[MRP] For RP Rule 9, what is the Assistant's lane?

[iamgoofball]

RP rule 9 states, with precedents:

9. Stay in your lane:
This means that you should do the job you signed up for and not try and do other people’s jobs for them or lay claim to their department. If you need something from another player you should attempt to ask them to get it for you instead of just taking it. Straying from your lane at the expense of another player should only be done where strictly necessary.

1. This rule is rooted in the experience of the players behind the characters you will interact with, remember this when playing and avoid justifying stamping on other’s experiences for personal gain.
2. The total absence of someone working the job which you require is always a legitimate reason to stray from your lane. Players simply being busy or unwilling to assist is not, however.
3. Where possible players straying from their lane should hand off their assumed responsibilities if another player becomes available to do it instead (if for example a missing roboticist returns to the lab after being revived while a paramedic is trying to handle a cyborg related issue)
4. Players are free to seek alternate routes that do not impinge on the games of other players to obtain the things they want where normal routes are closed to them. (An assistant that wishes to help a cyborg get upgrades while a roboticist is busy making mechs for security or augmenting patients may freely make use of a maintenance robotics bay, for example)

With that in mind, what is the Assistant's lane?

Traditionally, Assistant has been the everyman who has no job but does whatever the fuck they want. This runs contrary to RP rule 9's core fundamentals, because that's the kind of gameplay we explicitly want to avoid.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I kinda feel like the assistant should be doing all the stuff that doesnt really fall under anyone else's "lane". All the dick-about off-the-rails stuff, like fixing up the maint bar and serving battery acid or building an atomic face implosion machine powered by vending machines in the corp lobby. Scrounging maint for goodies then trying to hawk them to the chef, collecting loose cargo crates, growing stuff in the public gardens, doing bounties, stealing shit when nobody's looking, spraypainting walls with rude slogans.

If assistants want to get into the serious departmental stuff they should be asking the people who are actually department members if they want help or what they want doing, rather than barging in and doing it themself.

And in an emergency, an assistant is a good fill in for "body to throw at a problem" whether that problem be "all the [Role] are dead we need someone asap" or "charge the nuke ops to absorb their bullets while sec come in from the side with laser guns"

And if all those options fail... The HOP is in fact more than Budget Captain and can in fact give you a real job. You might have to send him spam mail and tell the AI to scream at him to get him into his office, but its always an option

[CMDR_Gungnir]

The Assistant's lane is to Assist.

They can choose to not do that, and nobody will lament the loss of it, but that's what they should avoid straying out of. Don't just go doing peoples' jobs for them, but ask if they want help, and do what they ask of you.

I'm also personally partial to them being a side thing. I've had rounds as Bartender before where the Assistant does up the maint bar and his advertisements for it involve just shit talking the bar constantly and talking about how much greater he is. You're not the Bartender, so your maint bar shouldn't be trying to be the MAIN bar. You should be a weird, side-alternative that people can choose to go to.

But that part's just my opinion.

[Vekter]

Dorsi's opinion pretty closely matches mine, though I think some exception can be made for situations where there's either nobody available to do the job that needs to be done or the department is overwhelmed (such as Medical having too many bodies and not enough people). That being said, I would prefer if the player in question be promoted to the job in question in those cases.

I think my main frustration with assistant right now comes from the duality with how people talk about it. Folks say that assistant is the job you pick when you want to fuck around, but so many of them then turn around and just do what other jobs already do anyway, which like... at that point, just pick that job? I don't know, it's confusing to me.

[Farquaar]

I feel the wiki page does a good job summarizing the role of a rule-abiding assistant with this line:

[Jolly66]

I feel like Assistants are allowed to do whatever, so long they're not being an inherent dick or stepping on the toes of others when it isn't needed.

Also, if they want to become engrained in a department, the HoP is RIGHT there, as well as the ID imprinters in the head offices. So, if an assistant is toe stepping, they can get promoted to a department job, or kicked out.

[Ezel]

Dorsi's opinion pretty closely matches mine, though I think some exception can be made for situations where there's either nobody available to do the job that needs to be done or the department is overwhelmed (such as Medical having too many bodies and not enough people). That being said, I would prefer if the player in question be promoted to the job in question in those cases.

