/tg/Station 13

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 4:23 pm**

There should be an additional option for Captain's allowing them to set hiring policy for races onboard the station. The Captain will be selected first, before any job roles and will always be Human. Job roles will then be assigned based on the Captains 'Hiring Policy'. Humans will always be allowed to roll for any job. I suggest the following example 'Hiring Policies' to be available.

Segregation: Only Humans can roll for non-assistant job. All non-Humans will be forced into assistant.
Second-class: Non-Humans can roll for any role except Security and Heads of Staff.
Discriminatory: Non-Humans can roll for any role other than Heads of Staff. (The default)
Integrated: Non-Humans can roll for any role. (Except, of course, Captain)

Why is this good for the game?
Many players chafe under the restrictions of non-Humans, either because they don't think you should have Catsec, or because they want to be Heads of Staff as a Felinid. This change would open up Captains to have more effect on the stations demographics and create more interesting RP dynamics and opportunities, such as non-Humans banding together for more rights or mono-Human Security to discriminate (and therefore incur the wrath of players).

At the moment, most Human players treat non-Human players without any of the 'racism' supposedly present in lore (not helped by Felinid Centcomm Officals). This change would allow more open-minded Captains to run non-Humans heads but also allow more openly hostile RP dynamics for the round.

Conclusion
Non-Human racism is basically not present in game, despite it supposedly being present in lore. This change allows Captains to either make the egalitarian station of their dreams, the dystopian state of their dreams or somewhere in-between.

Don't just say you dislike this PR, give proper feedback.

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 4:48 pm**

would this give the captain ic justification to try and fire all the nonhumans who will now have conflicting roles with his hiring policy

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 5:14 pm**

While I fully understand your concern from an RP perspective, I don't think this would be the proper way to address the problem. I can easily envision an environment where a Captain's authority over the crew utterly disappears just because he picked a restrictive hiring policy. Good luck if security is always empty because you're playing on Manuel, land of super-special xeno statics who will try to kill you or sabotage your department if you say something mean to them. Butthurt players, especially butthurt staticname players, will be a constant griefy thorn in the side of any Captain who doesn't go full integration.

Also, having the level of segregation vary from round to round at the whim of the Captain also messes with player expectations a bit too much. At the moment, you know their lane when you choose to play xeno. Again, once an expectation is established that xenos can be heads of staff, imagine the antagonism/roundstart suicides that will occur when someone's catgirl CMO static is auto-demoted to assistant at the start of the round.

It is an interesting idea though. Could be toyed with a bit to iron out the most glaring problems.

TL:DR: It shouldn't be up to the Captain, or any crewmember really, to decide whether the station is racist or not.

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 5:37 pm**

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:would this give the captain ic justification to try and fire all the nonhumans who will now have conflicting roles with his hiring policy

I believe he's envisioning something where it blocks someone from having an incompatible setup, ie. if the captain has full segregration, non-humans will all be forced to be assistants.

Personally I believe that'd be funny for a week until it gets annoying that all the lightbulb and atmos gamers don't spawn in engineering anymore and they wont be bothered to set up the engine if they'd rather to atmos autism.

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 7:26 pm**

Farquaar wrote:I can easily envision an environment where a Captain's authority over the crew utterly disappears just because he picked a restrictive hiring policy.

I can't speak for Manuel but at least for me this is the norm. The goal of this PR is to give the Captain a more direct method to shape the crew.

Farquaar wrote:Good luck if security is always empty because you're playing on Manuel, land of super-special xeno statics who will try to kill you or sabotage your department if you say something mean to them.

To me, at least, this sounds like a reason for this idea rather than against. I appreciate the problems that low sec count brings to the game but they seem to be deeper routed in the general powerlessness of security vs antags/griefers.

Farquaar wrote:Also, having the level of segregation vary from round to round at the whim of the Captain also messes with player expectations a bit too much.

