/tg/Station 13

Heads of staff roles are not much different from the roles of their subordinates. Really, the only thing that's different about them is authority. Inexperienced players should be able to have that authority while being incompetent if they truly wish to.

There's not really a flood of players that would rush to play heads of staff at lower hours, so I doubt that the people that play heads would significantly change for the worse.

People keep bleeding tears over how they want the Head of Staff role to have more authority or feel like a more proper role administratively. It also seems very odd to have it just be one hour, like it’s not really anything to strive for and really get interested in a department before you’re flung to the higher echelons of it.

Rule 5 and Rule 5’s Precedents address the role of a Head of Staff across all /tg/station servers. Although it’s considered to be “ generally considered to be not logging out at or near roundstart.”both in my player and administrative experience, it’s much more important on Roleplay servers:

Rule Three of Roleplay Rules: Chain of command and security are important.

The head of your department is your boss and they can fire you; security officers can arrest you for stealing or breaking into places. Unless they're doing something unreasonable, such as spacing you for spraying graffiti on the walls, you shouldn't freak out over being punished for doing something that would get you fired or arrested in real life. This also means that if you're in the chain of command, and especially if you're in Security, you're expected to put in some effort and do your job.

How can you ascertain who is properly doing their job and who’s worthy of firing if you aren’t personally without someone explicitly telling you? You would gain this skill over time, of course, but it wouldn’t exactly be jolly fun throughout. If someone is unjustly fired from the job they signed up for at round start and you fire them on extremely flimsy reasoning, that also opens up the potential to get bwoinked (although if you can adequately explain your side of the situation, I do not think it would go further than that. Variable to a situation-by-situation basis.) I think it’s a good idea to lessen the amount of headaches people have in a shift, and although it is funny to have to explain new concepts to an “incompetent” head of staff, it’s less funny if they can’t unbuckle themselves or put on internals.

I also believe that the 15 hours isn’t a punishment for new players, or maybe not even truly related to actually learning the skills of the department- it just increases the amount of time you come into contact with your boss. Over 15 hours worth of shifts, I’ll say that you can get a gross estimate of shit Heads or Staff and good Heads of Staff. If you, as an underling, get into such major conflict with a Head of Staff during a certain shift, you might not be likely to repeat that same behavior when you finally get the ability to play as that role. It’s about learning and figuring out how you want to tackle that responsibility, which is something you absolutely can never learn if you immediately unlock the job and never meet another RD/CMO/HOP/QM ever again. You can always learn new job skills as the head of staff, but the experience of learning how to be a better head of staff is severely crimped once again.

Also, I don’t know how revolutionaries balance would be affected, if it would be affected. You might see a completely clueless 2h player as the Head of Security, but they won’t stay completely clueless for long as they rack up more hours. Probably not an issue?

I’m also stuck thinking about the increase of “soft griefing” because some people who are not-at-all new who hates a certain department could easily access the head of staff role, and be miserable from there. That’s probably either an IC issue or an administrative one.

We also had this thread recently about raising the number of hours: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=31363 , and although this might accomplish the goal set forth in that previous thread:

We don't have interest in this, we want there to be more heads of staff in rounds and not fewer.

It comes so at the cost of it immediately spiking up in competition, as well as the potential negative aspects mentioned prior.

san7890 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 7:22 pm I’m also stuck thinking about the increase of “soft griefing” because some people who are not-at-all new who hates a certain department could easily access the head of staff role, and be miserable from there. That’s probably either an IC issue or an administrative one.

I'm wondering who would ever do this. Does this happen often?
Typically a person who hates a department enough to be miserable with the job wouldn't play the department.

tjatpbnj wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 7:58 pm

san7890 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 7:22 pm I’m also stuck thinking about the increase of “soft griefing” because some people who are not-at-all new who hates a certain department could easily access the head of staff role, and be miserable from there. That’s probably either an IC issue or an administrative one.

I'm wondering who would ever do this. Does this happen often?
Typically a person who hates a department enough to be miserable with the job wouldn't play the department.

I’ve heard of people who hate security so much they join the force to passively/actively work against it- or at least engage in the same shitty behaviors they witness because “if they can get away with it, I can too”, but this was a relic of a now long-gone time because those sorts of people wouldn’t last long.

