/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

The majority of the crew jobs do not have general maintenance access, only around their own department. The exceptions are engineering, security, cargo and the captain. Given maintenance isn't supposed to be open to the general public, assistants having free reign in there is out of place. As it currently stands, it is prefereable to antag as an assistant than some non-maintenance access job, and that devalues having an actual job.

I propose a test period where assistant maint access is disabled and see how it works out. This is a config option, so falls to headmins to decide.

Edit:
Headmin election thread on the topic:
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 52&t=27356

Some thoughts relating to the above thread and early discussion.
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 92#p573292

Istoprocent1 wrote:Assistants don't need maintenance access. Breaking and entry is a 2 minute sentence, which allows sec to search those assistants who are caught in the maintenance.

if you arrest for B&E into an area without that area's workers asking you to do so, you are shitsec and an arrestbot.

Arresting an assistant for being in maint, which their job has access to, is the low hanging fruit of the shitsec tree.

removing maint access from assistants will just cause engi tide.

that’s just a fun way to meet ban quota

oranges wrote:

cacogen wrote:Working against the players to force your dictatorial views on the game is not a good way to design.

hard to agree considering this is how it's always been done

well yeah design by committee doesn't work either but i think improve don't remove is a good rule of thumb

cacogen wrote:

oranges wrote:

cacogen wrote:Working against the players to force your dictatorial views on the game is not a good way to design.

hard to agree considering this is how it's always been done

well yeah design by committee doesn't work either but i think improve don't remove is a good rule of thumb

These systems that get removed, you'll be appalled how long nobody wants anything to do with them until someone removes it and people scream BUT YOU SHOULD BE MAKING IT BETTER

What even is the point of removing assistant maintenance access? There's nothing major in maintenance besides maintenance loot which is mainly garbage or stuff you can get at an autolathe. There's also the maintenance rooms, which should be encouraged to be used by crafty assistants to make underground dens and such.

Critawakets wrote:What even is the point of removing assistant maintenance access? There's nothing major in maintenance besides maintenance loot which is mainly garbage or stuff you can get at an autolathe. There's also the maintenance rooms, which should be encouraged to be used by crafty assistants to make underground dens and such.

maybe you should read the fucking opening post lol, that's his point right there

Armhulen wrote:

Critawakets wrote:What even is the point of removing assistant maintenance access? There's nothing major in maintenance besides maintenance loot which is mainly garbage or stuff you can get at an autolathe. There's also the maintenance rooms, which should be encouraged to be used by crafty assistants to make underground dens and such.

maybe you should read the fucking opening post lol, that's his point right there

his point is "other jobs dont have maint access" which is kinda garbo because roboticists for example do not need maint access

ATHATH wrote:Why are we specifically targeting assistants for nerfs and anti-QoL "improvements", again? Like, I know the meme is haha assistant robust despite starting with nothing, but isn't the CLOWN the one who's supposed to be specifically bullied by game mechanics all of the time (see: clumsy trait, shoes with slowdown)? Seriously, what is everyone's problem with assistants?

Assistant players and the culture they've created around being an """"assistant""""

ATHATH wrote:IMO, this change would make antag maint bases slightly harder/a bit more annoying to make

Don't care lol

Critawakets wrote:

Armhulen wrote:

Critawakets wrote:What even is the point of removing assistant maintenance access? There's nothing major in maintenance besides maintenance loot which is mainly garbage or stuff you can get at an autolathe. There's also the maintenance rooms, which should be encouraged to be used by crafty assistants to make underground dens and such.

maybe you should read the fucking opening post lol, that's his point right there

his point is "other jobs dont have maint access" which is kinda garbo because roboticists for example do not need maint access

Assistants do not need maintenance access, arguably those who need it most are engineers as it's maintenance for the station. It's so wall damage doesn't open one department to another, or to space. The fact there are goodies is neat for people who want to hack into it, and it makes a good spot to take people out, but those are game mechanics, not reasons assistants must have a traitor advantage at 0 tc above every job in the game that has a task but not maintenance access. In short, it's not every job without maint access that needs it, it's the do nothing job that doesn't need it

remanseptim wrote:

Istoprocent1 wrote:Assistants don't need maintenance access. Breaking and entry is a 2 minute sentence, which allows sec to search those assistants who are caught in the maintenance.

if you arrest for B&E into an area without that area's workers asking you to do so, you are shitsec and an arrestbot.

