TeoTab

Admin Applications
1

In-game Username: TeoTab
Discord username: TeoTab#EUW
Characters you play: Royce Riker

On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 6-12

Days you are available to admin on: Any day of the week

How old are you? 21

Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? I have played a little of RMC, Frontier and Goob

Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? I have not adminned on space station before, I do run a yearly LAN event , host monthly league of legend tournaments at my uni, and have hosted/adminned on many smaller scale minecraft and discord servers, long lost to time

Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? Never, my only admin note is about ambiguity on the 2.9 ruling on free agents

What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? What i would like is to bring a more active admin experience, especially on EU and lowpop hours on leviathan, simply being available in case a player needs it. It’s always a shame to have a prayer unheard, a question via ahelp unanswered, or a fax unread.

I want to improve the shifts, both in subtle but meaningful ways(ie : answer prayers,etc…), and if the vibe is right and i’m inspired, full scale admemes to make each experience just a bit more unique, while also enforcing stricter rules on things like metagaming and valid hunting.

I’m also fairly proficient with the replay browser, and i wouldn’t mind having to check a replay to get a clear picture of a situation.

What are you least interested in doing as an admin? I’m not as excited to handle things like ban appeals and discord moderation, but i can’ think of any part of the role i wouldn’t be interested in doing.

Detail Questions

What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?

To me, an admin has two main roles :

  • Ensure a smooth player experience, this includes dealing with raiders, rule breakers, bugs, and any OOC problem that might occur
  • Serve the players : when an opportunity arises to interact with a round in a way that can elevate the story that is unfolding, an admin should definitely be present to act on it. This can be as simple as answering a phone call or fax, or it can be making a small quest for salvage without their knowledge, giving a new chance to a player who got really unfortunate, or calling a deathsquad if someone really, really fucked up. You are always working alongside the players, and should do your best to make them have a good time.

Now of course this doesn’t mean giving in to every demand a player has, it’s up to your own judgement wether an action is appropriate or not, and being able to read the room is very important.

Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?

I started playing a few weeks before Hopper got axed and half the admins left, and then i moved to leviathan.
This means that during the vast majority of my playtime, i’ve had entire months without a single admin interaction, or admeme, or someone to save me if i got caught in a bug.
So much of this game was created with the idea that admins help shape the story happening, and while of course there is a thin line between not enough and too much involvement, I believe a lack of involvement hurts the player experience and reduces trust in the system.
I want to be able to reward player creativity, hold bad actors accountable and maintain a healthy environnment

How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?

My experience is limited to leviathan, where there is in my opinion a very good base of recurring players. Of course there are always people who will metagame thief gloves, give excessively harsh sentences, station AIs that will act as robocop no matter their lawset, or captains that will execute without proper procedures, but others will consistently hold them accountable and try to have a good experience together. For an LRP server, I like to believe despite the frequent outliers, most peole try to uphold a solid standard of roleplay.

Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?

The small things. Making a chaplain’s day because his prayer was actually answered, making artifact fragments discreetly appear when sci has a really bad day, things that will make a shift memorable in ways that would not have been possible purely from player interactions.

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’ve had very few admin interactions overall, and among those i can’t think of any that were specifically negative.

Just read the rules carefully and use common sense. I also believe rules should be able to be bent depending on the situation, as they should serve as a way to protect the player experience, not shackle creativity.

Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?

From my few admin interactions, one of my favorite was a shift where multiple admins decided to show up on levi and add some spice to the round.
I was playing salvage and 2/3 of us rolled traitor. But what a shame ! if only it was 3 of us. later on, we found an oil lamp on a wreck, and due to the admin presence in OOC before, i decided to try my luck and wish for our third salvage to receive a call from Interdynes. Lo and behold, and after some whisky echoes the three of us were buying surplus together and we decorated our shittle with syndicate items. The other two also got a wish granted and the entire shift was a blast for everyone.

In another one, i was spectating and Samuka had transformed one of the salv ruins into a mini quest, with a bit of lore and a named dagger planted into a corpse at the center of the room. I thought this was the coolest thing, and it made me realize just how much an admin can do when they get creative, to create memorable moments even if it’s just for one person sometimes.

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”.

Assuming there was no vote beforehand, if i were to consider anything it would be an action that doesn’t impact the course of the round in any meaningful way.
While waiting for traitors to get picked and keeping an eye on the round, i would make small talk with the ghosts and ask them to be more specific. If they ask me for something small or creative(ie: become a meth mouse or become cap’s sentient saber) i might consider it depending on their attitude and add my own twist to it. But i would still wait for at least the 10 to 15 minutes mark. I would wait because as it is traitors, there is always the possibility of a player generating a ghost role on their own that would need to be filled, and because when you join as a spectator it should be with the knowledge that the natural course of the shift is usually entertaining enough on it’s own.