Players can still get promoted by going to the HOP or department Heads, especially departments with manpower shortages. I'd hope it would encourage more independent hiring and vetting of players by Heads, providing RP opportunities and the use of the never used Departmental ID consoles.

An alternative would be to put the power in the Heads hands.

For example, Captain determines if Heads can be non-Human, Heads determine the hiring policy of their departments.

Farquaar wrote:TL:DR: It shouldn't be up to the Captain, or any crewmember really, to decide whether the station is racist or not.

I'd rather this didn't become a policy matter but it could be a round vote thing.

terranaut wrote:I believe he's envisioning something where it blocks someone from having an incompatible setup, ie. if the captain has full segregration, non-humans will all be forced to be assistants.

That's exactly what I meant.

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:16 pm**

So this has to be a preference in order to happen at round start before job selection, right?

Posted: **Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:43 pm**

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:So this has to be a preference in order to happen at round start before job selection, right?

Yes, the game would carry out the following steps;

1. Select Captain from Human player who want to play Captain.
2. Select Heads of Staff, security and non-assistant jobs based on Captains Hiring Preferences

Based on what others have a said a better system might be;

1. Select Captain from Human player who want to play Captain.
2. Select Heads of Staff based on Captains Hiring Preferences
3. Determine Departmental crew based on each individuals Department Heads Hiring Preferences

This way the Captain can determine if there are non-Human heads but Heads can determine who they want in their department. If the default for departments is that non-Humans can be part of a department, then Heads have to actively refuse to let non-Humans join their department. Then if there are not enough engineers, the CE will have to handle SM setup and basic competency, under Rule 5.

Spoiler:

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2021 12:26 am**

April 1st, funny PR.

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:49 am**

the reason this doesn't work is the same reason why the neat idea of a non-human head station trait also wouldn't work, at least without some serious bloat to the preferences selection.

the logic goes like this. non human players are playing non human because they want to be that non human character. because they want to be that non human character, they also will have head roles turned off, because then they would play a human character. in order for a solution like this to work, you either:

A. force non humans into positions of power (which is a very bad idea for hopefully obvious reasons)
B. need to do some serious work on the preferences ui (possibly one of the hardest/most frustrating to append to pieces of code in the codebase), and let it be configurable for "yes, i want to be head of staff, but not a human", etc.

ya dig?

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:52 am**

I dislike the idea all together. It literally allows people to practice racism and get better at it by proxy. Instead of race, we have species. This is genuinely line toeing the reason why someone WOULD get banned for derogatory language in the game. Although the species in this game are fictional, hiring policy should only exist in the sense that the captain changes the experience requirements for players joining certain roles later in the game. Now that would be an improvement. Prevent players who play too much from playing certain roles or prevent players who play too little from joining as chief engineer with no idea what hot ice even is. It would also prevent metagaming, as AI players wouldn't be allowed to join if captain decided the AI had to be a player with less experience in playing AI than the same shitters. Hour discriminations.

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2021 1:44 pm**

Saege Tilth wrote:I dislike the idea all together. It literally allows people to practice racism and get better at it by proxy. Instead of race, we have species. This is genuinely line toeing the reason why someone WOULD get banned for derogatory language in the game.

That is the point. It is a fake species, you won't get in trouble for being racist against fictional things.

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2021 2:17 pm**

i wish moths were real

Posted: **Fri Apr 02, 2021 4:29 pm**

As a raw idea this sounds interesting but it also seems like it would be a pain to implement.

Posted: **Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:57 pm**

Anecdote is anecdote but every single time I've ever seen a captain try to have "hehe I'm racist" as their gimmick they just act like a fucking asshole the entire round and that's it
incredible gameplay really enjoyable very unique and never-before-seen gimmick

I don't want a shitter player to simply roll for cap every single round to try and force everyone who's ever played a nonhuman into assistant because they decided that calling mothpeople fags is what makes RP high-quality today.