Cry more greytider.

Sheodir wrote:

remanseptim wrote:

Istoprocent1 wrote:Assistants don't need maintenance access. Breaking and entry is a 2 minute sentence, which allows sec to search those assistants who are caught in the maintenance.

if you arrest for B&E into an area without that area's workers asking you to do so, you are shitsec and an arrestbot.

Cry more greytider.

my man

most of the maps have areas created just for the purpose of being visited by assistants to do fun stuff in maint instead of validhunting since they have no real job, like the ghetto chem labs, surgery rooms, abandoned bars, without assistants there the only things that maintenance would be for is to traverse between departments easier without being spotted and as a way to the solars rooms

Every department still has access to their own maintenance, and cargo techs get to keep it as well. Its not like maints will never be traveled anymore if the overflow role isnt automatically allowed in anymore.

foolish skoglol
im going to play roles that have maint access JUST to greytide normally again

saprasam wrote:foolish skoglol
im going to play roles that have maint access JUST to greytide normally again

Unrelated to the above ban, we should really ban players who take up specialized roles and jobs just to tide. Looking at the entirety of Cargo Tech.

Sheodir wrote:

saprasam wrote:foolish skoglol
im going to play roles that have maint access JUST to greytide normally again

Unrelated to the above ban, we should really ban players who take up specialized roles and jobs just to tide. Looking at the entirety of Cargo Tech.

Hey techies gotta get paid somehow, it's like part of their job at this point so they get a pass

Armhulen wrote:

cacogen wrote:

oranges wrote:

cacogen wrote:Working against the players to force your dictatorial views on the game is not a good way to design.

hard to agree considering this is how it's always been done

well yeah design by committee doesn't work either but i think improve don't remove is a good rule of thumb

These systems that get removed, you'll be appalled how long nobody wants anything to do with them until someone removes it and people scream BUT YOU SHOULD BE MAKING IT BETTER

why remove it though
anyway I'm sure there are cases where something can't be improved really I meant coders should take player feedback and wants into consideration instead of the self-serving arrogance we've seen with various egotists over the years because you should be coding for the players not yourself and if you don't like doing it for free don't do it

Armhulen wrote:

Sheodir wrote:

saprasam wrote:foolish skoglol
im going to play roles that have maint access JUST to greytide normally again

Unrelated to the above ban, we should really ban players who take up specialized roles and jobs just to tide. Looking at the entirety of Cargo Tech.

Hey techies gotta get paid somehow, it's like part of their job at this point so they get a pass

I'm half-memeing but to be fair the browntide is real. I don't mean collecting shit, I mean people who use Techie as an excuse to be an Assistant with more access.

>nooooo you can't enter my department and use my techfab to get tools for your maint base NOOOOO
maintenance is the assistant's department, birdboat is the assistant's pet, assistants lurking in maint is a balancing act to cringesec.
office simulator 13 makes me weep.

remanseptim wrote:>nooooo you can't enter my department and use my techfab to get tools for your maint base NOOOOO
maintenance is the assistant's department, birdboat is the assistant's pet, assistants lurking in maint is a balancing act to cringesec.
office simulator 13 makes me weep.

>enters game about working a job on a space station
>doesn't wanna do their job

Local man behind 9000 layers of zoomer
Seriously though, I'd agree with this point if 99% of Assistants didn't take this into any interesting directions and just shat up everyone else's shift for the sake of either random shittery or little cringe autism projects that could be handled in a solo server. Let Assistant actually become the role for Beginners it was meant to be.

Sheodir wrote:>enters game about working a job on a space station
>doesn't wanna do their job

make jobs besides shaft miner, station engineer, and atmos tech worth doing consistently and we'll talk

Sheodir wrote:

remanseptim wrote:>nooooo you can't enter my department and use my techfab to get tools for your maint base NOOOOO
maintenance is the assistant's department, birdboat is the assistant's pet, assistants lurking in maint is a balancing act to cringesec.
office simulator 13 makes me weep.

