on emergency shuttles and appropriate use

[Garnascus]

Lately I have noticed a trend happening among heads of staff. What specifically to do about it has given me no small amount of internal and indeed external conflict. The source of this conflict is the use of the emergency shuttle and what i think is and is not a good use for it. Rather than conceive some arbitrary hypothetical I will do my bet to outline a situation recently and how I handled it.

I will begin by disclosing that I was playing said round as a traitor. It was dead hour and if memory serves our crew was in the range of six to eleven. No engineers where present at the time of shift start. I decide to cause a little chaos and rig a few welder bombs in maint. If I recall I set off two or three. One near security, one by the janitors closet, and one by the toxins lab. This of course drives the crew into a panic about how to deal with this.

These events took about 40 or so minutes at which point the CMO at the time calls an emergency shuttle. I examined the station and found only one person had died, the vented areas also appeared contained. I PMed the CMO saying I didn't think a few bombs and no power was reasonable justification for an emergency shuttle. The CMO responded that no security where present to find the bomber and that without power we couldn't begin fixing the breaches.

Again, I was the traitor at the time responsible. I relayed my concerns to Jenna at the time about calling it so early. She seemed as conflicted as I was but that we should maybe let it happen. I decided to offer a compromise, I would admin-recall the shuttle until the 1 hour mark and if the situation didn't improve I could call another one. An engineer eventually showed up and the round continued as normal with power.

Now here is my conflict. I have always thought emergency shuttles should be an absolute last resort. Im talking code red situation + mass casualties and every attempt to rectify the situation has failed. Is the responsibility on the head of staff to get creative during these times? Did I overstep my authority in forcing people to play a frustrating situation? Or perhaps did I help prolong the RP a bit? My gripes where that the sole decision for an emergency shuttle rested on one person.

I want to note that this situation is must the latest, but most severe case. More and more I see heads calling emergency shuttles early because a few things go wrong. I thinks line has to be drawn somewhere. Should I just let this happen as all IC? or is it true a line does exist and if so where? I would love any and all opinions here.

[Mofo1995]

You're right. Calling the escape shuttle is something which happens much more often recently, but I think the biggest, number one factor behind the recent surge in calling the shuttle is a sharp decrease in the number of engineering players. All too often, we're facing constant power issues and power outages, and a lot of structural damage has been going unrepaired. I think that, once our engineers become more and more trained in the SM engine and more and more learn how to set it up properly, as well as hopefully more people playing engineering in general, then we can hopefully see these issues melding away. But, as it stands, I don't think people have faith in engineering, and I believe this is a strong factor in people's decisions to call shuttles.

[Dreviore]

People should view it as, calling an Emergency Shuttle will cause your character to receive a pay cut, to discourage using it if it's not 100% necessary.

Like if maintenance tunnels are locked down, and breached, why would you call a shuttle? If there's no security maybe a manhunt with one of the available heads would be a better way to proceed.

[Garnascus]

I guess I can sum up my view nicely as "it ends RP dats bad" at least before a certain point.

[Mofo1995]

People should view it as, calling an Emergency Shuttle will cause your character to receive a pay cut, to discourage using it if it's not 100% necessary.

Like if maintenance tunnels are locked down, and breached, why would you call a shuttle? If there's no security maybe a manhunt with one of the available heads would be a better way to proceed.

Well, yes, in this specific case I do not think that the shuttle should have been called, but I can sympathize with why they called it. There was no engineering staff at all, and so they were facing no power at all. The round appears to have essentially saved by serendipity when an engineer finally came aboard an hour late. It's incredibly unfortunate that circumstances play out this way, but I don't think much of anyone wants to stand on a station with no power, minimal security, and a bomber on the loose. Well, actually, I take that back, maybe they do if they like survival horror as much as I do, but ICly they wouldn't want it.

Engineering is a department the station literally cannot operate without.

