Job Statistics & Unlocks

[Deanthelis]

 

I propose the following change, first and foremost, as an addition to the tools administrators and moderators have access to when gathering information on a given player.

 

When a player joins an ongoing round, or is ready when a round starts, it should store the job that they joined as. If it is the player's first to tenth round as that job, Mentors+ should receive a message informing them of that information. The upper limit should be variable, and configurable via a configuration file option.

 

This will tell staff members who to keep an eye on for potentially harmful rookie mistakes, like newbie Engineers doing the Singularity engine, and so on.

 

The following is change built upon, but should be considered independently of, the previous feature. It is my opinion that the previous feature should be instated regardless of the opinion of the following change, because the previous feature is simply a helpful information tool.

 

Heads of Staff and AI should not have ordinary time requirements. Instead, a new player should be required to have a certain number of rounds under their belt in every job type of the department in question, sans karma jobs. The number of rounds of each job should differ department to department and should be customizable in a configuration file.

 

The following are the ratio I believe is fair, but they are subject to change upon discussion of the matter, and may as well be placeholders.

 

Chief Engineer should require 25 rounds of Station Engineer, and 15 rounds of Atmospherics Technician.

 

Chief Medical Officer should require 10 rounds of Chemist, 20 rounds of Medical Doctor, 5 to 10 rounds of Virologist, 5 rounds of Paramedic and 10 rounds of Geneticist.

 

Research Director should require 30 rounds of Scientist and 15 to 20 rounds of Roboticist.

 

Head of Personnel should require 15 rounds of Quartermaster or Cargo Technician, 10 rounds of Shaft Miner, and 15 rounds of combined Botany, Chef, or Bartender.

 

Head of Security should require 25 rounds of Security Officer, 15 rounds of Detective, and 15 rounds of Warden.

 

AI should require 25 rounds of Maintenance Drone or Cyborg (Rounds in which the player is borged count, but if the borg dies and becomes a Drone, it only counts once).

 

Captain should require 15 rounds of Head of Security, Head of Personnel, Chief Engineer, Research Director, and Chief Medical Officer.

 

In addition, any Karma jobs within a given department should also require a minimum of 5 or 10 rounds in the departments those jobs have access to, if any; Ergo, Brig Physician needs Security and Medical rounds, and Magistrate needs Security rounds (in fact, Magistrate should have the same as Head of Security, but with 10 rounds of IAA added).

 

These restrictions are on the CKEY, not on the CHARACTER. That is very important.

 

My reasoning for this is as follows.

 

Currently, we have account age requirements on head roles. This is completely useless, as a player might play Botany for one round, play on a completely different server for several weeks or months, then come back later and become a Captain. A player also might play Chef or Bartender for a month, then play AI.

 

This system does not inherently mean that a given Head is competent. It also does not mean that a given Head is intelligent, or a good role player. It does, however, mean that a given Head has experienced every significant part of his department a significant number of times, and thusly can be expected to be competent - and if they are not, then they can be given a penalty to the job whose role they failed at (Chief Engineer releases singularity because he didn't turn on containment, he has to do 10 rounds of Station Engineer), instead of a global jobban from the department.

 

This will also mean that the Captain of the station will have experienced nearly every facet of the game at some time or another, and can be expected to, if not be competent, at least understand what competence at any given job looks like.

 

It also means that the Heads of Staff will be able to focus on their responsibilities as Heads of Staff, and not on learning their departments.

 

It means as well that a Head of Staff is probably an adequate teacher for players new to a department - because really, an RD that can't teach you how to do at least three of the Science jobs is a rather shit RD.

 

This will also be good evidence in a player's favor when they apply for mentorship, as it will be easy to tell how experienced a player is at the game, both overall and B department.

 

However, this system does have a glaring flaw: It is impossible to implement retroactively, and be completely fair. One cannot force it on everyone, or we will have no heads of Staff at all for several days. One also cannot force it only on new players, because there are players who are a week or so older than the changes who would really have no business playing those jobs.

