so what exactly is the captain's job?

[Deitus]

so other than just securing the disk, which literally takes less than ten seconds, what exactly is expected from the captain during a shift? filling in roles? co-HOS? wait around until calls of ops come in and then book it to the armory? i keep getting forced into captainship lately and it just seems like the job is really empty. if not from a gameplay perspective, what do you expect a captain to do during the shift from your point of view?

[Gun Hog]

Command people. Keep the HoS from powertripping over the other departments. Keep the RD from blowing up the station. Make sure the CMO is healing people. Yell at the CE for not setting up the engine. Stop the HoP from giving the clown all-access. Upload joke laws to the AI.

Basically, keep the department heads from killing each other. Of course, if there is a head missing, you need to fill in to make sure important round stuff gets done.

[Ikarrus]

The basic idea is that you regularly check on the performance of your heads of staff. Occasionally stopping by each of their departments to see how things are going, checking up on the head in-person to see if they have anything they need done that you can do for them. It's your job to remove obstacles that get in the way of their jobs. On the other side of the coin, if the department is in shambles, the department head is incompetent, or if he is just straight up MIA, it's you're job to find a suitable replacement for them.


This is all I do as Captain, and it actually keeps me busy all-round, nearly every round. It's with keeping your heads in check that leads to a stable, functional station. And it's not just Captain, it's any station management role.

The best Captain round I've had was one where I had to demote and replace every single one of my heads because they were either MIA or were fuckwits. They were replaced with my own hand-picked staff that were happy to do the job. The Traitor round lasted over 5 hours, and there was never a moment were I wasn't busy. It was fun. I survived a few assassination attempts (Including one from a disgruntled shit CMO) because the crew really liked me enough to go out of their way to help me.

[Steelpoint]

Essentially do what Gun Hog and Ikarrus says until you eventually become a mini-HoS as you huddle with Security as the Revs/Gangs/NukeOps/Cult/Admins start to bust in the brig's door.

[imblyings]

secure the disk

be mildly robust

that's really it

in practice, captains are usually all-access and better armed security officers trying to fill in for what is usually an undermanned security force

sometimes captains go above and beyond (or below and byond) their above fore-mentioned duties, by helping out as an all-access assistant around the station, or not helping out by acting as a petulant all-access child. Captains arguably have the job of not being a petulant all-access child but that is a fanciful theory currently not supported by research.

[Deitus]

Command people. Keep the HoS from powertripping over the other departments. Keep the RD from blowing up the station. Make sure the CMO is healing people. Yell at the CE for not setting up the engine. Stop the HoP from giving the clown all-access. Upload joke laws to the AI.

Basically, keep the department heads from killing each other. Of course, if there is a head missing, you need to fill in to make sure important round stuff gets done.

but what happens when the heads are actually competent (or at the very least not being shit)? there's just nothing to do but sit on the bridge and wait for shit to start going down. my rounds as captain usually follow these steps:

1) suit up (i.e. secure disk, pinpointer, teleporter, spare id, egun, set headset to loud/all departments)
2) go to sec and give hos pinpointer/spare id (if not hos, warden; no warden, hop; no hop, some other head; no other head, the fucking clown or something idk)
3) finish suiting up (loaded secbelt, sechuds, taser, 2 pairs of cuffs)
4) fill up emergency tank either at engineering or medbay and activate internals for WHEN the viro releases some shit
5) check if shit is getting done (engine, research, etc) whether through radio or visiting in person
6) sit on bridge and wait for something to happen
7) if something happens make announcement of it and try to help
8) die miserably or come very close and call shuttle

steps 1-5 take about 5 minutes MAX. other than that it just feels like a less interesting security of "ill just wait for something to happen." i dont even know what we could add in terms of busywork of some sort but it just seems like the captain is just "head of whatever there isn't a head for/chief shuttle caller."

