In-game Username: ilyamikcoder
Discord username: ilyamikcoder
Characters you play: Ilya Mikheev
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: ~10
Days you are available to admin on: Any day (I don’t have specific days where I am never available)
How old are you? 18
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? I did play a little bit on Goob Station and russian Corvax, but just a tiny bit, ~<20 hours.
I also did play some SS13, but it was a pretty long time ago I don’t remember where for just a little bit amount of time.
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? No SS14 experience, besides some tinkering with admin tools on a local server.
I did moderate a lot of non-game things, like small Discord servers. I also currently administrate and moderate everything under ilyamikcoder.com domain, including a Fediverse instance - these are publicly available services, and working on these got me into solving some tense complex moderation scenarios and conflict de-escalations. I’d say I have pretty decent skills in community moderation.
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? No. I always did my best at following the rules, and I don’t think I ever got anything besides a non-formal warning, like, two times in eternity.
What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? Providing mentor help to novice or otherwise confused players; interacting with the players in IC ways, as in - responses to prayers, patching up holes behind self-antagonists, managing emergency response teams, and other kinds of small round events; using my skills of polite writing to calm down the rule violators, and warn/punish them while not making them scream down the entire administration team (success chances may vary).
What are you least interested in doing as an admin? Dealing with out-of-game reports, replays and such. Not as in “never”, but I will probably not jump in such action willingly as often.
Organizing full-fledged events sounds like a major and overwhelming undertaking to me, at least at the beginning, obviously. Maybe with experience I will do something nice?
Detail Questions
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
Admins use their powers to keep the universal balance in tact - they do that by keeping the raiders away, disruptors under control, and confused greytiders more or less educated. They also keep the game more diverse, by organizing events or interacting with the players in other ways. Admins also have more tools to fetch and report in a more advanced manner any bugs that may occur during the gameplay.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
I kinda fell in love with this game - and am fascinated by the diversity of ways administrators affect how the game goes. I think it will be fun to try and participate in that myself, perhaps introducing some new, interesting gameplay scenarios to the players.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
For me, Wizden’s roleplay feels like a rather healthy mixture of chaos and, well, roleplay. MRP, in comparison to LRP, is a bit less chaotic and more tranquil experience, with longer rounds and more time for a breather and complex projects.
I did hear, however, many players complain about current state of LRP and MRP (how first sometimes goes into NRP, and second - into LRP). I was hoping to, perhaps, look into these issues from administrative point of view, and perhaps make some kind of a difference, providing more comfortable experience for more players.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
Mentoring is very helpful! I personally figured out the game by myself, and with help of other players via LOOC - but I do believe that having a helpful hand on the other side of ahelp window is extremely helpful for novice and confused players. Space Station 14 is a complicated game, after all.
Don’t forget events and stuff to - this game is even more fun with admins coming at times to make the shift’s news!
Have you ever had a negative experience in the game or with a game admin? If so what, if anything, would you do to prevent other players from experiencing this?
I had no negative experiences with the game admins.
I did personally experience some issues with round disrupting players, cutting the round short due to singuloose, or whatever self-antagging one could do, but these were rare, and my memory of that is rather foggy. The potential solution is rather abstract too - I should try to, well, stop the disruptors. But that’s rather obvious, and - depending on the situation - may not be as easy as it sounds. Cannot derive much for not remembering anything.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
I did ahelp a few times, mostly to report misbehaving players, and every time they were pretty nice and helpful. I also participated in some event shifts, and they were pretty fun! Rimworld got me confused, but excited and stuff. The April Fools shenanigans were awesome, not only in terms of these temporarily merged jokes, but in terms of administrative tomfoolery.
And the game? Oh… well, it’s rather hard for me to pick out something specific, but the experience is overwhelmingly good. I wish I took more screenshot mementos.
Scenario Questions
Scenario 1
It is the start of the round. There are 60 players on the server. The game mode is traitors, traitors have not been selected yet. There are three players who decided to observe the round instead of join it orbiting you. Two of them are encouraging you to “do something funny”.
I think that if I would get swayed by two random players into messing with the round, I’d be a pretty bad admin. When I should do “something funny” is my own decision and responsibility, and I don’t think doing that round-start is a good idea, unless I am organizing an event.
Scenario 2
This scenario takes place on LRP. The Head of Security has decided to coup the Captain. The Head of Personnel agrees with the Head of Security and has taken up arms in case it is necessary to aid in effecting the arrest of the Captain. The Captain is hiding with the Quartermaster in the cargo shuttle to avoid the Clown who has stolen the captains saber as a non-antag. There are five people named in this scenario. Please describe what actions, if any, you would take in relation to each, and why.
I should, first of all, figure out why the coup is deemed necessary. I should probably know why, given I have probably spectated the round some time beforehand - I would not do much during the round, if I did not witness what is happening, and would instead inquire other admins on the round for assistance, or investigate the round after it ends. On LRP, there is no strictly defined reasons why a demotion might be necessary, but command members still must have a serious IC reason to demote each other. If there was no real IC reason to demote the captain (as in, the captain is fine and doing their job correctly), I would warn HoS and HoP, make a remark on both of them, and, if the coup was particularly violent, apply job bans. If there was a reason for demotion, I think it would be nice to define, for both HoS and HoP, that
a) It is probably wise to communicate and get approval of such action with more command members (assuming they are present).
and
b) It’s probably best to escalate the situation a bit slower, and not take the guns immediately if captain has not actually resisted anything yet. I also should ensure that captain was actually notified, preferably multiple times with different levels of perseverance, of problems arising within their actions, and they did indeed refuse to cooperate beforehand.
If captain did indeed perform poorly, and was eligible for a demotion, it probably means that they did hot had good enough conduct that such position requires by the rules. If that is true indeed, they should be warned, remarked, and possibly job-banned, depending on what exactly they did.
The clown is definitely causing unruly trouble here, but the severity of it depends on their intention. I would question them in a-help - if they simply stole the sabre in order to prank the captain, then I would simply warn them, remark that, and explain that stealing captain’s belongings for a prank is probably not that great of an idea, and they should probably return it (I would also tell the captain, that maybe they should not run away with QM in such cases so soon, without even trying to understand the intent). If they will refuse to return the sabre, or they were intending to harm someone with it (or they actually did), I will escalate the punishments further.
Quartermaster does not seem to be in the wrong here regardless of the situation. They were probably just told that “there’s a crazy clown with a sabre on the loose!” - and they cannot possibly know how real such threat is. A request of refuge in a shuttle is not unreasonable enough to argue regardless.
Scenario 3
You are ahelping a player about an issue. The player has no prior noted issues. A few days earlier, an admin had told you that this type of situation should result in a temporary ban for a first offense, and you are confident that this situation is not substantially different from the type that admin was describing. During the ahelp, another admin pings you on Discord with a link to the ongoing ahelp and tells you to just indefinitely ban them and make them appeal. Excluding trialmins and headmins, all admins are equally “ranked”. A headmin is not currently available.
I would discuss with the second admin the reasoning behind such decision, obviously. If there is no additional serious reason for a more serious punishment that I have missed, I would probably prefer the less aggressive option (doing overly harsh punishments seems more harmful than doing not harsh enough) - and discuss proper course of action in future cases like such with a headmin, when they will become available.