Howluinb Mentor App Redux : Electric Boogaloo

Staff Applications Mentor Applications
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Your CKEY: Howluinb

Your Discord: Howluinb31153

How long have you been playing ss13?: For probably 3 years now

Who vouches for your experience (if anyone)?: Didn’t really ask for vouches.

Game Experience (More Detailed):

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Extra 700 hours from fulp back when the codebase were somewhat similar, but doesn’t count for much anyways, but it gives a lot of extra hours to most roles listed here. Like, I have 0.8 hrs as gene, but I got 20 on fulp - same for scientist, with 200 hours in it.

I got pretty much a lot of knowledge on most roles in the game, know a bunch of fun hidden interactions not many people know,

For example,

Did you know you can mix up a bunch of flavors as bartender in one single glass ? And the drink itself takes the appearance of the drinks with the highest amount of units inside the glass. You can then rename it with a pen, write a new description and make your own special coffees with an extra taste of mint ! This also allows you to make busted OP cocktails with a ton of extra buffs inside (or debuffs, eheheh)

I mainly spend time in service lately, I’m ready to go on the wiki if needed and I’m able to code dive if necessary.
I’m lacking a bit in botany - While I know how to grow stuff and do basic setups, I’ve never really interacted with most plants in the game. Same for Atmos/Engi - I know how to do fusion and a co2 setup, but nothing more complicated than that.
I’m also very eager to teach new people about the game, walking them through everything and helping them learn how to enjoy the game. I want to be a teacher IRL, so this even feels like extra experience to learn how to best handle teaching others

Additional Information :
It’s important to note that the way I play ss13 is very dependant on random hyperfixations. I can spend a week or two exclusively play ss13 for 6 hours a day, then nothing for 3-4 weeks. I hope that’s not a disqualifying factor.

As requested by Haliris, I also understand that mentors are staff. That comes with showing a proper image to players.
My past history on the discord does involve me getting salty/angry, but, and I believe I am not alone in thinking this, I feel like I’ve genuinely improved on this front over time.

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Let’s get this started

  1. How do I place the pod inside of the transport tube?
  2. Do I really need to ask a human to attach a camera to a wall as a cyborg?
  3. What does the Upgrade Wand do?
  4. How do I make money as cargo?
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How do I place the pod inside of the transport tube?

Open the RPD, go to “transit tubes” tab, switch to “station equipment”, spawn a transit tube pod.
You also obviously gotta have stations/terminus inside your tube system for it to work.
Bring the transit tube pod you spawned next to one of the transit stops & click drag the pod onto it. It should now work.

Do I really need to ask a human to attach a camera to a wall as a cyborg?

No, you can deconstruct the wall you want to place the camera on, place the camera assembly on the now empty space, reconstruct the wall ontop of it & then screwdriver the camera. It will automatically place it towards your direction.

What does the Upgrade Wand do?

AFAIK it’s an admin only item ? but it basically allows to boost the hell out of a stage magician’s abilities. Telegloves, for example, can now grab from super far.

How do I make money as cargo?

Plenty of methods. Base one is to just collect empty crates & welding tanks and deliver them to centcom for quick early cash, useful to start buying basic stuff the station may need.
The main source of income without complex setups would be the bounties you can find on the bounty console in cargo. They’re just items the crew can make/find which brings money when delivered.
You can print a bunch of bounties lists, and go distribute them to the crew - with maybe a few loud reminders for them to actually complete them. They can bring a lot of money afterall
Then you can do more complex stuff like rare gas farms, doing tesla bounties or even just simple things like setting up shops for the crew to buy items, and putting all the proceeds into cargo budget. Really, anything that convinces the crew to give you their credits legally works well, and can be a lotta fun.

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  • How much damage does a pickaxe do?
  • Im new to traitors, what am I supposed to do?
  • Why is the SM on fire when I added the gas already?

Bonus:

  • How do I mentorhelp?
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  1. Yep, most people don’t know you have to drag the pod into the tube after placing it.
  2. No need to go through that process, you can just drag the camera assembly to a tile next to a wall, stand on it and click on the assembly with a screwdriver. Same goes for other assemblies.
  3. It’s actually a Stage Magician uplink exclusive item. But yes, it does upgrade their unique items.
  4. Yeah, but rare gas farms don’t really exist anymore after lavanad’s gasses became non-random.

A bit lacking, but good answers overall, I’ll +1.

