Department/Job Goals

[Norwest]

Issues:

1. Station goals are a neat idea, but with only three different goals, they get pretty boring in practice. Once you've seen one station shield, you've seen them all.

1(a). More complicated station goals aren't easily implemented due to the extensive coding involved. You can't code a way to evaluate "put on a play" without human involvement in the loop.

2. Station goals require the entire station, which leaves you screwed over if/when Botany some other department fails to come through and renders all your hard work pointless.

3. Station goals also only involve a few departments; when the station's job is "haul some satellites into space," the entire Service department can't do much more than Advanced Thumb-Twiddling.

 

 

Design Goals:

1. I'm looking to make a flexible system which provides a goal which both departments and individual jobs can strive for.

2. I want to avoid consistency: the system should have a lot of different goals, which ideally challenge people's playstyles in some way.

3. The system should reward both departments and individuals in a way which provides some bragging rights, without incentivizing them enough to make them want to game the system.

 

Design:

1. Each department (Security, Cargo, Engineering, Medical, Science, Service) receives a specific goal from a pre-determined list. Similarly to the station goal form, the paper with the departmental goal would appear in the head's office (HoP, HoS, CMO, etc.). The departmental goal is intended to involve the primary job of the department (Engineers, Cargo Techs, etc.), with a goal such as "send back at least 20 empty crates" or "hold a pizza party." Suggestions for goals to complete are definitely appreciated (see below).

2. Individual jobs which are different from the primary department's job in some way (Geneticist, Chemist, Botanist, Mime/Clown, etc.) receive a role-specific goal which they're intended to implement. A Coroner, for instance, could receive a goal like "hold a funeral for at least one deceased individual this shift, complete with a eulogy."

3. Goal completion is evaluated by IA Agents, who can mark a department's or individual's goal as completed (I'd suggest having a particular form to fax to CentComm or something similar, to avoid complicating things). While this system could certainly be gamed, the low reward potential should keep people from gaming it for actual powergame-y reasons. And if someone wants to bribe or coerce an IA Agent into claiming they've done something good...well, that seems like perfectly decent RP, no?

4. Departments would be rewarded with a plaque or some other commendation that goes on a wall (either shipped in or stocked in the IA's office), and a minor greentext at the end under the Station Goal section ("Science Department Goal: 'Create multiple maximum-capacity bombs' - completed!"). Individuals who completed their role-specific task or contributed strongly in some other way would be rewarded with a commendation from their Head of Staff. Each Head of Staff would spawn with their own medal box in their closet, with up to three relevant medals inside (distinguished conduct for the HoP, nobel sciences award for the RD, etc.) Obviously, some medals like the 'medal for exceptional heroism' would still be Captain-only.

This:

a) allows for many more goals to be implemented, ranging from more conventional goals like "Engineering: repair and re-open the Med-Maint Bar" to off-the-wall stuff like "Service: serve a full-scale feast in the Bar, complete with a reconstruction of an ancient Viking longship" or "Mime/Clown: act out a scene from a Shakespearean play"),

b) gives IA Agents more stuff to do and a reason to visit other departments rather than the usual interaction of "You're doing your job? Cool, keep doing that,"

c) improves IA's interaction with other departments, since now they can provide something good rather than just being the bearer of bad news, and

d) Gives both recognition and reward to a particular department for the work they've done.

 

Expected issues:

a) People gaming the system for kicks (IA Agent being a shitter, Head of Staff pinning all their medals on themselves, etc.). I see this issue as a largely self-resolving one, since people being shitheads like this should invite enough public condemnation to limit it.

b) People simply ignoring their goals. This is also a fairly self-resolving issue, since the goals themselves don't provide any major risk or reward other than a shiny plaque or medal.

c) People mocking a weird goal they're given. This could be addressed by making the goal papers themselves fairly humorous ("Hey Atmos Techs, Comms Officer Steve here. So I know it's normally banned for being 'suicidally dangerous' and similar stuff, but here's what: how about you make a special room for plasmamen? I'm sure the Chief Engineer would commend you for that!"). This should hopefully provide the right tone for the goals, without detracting from the fact that they're a new and interesting thing to try on some slow round.

 

 

Suggestions for departmental goals:

General:

-Educate new members of the team / provide public education to anyone who wants to learn about your job

Medical:

-Remove at least ten appendixes / install at least five MedHUD implants

-Get half the crew to maximize their suit sensors / ensure the front desk is staffed during the shift

Science:

-Destroy the Toxins Testing Range with toxins bombs

-Build a quantum-pad network connecting the station

-Build and install two additional AIs / build a secondary comms array

Engineering:

-Complete and pressurize the Construction Site (the one east of the Engineering Outpost)

-Build a new room in the Assembly Line area (theater, lounge, etc.)