 

Ergo, I propose a compromise. Anyone with an account older than four months will be exempt from the system's changes. Anyone with an account older than a month, but not older than four months, will be subject to the restrictions, but will have a 'free' five rounds in each job, to give them a head start. Anyone with an account less than a month old will be subject to the restrictions with no handicap, mostly because they don't even qualify for most of the jobs anyway.

 

Please leave comments, additions, counterpoints and REASONED arguments in response. "I don't like this, this is dumb!" is not a reasoned argument, and I will point and laugh heartily if that is what your post boils down to. Constructive criticism is welcome, especially on how many rounds should be required for each departmental job - I rarely play much outside of Science, so I took an educated guess on the other departments based on my own experiences.

 

Bear in mind, a round is on average an hour and a half long. Most people won't play more than three rounds on average per day, due to time constraints.

 

[Coldflame]

 

The general idea is good, but I see a few issues:

 

-I have a strong feeling this would end up with a lot of empty command positions, with the majority of heads ending up being people who don't meet the requirements being promoted (through account age when implemented bypassing this will mean this is less of an issue).

 

-A lot of the requirements seem to derive from sharing department, rather than genuine job similarity. HoP shares very little skills or knowledge with Cargo tech, miner or service jobs. AI's not hugely similar to Borgs or Drones, either, aside from dealing with laws (which certainly doesn't need several rounds of experience to get a grip on).

 

-In general, the suggested limits seem very, very high. It underestimates the speed at which people will grasp the game's basics. You're asking people to total ~70 hours in a department (a lot more in some cases), before qualifying for head jobs. It also fails to account from players who are coming from other servers and already have knowledge of game mechanics (EDIT: expanding on this point, it's also really inconsistent between departments, though I'm aware they're placeholders)

 

[Dinarzad]

 

Yeeeeaaaah, I can't... support this idea, sorry.

It's INCREDIBLY restrictive, especially the limit on Karma jobs. If I blow my karma that took me a lengthy amount of time to build up, on a job and then the game tells me 'lel no' when I wanna play it? Sorry, but no. I bought it, I want access to the feckin thing. If I buy an ice cream I expect to get an ice cream not be told "Thanks, you'll get it two days from now."

 

This is even more restrictive then just flat out setting up a whitelist, because at least with a whitelist I don't have to dump an unholy amount of playtime into roles I might not care that much for just to apply.

 

[Deanthelis]

 

Point by point justification:

 

-Allowing account age to exempt the round prerequisites will mean that the majority of players who are veteran heads of staff will be in those slots anyway; most of our regular players are more than four months old accountwise. By the three month mark, the empty head slots will be a nonissue, and by the end of this year, most players will have had ample opportunity to earn at least one head position.

 

-The Head of Personnel IS related to, and is in command over, the Cargo and Service departments. I personally think that the Quartermaster should be a Head in his own right, but that's outside the scope of this feature - I'll put up another thread concerning it soon. AI is quite similar to Cyborg - Cyborgs and AIs are only semi-regularly subverted, but when they are, it's extremely important that the player know how to deal with it. Malf AI is also a rare game type, and any AI player should have had at least one round (hopefully) from the cyborg point of view, so that they will have an understanding of how to coordinate their borgs when it's their turn.

 

-The limits were somewhat arbitrary, though I do solidly hold that a player requires the equivalent of one week of playtime (3 rounds per day, at 1.5 hours per round, for 7 days) in experience in that department, but ideally, two to three. You could fulfill the Scientist requirement in ten days and Roboticist in five - two weeks, on average. Less for players who play more frequently, more for those who play less. If you want to scale it back, it's simple enough to do so. I did purposely set Security higher than the others; this is to dissuade grief, and to generally make shitty Heads of Security inexcusable, because if they have played every role of Security that much, there is absolutely no excuse for beating prisoners, execution of the Clown for honking, etc. In the same way that there's no excuse for a CE to release the Singularity or for an RD to blow himself up in toxins.

 

Players from other servers are not accounted for, this is true. However, mechanics can differ from server to server, and in any system we implement, they will be disadvantaged - this system does not attempt to remedy that.

 

Dinarzad:

 

-Karma jobs would not all have this requirement. Only the Magistrate would have particularly strict ones; this is because they have MORE authority than the Head of Security or even the Captain in some ways, and like the NT rep are not Heads of Staff, but are Command personnel and have access to the Command channel. Brig physician needs Medical experience because they're a specialized doctor. So on and so forth.

