[DISCUSSION PR NO REACTION RANDIES ALLOWED!!!] The CMO and CE ignore human authority

[Fikou]

About The Pull Request

The CMO and CE ignore human authority like the QM (this can be toggled off by config).

Why It's Good For The Game

The grandfathering of QM as the only head of staff position that can be non-human is very silly and I am not a fan of it. I think we should either go further in or remove it from the QM, and I think going further in is interesting to see what people think.
The reason it's these two specifically:
The Captain overlooks the whole station
The Captain and HoS are important combat-adjacent roles (We don't want AI messing with them)
The Captain and RD mess with the AI (We don't want AI messing with them)
The HoP is the second in command, though I'm not that opposed to it, but it'd be weird having the spare go to a lizard or something instantly.

The Chief Engineer and Chief Medical Officer on the other hand oversee secondary "supporting" departments, similar to Cargo, half their players play plasmamen and moths/catgirls respectively anyway and it makes sense for them that they would be picked just for their mastery over the craft of medicine/engineering (I don't think Nanotrasen would want the paper pusher handling civilian matters to not be a human for example).

Essentially, we already lose the "All the command roles are human" flavor with QM, so why not bring it to its reasonable extent?

Please comment your thoughts, I'm interested on the people's opinion.

Changelog

🆑
balance: The CMO and CE can be non-human now.
/:cl:

[mc-oofert]

NT is very speciesist and wouldnt let a nonhuman CE oversee the very expensive supermatter shard or telecommunications or AI equipment (probably)

also CMO probably but more felinids in medbay... stinky..

and QM is a meaningless bureaucrat/pencil-pusher/USPS manager who does trivial work and even then they werent recognized as a head for quite the time

[LemonInTheDark]

I don't like it. The qm was partially because it used to be that way, and partially because he's like, the lowest on the totem pole. S funny.
I like the vibe of human authority, and don't think we should support it being config'd out to this degree. It's not the furthest you could take it but it vibes a bit weird imo. I guess we do already support it, just on a binary. idk

[Fikou]

The qm was partially because it used to be that way

this is silly, we shouldn't code for the game that was but the game that is

and partially because he's like, the lowest on the totem pole

this barely matters anymore except in the case of the only 2 heads of staff being the hos and qm, the qm retains his pre-head status of being lowest to get the spare (imo we should put him above hos).
i dont get why we're speccing into the qm is not a real head meme when we (regrettably) made him a real head, he has all the access, a large crew in cargo and controls the economy of the station

don't think we should support it being config'd out to this degree.

we already do though its just a flipswitch between can these roles that ignore authority in the codebase ignore it or can they not (its just that it applies to qm only rn)

I like the vibe of human authority

i like it too but id fully commit to letting the players experiment more or fully commit to embracing tradition instead of sitting on the fence of "well he used to be pickable as felinid"

[Fikou]

NT is very speciesist and wouldnt let a nonhuman CE oversee the very expensive supermatter shard or telecommunications or AI equipment (probably)

tbh i dont get why we have the ai sat be next to engineering every single time like bro meta did it because the tcomms is in there why wouldnt the ai be next to like research on delta theres just ai shit there nothing engineering related
also the qm literally oversees the entire money of the station and can buy more supermatter 😛

[LemonInTheDark]

@SomeoneYouProbablyKnow @FlufflesTheDog @YehnBeep @Samag5 @RuByxarik @iamteapot422
Verbalize. Updoots/downboats are useless, the pr is about discussion just saying yes/no is pointless.

[YehnBeep]

I've seen players in both departments that are just ridiculously knowledgeable about engineering/medical/etc but, of course, you'll never see them playing heads because they're locked out of it if they don't want to play human - while these players often know so much more than those that are playing the CMO/CE.

Conversely, the human-only lock leads to some really cringe stuff, like say a certain CMO that has been playing on manuel lately that likes stealing eyes or other organs, as a non-antag, just for the funny. And that's only the most recent in a long history. But they're protected by the AI and just generally as being a head.

