Administrative Precedents
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Administrative Protocols
This page contains procedures and precedents for administrators.
- An administrator is anyone with game server permissions. This includes event managers and maintainers.
- This page is intentionally (relatively) informal. This is a roleplaying game, not a corporate service. We expect staff to represent the server's community and ideals, not act like machines.
Roles
In-game staff roles currently consist of:
- Administrator: Responsible for handling player disputes, policy questions, etc.
- Trial Admins are not lower ranked than Game Admins; it simply symbolizes a learning period for new staff.
- Maintainer: Given server permissions as codebase maintainers.
- Event Manager: Given server permissions to run events / storylines.
What staff can / can not do:
- Non-administrators should not handle player / policy disputes in most cases.
- Administrators / Maintainers can run events if they choose to, as long as they abide by the standards set for events.
- Anyone with game server permissions is allowed to interfere with the round if said interference abides by the standards set for events.
- Anyone with game server permissions is allowed to apply temporary / inconsequential punishments if a player is overly disruptive on an OOC level. This includes muting OOC, muting specific players from OOC for the round, etc.
General Protocol
These are things staff are generally expected to follow.
Slip-ups happen. We will not side with you if you are obnoxiously hostile to staff over a mistake that is insignificant in the long run. Don't be a dick.
- Staff are expected to remain cordial and impartial in admin tickets.
- Intentionally being belligerent towards staff may net you snarky responses in return. Staff are still human.
- Staff are expected to not handle tickets that they are involved / personally invested in / otherwise unable to make an impartial call.
- This applies to everyone, including head admins. We have a staff team for a reason.
- This can kick in if an admin becomes personally invested when otherwise attempting to handle a ticket impartially. Call another admin if you're getting heated.
- Staff are generally expected to not share data / knowledge only they know that players are trying to conceal.
- Example: character names - while normally not an issue, some players prefer having their identity be on the down-low.
- Anti-example: Whether or not something was sabotaged. After the round, staff are free to share anything they know about general round flow for transparency reasons.
- Pseudo-example: Specifically who did an otherwise stealthy sabotage. Remember, players might have characters trying to be stealthy. Don't ruin it for them.
- Staff should keep each other accountable. Please bring concerns up with each other in staff-chat.
- We are all here to collaboratively build a community; there is no ego, only right and wrong.
- Try to give players proportionate warning before serious consequences unless it is an egregious infraction.
- Outside of cases of obvious grief and/or established hostility, avoid giving excessively long bans.
- Players should generally be warned if they are spotted doing / planning a TK/PK (temporary/until-appeal removal of character) worthy action.
- Try to give IC punishments for IC infractions.
- OOC punishments (full-job-bans, server bans) should be for OOC / rules infractions, or when a player is abusing their allotment of allowable IC trouble-making.
- Investigation is expected when handling a non-trivial ticket.
- Logs do not provide full context. Always talk to everyone involved.
- Logs may leave out context, but logs are factual. Validate the story of those involved before applying a punishment.
'Central Command' / 'Higher Authorities'
This section applies to all 'higher authority' roles. Central Command (potentially to be refluffed) is simply the authority for Nanotrasen. There are others, like faction leaders, other megacorporation executives / leadership, etc.
The word CCO refers to these characters / authorities. Use common sense, do not rules lawyer this section to the letter.
- Be professional (or act in character if your character is not meant to be professional). It hurts player confidence if staff are shit-posting as an IC that can literally fire them.
- CCOs may visit for the sake of visiting, even without a grievance.
- As a CC visitor, they have no overrule authority.
- As a CC officer, they do; they are expected to not show up as an on-duty officer trivially.
- These are some of the only characters that have an exception to 'do not job swap by leaving and rejoining'. Staff are obviously expected to use common sense (ergo; extreme example: getting in a barfight as a visitor and then rejoining as an officer to flex is not acceptable).
- A CCO visiting is still a CCO. Don't do stupid things like provoke fights or otherwise make players miserable.
- Do not dogpile players. There is absolutely no reason for more than 2-3 staff to join as CCOs outside of extreme scenarios.
- It is an absolutely awful feeling to have all the administrators dogpiling you IC as in many non-Citadel servers this is what happens before you are banned. Do not propagate this. Wanting to watch is not a valid reason to join as a CCO.
- Using 'radio monitors' to speak for / as CCOs or just as the corporation is allowed.
- Use common sense. If there's an event that all subspace communications to command are suppressed, don't start shitposting over the traffic monitor if the traffic monitor is lightyears away.
Ascension Clause
'Ascending' existing player characters to a CCO-equivalent is not allowed without prior authorization from a head administrator and discussion with the staff team.
- Existing CCOs at time of writing (4/15/2024) are grandfathered in and are allowed to continue being used.
