Limiting Contractors

[Susan]

NanoTrasen is not a government entity and the comparison is incorrect. Equally, those restrictions already exist for aliens the Company does not want elevated to certain positions: Zhan cannot be heads, only M'sai and Njarir. NanoTrasen and humanity has a cordial and beneficial relationship with Jargon, NanoTrasen invested significantly in the PRA and the war on Adhomai, including technology, the NKA doesn't get liasons or anyone really capable of doing anything, and Vaurca defended Mendell from a Liidra invasion if my memory serves.

Find+Replace doesn't work because the circumstances are different. 

[Itanimulli]

1 minute ago, Susan said:

NanoTrasen is not a government entity and the comparison is incorrect. Equally, those restrictions already exist for aliens the Company does not want elevated to certain positions: Zhan cannot be heads, only M'sai and Njarir. NanoTrasen and humanity has a cordial and beneficial relationship with Jargon, NanoTrasen invested significantly in the PRA and the war on Adhomai, including technology, the NKA doesn't get liasons or anyone really capable of doing anything, and Vaurca defended Mendell from a Liidra invasion if my memory serves.

Find+Replace doesn't work because the circumstances are different. 

This does not have anything to do with limiting numbers, as you propose.

[Susan]

It has to do with addressing Schwann's strawman, which requires a response. Aliens are whitelisted and restricted in harsher ways than numbers; contractors will not be whitelisted, they cannot get paperwork like the Avowal form the Vaurca use because they're already sent to the station - as such they need to be limited in a less intrusive, simpler way.

[Itanimulli]

2 minutes ago, Susan said:

It has to do with addressing Schwann's strawman, which requires a response. Aliens are whitelisted and restricted in harsher ways than numbers; contractors will not be whitelisted, they cannot get paperwork like the Avowal form the Vaurca use because they're already sent to the station - as such they need to be limited in a less intrusive, simpler way.

I don't care how you plan to do it, I don't see a reason for you to do it besides personal taste and interpretation. I don't even play contractors, but this seems to be stepping on way too many toes for something so utterly mundane.

Edited September 27, 2019 by Itanimulli

[Wigglesworth Jones]

I am not a fan of this idea, as I do not support limiting people because someone wants more generic white bread NT goons. Contractors, at the moment, feel more distinct from the baseline of NT. Additionally, with the new uniforms, it makes sense that more people are interested in playing contractors. From my POV, this is just a "it's popular so it sucks" backlash.

[SatinsPristOTD]

Actually, large corporations would rather hire out of house than hire in house.

For example: My spouse works for a company that is close to becoming the largest supplier of childrens clothing. They run their warehouses on an 80-20 ration, 80% of the workers are "temp" workers or "other company workers". There's a lot of reasons for this, from insurance to pay rate, to liability concerns.

It would save NT quite a lot of money in insurance/liability costs if they out-sourced their employees.

So no, this change makes no sense at all.

As someone who has recently started playing a contracted employee (a Hep Engineer, which aren't as common as Necro Sec but still...), the RP's pretty fun to do. You can easily say "Oh well I'm with Hep here to help the Aurora with X. It's suppose to be a temporary placement." and it's up to you to write out the basis for your contract. Perhaps you get paid more but your insurance is shit. Maybe insurance is great but the pay is... ehhhh.

Maybe you find out you like Aurora and have to go through the NT liason process of being hired on.

They add a lot of RP.

Edited September 27, 2019 by SatinsPristOTD
Wrote the wrong percentage

[Brutishcrab51]

NanoTrasen Security is by-far not the best if we're going by precedence.

 

Necropolis, EPMC, Idris? They are the best. Their concerns are the company's concerns because NanoTrasen is paying them. They aren't all super big top secret spies just because they come from another corporation, they're hired because they are better than what NanoTrasen already has.

Beyond that, players like playing contractors. Given it makes sense, and given people OOCly like it, why do you want to ban it? Why would it be reasonable to ban it, or limit it?

It wouldn't be be, really.

-Brought to you by a Necromain.

[Skull132]

Problem.

There's no sane way to do this in code. Faction is not considered during job selection (by the game controller). While this could theoretically be done, this would lead into two other issues. First, it'd cause a heck of a lot more misfires and bad round setups, because a considerable chunk of people would be rejected due to the contractor limit being reached.

Now. With that in mind, I have often stated that most things are ultimately possible. And this is true here. But this leads into problem two. Whatever Next Big Meme the staff team is currently working on, it will utilize factions more than the current setup does. Specifically, we're likely going to stray away from NT being the default faction (for all departments, anyways). So whatever effort we would be putting into this now, would effectively be squandered there.

[Carver]

I'm against limiting contractors, I'd rather do the opposite and further encourage them for the variety they bring amongst the station. Let NT outsource more, it only creates more interesting dynamics ICly.

The other slight issue is most (sane and otherwise lazy code-wise) ways you could implement this would cause problem with something I've been suggesting for a while, allowing non-NT factions to play the visitor role. Example being that 'John HephWorker' coming on as a Visitor for some random event/to see friends/whatever (or as a role similarly useless but otherwise already available for contractors) would lock out 'Joe NecScientist' in another department entirely arbitrarily. The only way around this, which would cause immense annoyance to whoever would have to add it, would be having contractor-specific variants of roles (Ex: Two 'Contractor Security Officer' slots, to which you'd have to kill 2 existing Officer slots but the remaining 'standard' slots would be unavailable to contractors).