So, I'd like to see this. It opens up a talent pool that TG main servers lock away for the sake of flavor.

@SomeoneYouProbablyKnow @FlufflesTheDog @YehnBeep @Samag5 @RuByxarik @iamteapot422
Verbalize. Updoots/downboats are useless, the pr is about discussion just saying yes/no is pointless.

Done. Also maybe of note: I do play on community servers that have human authority turned off. In part because they tend to have so few human players it's just not viable if you want to have command-roles staffed, but that also benefit from access to aforementioned talent pool and some players that are just ridiculously knowledgeable.

[mc-oofert]

I've seen players in both departments that are just ridiculously knowledgeable about engineering/medical/etc but, of course, you'll never see them playing heads because they're locked out of it if they don't want to play human - while these players often know so much more than those that are playing the CMO/CE.

or they dont play head to not have responsibility

[Mothblocks]

as someone who has more cmo hours as hop promoted nonhuman cmo than most cmos i do not want this. i think you're just muddying the waters of heads of staff. being promoted by the hop has always created more interesting stories to me than if i were to just get it

the reason qm has it is 1. nepotism admittedly and 2. because i think it helps make QM feel more unique compared to the rest. don't need to make every exception apply broadly to everything else

[IndieanaJones]

I don't like this because I think it's important for our setting as a whole that NT treats humans as a class above non-humans, especially considering how Asimov works and the awkward scenarios where CMO and CE can be completely ignored or kill by the AI.

Also, while that rat QM is still a head (even though they shouldn't be), it at least gives them a unique characteristic the others don't have.

[YehnBeep]

or they dont play head to not have responsibility

That's very true. But some would if they had the options short of changing races/characters.

And to continue other possibilities, it's not like every non-human player is good. There's plenty of bad/"shitters" and, yes, if you open up the roles there's a possibility of them taking up those roles. But it'd be easier to deal with a griefy, nonhuman CMO, for example, and I personally think the good players now having a shot at that or CE would be a net benefit.

[datorangebottle]

before i get yelled at for just downvoting and moving on:
this should be going in the opposite direction.
the AI shouldn't be messing with any heads of staff under default laws.
the QM got special snowflake permissions to be nonhuman when they shouldn't have, those should be rescinded instead of further trampling on the 'human supremacy' theme by expanding which heads of staff can be nonhuman.

[LemonInTheDark]

Verbalize. Updoots/downboats are useless, the pr is about discussion just saying yes/no is pointless.

@SangryD @OneAsianTortoise @aaaa1023 @linkylink21

before i get yelled at for just downvoting

well timed

[datorangebottle]

well timed

actually poorly timed because fikou pinged me on discord a few moments before I posted this instead of giving me time to type up my thoughts.

[san7890]

I can't believe they were right about the slippery slope when goof did the QM..............

On a more serious note, I do not like how cargo's snowflake exception is getting expanded further and greater. I thought and still think it was funny to have such an abysmal job that Nanotrasen had to lax out on their typical speciesist policies just to fill the role. The CMO and CE are more important (although one can argue not by much) than the supply chain on a mostly-stocked station (excluding materials, but the QM does not really directly impact mining, and robotics can pick up slack regardless).

Back to the original point, people keep endlessly adding and removing content to cargo for whatever fathomable reasons they have. I think that it should just be a bunch of dudes who want to chill out, and are treated a little bit more specially by the game (lax on human authority) to help facilitate its uniqueness in the broad scope of SS13. Adding more erodes that small flake of specialness that Cargo has been entitled to, and Cargo content has always been dire. This is the game we inherited from our decisions of the past, and I'm comfortable with the status quo (and was comfortable with changing the status quo last year). I agree with Mothblocks on this issue.

If a non-human needs to step up to the plate and assume a command role, it should be done by the HoP/Captain. I do not like it being like that every single shift because when more things have been made "special"- the quality of how "special" it was nosedives a bit.

