It has come to my attention in the past months frankly how worthless ship-side roles have become. Doctors and Requisitions are not the departments I am talking about entirely. Doctors busy themselves with marines losing limbs and being face-hugged, researchers can now busy themselves with xeno eggs, or making extremely deadly chemical grenades that can one-shot a queen. And Requisitions is always occupied with getting marines what they need to survive on the field and build a proper FOB. These departments have a purpose, a purpose that keeps them engaged throughout the round as if they are contributing to something worth-while almost as if they are on the ground themselves keeping the fight going.
Then comes the Military Police. Honestly, their purpose is extremely limited to the start of the round. Military Police stop early marine shinnanigans so mods don't have to. Some which sometimes are punished harder to others because the MPs have the power so they want to use it because they know fully by the time the marines deploy they won't be able to again anymore. Once marines are deployed, nothing is left. MPs are left to go AFK unless by some slim miracle a xeno gets up to the Alamyer and or the researcher/CLs/MTs do something stupid so they can do arrests again. Or for example admins decide to do some sort of event which gets MPs involved or a mutiny happens which again is quite rare. Unlike in vanilla SS13 servers security (their version of MPs) on the station are constantly doing something. Yes, some are utter trash and abuse their power. But others often have the role of hunting possible traitors, revolutionaries, or some spiders that breed in the maintenance tunnels. It gives them purpose so they are not solely a force that relies on having to arrest people for small things so they can have something to do rather then just AFKing until something happens.
Finally, the MTs. Honestly this department has irked me as I personally have played it multiple times and frankly you do absolutely nothing. You start, set up the generators, reload the OB which can be done in seconds. Then you are done, there is nothing left. You either try to build your own room out of complete boredom until the MPs try to stop you for government property damage, or you do minor repairs due to a marine setting off a grenade accidentally which doesn't mean anything because it is not as if there is a breach in the ship as atmospherics was removed. MTs are one thing only, glorified engineers. When they realize how useless they are on the Almayer they just end up deploying and building up the FOB because their purpose on the Alamyer is entirely worthless. Unlike vanilla SS13 servers where engineers are constantly doing something such as setting up a shield generator to stop meteors from destroying the station, fixing lights, repairing small breaches that appear on the station, or making spears to fight off some random spiders that appear and invade their department. It brings something to do and something to look forward to as maintaining the station rather then just setting up the engine, then doing nothing for the rest of the round and then deploying to be regular engineers.
My point? I feel like the vessel needs some sort of more randomized events, possibly based around how many people are in each role. Maybe for MPs a random stowaway spawns randomly, sole purpose is to avoid being captured (and not to kill), maybe some sort of creatures spawning random in tunnels that have to be cleared out before they do damage, maybe a RARE case of some specific crewmember being of CLF/UPP origin and having to acquire something such as the Alamyer's codebook from the Captain's safe and the MPs need to figure out who it is (I believe this used to be a thing). For MTs maybe bring back breaches but limit them to certain areas of the ship so it doesn't impact the round heavily but could if left alone for too long, electrical bursts which could destroy entire section's of the vessels lighting which they have to fix, maybe even some random fires due to some sort of malfunctioning wiring that MTs need to get firesuits and extinguishers to fight off.
I understand the fear of shipside events impacting the round for marines, but why even keep these shipside roles if they are just glorified engineers, and for MPs they just end up enforcing the law a few times in the beginning then go AFK for the rest of the round as nothing happens and most end up abusing their power because they don't have much else of a purpose. In rare occasions admins may do small events but this is rare and usually only a select few admins do this because again they fear how it will impact the marines on the surface. I am just generally offering thoughts for some sort of mechanics in the future as I know the devs are busy balancing the game and fixing lagging and crashes and also working on a new map. But I always feel bad watching these departments just fall to semi-AFK activity and then cryo later because they have practically nothing to do of worth. If anything they'd just be better as manpower on the surface fighting as marines.