The Corporate Liaison is a role which, outside of fine threads, seemingly has little going for it. More often than it should be, you see liaisons sitting idle in their office watching YouTube or hopping on Fortnite from a lack of things to do. While the marines are fighting and Command are leading? You’re AFK, faxes unanswered and life dull. The solution I propose is to create a small minigame for the Liaison to work with on their (currently useless) office computer.
The minigame which I envision would be a sort of ‘fill in the blank’ on some documents. As an example; the liaison is filling out an NDA for W-Y regarding Seegson. There’d be slots to fill in the liaison’s name, Seegson, Weyland-Yutani, etc. Just an example, but that’s the general picture I have in mind.
The reward would be either funds wired directly to the liaison’s account, or maybe (and rarely) some unique outfits for them to customize their character with.
This is just me spitballing, and I’m welcome to other ideas, but I think giving the Liaison something they can do autonomous of admin or CIC intervention would be a great way to make the role feel more involved, and help out newer liaisons to have stuff to do besides badgering CIC for the copy-pasta wiki NDA signatures, maybe even helping them familiarize themselves with the different W-Y documents that they can then use themselves later on.
If you think CL is boring, don’t play CL, simple as that. Instead of the average “force command to sign forms copypastaed from the wiki/pretend MPs have no right to arrest you/deploy to see the marines fighting and end up chasing down benos with your dual shotguns”, do things like opening a weed shop with MTs, bribing command to get you some WY stuff from the colony or gather information about how marines are destructing your colony. And no, I don’t think CLs whole job is to fax “ungas deployed gonna keep you updated also need a gun pls send it over it will help alot” put into a form that is two times as long as the actual text every five minutes.
Many CIC players despise when CLs hand deliver the same wiki NDA for them to sign, and writing more giant documents for CIC players to sign won’t change that. My suggestion wasn’t intended to upend CL gameplay from the ground up, but rather just an optional aside for players to do if there’s nothing else to do at that moment. You might not always get a CIC who feel like RPing, nor admins who are going to respond to faxes, and thus a minigame would be a nice fallback for those rounds where there’s just not much going on.
Regarding @Johannes2262’s point, none of that (besides the MT weed shop) is stuff to do. It’s asking other people to do stuff, which is my point, everything you suggested is reliant on having players who feel like doing CL stuff that round, which just isn’t always the case. Giving liaisons some small optional side content certainly wouldn’t hurt, especially in the cases where everyone is preoccupied.
I never said that CL is boring, though I can see how it comes off that way. I myself have had a lot of fun on CL, but I’ve also had my share of rounds where there was simply nothing happening, not for a lack of trying nor some uninterest in the role.
There’s another option, go rp and talk to people. Learn some lores and create your own narration or a story, go tell it to others (when they’re not busy). Or go bother research with a deadline. Be creative with the role instead of a mechanical way that would end up a chore for others.
A RP role needs other people to do RP, who would have expected that? But jokes aside, if the CL’s main gameplay is boring because noone wants to interact with them, giving them a few forms to fill out won’t make the round much more interesting. After you filled out one or two forms, it will become much more boring than afking and doing other stuff while nothing happens. CLs having a random chance to get an unique outfit after typing in the same stuff for the xth timee would essentially be a lootbox system, and CLs could feel forced to do that minigame instead of RP in order to get some cool outfit.
CL Rp is fun for its randomness though in my opinion admins favor pranking on people with a lot of hours in it or people who don’t know what their doing aka junior execs. The Fun in CL rp is well being there that or I just really like wasting my own time enough to get senior exec. Having some form of engagement other than admins being not busy and wanting to Event things (Thank you Waseemq, Biolock, and everyone else who makes that funni possible) just not like as paper pushy? I guess? You don’t need a suit you have a wardrobe will of suits already if not liking code more.
But what I am trying to say is its a good idea just maybe make something else like CL objectives that they have to do like paradise station to get a green text. Maybe on some maps ya have to have a CO Sign something, Gather data on xenos aka grab it from research, or try to retrieve pred tech or something of that nature. Though retriving pred tech is likely to get very angry preds aboard the ship and everyone blowing up. So what I am trying to say is CL is basically a opportunity game have fun with it how you want or will. That or maybe ask a admin if they will do a funny. Which they will likely just give you a cookie but its a interaction nonthereless