Central Command

Being staff, you gain the fun ability to be Central Command. Unfortunately, we have some rules around being CC.

Your CC character must be a new character.

Your character must be a new character and never join a shift with them. This is to prevent metafriending really. It’s also somewhat weird for others, when you, as an example, were a well-known prisoner who just is now a CC official.

Make a sensible character, someone who reasonably could’ve gotten the position and rank. It can be a desk jockey who spent years in NanoTrasen’s bureaucracy, a nepotism hiree, a security veteran who’s a commander of ERT units or something else you can think of.

NanoTrasen is big, so making up a rank and a position for your character is generally up to you. You can be a normal Central Official, the Supervisor Of Hygiene or Immersive Experience Director and Facilitator. Poke fun at corporatism with your titles and act within their knowledge.

The only unspoken rule is that your in-character rank should reflect your actual staff position. For example, don’t make yourself the Head Director of Central Command if you’re only a Trial Curator. This is just to prevent the weird moments of lower rank officials, who are played by Directors or Project Managers, ordering around their superiors, who are played by Trial Staff.

CC shouldn’t be directly antagonistic to the crew.

With the narrative we hold in DeltaV, Central Command and NanoTrasen aren’t the soulless and evil company just because. They’re more seemingly soulless and evil due to the overwhelming bureaucracy they have to deal first before helping. “Amazon Evil” tier of evilness.

Your character should generally reflect that. While it’s fine to have an egotistical mean character who’s generally in it for the money or power, do keep in mind that in-character, if enough people complained about you, you would get booted off from Central.

You should generally have players fix the problem themselves than the opposite, which is easy to reflect in-game. While you could send in expensive ERT members to fix the station, it is expensive and probably best used somewhere else. So why not gift them some materials and have the engineers that NanoTrasen hired, do their jobs? Cheap, it stays within the budget, and you still help out the crew.

Clarify things and slightly help the crew. Remember, your character probably has to monitor thousands of stations with their own problems. The station that players are playing in are one of them, so act like it.

CC should act within their knowledge.

Generally, while being observing the round, it’s very easy to know what’s going and why it’s happening. However, realistically, Central Command doesn’t, which invites fun scenarios and roleplay.

As Central, you have to roleplay with what information you’re given. The only exception are admin interventions whenever dealing with a Ahelp or a raider. The list of what Central Command has information to is:

• Crew Manifest.
• Crew Health Monitors.
• Station electrical grid system.
• Station atmosphere systems.
• Hearing what announcements are made. (It’s usually better to ignore what they announce.)
• Cameras. (Generally, it’s discouraged to rely on “I saw through the cameras” reason, since it denies a lot of deceit from players. Another reason is why would your character be staring through the cameras, when you have other stations to attend to?)

As a rule of thumb, act as what Station AI can see, except hearing station radio communication. There’s a fun button in the menu to access AI visibility, which shows what you can see through cameras.

If you need more information on what’s going on, request an update from Station Command. You can fax, holocall them for more information, or even announce an update from them.

Don’t over escalate situations, try to get a clear idea of what’s going on as Central. Just because you’ve gotten an independence declaration fax from Captain, doesn’t mean it should automatically result in an Epsilon call. Call Captain, call other Command members, figure out if the problem is an actual real problem. Counterfeit is a real thing!

Rely on people that NanoTrasen hired to do their jobs as well. Order Command to relay messages and command their crew, call Engineering for building related matters, Logistics for purchases, cargo related things and so on.

However, do not shut down antagonists instantly. There are exceptions, where traitors managed to overthrow Command, but if you get a fax about seemingly fake CC members, don’t respond or give them a vague answer that doesn’t instantly validate them as being fake. Antagonists drive the round, so help them out if you feel like it.

Limit and keep your announcements professional.

Announcements are generally good to let everyone know what’s going on. They’re fine to use for emergency related things or incredibly niche things, like informing about a bill for crewmember teleportation out of an FTL flight.

However, keep in mind that the more common announcements are, the less players are going to read them. It’s why you should generally try to convey information through holopad calls or faxes. Command’s job is to command, so trust them to relay your information correctly. If you can’t decide if this requires an announcement, ask your peers for help.

Another note is that you should try to keep your tone professional as Central Command. Your position is valued highly, so act like it.

In short, avoid announcements like these:

• “Central Command announcement:”
  • “guys what the fuck are you doing there holy shit”

And have them more like:

• “Central Command announcement:”
  • “We’ve been observing the on-going situation and ask the crew to calm themselves. Otherwise we will have to take extreme measures.”