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How much damage does a pickaxe do?

Code diving, Mini pickaxe gives 10 brute / 7 brute when thrown, basic pickaxe is 15 brute, 10 brute when thrown.

Im new to traitors, what am I supposed to do?

Your goal is primarily to accomplish objectives for the glory of the syndicate. When you spawned you should have had a mission debrief about the things you need to achieve during this shift - but if you can’t remember, click the IC tab at the top right, then click “notes”.
You may need to steal a specific item you don’t know the position of, or accomplish a specific goal that you do not understand how to accomplish, so don’t hesitate to open up a new mhelp.
You can also try to use the code words you were given to find other people who are traitors, and allying with them could help you a lot, especially if you are new.
Finally, in your notes/debrief, it should give you an uplink code (assuming you have not changed the base settings for your uplink to start in your PDA). Open up your PDA, and set the ringtone to the code that was given to you - this should open up a whole list of traitor items you can use to accomplish your job. You can go on the wiki (insert link here) for explanations on what each item does - and you can ask more in mhelp if you want suggestions and whatnot.

Why is the SM on fire when I added the gas already?

Can’t really tell anything specific without being here - there’s a new functionality that allows mentor to ghost and come help directly to see what’s wrong and tell them or guide them?
Most likely problem, is that one or several devices/pumps/scrubbers were not turned on, so there is no gas flow and thus the SM is building up pressure and heat constantly, thus catching fire.

How do I mentorhelp?

…How did you open up a mentorhelp ticket if you don’t know how to open one ?


(if it’s in the discord, i’m just taking a screenshot and showing them visually)

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I mean, nah, SM pluoxium farm & atmos gas farms are still common and still net a lot of money - those were what i’m talking about

I’ve only ever seen it that way, so, fair enough lol. Thanks !

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  1. Good, though there’s silver and diamond picks too, with 17 and 19 damage respectively.
  2. Seems alright, though I’d mention that their main purpose is to spice up the round and cause mischief, rather than just completing their objectives.
  3. There is indeed (though I never get to become one) So heres a little more information about this scenario: You are observing. Everything is set properly, there are no pumps on the loop, the filters are on and set, scrubbers are good, so are the vents and the space heat-exchangers are all intact as well. Purely from the visual clues, the supermatter is set up properly.
    What do you do to next?
  4. There isnt really a good answer to this one as it could just be a troll or someone who legit doesnt know but made it by mistake. But thats a good response I guess.

I’ll decide to + or not after some more questions are asked. (Like, another 2 mentors ask some)

T:1

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Actually wanted to add that one but was too busy wondering about mechanics first lmao.

  • Did he use the correct gas ?
  • If he didn’t, did he use too much ? if there’s a bit of heat and the gas expands, it might clog inside the pipes/pumps & prevent quick release of gases.
  • If it’s been super long into the round, it might be one of the supermatter surges random event. Pump in some n2o to cool it down then some n2 (you can skip the n2o)
  • Someone may have been a bit cheeky and sabotaged the SM by pumping in a shitton of plasma or other whacky gases, so you’ll need to empty out the gases by removing the floor, then quickly fix it & pumping back in some N2 to stabilise it. (co2 overload is the most common one, so, obviously, check atmos intake pipe)
    Apart from that, if I really don’t see anything visual, then I don’t know what else it could be.
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The correct gas was used, N2, no new gas was introduced into the loop either, this is the most basic supermatter setup and the supermatter was working fine until recently and the gas inside the loop is cool, thanks to the space exchangers, but the supermatter is still on fire. Last ideas why is that? Spoiler for the answer if you don’t feel like answering, don’t want to drag this on unnecessary ( its lag. The scrubbers are siphoning the gas out faster than the vents can pump it in. Turning two of the scrubbers off can fix the issue)

It was none of the reasons you said before (though all are possible answers, not the one I’m looking for)

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I clicked the spoiler because I genuinely had no clue, I had no idea lag could ever cause that. I knew there was a time where SM would constantly delam because atmos would just not process, but I’ve not ever encountered such a case lol.
Interesting to know, quite wild

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  1. how the FUCK do I move?

