[Feedback] Raising minimum age for engineering apprentices

[limette]

An admin commented saying this needed a feedback thread, so I guess I'm posting one. I'm just going to drop my opinions here and allow anyone who has counterpoints to counter them.

My thoughts on this are very simple. No other learner role allows you to have such a massive gap in age from the actual role except Lab Assistant (which I plan to address at a later point.) See the pharmacy interns, surgeon resident, warden cadet, investigator cadet, etcetera. The values in this PR are taken precisely from the warden/investigator cadet values due to their full roles also being an age of 25. So, this is a step for consistency.

This is a learner role. This is not here so that you can play an engineer who is just as competent as the others but is 7 years younger than the required age, just as medical intern isn't there so you can play an 18 year old surgeon for the next 12 years. I think that idea is very clearly not intended, and I don't see how this one is either. Plenty of staff have backed this up whenever I've seen the topic come up, saying they would bwoink people who sit on the role despite full competency for extended periods of time.

There is no reason in my eyes to take a slot from new players that are interested in learning the role at all, particularly not for the sake of your character's arc of being a 7-years-younger engineer for the next 7 years, I would say taking learner roles negatively impacts the new player experience in a material way when they are prevented from... well, learning the roles for the previous.

The argument I've seen so far is mainly "well, it's been this way for a long time" - nobody has consciously really touched this role's values since 2014. Correct. The other argument has been "this will impact established characters." Yes, that is the point. Established characters shouldn't be in these roles forever.

PR: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17184

Edited August 30, 2023 by limette
removing redundancy + less bitterness (sorry!)

[Dreamix]

I agree with this PR, and I do think this is a bugfix / fixing an unintentional oversight.

 

Learner role age requirements should be consistent. It should be either that:

- All learner roles should have low required age like engi apprentice. I don't like this, cause they're learner roles - intended for new players, and not for established characters to sit on the role for months or years.

- Or all learner roles should be same age requirement as the actual non-learner role (or one year lower maybe, like warden needs to be 25 or older, but warden cadet can be 24). Engineering apprentice is the outlier here. Lab assistant IMO is fine as it is, cause I don't think it's really a learner role, but that's a bit off-topic here.

[Gem]

i'm fine with this. 24 years old is a much more reasonable difference to 25 than 18. you wouldn't play your apprentice for 7 years, even if you could.

[wheasymold552]

My only question is what do you intend to happen to the already established characters in the role that will be booted out? What's the plan with all of them because I know I'm not the only one that's had a character on apprentice for a decent chunk of time.

[JeffMomentRed]

From the PR, it cites characters who have been developed either from, or have developed onto a really old "bug" that use the slot for IC-purposes, as "unfair to new players that may need to actually actively learn the role."

It is absolutely necessary to foster new players into these roles the best we can. I understand clogging up a role and it says in the wiki "Established characters shouldn't jump into this position outside of very unique circumstances like CCIA actions or other staff approval." to back-up that the learner role is more of a mechanically related role than it is for roleplay, not to discard that you should indeed roleplay while playing a learner role, of course.

However, yes this does impact existing characters, could there be a supplementary role that has an age minimum of 18? Maybe even one of those "alternate title" roles? Something for young characters to roleplay as an engineer, or any department for that matter, working on their degree or otherwise, while keeping the mechanical learning roles? At my factory there are quite a few titles for engineers and maintenance technicians, starting with apprenticeships, to the juniors, to the average engineer or maintenance tech, then seniors, then yaddayaddayadda, I'm sure you've seen it before. Because to prop up one side, albeit as valid as getting new players trained is, it is unfair to people who want to roleplay, or are currently roleplaying as a young learning character, to not have access to any roles aboard if the age limit on all these intern jobs is to indeed be moved up to 25. I agree that an 18 year old surgeon intern or engineering intern should not be acting as a full blown surgeon or engineer, but that comes down to how they behave ingame and how they roleplay their character and can be handled on a case to case basis. This PR might help new players, it will definitely drive completely fine players away as well.

 

Tl;dr I can see all the positives to this, I also think it hurts just as much as it fixes, and I think it can be remedied in a way which can help both sides and end in a win-win rather than a win-lose. But, I know there were also things written specifically in to prevent the issues that have been brought up from this PR.

Anyways, thats all I got, I appreciate the thread, the PR, and the people who work really hard on development regardless. 

[wheasymold552]

1 hour ago, Gem said:

i'm fine with this. 24 years old is a much more reasonable difference to 25 than 18. you wouldn't play your apprentice for 7 years, even if you could.

