Merge IAA Into Command So The IAA Job Is Gone

[LorenLuke]

37 minutes ago, Skull132 said:

I have a really bad idea. Split the HoP into two roles. One is the civilian staff chief, who is responsible for cargo and service; and the other the human resources officer, who is more akin to the ID granting and IAA role.

So one is oversight and one is paperwork? The question becomes two-fold: OP appears to levy the issues of 1) Nobody plays it, 2) It interferes with roleplay in the performance of IAA duties. 

With regards to these issues, why would someone (besides current IAA players) want play a paperwork-heavy role? If this paperwork role is unfilled (presumably having IDs falling to this role as stated), would the responsibilities of the paperpusher fall to the other? What difference would there be between this oversight role picking up slack, and just merging HoP with IAA? Which of the split roles is higher in the CoC?

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea as a solution, but there's still a lot questions that I have.

[PoZe]

On 07/04/2019 at 23:36, Senpai Jackboot said:

All of the duties that the IAA does is already done by existing jobs.

IAA main duty that cannot be replaced by any other job, especially command is to do department checks and make sure everything is under control. Make sure every job including command is done properly. IAA can report wrong actions of command to CC.  If you merge IAA into HOP, then to whom will non-command people go to complain about command actions? What if a person has trouble with HOP command decisions and they wan CC to investigate it, who will they go complain to? Captain? Well, captain might be present or not, and they will most likely not relay that to CC and have their own judgement.

It is about having a mechanism to report people in charge to their boss. Because otherwise it is similar to the case of Police where police is supposed to protect you, but if police are assaulting you in custody who do you go to complain about them?

Edited April 9, 2019 by PoZe

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

58 minutes ago, PoZe said:

If you merge IAA into HOP, then to whom will non-command people go to complain about command actions?

The captain. We already do this. There is only a 33% chance you will ever see an IAA.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

2 hours ago, Skull132 said:

I have a really bad idea. Split the HoP into two roles. One is the civilian staff chief, who is responsible for cargo and service; and the other the human resources officer, who is more akin to the ID granting and IAA role.

I really don't know.  That's a strange divide of duties and the names are not self evident. 

The HoP and Captain already assume the duties of an IAA in a round.

 

For conflict mediation we have counselors and chaplains. An IAA-less station can have crew try to resolve disputes via these jobs.

It is the captains duty to ensure command is acting properly. It is their station for all intents and purposes. If it is the captain who is a butthead, there is always a member of command willing to fax CCIA. 

 

The IA is a redundant middle man in the best circumstances and an obstructionist at worst. 

[TheOrleans]

13 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

I really don't know.  That's a strange divide of duties and the names are not self evident. 

The HoP and Captain already assume the duties of an IAA in a round.

 

For conflict mediation we have counselors and chaplains. An IAA-less station can have crew try to resolve disputes via these jobs.

It is the captains duty to ensure command is acting properly. It is their station for all intents and purposes. If it is the captain who is a butthead, there is always a member of command willing to fax CCIA. 

 

The IA is a redundant middle man in the best circumstances and an obstructionist at worst. 

That thing you said about Counselors and Chaplains... just.. lol. They are not respected cause they lack power, so no one cares about what a chaplain or counselor has to say, and if he is saying something ''against'' you, you will just not care cause he's just a chaplain. But if the person saying that is an IAA, it changes.

 

I've roleplayed with IAA many many times, and I think they're really necessary in certain situations. By the way, I've never seen a HoP or a Captain trying to resolve issues between two crewmembers, never ever. If one of them did anything illegal they're brigged, if not, no one cares. But I've had my own problems and issues with crewmembers solved by IAAs, multiple times in the time I have been playing here, but never by a HoP or a Captain.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by TheOrleans

[TheOrleans]

13 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

The captain. We already do this. There is only a 33% chance you will ever see an IAA.

The Captain will support his HoP, and the HoP will support his Captain, 99% of times.

