Duty Officers

[lordexvar]

 

Read the discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7419

 

I have played space station 13 for years. I had my own server with an average of 20-30 people, I was an admin on several stations, but the thing I had the most fun doing was a role on Aurora station called Duty Officer. Duty Officer? Whats that you say? Currently, the task of answering and responding to faxes and communications, along with starting events and all is the admins. Aurora station had a role that was whitelist exclusive called Duty Officer, and on aurora they had that task. I was the head Duty Officer (most active one, really), reviewing applications for DO white listing along with the admins. I quit aurora after I just... got bored of it, and decided to come here. But something that really annoys me is that, well, we don't really have a thing like that on this station. I say we should definitely add this or a role similar, it takes the task off of the admin's hands, sets an active role that actually reads and responds to faxes, and even fills in roles at centcomm station. This wasn't a one person role, there were 9 DOs in total who each had a different role(or served for another person's role if they were absent). If we implemented this, we would have a Special Ops DO who briefed ERT and other things, Comms Officer who would, well, do comms stuff, the head DO to oversee them, etc. Each of these DOs had their own specific character, like SI Brennan or CO Jenkins, we always stayed in character and 'greeted' the escape shuttle survivors.

 

If we do implement this, I could be the head DO to try and teach the next generation le ways, I still remember the good ol' days. Here is a general set of rules that I would like to see suggestions on for the DOs.

 

I completely agree, DOs were and should be hard to get into. Does this server have any sort of record/log for bans or just on people who go on the server? We always checked the logs to make sure that this guy who claims to have played on the server for 2 years didn't just join yesterday. DOs also filled other roles on the station, for example we would have a DO at the special forces command office and another at the bsa office, playing a character that would actually be there. So it wasn't all paper-pushers, the DO Major was the ERT/DS commander, who would direct them while they were on mission and brief them when they spawned in.

 

Here are some basic rules I have thought of:

 

1. ADMINS ARE KING. Despite your seemingly massive amount of power over the round, the admins still reign supreme on every decision. If you want to call a death squad but the admins don't, then DON'T. Don't even think about firing that BSA at that asshole who butt faxed you unless you get an admin's approval.

 

2. ALWAYS RP. You must remain in a high quality of role play and always stay in character, so pretty much no having your paperwork-handling character all of a sudden turn into a badass and go out with that death squad. That also means that your elite, high ranking ERT DO won't suddenly be the nicest guy in the world replying to faxes if there isn't another DO doing that.

 

3. STAY IN TOUCH. Don't just ignore that pesky little station that keeps faxing you, ignoring the station is directly against what your job is. If somebody asks you what is going on, you should be able to summarize the situation in accordance with your IC knowledge. If you have to go to the bathroom or leave the game, inform a fellow DO. If you are the only DO and have to leave, inform an admin.

 

4. KEEP THE ROUND MOVING / KEEP THE STATION ALIVE. Your goal as a DO should be to have the station survive for so long that the automatic crew transfer arrives. It may seem like a hard task, what with the incompetence of command sometimes, but you sure as hell will try. If you can't get them moving, visit the station yourself(with admins approval, nerd) and set them straight.

 

5. REMAIN AT YOUR POST. You just performed a visit to the station, but you feel like you wan't to stay even though you've already completed your task of fixing command. Don't. Your goal should be to always stay at your post and never leave it unless you feel you absolutely have to. Your job is at centcomm afterall.

 

The job would not be a karma job, not for mentors, and heavily moderated white list applications viewed by admins and senior DOs, and would require them to create a DO character to see if they are truly ready for the role.

 

[NTSAM]

I swear someone literally just recently suggested this.

[ProperPants]

 

I swear someone literally just recently suggested this.

The same thread existed under General Discussions, but this is more fleshed out and an actual suggestion. If you saw the same thing also in Suggestions, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[NTSAM]

oh fuck nvm

[Jamania]

 

I've already spoke about this in the General Discussion thread, but I quite like the idea. I think if one was to say, to become a DO, they'd need both Admin (Maybe Senior, or Headmin?), and (If we're adding this) Head DO's approval. This gives a high level of scrutiny for applications, and will likely prevent anyone who isn't fit for the role, to not get in.

 

Eh, these are just some thoughts & possible suggestions I had.

 

[Cobradude]

 

I for one like this idea a lot, I 100% agree it would need to be a very strict selection process, but if done right it could make some really memorable rounds. I can already picture, station goes to hell, cult overrun the shuttle but there to greet them is comms officer Jenkins with a deathsquad mech.

 

10/10 would action movie again

 

[Jguytriple5]

 

I'm 100 percent up for this. But ofcourse, Tully is the one and only great comms officer jenkins.

So i love this idea, and would love to become one of those DO's, and i've already got a character especially for a role like this. I used to use him when we still had customisable ERT.

 

[Regen]

 

I am NOT sure about this

Giving players CC characters has NEVER been a thing for us, as they have such an immense power over the round.

 

This feels as just a giant way for someone to stroke their epeens, and there's so much in the suggestion that rubs me the wrong way.

