Fluffyghost - Command Whitelist Application

[Fluffy]

BYOND key: Fluffyghost

Character names:

  

 

How long have you been playing on Aurora?: 2/3 months give or take, near every day in this timeframe

Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they?
I got a complain on my character when I first joined the server (I never played HRP before so I thought to make a funny character, that was corrected soon after thanks to ReadThisNamePlz instead of in-round as at that time no staff was available to respond to the ahelp of the other two players I was playing with, which I currently enjoy to play with and have fun to this day when I play the (revised) Ben, and it seems they likewise enjoy having my character around, or so I think) and a warning that's being sorted out because I fell asleep while playing thus looking like AFK.

 

Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each.

What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?:
The main OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is to ensure everyone in the department, and that interact with members of said department, gets treated fairly and according to the rules, in a believable way and if possible that they can get a fair share of fun out of it, that includes curbing down do-all know-all personnel, attempts to metagame, to mantain situation and characters believability while ensuring the department try to remain functional and perform its services, that the tasks are fairly distributed to all the people in the department and are therefore engaged with the game while retaining a healthy amount of leeway on personal choices.

You can also be tasked to teach and show to new players (or otherwise interns) how to do things inside said department, including etiquette and mechanically, or assign someone as a mentor to them to distribute the tasks, depending on how well stocked your department is.

OOC ultimately, I believe your first task is to mantain an healthy balance of the fun of all players in your department and be the first line of defense against rules violation.

 

What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?:
Whitelisted (heads whitelist) players are expected to act responsibly with the power they hold, striking a balance between allowing anarchy to spread in the department and a 1984 absolute survelliance and order dystopia, you'll be referred to and are expected to uphold and help uphold the rules and regulations (and definitely not break them, at least the OOC ones, and the IC ones only with a good, RP believable and explainable reason), you are also responsible in try to help player retention (including via the means indicated above) and have your good share of knowledge, work with the staff and be the first line of defense against bad behaviours.

They also help to shape the events and atmosphere through their decisions, which must be believable.

Finally, granting all of what already said, you are responsible to get the things in your department done, usually indirectly: a department that do not function affect the whole round for everyone, it's your job to avoid it happening via IC or (hopefully rarely via) OOC means as appropriate for the situation.

I strive to uphold them through listening to all feedbacks and suggestions, working things out with other players or staff, double-doubting and trying to think well ahead of my decisions and actions.

 

Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau ceti and how it affected your character and their career?
Tau ceti is a boiling pot of anti-nt sentiment that continues to grow, one of my character is from the sol system and would like to see the system reunited with sol one day, but that applies for pretty much every system so except for the physical proximity it isn't all that much different to him than any other system or planet, though he would like to think that if tau ceti leaves the corporation it would open a door to negotiations to reunite with sol one day.

 

What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted?
Head of Security, eventually overtime to expand in other departments or even captain one day, in the future.

 

Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles?
I have read the wiki page for the HoS, the CMO and the Captain.

 

Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.:
Fyodor Koesvyin - HoS (to be created, i thought to upgrade Trov but I made him more of a "on the field" kind of character for a "behind the desk" work, that'd denaturate his persona, so making a new one)

 

Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action?
Indeed if I fuck up or ruin other people's fun, nuke me out of the whitelist, the server population's overall fun is more important than any whitelist.

 

Have you linked your byond account to the forums? 
Yes.

 

Extra notes:
If anyone would like to give me player feedbacks during the application or later, please do as it helps me and everyone by reflection, whether I get accepted or not.

[Carver]

I'll bite. Fluffyghost has shown a marked ability to take feedback positively and has improved drastically since he began playing on Aurora. Even if he doesn't pass a trial, I feel he'll do well at taking the lessons from it to heart.

+1

[Sputnik5927]

I know Ben Donitz and Trovensky Heapatus and although you had a rocky start, I can see that you've improved a lot. Believe me when I say that I had my own share of problems when I first started out. Anyway, you've dealt with it well and improved your roleplaying ability and lore knowledge. I have some concerns about seeing you in a command role because of your low playtime and only recent improvements, but I'd be willing to give you a shot. Have a trial, see how it goes. Sure you can manage if you try.

+1 from Sputnik.

