TullyBBurnalot

The result of a Hyper Kinetic Accelerator, Satchel of Holding, and upgraded Ore Machine. DOSH!

Jonah is a butt. A hardass butt. In all seriousness, I wouldn't have lifted a finger on that RD unless they became hostile. I just legitimately had an issue with creating 8 AIs, which led to an absolute clusterfuck.

Added: To Genetics.

Added: To the Combat Mech Guidelines, so the RD can't cheese it without asking either. Seeing as they have Command Comms, it should be even easier for them. Also added: To Geneticists.

The problem with that is that it isn't a SOP issue. It's to do with the actual job, which is far beyond my authority here. I'm making guidelines for existing conditions. As much as I agree that Genetics really should be placed in one side, that'd be a matter for a PR, not a SOP change.

Alright, in an effort to keep this on track... It's been over two weeks since the thread was open. I'm keeping this open for three more days and, if no more objections are raised, it's being implemented and we're moving on to the next one.

Counter, I'll let you go nuts. My only word to describe Carl would be... "nondescript".

The bar floor shined as much as its wooden composition allowed. With a clatter, the trash bag was clipped to the back of the Janicart as Carl turned around and left his first cleaned mess behind. He took a look at his PDA, noting down the time in his head. A multitude of plans formed in his heads on how to accomplish what he was told to do. Break-ins, sabotage, murder by proxy, every possibility was considered, a million plans forming from pure imagination. So immersed was he in his thoughts that he completely missed the fact that the airlock in front of him hadn't automatically slid open, and seconds later he was on the ground, rubbing his nose and cursing his luck. A few civilians passed by and laughed at him before the station's Mime helped him on his feet with a sincere smile on his face. Doing his best to ignore how ridiculous he looked, Carl took his tools out and opened the door panel, finding several wires to be cut. Grumbling, he fixed them as best he could, ignoring the sparks as his new gloves did their job. With the door now properly opening, Carl opted to pass by the front of the Bridge. Inside, behind the multitude of consoles, he saw the Head of Security chatting with the man he was supposed to murder. He began sweating. He didn't notice he had frozen in the middle of the corridor, and was only brought back to reality when the chain around his waist was yanked on, signalling yet another clown trying to make off with his cart. Working on instinct, the Janitor turned around and sprinkled some cleaner on the clown's face. Like usual, this scared off the coloured prat, and Carl carried across Central Primary. How to get into the Bridge? His PDA beeped. Certain it was someone calling him to clean yet another mess (most likely a vomit grenade, again), he took his time to look at it, opting to swing by Mr. Chang's first. As he chowed down on some fried rice, he opened his Messenger application and nearly choked when he saw the message. He had absolutely no idea who Tom Neril was. With the odd choice of words, Carl could only assume he was someone lacking in higher brain functions. He opted to ignore the message, unwilling to ascertain whether or not this "Tom Neril" was anyone of use. He didn't even bother looking at the manifest. He'd do what was needed, and he'd do it alone. He always had. He got up, groaning. His knees were getting worse by the day. Dragging his cart behind him, Carl casually strolled around the main corridors, sneaking a peek into the various