The upcoming techweb update brings about many changes. The removal of DEFCON and IO as a role, the new telephone operator squad role and of course the techweb system itself which will introduce some big changes to the overall tactics and flow of the round. And i must confess that i am very excited for all of these. There is however one change that completely changed my view of this update. From the title you probably already guessed what i'm talking about. One of the changes the techweb update will bring is the merging of CO and XO to a single role that will be the one in direct control of the techweb system. While this may sound insignificant it will in my opinion have a very negative effect on overall enjoyment of the shipside part of the game. I am writing this post to explain why i believe this to be the case and hopefuly convice more people to bring this issue up and by extention make the developers and staff reconsider their stance on the issue and allow both XO and CO to remain as they are.
For those who don't know what i'm talking about it was said on the last townhall that the role of commanding officer and executive officer will be merging into a single commander role. This means that at roundstard either the XO or the CO will wake up and the other slot will become unavailable. The COs will still keep their powers and benefits (BE, arrest protection, etc..) and will remain locked behind a whitelist. However you will never see CO and XO at the same time which brings me to the core of the issue i have with this upcoming change.
While i understand the game design decision behind this as well as the benefits of having a single commander lead the ground forces this change will inevitably lead to the commander being forced to stay in the CIC without ever being able to leave for longer period of time. What that means is you will no longer be able to have the CO or XO lead the troops on the ground while the other is free to attend other duties. That means you as XO can no longer oversee things happening on the ship such as making sure MPs follow the right procedure, taking over requisition when RO is SSD/missing or lead the hunt for a loose xeno that got aboard. But what will suffer most from this change is the roleplay aspect of XO/CO.
Having only one commander that has to lead the operation alone means that there will be nobody from senior command who can focus on whats happening shipside be it talking with survivors/faction representatives or more importantly organizing fun RP events. Yes, CL is the one who is supposed to be doing that but it can be very hard for the CL or any other RP only role to do that on their own. First of all with the adition of agents the CL is prety much guaranteed to spend a lot of time dealing with MPs being instantly suspected of agent activity (along with mess SGT and MTs) which does not make organizing anything exactly easy. What i'm trying to say is that if you as a player want to organize any kind of event or any activity outside the normal departmental duties you need someone with executive power. You need someone to keep the MPs from arresting everyone attending said event for the slightest SOP breach. You need someone with enough access and authority to announce the event is happening and alowing the crew to take a break from their duties and attend the event while at the same time making sure it will not affect the ground in any meaningful way (like req or medbay not working at all because all doctors have a party). In other words you need the XO or CO.
In my personal opinion there is just so much potential in having XO or CO free to RP on the ship while the other leads the operation. It doesn't need to be anything big like rebuilding half the ship or anything like that. Just small things like a boxing tournament, party in the mess hall or sermon in the chappel are all things that would benefit greatly from the active presence of a commander. You can talk with the CL about the current situation on the ground and the company involvment in it. You can negotiate with the corrupted hive a researcher made. You organize small construction projects like turning officer study into temporary housing for survivors and many other things of this nature.
If any member of staff is reading this, trust me i understand you want to make marine command and xeno command similar with both sides having a single commander using the techweb system. And its fine to do that. But you don't need to remove XO from the game to accomplish this. Why not implement a system that would allow the CO to take over command from XO if he wishes to or keep the XO in command of the ground while the CO RPs on the ship. That way you would still only have one commander for each side for groundside while keeping shipside unafected. You can add a ruling preventing the CO and XO from deploying to avoid the one not in command becoming unga+ on the ground. I know there are many COs that would enjoy shipside RP and i know there are some XO mains that do as well. As for the others there is always cryo if someone just can't stand not being in charge of the ground.
In the last town hall you said that you do want to keep the CM being MRP server but it's on the players to keep the RP going. If that's true then please stop removign all the tools that make the RP going. So many things got removed or changed mechanicaly, so many rules and regulations were put in place that make CM turn into team deathmatch game with any attemt of RP and RP events being laughed at (in some cases by staff themselves which sadens me even more) instead. So i implore you, don't make the XO role just one more item added to the list of those changes but listen to your playerbase for once and show some love to the people who enjoy the RP aspect of this game.