Kirshbia - Synthetic Application

[Steelpoint]

I’ve seen Braden before, so I’m confident they are a good player.

Three scenarios, I would humbly ask you to explain your thought process, one command, one medical/engineering and one combat.

COMMAND: CIC is undermanned and the Commander has directly ordered you to assist in commanding a squad, this squad has been assigned to frontline combat work. Considering the fact you are a Synthetic, how are you going to proceed with directing this squad until you are relieved?

MEDICAL/ENGINEERING: You just arrived at the FOB in the middle of a disastrous retreat, with the Xenomorphs approaching fast. You see six marine corpses in the FOB, two of these bodies have <1 minute until they can not be revived, there are no Corpsmen or Doctors. There are also four nearby Rifleman Marines who are not wounded but are not doing anything important. The FOB itself is poorly fortified, with several unbarricaded entrances that would allow anyone to enter and cause havoc, there are no ComTechs.

Reinforcements are en route from the Almayer and from the retreating Marines.

You have enough metal to do some fortification work, but you will need to scavenge for more. You have more than sufficient medical supplies to do your medical work.

What are you going to do?

COMBAT: You possess a laser designator, you are standing in the FOB during a protracted siege. As you are observing the less travelled areas of the FOB you witness, in the distance, a large force of Xenos, including the Queen, attempting to commence a flank attack on the FOB from a new direction.

You know that Command has a Cluster OB Warhead loaded for orbital bombardment, you see an opportunity to order a bombardment, there are no marines within the target area for now but that can change at any moment.

What are you going to do?

[Aces]

Howdy Steelpoint!

COMMAND: CIC is undermanned and the Commander has directly ordered you to assist in commanding a squad, this squad has been assigned to frontline combat work. Considering the fact you are a Synthetic, how are you going to proceed with directing this squad until you are relieved?

A: I would politely remind Command that while the Malcolm series exists to assist. The unit’s core programming would not allow me to participate in active combat, and literally, anybody else in the squad would be a better fit to lead the Marines. If they still really wanted me in the location, I wouldn’t follow any directive that would have me pushing with the Marines, instead opting for creating cover and acting as a medic if needed.

Ultimately I cannot follow an order against the guidelines, so while I won’t take our brave squad of PVT John Marines into glory. I can, however, give them assistance and try at least to meet command somewhat halfway in a way that I can.

MEDICAL/ENGINEERING: You just arrived at the FOB in the middle of a disastrous retreat, with the Xenomorphs approaching fast. You see six marine corpses in the FOB, two of these bodies have <1 minute until they can not be revived, and there are no Corpsmen or Doctors. There are also four nearby Rifleman Marines who are not wounded but are not doing anything important. The FOB itself is poorly fortified, with several unbarricaded entrances that would allow anyone to enter and cause havoc, there are no ComTechs.

Reinforcements are en route from the Almayer and from the retreating Marines.

You have enough metal to do some fortification work, but you will need to scavenge for more. You have more than sufficient medical supplies to do your medical work.

What are you going to do?

A: Are any of the downed marines engineers and or medics? I would ask two riflemen to start doing CPR on the blinkers giving them a scan if their damage is reasonable for healing. If I can save them quickly, I would try to do so before closing the most prominent gaps in the direction the enemy is coming from. If even it only buys us half a minute more rifles on the defense covering the treating marines and more protection for me as I close up the rest of the holes.

If I got to make custom meds before deploying, the reality is I can rapidly heal anyone not overly OD’d on something else. Still, if I have no engineers coming down or retreating, I will focus on bringing medics back up first to focus entirely on locking down our FOB.

If, however, we have a lot of engineers en route to FOB, I would focus on the major areas of concern that can be locked down quickly before moving to stabilize whatever is downed, maybe have one of the remaining riflemen go nuts with barbed wire as I throw up barricades. I am not going to factor in salvaging for metal atm as it is between all of our other issues that would fall under an if I had time.

More barricades are only useful if we have marines to man them. Ultimately variation there as I have to seriously consider what exactly it is I am working with.

