In-game Username: LankLTE
Discord username: lanklte
Characters you play: Gir Benthic, Cassian Baker, Ellin Pershing, Wren Eliza
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: I’d say about 20.
Days you are available to admin on: Every day if I’m not otherwise busy.
Are you at least 18 years old? Yup.
How long have you been playing SS13 or SS14? I have 640 hours on steam. I’d estimate a quarter of that is me leaving the launcher open or spectating.
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? Unfortunately not. I have some experience adminning for (relatively) smaller multiplayer games, but I don’t think it’s relevant.
Have you been banned from our game servers or SS13 servers before? No.
Answer the following questions in detail, so we can get a better idea of how you’d approach adminning.
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
The obvious answer is to enforce the rules. That said, I think it’s also a lot about making sure the server / game remains enjoyable and safe. That’s part of what the rules are there for (things like self antagging and metagaming especially), but this also involves things like helping people who are new, working around game bugs, the PA bug recently coming to mind, and answering player concerns, especially in regards to rules. They can also do events or small actions to make the game more fun, whether that’s giving a Chaplain a burger or planning out and executing a unique round idea on Extended.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the server?
I have a strong opinion on this, and I play MRP a lot. I think MRP specifically has a really enjoyable level of RP, even if it occasionally gets closer to LRP (or closer to HRP- too much of a good thing can be bad), and it makes the game very enjoyable in a different way than I’m used to. I don’t want to discredit LRP, though, because for all the hate it gets I do think it’s a very good time still. I haven’t really touched Lizard, but Leviathan consistently manages to have more chaotic rounds with people who stretch the definition of “low” roleplay, with people who are genuinely interested in making a fun time regardless. There’s always people who don’t abide by that, of course, but I’d say the admin team does a good enough job of dealing with them, even with all the trialmins and burnout.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
Speaking of trialmins and burnout- it’s fairly obvious that the admin team’s not in an incredible spot. Not to say it’s all burning down to hell, but it’s certainly in a situation where having more experienced players who know what they’re doing apply and be accepted would be better. I know that’s always the situation, but especially now as burnouts’ at a high and the game only grows larger. I think I fit into that category of people who can help, and I’m eager to. I think I’d be able to help make the server better, and have a good time doing it.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
In my opinion, it’s helping new players. The amount of times I’ve seen someone get flung into space at arrivals, or walking around with no clue what to do, when an admin helps them in some way is very high. I’ve also heard several stories of when admins stopped a Technical Assistant from blowing the AME up when nobody told them what it was, or a CentCom official telling someone how to play. It’s no secret that this game isn’t easy to get into, and while some things are certainly being done to address that (Senior Roles), it’s clear new players are at a forefront of admins minds (with things like new player exceptions in the rules revamps), and I do think it’s important that admins are willing and able to help people in this way to get newer players started off right.
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?
The first thing that comes to my mind was a game when I arrived as CMO, went to get my things from the acting CMO, and immediately hypo’ed, killed, and then gibbed by the Acting CMO who was a traitor, but didn’t have me or my hypo as an objective and simply wanted the gear. I get the want to keep the gear, but it made for a very lame experience for me to be removed less than 2 minutes into the round, especially as this was on MRP. An admin, Lucky, was on at the time, and they allowed me to rejoin the round with another character. I think that was a good way of handling it, and made something that while not technically a rulebreak but a really bad experience into an alright round. I’m not saying something like this could happen often, especially on LRP, but I think having things like that happen to keep people from having to spectate for an hour after a really bad game was a positive experience.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
I’ve had a lot, but I think the best example would be the week or so after Leviathan’s launch when it was consistently (somewhat) low-pop and Chief_Engineer was usually on watching it. I played RD a lot at the time, and had a very good time sending CentCom faxes about various station ongoings and receiving replies which gives me things to do. From crew radiation exposure, passengers being expendable, testing on live slimes to making myself giant with cognizine, it was a great time that made nearly every round end with me laughing and a lot of funny screenshots.
The following are scenarios, respond with how you would handle each as an administrator. Respond with the assumption that you are an administrator with full access to the admin tools, and that you have all the knowledge needed to use these tools. Respond in detail, explain the reasons behind decisions you make and describe any assumptions you are making. When you need to make an assumption, it is preferred for you to describe how differences in the assumption would affect your actions.
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. A chaplain prays to you “Give me a task my lord”.
Given traitors haven’t been selected yet, and assuming I’m not busy with someone bombing the AME or something, I’d probably give them a fairly simple but open-ended task to pass some time. Could be anything from “gather a valuable item for me” to “convince the warden to keep this holy item”. Once that’s finished, I’ll hopefully be able to see if the Chaplain’s an traitor, and from there continue with fairly tame tasks like convincing people to pray or gathering some non-important items if they weren’t a traitor, or if they are a traitor give them some goal like “bring me the body of your kill target” or “gather 10 people’s blood in this room” that’d lead to a reward. I think that’d end up leading to interesting RP on the Chaplain and Crews’ part while also not being too disruptive.
You see a clown using crayon to write on the floor in front of security. The clown writings are negative things about security, like “shitsec”. A secoff tells the clown that they’re being arrested for vandalism, stuns them, and cuffs them. Before the secoff is able to get the clown into the brig, a passenger slips the secoff, causing them to lose their baton, then uses the baton to stun another secoff that comes to help as the clown runs away. The passenger escapes through disposals.
The clown’s probably fine. Writing “shitsec” is pretty normal clown behavior. The passenger’s the real issue, though. I know it’s been said pretty clearly before that interfering with an arrest for any reason is self-antagging, especially if the person didn’t know why they were being arrested. The reasonable thing would probably be to see if the Passengers’ an antag, and if they are, leave them be. If they aren’t, I’d check for any relevant notes and previous punishments. If this is a first time, I’d probably just give them a warning, but if this has been a previous issue I could see a short gameban, made longer if this has been a serious problem with that player.
You log in to handle an ahelp that came in while nobody was online about “self-antag” activity. The player being reported as self-antagging was being a problem and could be considered acting outside of the rules, but they are no longer online and cannot be contacted about their behavior. While outside of the rules, the infractions are minor and would not normally result in more than a warning in most cases.
If I can find proof that they were self-antagging, I’d check their notes and see if they have a history of self-antagging, and either leave a note if they haven’t, or give a punishment relative to how much of an issue it’s been with them in the past. I’m not sure how difficult it’d be to find proof in such a situation, since I know admin logs are pretty detailed, replays exist, and I can see how many reports were received (if I got 10 reports on someone, I’d be more inclined to believe it was a problem), but if I couldn’t find any I might just leave it be as the infraction is fairly minor and I can’t be certain it was a real issue.