-Repair and re-furnish the Old Bar or Medical Maintenance restaurant

Cargo:

-Send at least twenty crates on the supply shuttle

-Ensure that every order submitted has properly stamped paperwork

-Provide every Civilian on station with a Station-Bounced Radio

 

Role-Specific Tasks:

Chemistry: Provide every other department with healing grenades / provide Engineering with at least five metal-foam grenades

Coroner: Ensure all corpses are disposed of via cremation or mass-driver once autopsied

Roboticist: Ensure the station has at least one 'borg with every module type before the shift ends / Build at least two Odysseus Mechs

Chaplain: Provide a service dedicating the station to your god / hold at least one funeral service for any person or thing, complete with firing them out the mass driver

Librarian: Create a role-playing game in the Library / provide books to all other departments

Atmos Tech: Destroy at least one dangerous item in the Incinerator / create a vox-specific (or plasmaman-specific) room this shift

(etc. etc. etc.)

 

I'd appreciate any other suggestions you have to offer, especially suggestions for additional goals to complete. I'd like a large number of goals to avoid people seeing the same ones too often, so if you can think of anything else, lemme know! If the maintainers are willing to go forward with this suggestion then I'll be happy to provide the fluff for it like the department/job papers, IA's new SOP regarding inspecting and completing goals, assessing and suggesting new goals, and so on.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Norwest

[Aletmagne]

Last I checked Robotics actually do have goals for completing Mechs and Borgs. I'd like to see additional objectives for things like Xenobiology (Send x different types of slime extract to CC), Botany could do plant disks or randomly selected mutant plants, etc.

[Calecute]

I'd actually rather have aims toward other departments, not the IAA. Like, botany has to deliver chef and science, and disks for cargo, cargo has to deliver science, eng and bar, xeno has to deliver robos, engies and mining (And whoever else can use those extracts, I don’t know what they do), toxins has to deliver mining, science has to upgrade everyone and get those research levels in the server and send disks to cargo, robos has to deliver mining, medbay, engies and sec.

Engies just need to leave the station with no alarms. I'd also like some feature that could be used to make tickets for engies, like using the console request thing to open a request for fixing a window, and closing it after the engies fixed it. So we could track if the engies are working on that kind of thing too.

Kitchen and bar could just need to make x drinks/meals, althou i liked the more elaborate objectives too. Janitor could be given a greentext for cleaner station also. 

Sec already have antags to deal with, so i think they're good. 

[Calecute]

22 minutes ago, Aletmagne said:

Last I checked Robotics actually do have goals for completing Mechs and Borgs. I'd like to see additional objectives for things like Xenobiology (Send x different types of slime extract to CC), Botany could do plant disks or randomly selected mutant plants, etc.

Yeah, each roboticist has the goal of building one Ripley (normal or firefighter) and one Borg.

[McRamon]

All of your example goals and objectives are nearly/absolutely impossible to implement with completion check included.(or like really boring) And that is one of the reasons why we dont have  more goals already. Right now if you want, you can go and provide that service dedicated to your god as chaplain. How tho game should know if you did good service or not? Little rp objectives like that - you can come up with different interesting ideas each time by yourself, dont you?

[Regular Joe]

Enchancing the station and job goal system would be something. From my viewpoint, I learned the SS13 as game here at Paradise, recently I have been testing some other servers. The thing Paradise has, in comparison to the others, actually is that so-called medium role play. Like, the timespan here is perfect. Not too long shifts for an about-casual gamer to participate from the beginning to the end, nor they are too short, for having room to do some RP. However, the station lacks goals that require work from all hands, goals other than just staying alive with the antag terror and space happening. Such a goal would endorse a bit more RP and co-operation to happen.

Sure a problem here is how to implement the completion check for the goals. I would say the new goals would not be job or departement specific, but issued to the station as whole; like it is now. The work needed to complete those goals should just be bit more dynamic, and the most, to require more people working for the goals.

How about a goal to build a new part to the station? Or a goal to build a new, tiny station or research vessel? These would require the HoP to hire the greytide as low-cost builders, the engineering to see over the work, cargo to supply materials, medical to save the asses of those cheapworkers, robotics to build like new constructor-variants of the Ripley to speed up the building work significantly, some persons from each department to co-ordinate the new ministation's departments, what kind of they are going to be, and so forth. A building goal would, in the other hand, require the completion check done by an admin, or actually, by some on-board person as part of their IC work, like the captain or the RD.

Another one, how about a scientific mission to a gateway world, to acquire certain special items, minerals or lifeforms, which then should be processed by Science somehow? 

 

Edited October 20, 2018 by Regular Joe

[JovanM]

Quote

additional objectives for things like Xenobiology (Send x different types of slime extract to CC)

This is a great objective, because Xenobiology has nothing to do with researching tech levels.

Also, Xenobiologist may receive a goal about breeding some (at least one) high tier slime.