The wiki does state that an engineer needs either a degree OR 7 years experience. I quite honestly don't see why it's so unreasonable in an ic context to work your 7 years of experience in the department as an apprentice. Like red said above, I definitely think that an intermediate role such as junior engineer, meant to played by say, 20 to 24 year olds while apprentice remains at 18-19 would make the most sense and punish the fewest amount of players. When my character became an apprentice through ic means I asked on ahelp and yonnimer gave me this information. I'm totally willing to accept the possibility that he just didn't quite understand the rules, same as I don't but this is what he told me and I think this holds some weight.

[limette]

3 hours ago, wheasymold552 said:

My only question is what do you intend to happen to the already established characters in the role that will be booted out? What's the plan with all of them because I know I'm not the only one that's had a character on apprentice for a decent chunk of time.

I would expect them to retcon their age up or move to another department, much like Surgical Interns impacted by the recent change to Resident Surgeon and the accompanying age change to a minimum of 28. I've also heard of staff requiring ages retconned to avoid people sitting on learner roles permanently, so this wouldn't be without precedent to my knowledge - though I have no evidence of such and it's just hearsay and could be entirely wrong.

2 hours ago, wheasymold552 said:

 I quite honestly don't see why it's so unreasonable in an ic context to work your 7 years of experience in the department as an apprentice.

I don't see why it would be either under the current configuration, but I also don't think the intent of the role was to be played for literally seven years straight OOCly, which is what I'm trying to address.

[wheasymold552]

59 minutes ago, limette said:

I don't see why it would be either under the current configuration, but I also don't think the intent of the role was to be played for literally seven years straight OOCly, which is what I'm trying to address.

This is why I personally would LOVE to see an additional role added, instead of shunning out a bunch of already developed characters. There's nothing hrp about retconning a bunch of characters ages up multiple years just because. A junior engineer role, something between engineer and apprentice would make so much more sense. I mean hell, it could even be a alt title role on the actual engineer job, I'm under the impression that you can make custom age requirements on an alt title basis. something like a junior engineer is a real thing in real life and it would make so much sense in a place like the horizon as well. It's a great place for intermediate engineering players like myself to kinda keep my character. I'm thinking like, apprentice average age like 18-20, junior engineer average age 20-25 and then full on engineer 25+. I don't really see any drawback to solving the same problem and this way and it doesn't push out a bunch of already established characters. It could be a win win for both the new players that want to learn and the people trying to roleplay a fresh engineer or something like my character where they're still in the midst of their education and experience gathering. Just raising the age of the apprentice role in my personal opinion doesn't solve the issue well enough to be worth shunning out a bunch of players from the department or even potentially the server.

[Carver]

4 hours ago, wheasymold552 said:

This is why I personally would LOVE to see an additional role added, instead of shunning out a bunch of already developed characters. There's nothing hrp about retconning a bunch of characters ages up multiple years just because. A junior engineer role, something between engineer and apprentice would make so much more sense. I mean hell, it could even be a alt title role on the actual engineer job, I'm under the impression that you can make custom age requirements on an alt title basis. something like a junior engineer is a real thing in real life and it would make so much sense in a place like the horizon as well. It's a great place for intermediate engineering players like myself to kinda keep my character. I'm thinking like, apprentice average age like 18-20, junior engineer average age 20-25 and then full on engineer 25+. I don't really see any drawback to solving the same problem and this way and it doesn't push out a bunch of already established characters. It could be a win win for both the new players that want to learn and the people trying to roleplay a fresh engineer or something like my character where they're still in the midst of their education and experience gathering. Just raising the age of the apprentice role in my personal opinion doesn't solve the issue well enough to be worth shunning out a bunch of players from the department or even potentially the server.

If an additional role was added, it'd make more sense to be a separate role rather than an alt-title. Mostly as I'm uncertain if alt-titles can be set to have substantially lower pay, and in this case potentially lower access.

[niennab]

I am in support of the PR. People should not be using a loophole to play young characters. Let alone young characters, in permanent apprentice roles, who likely know engineering inside and out. If a character is well developed, then there should be no issue being 24 instead of 18. A 6 year difference of a retcon won't make or break a character, especailly when we're talking about such young ages.

Edited August 31, 2023 by niennab

[Sycmos]

Many of the points I would have made were already stated above, so instead I will pose the following: considering the topic and the restrictions in place in other departments I feel that not only should we increase the apprentice age limit to 24, but we should also raise the overall age limit for characters on the Horizon to at least 21.