I think my main frustration with assistant right now comes from the duality with how people talk about it. Folks say that assistant is the job you pick when you want to fuck around, but so many of them then turn around and just do what other jobs already do anyway, which like... at that point, just pick that job? I don't know, it's confusing to me.

its moreso the assistant has zero responsibilities minedset and zero expections you expect a engineer to atleast fix breaches or set up the SM where an assistnat isn't expected to do anything of this

[dendydoom]

my personal discretion when it comes to mrp rule 9 is "is it bothering anyone?" if not, then in all likelihood i will just let it ride because it would feel like i'm pissing on their parade for no other reason than to check off a box for rule enforcement.

if someone is bothered by it then i will try to gently steer the assistant into ASSISTING the person whose job it is. assistants aren't necessarily free agents that exist outside of the chain of command. they're still employees. i prefer it to remain IC if it can with things like reporting it to sec and having them handle it. butting heads over this sort of stuff can be interesting, and there are IC routes to take that can develop into a good story that people can enjoy.

however, there are definitely times where people are depriving others of their jobs by powergaming the mechanics and not doing it in a way that's conducive to RP. this is generally where the problem lies with me. if you would like to knuckle down, not talk to anyone, not work with anyone, not have any understanding as to how you're depriving others of their role, only to hyperfocus on the pure numbers of doing a job, then you should really have chosen that job in the first place.

[RedBaronFlyer]

my personal discretion when it comes to mrp rule 9 is "is it bothering anyone?" if not, then in all likelihood i will just let it ride because it would feel like i'm pissing on their parade for no other reason than to check off a box for rule enforcement.

if someone is bothered by it then i will try to gently steer the assistant into ASSISTING the person whose job it is. assistants aren't necessarily free agents that exist outside of the chain of command. they're still employees. i prefer it to remain IC if it can with things like reporting it to sec and having them handle it. butting heads over this sort of stuff can be interesting, and there are IC routes to take that can develop into a good story that people can enjoy.

however, there are definitely times where people are depriving others of their jobs by powergaming the mechanics and not doing it in a way that's conducive to RP. this is generally where the problem lies with me. if you would like to knuckle down, not talk to anyone, not work with anyone, not have any understanding as to how you're depriving others of their role, only to hyperfocus on the pure numbers of doing a job, then you should really have chosen that job in the first place.

That’s the logic I tend to use as well. For instance, if a door/wall gets messed up in the department I'm working on, I’ll PDA message the CE, asking him to send some guys to fix it. If no one shows up after a while, I’ll start trying to fix it myself. If they do show up, I’ll immediately stop and let them do their job. Same with calling a janitor for a mess, or not hopping over the bar to make myself a drink when the bartender is still alive and serving drinks.

I think the only time I continue to try and do stuff even when a department is working on it is really simple stuff like dragging a heater around to heat up a room, or recover bodies and/or use sutures on hurt crewmembers during mass casualty situations. The later only being done if there’s literally piles of wounded crew and the doctors are overwhelmed.

[Timberpoes]

The following is all generalised to MRP.

RPR9 is twofold:
1. "This means that you should do the job you signed up for ..."
2. "... and not try and do other people’s jobs for them or lay claim to their department."

Consider how the two limbs of RPR9 play together. The first part (doing the job you signed up for) makes it much harder to change lanes. You have a "job you signed up for" and you'll, within reason, be expected to do it. You'll need a good reason to drastically change lanes outside of your own department or your job's competencies.

And by job's competencies I mean things like I'd have no issue with like a roboticist doing buff surgeries or replacing missing limbs with spares from genetics clones, and no issue with an MD installing implants and replacing limbs with cybernetic variants. Surgery forms a clear part of both MD and Robo competencies and there's some crossover between the two.

In my eyes, assistant has no explicit lane. No expectation/obligation to do the job they signed up for, as their job has no responsibilities. Which means assistants have freedom to sandbox that many other roles don't have because they'll be expected to do their jobs. There's no "job you signed up for" to prevent changing lanes. They can step-in to any set of responsibilities following the appropriate IC procedures. And just as easily step-out of them, too.

The downside is that assistants have no right to any lane and can be prohibited ICly from stepping-in to any lane for any or even no reason. Doing someone else's job follows the exact and precise same rules as any other lane change. A legitimate reason to cross into that lane. Appropriate IC procedures followed to create a reason (i.e. - they asked the CMO and the CMO said they could set up a triage center in medbay lobby) is a legitimate reason.

