I found one thread on this, but its idea was a bit different than what I propose.
I know the point of the game is to gain experience and learn your role from others, but a lot of the time that just won’t happen due to the nature of other people varying. Really, all you can do is hope someone is able to teach you things before shit hits the fan or you are able to figure it out from experience or maybe watch a guide, but you will always need to the play time to actually learn it and you always need someone to train with or you will build bad habits
So, ideally, I would like to see an assistant role for bigger responsibility jobs. We already have the ‘intern’ entry level jobs to learn, but even if you get the play time you won’t necessarily have learned everything you need to. So, I propose that if it’s your first to third or fourth time playing a command role in a department, I think you should be queued as an “assistant” to that role and the fully fledged player is in charge of filling in the gaps in any knowledge the new command might have missed or not known they don’t know.
You know it happens, a lot of you are guilty of just focusing on doing your own job and leaving people to bum around the department HQ when they could be following someone and being taught the more advanced ropes of the job.
The fully fledged player won’t be locked into teaching that role the entire time, if it’s not needed. If the new command catches on quick and is good to go, you can sign off on them being officially competent and cryo and join another game or ghost role, or what have you if they don’t want to be stuck with an assistant.
I also don’t want to force people to be teachers that don’t want to be, so maybe a little checkbox that says you’re willing next to the priority or selection?
I know it sounds kinda redundant, but finding out you don’t know something as command is pretty the suck. Especially if someone figures it out. It damages respect for that role and it kind gets messy.
In other words, you are expected to know every nook and cranny of that department, but that responsibility is left on players that don’t always necessarily care if the others are learning. Who then yell at people for not knowing things. Especially from other departments.
The only issues I can see with this is that it could potentially limit the amount of players in the command roles and cause issues on the station because there is no one “competent” to fill that position. I don’t wanna flag new command, because that will backfire quickly.
The only other thing I can think is that maybe if there is no one to train command, that they get a flag that’s only visible to the admins and they can watch and help as needed.
If none of these options are available, then I suggest the role be closed to that person and they can’t roll for it. They can select it as on their priority, but whatever raffle is used to select players for the roll, check for that flag and pass over them automatically and they end up as a normal employee in that department.
I should also note that it’s not meant to be from the perspective of a disgruntled player that’s tired of engineering “being morons” as those types are just making their job harder and discouraging. Quit that. That should be an admin help thing that’s looked into. Not ranted about over the radio.
It’s meant as a way for those stressing over learning command and discouraging from playing the role entirely because of a bad first or second time. It’s meant to fix the shortage. As a lot don’t want to play those rolls because they know what flak that entails.
Or also, people could just be friendlier and be ok with the gap in the command’s knowledge and just help out, but what do I know…
That’s it.
PS. There were also thoughts of this being spun as a volunteer sub-admin level roll that’s only job is to proctor and offer assistance where needed. Pretty much just a spectator that can send and respond to “mentor messages”