COMBAT: You possess a laser designator, you are standing in the FOB during a protracted siege. As you are observing the less traveled areas of the FOB, you witness, in the distance, a large force of Xenos, including the Queen, attempting to commence a flank attack on the FOB from a new direction.

You know that Command has a Cluster OB Warhead loaded for orbital bombardment, you see an opportunity to order a bombardment, there are no marines within the target area for now but that can change at any moment.

What are you going to do?

A: Honestly? I will probably give my LD to a marine. Advise them about incoming and perhaps to call it in an OB when the moment is right. I would also actively consider coordinating an OB as participation in active combat duties, even if I didn’t. Malcolm is a multi-purpose robot. I don’t foresee any reason that me coordinating an OB would be more effective than me doing anything else.

But also, more importantly. I likely wouldn’t have LD. I would take one of the ship’s fifty thousand pairs of regular binoculars. Fewer chances to actually error there. Always better to err on the side of caution, in my opinion.

[Steelpoint]

COMMAND

Synthetics can not issue direct orders to Marines, they can only offer suggestions. Furthermore, you can not lead Marines into combat since this puts you at risk of violating your 2nd Synth law as directing a Marine into combat puts them at risk of being brought to harm. You can offer “suggestions” on what Marines should do as a pseudo-work around. You are correct that it would be best to convince the Commander that you are ill suited to the task of leading a Squad.

However, you are authorized to disregard an order if you believe other USCM personnel have the job covered sufficiently, ergo you could have made an executive decision to ignore the order as it is virtually guaranteed their will be someone in the squad who can take command. I would have liked if you mentioned this.

ENGI/MEDIC

I’m satisfied, you displayed a proficient response to this scenario. You’ve demonstrated keen medical and engineering concepts such as CPR, deferment of treatment, prioritisation of tasks, revive priority and where to expend your time in performing engineering and medical tasks.

As you become more proficient as a Synth you will start to better understand what you can do in terms of Medical and Engineering, you will often find yourself presented with unique opportunities that no other role has access to.

COMBAT

Your hesitation in calling in an OB may have made the difference between the alien hive being scattered versus them penetrating the FOB at a weak point and overrunning the Alamo.

As a Synth you are allowed to call in CAS, OB and Mortar strikes, although you must take into consideration the fact you can not do harm to Marines which often makes using these three abilities a high risk endeavour for a Synth. Defensive fights are likely the only safe time you could call in these attacks since Marines generally won’t be charging out.

Giving a high value item to a Rifleman who may not even know how to use it, let alone contact the people who can make use of the information, feels neglectful. Not a major strike to your application but it bears mentioning. Getting someone else to call in coordinates, knowing they can contact the appropriate people, is a good work around but you did not satisfy my belief you were intentionally aiming for this action.

You are however very right to be cautious, but there is a difference between a Synth that avoids combat because they don’t want to engage in it, versus a Synth that avoids combat because they do not fully understand when they can and can not get into a fight. Even the most pacifist Synth will be forced to take up arms in certain circumstances. I’d like to see you be more confident in knowing when you can and cannot engage in combat.

I would have liked to read you mention more confidently about how you would’ve brought this possible flank attack to commands attention and how you’d have worded your warning to other Marines of the imminent flank, especially if command is slow to respond to this information, was unwilling to fire an OB or if you felt it was not safe for you to order an OB.

You can’t be afraid to perform tasks you know you are allowed to perform when the circumstances allow it. You certainly can not afford to shy away from tasks if you hesitate due to a lack of understanding when you can and can not do the task during a high stress event.

Looking over the rest of your application. Your story is good and shows a good command of the lore. Your personality seems quite doable and something that can be maintained for a long time without issue.

I am somewhat disconcerted about the idea your Synth is some old machine that used to sell used Tractors for WY before somehow ending up onboard a USCM military warship. I’d be more receptive if the idea was your Synth was conscripted and semi-reprogrammed for service onboard the Almayer (since the Almayer is operating with a sub-standard crew to start with).