[Kelnor]

As one of the parties involved in the original complaint that's mentioned in the app, I can say that the basis of that complaint is no longer a problem or relevant. I'm not a secmain so I can't speak to his HoSyness but he's a good RPer and I enjoy having him around medbay on Donitz. I can't speak to his ability to lead but that's what the trial is for and I would like to see that happen at least. Letting him get some experience in command seems prudent.

+1 for the trial.

[Desven]

I'll have to -1 this one. I suggested you as interim HOS early on on a chaotic round. It wasn't particularly deadly, just a lot of antags that needed to be wrangled. I thought it was a great opportunity for you to showcase some leadership. Instead, Trovensky was reluclant to take the big seat. When he finally did, his presence was at minimum—it was basically like if we had no security, despite a full department. I know, there were two very active cadets and other really new officer characters, but I still think a lot of things spiraled out of control because of poor presence in sec.

My advice is to play more, learn more at how each HOS acts during hard times, and improve from there.

[Fluffy]

I'm gonna address this suggestion from different points:

 

20 minutes ago, Desven said:

Trovensky was reluclant to take the big seat.

Yes, Trovensky (the character) was reluctant to take the big seat, as it would be expected from someone who is straight out from the military academy, spent years taking and executing orders from a drill sergeant and barely a foot into an active, real field would, one of our rules is to mantain character at all times, which is what I did, I explicitly hinted that if it was an order I would have executed it, but it wasn't, so I didn't as my character would not have believably done so, besides sending some suggestions.

 

21 minutes ago, Desven said:

When he finally did, his presence was at minimum—it was basically like if we had no security, despite a full department.

I did not take any leadership besides some hinting, he was assigned to warden, which explicitly states in our wiki and in the station procedures to have no position of command over the rest of the department, with the only order being to have the bomber taken care of and the breachers arrested, which was relayed along with a minimal necessary force applied suggestion to.

On top of that, I had as an officer to go and try to capture the antags myself and try to negotiate with the bomber, which leaves little time to follow the whole situation around.

On top of that, while doing so, I had two people (one of which was a cadet, the other an officer) essentially telling me to suck it while standing next to two bombs, one of the cadet came in and, while the negotiation was undergoing with the bomber, out of nowhere grabbed him and it went down from there with the welder firebombs explosions.

Just to get the officers/cadets to finally come to armory and get equipments it took a good 10 minutes and multiple radio calls.

 

31 minutes ago, Desven said:

I still think a lot of things spiraled out of control

We had zero losses, except the one antag that the same cadet (i think) as above mowed down with an SMG (thinking it was loaded with rubber bullets), a small fire from the firebomb explosion and that's pretty much it, we let the antags play some gimmicks, but it never went out of control, for some reason the alert was rised to red but that's all really.

As I indicated in the application, one point of a head is to balance things out for everyone, antags included, sending out the whole department with a "shoot on sight, they're breathing our air" would not have been anywhere as fun, nor warranted given the IC circumstances (nor the corporate regulations), nor give many of the departments much to do for anywhere as long.

Many people in OOC appreciated the round and had fun from it.

 

38 minutes ago, Desven said:

because of poor presence in sec

We had for most of the round two officers and two cadets I believe, one of which got stabbed and had to be under surgery for a lenghty period of time, and an equal number of antags that were playing as mental patients that escaped to our ship, which were mostly non violent, which means that each officer had to apply the station procedure for arrest for each of them with a backup cadet or officer in case they turned violent, possibly (god forbid, apparently?) RPing with them besides "you, brig, now", plus the RP of trying to handle someone that is mentally unwell, and another two to three antags that were doing another gimmick, essentially putting us in a 3:1 situation for an extended period of time, not including guarding the brig (since we had power issues and the doors could open any moment from the lack of power) and processing the prisoners.

I'm not sure where you got the impression of a poor sec presence but we were out to handle them since they appear for basically the entire round start to finish, with the only order being to detain the welder bomber and my character having no authority to really order anything as an interim warden, so I don't feel like this criticism is fair nor the situation reflective of my ability, with an appropriate character or Trovensky in an appropriate situation, to command, and I'd be pleased to justify my choices, hopefully to satisfaction, or demonstrate what I believe to be able to do.

[Desven]

2 hours ago, Fluffy said:

I'm gonna address this suggestion from different points:

 

Yes, Trovensky (the character) was reluctant to take the big seat, as it would be expected from someone who is straight out from the military academy, spent years taking and executing orders from a drill sergeant and barely a foot into an active, real field would, one of our rules is to mantain character at all times, which is what I did, I explicitly hinted that if it was an order I would have executed it, but it wasn't, so I didn't as my character would not have believably done so, besides sending some suggestions.

