Assitant limit

[RescueRanger]

Why does this even exist? This forces people who may have to leave mid-round/ don't want to play a job with actual responsibility/ just want to relax/ observe, to play roles that they hate/suck at. Not to mention brand new players who just want to learn the controls and basics of the game being forced to either observe (which sucks) or play a role that could end up with them ruining the round for everyone (which isn't there fault since someone decided limiting assistants was a good idea). If you are worried about mass grey tiding then start handing out bans/job-bans for that shit, takes less than 5 minutes to slap a ban on some cuck greytiding. Oh and to the admins reading this who are going to be like "we do ban them", bull most are warned if that and continue to do that shit anyway.

[imblyings]

Hgs legacy

Its a simple config change surely it will be raised with a sense of urgency

[RescueRanger]

Hgs legacy

Its a simple config change surely it will be raised with a sense of urgency

Knew it would be Hg

[Davidchan]

Some one needs to compile a list of all the shit hg screwed and we can have one massive pr to revert it all and start 2017 right. Exhume the std ridden corpse and remove anytrace.

[Lumbermancer]

I voted yes.

[DemonFiren]

If we want to restore the old days we also have to restore the old playerbase.

[calzilla1]

Because people are talking about nerfing flash bangs

[Sweaterkittens]

I think the intention was to keep a million people from going assistant at roundstart and just spending the round fucking everything up. It's hard to administrate when the greytide is happening for the same reasons it is to keep a riot in check in real life. Everyone wants to blame it on the other person for starting it, and there's a 20 people stating "I was just breaking a window!" "I just disarmed him" etc etc. I don't mean to say it's impossible to handle it in an OOC fashion, only that it's not as easy as "Just ban the people who are being bad".


That being said, RR's point is absolutely correct - if people want to be shit they're going to be shit regardless of what color they're wearing, and putting them in a role that actually matters can only make things worse. I'll see what i can do about getting the limit removed.

[Lumbermancer]

Are you condoning being shit?

[Sweaterkittens]

I'm saying that the purpose of the cap seemed to be to limit people from going assistant so that they could just greytide and generally be shit. People who do that are going to be shit in whatever role they're stuck with, whether it's as assistant or captain. At that point it's a player problem, not a gameplay problem, and it'll be dealt with by the administrative team.

[onleavedontatme]

>endless complaining about hubbies in security on basil
>security officer has 11-15 slots from scaling
>assistant has three

Makes me think

[InsaneHyena]

A shitload of assistants is not a good thing. They're pests.

[Drynwyn]

>endless complaining about hubbies in security on basil
>security officer has 11-15 slots from scaling
>assistant has three

Makes me think

There's fucking THREE assistant slots? Jesus christ


Also, there's no limit on how many people can be assistant at round-start, IIRC, because that would have required extensive fucking with jobcode. Instead it only applies to latejoiners.

[onleavedontatme]

Only three latejoin slots yeah.

[Okand37]

There are seven assistant slots at roundstart.
There is a limit to how many of a slot there can be at roundstart, spawnpositions is different than available positions. There is a simple option in the config to change the cap, however.

[PKPenguin321]

i miss spawning on top of 3 other people in tool storage as assistant and having a flood of 20 people just pour towards the toolbelt then out the doors

[John_Oxford]

>implying assistants dont already ruin the round for everyone

[Douk]

The fact that there is more security slots than assistant slots for any given population is counter-intuitively more dangerous than if it were the other way around. I have seen now no less than 5 rounds get absolutely ruined for security because either A)the ridiculous amounts of time and energy has to be spent tard-wrangling the idiots who chose sec because there weren't any other jobs available, or B)late-join hub pubbies do something stupid and get everyone else killed, especially during conversion gamemodes. The damage these people could do if they just filtered into assistant roles would be SEVERELY less: at least then you can IC throw them into the gulag if they act like shitters and hope they don't come back alive.

Just go back to where assistants had essentially an infinite number of slots. Greytide sucks, but having the greytiders sucking up the resources from actual productive departments from the inside is even worse.

[Lumbermancer]

This may be the case during US-prime time, but when population numbers 40-60 players there's simply never more Sec than assistants. IF you have HoS, Warden, 2 sec and Detective then it's as best as it could ever be. It's usually 2-3 sec and a HoS OR Warden OR Detective for most of the round though.