Overall, I think you’d make a good Synth, but I am somewhat put off by some minor issues such as your answers to Synth combat parameters and some possible issues with how you’d react to issues regarding command orders and what you can and can not do regarding command.

I’m giving a neutral score, leaning towards a positive one. Though I do hope to see you in the shoes of a Synthetic either way.

[Aces]

Thank you for the feedback Steelpoint!

I’ll do some quick retorts to try to address your concerns.

Command
I addressed this in my answer. Perhaps, not in the exact wording. I would try to meet them halfway because there has to be a reason they want the multi-purpose robot down with a squad. So unless it were entirely apparent to me, I likely wouldn’t just make that executive decision at that time. I like offering suggestions as a workaround, but I don’t think that’s practical. Again situation depends. I believe getting eyes on it and at least making efforts to help the squad should they need help in an area before moving to ignore the order would be better for all parties involved.

Combat
In my years playing here, I’ve never seen a synth try to make calls for fire support. It never occurred with their current guidelines that they would even try, even though I will happily take your advice under genuine consideration. I can’t say with confidence that I feel the synth coordinating an OB and fire support is the best usage of time they can do given their vast skillset. But I will admit I could see a rare situation where it might be what needs to happen. The JTAC mafia is far better equipped than me to call forth an OB, and team leaders are mostly specifically tailored to calling in JTAC. (Especially if they carry phones. I have no idea if the synth powerpack makes phone calls, but I will go ahead and assume it can’t.)

When I wrote this answer, I kinda assume comms had already fallen with a significant force en route to mob the FOB. I will admit complete fault on my assumptions, of course. But even if comms were still up and I had a way to communicate with Command, given the vast ways a synth can help a FOB defense, I am still hesitant to make that OB call or coordinate when dedicated roles exist. I’m capable of doing significantly more.

So, I will fully take your advice, but it’d still depend on a lot of IFs going right for that to effectively use my time.

For your unsettled feeling. I would say that is very intentional on my part. Some people should feel unsettled. Maybe someone wants to roleplay that Malcolm series sold their dad a car? I am shooting for the whole crapsack universe where USCM needed to be outfitted, so instead of getting off the line module WY just did the cheaper corporate operation to help equip their “Business” partners. So while he’s much high-end technology, he’s not top of the line, a little aged and repurposed, and I am hoping that unsettling feeling can creep in some IC Interactions. There’s just an immense charm in that for me.

[noah]

I know Kirshbia primarily in the context of their place within the CO community (of which they are an exemplar), but speaking in my capacity as a ‘dormant’ synth WLer;

Both their ability to RP, as well as the opportunism with which they seek out engagements with a variety of players is practically unrivaled in my opinion. He takes on any challenge which is put to him, and gleefully at that. I’ve seen him take on a ton of engineer hours, for example, and take the opportunity to perform some of the coolest things that you would never see without some real keenness. Seeing him set up an entire makeshift power system on LV (as Engineering had been bombed out) to power comms was one of the highlights of my rounds recently.

I don’t have any quips regarding the application itself - I leave the pedantry of nitpicking (of which I see very little worth commenting on regardless) to those more interested. But I what I would want noted for those that do so is that those easily rectifiable points pale in comparison to the character he displays as a member of the community, and the fundamental truth that he embodies what a synth player should be.

In case it wasn’t otherwise clear, +1.

[lca_not_lca]

My opinion is very similar to Noah’s above, Kirshbia knows their game and truly makes it enjoyable for those nearby with his ability to roleplay.
Seen him play groundside roles enough to not ask questions, + from me.

[WestRover]

after seeing Braden a lot groundside, they know their shit, they know how to RP well, and well they have already proven to be able to keep a WL +1

[QuickLoad]

You are a well reputable player with an immaculate backing of support. You’ve proven yourself in support roles and are well experienced. Furthermore, your application is of good quality. The application is accepted. Please keep up the good quality, and we would like to warmly welcome Malcolm to the Almayer.