As it stands, a stark majority of characters portrayed in our community are in their mid to late twenties, with most older staff and command in their thirties and forties. In consideration of our setting, most players choose to portray characters in these age brackets to reason having some semblance of work or life experience in order to better relate to their peers in the workplace, and in turn open up doors to roleplay. Playing a teenager severely hamstrings the potential for a character to have these experiences (or the maturity to understand them) and in turn harms the potential for mutually beneficial interactions. Having the potential for teenagers to be on board the Horizon also puts characters who are older into a position of responsibility when interacting with them, putting an unnecessary burden on the player to curtail character behavior by virtue of being proxy to someone who is significantly younger, less mature, and generally not considered a true adult. Power dynamics in regards to age are not something that players should have hanging over their heads when they choose to interact with other characters in a work space, and allowing incredibly young characters to be present among a multitude of working adults opens the door to uncomfortable situations. As Nienna mentioned, the difference between eighteen and twenty-four in regards to personal development and maturity is already small, so twenty-one is a lenient requirement. It still allows room for growth, but demands at least a semblance of life experience to which a character can make limited decisions about their personality and future. 

The SCCV Horizon is considered the flagship of the SCC and is tasked with a rather serious objective. I do not feel it benefits players nor our narrative to keep the age limit we've maintained since the mid-2010s. It should be updated to reflect our setting, and the expectations of heavy roleplay.

[wheasymold552]

One last question, if the requirements posted on wiki are a bachelors OR 7 years experience, why is the age requirement for engineer not 22? 18 + 4 = 22 

[limette]

1 hour ago, wheasymold552 said:

One last question, if the requirements posted on wiki are a bachelors OR 7 years experience, why is the age requirement for engineer not 22? 18 + 4 = 22 

Most jobs have a gap of age higher than that required to meet their requirements; see the Doctorate-requiring jobs levelled at 30, or Physician at 25. I don't really get it myself, to be honest.

[CatsinHD]

The original decision for what's listed on the wiki is lost to time, as is for the age requirements in game. They likely don't line up because one got changed while the other didn't. Those requirements can be changed to fit whatever they need to fit on the wiki, in-game is another question. Don't sweat over what the wiki says too much, there's some requirements listed on there that don't make a ton of sense but isn't dire enough to take priority over other projects.

[GeneralCamo]

3 hours ago, wheasymold552 said:

why is the age requirement for engineer not 22? 18 + 4 = 22 

Would this be an acceptable compromise for people? If we lowered engineer minimum age to 22 to reflect the wiki, but increased engineering apprentice to 21 or so?

[Sneakyranger]

7 hours ago, GeneralCamo said:

Would this be an acceptable compromise for people? If we lowered engineer minimum age to 22 to reflect the wiki, but increased engineering apprentice to 21 or so?

Putting aside whether this should be implemented, I wish to state the following firmly:

Pages under wiki maintainer jurisdiction (i.e not lore) should reflect the game; the game should not reflect the wiki. The idea presented needs to stand on its own without any relation to what the wiki says.

[Arrow768]

There are imho two distinct issues that need to be addressed separately: "minimum age" and "people hogging the apprentice roles"

From an OOC perspective the (Engineering-)Apprentice Roles are meant to be learner roles to get some knowledge about the actual game mechanics.
With that in mind, it becomes a OOC issue if players are playing in these roles for months on time as they are blocking the slot from people who actually need to use them.
So this should primarily be ahelped. (Admins have the ability to look up how many rounds were played by a certain character and in what role they played as)

I do not see why the reduced minimum age is an issue.
It is quite common in various countries that younger people work at companies as interns and/or apprentices.
(To quote a example from wikipedia: 40% of all teenagers above 15 years enter a apprenticeship in Austria.)
We already have a well established policy that players need to create different characters for different roles (even in the same department).
We also allow people to "age-hop" their characters.
Given that I do not see why it is an issue to either age-hop a character to the required age (when the player has gained the necessary mechanical knowledge to play a more advanced role) or to just create a new character.

However, it might be required to more clearly point out in the game that the apprentice roles are meant as a (very) temporary learner role and not meant to be played as persistent characters.

[limette]

4 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

Given that I do not see why it is an issue to either age-hop a character to the required age (when the player has gained the necessary mechanical knowledge to play a more advanced role) or to just create a new character.

