Making the CL mechanically and roleplay-ingly engaged - The Rework.

[prophetb1]

Currently, the CL is a mostly lackluster role that relies on an increasingly diminshed RP value onboard the ship. This rework will make it more mechanically engaging for both the CL and the marines.

WHY THE REWORK?

The CL is mostly played as an RP role or more rarely, a CLown role (see Gut Bumburn, the legend), and has barely any mechanical power at all. This rework will make it a more attractive role by combining defcon itself and its abilites as a tool to give the CL his power.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

The Liason will recieve a paper labelled as a Mandate, that'll be the bonus objectives marines will try to execute to earn the company's favor and assistance. The Mandate will be written and sent as a normal fax, except that it'll be more visible to the staff team and have it's own menu to ghosts and staff to review it.

A Mandate needs a range-band of company support, that is how much the Company (staff team) will deem the objective valuable... An easy objective will net Defcon 5 tier rewards, while a moderately difficult objective will net Defcon 4 tier rewards, and hard objectives Defcon 3 tier objectives. A mandate will be APPROVED or DENIED by the staff team after reviewing it... bad formatting, grammar or spelling, bad objective? Deny it. A good fax with a reasonable objective? Set the difficulty according to your judgment and approve it.

After the staff approves the fax, it'll appear as an annoucment to the marines with an option to view the contents similar to how D-chat fax viewing works. The CL can view the progress of the Falling Falcons through an overwatch console in his office that he can access - Should the Falling Falcons fail to fulfill the objective, the CL can fax the Company to report that their Mandate hasn't been fulfilled. A potential punishment in the form of a Defcon reduction will incur:

An easy objective will net a loss of 30% of defcon.

A moderate will net 40%.

A hard objective will net a loss of 50% defcon loss.

THE FLAWS

Ofcourse, the CL is still subject to the whims of the staff that are online at the time, but the staff and the CL will have a reason to be mechanically enganged, and this'll hopefully up the RP fun and the mechanical fun that the CL can get.
The punishments are abit lackluster, and the reward tiers are vague in definition - in example...

Demanding a hard objective like not trashing the colony would be hard to follow, but the Company ultimately does not control the operation and incurring a defcon loss for this seems unfair. While the staff team can deny this Mandate, human error can still occur... if you change it to REQUESTING to not trash the colony, it becomes a much more fair objective, but you cannot rely on CLs to be great... or to not softgrief.

IRONING THIS REWORK

I've come up with this the last couple of days, so this is not the most fleshed out rework, but I can (hopefully) see alot of potential with some proper adjustments, so feel free to give criticism.

[CABAL]

Researcher needs rework more and it was "promised" long time ago.

[Swagbag]

This relates to CL more than the post but here's my opinion. In MY opinion, CL can sometimes be a lack-luster role mostly on lowpop when no moderators or admins feel like replying and or if your just new to faxing and paperwork....which most admins/mods will just ignore if it's not good
but if you play CL right you can have some fun. Just like the clown and chaplain on vanilla SS13 (I haven't played vanilla ss13 in quite a while more than a few rounds) your fun as these two roles depends just like the CL, usually your gimmick and play-style. Your gimmick is nothing unless the other players like and or follow along with it. You can do a gimmick as CL and many other roles on CM but I'll have to say a good gimmick as CL seems harder to do, ("gimmicks" like handing out alcohol, ultrazine and using the WY injectors without roleplay and good reason really aren't gimmicks imo.)

[Chaznoodles]

Currently, CL only works if people - both players and admins - are willing to engage with you, as it's purely a RP role. This presents a huge problem, as the current state of the game does not promote roleplay.

[Bancrose]

Doesn't help your often predisposed to getting Battlefield Executed.

[awan]

To be honest. Even the fax templates did not add replies.
I suggested adding it for deadchat where staff only has to approve/ok it.
I like cls with objectives but it's still fluid.
We do have an fds for research since today.
Idk how much that helps but its "something"

[bobatnight]

Yeah no thanks

[prophetb1]

Currently, CL only works if people - both players and admins - are willing to engage with you, as it's purely a RP role. This presents a huge problem, as the current state of the game does not promote roleplay.

I do realize this, but adding any sort of interface that smooths down admin-CL interaction and encourages the interaction can help this.

[SilentMountain]

I do realize this, but adding any sort of interface that smooths down admin-CL interaction and encourages the interaction can help this.

This is really needed. As imo CL is still a (honestly) cosmetic role that adds absolutely nothing to 99% of rounds, this is intentional as I feel Admemes do not want to have to worry about another role that can meaningfully affect the round.

Right now you are completely dependant on the (non existant) willingness of the mod in turn to give a shit about your faxes since after the xeno updates survivors will almost never reach the Almayer alive so you can forget about RPing with the survivors. You are left with just sitting on your office looking for someone to bug with whatever soft-grief gimmick you've come up to counter boredom or going down to the planet to grab some non intel papers in prison map or xeno samples in Solaris Ridge.

I feel like adding yet another DEFCON related thing might make the whole thing trivial and non distinctived tho.

A better solution would be to add randomized certain items, like the alien blood-tissue-chitin samples or some other kind of items or even a random survivor, to all maps, and making the CL have to recover these or take them to somwhere by whatever means they see fit as long as it means they do not directly or majorly grief marines. In accomplishing these quests the CL could have access to bigger resources to work with, maybe opening the implant box.

Now this could very well encourage combat-CL and power-gaming behavior but since CL's are almost always meta-targeted by xenos and easy prey on their own, natural selection will take its course and the rambos will shortly die, no affecting the round in any way. The only issue would be as to what the rewards for recovering the items would be but it can also just purely be roleplay rewards.

[Denthamos]

So...You want the CL to be able to screw over the entire marine population in the server every round just in the name of letting xenos be able to run rampant over marines? Because that's what I am getting from this threat.