>enters game about working a job on a space station

wrong

cedarbridge wrote: Assistant players and the culture they've created around being an """"assistant""""

this shit is real

I heard one of the HRP servers changed "assistant" to "visitor" and the tiding and shittery went down overnight, like something about being an "assistant" flips a switch in their heads that tells them to go around breaking windows and stealing shit, even on HRP, as soon as they stopped being assistants they remembered what server they were playing on

it's one of those fucked up things that shouldn't work but it does, I bet if you re-enabled clowns on bay it wouldn't even be 24 hours before some normally no-fun-allowed HRP stereotype joined and went full honktide

it's like that scene in the boondocks where someone throws a chair

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Sheodir wrote:

remanseptim wrote:>nooooo you can't enter my department and use my techfab to get tools for your maint base NOOOOO
maintenance is the assistant's department, birdboat is the assistant's pet, assistants lurking in maint is a balancing act to cringesec.
office simulator 13 makes me weep.

>enters game about working a job on a space station

wrong

The first thing players are always introduced to after the new player guide or index is the list of jobs, jobs (used to be aside from race and quirks now) are the only thing you can pick since release that isn't cosmetic to heavily alter your experience and context, and most of the rules are concerned around what you can do related to the context of doing your job. This is a roleplaying game about having a job in a space station. You can cry about this all you want, but it's still true. Hell, a traitor's main exemption is that whilst he's given a new job, he can ignore doing his job. It's so important it gets a written exception to the rules.

remanseptim wrote:make jobs besides shaft miner, station engineer, and atmos tech worth doing consistently and we'll talk

I don't know in what universe engineer is engaging other than - and I assume, by the inclusion of the atmos tech who will never work if nothing goes wrong there - fixing problems that arise. In that case, I suggest trying Security or, if you're particularly prone to chill times, Janitor.

I don't get people who call Shaft Miner engaging since it's so separate from the rest of the station that it might as well be another game. I suppose it can be fun to bring minerloot back to validhunt, but then it's less the job that's fun and more the trinkets it gives.

way too much discussion lets just do it and see what happens

remanseptim wrote:make jobs besides shaft miner, station engineer, and atmos tech worth doing consistently and we'll talk

Not sure what you are referring about a job being "worth doing consistently".
Aside from the concept being completely subjective depending on the player, the main point when playing ss13 is to make the job you pick worth or interesting by yourself. You know, since it's a "roleplaying game". If you find yourself unable to achieve that in certain jobs, so you prefer other specific ones, then that's okay, but it's on you and your playstyle, not an universal constant.

You might find curator or bartender "not worth" playing, but then someone else might find those jobs "worth" their time, playing them in a far more interesting or creative ways than you might ever play at your preferred ones.

Going back on-topic, I'm not really against assistants having maint access, because when they're not straight breaking the rules they can be an interesting and unpredictable factor in a round, and it's true they can give sec something to do on slow rounds. However, when you think about it, it really makes the least sense for them to have it.

It's mainly because of tradition and an implicit accepted consensus, and about them having to be the "greytide". Most players with a job will perceive assistants as shitters or as someone not playing seriously because of this, when in reality, assistants should be but a tutorial-like job, perceived by the rest of the crew as newbies who are trying to learn the game, and not powergamers who know every single inch of the station and will most likely robust you in 2 seconds if you get anywhere near them.

So you either leave them as they are, or restrict them heavily for them to be perceived as the "noob" job. Maybe even changing their title to "visitor" or "civilian" to emphasize the change.

Fuck it do it now, nothing ventured nothing gained

if assistants had some mechanical incentive to actually "assist" other departments with various tasks then maintenance access would make sense for them as utility corridors to get around quickly but as it stands assistants do whatever the fuck they want and maintenance gets used as a shady back-alley to kill people, dump bodies, and build no-no shit out of sight.

