Head role assignment compromise that will leave everyone unhappy.

[spookuni]

This proposal would inherently require some coding work and changes so I'm posting it here for feedback and to see what the buy-in is like rather than 'headmins please do this immediately'

Alright so there are three general camps to the non-human heads debate, the people who just want to play their felinids/moths/lizards, the people who want to retain the grungy atmosphere of the game where NT floats somewhere between 'questionable corporation' and 'outright evil', and the people who just want more competent heads of staff players (I am in this camp.).

I'd like to propose a compromise which will make everyone somewhat unhappy, but will hopefully cover some of the bases of each position in a way people can at least agree to be moderately unhappy about together.

The proposal as it currently stands is:

A. Non-human heads are enabled, but human characters with head roles enabled have priority over non-human characters with head roles enabled, so non-human heads will only fit in to fill gaps in the roster, rather than competing whenever the head roster is full.
B. Non-human characters that do receive head roles are automatically assigned an alternate job title which is less prestigious*.
C. Non-human heads have an even greater payscale decrease than the normal non-human wage decrease, bringing them equivalent to the normal wage for a worker in their department

* Potential alt titles (workshopping in progress)
Captain -> Lieutenant
HoP -> HR Coordinator / Personnel Coordinator / Personnel Relations Manager / Manager of Personnel (New!)
HoS -> Acting Security Specialist / Acting Security Supervisor
RD - > Research Fellow
CE - > Senior Engineer
CMO -> Senior Medical Officer / Chief Resident Medic
QM -> QM is not a real head and being called the Quartermaster is already equivalent to being insulted

The upsides as I see them
- People who want to play their non-human statics in head roles will occasionally get to do so, without needing to make new characters or use the backup human function
- The game's roleplay atmosphere of lite corporate distopia and NT's lore status as being at best on the borderline of outright evil are both maintained
- Humans as an in-game species option retain their current effective upside of institutional backing, rather than becoming more generic for its loss
- Rounds will have more available competent head players filling in gaps in rosters rather than leaving departments leaderless, especially on MRP where the chain of command is more important (total 'please just give us more head players' victory)

Downsides
- It is in fact a compromise and everyone will probably not be getting 100% of what they want

As mentioned this would require some coding work to happen, but it will need backing before then so I hope this proposal satisfies enough of a middle ground to be workable.

[WineAllWine]

As one of the most vocal amongst the 'no non-human heads' crowd: I Wholeheartedly support this proposal!

[Roadto3k]

I like most of this, but I don't think there needs to be a title change for jobs. There is no prestige or respect towards heads of staff, because IC and OOC everyone knows they are not earned titles. It seems like unneccesary complication.

[dragomagol]

I was lukewarm until I saw "Research Fellow" and then I got a giggle, good policy thread.

[RaveRadbury]

As one of the most vocal amongst the 'no non-human heads' crowd: I Wholeheartedly support this proposal!

Seconding Wine's sentiment!

What I really like about this solution is that it maintains the vibe and also has a kind of poetic resonance with the IRL circumstances of having low population right now.

It also very much empowers player agency!
Want a guaranteed non-human head roll? Play off hours!
Mad about non-human heads? Better ready up to play a head of staff! (Finally, an incentive!)

This also makes AI concerns more circumstantial and therefore engages the "more stories" argument in a way that has more texture to it!

Maybe the specific heads need fine-tuning, those details of the argument never much mattered to me. I'm sure others who care about that nuance will have good arguments for it.

I could see myself having HOP on medium or low for one of my lizard characters under this system. It would be a fun surprise when it happens!

Also the re-titling is solid and a great touch.

I hope this is something that we can see happen, great idea Spookuni!!

[Striders13]

I actually like this a lot

[dendydoom]

YOU DID IT SPOOK YOU SOLVED IT

my only criticism is that i STILL think hos should be human only. itt the jackbooted thugs should always be incentivized to protect human interests with corporate law sanctioned violence. other than that i really like this a lot!!

now do naming policy...

[britgrenadier1]

Just make sure you can still type in the original job to find the alt job title. Downstreams like monke have alt titles for jobs and it sucks not being able to type in captain to instantly find the captain on the PDA

Edit: Also nah, just send it through with only CE, CMO, and HoP. No code changes attached

[Deathrobotpunch1]

Honestly, I like this compromise. but since it requires a code change I am not sure how the maints would respond.

[Deathrobotpunch1]

also rule wise they should still be considered heads obv

[mrmelbert]

But HoP is the true Lieutenant, not the √Captain.

Edit: I realize this is Policy and not Player's club. In which case I think this proposal is totally O.K. Not a huge fan of the alternate job titles or non-human captains but otherwise O.K.

[Deathrobotpunch1]

But HoP is the true Lieutenant, not the √Captain.

Edit: I realize this is Policy and not Player's club. In which case I think this proposal is totally O.K. Not a huge fan of the alternate job titles or non-human captains but otherwise O.K.

yeah, I would prefer for the alternate job titles to be removed.