[Steelpoint]

Your a assistant with all access and the authority to use it. Be the Captain you want to be, if you want to fuck off into maintenance that's your prerogative, but don't expect any sympathy from anyone else. Your literal only job is to take and keep the Nuke Disk secure, even just tossing it to the HoS is sufficient.

[Super Aggro Crag]

from what i've seen the captains main job is to recall the shuttle when half the station is destroyed because "we can fix it" even though he hasn't left his office all round, there's no power, and the tesla is loose.

[Anonmare]

In theory, the Captain is the manager of managers and keeps all the other Heads in check/talking to one another and represents Central Command in most matters.

In reality they're all-access assistants/incompetent/drunk/Syndicate spies/Changelings/Power-mad/power-deficient/Gang members. Or all of the above.

[PKPenguin321]

you know how the CE watches the engineers, the CMO watches the doctors, the RD watches the scientists, all that?
the Captain watches the heads of staff
he keeps them all in check (stops bureaucratic HoPs, demotes shitcurity HoSes, ensures the CE isn't (or is, depending on the captain) building a quad-singularity/tesla engine that will destroy everything)
he also secures the disk and has the right to give the AI flavorful laws (or entirely different lawsets if the captain's a shitter) as well as having the authority to gun down assistants in the street if they touch him the wrong way

[IcePacks]

all-access assistant

ideally you should be steering the efforts of the various departments in the right direction but this is an extremely difficult task to accomplish

any role the captain fills is immediately complicated by the impressively large target on their back

[EndgamerAzari]

Captain was one of my most-played roles back in the day, and at the start of the round I'd usually make an announcement along the lines of "If I can do anything to make your shift easier, let me know."

Of course, the response was usually "suck my dick" "kill yourself" or people saying that I should give them all-access or a gun or something or calling me weak and shitty.

[EmGee]

gimmicks

[oranges]

find the super robust assistants and bribe them to be your ally so you beat the current antags.

[iamgoofball]

90% of you are wrong

captain is not about being security or validhunting or recalling the shuttle

captain is about the gimmicks

you have all access and literally no responsibility aside from keep a green floppy disk in your pocket

turn the station into a democracy and run for re-election as Donald Trump VS Richard Nixon

Declare the creation of a monument to your glory in Escape

build a wall on the border of the station(read: arrivals) to prevent illegal immigrants(read: assistants) from getting into your glorious nation(read: the crib)

tell Central Command you're holding a Plasma Chef competition in the bridge

declare the primary hallways a wildlife refuge and import exotic animals(from mining)

the possibilities are endless

[iamgoofball]

in fact because of what has been listed here I feel captain should have the age lock removed since it's the perfect newbie job

you have access that allows you to explore the station and fuck around

the only job of the captain teaches you basic inventory management and motor skills

no one gives a flying fuck what the captain is doing because he's the captain

remove age lock on captain 2016

[ShadowDimentio]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>PERFECT NEWBIE JOB
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>YOU'RE BOTH THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB AND THE MOST TARGETED
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>LITERALLY A LOOT PINATA IF THE CAPTAIN IS SHIT

Goof you just fucked up harder than you did with Goofchem

[Buggy]

It's half-and-half, really. The captain has fuck all responsibilities outside of nuke ops and kinda rev, and starts with a ton of gear to make a newbie's life easier, and has all access so they can explore and shit.

On the other hand, captains are usually expected to actually be decent and competent, even if it isn't required, they're loot pinatas, and they're the single most important person in nuke ops.

[iamgoofball]

MOST IMPORTANT JOB

Your job as the Captain:
Put a green floppy disk in your pocket.
This is intensely hard.

THE MOST TARGETED

Aha, no. Captain is so low on the target list it's not funny. The HoP is a far juicer target with the exact same amount of loot(all access), and has less defense. Engineers are also way easier and a better target because they carry around Ghetto All Access aka insulated gloves and a toolbelt.

LITERALLY A LOOT PINATA IF THE CAPTAIN IS SHIT

And every other job isn't?