[PunishedHideo]

Imagine being so called "responsible role" and being a xeno(preferably felinid for the author of this pr and his friend idk) lying on a couch round-to-round, spitting furballs and doing merp with your "same-species" subordinates. Very, very responsible gaming. I feel like NT leaders did something very wrong with this one. If you want to satisfy your kinks that way just go to the reservations for individuals your kind, because that kinds of PR always ends that way. It is hilarious how can you justify this thing, we want to have fun here.

[CliffracerX]

I'm all for outright stripping human authority from the game, frankly. Flavor or no, it's not fun mechanically. While we're at it, nuking the speciesist-by-default AI laws wouldn't be a bad idea either, or nudging them around so that crew priority > bioform priority to allow for all new manners of novel and un/fortunate interactions. Captain unwillingly borg'd? Too bad, AI still says you have to obey their orders; after all, captain rank > silicon body! Don't want to be operated on by a monkey? They've still got their CMO ID? You're fresh outta luck, but your friendly overseer will unbolt the way to botany so you can get consolation bananas at least. Only human left on a station run amok with felinids & begging for release? Is that a grey jumpsuit? Looks like you gotta put on the cat ears, bubs.

[SangryD]

Imo the bending of the "Human owned station" concept is getting harder year after year. I would prefer the non-humans being the second class personal, but sadly it's a thing of the past.

[carshalash]

As chief AI, the man who will forever have more AI hours.

I must say that I and most other silicons fuck with heads of staff because they're bad at the game. Most AIs will act in good faith about this change. They will be mocked relentlessly if they're bad at the role, but thankfully most silicon rulings will prevent anything really bad from happening.

I'd fucking kill for non-humans to be able tp play RD since it'd mean a different pool of RD players, but Fikou's logic in the OP is reasonable.

[Samag5]

I see pr from skyrat coder, I downvote it.
Well, I've played on a few servers where xenos had command roles available and it doesn't look good(White vulps on paracode as CMO/CE/HoS etc. that spent most of their time "roleplaying" instead of doing their job, pink-haired catgirls on tg based servers that adding "meow" at the end of every sentence. It just doesn't fit the game in my opinion.). If a player wants a command role they can just create a human character, if they still want to play on xenos they always have a way through hop/captain.
It'll also be fun to see this command roles as xenos with AI on Asimov, or maybe we could make the TG into a skyrat and make Crewsimov as a roundstart law set?

[Fikou]

I see pr from skyrat coder, I downvote it.

i don't have the skyrat repository and i've never coded for there? i'm not even whitelisted there? i don't even play nonhuman lol

[Rex9001]

I'm not sure about non-human CMOs but I'm all for non-human CEs, I feel like a plasmaman or moth CE is fine though since they fit the job pretty well.

[thgvr]

Species shouldn't have immediate roundstart upsides like head roles offer, and this PR goes in the right direction.

I don't quite agree with the AI points, the AI shouldn't be randomly fucking with anyone regardless of their cosmetic race choice. If you don't want AI messing with security, at this point you should remove cameras from security/bridge/captain areas, or remove turrets/cameras from the upload if you don't want AI to mess with captain/RD.

Races are nearly purely cosmetic on tgstation and the game should reflect this.

People should be allowed to play the role they want with the species they want. Arbitrary restrictions are bad for player individuality and freedom, and having people jump through hoops to become CMO for example through access changes, which doesn't remove the slot, just creates weird confusion.

I see pr from skyrat coder, I downvote it. Well, I've played on a few servers where xenos had command roles available and it doesn't look good(White vulps on paracode as CMO/CE/HoS etc. that spent most of their time "roleplaying" instead of doing their job, pink-haired catgirls on tg based servers that adding "meow" at the end of every sentence. It just doesn't fit the game in my opinion.). If a player wants a command role they can just create a human character, if they still want to play on xenos they always have a way through hop/captain. It'll also be fun to see this command roles as xenos with AI on Asimov, or maybe we could make the TG into a skyrat and make Crewsimov as a roundstart law set?