Just yesterday me and CJS and Warden had to face 20+ man blood cult by ourselves.

Make the assistant cap scale.

[Sweaterkittens]

The damage these people could do if they just filtered into assistant roles would be SEVERELY less

This pretty much hits the nail on why I feel as though the limit should be removed or at least heavily increased. The cap is primarily intended for players with shitty behavior, but it also shuts out new players and less-skilled players. Hell, I've never been a greytider and I mained security for about a year when I first started playing, but I still never like late-joining as anything but an assistant, since I have no idea what's going on on the station. It's oftentimes too late to do your job if it's something time-gated, your workplace might already have been blown to bits, you might immediately get jumped by a conversion antag or killed by a murderboning traitor. There are few things worse than watching someone latejoin as a head or sec and get butchered as they walk down arrivals hallway because they have no idea what sort of danger they should be looking out for and are woefully underprepared. At that point they're basically a loot pinata.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Did the assistant cap get set hard? I could have sworn it used to be a cap of 2 assistants per sec role.

[Jibreel]

While I hate assistants doing things like hacking into every department and being a nuisance, having it be a geneticist who is hacking into every department and being a nuisance while corpses pile up is not by any stretch of the imagination an improvement.

[danno]

without assistant slots i've just been joining as janitor and chef and shit and being a dickhead anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[MrStonedOne]

The assistant cap goes away once all other roles are filled.

Or, at least, it should.

[confused rock]

why not have it go away permanently

[DrPillzRedux]

>lets force the greytiders into real jobs
>wow why are they not doing their job

[onleavedontatme]

The assistant cap goes away once all other roles are filled.

Or, at least, it should.

Security scales massively with population though, so you've got 10 people who don't want to play officer being forced to play a role with authority and guns before the assistant slots open up.

[IcePacks]

>opens up a gazillion fucking sec slots
>"this will give us more validstopping power!"
>try to join a game
>you can only join as sec officer 10
>the hop didn't bother to get any more gear for new officers
>all you have is a taser and the cold realization that you're a haphazard bandaid over a problem that may or may not exist, applied by someone who doesn't know or care enough about their job to do it properly
>get shot by an assistant with a taser that he got off of a braindead officer

[srifenbyxp]

You know its bad when the poll is the same and/or greater than tells you to fuck off.

[Arianya]

While I don't play assistant, and so can't really comment on the cap itself, I will say that going back to "5 sec officers try to wrangle 20 greytide worldwide shitbirds who are all hoping to win the disarm lottery and live on in immortality in the Hall Of Robust" is not a good way to encourage people to play sec, a pretty small population of players that is pretty much exclusively made up of masochists who try to run a compassionate sec, new people who don't know better and powertrippers who cause people to rail against sec and try to implement sec nerfs. Sec is where you get shouted at for being too strict but also get shouted at if you fuck up and die, even if the odds are against you.

The assistant cap might not be the answer, but you can't just revert the assistant cap and have everything be hunky dory with the world

[TheColdTurtle]

Assistant cap does not matter, they will just go engineer and spawn with hacking tools. Like this one engi who gives a greyshirt a full toolset and just greytide the rest of the round

[Gun Hog]

I support Assistant cap removal. Greyshirts are annoying scum that wreck the station and steal everything; However, having that same player in a SECURITY role with the power to back up his theft with guns is even worse. Security Officer is one of the hardest jobs in the game, forcing noobs into it is a baaad plan.

Removing the Assistant cap allows those players to be easily identified. Furthermore, people who want to join in a capacity where they do not matter to the round will be allowed to do so. No one cares if an assistant goes braindead in a hallway. It is a big deal when it happens to an officer. The cap does not solve the greytide problem, it masks it.

Excessive greytide in maint could return as an issue (where stealth antags cannot hide or create bases in maintenance due to the high traffic) so we could consider adding an "Unassigned" role that is just "Assistant" without maint access.

[Davidchan]

Assist cap is pretty dumb, as stated numerous times over preventing people who want to be shits from playing a meaningless role just makes them play other roles and act the same way. Just ensure that sec officer positions open based on overall crew size and/or assistants on the roster. If people aren't breaking the rules let them greytide, if they are breaking the rules then ahelp it. This whole sec vs assistants thing is getting over played particularly when there can be more sec officers in a round than assistants.