 

Also, of course it's restrictive. That's the point; restricting new, incompetent and/or inexperienced players from playing roles that are crucial to the station, which the current system of account age requirements does not do, at all. Bear in mind, players with large amounts of Karma already are also players with old accounts; they will start off with either a reduction in the amount of rounds they need, or if older than 4 months (which could be lower or higher, administration discretion), this entire system doesn't apply.

 

-No, whitelists are more restrictive for the following reasons.

 

A. They are subject to review by administrators, which means the administrators have EVEN MORE things to do. This system is automated, there is no approval process.

 

B. Whitelists can be subject to personal biases within the staff. This system is automated, which means bias is impossible (though I don't think it'd happen much here).

 

C. If you do not "care that much for" the jobs in a department, you have absolutely no place being in command of that department. I don't know why anyone not interested in Security would want to be the Head of Security, unless they are simply a power gaming comdom that really shouldn't be a Head of Security anyway. If you have a reason to be in command of a department you don't like playing, do tell me, because there's none I can think of.

 

Lastly, Karma jobs are not ice cream. Ice cream doesn't carry with it responsibilities to other people. Karma is awarded for good role playing - but if you don't have the necessary skills to actually perform the job you want, you shouldn't get to deny another player who ALSO spent their Karma and DOES have the requisite experience to not do a terrible job.

 

[MrFinnT]

 

i can only agree to dinarzad.

 

you asking for 305 to 315 rounds to play before you can play as captain. that means we either have a competent captain who knows every single spiderweb on the station, or no captain at all. and as you said around 1 and 1/2 hour is the average round. that means over 500 hours of SS13 gameplay to unlock every normal job.

 

i can remember when i was playing this game for the first time and I really goofed around. i can understand why you want some rules to prevent noobs to play round-important roles.

but in my mind a "cold start" is the best way to learn a role.

when i did a job for the first time i had the wiki to that job or a guide open all the time and sometimes even read it before the round started. (i was hoping for that job and prepared myself).

 

the mentor system you speaking of is helpful. adding to that i would suggest a wiki link being send to every player every round for their specific job.

 

so now to a counter suggestion:

you replace "played that amount of rounds" with "played that amount of time" - so someone has to play 10 hours in the support/service department to get the HOP job. just an example.

 

[Coldflame]

 

Point by point justification:

 

-Allowing account age to exempt the round prerequisites will mean that the majority of players who are veteran heads of staff will be in those slots anyway; most of our regular players are more than four months old accountwise. By the three month mark, the empty head slots will be a nonissue, and by the end of this year, most players will have had ample opportunity to earn at least one head position.

 

-The Head of Personnel IS related to, and is in command over, the Cargo and Service departments. I personally think that the Quartermaster should be a Head in his own right, but that's outside the scope of this feature - I'll put up another thread concerning it soon. AI is quite similar to Cyborg - Cyborgs and AIs are only semi-regularly subverted, but when they are, it's extremely important that the player know how to deal with it. Malf AI is also a rare game type, and any AI player should have had at least one round (hopefully) from the cyborg point of view, so that they will have an understanding of how to coordinate their borgs when it's their turn.

 

-The limits were somewhat arbitrary, though I do solidly hold that a player requires the equivalent of one week of playtime (3 rounds per day, at 1.5 hours per round, for 7 days) in experience in that department, but ideally, two to three. You could fulfill the Scientist requirement in ten days and Roboticist in five - two weeks, on average. Less for players who play more frequently, more for those who play less. If you want to scale it back, it's simple enough to do so. I did purposely set Security higher than the others; this is to dissuade grief, and to generally make shitty Heads of Security inexcusable, because if they have played every role of Security that much, there is absolutely no excuse for beating prisoners, execution of the Clown for honking, etc. In the same way that there's no excuse for a CE to release the Singularity or for an RD to blow himself up in toxins.

 

Players from other servers are not accounted for, this is true. However, mechanics can differ from server to server, and in any system we implement, they will be disadvantaged - this system does not attempt to remedy that.

