Before I became an admin, I was quite frustrated with the lack of admin responsiveness to faxes.
After becoming an admin, I realized that the most common reasons faxes don't get a response are:
- Issue is so minor it isn't worth CC's attention, e.g. sec officer batoned a prisoner - HoS is expected to deal with that.
- There are OOC gameplay balance reasons that CC should not respond. E.g: NTR requests gamma alert due to war ops. War ops always lose anyway - giving the crew Gamma just turns a loss into a curb stomp battle. Another example: command may be panicking about traitors, but if we see there are only two traitors, and 6 sec.... we aren't going to send backup, as the traitors are already badly outnumbered.
- GAs are AFK or absent. TAs cannot even see faxes, let alone respond to them. Ditto all other messages to CC.
- GAs are simply busy playing and miss the fax notice - or assume someone else will get it.
- The fax is unhelpful. Long, vague and/or otherwise time-consuming to deal with.
Escalation Procedure:
- If the issue concerns a normal crew member, their head should deal with it.
- If the issue concerns a head, the Captain should deal with it.
- If the issue concerns the Captain, or the entire chain of command up to and including the Captain is not dealing with it adequately, THEN you fax CC.
- This requires you actually at least try to talk to people in the chain of command. DO NOT automatically fax CC without talking with anyone.
Good reasons to fax CC:
- The Captain is an idiot, and needs to be replaced. CITE EVIDENCE for this.
- The station is in widespread chaos, and requires an ERT, but most of Command is dead / you're unable to officially request an ERT. So you fax instead.
- There is an unusual situation (admin event) going on, and you want advice.
- The station is being consumed by a blob/xenoarmy/etc and your request for the nuclear codes has gone unanswered.
If you think you have a good reason, and CC isn't responding:
- You can call a vote of the heads to remove the Captain.
- You can ask the HoS/Captain to arm the crew to combat emergency threats.
- You can ask the crew for advice.
- You can (usually) call the shuttle.