The absolute state of (Widely seen as) boring but necessary roles

[WitheredGryphon]

as a somewhat of a veteran PO pilot, i feel naturally inclined to shut down baldie PO's who want to do CAS. reason being is that honestly it's better if someone more experienced does that role, honestly i've seen people insist that they know how to do CAS when they're standing there reading the wiki on gimbals, then put the loadout as something stupid like 1 GAU and 2 rocket pods then some random other weapon.

And flying Alamo is going to fix that, how exactly?

[Grubstank]

I actually really enjoy flying transport PO. Sometimes I just want a chilled out round, and there can be major advantages to having a transport PO as well- big help with logistics, you can grab a basic medical load out to make sure people don't die.... and what I enjoy most is enabling squad comms and screaming at CIC when the inevitably bald overwatch officers ignore their squaddies begging for x y or z.

I am going to admit though, the most enjoyable part of transport not being automated is when you're solo PO and balance running CAS, transport by remote, etc to keep everything running efficiently.

[zzurge]

Now that you mention it,if you were on hydro I think I was the other engie trying to do external walls telling the engie to not do internal cade lines first

[50RemAndCounting]

There's a chronic lack of squad engineers and doctors. Many a lowpop round has seen the marine side severely hampered by this.

[MystersSpy/David Hovey]

On the subject of transport PO, some people enjoy doing it like how some people like playing games that are basically logistics games, they enjoy balancing handling wounded, ammo delivery, loading and unloading, etc. Not my cup of tea personally. Though I also saw someone reply about shutting down baldies who want to do CAS getting shut down, and while I agree they need to be shut down 90% of the time, when I mained CAS PO and I had a baldie who wanted to fly CAS rather than just entirely shutting them down I'd say "No, but I'll show you" and take them and show them how I set up fire missions (And I didn't really do anything fancy, mostly a relatively narrow 6x12 corridor of fire that I'd make secondary missions to skew it to to the left or right of center, because if we're real CAS is called 90% of the time firing down narrow pathways), telling them the benefits and draw backs of that decision, benefit and drawbacks of wider fire, etc rather than just shunting them.

[kooarbiter]

Don't know about PO, but for Engineer man is it boring and frustrating. Setting up cades takes a fair amount of time and while you can get creative with cade placement, there's only so much you can do. Not to mention it involves yelling at your local RO/SL/CT for a good 5-15-ish minutes until they finally listen and pray that they finally get you resupplied. With most medics, at most they need to find is a medvendor or return shipside for additional pills rather then screaming at req for using all their points on a spec that just died.

Even then, your cades are only useful if someone is manning them, which normally there isn't unless it's the FOB around the LZ.
Doesn't help that they removed shock grilles and really really simplified hacking from back when it was RNG to where it is now.

Not to mention, I find it often i'm fighting with bald engineers who insist that they are right. They build things like Mortar pits or side cades inside of cade lines INSISTING that they help defend us despite me telling them it doesn't. Hell just yesterday I had to constantly argue with him that sidecades were useless inside of FOB cade lines, and he ended up both really salty and in belief that he's in the right. Another time an FOB engineer built a mortar pit and I told him it was a waste of materials and he gave a condescending I'll CONSIDER IT line (which means he doesn't give a rats ass about my advice). Point being, I find a lot of FOB engineers are not only bald, but also giant pricks who don't want to listen to genuine advice.

Frontline engi is a little bit better since most engineers won't bother to try something stupid because there isn't much time to get building.

Once as mini engi I was fortifying hydro road and leaving it open just wide enough for tanks when I get into an argument with an engi after telling them to shift their Cade's a tile south, they chose to be an ass and ignore me and the tanky boys chonked it up as I watched with the kind of toxic petty pride you can get by proving a superior wrong

[Nichodemius]

I used to love engineering. The issue is not the role.
Hell even materials become easyer once you know a few "tricks".

Issue is cade doctrines, every engineer right or wrong has a doctrine and begin in fighting.

I game, pick an area. Be it front mini fob for medics, front war line, a part along the resupply
If you are good your point will probably hold better than hydro nexus or lz.

About doctrine and correct things. Many misconceptions old / misinformation. Makes it hard to convince. The old cade guides are seriously out dated.
Is it meta to talk about it? Should CM community make a unified doctrine? The big brass needs to think about it.
Common questions and gripes:
- double cades ] [ (blocking shots flames attacks getting double slashed,...)
- one space lines with plasteel ] ] (one space sandbag with no wire but leaving plasteel open is different)
- sandbag vs metal for main defence (strength vs weld repair)
- form for tank and locations
- un defended cade lines being built. (5th layers nexus south no one watches or defends)
- right behind the cade or not
- claymore nases turret placement (partial to no clay or nades myself heh FF and cade damage monsters)

These are just some that descide the doctrine.
Some things are old modified,... But as long as information is scattered and divided there will be arguments.