[Archie700]

Instead of a binary "no head assigned for humans", we could consider lower job weights for nonhumans in head positions instead

[Deathrobotpunch1]

Instead of a binary "no head assigned for humans", we could consider lower job weights for nonhumans in head positions instead

isn’t that what this policy is suggesting we do?

[RaveRadbury]

Instead of a binary "no head assigned for humans", we could consider lower job weights for nonhumans in head positions instead

isn’t that what this policy is suggesting we do?

This policy fills all available human heads (the system will already fill head roles over the HIGH pick) and then checks to see if any non-human heads are available and finishes out the selection.

So the proposal is that the system will always pick humans over non-humans.

[conrad]

I am in no way unhappy with his proposal. It has a very satisfying lore crunch.

It'd be nice if the jobs had the same abbreviation/acronym, like Chief Medical Officer becomes, say, Clinical Management Organizer. If that's too contrived, I understand.

Good one spook

[FantasticFwoosh]

I disagree on the principle; it would take very little effort to alter the subtext of the names and cause conflict by pushing them through the HOP console to name their full counterparts, mechanically limiting due to funds or not. The largest portion of "Not getting what you want" may come from the players themselves with misplaced expectations of believing they are worthy to usurp a full captains title with or without popular support.

I have no objections to the format though, they would be 'assistant heads'. And it would be good to log their relevance in for midround deputization.

[iwishforducks]

sounds good on paper but this just seems too complicated. i think changing the job title can cause confusion. if we are to do alternate job titles i think it should just be “Acting Head of Personnel” “Acting Chief Engineer” - it keeps it obvious that they’re less prestigious but still hold the same responsibility. i would rather them just keep the job title but the human-preferred heads is honestly fine and probably how it should be if we’re still keeping asimov

Spoiler:

you know for all the talk of stopping our server from becoming a furry erp server, alternative job titles is the most furry erp server shit i have ever seen

[Timberpoes]

This just seems like a way to almost automate away non-humans needing to get a promotion to head ICly. I'd personally prefer to stick to that gameplay route rather than seek some code solution in a place that's already ham-fisted enough with job priorities vs antag selections.

I have nothing against non-human heads being promoted from the crew, by the crew. I would instead prefer there be some route for the HoP or Captain ICly to close out head of staff roles that have been filled from the crew already to better support this. Or alternatively, for the player promoted to be able to enter their Head of Staff office and clock in for the shift - thereby filling one job slot on the manifest.

Cuz I do think the "player x latejoins for a head of staff role thinking they'll be the boss, finds out player y has already filled it after joining, nobody is happy" conflict genuinely sucks regardless of how it occurs and whether it's between humans or nonhumans.

And I also like the idea of players controlling it ICly incase someone wants to step up as interim command until someone else signs up for it - where they'll handover and go back to their old job.

Would some people abuse this to grief? Probably. I'd just ban em. Admins reopening job slots is trivial. Could also auto announce to the crew when head slots get closed (like when heads joining get annoucned) so people can investigate and ahelp or lynch as appropriate.

[Jackraxxus]

The alternate naming things kinda sorta conflict with my ideal state of role names. I want TGMC-style playtime job titles. I think they're funny.
I guess non-human heads could like playtime title - 1.
Otherwise humans taking precedence in rolling the job is cool.

[MatrixOne]

I support the proposal, without the alternate naming. I'd probably prefer just to keep captain and RD as only human because of the AI interactions, and the other heads would be nonhuman allowed, but if we're compromising, sure, Spook's suggestion seems good to me. Would rather just keep the classic job names and perhaps one day we'll get the system where everyone can choose from a list of alternate names like monkestation has.

[britgrenadier1]

Yeah the more I think about it the more I dislike the alt names. Otherwise the compromise seems fine, I just use the PDA messenger search too much. You don’t notice how nice it is to type in captain and find them until you play on monke where it’s a total crapshoot

[warbluke]

I like the names because Lieutenant is just a better sounding officer rank than Captain unless you're in the golden age of sail.

[dirk_mcblade]

I don't like this proposal.

[Jamarkus]

I don't like this proposal.

Thank you for your input.

Its iffy to me, but I see the benefits more than the downsides. I like the cut pay, and humans getting priority. It also now makes a bit more sense as to why there's a few lizard or ethereal CC members. Felinids don't count. I dislike THIS way of changing the name. It dosent actually feel like the title is lesser, it just feels like a new name like how some servers let you change the job title. I dunno about even changing the name. What WOUND be interesting is doing a real corporate underhanded tactic and making an automated CC announcement welcoming the NON-HUMAN employee to their department, and reminding the crew that having new DIVERSE opinions on how to run their department is a new open way to-

you get the point.

Make it demeaning by showering the head of staff with praise using an announcement the corpo way!

[RedBaronFlyer]

Yeah the more I think about it the more I dislike the alt names. Otherwise the compromise seems fine, I just use the PDA messenger search too much. You don’t notice how nice it is to type in captain and find them until you play on monke where it’s a total crapshoot

This is why I never want alternate job titles to come to TG. It's absolutely infuriating having to type in like five to seven different job titles in the PDA looking to call a jannie or an engineer or something. You could just call for it over the radio but lord knows no one reads the radio and it's even worse on a 100+ pop server.