Departments to see if someone had voided their bowls or veins. So far so good. No dirt, mud, blood, crud or any such other fluids or contaminants. He stopped, looking behind him. Was it worth it? He quickly turned around and headed towards the Teleporter room, cursing his luck as the Janicart clanked loudly behind him. It wouldn't matter, he thought, as he could always claim he was just cleaning. He was the Janitor, after all. No one ever suspects the Janitor. Before anyone had the chance to come down the corridor or look at him from inside Medbay, Carl opened the Teleporter Room's door and scooched inside, dragging the cart before closing the door as quickly as he could. He stopped, ear pressed on the freshly locked door. No footsteps. Nothing on the radio. No one had seen him. He turned around, flinching as he noticed the Hand Teleporter was already missing. He spat on the ground, angry that his backup plan was already taken, likely by the Research Director. No matter. He wasn't there to kill the Captain. Not yet. Carl quickly climbed on the table and went to work on the small wall that led into the Captain's bedroom. It took him the better part of ten sweaty, nervous and incredibly nerve-wracking minutes, but eventually he managed to install an inconspicuous sliding door that, when closed, was virtually indistinguishable from the walls around it, so long as the Captain didn't touch it. He smiled. Unwilling to push his luck, he turned towards the Teleporter Computer and set it to the Arrivals Hallway, then pressed the red button labelled "Calibrate". He'd have to leave his cart unattended for a few seconds, but that beat possibly being caught leaving a restricted area. Soon enough, he had pushed it into the swirly void that had formed in the metal frame in front of him and, sooner yet, he would experience the crushing sensation before finally emerging halfway across the station, cart still on his side. Carl clipped the chain to it and moved along. He had work to do. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Medbay had always been his favourite department. Engineering was usually covered in oil, Science was nearly always filled with trash, the Chef never cleaned his freezer and Security had a multitude of bodily fluids. But Medbay, barring stationwide emergencies, was always sparkly white. He loved that. It was also quiet. And full of places one could secrete themselves to in order to grab a quick nap. The closets were an especially nice place to doze off whenever someone wasn't dying of spontaneous cellular collapse or from coughing up too many puppies. They were also useful for hiding stuff. In this case, the Chief Medical Officer's strangled corpse. He never did like the concept of collateral damage. He would've preferred if he could target the Captain, and Captain alone, but drastic measures must be taken for a target of that magnitude. Sensors off, Hypospray taken, and ID access copied over to his fancy Agent ID. Medbay would no longer be an impediment to any escape attempts, and the Bridge was wide open. He smiled. He wasn't capable of maintaining the smile, but he tried anyway. He locked the closet shut, then began dragging it towards Virology. He had heard the person manning it was still stuck in the Brig after their third escape attempt, so he figured he'd have time. Indeed, no one bothered him as he shoved the body into the disposals chute. He knew that mere seconds later, it'd be flying through space, never to be seen again. He adjusted his cap and headed out towards the front lobby. He tipped his cap at the lovely nurse. He clicked the button and crossed the threshold. No one was the wiser.

