Moderator Application
Personal Information
Byond ID? trustscience44
CM Character? Zuup 'Science' Pools
Are you 16 or older? Yes
Timezone west
On average, how many hours are you available per week to moderate? 20-30
Qualifications
Do you have any previous experience in being staff (not just SS13)? yes but not ss13
Do you play any servers aside from CM-SS13? goons
Provide links to any previous Colonial Marines applications that you've made: none on the new forums
Are you currently a staff member elsewhere (not just SS13)? If so, where? no
Have you ever been banned for more than 24 hours on Colonial Marines? yes
Have you ever been banned for more than 24 hours on ANY server? If so, which server, when, and what for? yes on CM from xeno, suicided as an infinite immortal ghost larva on test round
Are you familiar with the chat program Discord (its use is required)? Yes
Communication is a vital part of being a Moderator. Are you willing to actively do so with the team? Absolutely I enjoy communicating either in voice chat or in text, as long paragraphs with many words. Please see below as an example.
Common Staff Situations
A player randomly shoots someone at round start and MPs have detained him. First, If its ahelp I would ask the guilty what's up.
Check guilty parties notes, check guilty parties recent playtimes.
But, IMO, I don’t feel like I need to get involved as a mod because this has already been handled IC.
MP’s can perma brig the guilty guy for murder, maybe the CO can come BE them, its handled. I feel that in Permabrig the player can either sit there for the entire round or they can cryo. If it's some guy doing this every round that's an edge case and should be handled differently, perhaps a ban.
A player ahelps that a predator has violated the honor code when killing him, what should you do? As far as I know the current system for predator violations has nothing in-game any longer. We handle that on the forums so I would direct them to the forums to report the predator and for the predator council review.
You see a player walking around the ship naked and clearly lost at roundstart. If its roundstart it could be a late join IO or PO who just joined 2 seconds after start, theres roles which start nude in cryo and force you to run around naked, besides those edge cases.
I’d check their playtimes and notes. Is it a new player or old player? This is an IC issue that MP’s can handle.
In my opinion nudity as a marine is IC.
I feel the dev changes to armorless marines are punishing enough to limit the appeal of nudity, so that you won’t see nude players a second time on the frontline.
If they are a new player I’d see if there was an SEA around, well, then we have a team of mentors, so I’d direct the appropriate response.
A player is being very rude to you in adminhelps, calling you names and arguing everything you say. He is requesting to speak to an Admin+ staff member. This is a community of volunteers that take time out of their lives and there's no reason for extreme rudeness in direct messages, which in real life would be a simple one on one conversation. I would speak to another admin about the conversation i’m having with that player first, if it came to spam vitriol etc etc from that player.
But sometimes people get pissed, maybe they are just raging like a gamer nerd, a second voice or opinion goes a long way to assuage the individual.
I would be happy to do this, to speak to an admin+ if a player requested. I have a strong stance on individual actions having consequences, everyone can control themselves, and clearly if that player can not and they are sending me 5000 word essays of hate and rage in direct messages, then they should go to timeout for a while which should help them learn or improve this skill.
A player ahelps that a marine is named 'John Doe', how do you deal with this? I would check the play times and notes of ‘John Doe’.
Message the player, ask them what's up for a chitchat and if they are aware of our rules. Give them maybe 30 seconds or so to pick a new name, or change their name for them. But I would definitely note that players account with the time and date of the meme name and what I changed it to.
You see a Maintenance Tech running around in armor and carrying a rifle. The security level is green and there has been no threat to the ship in the round at this point. Unless they are running around in the firing range I don’t think that would be appropriate nor without a threat for exceptions going on. Agents are able to use lethals but I feel agents are kinda ambiguous for that context currently. Normally I would say, 99% of time that's an IC issue the MP’s should handle. I would check the players notes and playtime and if there are no MP’s around message that player.
A Marine ahelps that they were killed by a survivor. It is early round, the Marines have just landed, and the survivor claims that they were outright hostile to all Marines from the get-go and openly stated their intentions. How do you deal with this? I would let the survivor know about the recent changes to survivor roles and first engagement with USCM drop. Checking their playtime and notes to make sure it's not a repetitive weekly thing. But IMO, since the survivor will 100% get murdered by every single marine, especially Delta, after opening fire on marines at their first LZ drop. I know that the survivor would have to be revived on the Almayer and face punishment as IC on the Almayer from the CMP or MP’s, which I have seen happen in the past.