[ben10083]

13 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

The IA is a redundant middle man in the best circumstances and an obstructionist at worst. 

Internal Affairs can be an obstructionist at worse, there is no arguing there, but at best, they are your liaison, the one person you can talk to when command is going south. The Captain and HoP will typically stick up for each other or something redundant. IAA is the one role that keeps everyone in check, yes, the captain and HoP can do IAA job, but not as effective or to the extend IAA can do. The low amount of IAA is also not a good reason for merge, we have various jobs that few people use, yet removing them would be a bad decision due to the negative impacts it would entail. IAA is a underrated role that should remain on the station.

[Scheveningen]

Strongly against the removal of IAA, and the addition of other roles. Things are fine as-is.

[Kaed]

What if we try test of this idea, since we're already planning to test juggling security around to departments.

"Things are fine the way they are." Is a terrible reason to never try anything new. What it really comes down to every single reasoning given on this thread, is people wanting to get what they want. As a results this entire thread is based on speculation on both the people for and against the change.

Maybe things will be better without an IAA. Maybe these captain and head of personnel buddy buddy biases people keep bringing up will make things terrible.

We don't know either of these things for sure and are spouting conjecture. So just give it a try and see how it works. It's certainly a much more trivial change than security is going to be going through.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Kaed

[Scheveningen]

2 minutes ago, Kaed said:

What if we try test of this idea, since we're already planning to test juggling security around to departments.

And apparently a lot of people who play security hate it.

The definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing and expecting different results.

Edited April 10, 2019 by Scheveningen

[ComradeCorbyn]

I don't think we should make this related to Departmental Security. It's two separate suggestion, and we shouldn't intermix them. Additionally, it's pretty clear from the feedback received by multiple people that this isn't something that we should enforce on the server as of yet. 

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

6 hours ago, TheOrleans said:

The Captain will support his HoP, and the HoP will support his Captain, 99% of times.

Then here is what we do. we add the policy of IAA where in they are the ones responsible for conflict resolution and add that to the counselor role.  we can very easily ad policy and promote this policy where the counselor is the conflict mediator and provide the counselor with a form to give to the captain like an injunction to resolve disputes.

 

For regulations being followed by command we already have the captain of the vessel. The captain already is responsible for this. This conspiracy theory of the head of personnel always being best friends with the captain is a fallacy. Even in the worst case scenario where the head of personnel and the captain are in cahoots despite the captains loyalty implant, it would be very easy for another command member to fax CC. And if all of command is in cahoots... Tough break.

The only duty of the IAA in terms of oversight is faxing Central Command. Anyone can fax Central Command. We do not need the additional baggage an IAA brings to a round just to have a ao-called unbiased fax user.

[Munks]

Jackboot your stance seems like its that IAA is an "antagonistic" force to players, and I don't exactly see what the problem with that is. Corporate Regulation itself should be natural, passive antagonistic force against the crew. It exists to tell people what they can and can't do, even if it would what is best for the crew isn't in line with regulations. This creates a point of conflict for a character where they must decide if they are going to play by the rules, or be a loose cannon that gets shit done faster. Some form of structure that exists to be worked around, and as a result of which maybe security doesn't do as well a job as they could of shutting down and antagonist, or engineering or research doesn't work as quickly and efficiently as possible, or maybe medical doesn't treat someone as fast as they could. For an RP server, especially one that limits what actual antag players can and cannot do so heavily, you'd think a neutral, roleplay-based sort of conflict and antagonism such as this would be more appreciated.

In an ideal perfect world, IAA wouldn't be needed, and heads of staff would be fully capable of holding their departments, and themselves, to standards. The world isn't perfect, however, and more often than not, our command players are the ones responsible for breaking protocol, because our corps of command players is so full of "heroes" and "protagonist" characters that refuse to let their characters do anything that might be considered immoral or wrong, and they've grown so comfortable in their popularity that no one does anything about it. As a result, the drastic measure of having an entire multi-slot role dedicated to sitting down and talking to these kinds of characters, and reporting issues that refuse to resolve themselves, is necessary. The Captain and HoP both have shit to do and can't be expected, nor would I since they too tend to have problems, to always step in whenever a head of staff is out of line.

