Assistant Assignments, Tourists, and Mentor/Mentee

[Jessen21]

I believe i've thought of a good idea. Maybe we could look into assigning assistants to 'assist' another player at their job? That could potentially lower some of the tiding for those who actually do want to be productive on the ship but have no idea where to start, and who actually 'do' want to be productive in the station. If we need to look at the problem of traitor players? We could perhaps have a couple of solutions, like traitors are opted out of the assignments, or the assigned greyshirt is given a hidden sleeper status that their assigned player can choose to wake (or not, afterall it would add more risk to their mission, and they may be better off using the assistant to 'do their job' while they sneak around to do stuff). This would likely help new players actually get a feel for their desired jobs.

There were a few other ideas along these lines which I'll let the other people who thought of them speak up so they get the credit they deserve.
MortoSasye had an idea for a mentor/mentee system.
CrazyGamer313 had an idea for job surveys for new players.

The idea of tourists was tossed around as 'people who just want to goof around' as well.

Posting on Behalf of CrazyGamer313 who only recently made a forum account:
"so the first suggestion to assign them if they have like less than 1 round in one job they can choose upon selecting that job if they want help in doing that job if they choose yes another player who has selected that job or set to high and will get that job they get a prompt if they want to teach a new player if he chooses yes they spawn next to eachother and have a note who their teaching and who is the teacher respectivly."
"for access for the one thats being helped/taught its a normal assistant card but the teacher has a little card/visitor card printer where he can choose the acces that it has much like the HOP console but only with his id access, and that card runs out after a set amount of time ranging from 1 minute up to 30 minutes. The idea is from other servers that have a visitor card printer"
--Additionally I'd say that the paper thing could work, but it could also be done where the assistant's card instead has a corresponding remote that their teacher can use to enable or disable certain permissions.
"if the one being taught wants to learn antag roles he can select that in some preferences. f the game mode has for example traitors and he selected traitors at roundstart one of the traitors gets a message if he wants to teach an assistant in the antag role if he chooses yes he gets a remote to summon the assistant at will but just one time so they are in a secluded place and then tech them in it if not nothing happnes and the assistant gets a normal teacher and have a preference if he wants help, even when they have more than 1 hour in a job just if they forgot how to play or somthing"

[MortoSasye]

Hi hi. The idea was mostly born from us brain storming on the tg discord server.

To confirm my part of the idea, i was thinking of adding a "Teacher"/"Student" option in game that would be an option for players who want to teach new players the job they choosed.

For example, if the person selects the teacher option and they get spawned in as a doctor, they would get a notice of a person who also spawned as the same job as they and have the student option enabled.

This would help new players learn from experienced players instead of going solo or even without reading the wiki first as well.

[Lumbermancer]

Well I suggested job contracts, to make the economy system an actually economy. You would write down on pre-formatted holo-card "do X and Y for me, get paid Z". Then an assistant would do this, contractor would approve, and money would be wired to their account.

But then I realized the contracts would be "break shit" and "steal shit" mostly, because it's tgstation.

[tinodrima7020]

I think this is an excellent idea in order to foster the /tg/ community because it may help flakes who may leave after one or so rounds because they have no idea how to play and may find it hard learning in /tg/ since it's such a quick-paced server and given the amount of dickheads on the server. I think this is an excellent idea and hope something comes of it.

[Jessen21]

Indeed. New players just don't get much time to actually learn. If we actually draw in people, we might actually be able to 'outnumber' the idiots and jerks and actually allow the station to run longer than say 20 minutes under most cases. A lot of the rounds are going that way because people just don't know how to play. We have experienced people not playing engineering because of one jerkwad, so the engines don't get set up right very often, i've seen scientists going off in Xeno trying to get the headslug because they know it'll give them 'powers' and/or make an army, but don't necessarily clean up after themselves. Nanites are still newish so not everyone is well versed in them yet. Like... everyone is trying to rush to get uber before someone tries to kill them, leaving newbies to fend for themselves most of the time. Like, we need to play as a team most of the time, and not panick the moment something goes wrong.

[Daxxed]

Alot of players probably dont want to waste their entire round teaching some newbie, something could distract you from teaching, etc.
How about making it an observer option ?
Like a sort of "allhelp" people can ask questions in, or just straight up ask for a full run through of the role. Only people with enough experience in said job would see/be able to respond to the question.
Perhaps if you see someone struggling you could offer to teach them but this removes your ghost vision and makes you permanently orbit the student ( I trust in our players to not abuse their ghost knowledge and just worry about teaching the job ).

[Jessen21]

it really depends on the player and the job, Daxxed. I mean I was doing Xenobiology at the same time I was teaching Datorangebottle about nanites, and I really didn't get slowed down any. And i'm sure there are lots of other jobs where the assistant can watch mostly, and ask questions while their mentor is waiting. Like setting up the engine for instance. That would likely be a quick and easy lesson since its more running around making sure things are on/off.

[DrunkenMatey]

I remember a round where the HoP? was trying to force jobs on assistants. Sec would drag cuffed assistants over and the HoP would give them a job. Most suicided... It was amazing though.

I think having it be an IC thing more often is a pretty fun way to do things, like have the cap/HoP announce that any assistant who doesn't report to HoP for a task (they could pick a role to learn and HoP assigns them a willing(ish) mentor to look after them) and any assistants who refuse are banished to maint and not to be served at the bar or kitchen, sec could taze and gulag them if they catch em in hallways and refuse to take a job. Would be pretty fun having your tiders hiding in maint building autismforts while the others get a chance to learn a new job or do some RP or just have better acccess for tiding and totally ignore whatever job they are supposed to do which is only a risk for them if their assigned mentor calls them out on it.

Could be fun! I hardly ever play assistant as I find it incredibly boring, but the few really good rounds I had were when I would tell the HoP to make me an Assistant-Captain or Assistant-HoP or something and just follow them around doing things they tell me. One captain just taught me how to hurl insults at greyshirts. A HoP told me to go asking around cargo for a crypto (i got murdered). Fun rounds.