I doubt that's still acceptable with the current changes, also whenever this happens Marines typically permakill the surv. I’d make sure to note them and what concluded.
You receive an ahelp from a player stating that an MP has locked them up in permanent confinement for running into Requisitions and taking an attachment that was laying around. I would let the guilty player know that with good behavior they can earn access to the hydroponics lab and garden area!
Seriously though! I would see what was going on with both parties with some chitchat and diving into their player notes. See why the MP did this first off.
It seems pretty simple, a basic charge we see MP’s brig people often for during the 20min of prep before deployment. As I am pulling up marine law it looks like 10 minutes, maybe a couple double charges, sure the MP could do more charges but PERMA from theft and breaking/entering, not without being ignorant of the MP rules, no way to do that math that I see from the Marine Law Wiki page.
Also, I’d wonder what was up with the MP clearly not following the Law as intended, I see it as the MP who is wasting time by causing ahelps and forcing us to fix it. The MP could have just done what every other normal MP would have done that doesn’t get ahelped and all this mess and ahelping would have been avoided in the first place.
The round is stagnating. There are 30 marines and 4 aliens. The marines won't leave the ship, and the aliens won't attack. What would you do, to "encourage" the sides to engage each other? It depends on a few things, I would do nothing most likely because I don’t like interfering with rounds.
Now, of course on one hand if the round is 3 hours. I will look at the round and see the appropriate course of action. There's a lot of factors; is it either highpop or low pop, what time of the day, and who is going to be coming on in other timezones as the typical cyclical population of the server goes, what's the status of the IO’s, how well is the hive defended, is it an omegafob? is it an omega hivelord hive, Marines can get more defcon, etc, etc. It really depends on a lot of factors.
These days the developers have made sure both sides have useful systems to repopulate their ranks and they work pretty damn well.
But, Encourage either side depending on the things above?
Let's be honest and it really takes an incredible Queen to come back from 4 xenos, but it does happen (not often) but it does happen, and we typically don’t end the round for that comeback to happen, even though we know that the xenos will most likely get fucked up when they crash land, we still let it go on.
For some round ending encouragement, I’ve seen giant boilers or oops asteroids hit the Almayer, or power outages, or research corrupt hive, etc etc. Depends a lot on the context of each round and I’d try to keep that same spirit.
You are playing as a medic, and another medic overdoses all your patients and prevent marines from being revived. It seems like it may be on purpose. How do you deal with this situation? Okay this one seems complicated.
How many patients though? Is it one? Is it like 5? I would look at the medics playtimes and speak to the player about what was going on. If that player logged off and if that medic has over 10 hours of play time then I would recommend the maximum time ban possible. I take a hard stance on these types of ‘meme’s, our server does not need ‘memes’ of these kinds anymore. No one likes this shit, keep it fun by giving the player a chance to come back.
I would talk to the player and ask them what happened, I would look at the context and notes of that players history.
Mistakes happen to us all and no one is perfect at anything, let alone at every role, especially the medic or doctors roles. Medic can be mentally exhausting / confusing for new players.I have a lot of time as a medic and as a doctor this would help me identify issues with these kinds of incidents.
I'd give them suggestions to try a less intense field role while they level up their knowledge of meds and injury interactions for this server. One or two OD’s, sure that happens all the time because of accidents in the field, or delays refreshing their medical nanoui etc etc, and I would understand these issues if a player brought them up. However, if there's corpses with 4-5 OD’s on every med etc that's a lot different. However, IMO these days it is pretty damn hard to make a marine unrevivable, unless you are malicious on purpose. It depends a lot on the player and their notes and interactions after the mistakes.
The round ends, a Marine starts shooting a hostile CLF member and the CLF member ahelps about being killed after the round ended. Eorg rules do not apply to hostile enemies.
