Merge IAA Into Command So The IAA Job Is Gone

[Kaed]

2 hours ago, Carver said:

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.

The duties can be easily dispersed to others without needing a dedicated, barely played role for it, as people have repeatedly said this whole thread.  The loyalty implant is also a joke - its primary purpose for existing is so people can point to their implant and claim they are working in Nanotrasen's interests, even if they are just doing what they want under a thin veneer of 'enforcing regulations'.  Loyalty implants are so vague and indistinct ("You are loyal to nanotrasen") that people can insert whatever meaning they want into having one and use its existence as a cudgel to justify their terrible behavior.

The reason why many IAAs have time to do this is because their job responsibilities are also a joke.  It's so niche and underused that they have to figure out things to do the whole round, and since they are supposed to be a corporate liaison for regulations and disputes, generally that means either walking around finding people to heckle over regulations or finding people to talk to and doing even less fuck all than even an assistant every round.

Almost every role on the station has a clear idea of stuff they should be doing in the round from the beginning.  Not just vague responsibilities that aren't relevant except in rare situations - miners mine, engineers set up the engine, chefs start cooking, etc. The only other role that's comparable to IAA's in general lack of 'shit to do' direction every round is the chaplain, but chaplains generally aren't empowered with a sense of entitled authority and a magical implant, and usually just start on religious service roleplay anyway. Bureaucracy not being a religion, the poor IAAs have very little idea of what actually to be DOING in their free time.  Even if they aren't going around heckling people are hooking up with metabuddies for some chair rp, I've seen desperate IAAs creep into the bridge to make announcements in the hopes of reminding people they exist so they maybe come over and interact with them in their office (they don't).

So if you want to keep the IAA job around, you're going to have to do more than flip your hands in the air and handwave off bad IAA behavior as 'just bad players'. You need to give them actual, concrete tasks and duties to perform every round, instead of hypothetical responsibilities that float in the air unused 90% of the time.  They don't have to be complicated, but they have to be something for them to DO, so they aren't encouraged to just wander off and 'make their own fun' in terrible, obstructive ways by finding people to hassle. Inspections, paperwork to file, records to go over, command staff interviews to make, etc etc. SOMETHING.  They don't need more 'teeth' they need something to sink their teeth into so they don't turn into wandering regulation vagrants out of boredom.

If you can't bring yourself to support IAA duties, and feel that infringes on their freedom, then maybe you're better off letting the role go and playing someone else who can wander around and roleplay with people all round, like a visitor.  You don't need the backing of Nanotrasen to go roleplay with people all round.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Kaed

[Munks]

IAA is a role primarily vested in interacting and reacting to other players. The same goes for chaplain/counselor, psychiatrist, detective, reporter (to an extent), and librarian. These jobs have very little in the way of mechanically structured gameplay, they are not like engineers and miners where you can just decide they're too boring and code them more gameplay events to respond to. It's a problem with server culture that people ignore them in favor of aggressively pursuing IRs or jumping the chain of command to PDA the captain if something is wrong. You can't just handwave the argument of "people's experiences with bad IAA play stem from incompetence" either, when you follow it up with "people keep getting bored and decide to (illegally) meddle with others". That is 100 percent a problem with players, and server culture for not slapping these agents down, as mechanisms exist to do. If more players have to be lured in with shiny things then they don't belong in the role. Once again, someone needs to start whitelist stripping shitty command players, because the kind of person that goes IAA and starts acting like a secret agent/special security and pissing everyone off is the same kind of person that will overstep their bounds in other Head roles which IAA needs to exist to counter; once this is actually being enforced the issues with sometimes having an obnoxious IA will disappear.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Munks

[Carver]

1 hour ago, Kaed said:

So if you want to keep the IAA job around, you're going to have to do more than flip your hands in the air and handwave off bad IAA behavior as 'just bad players'.

Amusingly, I wouldn't consider a lot of it to be 'bad IAA behaviour' in the first place. More that people just don't like being told to straighten their act ICly. 

1 hour ago, Kaed said:

Loyalty implants are so vague and indistinct ("You are loyal to nanotrasen") that people can insert whatever meaning they want into having one and use its existence as a cudgel to justify their terrible behavior.

They're solely to limit the character's behaviour so as to react how one reasonably would (and prevent easy antag conversion). An IC-esque way of enforcing OOC guidelines for the roles that are implanted. It means if someone is being a shit despite having one, you can adminhelp their ass. Of course, if someone's not actually being a shit (as per my previous response in this post), it's not exactly going to limit them.

[PoZe]

HOP is not loyalty Implanted like IAA does. So he would not always represent company's best interest unless we loyalty Implanted HOP too. At that point we only have CMO, RD and CE not implanted which is half of head of staff.

[Asheram]

Or since the HoP seems unfit to do it, throw it upwards to the Captain.  Would give them something to do when on quiet rounds.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

7 hours ago, PoZe said:

HOP is not loyalty Implanted like IAA does. So he would not always represent company's best interest

How? What dangers are there? The implant is to prevent antag conversion.

Can you describe two scenarios that you fear coming to pass that the lack of an implant will allow that whitelist standards cant handle?

Edited April 30, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[ben10083]

17 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

How? What dangers are there? The implant is to prevent antag conversion.

Can you describe two scenarios that you fear coming to pass that the lack of an implant will allow that whitelist standards cant handle?

Implant does two things

1. Prevent bias and other emotional factors from negatively affecting how they do their job 

2. Ensure they work for the company's best interest (hence no antag conversion)

Scenarios

1. Similar to Captain and HoS, antagging as a IAA who could injunction and send requested actions for CCIA to review to make permanent is too powerful for antags.

2. Play as a biased character that always tries to harrass and get xenos in trouble, also asks CCIA for actions to be conducted.