[Guest]

I will note, when that much damage has happened to a station, and no engineering personnel are around to fix it, and no security are around to guard/cordone it, the entire station becomes a big law-suit deathtrap waiting to happen.

No employer would require you to work in a station that's falling apart.

Although the shuttle does get called much too frequently lately.

[Mofo1995]

On further thought, they should've called an engineering ERT.

[Garnascus]

On further thought, they should've called an engineering ERT.

 

My thoughts as well, I don't like players jumping right to emergency shuttle without trying other options. Although it can be argued that no ghosts are around but isn't that IC in OOC? Also Im EXTREMELY resistant to making admin judgments around things I "don't like". Very slippery slope, even if I can back it up. Part of the reason I made this thread.

[Dreviore]

On further thought, they should've called an engineering ERT.

 

My thoughts as well, I don't like players jumping right to emergency shuttle without trying other options. Although it can be argued that no ghosts are around but isn't that IC in OOC? Also Im EXTREMELY resistant to making admin judgments around things I "don't like". Very slippery slope, even if I can back it up. Part of the reason I made this thread.

 

I agree that they could have tried calling an ERT.

I think the biggest annoyance is though, you get called as an ERT, and suddenly... EMERGENCY SHUTTLE right as you arrive.

[Guest Menown]

I find, whenever I die, it's an appropriate time to call for the shuttle.

[Jboy2000000]

Except you can't call an ERT when you have less than two heads. And according to Garn, there was exactly one CMO, and no others.

[Garnascus]

In that situation i think it would be valid to collect the spare and give someone access to help you call ERT.

[SierraKomodo]

On further thought, they should've called an engineering ERT.

 

My thoughts as well, I don't like players jumping right to emergency shuttle without trying other options. Although it can be argued that no ghosts are around but isn't that IC in OOC? Also Im EXTREMELY resistant to making admin judgments around things I "don't like". Very slippery slope, even if I can back it up. Part of the reason I made this thread.

 

This wouldn't have been possible in this situation though. Only one head of staff was on station, and if this is the round I'm thinking of, the AI (Whom was myself) was 'subverted' and wouldn't have cooperated with the sole head of staff to let them get the spare either.

[Garnascus]

Yeah but thats all IC! They didn't know the AI was antag!

[Dreamix]

Except you can't call an ERT when you have less than two heads. And according to Garn, there was exactly one CMO, and no others.

You can. By faxing CC, that is. When I'm a head, I'm always against calling anything without faxing Central first.

But, if Central Command wants you to stay on the unpowered, heavily understaffed station because... Reasons, I guess. You may just want to call the shuttle.

Also, I wasn't there, but a traitor leaving bombs around on that unpowered and heavily understaffed station, without anyone there to repair the damage he caused, and no one to catch him, is the same game-ender as releasing singularity, overheating supermatter or calling nar'sie is. You just can't really do anything after these happen. Unless you want people to hide in their departments, praying for a crew transfer vote and having 'fun'. Or, unless you want people to metagame and have your doctors and scientists repair breaches and validhunt that traitor.

[Nanako]

My thoughts:

With only one head of staff, you can't call an ERT, otherwise that should be the first option.

You mention breaking into offices and promoting people to get the extra IDs?

Well hacking into places is engineering's job. You said there's no engineers.

And when there's hostile intruders and/or traitors onboard, it's a job for engineering AND security. As far as i can tell the crew had neither.

I don't see a way out of that situation without metagaming/powergaming, except to call the shuttle and leave.

The fact that an engineer turned up is incidental, without an IC way to request personnel. You can't reasonably know or expect that will happen, and using your OOC knowledge that someone will probably join as engineer at some point, doesn't seem a reasonable reason to continue the round. The fact that only one person died, and that the breaches were contained, is probably OOC knowledge too. Generally only an engineering team and the AI will know much about the status of a breach, to everyone else it's a big scary mess of yellow doors and possibly-deadly rooms.