 

 

-This is fairly valid, but missing command staff would be significantly present. Additionally, I think account age bypass will null any benefit this system has- there are plenty of players who play heads poorly within the community, but aren't quite bad enough to qualify for a jobban.

 

-HoP is RELATED to service/supply, but my point is they share very little gameplay. Quartermaster is arguably relevant (and even that's a stretch, the only real link I can see is them both being leadership roles; and in practice the HoP doesn't directly lead anyone in 90% of rounds), but outside of that I see very few cross-applicable skills. AI being related to borg is more arguable, but I still think they're less similar in practice than in theory.

 

-As I said in my first post, this is a severe underestimation of the speed a player can gain competency. The numbers given are placeholders, though, so I won't go too far into depth about them.

 

[Dinarzad]

 

C. If you do not "care that much for" the jobs in a department, you have absolutely no place being in command of that department. I don't know why anyone not interested in Security would want to be the Head of Security, unless they are simply a power gaming comdom that really shouldn't be a Head of Security anyway. If you have a reason to be in command of a department you don't like playing, do tell me, because there's none I can think of.

 

Wrong, flat out. There's jobs within a department you can have distaste for, while still liking the department as a whole or vice-versa.

 

I've played CMO previously, I know medical pretty well, More then most and less then some. I have played Genetics, MD, Chemist, Surgeon, Coroner (Yes they are alt MD titles but different expectations of them.)

I have not played Paramedic, Psychiatrist or Virologist.

Mostly because Virology is very slow and boring to me and I don't care for paramedic.

 

When I was CMO, we had Clean SE's on stand by at Genetics, we had the chems, cryo was set up and doctors knew to talk to me if there was a problem. I didn't need Virology and Paramedic playtime to know this, and if it came down to a viral outbreak, there's a very detailed wiki guide on how to handle those.

 

Vice-versa I have -very- little desire to play proper Security, it is not my cup of tea in terms of playstyle and yet, I like and sometimes will go into, Brig Physician. Because I am -not- an officer I am a medic, the department as a whole is very much not my speed but the singular job is. The Brig Phys is not an arresting officer he is a doctor, his grasp of space law is there, but much less then others, his task is the well being of officers and prisoners.

Requiring someone to play Security to play Brig Phys is making someone play a job they have no desire or want to play to unlock a totally separate job.

Requiring a CMO who otherwise knows the entire department front to back, except Paramedic procedure and advanced Virology, to then play those jobs is excluding an otherwise, for the most part, competent CMO who knows how not to kill patients. As long as said CMO knows how to handle a viral outbreak does he REALLY need to know how to manufacture a virus lethal or beneficial?

 

Now while this all sounds like "Me, me, me" I'm just using myself as an example, you can like certain jobs WITHIN a department or certain departments excluding certain jobs.

 

[monkeysfist101]

 

I agree with most of this. I do have a few suggestions, though.

 

1. I'd say half the time would be more reasonable as not everyone is a hardcore player like the regulars.

2. To play as a head, you only need experience in the primary role of that field. For example, despite being one of the longest running Heads of Security on this station, I despise playing as detective. I neither enjoy it or even see its value in most cases. This ruleset would prevent me from playing this role.

3. Lower the captaincy requirement to one department. It is unreasonable for the captain to know every field. The captain's job is akin to a manager's. IC, unless the captain was promoted from being the CE, he should not know how to set up the singularity engine. The heads would lose purpose if the captain could do everything.

 

Other than that, I like the idea of having to play a number of rounds in that department before getting to play as the head.

 

[davidchan]

 

This sounds like a well intended idea that is only going to have terrible consequences for the server.

 

If you're trying to scare off players from the server and lower our pop countdown, then you found the way to do it.

 

You're talking literal days of proving your worth in jobs that shouldn't take more than an hour or two to learn and understand. A typical round lasts 2 hours, and you want someone to put 80 hours of their life into our server just to be able to play Chief Engineer, Head of Personnel or Head of Security? 90 for Research Director? 100 hours for Chief Medical Officer? 50 hours to play as an AI? 580 hours to play as Captain?

