/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

After both the policy bus and coderbus meetings the general consensus was TG was interested in going in a direction where heads were more meaningful/impactful to the round. I want to hear more thoughts on this, discuss.

Some food for thought:

Do we want administration to warn all heads of staff who do not show ample game knowledge? For example, a CE not knowing how to set up a basic SM setup without causing a delam, so the admin tells this player to play the station engineer role until they learn how to set up the engine.

Do we want the same level of standards for MRP and LRP?

What kind of things/access should only heads of staff have access to? This could be anything from unique and improved gear onwards.

What kind of traitor objectives could we give to heads of staff that could challenge them? As it stands now people are vying for the removal of traitor, blood brother, and theif because it's seen as "easy mode".

Authority and respect are a social aspect of the game, should heads of staff have to earn this respect to keep control of their departments or should enforcement of this respect lay partially on admins. We already enforce metaprotections on valid demotions.

If we want to enforce a higher standard of game knowledge for heads of staff, should we raise the time required to play before you can unlock these roles? If not what other alternatives could we implement?

As it stands the only time a head of staff "matters" is when a revolution is active, what things could we change or add that could make them more useful without it being required?

ekaterina wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 7:06 pm

Tearling wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:14 am training for the main purpose of HoP basically requires you to play HoP, or as an Acting Captain. There's a good chance someone will play as a HoP before they play as an acting captain, so most of the time first-time HoPs have no idea how to change ID access.

Not necessarily. All heads have the ability to edit access on IDs to their respective departments. That said, it's true that HoP doesn't require you to have played as any other head before.

Most heads don't even know they have that ability until someone explicitly points it out to them, so it's still possible that someone who played heads before still does not understand how to play HoP.

I remember making this thread many years ago and I'm still of two minds about it.
On the one hand, heads of departments are more or less meant to be a sort of mentor or leadership of a department. Depending on charisma and level of RP severity, they could also wield actual authority over the other members of the department. In security I would generally look to the head of a department to know what their underlings were doing and where they were or hold them accountable for where things in their departments had gone. This obviously met varying levels of success depending how seriously that head took their job. Similarly, we look to heads of departments as a sort of enabling or throttling force. They keep good workers engaged and effectively working to do things, meet station goals, etc. They keep bad workers in check through demotions and supervision. They produce an obstacle for antagonists by both being present and observant stewards of their departments as well as an immediate contact line to the other heads. Played correctly, any head of department is in a position to be the Hero the Station Needs at any time. They're both the biggest loot box in any department and also the department's Final Boss of sorts. Ideally.

On the other hand, incompetent heads of department can be an interesting story point as long as they're functionally incompetent. A head that just cloisters in his office with a wiki page up looking at controls and inputs is functionally worthless and many a rev round was ruined in the past by clueless heads of staff who had never even touched half of their department roles before. On the other, Emergent Gameplay(tm) occurs when mistakes and suboptimal play occurs.

Ultimately, I like the idea of Very Competent players playing heads of staff, but my primary concern would be that a head of staff be a competent manager and not necessarily a competent department role. This leads us to avoid the problem chronic to real corporate structures where all of the talent is promoted away from the projects and placed in management where they do little of it. A station benefits more from a skilled roboticist being a skilled roboticist than it does from that skilled roboticist being pulled from the robotics bay and plopped into a staff meeting of heads or babysitting the slime ranchers.

ekaterina wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 7:06 pm

Tearling wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:14 am training for the main purpose of HoP basically requires you to play HoP, or as an Acting Captain. There's a good chance someone will play as a HoP before they play as an acting captain, so most of the time first-time HoPs have no idea how to change ID access.

Not necessarily. All heads have the ability to edit access on IDs to their respective departments. That said, it's true that HoP doesn't require you to have played as any other head before.

It was in 2021 when I last saw ID changes used by a head that wasn't the HoP/acting captain.

Tearling wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 9:48 pm

ekaterina wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 7:06 pm

Tearling wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:14 am training for the main purpose of HoP basically requires you to play HoP, or as an Acting Captain. There's a good chance someone will play as a HoP before they play as an acting captain, so most of the time first-time HoPs have no idea how to change ID access.

Not necessarily. All heads have the ability to edit access on IDs to their respective departments. That said, it's true that HoP doesn't require you to have played as any other head before.

It was in 2021 when I last saw ID changes used by a head that wasn't the HoP/acting captain.