If you want to solve this and make IAA's unnecessary, maybe you should consider actually enforcing whitelist standards, so that that these characters that won't act as corporate leaders and only exist to be heroic superdoctors/super-engineers/etc are no longer relied on to do the job that they are demonstrably uninterested in doing. The players that roll Captains and Heads of Personnel are plagued by the same mindset and cannot be relied on to enforce regulations even if they did have the time to.

 

Edited April 10, 2019 by Munks

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

4 hours ago, Munks said:

Jackboot your stance seems like its that IAA is an "antagonistic" force to players, and I don't exactly see what the problem with that is. Corporate Regulation itself should be natural, passive antagonistic force against the crew.

 

4 hours ago, Munks said:

In an ideal perfect world, IAA wouldn't be needed, and heads of staff would be fully capable of holding their departments, and themselves, to standards. The world isn't perfect, however, and more often than not, our command players are the ones responsible for breaking protocol [therefore we have IAA].

You have two conflicting philosophies about the IA held at the same time. They are both antagonists to the crew, and the safeguard against antagonism from command.

You are also focusing on one part of my reasoning. Let me try to cut it down to the barest possible bones.

If we use the most popular job on that list (Chemist at 462 rounds) to get close to the total number of rounds played, knowing that there are even more rounds because we are not garunteed a chemist, we find that e have seen an IAA only 24% of the time from Jan 1st 2019 to the day these stats were gathered (shortly before posting this thread.)

4 hours ago, Munks said:

As a result, the drastic measure of having an entire multi-slot role dedicated to sitting down and talking to these kinds of characters, and reporting issues that refuse to resolve themselves, is necessary.

The IAA role is extremely rarely played.. Therefore, the station operates without them. You are talking about the IAA being a safeguard for the station against a corrupt command, but this only happens 24% of the time.

I don't like removing jobs and want to see unpopular or poorly maintained jobs adjusted to make them a more enjoyable experience for players. However, I can't see the IAA job being transformed into something that will rekindle its playerbase.

I was originally in favor of a dedicated HR slot, but I understand now that it would have the exact same issues as the IAA, and face all of the same issues.

4 hours ago, Munks said:

The Captain and HoP both have shit to do and can't be expected, nor would I since they too tend to have problems, to always step in whenever a head of staff is out of line.

Whenever I see people complain to the Captain, the Captain delegates it to the most relevant Head, because there is almost always no IAA to mediate the conflict. This means it goes to the HoP, the HoS, or the most relevant Head. If it is a Command dispute, the Captain handles it directly, because there is almost always no IAA. Why not have the captain delegate minor issues to the Counselor?

It would ease the burden on these Command members if the Counselor/Chaplain roles were given the expectations and guidelines for conflict resolution between crew members. A counselor is present 86% of the time. This is far, far higher than the IAA. While quality of Chaplain varies, the role does need something concrete and I am sure the majority of counselor and chaplain players would appreciate the interest in their time. I know they sometimes lack things to do outside plan funerals and the like, and this would be a positive way to get crew to get involved with them.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[Crozarius]

I want to add my two cents to this, and this will be my only post because I don't want to deal with Corbyn.

 

I support the removal of the IAA role, and as an exclusive station player who doesn't deliberately neglect their duty, my experience is that the IAA role is used almost exclusively to harass players over pedantic things in an inconsistent and fun killing manner. I have been harassed by IAA for the following, but not limited to: Setting food out in the kitchen on the counter as a buffet instead of using the smart heater, not wearing gloves despite the Kitchen not being provided with gloves, not wearing an apron, leaving the fridge open, having milk outside of the fridge, having beakers outside of the fridge, not having beakers constantly covered, not having beakers labelled. 

