Time to elaborate on assistants
Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 5:03 pm
>oh boy, another assistant thread from deedubya, I bet he wants them deleted from the game or something
Nah, chill for a minute. What I want is for assistants to have purpose again. Possibly even their original purpose as a job for newbies to learn the ropes, or a low-stress job with few expectations of you.
The idea is simple. You know that preference you toggle in your character settings that denotes your security department assignment? Have that also functions for assistants. What will this do, in function? It'll assign assistants to a department, with the intent that they...you know, actually assist with that department. This would also give them basic bitch access to that department. So entry into the engineering lobby, medbay, science wing, cargo office/maint, and their associated break rooms. No sub-access though, so no medicine room/surgery, no engine room/atmos, no RND/xenobio/robotics, no cargo shuttle/mining, and so on.(meaning no free insuls) This means that in order to get access to areas or tools to help do the actual job, they'll need the cooperation of someone working that department. But why would someone in that department open the door for some random assistant? Well, remember the multicolor jumpsuit change to assistants? Give it a purpose. Rather than the armbands that security officers get, assistants assigned to a particular department will get that color of jumpsuit to denote their status. Blue jumpsuits for medical, yellow for engineering, purple for science, grey for cargo. They could also potentially spawn with an encryption key in their bag for their chosen department, if necessary. Also, we'll be removing maint access from default assistant access. I'll go over why in the "what this will do" section below.
What this change is intended to do:
Give the assistant role a purpose again. They can assist with menial tasks in their assigned department, learn to do the job from someone that's more experienced with that job than you are, or help do the job itself without the feeling of responsibility associated with choosing the job from the start.
Cut down on the negative association departmental players have with the random assistant wandering around in their department. If you see an assistant there in the right colors, you can typically assume they're there to help.
"hold on, you said remove maint, what about the classic tider gameplay?" As much of a shitter as you are for playing this way, this is preserved. Cargo assistants will have maintenance access for the purposes of finding crates/tanks for cargo, and get the grey jumpsuit so associated with their shitty playstyle. On top of that, they'll actually get free access to the autolathe, meaning you won't see the ORM wrenched out every single round as it is currently. Further, there won't be any limits as to how many assistants can be assigned to a singular department. So if you want to flag cargo as your assistant preference just so you can continue to be a useless tiding piece of shit, there won't be any worry about there being limited slots.
"but what about the service department? don't they need assistants?" Assistants will still technically be service workers under this new system. Further, all the service/civilian roles are so self-contained that they don't actually need assistants to be there helping them out. However, all "unassigned" assistants will be service by default, so if you want an assistant in the kitchen/hydroponics, you could always just let them in.
Basically, I want to give more legitimacy to assistants that actually want to assist, and newbies that want to learn a department with no expectations made of them. Also, if we're not going to make a code solution to greytiding(RIP the randomized door wires PR) then their playstyle is still preserved.
Nah, chill for a minute. What I want is for assistants to have purpose again. Possibly even their original purpose as a job for newbies to learn the ropes, or a low-stress job with few expectations of you.
The idea is simple. You know that preference you toggle in your character settings that denotes your security department assignment? Have that also functions for assistants. What will this do, in function? It'll assign assistants to a department, with the intent that they...you know, actually assist with that department. This would also give them basic bitch access to that department. So entry into the engineering lobby, medbay, science wing, cargo office/maint, and their associated break rooms. No sub-access though, so no medicine room/surgery, no engine room/atmos, no RND/xenobio/robotics, no cargo shuttle/mining, and so on.(meaning no free insuls) This means that in order to get access to areas or tools to help do the actual job, they'll need the cooperation of someone working that department. But why would someone in that department open the door for some random assistant? Well, remember the multicolor jumpsuit change to assistants? Give it a purpose. Rather than the armbands that security officers get, assistants assigned to a particular department will get that color of jumpsuit to denote their status. Blue jumpsuits for medical, yellow for engineering, purple for science, grey for cargo. They could also potentially spawn with an encryption key in their bag for their chosen department, if necessary. Also, we'll be removing maint access from default assistant access. I'll go over why in the "what this will do" section below.
What this change is intended to do:
Give the assistant role a purpose again. They can assist with menial tasks in their assigned department, learn to do the job from someone that's more experienced with that job than you are, or help do the job itself without the feeling of responsibility associated with choosing the job from the start.
Cut down on the negative association departmental players have with the random assistant wandering around in their department. If you see an assistant there in the right colors, you can typically assume they're there to help.
"hold on, you said remove maint, what about the classic tider gameplay?" As much of a shitter as you are for playing this way, this is preserved. Cargo assistants will have maintenance access for the purposes of finding crates/tanks for cargo, and get the grey jumpsuit so associated with their shitty playstyle. On top of that, they'll actually get free access to the autolathe, meaning you won't see the ORM wrenched out every single round as it is currently. Further, there won't be any limits as to how many assistants can be assigned to a singular department. So if you want to flag cargo as your assistant preference just so you can continue to be a useless tiding piece of shit, there won't be any worry about there being limited slots.
"but what about the service department? don't they need assistants?" Assistants will still technically be service workers under this new system. Further, all the service/civilian roles are so self-contained that they don't actually need assistants to be there helping them out. However, all "unassigned" assistants will be service by default, so if you want an assistant in the kitchen/hydroponics, you could always just let them in.
Basically, I want to give more legitimacy to assistants that actually want to assist, and newbies that want to learn a department with no expectations made of them. Also, if we're not going to make a code solution to greytiding(RIP the randomized door wires PR) then their playstyle is still preserved.