Rework/Loosen Interim Restrictions

[VeteranGary]

There are a lot of headscratching restrictions when it comes to electing an interim head of staff for what is effectively a temporary managerial role, albeit some more understandable than others it ultimately leads to the breakdown of RP in an unsatisfying and unceremonious fashion. Namely having no other choice to awkwardly back out of roleplay scenario, use of LOOC or admin bwoinks which can entirely halt participation in a round. Doesn't seem very HRP to me, personally and I don't think I've ever had a satisfying experience from the enforcement of these restrictions. First of all, the worst part of this rule is just finding all of the restrictions.

So, you want to elect an Interim. You must check;

Are they affiliated with any subversive groups, IE Himeo, ALA, or a handful of the half dozen Solarian Warlord fleets.
Does their species or subspecies allow them into this role? 
Do they have a fancy origin that restricts them from command?

Doesn't seem awful, right? There's probably one spot where you can find all of this information...except there really isn't. You'll be checking a minimum of three wiki-pages to be fully kept up to date on the rules, and it's a bit of a mess. The Guide to Command is claimed to be the most up-to-date source of these restriction, but it explicitly only contains species restrictions and not the various addendum that also disallow Interim appointment. You must go to every species page, and even then that might not give you the full picture with the intricacies with certain characters. Everything might check out, but their job itself might restrict them from taking interim position such as some owned IPCs. 

Obviously most of these restrictions go out the window in situations of duress where command cannot effectively function without certain departments having an appointed interim, namely Security and Medical. But even in minor scenarios it makes sense to want to pass interim to someone as some command players simply do not want to involve themselves in departments that they aren't familiar with or doesn't make sense for their character to manage. Now lets hamfist a bunch of unwritten-but-written classism or racism rules ontop of it that they have to abide by no matter what background they come from. It's not even entirely clarified if these rules are something that command knows about ICly or if these are strictly OOC rules that command are expected to display, which somehow feels even more eh? I don't see that being conducive to RP nor the theme especially as we are moving away from that aspect of lore. 

Anyway, I don't particularly lean heavily towards outright removing these restrictions, but at the very least they should be documented much better if command is expected to enforce these without needing to ahelp/browse wiki every single time they want to elect an interim. Which I believe is something we want to avoid. Personally I think every species besides Vaurca should be fair game for Interim election, as in some scenarios it's just ambiguous. Like not being able to appoint a M'sai surgeon to CMO, because you're Hadii's strongest classist. Or racist. Who knows.

Edited yesterday at 02:40 by VeteranGary

[Carver]

I'd rather see them better documented than loosened in any manner.

[GeneralCamo]

Honestly, in an emergency situation, I primarily care about their qualifications. The SCC can complain all they like about my appointment of a Plutonian to chief engineer, but when half the ship is vented and the rest of engineering is either drunk or vaurca, then I'm doing it anyway. I prefer not to die, thank you. And I'm sure the SCC would complain more about the loss of their valuable ship.

That said, I agree with at least putting this into a central place. Say, the command forum that all command players have access to?

[CatsinHD]

57 minutes ago, GeneralCamo said:

Honestly, in an emergency situation, I primarily care about their qualifications. The SCC can complain all they like about my appointment of a Plutonian to chief engineer, but when half the ship is vented and the rest of engineering is either drunk or vaurca, then I'm doing it anyway. I prefer not to die, thank you. And I'm sure the SCC would complain more about the loss of their valuable ship.

I believe in many cases, when or how the restrictions are applied is overblown. Looking directly at the SOP:

Quote

During non-standard operation, restrictions and considerations on an Interim Head of Staff may be ignored. However, all Interim Heads of Staff that do not otherwise fit SCC standards must be demoted to their standard position immediately following the conclusion of non-standard operations.

Non-standard operations is pretty much any time you're not working normally. What does this mean? The restrictions primarily apply when you are appointing an interim to fill a vacancy when the shift is calm and/or on green. There is some language differences between this and the Chain of Command page that will be resolved. However the point standards. In an emergency, anyone (except Vaurca) can be interim, to be demoted when the emergency ends.

As for the information consolidation, yeah. While I disagree it's as fragmentary as wording may suggest, many of these things have been added or changed and either the wiki or CCIA team haven't had a good place to put everything together. So we're working on that. I would disagree with removing the policy outright given the above point. Most of the non-xeno restrictions are pretty intuitive, the anti-corporate planets naturally are not good command candidates, and the xeno-restrictions are a species lore decision for various reasons within their lore. This should be reflected when there isn't an emergency, which is the current status quo.