/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

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.

Gamarr wrote: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.

Literally makes tiding spare easier lmfao

Absolutely not. Assistants need to have SOMETHING and maint access is basically the only thing they have.

Maybe instead give MORE JOBS MAINT ACCESS

I guarantee you that all this is going to result in is Assistants begging for maint access, which most HoP's will give, or assistant mains taking up other valuable jobs to get the access conveniently at roundstart. This is going to solve nothing but shit up other departments with more people who don't want to do their assigned job but just fuck around (and all the power to them, this is a sandbox game primarily and an RP one secondarily). Not a very bright idea at all. Might work on med rp though.

Kool'kat McLaser is an oldfag now. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. sea beams nigga

I take no issue with current assistants getting a job for easier maint access. You might make the claim that this will only cause a wasted job slot, but the treshold for contributing is a lot lower if you actually have a role instead of just being a non-role. People already fuck off shiftstart, this will not change much.

Handing out access is also part of the HOP's job, and more work is good. Leaving the decision about maint access up to the crew IC is also perfectly fine.

Laz0rgrunt wrote:I guarantee you that all this is going to result in is Assistants begging for maint access, which most HoP's will give

which is fine

Laz0rgrunt wrote:or assistant mains taking up other valuable jobs to get the access conveniently at roundstart

which is an admin issue, and can be solved with correctly setting the bar

Laz0rgrunt wrote:This is going to solve nothing but shit up other departments with more people who don't want to do their assigned job but just fuck around (and all the power to them, this is a sandbox game primarily and an RP one secondarily). Not a very bright idea at all. Might work on med rp though.

that is a lot of cringe you have contained in those parentheses, but jobs on our codebase are not fleshed out at all. we already don't expect people to religiously follow them because they are mostly "do boring repeat task, get reward"

I don't think removing maint from assistants is a good idea. And I say this as an engie/atmos main who has to deal with assistants fucking around in maint and breaking shit. Who else besides assistants and traitors really has a reason to be in maint? The jobs all have their own private areas (and most don't even have maint access except their own back door) so they don't have much reason to be in maint. Engies only really need to be in maint to hunt for those damn rats and the wires they break.

Yes, I know they can just hack their way in. That's not the point. Why do we have all these fun little side areas mapped in maint if not for assistants to go screw around it? For that matter, what else will they do if they (aren't supposed to) do that? If you're going through the trouble of hacking, you may as well just hack into somewhere fun like science or the brig instead. At the very least if this is the direction we intend to go then some expansion of common areas is warranted. Right now you have basically the bar, the dorms, the garden, the chapel, and library. And let's be honest here, there's not much to do in any of those except fight or talk.

VexingRaven wrote:Why do we have all these fun little side areas mapped in maint if not for assistants to go screw around it? For that matter, what else will they do if they (aren't supposed to) do that

Learn how to play the game and assist

During the vatgrowing testmerge on sybil I, as a xenobiologist, was hiring assistants every round to swab maint for samples. It was dope. Sorry, I just wanted to tell someone

Agux909 wrote:Learn how to play the game and assist

assistants are their own department by this point, so this point is incredibly moot. they even have their own departmental pet, being birdboat.
they're the maintenance-dwelling slum people. the lower class of the station. the wild card (read: general nuisance).

remanseptim wrote:

Agux909 wrote:Learn how to play the game and assist

assistants are their own department by this point, so this point is incredibly moot. they even have their own departmental pet, being birdboat.
they're the maintenance-dwelling slum people. the lower class of the station. the wild card (read: general nuisance).

I disagree. This is only what you like to think, but it's not something that should be considered set in stone. Current assistant meta is just a really bad habit that has stuck with /tg/ forever and is nowadays considered to be a staple for no good reason. People does it just because people does it, a vicious cycle that has no actual reason to be other than past memes and a virtual convention that players are just used to and comfortable with, and incentivize others to repeat, again, just because.