[Sweaterkittens]

Removing the assistant cap may not be a fix-all, but as many others including myself have stated, if people want to be shit they're going to be shit no matter what role they're in. At least if they're wearing grey they're not taking a role that requires responsibility from someone who might actually use it properly.

After speaking with Krusvik for a little bit about this, it's my feeling that there is a lot of reluctance to raise this cap. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but that is my gut.

In the meantime however I've been given the go-ahead to raise it manually on a per-round basis. If you late-join and would like to join as an assistant, feel free to ahelp and I'll add a slot. Though let me be clear that I'll be watching extra close for excessive grey-tidery and line-toeing if I do.

[Arianya]

I do wonder if forcing greytides into actual jobs causes infighting as the "true" greytiders try to loot their "privileged" "greytide" brothers of their access/tools/etc.

[Doctor Pork]

I support Assistant cap removal. Greyshirts are annoying scum that wreck the station and steal everything; However, having that same player in a SECURITY role with the power to back up his theft with guns is even worse. Security Officer is one of the hardest jobs in the game, forcing noobs into it is a baaad plan.

Removing the Assistant cap allows those players to be easily identified. Furthermore, people who want to join in a capacity where they do not matter to the round will be allowed to do so. No one cares if an assistant goes braindead in a hallway. It is a big deal when it happens to an officer. The cap does not solve the greytide problem, it masks it.

Excessive greytide in maint could return as an issue (where stealth antags cannot hide or create bases in maintenance due to the high traffic) so we could consider adding an "Unassigned" role that is just "Assistant" without maint access.

Civilian roles? I.E. Mailman, Waitress, Etc.? Could be neat. Although tbh if someone catches you in maint and they arent a sec officer they're probably up to no good and as such believe you to be no good and would just as soon pass eachother by unless theyre a shit and murder you. Most of the time if I see someone in maint I emote a nod and pass them by.

Good Tiders don't Narc.

[ShadowDimentio]

>Raise the cap on a round-by-round basis

Great so basically nothing changed then. Just remove the cap, nobody wants it, not even sec mains who have to deal with it.

[Sweaterkittens]

>Raise the cap on a round-by-round basis. Great so basically nothing changed then.

Except that it has, because I'll be able to open more assistant slots when it's needed

Just remove the cap, nobody wants it

Except the headmin that I talked to that isn't keen on raising it.

2/10 for reading comprehension.

[oranges]

there are three headmins and they should be strongly considering removing the caps

[Armhulen]

I support Assistant cap removal. Greyshirts are annoying scum that wreck the station and steal everything; However, having that same player in a SECURITY role with the power to back up his theft with guns is even worse. Security Officer is one of the hardest jobs in the game, forcing noobs into it is a baaad plan.

Removing the Assistant cap allows those players to be easily identified. Furthermore, people who want to join in a capacity where they do not matter to the round will be allowed to do so. No one cares if an assistant goes braindead in a hallway. It is a big deal when it happens to an officer. The cap does not solve the greytide problem, it masks it.

Excessive greytide in maint could return as an issue (where stealth antags cannot hide or create bases in maintenance due to the high traffic) so we could consider adding an "Unassigned" role that is just "Assistant" without maint access.

Civilian roles? I.E. Mailman, Waitress, Etc.? Could be neat. Although tbh if someone catches you in maint and they arent a sec officer they're probably up to no good and as such believe you to be no good and would just as soon pass eachother by unless theyre a shit and murder you. Most of the time if I see someone in maint I emote a nod and pass them by.

Good Tiders don't Narc.

This is a fun idea that I feel would tickle the people who play ghost roles a lot. We could have a role called civilian instead of assistant that gives you a random civil job like you mentioned, mailman, waitress, other stuff like that. Janitor could be moved, could stay, doesn't matter. The civilians all arrive on a space bus.

[bandit]

>endless complaining about hubbies in security on basil
>security officer has 11-15 slots from scaling
>assistant has three

Makes me think

Should be the end of thread, really. The best solution is obviously not to have a mass of shitty players, but a mass of shitty players in security is a far worse situation than a mass of shitty players in assistant.

[cedarbridge]

>endless complaining about hubbies in security on basil
>security officer has 11-15 slots from scaling
>assistant has three

Makes me think

Should be the end of thread, really. The best solution is obviously not to have a mass of shitty players, but a mass of shitty players in security is a far worse situation than a mass of shitty players in assistant.