Minor edit to the main Standard Operating Procedure page to make it consistent with Security Job SOP.

Welcome to the station, crew. Enjoy your stay. The belt buckles automatically disengaged as the Arrivals Shuttle's doors shot open, the promise of another shift full of accidents looming just outside. All around him, workers of all races chatted excitedly about the goings-on of the previous day in the precious few seconds before they had to adjourn to their workplaces. He had never really liked the Vox. He was sure they were discussing inane things, such as their favourite flavour of coffee, but the slightest "word", if it could be called that, drilled into his skull like a jackhammer. He deliberately hung back as the entire crew funneled out of the shuttle, enjoying a few extra minutes of quiet before the late arrivals would begin docking in the side pods. He heard the announcements from the various Heads, pausing at the Chief Medical Officer's to turn off his suit sensors entirely. He chuckled before falling silent once again. With a sigh, he picked up his PDA. It was, for all intents and purposes, identical to the one given to him before he boarded, if not for a small chip located inside. He opened his Messenger application, then personalized his ringtone. 562 Gamma. The PDA beeped softly. The familiar touchscreen vanished, replaced with a dark, sickly red background with a single phrase written on it. Greetings, Agent. You are you assassinate the Captain, Richard Morgan, and make it out of the station alive. Do not fail us. He gulped, his hands shaking. Instinctively, his eyes shot up and swerved around, desperately searching for any possible surveillance equipment. He looked up, freezing as he noticed a camera swaying lazily. It stopped for a few seconds before continuing to scan the shuttle. "Greetings, Janitor." "GAH!" "Apologies, Janitor. I did not intend to frighten you," the hologram said, solidifying into a vague humanoid shape, "my sensors indicated you had not moved from the shuttle. It has been ten minutes. Please direct yourself to your workplace." "S-sure thing, AI," he gulped, "will do!" "Many thanks, Janitor. Your Head of Personnel for the day is John Adams. Your Captain for the day is Richard Morgan. Have a pleasant and productive day." The hologram dissolved into thin air, the shuttle growing silent once more. He sighed in relief, knowing the AI hadn't seen his open Uplink. Closing it and stashing the PDA into one of his pockets, he got up from his chair and stepped onto the main station. Time for work. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Galoshes on. Cap on. Gloves on. Bucket filled with water and mop placed on the rack. Belt properly fitted and filled with foam grenades, soap, cleaner bottle and light replacer. Trash bag on the cart. Chain clipped to stop random civilians from running off with the damned thing. He adjusted his new ID, the original one hidden underneath the water tank in the Custodial Closet. It had taken him a good five minutes, but it was an identical copy, down to the photo and DNA tags. Cursory or close inspection alike would be unable to distinguish it from a NanoTrasen ID Card. He had opted to place bear traps near both doors, ready and waiting for any possible trespassers. He stopped, considering his options. He was never given any tips or pointers. He was never told how to complete his goals. And considering how long it had been since the shift started, all the tools were probably in the hands of a random civilian already. He sighed, opening his Uplink again. With a soft beep, a black and red toolbox materialized in front of him. Inside, assorted tools and a pair of insulated gloves identical to his own black pair. He swapped his gloves and hid the toolbox under the plastic flaps that led into the maintenance tunnels, tools in his bag. No one would be the wiser. A quick tinkering with the back door later, he had all the information he needed for when he inevitably had to break into somewhere to clean up a mess. Among other things. His headset vibrated. "Janitor to the Bar, please." He sighed, pulling the cap over his eyes. --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- It was a right mess. "Fuck off, ya prick!" the Bartender yelled out, aiming his shotgun at the Virologist, "You're not welcome here anymore! Get out!" "Oh come on, man!" *click* "Safety's off, get the fuck out!" "Excuse me..." "Bartender, please don't shoot the guy, that's why I'm here," the Officer sighed. "I don't give a shit, either this maniac leaves or his nuts are getting a lesson in applied kinetics!" "Virologist, please just move." "Excuse me, I was called up to clean..." "Janitor, not now," the Officer scoffed, turning around, "right, if you're not doing this the easy way, you're doing this the hard way." The lanky man grabbed a small stick from his belt. An electrical crackle buzzed out when a button was clicked, quickly followed by the Virologist's cries of pain as he collapsed into a shaking heap, screaming his lungs out about police brutality. With a calmness rarely seen when accompanied by the red jumpsuit, the Officer quickly snapped a pair of cuffs on the screaming man and began dragging him off, a steady trail of blood accompanying them. He sighed. More to clean. "Sorry 'bout the mess, Carl," the Bartender sighed, putting his shotgun on his back, "bloody idiot decided to just walk in and smash bottles on his fucking head." "Business as usual, huh?" "Yeah..." - the Bartender scratched the back of his head before stretching his arms - "Anyway, there's blood and glass all over. Mind gettin' it?" "S'what I'm here for, isn't it?" Carl chuckled, crying internally, "I'll get it done in a jiffy." Another day, another mess. It was fun seeing the other side.

These look absolutely fucking awesome. MOAR PLIS!

That, I'm afraid, falls under the purview of the Staff's own rules. I'll see if I can bring it up.

Added a little something to Scientist Job SOP to account for (peaceful) Golden Extract lifeforms.

... I'll, uh, split this off then. EDIT: Christ almighty, this fucking thread got huge fast.