[IcePacks]

internet sense is telling me it's just a prank, bro
hanlon's razor is telling me you're an idiot

in either case i'm willing to bet that even the new players can tell you're wrong

[iamgoofball]

nice lack of argument

[Ikarrus]

Hey it shouldn't be a surprise that goofball's been nearly command banned a few times, if he hasn't already.

[Malkevin]

Captain's job?

Shoot people and get away with it.

[iamgoofball]

Hey it shouldn't be a surprise that goofball's been nearly command banned a few times, if he hasn't already.

Would you care to elaborate on your statement or do you need to pull irrelevant statements because I have never been PM'd about such a thing before.

[Ikarrus]

Your only saving grace is that you hardly even play. Every time you did I'd get a ton of complaints about you.

You were most certainly on the "Watch closely for shit behavior" list for a while because of this, but you were never around anyways.

[Cheimon]

You lead the crew. That means:

Negotiating with aliens, even enemy aliens

Wearing a snazzy uniform

Going on away missions with the other Heads of Staff, bring a couple of security people too

Keeping your phaser with you at all times

[Davidchan]

You lead the crew. That means:

Negotiating with aliens, even enemy aliens

Wearing a snazzy uniform

Going on away missions with the other Heads of Staff, bring a couple of security people too

Keeping your phaser with you at all times

You forgot spreading spess herpes to any female lifeform detected.

I've always played Captain's job as being 3 tasks.

1) Command the station. It's your job to make sure the station run smoothly. It's not your job to run the station yourself. If the engine isn't started, find someone to set it up, not do it yourself. If a department is staffed and not doing your job, get on the Staff Head's ass and make them do it. If they still don't fire them, or at the very least give them a beating, verbal or physical, where their department can see it. Each part of the station plays it's own role so keeping them all active and on track will make your life easier in the long run. After all, it's a hell of a lot easier to recover from spiders if you didn't let medical get looted and the chemist run off to get high and OD on meth. Keep security patrolling, if dangerous antags are about have them rove in groups. Keep medical making medicine and treating patients, and harassing crew about suit sensors. Make sure engineering turns the engine on and keeps an eye on it so it doesn't break or get loose, and have science to RnD and upgrade the station, a few extra borgs and mechs never hurt either, if mining did their job there is more than enough space in your office for a personal Durand and mech charger.

2) Manage the Heads. Heads of Staff like to fight, it's pretty much standard that the HoS is going to butt heads with someone, though sometimes its the CMO and RD fighting over genetics or supplies. Defuse the situation where you can, try not to take sides unless you absolutely have too. Make executive decisions only when needed and to settle problems. Command Staff bickering is fine, Command staff refusing to cooperate is not. If the HoS pissed off the CMO and doctors are refusing to treat security now, intervine and settle shit, even if it means firing both heads for refusing to do their jobs. If a Head is dead or not filled, always promote from within the department, lest you want to find yourself being bombarded with salt as Science shuts down after you made the Chef RD or something.

3) Protect the Station. The Station and the Crew are your responsibility, and as such you should be keeping an eye out for anything that would threaten the balance or make life harder than it needs to be. Security are your eyes in the field, but your ears hear everything that happens on the radio. This is a blessing and a curse. Listen in to all the channels, as suspicious activity usually gets discussed in the home department before it gets channeled to security or command. Don't ignore public comms either, as a lot of useful information gets divulged out and is usually the first place people go to beg for help. Keep the disk safe, pocket it, or give it to a trustworthy member of the station. Someone not holding the disk should have a pinpointer just to be safe. Choose carefully when you decide to engage antags. A lone traitor can probably be handled by the security that reported him, but a pack of angry gang members or revolutionaries is more than your guns can handle, especially if they are armed with more than toolboxes.


As for Captain being a high target, I would say during Nuke or Wizard rounds, yeah you can bet your ass you got a target on your back. But to the typical Traitor, Cultist, Gang Member or Rev you'll find yourself being avoided as Captain until the antags have built up enough steam to take you in a direct assualt, unless you're being a moron and wandering the station alone and snooping around less traveled areas. Shadowlings would fall under the latter category though they have better odds than your typical gang leader in converting the Captain.