That's ultimately the debate we had the last time I remember assistant limits and maint access being discussed. Ultimately, you either have a mass of useless assistants off doing their own things and leaving departments understaffed but at least staffed by people who wanted to be there. (and probably further understaffed when the one guy in engineering gets caught with an emag), or you have that same mass off fuckoffs spread through engineering/medbay/science/service and they have extra tools/access to boot.

The problem is exacerbated by hub players who may or may not have the slightest idea what they're doing. New players are drawn to roles with importance and authority. That's why you tend to find so many RD and CMO players that have no idea how anything in the science department actually works. Its also why new players tend to join and be awful at sec.

Spoiler:

Beyond merely being combat unrobust.

Its seen as *the* combat role on the station and the amount of iteration on the robust combat system shows how important that is to the game design as a whole, so it shouldn't be terribly surprising. Additionally, as the players are joining from the Hub and not from the server portal page like ye olden days they aren't going through the rules and policy notices that players were previously subjected to. They merely know they're joining a game server for that one space game they heard about and will have little to no idea what policies affect them and what is expected of them upon joining. Admins may guide, but their guidance will almost always be ad hoc because they will usually be responding to an ahelp about that player or trying to stem a tide of IC in OOC.

Assistants are useless, but ultimately they aren't crowding out department slots and useful positions. However, the assistant position itself is not generally attractive to new players. I can't imagine many new players (apart from exceptions) wanting to play a role that gives you the least access to activities and tools. This makes assistant a newbie role that doesn't attract newbies. Generally, assistants (from experience, I lack hard data on this) tend to be older veteran players looking for maint access for antag opportunities or freedom from department obligations for tiding and trouble-making. This is only partially a cultural problem as departments are loathe to trust greyshirts because of their history of breaking into and robbing departments and generally causing trouble. This makes the title "assistant" make less and less sense as its rare that assistants assist anyone, but as I said, this could as well be because nobody trusts them enough to ask.

Balancing assistants to be attractive to new players while not just buffing a role already preferred by veterans is a tightrope act that we still haven't figured out. Unfortunately.

tl:dr - Assistant was meant to be and should be an overflow role for surplus and new players, but is an unattractive option for new players. Look for a way to attract new players to it as a learning role without applying some sort of buff that unbalances it.

[PKPenguin321]

Make assistants uncapped and all spawn in tool storage again please

[Whoisthere]

This makes the title "assistant" make less and less sense as its rare that assistants assist anyone, but as I said, this could as well be because nobody trusts them enough to ask.

When I play assistant I'd be delighted if someone actually asked me to help. Nobody ever does, even if you yell "ASSISTANCE READY TO ASSIST!!" over the comms. I think the only time someone asked me to assist was to suck my fluids out.

tl:dr - Assistant was meant to be and should be an overflow role for surplus and new players, but is an unattractive option for new players. Look for a way to attract new players to it as a learning role without applying some sort of buff that unbalances it.

Maybe make miner a newbie job? Like create a job called "apprentice miner" or whatever so as not to take real miner slots. It's exciting enough for the new players, they get to learn how to interact with the world, there's enough incentive to help each other and the station as opposed to breaking windows because that's all you know how to do, and valids in the form of asswalkers and mining mobs. That's probably a retarded idea though.

[Haevacht]

It really is a terrible, no-good, repulsive, ignorant, shit, terrible idea.

[Whoisthere]

Doesn't the wiki say something like "assistant is for learning controls, once you learn contorls, go be a cargo tech as it's an easy, but real, job"?

[Armhulen]

The problem with assistants assisting is that every job can basically be done solo, you don't need any help with it

[Whoisthere]

Assistants can be good paramedics if you give them crew monitors I guess. When you're a medical doctor in a busy round where a wiz is killing everyone you often have to make a choice between treating the bleeding guy who also brought his recently deceased friend ripe for defibbing or rushing off to save the HoS laying in crit in maint somewhere.

[Davidchan]

Some jobs can be done solo, though places like medical can typically use more hands than they have available. Particularly if they are undermanned as is or someone bombs and kills the few competent doctors there was left.

[cedarbridge]

The problem with assistants assisting is that every job can basically be done solo, you don't need any help with it

Not entirely true. I've made use of assistants in the past in several jobs (RD and Botany come to mind off hand, though robotics to an extent) using them as go-fers or delivery errand runners.