 

This is a game, not a job. Some people may put 20+ Hours into our server a week by themselves, but others maybe play it 3-5 times a week for a round and a half, maybe. These requirements are unrealistic and almost a years worth of play for some of playerbase, who can likely do just as damn good of a job in any head position as people who have reached the suggested hours for.

 

And as for restricting Karma job? No. It makes no sense, and depreciates the Karma system. Many of the Karma jobs have nothing to do with the Department they are attached to. A Brig Physician shouldn't need to know space law better than any other member of the crew, or how the Brig runs. His sole concern is that everyone in the brig, Security or Criminal, is in peak health and properly cared for. Pod Pilot just needs to know how to maintain his Pod and how to patrol the exterior of the station without getting lost. He's not going to learn any of this walking the halls and maintenance tunnels as an Officer. Mechanics are attached to Engineering but have more incommon with Robotics than they do with Engine Techs, and the NT Rep serves as a professional brown noser and stooge for Centcom. Restricting Karma bought jobs is counter productive.

 

Heads of Staff only need to be proficient in the core responsibilities of their department, and only just incase there is a manning gap that prevents the person who should be doing that job from doing so. Being familiar with every job and knowing how to do everything are two entirely different things.

 

A Chief Engineer knowing how to optimize the loop or fix broken pipes for example. He doesn't need to know how to make a self cooling waste loop through space or rig up specialized Fire-Deterrent Mixes to quickly snuff and cool plasma fires.

 

A CMO doesn't need to know how to unlock gene powers, he needs to know how to make a Clean SE injector incase one of his Geneticists screws up or goes rogue. He doesn't need to know how to create hyper-lethal or beneficial viruses, he just needs to know how anti-bodies are created and replicated in case of an outbreak.

 

A Research Director doesn't really need to know anything aside from the dangers each area of his department has and how to circumvent or reduce the risk if need be. The Head of Personnel's primary job is just making sure the entire station is properly manned with whats available. Knowing how to grow a tomato, bake a pizza or mix a B-52 doesn't or how to load and unload the shuttle doesn't teach them this. The HoP just needs the judgement to decide who needs access to where, and how to up channel it to Captain or another Department Head if the request could interfere with their responsibilities (like giving the clown armory access.)

 

Being a Drone or Cyborg doesn't really prepare you for life as an AI. You can learn some nifty tricks of the UI and observe an actual AI at work, maybe. But this doesn't prepare you for having 5 different channels worth of people making requests of you, demanding you to track civilians or suspicious personnel or the ludicrous requests or demands command staff will make upon you so they can slack off.

 

And finally the Captain. The Captain only needs to know how to lead. Minor Security experience preferred, just because of how huge a risk to the station and incompetent captain can be, but knowing how to build a Cyborg, set up the engine, investigate a crime scene, set and repair a broken bone or authorize supply requests helps the Captain accomplish anything. The Captain's only job is to manage the Heads of Staff, if he's doing that, the rest of the station should be flowing smoothly. It's not the Captain's job to step in and set up Singularity or mix Cryoxadone if nobody is assigned to do it, It's the Captain's job to FIND someone who can do it and give them the access to get it done.

 

The only thing I see this recommendation is either A) People will stop playing the server and go to other codebases where they can play and learn the jobs they want to play, or B) People joining the game in what ever required role they need to unlock the role they want, and going AFK/SSD for the round to increase their counter while they go do something more fun.

 

I'd rather go to an admin/staff approved whitelist for players to prove their worth. Everyone learns and plays this game differently, and we have players who know the game damn well but are not the people who should be in head roles because they are hard to work with or have a habit of making unrealistic demands of their department (such as the CMO a while back who required patients not in critical condition to fill out incident forms)

 

[Clayton_Kelly]

 

If you take into consideration the posts regarding RP going down since server population has gone up, I think there is only one solution to increase RP. That is by increasing standards for playing RP which Heads can control in their department. Admins have a lot to keep track of with player populations and can't do it on their own.

 

I think this is a good idea but make the requirements low. For HoS, you can do 2 rounds security, and 1 round each of being a warden and detective. This requirement just ensures familiarity with your department. I think this would raise the bar just a bit without asking too much.

 

Or we just accept the server for what it is and move on.