So what is the solution? Depends what is allowed. A detailed wiki page with cade mechanics? Cm ss13 doctrine? Forum discussion ? See another engineer leave to another area?

[ChiChii]

On the subject of transport PO, some people enjoy doing it like how some people like playing games that are basically logistics games, they enjoy balancing handling wounded, ammo delivery, loading and unloading, etc. Not my cup of tea personally. Though I also saw someone reply about shutting down baldies who want to do CAS getting shut down, and while I agree they need to be shut down 90% of the time, when I mained CAS PO and I had a baldie who wanted to fly CAS rather than just entirely shutting them down I'd say "No, but I'll show you" and take them and show them how I set up fire missions (And I didn't really do anything fancy, mostly a relatively narrow 6x12 corridor of fire that I'd make secondary missions to skew it to to the left or right of center, because if we're real CAS is called 90% of the time firing down narrow pathways), telling them the benefits and draw backs of that decision, benefit and drawbacks of wider fire, etc rather than just shunting them.

I'm personally still learning a lot of the ship side roles, so I can speak to this as a newer player.

Tried learning research once, had someone who was ICly rude, and would not explain anything so I ended up cryoing. My next attempt a week later, I had this nice guy who allowed me to follow him around and he explained things as he did it and showed me how to get research up and going with help of both him explaining some of the unclear stuff on the wiki and pointing out some of the more vague stuff that was more of a quality of life thing? He was super helpful, kind, and patient unlike the first guy I spoke too when trying shipside. So I ended up having fun with research and playing it often.

What personally for me is the problem is how are you supposed to learn on this server? Wiki helps, yes, but it doesn't really do a great job and sometimes depending on what you're doing it's confusing and it's even worse if you have one monitor and you're tabbing back and forth between the wiki and the game, or your split screen it. There's no intern rank on this server, which every SS13 server I have played on has so you can follow people and learn in the same manner that you're talking. I think this server would greatly benefit from a "teach me" role that doesn't include the pressure of also having to do the job/be responsible for you're trying to learn.

For example I was learning MT another round, speaking with a mentor over mentor chat the entire time as I asked them questions about the wiki. Had someone yelling at me ICly the entire time about having the other MT and myself charged with gross negligence while I was trying to figure everything out. Luckily the engines are easy so it wasn't that bad, but that type of stuff is kinda daunting when you want new players to pick up support roles and you have this guy icly raging at you over the radio while you are OOCly trying to speak with a mentor.

TL;DR

• People need to chill out.
• This server needs an actual intern role.

[SilentMountain]

I'm personally still learning a lot of the ship side roles, so I can speak to this as a newer player.

Tried learning research once, had someone who was ICly rude, and would not explain anything so I ended up cryoing. My next attempt a week later, I had this nice guy who allowed me to follow him around and he explained things as he did it and showed me how to get research up and going with help of both him explaining some of the unclear stuff on the wiki and pointing out some of the more vague stuff that was more of a quality of life thing? He was super helpful, kind, and patient unlike the first guy I spoke too when trying shipside. So I ended up having fun with research and playing it often.

What personally for me is the problem is how are you supposed to learn on this server? Wiki helps, yes, but it doesn't really do a great job and sometimes depending on what you're doing it's confusing and it's even worse if you have one monitor and you're tabbing back and forth between the wiki and the game, or your split screen it. There's no intern rank on this server, which every SS13 server I have played on has so you can follow people and learn in the same manner that you're talking. I think this server would greatly benefit from a "teach me" role that doesn't include the pressure of also having to do the job/be responsible for you're trying to learn.

For example I was learning MT another round, speaking with a mentor over mentor chat the entire time as I asked them questions about the wiki. Had someone yelling at me ICly the entire time about having the other MT and myself charged with gross negligence while I was trying to figure everything out. Luckily the engines are easy so it wasn't that bad, but that type of stuff is kinda daunting when you want new players to pick up support roles and you have this guy icly raging at you over the radio while you are OOCly trying to speak with a mentor.

TL;DR

• People need to chill out.
• This server needs an actual intern role.

This server will never have an assistan type job because shipside roles are relegated to simple pushing of 2 buttons max and that's it. All the focus is on the MUH PVP MUH K/D

[BeardedWall]

The issue for engineers, mts, doctors, (and for a point mps) is that everything that made the role interesting has been removed.

You cant hardwire anything as an engineer anymore, or rewire things to fix power. Wires were removed. Generators were removed. Things like electrified grills. Atmos etc.
You cant really build much of anything as a squad engineer but cades, and that is boooooring as fuck which is why no one does/wants to anymore.

For doctor, all the difficult things are gone. No more infections, necro, etc. Lung surgeries require a single autoinjector that we dont even have to make anymore. In fact, most doctoring nowadays seems to be stuffing people into the autodocs. Its mindlessly repetitive and boring.
Ce and mts have NOTHING to do but load the OB and start the generator. Its a meme role.

All of the changes above have been to reduce lag and some of them good. But its at the expense of anything that made the role interesting.