Agux909 wrote:

remanseptim wrote:make jobs besides shaft miner, station engineer, and atmos tech worth doing consistently and we'll talk

Not sure what you are referring about a job being "worth doing consistently".
Aside from the concept being completely subjective depending on the player, the main point when playing ss13 is to make the job you pick worth or interesting by yourself. You know, since it's a "roleplaying game". If you find yourself unable to achieve that in certain jobs, so you prefer other specific ones, then that's okay, but it's on you and your playstyle, not an universal constant.

You might find curator or bartender "not worth" playing, but then someone else might find those jobs "worth" their time, playing them in a far more interesting or creative ways than you might ever play at your preferred ones.

if it were a me problem, we wouldn't be having this thread. assistant is the most played role and it's often played by the most active players.

remanseptim wrote:
if it were a me problem, we wouldn't be having this thread. assistant is the most played role and it's often played by the most active players.

Yes, in LRP, where being assistant equals having green light for semi-antagging all the time. So of course a lot of people will enjoy shitting around with no responsabilities and flexing their gimmicks freely round after round with almost no care in the world. This doesn't mean this meta is 100% okay, it's just a meta we are used to.

Metas can change though.

Sheodir wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Sheodir wrote:

remanseptim wrote:>nooooo you can't enter my department and use my techfab to get tools for your maint base NOOOOO
maintenance is the assistant's department, birdboat is the assistant's pet, assistants lurking in maint is a balancing act to cringesec.
office simulator 13 makes me weep.

>enters game about working a job on a space station

wrong

The first thing players are always introduced to after the new player guide or index is the list of jobs, jobs (used to be aside from race and quirks now) are the only thing you can pick since release that isn't cosmetic to heavily alter your experience and context, and most of the rules are concerned around what you can do related to the context of doing your job. This is a roleplaying game about having a job in a space station. You can cry about this all you want, but it's still true. Hell, a traitor's main exemption is that whilst he's given a new job, he can ignore doing his job. It's so important it gets a written exception to the rules.

If the game was ever purely about doing the boring minigame that is your job, nobody would have ever played it in the first place and it would not exist today. You cannot be telling me that all you ever do when you're a non-antag is your job and literally nothing else.

PKPenguin321 wrote: If the game was ever purely about doing the boring minigame that is your job, nobody would have ever played it in the first place and it would not exist today. You cannot be telling me that all you ever do when you're a non-antag is your job and literally nothing else.

It is the main context around my actions, yes. It isn't the ONLY thing I do, but it is what the game is about at its core. Halo might be a game about green man shoot blue man but that's simply the context around everything else that happens in it, and SS13 is similar. It isn't the ONLY THING, but the game would literally not work without that at its core.

No wonder you're so bitter about this game, jesus christ

PKPenguin321 wrote:No wonder you're so bitter about this game, jesus christ

Do you have me confused with anyone else? I have a great time with this game.

go play farming simulator if you want to be a wagie in videogames

Remove Maint access from assistants, randomise wires for each single door every round, remove Insuls providing complete protection from shocks entirely, or leave it only as CE's unique item, BEPIS' reward, and maybe some very expensive item to get from cargo, and figure the way how to balance shocks so that one entrepreneurial AI can't alt-click everyone to death. Then testmerge this on sybil.
If feedback is positive, then we're good, if not Sybil dies for good.
Win-Win situation.

Omni wrote:Remove Maint access from assistants, randomise wires for each single door every round, remove Insuls providing complete protection from shocks entirely, or leave it only as CE's unique item, BEPIS' reward, and maybe some very expensive item to get from cargo, and figure the way how to balance shocks so that one entrepreneurial AI can't alt-click everyone to death. Then testmerge this on sybil.
If feedback is positive, then we're good, if not Sybil dies for good.
Win-Win situation.

how to make station engineer useless: the post
this would also need to remove shocked grilles. it'd also make it so only the CE could possibly deconstruct airlocks, unless you wanted the engineers to either sear their flesh from their bones, or have to turn off the entire room's power just to get at a single door.
absurd idea, not even sybil deserves this treatment.

remanseptim wrote:sip

Joke's on you, engineering is already useless. I have to think hard of last time I saw engineer actually repair station (why would they? shuttle gets called 20 minutes in most of the time, over such trite problems as missing tiles in the hallways, there is little incentive to rebuild anything) and SM is not even really necessary.
You could have different budget insuls with degrees of protection and give the better ones to engineering. And I see little wrong with engineer having to turn the APC off for a moment to fix whatever is there to fix, just like you should do IRL when you repair most electric systems unless you want to abruptly die.
But fair, and grille criticism is valid.