 

It's all just obtrusive and pedantic. These are things that I can fix for the most part, but I've been harassed over the gloves even though the Chef has to access to get these things without using the loadout, ehich should absolutely not required. It doesn't make narrative sense to demand these things and then expect us to have to beg medical for gloves to do our jobs.

 

I have never had a positive experience with IAA, and its because they're geared toward doing exactly the things described above. This is the nofun pedantic harassment that IAA claims does not exist. And what can we do? Make a CIAA complaint? Who are staffed by the same clique of people who play IAA?

 

Anyway TL;DR IAA only exists to harass players with pedantic nofun bullshit that often makes no narrative sense.

 

 

[Munks]

57 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

You have two conflicting philosophies about the IA held at the same time. They are both antagonists to the crew, and the safeguard against antagonism from command.

It doesn't need one or the other. IAAs can function as an extension of Corporate Regulation as a source of passive conflict while still serving as a barrier to command incompetence. In fact if they're operating properly, as intended, they will inherently do both at the same time.

Quote

You are also focusing on one part of my reasoning. Let me try to cut it down to the barest possible bones.I

f we use the most popular job on that list (Chemist at 462 rounds) to get close to the total number of rounds played, knowing that there are even more rounds because we are not garunteed a chemist, we find that e have seen an IAA only 24% of the time from Jan 1st 2019 to the day these stats were gathered (shortly before posting this thread.)

The IAA role is extremely rarely played.. Therefore, the station operates without them. You are talking about the IAA being a safeguard for the station against a corrupt command, but this only happens 24% of the time.

I don't like removing jobs and want to see unpopular or poorly maintained jobs adjusted to make them a more enjoyable experience for players. However, I can't see the IAA job being transformed into something that will rekindle its playerbase.

It is an unfortunate reality that IAA is underplayed, as well as that, frankly, most of the regular ones we do have suck and don't understand their role. It's unfortunate, and it's unfortunate because they have an actual functional purpose to exist, and it's because of that purpose that they shouldn't be removed because I'd rather have a 24 percent chance to have an IAA on shift that should counteract whitelist failures than a 0 percent chance because the role was removed.

IAA doesn't have to be glamorous, or entice people with cool perks and draw them in. You shouldn't play IA for any perks whatsoever. It's the same logic that being a moderator shouldn't come with any special perks or VIP glamor, you do it because you want to do it; otherwise it attracts glory hounds and insecure kids that are just in it for authority to throw around. If you're not interested in playing IAA you just shouldn't play it. Again, I'd rather have an IAA in it to actually do the job even if it's boring 24 percent of the time of the time than an IAA who got drawn in by extra authority, extra access, and a "self-defense" gun to go after bad guys with 100 percent of the time.

Quote

Whenever I see people complain to the Captain, the Captain delegates it to the most relevant Head, because there is almost always no IAA to mediate the conflict. This means it goes to the HoP, the HoS, or the most relevant Head. If it is a Command dispute, the Captain handles it directly, because there is almost always no IAA. Why not have the captain delegate minor issues to the Counselor?

This is no different than how it is now even if there is an IAA present. As a frequent IA player, I always believe that the situation should be handled on the smallest scale possible before IA is involved. The counselor can already play plenty of role in this. Nothing will change if the IA workload is officially offloaded to the counselor. People will skip peaceful mediation and seek someone with the authority to formally investigate complaints, as they do now. The captain and HoP should already be recommending people sort their issues out with counselling or their departmental head of staff handle departmental problems before taking it on themselves or jumping to activating IA. They dont, and this is because they suck at command.