Fraternization Clause
After a colossal clusterfuck in the ancient eras of the server's history, under no circumstances are CCO-equivalent characters allowed to engage in ERP while in game.
- ICly, if you were too attached to a significant other / associate to the point of losing your impartiality, you would not be allowed to continue making decisions regarding them / their posting by any reasonable corporation.
Events / Round Interference
On Lore Integrity
Citadel is a canon server. This means that memory is continuous between rounds unless otherwise specified.
- Do not do anything outlandish. This includes changing (large amounts of) IC objects to have nonsensical sprites, or anything that would generally be extremely immersion-shattering for players who witness it.
- If doing anything story-significant, try to know the general gist of the lore behind a faction so that it can be portrayed properly.
- We do not expect event runners to know every tiny tidbit of lore about something unless they are running something with very high importance to the 'something'. Characters have natural variance.
On Delaying / Ending the Round
- Staffmembers are allowed to interfere with the round timer / automatic transfer, up to and including cancelling votes, if justifiable reason is procured.
- It's generally reasonable to do this if deemed necessary during announced events. See: 'On Scheduled Events'.
- It is generally inadvisable to outright cancel the transfer vote (or the transfer itself) without good reason.
- Good reason may include finishing IC-critical scenarios occurring in game.
- Staff is generally expected to have a finger on the pulse of the round when doing these things; if a large amount of the server is sitting around with nothing to do / in dead-chat, it's probably not a good idea to keep the round going.
- Delaying the actual reboot post-transfer is allowable for IC scenarios to resolve.
- Please do not do this too often, or for too long. People cannot join the round after the round ends, not to mention it is awkward for everyone sitting around.
On Impromptu Events (Round Interference)
Round interference / 'spicing up the round' is allowed and encouraged within reason. 'Organic' events and conflict can often be even more fun than scheduled events and organized missions.
- Any un-announced event fits in this category; hence why such broad jurisdiction is given. There is no difference between a spontaneous overmaps mission, and spawning something in maintenance for crew to interact with.
- Impromptu events should avoid being chaotic to the point of undue lethality.
- While an argument can be made that being in game (or on duty) makes you fair game for world events, understand that a large part of the server is being able to roleplay without the fear of being randomly gunned down without warning or provocation.
- Danger is allowed in impromptu events; just scale it as necessary and make it believable. Avoid making scenarios that will become overly lethal for uninvolved crew.
- Take into account who is on the station when doing anything dangerous.
- If security is empty, as an example, probably don't give weapons to the stowaway you just spawned.
- Do try to ascertain the impact of your intervention. Giving a rocket launcher to a random person, for example, will probably result in security going on high alert at the very minimum, not to mention that person being grilled by security or worse - even if you thought it would just be a few people involved.
- By no means does this mean you cannot involve on-duty departments as needed; it just means to be mindful and think ahead when interfering with the canon world.
On Scheduled Events
Scheduled events are, in effect, someone reserving a time slot / round on the server to run their scenario.
- Events must be scheduled at least a day in advance (give or take) for it to count as this.
- Scheduled events get a lot more leeway in what can happen. Notably,
- High-chaos / 'we didn't sign up for this' events are generally okay in this context.
- Any event that requires the round to be non-canon can happen in this context.
- Arbitrarily interrupting a crew transfer vote to ensure event completion is generally allowable in this context.
- Do not spam scheduled events; downtime is important.
- Do not make every scheduled event a shootout; the ability to reserve the server for a high-chaos shootout does not mean the server exists for high-chaos shootouts.
- Remember; events, if canon, are still part of the crew's history. Do not turn the crew's history into just moonlighting as space marines.
People should still be having fun in scheduled events. Being given leeway to do whatever you want to the round does not excuse you from having to get a read on the general state of the round.
On Events & Chaos
High chaos events are generally classified as events that involve forcing a significant fraction of the players onboard the main map to deal with something, regardless of their opinion on it.
- There should generally not be too many high-chaos events in a week.
- High-chaos events should generally be announced, unless there is a natural buildup to it / other factors.
- If the crew infinitely escalates against a faction, they consent to being escalated against in return, whether or not announced.
- Low-chaos events are generally 'uncapped' / not limited.
- Combat-heavy events should not be too frequent, regardless of chaos level.
On Event Characters
- ECs (event characters) are those that do not exist outside of an event / is otherwise not normally played by a player.
- PCs (player characters) are those that do / are commonly played by a player, whether on the station or in an offmap.
- Spawning player characters in as an event character is generally acceptable if it makes sense to do so.
- This especially applies to offmap/non-NT characters.
- Permadeath is not automatically enforced on characters that are in an event, unless agreed to prior (and it being sensical to the story to do so; examples include factions that do not revive their dead).
Administrative Precedents
Miscellaneous, rare / improbable precedents are here.