Also, I guess this is not policy discussion anymore, apologies.

assistants already have to break into tech storage/engineering to get insuls that reliably work. what you just suggested is roughly how it works already.

remanseptim wrote:assistants already have to break into tech storage/engineering to get insuls that reliably work. what you just suggested is roughly how it works already.

As if those places weren't raided the first couple of minutes any given round whenever assistants want to do it. But give those airlocks medium security, their own set of wires and then we can talk about breaking into storage/engineering being some kind of feat at all.

Commiting to these changes (including barring assistants from maint), depends on if the ones responsible for the decision are ready/eager to face the meta shift and the inevitable honest feedback from the community.

Some meta changes, albeit not supported by a loud part of the community, can be extremely informative about aspects in a game that were to that point being ignored or remained undiscovered by the players.

Regardless of the result, it can at least shake things up enough so the game doesn't become stale and players start trying new things, or old things in plain sight that were completely disregarded because of the predominance of old habits.

remanseptim wrote:assistants already have to break into tech storage/engineering to get insuls that reliably work. what you just suggested is roughly how it works already.

Any assistant knowing their trade does not really need insuls as it is. Once you figure out the wires, you are set, and the only thing insuls are there for is passive protection from Ai going bad/grilles and rare occasions when you need to lay cable someplace. If I ever get insuls, it's mostly as status thing.
i do not have that idea fully figured out, it's a code solution to issue larger than just common greytide shitterywhich is prime concern discussed here, yet I stand by opinion that at the very least wires should be randomised, and probably hacking/insuls thing could see rework, cause as it is it's very stale aspect of the game.

I would be perfectly okay with a shift of current assistants mainly playing cargo or engineers to do their maint projects. The prominence of assistant maint projects is extremely overstated in this thread, as most assistants don't do anything productive at all.

why is there a need for everyone to do something productive

I say valid hunting is more productive than doing engineering staring at pipe rp

Having been there at one stage, I can say with considerable confidence that there is no longevity at all in that kind of playstyle, and anyone who is at that stage is in burnout mode.

Screemonster wrote:

cedarbridge wrote: Assistant players and the culture they've created around being an """"assistant""""

this shit is real

I heard one of the HRP servers changed "assistant" to "visitor" and the tiding and shittery went down overnight, like something about being an "assistant" flips a switch in their heads that tells them to go around breaking windows and stealing shit, even on HRP, as soon as they stopped being assistants they remembered what server they were playing on

it's one of those fucked up things that shouldn't work but it does, I bet if you re-enabled clowns on bay it wouldn't even be 24 hours before some normally no-fun-allowed HRP stereotype joined and went full honktide

it's like that scene in the boondocks where someone throws a chair

I've been a proponent for a long time of just making assistants "civilian visitors" and non-crew by default. If the "civilian visitors" want to enjoy full rights on the station as crew they can apply to the HoP for a job. If they just want to wander the halls and screw around in the bar, they can do so freely with the understanding that they're visiting. Civilians trespassing in employee restricted areas open themselves to greater punishment, etc.

In practice I'd expect that sort of distinction to have a greater impact on Manuel with its higher play standards, but it could be made more general.

NecromancerAnne wrote:Having been there at one stage, I can say with considerable confidence that there is no longevity at all in that kind of playstyle, and anyone who is at that stage is in burnout mode.

let people burn out you aren’t Chinese government to stop us from doing self immolation

what if we turn assistants into assistant monkeys

Space Panda wrote:what if we turn assistants into assistant monkeys

we already have ghost role monkeys

What you do is remove assistants entirely and instead have a monkey role for roundstart.
The new role makes you a monkey in one of the pens for departments around. That's it.