Deekin Mentorship Application

[iansdoor]

Usual character name: Deekin DOOM scale
BYOND username: iansdoor
Discord username (if you are on our discord): iansdoor#6387
Goon servers you play: RP1 RPO
References: Zergspower[weirdo lizard]; Tiggersaurus [Dr. Squiggles]; Kamades [Fellow secoff-in-arms]

Reason for application + game experience:

        I am be simple in that I have a desire in becoming a mentor to help those that aren't familiar to BYOND, their role, or Space station 13. I already do help and explain in most of my shifts lately as a command head or fellow co-worker. Especially, when I see someone struggling or just getting into the "new" job. Those folks don't "ask" away for help but I have been in their shoes and its tough when you aren't sure of anything. My goals are for everyone in my departments to have fun and succeed in anything that they were putting their mind into as well as being able to hold their own. This does take quite a few shifts to build an understanding and fine-tuning of what you can do.
       This is very similar to my experience as I first started as well. I was usually trapped as the solo engineer with no current knowledge to do anything. the beginning of ss13 took me about 6 shifts to get how to eat and probably 10 shifts to drink stuff. I am always thankful about blundering into things and have people teach me the small stuff with looc. The first couple of engineers to really show me a general run of the engine was Griffin Roach and Jacoby Vujic. These guys, (even as antags) didn't ask for much and give me their attention and my freedom to fail and then learn from mistakes together. Learning the engines still took me a long time with alot of trial and error and there was alot of bonding with specific crazy engineers that stay for 2 hours and 11 minutes to see our ending result. I am currently learning more ideas and concepts from engineering with a group of peers.  
     In closing, not alot of folks like engineering department as they see their jobs to be too steep in its understanding. I am hoping by being a mentor that I will bridge the steep taunting roles as fairly easy to get your foot if the listener is interested in the big picture of each job and that my enthusiasm about part of any crew leaks in a positive way to other members. (alittle out of context, but my personal smile and my laugh has been known to be infectious and I have received alot of comments and compliments about it. I have always felt this to be the case in my gaming as well.)

Thanks for the reading and see ya on the next shift.

[Kamades]

Yes, I mean, shit, I gave him my blessing to use my Reccomendation, yeah? Scale has been extremely helpful to folks on the discord, and I've seen nothing but the same from him ingame. The application as written also speaks to the kind of things I like to see out of a mentor - it's about helping folks, and making sure the next person comin in the door has someone around to help em out.

+1. Looking forward to you joining us in the *gags* OH GOD WHY DOES THE PURPLE MOUSE HAVEN REEK SO?

[Zergspower]

+1 from me, ever since he was a wee lad he's always been curious.  They grow up so fast!

[nefarious6th]

I'll give this an indifferent.

Scale's knowledgable about engineering, which is good and probably needed on the mentorship team.

You do come off in Discord very frequently as having kind of an absolutist approach to knowledge; what I mean is that you can be incredibly abrasive in describing the "correct" ways to do things, especially when it comes to talking about engineering, and don't take to people expressing different approaches, doubts or ideas very well, whether those people sincerely do need to learn more or whether they simply have different methods (in particular I am thinking about everyone talking about working on charburn methods on the new engine, to which multiple people were told "it's easy", prior to you actually working on the new engine with a charburn and admitting it was not easy). I haven't been terribly impressed by tone in Discord and find it to be something that actually has made me not want to do engineering on RP1 anymore. I play as engineer and CE almost exclusively on Main or RPO.

You also talked in Discord about how as CE, all your engineers would be new, and how all/almost all new engineers you tried to teach would get bored and would suicide or cryo after no time flat in RP1 rounds because they didn't care about the engine or learning or they just didn't get follow anymore. I think walking away from rounds with that as the read of the people you're trying to teach isn't great. I've had people who didn't know the engine and didn't pick the job but rolled it anyways say they weren't terribly interested in it or didn't know. I offer to teach step-by-step and really direct them because a huge part of engineering, in my experience, is confidence in the mechanics of intricate parts of the game. Sometimes people need an extra nudge to know they're supported well and wanted in the round, versus just jumping right into "here's this and where you put that". Sometimes people really don't care about the engine for other reasons, and maybe there's other ways you can support their round, whether by giving them ideas for things they can work on, or talking with them and walking with them to the HoP to secure a job transfer to something they are interested in. Although, generally, for RP, I assume if someone signs up as an engineer, they do it with the intent to learn engineering. If someone's not interested in the engine, have them work on construction. If they don't care about that, maybe they can transfer within the department and shadow mechanics or miners. If you walk away from a round saying all the engineers cryo'd out because they just couldn't get it or get into it, to me, when you're playing as CE, that really is something that needs to be worked on. A super important part of people I've recommended before and mentors I've worked with who were engineering-knowledgable is that when I played with them while they were CEs, they made sure engineering wasn't an unobtainable or exclusive field to new players, that everyone was welcome, even if people were starting out uncomfortable with working on the engine and more interested in other things. I appreciate heads and mentors that have a great deal of empathy for the difficulties players might encounter when it comes to becoming comfortable and well-versed in more complex game mechanics. Walking away complaining about all the new players that abandoned the rounds from boredom/incompetence doesn't demonstrate that to me. I always take the approach when I'm teaching that if someone doesn't understand something I'm teaching them, the onus for that lies squarely with me. It's up to me to find a way to communicate with them that "clicks", to find alternatives if they're demotivated in a field, or, finally, to defer to someone else who can speak on the right frequency to that person.