SS13 is a roleplaying game, you should look elsewhere if you don't like people roleplaying. Also, Fikou is a maintainer on tg, not Skyrat, and regardless there's fine contributors to both codebases.

[mikederkan]

i see people are still all for "le ebic racism" and are terrified of players being represented as what they prefer to be in a 20 year old spessman video game

this community is a mistake

[Xander3359]

Having played on Yogstation where they have all non-human heads, I support this PR. I never thought I would see the day where I'd ever agree with @thgvr but I think he's entirely right. Races only ever come into play when their specific strenghts/weaknesses or gimmicks play out in super specific scenarios, or when interacting with the AI (Asimov is IMO the worst lawset).

Considering the fact that in the lore, plasmamen are the NT mascot, it would, if anything, make more sense for humans to be restricted to plasma-man only if we take into account the lore we have stored on this github.

The fact that heads are human-only in the first place is only due to most people's barely-hidden racism that is somehow still seen as ok.

[SangryD]

i see people are still all for "le ebic racism" and are terrified of players being represented as what they prefer to be in a 20 year old spessman video game

this community is a mistake

I forgot that ss13 became a game where you're not role-playing as a crewmember of the very capitalistic corporation on a space station in the probable future, but role-playing as your OC on a "hip" space station with memes 'n shit, where the priority is "having a good time".

[thgvr]

i see people are still all for "le ebic racism" and are terrified of players being represented as what they prefer to be in a 20 year old spessman video game
this community is a mistake

I forgot that ss13 became a game where you're not role-playing as a crewmember of the very capitalistic corporation on a space station in the probable future, but role-playing as your OC on a "hip" space station with memes 'n shit, where the priority is "having a good time".

Yeah, unfortunately a lot of people still think tgstation is linked to 4chan, so you get misconceptions like this. It's neither the former nor latter, but that's a discussion about greater scope and direction that isn't really related to this pr.

[Yobrocharlie]

Fikou, more like, uh um.

[Fikou]

Imagine being so called "responsible role" and being a xeno(preferably felinid for the author of this pr and his friend idk) lying on a couch round-to-round, spitting furballs and doing merp with your "same-species" subordinates. Very, very responsible gaming. I feel like NT leaders did something very wrong with this one. If you want to satisfy your kinks that way just go to the reservations for individuals your kind, because that kinds of PR always ends that way. It is hilarious how can you justify this thing, we want to have fun here.

[Fikou]

@Yobrocharlie not funny didnt laugh

[Yobrocharlie]

@Fikou im crying and in tears my day is utterly ruined and I am in shambles.

hotdog_CSGO.mp4

[optimumtact]

The status quo is unlikely to change while mothblocks and I are headcoders FYI

[Yobrocharlie]

B-but, your both non human! OH THE TYRANY!!!

[nukularpower]

imo just do it like paradise and open all roles to all races and set AI to crewsimov or corporate by default

but honestly whatever, not sure I want to see the meat-agangs take over command either

also add vox kthx

[EricZilla]

I think having the options in code is good for the codebase, but leaving the settings to only QM aliems is for the best.
Also imagine getting fikou for coding on skyrat instead of bringing up girlystation

[Learner10]

I'd find myself doing medical more often if I could play my Ethereal as the CMO. My support lies with the proposed changes primarily because despite people's take on it 'taking the power away from humans'... generally all the authority still lies with the humans. As it was said, the CMO and CE are secondary roles. They influence a smaller specific part of the station, whereas the other departments affect the station as a whole. Fears about taking the HoP's opportunity to offer field promotions are invalid, since even with existing heads, situations happen that'll deprive the station of those individuals.

Honestly, what exactly is the big fear behind locking the knowledge based head roles?