New Player restrictions on Roles.

[KingKire]

Now, theres been alot of new players flooding into CM, it is grey tide summer from what i hear. New players are the lifeblood of any game, colonial marines is no exception. Whats been unfortunate, is that some of these new players tend to find themselves in roles that requires a little more tact or finesse than your usual robust-y toolbox carrying player has.

What type of roles? Roles like Commanding and Executive officers, Chief Medical officers, Chief Engineers, and your Requisition officers. These roles tend to be extremely powerful, and the right people in these roles tend to change games all by themselves. But these roles are also complicated, and tend to require a pretty large knowledge of not only how Colonial Marines work, but also intricate knowledge of how Space Station 13 at large works too.

On a lesser note, there are other limited roles that are also powerful in their own right, but no less demanding in what a player needs to give to make them work. Roles like Bridge officers, Researchers Survivors, Squad Leaders, Specialists, and Corporate Liaisons.

Its a weird thing to see though, that we have no restriction of any type to help limit players from selecting these roles fresh from the start. Some people might argue " but i've played a lot of other SS13 servers, and 'ive played a lot of command roles in those servers". To which i would argue back that CM is not your average SS13 server. CM as a server tends to move a lot quicker, has a different pacing, and tends to have a much larger player base then most normal SS13 servers. A CMO in a normal server will usually only deal with a few injured players at a time, maybe a big wave if it gets bad. In CM, the bodies never stop flowing, and if somebody doesn't do something quick, the medbay will be packed wall to wall with corpses, even on a good day.

I don't think its fair to both new players and old players to have this trial by fire basis for such important roles, at least not during the start of the round.

I could state many more reasons on why we should have restrictions but ill try to narrow it down to a few key reasons:

New to Space station 13/ Colonial Marines: People who are new to this server and game dont need extra responsibilities of that high end roles demand from them. Players need to get used to at least what the ship looks like first before they find themselves in charge of it.

Griefing/Leaving early: I consider these both forms of griefing, just the latter is a more passive version of it. A fresh player can jump into the round as a CO and go completely wild before he gets banned by an admin. Before that happens, there could be a lot of collateral damage left over, not to mention that the critical role they occupied is now locked from others to join in. The same can be said of those who SSD, who dont even have the curtsy of entering a cryopod. If they manage to SSD in a hidden or unaccountable area, their body could never be found, locking that role permanently.

Poor understanding of their role: There have been plenty of times where i've had to join a game as an MT, to find the CE knew absolutely nothing about how to set up the SM engine, or even caused it to explode. Corporate Liaisons that would just wander about the ship aimlessly. CO's who would just pick up a gun, get onto the drop pod, and never issue a standing order for their troops while they fought on the ground silently.


I gotta say, imo, this is an issue that needs to stop somehow. I don't think the 1-20 chance of getting the Great Green CO right off the bat is worth 19 deployments of Commander Grey-Bald. Or Dr. Soulless. Or Chief Engineer SuperNuker.