Assistants are supposed to be what newbies pick to learn the game, period. It's literally the reason why the role is considered separatedly in the job list and will automatically grey-out all the other jobs. You can't assign "medium priority" to assistant, because it isn't an actual job. It's supposed to be what new players pick for learning the game and it's mechanics, before trying actual jobs, and not a semi-antag/griefing/shitting greenlight for when there aren't any admins around.

But as I said before, a change like this today with all the implications I mentioned in my previous posts would obviously bring drastic change in the meta and, of course, the ire of many players, so I can't say it will objectively be the best decision or not.
However, I can certainly say it would be an interesting one.

wasn't prisoner added to fulfill the 'brand new player' role? or is that just what it fell into?

remanseptim wrote:wasn't prisoner added to fulfill the 'brand new player' role? or is that just what it fell into?

Original intent was as a roleplaying role because people would adminhelp to be put in permabrig and they'd just fuck around back there all shift long

Assistant is the general "civilian" role. If you don't have that, then somebody who just wants to sit in bar and chat, or play around in aux construction or something has to put engineer or some other valuable role. I'm not entirely against removing maint access but I think some mapping changes should be done to make some of the more interesting main spaces not maint. Otherwise, like I said before, why are these spaces there if only 3 roles have access to them, none of which are going to give a shit?

turn half of assistants into department interns ( minor access to 1 department) for new people who want to learn without being a job slot waste or people who want to work less and have less responsibilities
turn the other half into tourists with no access for people first joining and people who want to fuck around and then suicide if they are bored

Since this is now a headmin election discussion as well, lets talk length. A lot of the early suggestions in https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 52&t=27356 talk about a weekend or two, and that is quite frankly just pointless. If this is going to be a valuable test, it needs to be a thing for long enough for players to adjust to it and start playing as if it was a fact of life. This change will cause a shift of players going to other jobs for access, and that is the point. The threshold for contributing as <current needed role> is a lot lower if you are already playing that role, and filling our regular job slots is a positive development despite some people trying to paint it as a negative. If people break our rules or toe the line as a result of chasing maint access, its an admin issue and we can deal with it accordingly.

Needs to be at least a couple of week, ideally a month or so. It does not have to be a tg-wide test, though it should be applied to at least one non-mrp highpop server.

I agree. Better yet, make the change to show up lasting for an "undetermined" duration.

Tlaltecuhtli wrote:turn half of assistants into department interns ( minor access to 1 department) for new people who want to learn without being a job slot waste or people who want to work less and have less responsibilities
turn the other half into tourists with no access for people first joining and people who want to fuck around and then suicide if they are bored

Now this is an interesting idea. You could do this pretty easily with the existing sec officer code as well: Give assistants the option to choose an assigned department, give them an armband and encryption chip. Give them basic access as desired. Add configuration options for how many to allow for each department.

Mind you all this can already be done by department heads on the rare occasion you can find one and they actually know how to use their department console, but codifying this for roundstart seems like a net positive. If there's support for this idea I'd be willing to look at adding it.

tlat is calling them tourists so they arent protected under crewsimov/corporate , which is based as hell.

imagine caring about ai protection

Now that vatgrowing/swabbing exists as an actual productive purpose for exploring maintenance, has anyone's stance on this issue changed?

ATHATH wrote:Now that vatgrowing/swabbing exists as an actual productive purpose for exploring maintenance, has anyone's stance on this issue changed?

slightly more willing to let them keep it. I pay assistants cash to swab for me.

More work for the HOP

It's worth noting that removing maint access from assistants will make maintenance a bit safer for anyone looking for secrecy.

Even if there can still be prowling security, engineers, or people who simply hack in, this change would definitely reduce the random wanderers who could spot someone in the process of dragging a body, building a secret base, or trying to enter the backdoor of some department. It would help anyone looking to skulk in the shadows, including the 'professional assistants', who can hack the doors to get around anyway.

We have no desire to disable maintenance access for assistants at this time.

Headmin Votes:
Coconutwarrior97: Yes.
Domitius: Yes.
Naloac: Yes.