[Anonmare]

You lead the crew. That means:

Negotiating with aliens, even enemy aliens

Wearing a snazzy uniform

Going on away missions with the other Heads of Staff, bring a couple of security people too

Keeping your phaser with you at all times

You forgot spreading spess herpes to any female lifeform detected.

I have yet to see a Kirk Impersonator Captain. Surprising really.

Certainly a lot of Insaneways though.

[WarbossLincoln]

I think your main job is to not be useless. Coordinate the heads of staff, or at least remind them to not suck. Most of the time the heads can be left well enough alone.

The other big job is trying to do something interesting. As goofball said, the gimmicks. Find crewmen doing a good/amusing job and reward them. Maybe organize some assistants to do something instead of raiding engineering for gloves. One time I was the janitor and I did a really good job of cleaning tons of roach guts out of the captain's office so he gave me a medal and all access. I strapped up with a couple weapons, got on my scrubber upgraded janicart, and went through the gateway. I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning up the syndicate base from all the blood and dead crew who cleared out the syndie npcs. I came back to the station loaded with gear and died to a hoard of player-controlled spiders.

[iamgoofball]

Your only saving grace is that you hardly even play. Every time you did I'd get a ton of complaints about you.

You were most certainly on the "Watch closely for shit behavior" list for a while because of this, but you were never around anyways.

Would you like to state these complaints and provide a time period? Because I never get PM'd by admins about this shit behavior and the only recent incident where I pissed off the players was the detective and I were trying to interrogate a potential shadowling because we figured it'd be a bit more fun, and even then I never got PM'd.

Also, every time I've requested notes there hasn't been any notes about shitty behavior as a head. I run gimmicks as heads of staff because quite frankly playing to kill the antags/do the round's expected grind is boring. You get far more done by just working WITH your staff members than yelling at them to do shit.

Put it this way:
Do you prefer a captain who smashes his case for the laser gun roundstart and then takes a security member and 10 flashlights into maint to hunt the antags
Or do you prefer a captain who works with engineering to construct a wrestling ring in the middle of the bar and hold Space WWE?

[Cheimon]

I'd rather not have the captain subsumed by validhunting or gimmicks. If there are a bunch of nuke ops and the captain is saying to security "fuck off, I'm making a WWE ring" and everyone dies because of him, he's doing the job as poorly as if he'd been in maint searching for abductors all round.

[Davidchan]

Yeah, Cap doesn't need to be doing either of those things. If the HoP or CE wants to devote their time to making an autism ring to keep the assistants occupied in the Bar, so be it. But the Captain doing this is probably just begging to be bombed.

[iamgoofball]

Of course if he's actually needed he'd go do actual validhunting shit, but if normally he's not allowed to go antag hunting for the round, and he's not allowed to run gimmicks, then what the fuck is there to do as captain when there isn't nuke ops, the only round type that actively involves his job as a core part of the gamemode?

[WarbossLincoln]

The only real responsibility the captain has is to secure the disk. Plus making sure that there's an HOP and that he's taking care of personnel needs. HOP and Cargo can handle nearly every need every department will have. The Captain should find something entertaining to do, preferably in a well lit public place, and pay attention to command and security channels so he knows what's going on. Then if something serious comes up and the captain is needed to knock some heads, yell at people, valid hunt manually if shit's bad, he can.

[Davidchan]

Of course if he's actually needed he'd go do actual validhunting shit, but if normally he's not allowed to go antag hunting for the round, and he's not allowed to run gimmicks, then what the fuck is there to do as captain when there isn't nuke ops, the only round type that actively involves his job as a core part of the gamemode?

Command

Boring round? Tell the CE to make an arena.

Have the CMO make some recreational or beneficial drugs (ephedrine for example)

Retool the bridge to make it more compact, efficient or just an eyesore.