To be fair, there's very, VERY rarely a reason to do so. I think I've only ever actually demoted one person from my department as a CE, and, yesterday, I saw an RD give the Chaplain Science access. I don't know why the Chaplain wanted it, but, it was actually being used to kill the Chaplain - the RD was a traitor and killed them and left their corpse floating in space outside xenobio shortly after they were both alone in the isolated xeno department.

Back on point though, yeah, expecting a first time HoP to know how to use the ID system isn't really fair, firstly it isn't straightforward at all, and secondly you don't REALLY use it as any other position.

After playing a round where the CE decided to not allow anyone to set the engine up. I have decided to completely change my stance. Policy shouldnt be where (ic) shithead heads of staff are handled. Other players lynching a head for not doing head duties should always be the punishment for being a shitty head. Even a new player head that is not the best at the job will gravitate towards whoever they believe can help them, and that player (and department) in turn can protect the head from the crew or even complete the head duties for them so they can teach them what they need to know to be a good head. Lynchings usually only happen if someone is being an asshole, or for MASSIVE fuckups

TheLoLSwat wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 6:36 pm After playing a round where the CE decided to not allow anyone to set the engine up.

Have you discovered who really has the power to completely fuck over a round and force a shuttle call? And likely get away with it because the administration mostly hasnt caught up yet?

A year ago this would have been fine you could just make your own power without the SM.

Now the SM is no longer distinctly the engineer`s domain, its everyone`s problem and not setting it up as a CE is massive grief.

And i`m 80% sure if a CE doesn`t set up the sm and tries you remove you from their department when you do and you lethally fight back so you can make power and move on with your round an admin won`t be happy with you.

MooCow12 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:19 pm

TheLoLSwat wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 6:36 pm After playing a round where the CE decided to not allow anyone to set the engine up.

Have you discovered who really has the power to completely fuck over a round and force a shuttle call? And likely get away with it because the administration mostly hasnt caught up yet?

A year ago this would have been fine you could just make your own power without the SM.

Now the SM is no longer distinctly the engineer`s domain, its everyone`s problem and not setting it up as a CE is massive grief.

And i`m 80% sure if a CE doesn`t set up the sm and tries you remove you from their department when you do and you lethally fight back so you can make power and move on with your round an admin won`t be happy with you.

if the CE is the only person standing in the way of a powered station, nobody is going to care (IC and OOC) when the CE gets killed. If the crew (mainly captain and all engineers) let the station go for 30 minutes without power because of a baby CE thats their fault for not slapping the baby CE

Kieth:

I'm not the biggest fan of forcing restrictions onto people. I don't really want to push anything onto the heads unless the code empowers them a bit more, thus, I'd like to keep the status quo and keep the heads to the high levels of freedom that they currently have on our servers. I am absolutely willing to re-consider my decision if heads get powered up a bit more.
Misdoubtful:

I've had a lot of time to think about this one (once again), and the reality is I'm still coasting along with my original viewpoint on it, I was the last time this topic came up on TG too. I feel its a part of TG's identity compared to other servers, where almost every other environment has this sort of thing TG doesn't. There's nothing wrong with options like that existing in the greater community. TG has its flavor, its had this flavor.

I say this having played on multiple other servers (the vast majority of them actually) that have had this kind of thing. Its predictable. Meanwhile TG is one of the goofiest mainstream environments there is, and the rules always kind of supported that.

I don't want to come off as rude when I say this but if someone is feeling the itch to experience head 'restrictions' like that I feel like it behooves them to try out other environments, as TG is very good at offering what it does, and a change like this would change one of the things that fundamentally makes playing on TG different from other places. This sort of change would have an impact on that for the very foreseeable future.

Those that do take that leap may come to appreciate not only what TG does well, but what other servers do well too.

Timber:

I'm all for heads of staff mattering more. Especially having more responsibility, or being expected to play to a higher overall RP standard. I think our policy on Heads is antiquated, neutering any attempt by admins, players and coders to make Heads more than just departmental assistants with expanded access and gear. I'd very much like to see the codebase do more with Heads, but as long as all the admin team asks of Heads is just not logging out roundstart, the codebase will have to continue treating heads like loot pinanas or departmental assistants instead of giving them any place in the chain of command. I still welcome coders to come forward with policy suggestions that would allow for better game design, and hope my fellow headmins consider any suggestions if they come

So, to sum it up.

Kieth: Status quo.
Misdoubtful: Status quo.
Timber: Raise standards.

Our charter for this term dictates that for policy, majority rules, thus, we will be keeping the status quo.