Setting up unauthorised bootleg/ghetto departmental areas buried deep in maint is also a general area that assistants can exploit too, but emphasis on the bootleg/ghetto. If your ghetto department is better equipped than the main department, you're lane-stepping. Any attempts to lawyer around it with a "well technically it's okay because even though I have a genetics machine, surgery computer, stasis bed, operating table, advanced tools and a chemmaster I'm only offering to do advanced surgeries" are unlikely to be seen favourably.

[Constellado]

Am glad I saw this because I have seen people break that but I didn't ahelp because I had no clue what an assistants lane should be.

Here is something to think on though:
Say you are doing your job in your own way and an assistant goes up to you and tells you how to do it as you are doing it without you asking. Imagine you being in the pharmacy and an assistant goes up to you: "Hey! I know a better way of making this chem you already made/am making right now! This is what you do!" Is that breaking their lane? To me it does feel that way. However, I can see people thinking this would be fine. In my opinion I don't expect an assistant to just go and teach people without them asking for it. A person in the same department doing that though? That's perfectly fine in my eyes.

[Rustybuckets6601]

Am glad I saw this because I have seen people break that but I didn't ahelp because I had no clue what an assistants lane should be.

Here is something to think on though:
Say you are doing your job in your own way and an assistant goes up to you and tells you how to do it as you are doing it without you asking. Imagine you being in the pharmacy and an assistant goes up to you: "Hey! I know a better way of making this chem you already made/am making right now! This is what you do!" Is that breaking their lane? To me it does feel that way. However, I can see people thinking this would be fine. In my opinion I don't expect an assistant to just go and teach people without them asking for it. A person in the same department doing that though? That's perfectly fine in my eyes.

I'm biased as hell because I love teaching stuff, but I feel that it doesn't matter what role someone is if they decide to help another player learn something. Now if the player doesn't want to learn, that's a different story.

[nukularpower]

Just chiming in here to say that lately I've noticed the tiding on manuel to be getting super extreme, especially in science - its fairly common to see both Genetics and the RND office windows smashed in by the 15 min mark. On TG, 10 mins in the brig is the max you can EVER do, and half the time, security officers are the ones doing the tiding. On the other hand, on Paradise station, breaking into a department and stealing is grounds to do at least 10 and up to 20 mins of brig time, or to be perma'd if you keep doing it.

I guess my point should be fairly obvious but in case its not: I feel like security should be less afraid to arrest tiders, especially the well-known ones that do that sort of thing non-stop. Make it an IC issue!

[Vekter]

Just chiming in here to say that lately I've noticed the tiding on manuel to be getting super extreme, especially in science - its fairly common to see both Genetics and the RND office windows smashed in by the 15 min mark. On TG, 10 mins in the brig is the max you can EVER do, and half the time, security officers are the ones doing the tiding. On the other hand, on Paradise station, breaking into a department and stealing is grounds to do at least 10 and up to 20 mins of brig time, or to be perma'd if you keep doing it.

I guess my point should be fairly obvious but in case its not: I feel like security should be less afraid to arrest tiders, especially the well-known ones that do that sort of thing non-stop. Make it an IC issue!

This isn't really applicable to the thread, but people who are tiding should absolutely be arrested and, if it's something you notice a specific player doing often, you should adminhelp it.

We keep brig timers low because our rounds tend to run shorter than Paradise's IIRC, so we don't want a player spending like 1/5th of their round in the brig if all they've done is a little B&E. We do encourage sec to gulag people for multiple offenses or escalate to permabrig if they feel it's necessary.

[TheBibleMelts]

assistants should be encouraged to thrive in the maintenance shafts. there are entire rooms half-built for them to run gimmicks out of. if they want to butt in on another departments job they need to either go full-on assistant and actually help out that department without taking a lead, or do the menial crap like cleaning or material gathering to assist.

[RedBaronFlyer]

Just chiming in here to say that lately I've noticed the tiding on manuel to be getting super extreme, especially in science - its fairly common to see both Genetics and the RND office windows smashed in by the 15 min mark. On TG, 10 mins in the brig is the max you can EVER do, and half the time, security officers are the ones doing the tiding. On the other hand, on Paradise station, breaking into a department and stealing is grounds to do at least 10 and up to 20 mins of brig time, or to be perma'd if you keep doing it.