If you want to be a piece of shit to people through methods that are already allowed in the game, feel free to do so. If you want to refuse medical treatment or generally act like the shitter you've always wanted to because your doctor is a moth, feel free. But I don't think we need to make it any easier for people to be annoying to others who want to play as a nonhuman than it already is, nor should there be an extra incentive to gun for cap if your goal is to be an asshole. Captains should be playing captain ideally not because they want to make cats/lizards/plasmemes/ethereals be forced to play assistant.

Posted: **Wed Apr 07, 2021 7:20 am**

The specism is at a fun balancing point right now. Not equal and having the same privileges, but not at a point where extremism will get fueled by something like segregating them entirely to assistant. It's a light touch, a scent, a flavor. A theme.

What audiences would have fun with extreme xenophobia becoming a commonplace feature, I wonder?

This game isn't an actual xenophobia simulator despite having xenophobic themes. Is it right to actually encourage it becoming one?

People can already act out xenophobia. The HOP can already just demote or deny access in the HOP line for example, the bartender can refuse drinks, cargo can opt to rip another species off, etc.

Will adding more xenophobic mechanics encourage more creative xenophobia? This doesn't require any more effort to do in a creative manner (it honestly takes less effort than typing out 'ligger'), it's a preference toggle to step on other people that are actively rolling for jobs.

There is plenty of creative space within the theme of xenophobia that's present, without creating a blanket to mask real bigotry.

Posted: **Wed Apr 07, 2021 8:49 am**

I'd rather not have some dipshit I don't know forcing me out of my character because of a preference he set and not me. I'm primarily playing a human right now and I still think this is fucking stupid just because I don't have any say in the matter even if I dodge the consequences.

When other people are dictating how and what I get to play, that's when things get into the absurd. If I'm going to play a nonhuman, I agree to the terms already in place. Non-preferential silicon treatment and no head roles.

I don't agree to giving someone else the chance of pulling the rug from under me and rewriting what the terms I agreed too were. Especially if it means they're going to start taking my roles from me without my knowledge or say-so, beyond the rng dictation of role slots being filled up (and that's just a fairness to those also wanting to play the role, not any kind of deliberateness on a single person's part). I don't ever want to get thrown into assistant just because the captain put down something before the round started, invalidating any of my other job prefs in the process, just as an example. You agree to being an assistant, as much as you agree to being the captain, because they are on the two extremes in terms of job content, responsibility and exclusivity.

Posted: **Wed Apr 07, 2021 6:17 pm**

i endorse segregation as all nonhuman players are freaks of nature

Posted: **Wed Apr 07, 2021 8:50 pm**

The behaviour of the playerbase currently is such that this feature will not be merged, even though it could enable some interesting roleplay scenarios.

Posted: **Wed Apr 07, 2021 10:48 pm**

make it so you can set this policy as captain but if you pick anything more restrictive than the current baseline it also makes you valid

Posted: **Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:04 pm**

oranges wrote:The behaviour of the playerbase currently is such that this feature will not be merged, even though it could enable some interesting roleplay scenarios.

Posted: **Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:36 am**

oranges wrote:
oranges wrote:The behaviour of the playerbase currently is such that this feature will not be merged, even though it could enable some interesting roleplay scenarios.

Posted: **Thu Apr 08, 2021 7:28 am**

Sparkezel wrote:
oranges wrote:
oranges wrote:The behaviour of the playerbase currently is such that this feature will not be merged, even though it could enable some interesting roleplay scenarios.

Posted: **Fri Apr 09, 2021 5:23 am**

If you can get headmin approval, it would be fairly easy to add more nuanced config options so for example Bagil could be nonhumans as assistants only or whatever.

I'll bet every dollar I have that their response will be:

TheFinalPotato wrote:
Sparkezel wrote:
oranges wrote:
oranges wrote:The behaviour of the playerbase currently is such that this feature will not be merged, even though it could enable some interesting roleplay scenarios.

/tg/Station 13

Captain's should set hiring policy

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