If the solution of merging IAA and HoP is taken, then effectively it accomplishes giving IA extra goodies (including guns and extra access) which, considering already HoPs have a hard time not acting like Security without being given the added benefit of officially being given an investigatory role, doesn't seem like the best idea. The problem is in the event that whoever happens to be HoP is incapable of fulfilling or unwilling to fulfill the duties of an IA, there should be room for a job which is entirely about handling these problems, and absolutely nothing more, so there is zero excuse to be incompetent at it. Not to mention there arises the issue of people tasked with IA work being antagonists, which counsellors and Heads of Personnel can.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Munks

[Mofo1995]

Personally I'm not a fan. I think Skull's bad idea is probably the best proposed alternative there is so far. But IAA is my favorite role on station. The reason it's my favorite is because I really don't have a lot of mechanics or hard responsibilities to worry about. I'm not in command of anyone, I have no command authority, I can't force anyone to do pretty much anything. All I can do is my favorite thing to do, go around and talk to people. I don't have to worry about commanding cargo to do this or that, I don't have to worry about bossing the kitchen around, and I don't have to worry about altering IDs. I can just advise security and command on procedure, let them know when I think what they're doing is a bad idea, politely ask heads of staff to do things, and hear complaints and advocate for crew like a lawyer of sorts. I love this! It's perfect for me. But, the sad truth is that I don't play very often, usually about once or twice a week. And with the Adhomai server going I play even less. My IAA isn't always present and sometimes I feel like playing another character or another job, so it's even less present when it's in competition for my other character slots. A lot of people say things like the IAA is under-powered or useless, but it's an absolutely powerful role to play when you're, well, role-playing. It's like an entire role dedicated to the social nature of the game that is so endearing to me. I don't have a gun and don't have to worry about responding to security situations, but I get to hear about them and advise security when I think they're in the wrong. I'm not a medical professional and don't have to worry about prescriptions or diagnoses, but people come to me feeling safe and confident with their problems that I will advocate for their causes. Command doesn't need me to uphold their authority in any way, but they always involve me and ask for my advice and opinions because they trust in me and value my input. It's like this perfect bridge between civilian and security, crew and command. This perfect sweetspot middleground where I get every slice of the station experience and am trusted from all sides without these divisions of roles which tend to cause tension. And because of this strange position of being the perfect intermediary, despite having no command authority of my own, the advice I usually give is taken. The disputes between people I settle is usually universally accepted by both plaintiff and defendant, and settled. I guess what I mean to say is that all I ever hear about is that IAA is useless and not respected, yet the reality is that everytime I play it I feel like I'm uplifted as highly respected and valued by everyone.

[Munks]

35 minutes ago, Crozarius said:

I want to add my two cents to this, and this will be my only post because I don't want to deal with Corbyn.

I support the removal of the IAA role, and as an exclusive station player who doesn't deliberately neglect their duty, my experience is that the IAA role is used almost exclusively to harass players over pedantic things in an inconsistent and fun killing manner. I have been harassed by IAA for the following, but not limited to: Setting food out in the kitchen on the counter as a buffet instead of using the smart heater, not wearing gloves despite the Kitchen not being provided with gloves, not wearing an apron, leaving the fridge open, having milk outside of the fridge, having beakers outside of the fridge, not having beakers constantly covered, not having beakers labelled.

It's all just obtrusive and pedantic. These are things that I can fix for the most part, but I've been harassed over the gloves even though the Chef has to access to get these things without using the loadout, ehich should absolutely not required. It doesn't make narrative sense to demand these things and then expect us to have to beg medical for gloves to do our jobs.

I have never had a positive experience with IAA, and its because they're geared toward doing exactly the things described above. This is the nofun pedantic harassment that IAA claims does not exist. And what can we do? Make a CIAA complaint? Who are staffed by the same clique of people who play IAA?

Anyway TL;DR IAA only exists to harass players with pedantic nofun bullshit that often makes no narrative sense.

 

What you described is outside the scope of internal affairs in the first place. Your root problem is incompetent, authority-hungry players, not the role itself. If deleted, these types would just move to Security and continue to harangue you with stupid shit. The answer is whitelist enforcement on these players, not outright removal.