I guess my point should be fairly obvious but in case its not: I feel like security should be less afraid to arrest tiders, especially the well-known ones that do that sort of thing non-stop. Make it an IC issue!

It's super bad in cargo. For some reason, PRs to make the ORM be welded to the ground constantly get shot down. As a result, people just tide into cargo via unscrewing the ORM. It's way worse because if you try and be kind by moving the autolathe out into the lobby, they'll just print out a wrench there and push the form aside. This is super noticeable on Metastation, Icebox, and Birdshot. Delta, and Northstar are fine, because the form is linked to a room that doesn't have access to an ordering console.

I have regularly seen people unwrench the orm, steal the medkit/donkpocket boxes, then leave wordlessly. Sometimes they even steal the cargo mech or the cargo modsuit. It's obnoxious as shit and it feels like it's way worse than it was last year. Paramedics and assistants have become absolutely obnoxious with the level of tiding happening. Most rounds I play now regularly have 5+ tiding incidents. It's super obnoxious, and I've regularly come back to cargo after leaving it for a minute or two just to see that some assistants (sometimes even intern assistants) have tided into cargo and ordered mosins. One round had an assistant and two intern assistants that tided in and were ordering mosins.

This isn't really applicable to the thread, but people who are tiding should absolutely be arrested and, if it's something you notice a specific player doing often, you should adminhelp it.

We keep brig timers low because our rounds tend to run shorter than Paradise's IIRC, so we don't want a player spending like 1/5th of their round in the brig if all they've done is a little B&E. We do encourage sec to gulag people for multiple offenses or escalate to permabrig if they feel it's necessary.

The issue is sec will basically not respond to calls about breaking and entering. People move so quickly that even if a sec officer bum rushes from the brig to respond, they'll probably already be too late to actually stop anything. If even a single antag is doing something then security won't even bother trying to respond. You have to pray that you have a department officer that isn't just using your department as a place to get equipment. It's super rare that anyone gets arrested for breaking and entering, and even more rare that the person stops doing it after being arrested. Often times if you force them out or get them arrested, then they'll just come back for revenge (this gets super old after a while)

You could just hit them but that's assuming that you're carrying around an actual weapon (something frowned upon in MRP), I've regularly tried pushing or pulling tiders out of cargo, only for them to respond by tabling me and smashing my head repeatedly with a toolbox, stealing department items, and/or killing department pets in retaliation. Most of the time though they'll just bumrush through the department grabbing stuff because as long as they don't crit/kill anyone, they're technically not breaking any rules, despite being a wordless greytiding gibbon.

Don't even get me started on paramedics, at least assistants are taking a risk by breaking into departments. Paramedics have massive access permissions, and they fully abuse it to take departments stuff. I've only seen a single paramedic ever get in trouble for tiding, and it was after he wordlessly stole two mechs on separate occasions.

There is a shocking amount of individuals that just wordlessly tide, and it's to the point that people just let it happen because they're tired of being beaten up for daring to defend their own department. The best way I'd know how to describe it is that some people who should really be on the LRP servers hang out on the MRP servers because they know the playerbase is way less likely to fight back or be good at fighting.

I'm not demanding that admins smite or boink people who tide but it's been super tiresome with the amount of wordless tiding on manuel recently. I can't wait for summer to be over.

[Vekter]

The issue is sec will basically not respond to calls about breaking and entering. People move so quickly that even if a sec officer bum rushes from the brig to respond, they'll probably already be too late to actually stop anything. If even a single antag is doing something then security won't even bother trying to respond. You have to pray that you have a department officer that isn't just using your department as a place to get equipment. It's super rare that anyone gets arrested for breaking and entering, and even more rare that the person stops doing it after being arrested. Often times if you force them out or get them arrested, then they'll just come back for revenge (this gets super old after a while)

Set them to arrest? Beepsky exists for a reason and it'll alert other officers that they need to be apprehended. It takes like 30 seconds for the warden to do, sec can just call out "set Tommy Toolbox to arrest for B&E" and you're golden.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

The issue is sec will basically not respond to calls about breaking and entering. People move so quickly that even if a sec officer bum rushes from the brig to respond, they'll probably already be too late to actually stop anything. If even a single antag is doing something then security won't even bother trying to respond. You have to pray that you have a department officer that isn't just using your department as a place to get equipment. It's super rare that anyone gets arrested for breaking and entering, and even more rare that the person stops doing it after being arrested. Often times if you force them out or get them arrested, then they'll just come back for revenge (this gets super old after a while)

Set them to arrest? Beepsky exists for a reason and it'll alert other officers that they need to be apprehended. It takes like 30 seconds for the warden to do, sec can just call out "set Tommy Toolbox to arrest for B&E" and you're golden.

