Liason is ok as it is, but I would like to see more office equipment and more incentives to go after xeno eggs. It seems that the Company isnt really interested in xenos, which more or less contradicts their lore
Liason is ok as it is, but I would like to see more office equipment and more incentives to go after xeno eggs. It seems that the Company isnt really interested in xenos, which more or less contradicts their lore
The CL is a role with a lot of potential. Interest in the CL role is actually what lead me to start playing CM in the first place. But these days, I don't play CL much(and neither do a lot of other people, if you put CL on low you get it like 50% of the time). There's a few reasons for this, but really the most important one is that the CL has no actual power to do anything and, with the devs aiming for a 65% xeno winrate, the marines are always too focused on trying to do their jobs effectively to bother dealing with him. Nobody has any patience for the CL telling them that they need to grab eggs or not fire off rockets on company property because everyone already expects the battle to be a nightmare and the CL has no actual game mechanics associated with them and is thus not worth bothering with.
Currently, the CL has essentially 2 things he can do. He's got his briefcase with implants and ultrazine, and he's got his fax machine. The briefcase goods were always situational because they came with massive drawbacks, and now with the supply he can get drastically cut nobody really has much interest in anything he's got in there, especially with the MPs running around desperate to hassle people about that(if we're talking about roles who are stuck with fuckall to do, MP is a discussion that needs to be had at some point also). As for the fax machine, well, writing up a good fax can be time consuming and is, 95% of the time, met with no response. So you can sit there composing the perfect fax message for 5 minutes and receive literally nothing in return for it. I fully understand that the admins are often too busy to respond to these things and that you can't exactly send out a corporate deathsquad every time the CL bitches about anything but given that the fax machine is like, 75% of what the CL has, the fact that it has such a low response rate makes playing the role often feel unrewarding.
With the 65% winrate mark set, RP has been given a backseat to Mechanics. That's fine, but as an RP heavy role it means that, in order to remain relevant and actually have some leverage he can use to get people to care about him, he needs some actual Mechanics. I've got a few ideas for this which may be good or bad, but in any event he does actually need SOMETHING.
Add some items to the briefcase which are neither horribly illegal nor carry the risk of backfiring and killing you. PMC weapons and ammunition, chits which can provide a small amount of Bonus Req Points if inserted into the console, a kit for building one of those xeno-detecting towers the devs have been testing out, etc. In order to prevent him from just handing this shit out to the marines for free, have him start with a certain amount of points and only allow him to gain more as long as he's serving the Company interests, with no free trickle of points over time. Give him a little terminal in his office which he can scan/upload data disks and documents from the colony, or pictures of xenos(only one picture per caste accepted, bonus points if they're alive) to to gain points. In order to prevent handing all this stuff over to him from being purely beneficial, n addition to having him compete with the High Command for these objects(with that system that was tested with that earlier in conjunction with the hive memory test), you could make the most expensive thing on his list, something that he would never be able to afford without working very hard to get these things, the ability to gain authority over the operation on the colony and summon a little squad of PMCs to help him.
You could also allow whitelisted players(not with a new specific whitelist, just any whitelist) who are dead to take up the mantle of a Company rep and respond to faxes, with a short list of things that they're able to grant and a limited authority to give the CL specific objectives.
TL;DR
Give CL more mechanics to be able to do his job.
RP is only as supported as the mechanics are; the best CL rounds are when Admins actually interact with CL, aka the ADMIN is the MECHANIC in this case.
If there was hard coded mechanics for CL, like more WY items both legal and illegal, being able to call in WY reinforcements, in return for doing company objectives (securing xeno eggs, having a special document printed from the WY briefcase signed by XO or CO, sabotaging / stealing certain items like CO rifle), that'd be great.
This would also solve the issue of MP's being bored, because now the CL is running around being an actual nuisance for actual reasons, so they have actual investigations they can do instead of "AFK simulator after briefing".
Back in those days, there were more people who focused on roleplaying, and more retentive staff that would respond to CL faxes. CL is fun when people interact with you, but nowadays this is hardly the case.
The chances of having staff actively interact with the CL is already extremely slim. Combine that with the slim chances that there are players that want to roleplay with the CL and you have yourself a big yucky role that is extremely boring 98% of the time. Why would I want to spawn as CL and be forced to potentially play that for the next few hours when the chances I will have a fun round are next to nothing?
Yeah, the main issue is the CL's current condition is a symptom of an overarching server issue: CM's drifted away from an MRP server where you shoot benos and become a TDM HvX server where you trash talk other players and occasionally RP with them. There's even an admin that seems to think a "pure RP" round is just having the CLF infiltrate the colony during a humanitarian mission to slaughter the Almayer's command staff, spawn a few waves of CLF, and then drop in near-endless waves of UPP for no reason after the CLF die. That's not RP, that's basically the CM version of a rev round where nuke ops show up to murder everyone without any warning. I personally don't think the staff deciding to balance the game around a set winrate instead of what's fun to play helps the matter either.
Not to hijack the thread, but I think what the server needs is a few limited-duration (maybe 1-2 hours long) rounds where it's just RP to try and reverse the trend. Outside a few specific staff members and players, most people have no interest in RP opportunities because all CM is today is "murder everyone on the other side" and roles like the CL suffer for it.
Retired CO Councilor (Winter 2019-Spring 2020, Winter 2020-Spring 2021)
Goddard Pearsall, the Pilot that (almost) always has Souto
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Ill double up on FGRsents post and say that the reason why the CL has fallen out of favor is because the CL was designed for a diffrent style of game. Currently, the pace is a little on the fast side, but i think staff are trying to slow it down in the beginning of the game so more RP can take place.
The CL is fine, the game just moved up a little too fast, and when it slows down, the CL should find his place again.
Although, having some more stuff for the CL to do is always great. He's an Optional RP role people can play, he shouldnt be the center of rounds, he should be the spice that is on the side.
As others have said, I think there needs to be an antagonist aspect to the role of Corporate Liason that does NOT have to rely solely on hoping that you might get a fax responded to, which is not common in my experience as the CL no matter how well done the fax actually is.
Look at Burke from Aliens, for example. He was willing to get the other marines killed in order to preserve the colony. That was his alternative goal that none of the other marines knew about. Much like traitors in other SS13 servers, CL's should have the opportunity to spawn with one or more secret objectives. They could be benign, like an objective to do a whole bunch of paperwork for something, or the objectives could be more nefarious, like to smuggle eggs away on an escape pod, to incite a mutiny (not sure Weyland would want to do that but hey) or to assassinate any survivors, even!
It wouldn't require much coding at all, simply a little message at round start (just like in other SS13 servers) that notifies you of your secret objectives. Perhaps they could even be written on a piece of paper that you'd have to be sure couldn't be found. I'd be happy to write objectives if you guys are in need of any ideas. I think this could make the CL role god-tier with the possibilities!
Last edited by Chemical; 01-04-2019 at 10:06 PM.
TBH I think the CL needs to act more like chaplain in the normal game. More or less a gateway to the admemes.
Call in goodies from "The company" and such.
I love playing as CL. I used to have it in my regular rotation. But nowadays there's just a lot of other roles that are more fun to play. Giving random objectives and possibly soft antag goals to the CL should make things more interesting for most shipside roles I think. It's always cool to have a little intrigue going on in a round.
I dig this.