  2. I saw someone make a bomb that exploded and made carpets everywhere, how do I do this?

  3. How do I remove a label from an artifact?

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its more frequent than it should be…

And you can tell this is the case if you click on the SM as a ghost and notice that both o2 and plasma keeps going up and up slowly, occasionally going back to normal, low levels

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If you are stuck on the arrivals shuttle, you can either press the “resist” button on your UI, bottom right - or you can press the hotkey B. This will unbuckle your character from the seat you are strapped in

I saw someone make a bomb that exploded and made carpets everywhere, how do I do this?

There’s a chemical called “carpet” you can fabricate in chemistry, done by combining blood & space drugs. You proceed to make a smoke bomb with it, i think ? not sure if it’s smoke or something else.
When detonated, it will spread carpets in the area surrounding the grenade.
If they don’t know how to make chemical grenades, they should mhelp again on that matter. (which i’ll tell them to)

How do I remove a label from an artifact?

You don’t, you can just add a new label, which will overwrite the previous one. I may be wrong on this, but at least, in my experience, that perfectly did the trick.

Got it, I’ll have to pay more attention to that then in the future

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  1. Correct, thooouugh probably mention hotkeys to walk and all that. They were buckled in a seat in this situation.

  2. Correct, I believe foam or smoke could work here, actually.

  3. Mhm, it just overwrites it!

+1, good answers, get in here

T:2

Wilson has made me question my math skills.

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Did you know there’s nothing stopping me from posing hard questions?

  1. You’ve been a mentor before, do you know what changed about mentor policy since you’ve been away?
  2. Is there a way to quietly shave somone’s hair?
  3. You’re playing the game as an antag, so you’re relatively busy setting some gimmick up, when an mhelp comes in. “Hey how do I use loud comms as command?” Another mentor (let’s call them “Jilgax”) starts replying first and hits then with “Simply control+click your headset”. What do you do?
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Those are indeed hard questions.

1- Oh man, that’s a hard one. I was a mentor like, 2-3 years ago, and I do not remember the exact specifics of the policy back then.
Rereading the entire thing and trying to think about it, it’s maybe the fact you can’t reveal anything out of the mentorhelp channels ? At least, everything else seemed standard to me, and I do not recall such a measure being enforced back then. It has been a long while, though, so there may have been a major change I did not realise.

2- It depends on what you mean by shave. If you mean changing hairstyle, sadly, the shaving tool gives a message to the person being shaved - the Barber’s aid chemical & its concentrated version will both change someone’s hair and beard style when splashed onto them, and that is both instant and relatively silent.
Making them bald specifically, however, I do not think is possible unless you expand on what the meaning of bald may be - if you turn them into, say, a lizard, they won’t have hair anymore.

3- Right, so, you use alt click to put on loud comms, not control click.
BUT I’d not want to harass the player with bwoinks, nor do I want to make the other mentor sound like an idiot. I’d use mentorchat to go
“Hey “”“Jilgax””" you got it wrong it’s altclick, not ctrlclick, if you want you can also tell them about activating the headset in hand to manually enable it & turn off certain channels"
Jumping in right after he answered to go “Erm akshually it’s alt click !!” and make him sound dumb is just bad form/disrespectful and will look bad on both of us for the new player, and giving him the save with extra info is just the nice thing to do

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That’s right! Although it’s been implied for a while now that you shouldn’t leak mentor channels and whatnot, it was only made official relatively recently.

This is a good answer. The answer isn’t immediately obvious but you came up with quite a few options. I will mention though, that despite it being hard (and risky), you can also use virology for this. A stealthy virus with alopecia (with other symptoms neutered and mixed with spacecillin/cryostalane so it doesn’t spread/mutate), possibly spread in spiked food, drink, pill or cigar would indeed very stealthily make someone bald.

For this one, this “Jilgax” person was really distracted since they were watching a show on their second monitor while just observing the round and it was getting interesting. Obviously it’s alt+click not control, but you know how they can be a dum dum sometimes. But yeah, you had the right idea in not pestering the player with honks while correcting the other mentor, it’s always nicer to use msay to point it out.
Btw, this “Jilgax” was actually alone at the time so they had to realise their mistake only after the player mentioned it didn’t work, which was extra funny since they were a QM.

But yeah, good answers to questions, good set of varied hours on jobs, and active in the community, seems like a good fit for a mento! +1

T:+3

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I feel happy to give my +1 now, especially with that answer to Gil’s third question.

making it
T:4

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  1. How do I get captain’s spare id?
  2. I am walking slower than other people. Why?
  3. How much alcohol can I drink without dying?
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