People definitely underestimate the utility of a roaming beepsky / red [W] next to someones name

[Vekter]

People definitely underestimate the utility of a roaming beepsky / red [W] next to someones name

If I see you or anyone else dragging Beepsky around as a weapon you're getting smote; that's the height of cringe

[Not-Dorsidarf]

People definitely underestimate the utility of a roaming beepsky / red [W] next to someones name

If I see you or anyone else dragging Beepsky around as a weapon you're getting smote; that's the height of cringe

??? The whole point of beepsky is he wanders around the corridor on his own bapping people with the red [W] and screaming at you on radio that he's caught a dumbass and to come collect them.

[Vekter]

People definitely underestimate the utility of a roaming beepsky / red [W] next to someones name

If I see you or anyone else dragging Beepsky around as a weapon you're getting smote; that's the height of cringe

??? The whole point of beepsky is he wanders around the corridor on his own bapping people with the red [W] and screaming at you on radio that he's caught a dumbass and to come collect them.

You are correct but I know people who have set someone specific to arrest and dragged around Beepsky to use them as a weapon before and it's the most lame shit I've ever seen in this game

[vect0r]

People definitely underestimate the utility of a roaming beepsky / red [W] next to someones name

If I see you or anyone else dragging Beepsky around as a weapon you're getting smote; that's the height of cringe

??? The whole point of beepsky is he wanders around the corridor on his own bapping people with the red [W] and screaming at you on radio that he's caught a dumbass and to come collect them.

You are correct but I know people who have set someone specific to arrest and dragged around Beepsky to use them as a weapon before and it's the most lame shit I've ever seen in this game

When I play AI, if I see a nonhuman dragging beepsky around, I disable safeties on it and watch them never touch beepsky again.

[Vekter]

When I play AI, if I see a nonhuman dragging beepsky around, I disable safeties on it and watch them never touch beepsky again.

Stunning isn't harm; you can and should do this to humans if they don't order you not to.

Also we should get back on topic. The important thing here is that even if assistants don't have a defined lane, they still can't stray too far into another job's lane without needing to actually change to that job.

[RedBaronFlyer]

I guess I live in that weird world where beepsky gets killed like, two minutes into the round.

Roboticist are too busy building 20 mopbots and spending all the iron on EORG mechs to actually replace the sec bots.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

For me, I think of assistants as this "Jack of all trades, master of none". My general playstyle as an assistant, at least on sybil. Is to fill in small tasks in various departments, if it's not being performed, like jumping from repairing wires in maint, to grinding the bounty cubes, to making reactionless explosives experiments. Doing a small bit of everything in all departments, but never fully specializing into one.

[kieth4]

In my eyes, assistant has no explicit lane. No expectation/obligation to do the job they signed up for, as their job has no responsibilities. Which means assistants have freedom to sandbox that many other roles don't have because they'll be expected to do their jobs. There's no "job you signed up for" to prevent changing lanes. They can step-in to any set of responsibilities following the appropriate IC procedures. And just as easily step-out of them, too.

The downside is that assistants have no right to any lane and can be prohibited ICly from stepping-in to any lane for any or even no reason. Doing someone else's job follows the exact and precise same rules as any other lane change. A legitimate reason to cross into that lane. Appropriate IC procedures followed to create a reason (i.e. - they asked the CMO and the CMO said they could set up a triage center in medbay lobby) is a legitimate reason.

Setting up unauthorised bootleg/ghetto departmental areas buried deep in maint is also a general area that assistants can exploit too, but emphasis on the bootleg/ghetto. If your ghetto department is better equipped than the main department, you're lane-stepping. Any attempts to lawyer around it with a "well technically it's okay because even though I have a genetics machine, surgery computer, stasis bed, operating table, advanced tools and a chemmaster I'm only offering to do advanced surgeries" are unlikely to be seen favourably.

I'm happy with this- me and timber agreed here internally but I did it in like 5 words, so this is probably a better chunk to use as a ruling.