The Petitioner

[Helios]

Everyone knows Petitions are meaningless. Signing them does nothing. But in SS13, it doesn't have to be that way.
Through writing, players would be able to write a petition, and players can sign that piece of paper. When over half of the living crew has signed that piece of paper, a ghost role is offered to dead players, offering for them to become the Petitioner, if none of them accept the role, a subsequent roll will be made each additional time there is a signature on the petition.
The goal of the Petitioner is whatever the piece of paper said. That could be "fix atmos so we all stop suffocating" "fix the virus so we all stop dying" or "make clown president". Petitioner would arrive on centcomm shuttle, with full access. Rank wise he is above the captain and heads of staff, but he has one goal, and that was set before he set foot on the station. There can be as many petitions as players want, but only one Petitioner, and it would be the first player to cross the 50% threshold that decides what his goal is. Obviously other people when offered the petition can attempt to steal the petition, burn it or whatever, or just sign the paper and hand it back to the clown.

[san7890]

This sounds rather fun on paper. Not sure how it might play out on actual production servers.

[oranges]

sounds more like an admin event

[Shadowflame909]

curator traitor item to keep it fresh

[Helios]

sounds more like an admin event

Sure, but if we look at this thread for precedent
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=32010

If it requires admins to be online, that's a no-go. More than half of my time on Sybil, there are no admins on.

It would be an admin event that could be run while admins are asleep. Which is sort of the point. When it's 2am EST the mods have gone to bed for the night, and 80% of the station is dead because of a virus/someone messing with atmos to make people suffocate, freeze or burn. Nothing happens. It's a waiting game for shuttle calls. This would act as a failsafe, and given the petitioners objective is created by player prompt, it can be flexible enough to deal with whatever crisis is facing the station, be it a virus, everyone burning to death, or the blob actively consuming medbay. The Petitioner may not actually solve the problem, but it will give ghosts someone to orbit because they are presumably trying to fix the crisis and will save the station.
As for the "there can only be one petitioner", it brings up a good question. If the petitioner dies, should another one get sent?

[VexingRaven]

sounds more like an admin event

Sure, but if we look at this thread for precedent
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=32010

If it requires admins to be online, that's a no-go. More than half of my time on Sybil, there are no admins on.

It would be an admin event that could be run while admins are asleep. Which is sort of the point. When it's 2am EST the mods have gone to bed for the night, and 80% of the station is dead because of a virus/someone messing with atmos to make people suffocate, freeze or burn. Nothing happens. It's a waiting game for shuttle calls. This would act as a failsafe, and given the petitioners objective is created by player prompt, it can be flexible enough to deal with whatever crisis is facing the station, be it a virus, everyone burning to death, or the blob actively consuming medbay. The Petitioner may not actually solve the problem, but it will give ghosts someone to orbit because they are presumably trying to fix the crisis and will save the station.
As for the "there can only be one petitioner", it brings up a good question. If the petitioner dies, should another one get sent?

Who is going to sign the petition if everybody is dead and the living people don't want to end (or else they'd have called the shuttle)?

That being said this sounds interesting, at the very least as a backup if no admins are on. Admins would be able to override it (Centcomm has reviewed your petition and decided not to grant it) or mess with it. Of course one potential complication is that, as far as I know, the Centcomm shuttle can only be moved by admins, so part of this would require changing that and you're potentially opening up players getting onto Centcomm when no admins are around to control them.