[TheOrleans]

7 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Then here is what we do. we add the policy of IAA where in they are the ones responsible for conflict resolution and add that to the counselor role.  we can very easily ad policy and promote this policy where the counselor is the conflict mediator and provide the counselor with a form to give to the captain like an injunction to resolve disputes.

 

For regulations being followed by command we already have the captain of the vessel. The captain already is responsible for this. This conspiracy theory of the head of personnel always being best friends with the captain is a fallacy. Even in the worst case scenario where the head of personnel and the captain are in cahoots despite the captains loyalty implant, it would be very easy for another command member to fax CC. And if all of command is in cahoots... Tough break.

The only duty of the IAA in terms of oversight is faxing Central Command. Anyone can fax Central Command. We do not need the additional baggage an IAA brings to a round just to have a ao-called unbiased fax user.

Counselors are Counselors, we're not in XV century

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

1 minute ago, Mofo1995 said:

Personally I'm not a fan. [sic]

The only means by which the IAA role would continue to be the role by which you see it being used, in a social and pro-crew advocating fashion, while undermining the negative aspects of obstructionism and antagonism, is to replace the job itself with something that inherently has a pro-crew agenda. This could be a union representative, an OSHA inspector, or some other aspect.

The negatives of the role are outweighed by the positives that I have outlined.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

1 minute ago, TheOrleans said:

Counselors are Counselors, we're not in XV century 

I don't understand what this means.

[TheOrleans]

25 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

I don't understand what this means.

Counselors are just a re-name of priest chaplain job

They are SPIRITUAL Counselors

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

3 hours ago, TheOrleans said:

Counselors are just a re-name of priest chaplain job

They are SPIRITUAL Counselors

https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/all/n-o/OPD Job Description - Chaplain.pdf

 

Quote

When an officer is seriously injured or has died on duty, respond to the hospital emergency room, on request, and identify themselves to the hospital staff and the hospital chaplain and work with both according to common ethical courtesies.

Counsel officers and families with personal problems, marriage and family, stress, etc..

Be on call and on the street during any major demonstration in the city or any public function requiring the presence of a large number of Law Enforcement personnel.

https://montgomery.crimewatchpa.com/upperprovidencepd/6408/post/new-police-chaplain-program

 

The Chaplain can be a spiritual counselor, but the job requirements are whatever NanoTrasen makes it to be. If NanoTrasen adds conflict resolution to their duties, then that is what happens. It is very easy to make it so, and to make sense.

https://www.amanet.org/articles/the-five-steps-to-conflict-resolution/

 

[Carver]

If the HoP were to inherit the duties/role of IAA, he'd need to have an obligatory loyalty implant. I would not trust a majority of current HoP players/characters (moreso the latter) to sufficiently perform the present duties of IAAs, especially without such an implant.

I've also never seen any issue with IAAs performing their role, it's not antagonistic to be the force that grounds the crew into their oft-ignored world of regulations and directives. The role has a purpose, and an important one, albeit niche.

[ben10083]

9 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

The only means by which the IAA role would continue to be the role by which you see it being used, in a social and pro-crew advocating fashion, while undermining the negative aspects of obstructionism and antagonism, is to replace the job itself with something that inherently has a pro-crew agenda. This could be a union representative, an OSHA inspector, or some other aspect.

The negatives of the role are outweighed by the positives that I have outlined.

 

IAA is your company liason, they are the representative of central command, and work to help make sure procedures are followed and to resolve intra-crew conflicts.

10 hours ago, Crozarius said:

Anyway TL;DR IAA only exists to harass players with pedantic nofun bullshit that often makes no narrative sense.

1. Yes,  there can be bad IAAs, but a few bad eggs does not mean they are all bad.

2. They make alot of sense to exist, they are the closest you have to a company legal team, making sure people are not ignoring policies and regulations (which you will need to do for them to be on your case anyways.)