 

I did not take any leadership besides some hinting, he was assigned to warden, which explicitly states in our wiki and in the station procedures to have no position of command over the rest of the department, with the only order being to have the bomber taken care of and the breachers arrested, which was relayed along with a minimal necessary force applied suggestion to.

On top of that, I had as an officer to go and try to capture the antags myself and try to negotiate with the bomber, which leaves little time to follow the whole situation around.

On top of that, while doing so, I had two people (one of which was a cadet, the other an officer) essentially telling me to suck it while standing next to two bombs, one of the cadet came in and, while the negotiation was undergoing with the bomber, out of nowhere grabbed him and it went down from there with the welder firebombs explosions.

Just to get the officers/cadets to finally come to armory and get equipments it took a good 10 minutes and multiple radio calls.

 

We had zero losses, except the one antag that the same cadet (i think) as above mowed down with an SMG (thinking it was loaded with rubber bullets), a small fire from the firebomb explosion and that's pretty much it, we let the antags play some gimmicks, but it never went out of control, for some reason the alert was rised to red but that's all really.

As I indicated in the application, one point of a head is to balance things out for everyone, antags included, sending out the whole department with a "shoot on sight, they're breathing our air" would not have been anywhere as fun, nor warranted given the IC circumstances (nor the corporate regulations), nor give many of the departments much to do for anywhere as long.

Many people in OOC appreciated the round and had fun from it.

 

We had for most of the round two officers and two cadets I believe, one of which got stabbed and had to be under surgery for a lenghty period of time, and an equal number of antags that were playing as mental patients that escaped to our ship, which were mostly non violent, which means that each officer had to apply the station procedure for arrest for each of them with a backup cadet or officer in case they turned violent, possibly (god forbid, apparently?) RPing with them besides "you, brig, now", plus the RP of trying to handle someone that is mentally unwell, and another two to three antags that were doing another gimmick, essentially putting us in a 3:1 situation for an extended period of time, not including guarding the brig (since we had power issues and the doors could open any moment from the lack of power) and processing the prisoners.

I'm not sure where you got the impression of a poor sec presence but we were out to handle them since they appear for basically the entire round start to finish, with the only order being to detain the welder bomber and my character having no authority to really order anything as an interim warden, so I don't feel like this criticism is fair nor the situation reflective of my ability, with an appropriate character or Trovensky in an appropriate situation, to command, and I'd be pleased to justify my choices, hopefully to satisfaction, or demonstrate what I believe to be able to do.

You were elevated for Command eventually, as far as I remember. At least, that's what the OM said before they left.

I agree with not arresting them on point. In fact, I called out the RD for trying to elevate the situation when the troupe first appeared. Command sometimes requires suspension of disbelief to keep the round going.

I myself praised the gimmick, I think it was fun and there were a lot of antags. But I reiterate the poor presence of security. For the most part they were all together inside the department while there were other things to attend (like the anomaly). I know we didn't have any losses because I was playing CMO (turned into acting Captain), but I reiterate that security presence was really lacking.

I was mainly displeased with some of them, which I know is out of your hands, but I wish you took control of the department better when given a promotion. Sometimes Command also requires a lot of spouting directions at the radio too.

[Fluffy]

5 hours ago, Desven said:

You were elevated for Command eventually, as far as I remember. At least, that's what the OM said before they left.

No, I was never elevated command, I remained a warden for the whole time, otherwise I would have retrieved a HoS headset to have access to the command channel and coordinate with the other departments to try to prepare a welder bomb containment as quickly as possible

The OM updated the ID to warden, stating something on the line of "this will suffice" no less, and ordered to arm the team and arrest/contain the welder bomber, that's pretty much it

 

5 hours ago, Desven said:

For the most part they were all together inside the department while there were other things to attend (like the anomaly).

This happened only in one instance that I know of, and it was because there was the welder bomber along with two bombs in our lobby, with me and another officer trying to reason with the bomber, eventually they proceeded to break the RP and pass through the bombed area to roll back out, but it neverthless was a minority of the time and any status update that i asked on the channel indicated everyone who replied to be outside doing something, in fact part of the time they were inside was because they were trying to recharge the laser weapons (and we had little to no power)

 

5 hours ago, Desven said:

I was mainly displeased with some of them, which I know is out of your hands, but I wish you took control of the department better when given a promotion.