I have also seen rounds where you have latejoined as CE; in one example on Cog1, I was an observer watching someone not in the engineering department set up the engine, because no one else was there to do it. They began their work at roundstart and attempted a charburn on the newer TEG system. When you latejoined, they were already getting a sustainable burn going. I watched you enter the engine room as they were in the cold loop, and without a word over general comms or engineering comms, you began swapping cannisters around and touching things on the burn without telling them, to make it produce more power. When they did enter, things were moved around, the engine was producing at a different rate than it was before, and frankly, I'd be pretty confused if I was just trying to learn a burn and suddenly was seeing things moved and my output going up over 4MW when I had a steady 500kW going. To touch on the mentor guidelines a little, backseat driving is discouraged, and I think changing someone's burn set up wordlessly and not trying to find out who set up the engine or walk them through what you were going to do was very much under the realm of backseat driving.

My last thought is about attitude in post-round comments on Discord. You have, more than once, charged people with "metagaming". Particularly, there was a changeling round with one changeling that had killed a number of people in a short span of time. I was AI, I was watching them transform and murder someone and swap between numerous IDs in pathology on Donut 3 and narrated this, with little interruption, over the general and sec radio frequencies for 5-10 minutes. You were playing Security, along with others, and the entire time I was watching, no one went to go check on this, and I heard nothing from you, specifically, over the radio. The person playing as the changeling went north, and I trapped them in the room with the printing press on Donut 3, while waiting for one other officer to show up, while a number of civilian players also surrounded the room because no one was trying to handle the problem to that point. Only one officer was there at the time, and they requested to go in solo, as did the civ players request to go in. I had to open the door for them, which resulted in the changeling player escaping, and then getting trapped again in the funeral parlor. They went abom form on two or three civilian players and one or two officers, who all managed to live and also beat the changeling to death. I said, over radio, as AI, "Aw, just burn 'em" as the officers were dragging the body towards the Crematorium two short rooms to the left of where the changeling had died. After the round was over, you then said in Discord that "though there was alot of metagame to know to furance that ling" (11/21/2020). I don't really know how to summarize my thoughts on this in a concise way; 1.) I was the only person who said to burn them, and said it in a pretty non-descript and sardonic way, per my characterization as an AI. I wasn't even thinking about how people traditionally furnace changelings. You called out an AI for metagaming about furnacing; frankly, this is the matter of least importance, but consider that an AI can know as much or as little about antags as they want, and while purposeful ignorance is nice, I didn't choose that this round and it's within my role limitations in an IC manner to know or not know; 2.) You called using the nearest lethal method to the scene of a fight that involved lethal intents "metagaming", publicly, in Discord, which to me serves no greater purpose than to shame the handling and decisions made by specific players in-round. "There was a lot of metagaming to know to furnace that ling" is markedly different in tone and intent than saying "I wish we had borged that changeling"; 3.) These were your comments about a round where you, a security officer, did not address a lethal threat in a timely and sufficient manner (you only arrived and acknowledged the threat by the time two civilians and an officer were in the funeral parlor with an abomination after a 10-15 minute monologue from the AI); 4.) A lethal and round-ending method was used on a changeling that was expressing very little interest in RPing. All of this points me to the idea that you perhaps don't really understand "flow" and tone within a round. I wouldn't be comfortable with you advising players on what does or doesn't pass muster with regards to how to perform antagonism, ideas or gimmicks in a regular RP round since you seem to lack a lot of greater awareness when I play rounds with you.

I'd like to see more thoughtful engagement with players within all departments, but especially engineering, better tone towards others regarding engineering on Discord, and indicators of you having a good read on the tone and nature of rounds you're playing in before I'd give this a recommendation.

[Splints]

+1 What a coincidence that I notice this thread just a few minutes after finishing a round where Deekin provided me with appropriately in-character help regarding the nano-fab.

[Studenterhue]

After some discussion, we've decided we'd rather reject this app. Feel free to reapply again in 60 days from today.