A Marine is running around disarming, punching and stealing gear at round start. You receive an ahelp from one of the victims. Round start shenanigans happen. That is a mild round start shenanigan. I would first make sure they were not disarming or stealing gear from specs to delay a spec from reaching their area or other things that would prevent another player from playing their round as intended because that would be a lot more than just shenanigans.. I would check the players notes and play times in case this was a daily thing from them.
Otherwise, this would be an IC issue handled by MPs. MP’s brig them for assault charges etc.
I would tell the player who ahelped to go and report this attack/theft to the MP, SO, SL etc.
Spending time in the brig is good, that player won’t like spending 20 minutes in the brig and I feel that it is important to goto an MP here, because IMO it shows that the system we have in game for IC punishments is working as intended and so the mods don’t have to mess with anything.
You receive an ahelp from a Marine saying that he was killed by another Marine. When you ask the murderer why, he said it was because the other Marine had punched him. That is an IC issue and I would hope an MP would grab them on it. Fist fights shouldn’t become gun fights they should have got an MP. As Mod I would have discretion to determine appropriate response right? If I could I would heal the dead marine, then allow the MP’s to do their IC permabriging of the murderer or maybe the captain would BE him, the system works! All would stay IC and of course notes like everything.
Another possibility, maybe it's a player that has 20 notes for escalating, could become a ban. I’d make sure to check the notes and talk to everyone to be positive.
You find out that there is an improper mutiny occuring. The mutineers are rallying together and preparing to storm the CIC. How would you attempt to resolve this situation? I would have Ares send out the loyal and highly defensive vent spiders.
Seriously however, We see this a lot and there are usually MOOCs about it or Ares messages. I mean, we usually have a dozen people ahelp and mods make a mutiny leader and it goes on.
Except it usually fucks up because no one does it right or understands how to do it.
I would check out and figure out what was going on, figure out how it's an improper mutiny.
As I said before I don't like to interfere with the round, but if I had to I would try to find a creative RP way to protect CiC, if some stage of the mutiny messed up.
Are the marines just ungas and don’t understand, did the leader fuck up, or what happen to make it improper because there are several things that could have gone wrong from ignorance or what not.
So, if it all went to shit, I would try to explain to everyone in MOOC what goes on during a mutiny the mechanics of it and what to do. They are pretty rare so it's not surprising most players don’t understand the workings.
There are minor racist comments going on IC. 9 of the 10 people are laughing and RPing but one player gets offended and Adminhelps about it. A lot of these rules recently changed so I might first let the marines know about these changes as a warning.
Also it really depends, The N word is out, etc etc.
However, asking a CL named ‘GoldBerg’ how much gold they have in their purse is considered okay.
So it would really depend on the context, UNLESS its blatant shit words.
I would take a look at what was going on and the chat history. I would tell the group of marines to stop their shit in MOOC. There's a BIG difference between roleplay and racism and what's offensive. I think I can see that difference and would make the right choices.
A marine opens fire at round start in briefing killing multiple marines and instantly logs off. Whenever I saw this happen I always wondered about that player. Sometimes we would see fully clothed and readied marines just open fire at brief going nuts with nades. And of course there would be the naked marines with guns that you might raise an eyebrow at as they walked past your color prep area.
I always felt that getting dressed up implies intent to obfuscate/subterfuge/deceive which is a lot more than a naked marine being a dick. Either way, I would aheal the marines and then jobban that player from marine and apply a ban.
My reasoning, We should make player come and explain themselves on the forum as they chose not to explain what happened on our time by logging off, so that player can go to the forums on their time, logon and explain it to us.
You see a player playing a Xeno larva/chestburster run towards the frontlines straight from the Xeno hive the second they burst and die. Suicide larva illegal, warning or jobban for a few days or more, after I speak with them and depending on notes.
You see a Xeno memeing, saying AYYLMAO, REEEEEE etc in hivemind chat, as well as insulting the Queen. This happens all the time in the round and mods are always warning the hive.
Therefore, as a mod I will have prepared a statement in notepad++ for things such as this, something like XOOC “No Xeno’s you are not the JoJo Anime Hive or the Imposter Gang, If I hear another person say uWu mommy give me hot plasma there will be punishment and bands.”