That's a fair point and something I'd have liked to do, but I reiterate that Trovensky was not promoted to any position to take control of the department and as I indicated above (on top of him being a sucker for procedures and correct execution of orders) he did not outstepped his orders or unlawfully assumed a position of commanding other personnel that he was not ordered or assigned, and therefore not entitled, to hold

Edited December 7, 2022 by Fluffy

[limette]

As the officer that 'broke RP' (because standing and talking to a bomber for an hour while people yell about demons invading the station doesn't work well enough, and we'd seemingly talked her down as she was complying with demands, but I digress,)  I have to say that I told Heapatus to suck it because by this point in the round I had no idea what was going on. If I hadn't personally witnessed every arrest, I wouldn't have known who was in custody and who was not; at the end of the round, I recall one of them being released and the entirety of security being confused as to where they went, because I suppose they weren't informed that the ninjas would be taking one of our prisoners for a walk. There's other examples, but this is the one I most directly witnessed nearly the entire department confused by. There was essentially no information relayed to us beyond orders to be gentle with them. I'm not strongly opposed to this application, because it was a chaotic round (merc + ninja always is) but I do feel things could have been far clearer for everyone.

[Fluffy]

1 hour ago, limette said:

As the officer that 'broke RP' (because standing and talking to a bomber for an hour while people yell about demons invading the station doesn't work well enough, and we'd seemingly talked her down as she was complying with demands, but I digress,)  I have to say that I told Heapatus to suck it because by this point in the round I had no idea what was going on. If I hadn't personally witnessed every arrest, I wouldn't have known who was in custody and who was not; at the end of the round, I recall one of them being released and the entirety of security being confused as to where they went, because I suppose they weren't informed that the ninjas would be taking one of our prisoners for a walk. There's other examples, but this is the one I most directly witnessed nearly the entire department confused by. There was essentially no information relayed to us beyond orders to be gentle with them. I'm not strongly opposed to this application, because it was a chaotic round (merc + ninja always is) but I do feel things could have been far clearer for everyone.

I cannot agree more, there was an absolute chaos and it was never clear what neither Trovensky nor security as a whole was expected to do, as I already indicated if an appropriate elevation to interim HoS was issued he would have had a far firmer grasp on the situation; acting as a sorta information relayer and sending suggestions while also being the warden to process and mantain the prisoners and also an officer to go out and try to negotiate/arrest them too was just too many things to do all at once to perform each of them to a high degree of proficiency, the HoS barring exceptional circumstances is not supposed to go out and perform arrests itself, manage the brig and the likes, nor is the warden usually supposed to leave the brig, but I don't want to repeat what I already outlined in the other two comments, the extremely short version is that it was never clear I was supposed to command the security department and without an order my character had no character-RP reason to, so I didn't.

[Sparky_hotdog]

I thought I would put my thoughts, good and bad, on how Heapatus handled that round from my (Erina Shen's) perspective, given I do think it is somewhat decent comparison point.

I would start of by saying I don't think anyone in security, myself included, handled the situation perfectly. It was very chaotic, and we lacked leadership. We made mistakes, and that isn't Fluffy's fault.

However, while there is nothing that says the Warden has direct authority over the rest of security outside of the brig (A point which is often forgotten, so thank you for remembering), there is also nothing that says in the absence of a HoS, nobody can step up to coordinate. And given that a second warden arrived (Because promotions mess with the slot system), it was fairly clear in my eyes that ISD were looking to Heapatus for guidance, given he was the one that had received some form of interim promotion, which the rest of command had suggested be HoS (I don't entirely know why the OM gave you warden instead, but that's not really relevant).

That aside, there are certain things that needed communicated, regardless of whether you were an officer, warden or HoS. Who is in the brig, If you are letting people out of the brig, If you are having research try to help them with a serum. These all were things that weren't forwarded. I don't know if all of these were necessarily your call, but the general lack of communication beyond the regular check-ins (Another thing I did like), would probably be the biggest thing for improvement.

[MattAtlas]

This application is denied.

I think you need more in game experience before you can proceed to being a head of security -- more importantly, I think you need to play security characters that aren't Trovensky and are different from him in personality. Due to the way your character is (which is, he is almost a robot in most matters), it's hard for anyone to really gain any insight into how you actually think about security matters.