Spend all of Cargo/Minings points on stupid shit and decorate your office with it.

Get Xenobio to make gold slimes and make a zoo of monsters.

The point is, the Captain personally shouldn't be doing much, but rather focusing the crew to do shit. Check up on the work and enjoy the spoils all you want, but dropping everything and focusing on an autism-engineer level project is a waste of the Captain's time.

[iamgoofball]

...
Or do you prefer a captain who works with engineering to construct a wrestling ring in the middle of the bar and hold Space WWE?

Yeah, Cap doesn't need to be doing either of those things. If the HoP or CE wants to devote their time to making an autism ring to keep the assistants occupied in the Bar, so be it. But the Captain doing this is probably just begging to be bombed.

Of course if he's actually needed he'd go do actual validhunting shit, but if normally he's not allowed to go antag hunting for the round, and he's not allowed to run gimmicks, then what the fuck is there to do as captain when there isn't nuke ops, the only round type that actively involves his job as a core part of the gamemode?

...
Boring round? Tell the CE to make an arena.
...

You're sending mixed signals here.

[Cheimon]

I think the ideal captain is one that tries to strike a balance by making things fun for the crew. Antags get to do whatever they want, so the captain doesn't exist for them, security are normally pretty busy, and the captain exists for the rest of the crew. He's there to make things interesting for them, to make sure their departments are well run and to delegate things effectively. The ideal captain isn't subsumed by a single project that any old assistant could do (like making a rage cage) but he's delegating and keeping an eye on things to the point where the station runs more enjoyably than it would without him. He has the power to make things happen, and he should use it. Of course, at many points in the game 'the station running more enjoyably' means that he has to work against antagonists almost 100% of the time, but it's in the quiet periods that the captain really does his job. If that sounds vague, it's because it is. Captain's job is to make decisions for other people, and try to make the right ones.

[Zilenan91]

Good fucking god goofball. The reason you're watched so harshly when playing command is because you're the HoP who shoots and door smashes people trying to get access during a WarOps round

[Zellion]

Captain's job is to have fun while trying to stay alive (and also keeping the disc safe)

[srifenbyxp]

[youtube]7M-JPH5SOmI[/youtube]

[AngryTurnip]

It seems like every round I've been captain I'm rushing around to fix 20 different things at once and everyone is calling me lazy because I'm not constantly helping them personally. Is this just something you have to deal with or should I really be making sure one problem is 100% fixed myself as opposed to checking it out and telling people how they need to fix it?

[bandit]

Is this just something you have to deal with

Yes. The captain's job is scapegoat.

[Oldman Robustin]

Maintain order at all costs.

You're literally the only person who has the access and authority to do so. If all other departments are running fine then security can ALWAYS use more help, but unlike the HOS, you can and should intervene when other departments are screwing up. That means you're in engineering for power issues, medbay when there's an outbreak or a pile of corpses outside of genetics, science if they need specific supplies and are developing crucial weaponry for blob/warops, cargo if you need to secure the implant supply chain or other necessities.

You get the idea. I make this my playstyle since my round enjoyment as captain directly correlates with how much of the station I was able to preserve through my actions. People might chafe under a captain barking orders, but its a whole hell of a lot better than the station collapsing into chaos.

The hard truth is that if you had tried harder, some of the people who depended on you would not have died. A powergaming captain will save more lives than Mr. RP's-from-the-bridge 100% of the time. Sure this has reasonable limits, you can minimize casualties by going full metagame but its important to have some meaningful conflict as well. That doesn't mean you sit back as the brig slowly falls to a gang/thralls/assistants because you're above killing people. Also absolutely nothing is worse than captain getting shit on by ops/slings/gang and having his all-access and authority turned against the brig because the captain was wandering maint alone with nothing but a disabler and no cuffs and was too slow to yell anything before he was captured/killed/converted.

I don't see anyone as a true captain (as opposed to all-access assistant) if they don't try their hardest to preserve the station that's been entrusted to them.