That sounds a little stupid to me, I doubt it will happen more often than it already does.

I think the numbers are fine where they are. Shouldn't be decreased, but shouldn't be increased either.

I think you're overestimating the amount of new players that would immediately go for head of staff immediately after unlocking it.

And with what you said about not getting to know the heads of staff, that assumes the player never plays a round as a subordinate after unlocking a head, which will not be true, because there's competition for the roles.

You also don't have to know the jobs well to be a head, just the basics. You may be incompetent, but you'll get by just the same.

Not trying to be rude here but... What would this accomplish?

More heads of staff, easier for new players to unlock heads of staff.

Some evaders like to go for head of staff positions and I wouldn't want to make that easier on them.

RaveRadbury wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 9:40 pm Some evaders like to go for head of staff positions and I wouldn't want to make that easier on them.

Newer players or players from other servers may also want to go for these positions. It makes it easier for them.

The head jobs are often different from the subordinates job as well, so a player that dislikes supply and service jobs will never get to try HOP, which they may (unlikely) enjoy playing more. The same goes for cyborg and ai, or to the other heads, in a much lesser extent.

I am aware how this looks

tjatpbnj wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 10:51 pm Newer players or players from other servers may also want to go for these positions. It makes it easier for them.

a head of staff is supposed to be the leader of his department, the guy who tells you what to do, inexperienced players shouldn't be picking the role "because it's easier" and it would be actively detrimental to encourage this. Nobody takes command seriously on lrp because they frequently cannot be relied on. Chain of command doesn't exist when people play like this

If anything tbh the hours required should be raised

Terrible take. Heads of Staff when done correctly are very different from a regular departmental position you are not just another worker with gamer gear.

Heads of Staff need to be familiar with most jobs within the department as they have the authority to demote people and shoulder the responsibility for their department being efficient.

Heads of staff also deal directly with other heads, and may need to take acting captain.

An hour in a department does not teach you enough to run the department, why would we want less experienced heads?

tjatpbnj wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 7:58 pm

san7890 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 24, 2022 7:22 pm I’m also stuck thinking about the increase of “soft griefing” because some people who are not-at-all new who hates a certain department could easily access the head of staff role, and be miserable from there. That’s probably either an IC issue or an administrative one.

I'm wondering who would ever do this. Does this happen often?
Typically a person who hates a department enough to be miserable with the job wouldn't play the department.

In my experience way too often for me to be comfortable lowering the requirement. In fact I am the opinion it should be raised. There are a lot of nuances you are expected to know at any given moment as a head of staff and that can put a lot of stress on someone who isn't expecting it. I view the playtime as: a shield for new players to avoid any toxicity they may encounter from a lack of game knowledge from said expectations. A shield for the players who play the department but don't want the responsibility. This let's them have more trust for anyone that ends up being their superior because of that required time to play under that specific department, and a shield for the playerbase as a whole against alt account or new account griefers. You'd be surprised at the level of dedication some people put in for the sole reason of being malicious. The DDOS in April we underwent is a good example of the time, effort, and actual money people will put in to be malicious. I should note that head of staff roles arnt our only time locked roles, security officer for example is also time locked.

Here is a thread for the switch from account age (awful) to departmental age:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=14827

Exp_requirements are found in the individual job_type dm files here:

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/ ... /job_types

They can be overridden via config in this block here:

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/ ... ig.txt#L64

Therefore:

Has there been a decision on whether it would be beneficial to lower the exp requirements?

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Personally: I take a lot of my approach from one of the areas where the port of the department exp system came from, and feel it is better left as a read for those interested in the talking points it contains:

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/7020

I don't think any of the headmins care enough to lower it. There is a delicate balancing act where having no Heads of Staff makes the shift less fun than having some, but having REALLY SHITTY Heads of Staff make the shift even less fun than having none. Heads of Staff **do** end up in a position of more responsibility and abusing those responsibilities leads to more serious notes and bans. The hope is that after the required number of hours, the player has seen a few shifts with another Head of Staff around and knows what is and isn't acceptable.

I don't think our current approach for time played is perfect, however I think it strikes a balance between eligibility and the experience an individual needs to not get in administrative trouble as a head.

No one on this current head admin term has any interesting in lowering any head of staff playtime requirements.