From an IC perspective, a station without power and no engineering staff, is lost. A station under attack and without security staff, is lost. Both of these together seems like more than enough reason to call a shuttle.

So for what it's worth, i think you made the wrong decision here

[Garnascus]

No its not OOC knowledge. All you have to do is check an atmos console. Plus there's usually always someone who can hack a door open on station. Could be someone with the IC skill.

[Skull132]

Why not just take the spare ID, hand yours to a trusted doctor, and swipe to victory?

[Lucychan42]

I do agree to an extent that some people jump too quickly to ERT or escape shuttle. My own character is guilty of crying out for ERT whenever breaches occur or people are missing and/or being severely hurt. She generally feels the need for ERT the moment three or so people die in quick succession. One death from a single rogue factor is startling but not urgent. An escape shuttle is only when half the staff are dead and not only is chaos prominent, but literally most of staff have abandoned their posts due to their posts not existing anymore or the general situation being far too dangerous to perform their duties.

Now. Going with these guidelines, it's also a bit smart to take into account what is usually available. Aerianna is usually on shifts with six or so security and around three (maybe two on a bad day) engineers. She hears "oh god Atmospherics and the Bar just got breached! Phillip and Pun Pun are dead!" she's like "well shit, let's clone them and have engineering patch it up and have security handle whoever was responsible if it was deliberate."

In the situation you describe, Aerianna would have seen the situation as dire. Two areas are breached. No engineering or security, one head of staff, so there's no ERT coming, the problems won't be fixed unless the janitor and Xenobio pipe up that they sort of maybe know how to fix breaches and powergame engineering knowledge (or the lucky hour-late engineer shows up) and everyone forms a militia, thereby abandoning all of their departments in search of someone who is obviously dangerous, in the possession of bombs as well as likely trained in combat.

IC? It's entirely reasonable to decide "yeah fuck this, more people are going to die because we have nobody that's qualified let alone even trained to handle the fact that someone is blowing up the station." Sometimes ERT is quick on the trigger and called a bit early. I personally haven't seen an escape shuttle come too early. And in this scenario, I feel it's perfectly reasonable to call an evac shuttle and just get everyone off safely before more severe damage comes to the station and its personnel.

If there's one head of staff, it isn't likely he's going to hand off his spare to someone he trusts to call an ERT that might not even come on time, let alone be able to fix their problems before more happen. ERTs rarely come in <10 minutes, so it was a safer choice to just evac and be done with the shift before anyone else was hurt on a station with: no power, no engineers, no security, a rogue element bombing the station, and no personnel capable of tracking the rogue element without abandoning their already understaffed departments.

As well, checking the Atmos console to figure out if the breaches were contained might even be using knowledge the characters don't have. How would they know what to look for to find if the breach was contained? Should the number be gradually dropping? What range should it be in, is it too low or is it normal, how quickly does it normally drop, if at all, and what's a worrying rate of pressure loss? Not only may people not even know that OOC if they aren't familiar with Atmos, but their characters may be nowhere close to bearing that knowledge. And before you say (if you would) to load up the wiki and check, then that's cheating and essentially powergaming. IC I doubt Atmos is really as simple as searching up a wiki and doing three things. People spend years and years getting certified ICly to know pressures, gas composition, ideal station atmosphere composition, distribution of said atmosphere and maintaining its pressure, et cet era.

Quite simply, they weren't qualified to manage or save the situation they found themselves in, so they made an IC decision to leave with their lives instead of trying to cover the empty departments they were nowhere near qualified to handle. From my understanding, you're suggesting that not calling ERT due to the lack of ghosts would have been meta gaming, and that IC ERT would have arrived. I refute that with the fact that your solutions ask people to break character in different ways for the sole purpose of making the round and roleplay last longer. And making the round last longer on an essentially lost station isn't a decision that would be made IC. When someone is blowing crap up and you have no means to stop them, you're not gonna wait, hunker down, and hope for an engineer and security. You're just gonna leave with your ass still firmly attached to your lower body.