I would disregard any requests for something that would have a noticeable impact on the round besides distracting the spectators for a bit, and wouldn’t hesitate to reply a simple “no” if they become insistant, or straight up ignore them.

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.

Assuming i have absolutely no prior context and this is the situation, first i will list my thoughts about each character

  • The HoS : they might have a valid reason for the coup. Because the situation is unfolding, i wouldn’t ahelp them yet, as in the scenario where they are in the right it would bring action to a halt and prevent a potential interesting development.

  • The HoP : while he is a command member, HoP is still a civilian and should only arm in case of extreme necessity, leave security’s job to sec. However, if security is severely understaffed, it would be a justifiable thing to do(assuming the HoS is acting within reason)

  • The clown : it’s very easy here to immediately assume the clown is obviously in the wrong, but once again : context. If the captain was acting in a way so unfair that civilians start to attack him, the clown having cap’s saber is not unreasonable among the chaos, and this aligns with the fact that multiple command members agree that cap should be outed.
    However if the clown is acting alone and there is no obvious outrage among the station, he would likely be the first person i ahelp to try and get a proper picture of the situation.

-The QM : If other command members are against cap and he is siding with him, it could either mean the QM doesn’t believe whatever captain did was unjustified, that he isn’t aware of what HoS and HoP are doing, or that captain forced him to fly off. as QMs tend to be doing their own thing a lot more than other command members, it’s entirely possible he is simply doing as he’s told here, and is in no way in the wrong.

-The captain : This is the trickiest one. First of all the captain should never leave the station except for extreme circumstances. if he is running away from the clown, the most likely scenario is that he had his saber out and got slipped. Except for a raider, no reasonable player would immediately attack the captain with a lethal weapon without a very good reason, and with the clown not being an antag, it is not unlikely to have been self defense. If the captain had to run away it also means both security and the rest of the crew were either not assisting the captain, or not capturing the clown, and that captain either didn’t have his pistol or disabler, or was unable to fight off the clown with them, showing possible incompetence.

With all of this in mind, i would not take any immediate action until some kind or resolution happens, or until i can get enough information to justify ahelping one of the 5, most likely being the HoP or the clown. I would not Ahelp the captain or HoS first, as they would likely both give me very biased testimonies, and, because such events don’t randomly happen, there would be a lot of context to give, which would slow down the action a lot.
Another reason i would not take any immediate action is because the scope of what is happening only affects a few players, life as usual can go on inside the station, and no one is getting round removed anytime soon, so no matter what happens, more action is good.
No matter what however, whether any of them are in the wrong, and what action should be taken can wait until everything is resolved.

if : cap is in the wrong

  • no action taken towards HoP unless there was sufficient sec to take care of the situation. in which case i would remind him to not take actions into their own hands unless absolutely necessary.
  • no action taken towards the clown assuming it was self defense. If captain was attacking someone else, and the clown slipped cap to hit him with the saber it’s a different story, as you shouldn’t take actions to defend or prepare to defend someone as a civilian, but depending on the severity of the situation it is justifiable.
  • no actions taken towards the QM as he is at best doing his job, and at worst listening to orders.
  • no action taken towards HoS assuming there was a prior attempt to deescalate things with the captain before arming up with lethals. Hos is the most qualified person to handle a rogue command member.
  • an ahelp to the captain calmly asking to describe the events leading up to the situation. depending on his testimony, prior history and information gathered from other players it could go from a warning if no prior history to a roleban if this kind of behavior has been reported before.

if : cap did nothing wrong
This woud mean multiple players in the same round decided to break rules at the same time towards a shared goal, so i’m less inclined to believe this scenario. Revolutions don’t happen randomly. but in the case it is :

  • clown gets a warning for self antag if he attacked captain without reasonable escalation
  • HoP gets a warning for assisting in an unjustified coup and not following escalation rules
  • after hearing HoS’s testimony, it would go from a warning to a roleban depending again on prior history and reasons given for the coup.
  • no actions taken towards QM
  • i would remind the captain that escaping to space is not okay especially if it blocks the use of the cargo shuttle, but no further actions would be taken

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.

With no headmin present, I would first try to figure out what type of sentence has been given before for this kind of behavior.

If i can find any examples, i will simply act accordingly to prior sentences, as being consistent should be a high priority. However with the lack of prior noted issues, i will be more inclined to assume good faith. And unless we explicitely state in the rules that we have zero tolerance on this particular issue, I don’t believe i would give an indefinite ban with appeal, as this both adds more work for us later and could prevent an otherwise good player from contributing to the rounds.

If i cannot find any however, i will act according to my own judgement when i’m sure i understand the situation. Assuming i don’t trust either of the two admin’s judgements more than the other, I will do what I believe is appropriate, while trying to remain as consistent as possible with the closest ruling i can find. But again, unless explicitly stated that it’s a zero tolerance rule, i am unlikely to give an indefinite ban to a player with 0 prior notes.

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