I have no opposition to this being mandated of players, but I felt that mandating the agehops to happen with minimal retconning would discourage significantly the behavior of using it as a permanent younger-than-the-main-role slot by... well, not making it that. This is mostly intended to mechanically dissuade the behavior rather than actually be an IC reflection of apprenticeships being at high ages in-universe.

There's a number of players that do this already with the justification of 'my character is too young for the full role' so I feel that disabling the idea of doing that would make sense. Basically, the point is to mandate mechanically the requirement to age up into the full role instead of leaving the hole there in the first place; I personally have a philosophy that mechanical restrictions are better than leaving such things to be bwoinked, though, so this might be a divergence in perception. But further I think new players could fall into the trap of making apprentice characters under their main roles' ages and have a bad taste in their mouth when told to retcon their character 7 years up.

Edited September 9, 2023 by limette

[Arrow768]

1 hour ago, limette said:

But further I think new players could fall into the trap of making apprentice characters under their main roles' ages and have a bad taste in their mouth when told to retcon their character 7 years up.

Thats where the final part of my post about updating the wiki/game to make it clear that those are temporary learner roles comes into play.
(So they are informed of that early if they read the messages/the wiki; which is generally recommended and often required before you play a specific role)

[wheasymold552]

On 08/09/2023 at 21:46, GeneralCamo said:

Would this be an acceptable compromise for people? If we lowered engineer minimum age to 22 to reflect the wiki, but increased engineering apprentice to 21 or so?

As somebody directly affected by the whole thing, it's MUCH easier to continue roleplaying as my character if the age is brought down to my proposed 22. I can justify in my head doing an age up of like 1 and a half years but 5 whole years just doesn't sit right. I can come up with a million reasons as to why my character may take a break for a year, maybe to really focus heavy on studies etc. With the age left at 25 my only options are a drastic age up or coming up with some sort of termination/whatever forcing them into a department change. I'm aware this isn't all about me but I feel like I'm not the only player that would feel this way.

Edited September 13, 2023 by wheasymold552

[niennab]

I don't think we need to add more work to the moderator team, (i.e to keep watch on who is sitting in the learner role unneccessarily) when it can be solved by just making the minimum age one lower than Engineer/Atmosphere Technician. These people are using it to play almost-children in an industrial workplace. If we want the role to be a learner role and temporary, we gain nothing by permitting teenager characters who will be in one session and out the next. Which, compounds another greater issue where apprentice roles are seldom roleplayed with because a lot of players tend to use throw aways to learn the role, leading to people seeing the apprentices as vehicles for learning rather than characters.

When it should come to moderation, what constitutes as too long? What if the person only occaisionally plays the character in an effort to dodge moderator attention? An easier fix is to just bar it from happening.

Edited September 13, 2023 by niennab
more words

[WickedCybs]

The minimums should be raised and the sooner the better. The current way it's handled, there can't be much in the way of character continuity and in a server that values continuity it leaves us with only being able to tell people that roll very young interns/apprentices that they can age up the character, drop the character or change roles. Security cadets and first responder interns never really had this problem because they are either the same or closer to the minimum ages for what they're training for.

[Flpfs]

Regarding the changes proposed, I agree with them because the apprentice jobs perform very similarly to their actual roles, and therefore should also have a similar expected age. 

Although apprenticeships do exist IRL as mentioned by others, they are usually for trade jobs (which engineering is not as it requires higher education or half a decade of experience), require close supervision (apprentices may join with no engineers or CE on), and are not entrusted with high complexity tasks (setting up tesla/engine/atmos which could cause severe damage to the ship if done poorly)

As it stands right now, an eighteen year old can join as engineering apprentice and setup the engine singlehandedly, which seems really unrealistic and dumb.

OOCly, we have been plagued by individuals using the role to play essentially younger engineers, and I agree with what others have said.

 

[ImmortalRedshirt]

9 minutes ago, Flpfs said:

they are usually for trade jobs (which engineering is not as it requires higher education or half a decade of experience),

I've gone into more detail on this in a separate thread but SS13 engineering in general is functionally structured like a trade job, just with a misapplied label that still persists due to inertia.

[NG+7 Gael]

I think the PR is a very good idea, both because of it mechanically requiring players to age-up their characters and out of learner roles- thus making them unable to hold the position hostage with that character- and also, I think it helps push towards getting rid of teenager characters. I think the minimum age for characters in general should be raised as well, as I really don't think characters being playable that young adds anything positive.