ERT commander?

Players sending deathsquads?

No

We don't have consistent ERT's and even if we did it'd be a whole other discussion to have it be rank based.

Deathsquads are high tier black ops sent to destory any and all personel and leave no evidence, comms officers would have no knowledge of them if anything. They are created to end the round, and is completely unfair against any antagonist

 

[Sparkyninja]

 

I've always maintained that lower rank staff should have the ability to answer faxes, such as trialmins or even moderators.

 

Its' a whitelist that's already in place, with people who most likely will not fuck it up, because they don't wanna suffer the wrath.

 

[Dinarzad]

 

I am NOT sure about this

Giving players CC characters has NEVER been a thing for us, as they have such an immense power over the round.

 

This feels as just a giant way for someone to stroke their epeens, and there's so much in the suggestion that rubs me the wrong way.

ERT commander?

Players sending deathsquads?

No

We don't have consistent ERT's and even if we did it'd be a whole other discussion to have it be rank based.

Deathsquads are high tier black ops sent to destory any and all personel and leave no evidence, comms officers would have no knowledge of them if anything. They are created to end the round, and is completely unfair against any antagonist

 

I think the primary intent is more the Faxes then the other 'Toys' such as BSA or Deaf Squids. That faxes are answered more consistently, and admins don't have to split their attention 'tween admining, playing and Faxes.

 

BSA's could feasibly be a thing with admin approval only, Death Squads though, absolutely never. That should absolutely be Admin only, no exceptions.

As for ERTs, to best my knowledge, the way they are now, takes an admin to declare what kind of ERT is sent and if no input is given it defaults to code amber ERT Squad. so I'm not wholly sure if a DO would be able to send an ERT, if so, it would likely remain AMBER type alerts, unless an admin can intervene to go higher ones. Maybe RED alert squads at max, GAMMA should probably remain an admin specific type of squad.

 

I personally approve of it, if only cuz I enjoy the notion of people being able to legitimately RP as Cent Comm, BUT. Yeah, we'd have to be very clear and definitive with what these players can and cannot do without admin approval if we end up going through with the notion.

And white-list or no, the role would have to have very heavy scrutiny to how the players respond and act as said officers, like just shy of admins themselves.

 

[Regen]

 

I just generally want to keep gameplay to the station only, allowing players to act as centcom has never been something we've done, we even don't allow anyone to play as CC agents even if we were to constantly watch them.

 

I think it's too much of a responsibility and outside of the scope of the game we're trying to create

 

[saywat_the_15th]

[spoiler2]Doody officers[/spoiler2]

[NTSAM]

 

[spoiler2]Doody officers[/spoiler2]

[spoiler2]poopy ofitzer's[/spoiler2]

 

[lordexvar]

I think I forgot to say this, the ERT commander DO doesn't lead the squad, he briefs the squad and on admin approval, opens up the armor shutters. They are basically just an armchair general sitting in ther special ops office.

[HereticChurch]

 

On the opposite side of the spectrum to Regen, I actually really like this idea. Giving a few players the ability to be the centcomm pencil pushers and fax readers would be kinda cool. While it's something we've never done, I feel it'd be an interesting way to involve some more of the community. There are definitely some restrictions and such that would have to be placed before it could really happen. It'd probably be best if a duty officer was spawned in with a button admins push, rather than be a roundstart thing. We'd have to give them a small area on Centcomm to do stuff which may be tedious and annoying, and we'd have to really restrict the access. I'm a bit skeptical about giving them a headset with the ERT channel, but it might be a neat thing to give them that + a camera system to let them act as a director of sorts. We wouldn't want to let them approve ERT requests or activate the BSA, that'd be restricted to admins.

 

I do like the idea of possibly giving this opportunity to mentors/moderators to work as a whitelist, rather than throwing up a new section for applications. It's not much more than an IC mentor anyway.

 

Overall though, this might take a bit too much micromanaging from admins to be really worth the effort, plus what Regen said is true. We've always restricted persistent Centcomm characters to admins, so we're probably going to be reluctant to let others in on our little fun thing (Though we still have our personal admin station that'd likely keep a BSA lock on the Duty Officer's area).

 

[Rumiluntti]

 

I don't like the idea and I don't like the pain in the ass it would be to get going and keep operational.

 

Too much admin babysitting for a role we don't need.

 

[lordexvar]

The idea is that admins don't have to babysit, thats how its done on aurora station and thats how we could do it.

[Regen]

 

The idea is that admins don't have to babysit, thats how its done on aurora station and thats how we could do it.

 

Aurora also averages 21 players while we average 50.

 

Aurora is a much smaller community, making it easier to find individuals and place trust in normal players.

It's basically not as easy as you seem to think it is

 

[necaladun]

 

While interesting, and perhaps something we'll look at in future, the extent of this for a start is way too much. Even the ability to read faxes has huge potentials for metagaming power. The ability to lead ERT, reply to faxes, etc, is something that has a decent level of power beyond what trialmins have right now.

 

While we might be interested in a very minor version of this in the future, I can't see it happening any time soon.