It always changes, whatever meme is next month and then the next month.
The Queen can handle insults on her own through warnings/devolution/hive banishment.
However, it could be extreme in content and I would take a stronger action against that player.
If the xeno is singing country roads or katy perry or something I’d give them a message to chill out just a tad.
New queens really get hammered hard in xeno chat by aggressive and insulting senior xeno players and it is always sad to see that new Queen not trying to be Queen again. I still think a more relaxed and neutral option such as ‘Xeno Mute’ on that rude Xeno for a period of time would be useful by the Queen.
Also I looked and as far as I can tell from Discord, REEEEE is allowed again.
Of course, overall, I would warn that player about ‘memes’ and note it down because one person can lead everyone off a cliff.
A Xeno player calls the shuttle a "dropship". A different Xeno player ahelps that it's low role play to call it a "dropship". I would let the player know that basic engagement has changed. Xenos are now aware of the ship above them and that humans will come down from this ship to the colony. I would let the player know that they no longer have to say metal bird or metal turtle and that the other player's usage was acceptable.
A Command staff player at briefing near round-start mentions there are aliens on the planet. You receive an ahelp from a marine regarding this. Unless it was a custom event current expected contact is for other things. Aliens are not part of expected contact at the colony at this time. So I would tell that player thank you and let the Command Staff player know about our current policies.
You find a Marine killing another Marine on the EVAC Pod to take the last spot and claims it was RP as he was saving himself. There are two other marines in the pod along with him. If its 3 people in a pod? One marine and 2 others there is no problem with the EVAC Pod leaving. I would let that marine know that only the CO can do that and that they have to find another pod. Also checking their notes to see if they always try to play off murder as RP. I would warn them and note that player depending on history.
A player insults you after you warn them for a minor issue and begins ranting in LOOC or dchat about staff and mentions you specifically, referring to you as an 'idiot' and a 'retard'. I don’t feel this is as significant as rude direct messages to staff through amessages.
I’ll explain my reasoning why, Dchat salt is common chat imo, at the same time though LOOC shouldn’t be used for that stuff at all.
I would first let them know to just post on the forums about it in the staff report section because what they are doing right now would only get them in more trouble. Also, idiot and retard are not a big deal to me so I would ignore it as I do not consider that rude, however, if it is to the point that they are all over Dchat and keep escalating or even if they are spamming the chat then they are affecting the game and setting a bad example for other players so it becomes a problem and I would have to let them know to chill out or there are consequences.
A player ahelps saying he was hugged by a Xeno when he was ssd, and wants the larva be removed from him via admin powers. How do you handle the ahelp? Fake being ssd myself until the player logs off.
But seriously I would let them know our current rules and we don’t do things like that.
I would also let them know they will burst as a larva so they can still play as xeno for this round after they burst.
You see a fellow staff member give wrong information in an Adminhelp or incorrectly enforce a rule. I’d speak with the staff member in the admin chat and maybe get another opinion, since we are a team let's make sure we all do the best teamwork we can. If I saw something I knew was incorrect I would seek out clarification from higher up the chain.
Two staff are arguing in msay if an ahelp is breaking a rule. Because the staff who took the ahelp thinks the player broke a rule, they ban the player based on their interpretation of the rules, with others thinking the person was fine. What would you do? Disagreements happen and should happen, when people care that's how systems are improved. Mistakes happen as well. The ban will go to the forum and all of the senior mods and leads will look into it, and determine if it was indeed inappropriate or not. There's systems in place for this, for both the players and review of the moderators as well. I would not exacerbate it anymore and most likely stay out of the conversation unless I was pretty damn sure I could add something positive to their exchange.
Why would you like to become a moderator? I’d like to add to the server with events, helping to keep the good people around, tossing the bad out, Dealing with issues to keep the round flowing. The server has been steady and only improving for years and I think I could add a lot to the team and would really like to help out.
In your opinion, what is the most important quality for a moderator? First and foremost, A mod should be honest and unbiased and ready to accept input from others while putting the server first. Also to help others while staying calm and trying to calm others without taking sides.
Also, if they use their in-game nick name with ‘nickname’ or the evil unspeakable “nickname”.
Anything else you yes