Precisely why my most frequent fax is a "please sign and stamp your faxes properly" one I have pre-made on Word. I won't be addressing the entire point with the fax thing point by point. Rather, I'll do it in a general sense, as I can see that I touched on a sore nerve. I never intended to diminish the impact of player input, nor the real emergency of the situation at hand. However, I would like to point out something: Some times, we just can't make it. Administrators, when not observing, are not only playing the game alongside everyone else, they also deal with Ahelps, random Asay/Msay, making sure Deadchat, LOOC and OOC is policed, handling complaints and generally having our chat boxes spammed by the clown hitting people with the horn. Simultaneously, we're trying to play and have fun while doing so. And, well, not all people think paperwork is fun. I do, but I'm a nerd. It boils down to the fact that, after a million "thing is bad halp" faxes, it becomes increasingly harder to respond with the exact same enthusiasm as you may once have had. Not just because writing a fax takes time and effort that maybe we want to apply to the round itself, but because, well, we're human beings, and we just get tired. Not to mention, it is also very easy to ignore faxes if you don't check the Fax Panel frequently. The fax alert, too, is silent and stealthy. But I digress. It's not a "you suck" attitude towards faxes. It's very much a situation where we're constantly exposed to, frankly, completely inane and pointless walls of text that serve no actual purpose other than to have the person kill time writing it. As simple (and possibly petty) as it may sound, after a while, it becomes increasingly hard to maintain the level of shits given. It's desensitization. Enormous amounts of "noise" drown out useful information. I personally try and go around this by reading every single possible fax, but even I, at this point, just look at some of them and think: "The only possible response I could give this is telling them to fix shit themselves" And really, in some circumstances, it's hard not to expect the person to do their job on their own, especially when there are other, more important faxes, waiting for a response. Not to mention, from an IC perspective, a lot of faxes just give a really general description and sorta expect CC to "just know". There really isn't a guideline, but a rule of thumb is that CC knows just what's on the fax. And when a fax shows up without a signature or stamp, how can CC confirm it's a real fax and not just a forgery/prank? How to fix this? Consistently answer to every single fax and explain just why they shouldn't have been written, or what to do properly. I tend to use the Representative as my go-to person for that, by telling them "Sit down with X and teach them how to properly write faxes, goddamnit". But, at the end of the day, we're still human beings, with limited stamina, and all the limitations that come with it.

Woops, gonna change it.

If the Trurl is joking around, assume the madmen have taken the helm. Context is king, after all!

Multiple Mutadone syringes, for one. Or getting Security to forcefully detain people and bring them in for Genetic treatment. Essentially, if the Powers are being abused, the CMO has full authority to do what it takes to remove those powers, short of actual bodily harm. Unless it's an out-of-control Hulk, then bodily harm is fully permitted.

Changed: To:

I personally dislike the Laser Cannon for the simple fact that it's bulky as all hell. That said, I'm not opposed to the idea of carrying multiple weapons to handle an immediate threat, just don't hold on to all of them unless it's actually necessary. Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually follow that line of thought. I just carry around what I need for my immediate job and leave unnecessary (for the time) stuff at my work station. I dislike bags filled up with random stuff. As someone who plays Medbay often, I can assure you that you are the exception to the rule. It's been literally months since I've seen anyone carrying around more than a small syringe of Omnizine. (one of the biggest reasons to which is the fact that getting Robotics to make an Odysseus is borderline maddening most shifts) I played Mage exclusively in Dragon Age: Origins. Quadratic mage growth is one of the few things that make me cackle maniacally. My point was that yes, you need to work for your stuff. But it's not that much work, and the stuff at the end of the line is ridiculously powerful compared to everyone else. You can basically make entire Departments on your own. I agree. I admit I may not have as much Science experience as others, but a lot of the Guidelines here were created with practical considerations in mind. A lot of it (and a lot of what's to come) is stuff people already do, except put in an actual formal guideline. That said, as mentioned before, I am averse to the idea of Science carrying weapons to "protect" themselves. Protecting the station is Security's job, and if they're not doing that properly, I'd rather fix that than find workarounds. Beg pardon, I misspoke. My idea was to slightly reduce the amount of Bananium available off the bat, not outright remove it. And to compensate, add even more Bananium at the gateway as well, so you either need to spend a loooooooooooong time finding Bananium, or brave the Gateway for it. Actually, that does make sense. Huh. Very true, though personally I'm a fan of general job objectives in order to nudge people into actually doing their jobs (such as "Make X of Y" for MedChem or "Set up the X Engine" for Engineering). That said, my entire point is that the main source of goodies and upgrades for Science comes from Research, which can be very easily completed, so Science shouldn't just ignore it entirely. Pretty much. I'm averse to the idea of the RD carrying multiple weapons "just in case", but as someone else said in this thread, SOP is meant to interlock. In this case, Science SOP interlocks with Sec SOP. If the Head of Security sees fit to give the RD more than a single weapon, then I'm to assume the situation really is that dire. I feel I should clarify something: 90% of faxes we receive deserve no response. They're either piss-poor formatted, have horrible grammar, have no signature/stamp, have no useful information or have stuff that we have literally no reason to do anything about. I get faxes from IAAs asking us to sentence someone who hit someone else with a crowbar on a daily basis. That's just stupid. I make a point of answering every fax that deserves an answer. And I do so based on what the fax is. If I receive a fax from the Captain that just says "We have Xenos", I'm not gonna do anything. Not only did the Captain not ask anything, he just wasted a fax machine relay cooldown to tell us something we have no way of doing anything about. As for the second point, any Command personnel that panic whenever CC doesn't answer them probably aren't fit for the position anyway. We expect Command personnel to be able to keep their cool and not flip their shit the moment something remotely bad happens. I actually do deny ERT requests with a reason whenever the request is not necessary. 99% of the time, this reason is "You have an active Security team, we're not scrambling an ERT because one person died". At the end of the day, properly written faxes get responses. If my initial mental reaction to a fax (and I know this extends to the Administration as well) is "You should fucking know how to do this yourself, we're not your babysitter", you're not likely to get any help, because: To be perfectly honest, this is mostly to do with round balance. Yes, it can be an amazingly detailed fax or communication, but it's tremendously unfair for a 3-person cult to suddenly have a 5-man Amber ERT hunting them down. That said, I've been handing out detailed "no" responses more and more lately. Command has an unfortunate tendency to only call ERTs when they're not needed, and completely forget to call for one when it's actually necessary. Panic, I guess. We actually have something similar. If there are no Game Admins online (so, only Trial Admins and below), eventually all ERT requests default to Code Amber and get sent automatically. That said, a lot of it is due to the fact that the ERT request is hilariously easy to miss, since it's the same colour as 50% of the chat box. And that is why SOP is malleable. Again, under nominal conditions in Code Red, one good weapon should suffice. If it doesn't, feel free to request further assistance from the relevant person. This'll actually be its very own mini-section in Command SOP: "When SOP isn't enough" That may be so, but there is still a problem with Science players who play Science purely to play with the toys. Roboticists who make not a single Utility Mech and hog all resources to make that one Durand so they can go pewpew at post-round grief. There's a lot of powergaming going around in Science, and Science Job SOP should at least establish some nominal baselines on how Scientists should be acting when everything's alright. As I said, SOP is malleable. But if there's no reason to mold it, then it should be followed normally.

As recommended by Regens, created the Guide to Faxes page. (wooooo bureaucracy!)

+1 for this idea. Also yes, if you don't want to be an antag for one round, just ahelp it and we'll give the slot to someone else.

And hold gung-ho Roboticists accountable if they decide to make combat mechs without asking anyone.

That's... actually a good point, it's incredibly redundant. I'll be removing it. As for your other point, here's where I have to reiterate the point from where I stand: Robotics has no real reason to be making fully armed military exosuits just because it can. The "but something antaggy might happen" argument should have no bearing on SOP. That said, here's what I'm going to do: rather than written and stamped permission at Code Green, I'll swap it over to merely verbal consent from the Head of Security and/or Captain. That way, there's still a restriction, but all you literally need to do is ask "Yo, Cap/HoS, can I make them Durands?".