Mentor Application - Tobias_reaper

Staff Applications Mentor Applications
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Mentor Application - Tobias_reaper

Byond CKEY:

Tobias_reaper

Discord ID:

aclockworkgent

Character Name(s):

Vaughn Russel, The coldsmith twins, VG-000

Why do you want to become a Mentor?:

I frankly do enjoy teaching people. I often do stop and teach people stuff if they are struggling, such as mending APCs, medical as CMO, resin building as a drone, ect. I have had a few people suggest I apply for mentor after witnessing me teach a few people stuff, and I recently got enough of a grip on the xeno side I feel like I could handle questions from both sides, which was the main bit putting me off.

Currently my ability to help new players is limited by if I am physically aware you require help- if I was to be granted mentor, I would of course be able to see and respond to Mhelps, which I feel would expand my ability to guide players and answer their questions significantly.

What gameplay areas do you know and which areas are you strong and weak in?:

Engineering: My first love in CM, before I got into the command roles I am probably most known for now. I know pretty much everything that is to be known, from niche to obvious. I never play SL without taking tools, so have built a great deal of my experience in engineering via that role too. I am also pretty read in, in terms of cade theory.

Medical: My second love, there is something oddly calming about just worrying about your patient, and getting that body. I know what the chemicals do, what different mixes are, and how to best get a marine running again. On the surgical side, I frankly think there is not much to know, I have every surgery down to rote, and know what steps can be disarm intented to speed them, and what will just slash your patient. I do struggle with chemistry in the sense I only have IA and MB down to memory, anything more I do need the wiki.

Command: The role I enjoy most, and can often be found in in some aspect. I know the OW intimately, can walk people through the use of their entire tactical capability from as simple as the map and changing who you are tracking, to more in depth things such as setting hotkeys, and macros to shout your marines to move to you, move forward, fall back ect.

CAS: I can walk someone through the interface, and explain fire missions to them. I know the traits of each weapon and how it is best used.

REQ: Frankly, I dislike this role, as I find it rather dull, but I also do not think there is much to know- I can explain what is found where, how the gameplay works, and balancing the budget. I have spent more time than appears in req due to my SO hours.

OT: The first role I ever played beyond the basics- I can explain making explosives, and often found myself here as CE.

Intel: I have been here as ASO and intel, and can explain the systems, matching up intel to further intel in the field, and what gives you points.

Spec: I know how the different specs function and can explain a loader role, though my experience in certain roles is limited due to difficulty rolling.

Basic combat: I can teach the fundamentals, make gear suggestions, and more “tactical” stuff, such as avoiding corners, battle buddies, destroying doors safely, use of UB attachments, what each weapon can do, and how to do a basic reading of the situation.

Research: though there is of course new ground with the rework, I do play research and can explain how it functions in detail. I know what makes a good stim, hydroponics, how to get credits, how to make greenos, give the pilots NV, and other nicher functions.

ML: I have a extremely detailed knowledge of niche ML and procedure.

Paperwork: Thought it was worth mentioning in passing I do also spend an unhealthy amount of time making new fax templates so can walk people through where to find guidance on that.

Map knowledge: I know each of the maps extremely well and can handle any navigational issues a drone or private could have.

Capping and xeno basics: I can walk people through the different methods of capture depending on caste and strain, and the steps involved in getting a tall nested. I can describe the basic idea behind xeno combat, and how it varies for each caste.

Resin building: I know how pylons work, how nodes work and what the different structures do.

Xeno abilities: I can talk people through their abilities easily. I can describe how pheros work (seems to be an oddly common question) how some of the less apparent things function such as “fury” in valk, fruits, the reasons you could be glowing, and more.

Interface use: I can talk people through resolving most interface glitches, and finding settings, hive status, prefs, ect.

I do have a weak point in my queen knowledge, having limited playtime, but I believe I am well read, and have gone through their abilities on a private server enough I can describe setting leaders, remote building, and such.

How often are to able to play CM?:

I play it pretty close to every other day at minimum, often at high pop weekdays and low pop weekends. Occasionally I do get hit with work rather hard and might disappear for a week or two.

A screenshot or transcript of your human and xeno playtimes:

Marine

Executive Officer 228.8 hr
Squad Leader 164.6 hr
Staff Officer 77.8 hr
Hospital Corpsman 60.9 hr
Corporate Liaison 48.1 hr
Chief Medical Officer 38.0 hr
Chief Engineer 31.3 hr
USCM-HC Communications Officer 26.0 hr
Military Police 25.2 hr
Military Warden 25.0 hr
Doctor 22.2 hr
Chief MP 15.2 hr
Combat Technician 13.9 hr
Researcher 11.2 hr
Ordnance Technician 10.1 hr
Gunship Pilot 8.2 hr
Weapons Specialist 5.7 hr
Intelligence Officer 0.9 hr
Auxiliary Support Officer 2.0hr

For viewing ease truncated some junk roles- I doubt you care about my UPP kapitan time.

Xeno:

Defender 10.2 hr
Warrior 4.9 hr
Larva 2.7 hr
Runner 2.7 hr
Lurker 2.6 hr
Hivelord 2.6 hr
Drone 2.4 hr
Spitter 1.4 hr
Praetorian 0.8 hr
Sentinel 0.4 hr
Ravager 0.3 hr
Carrier 0.2 hr
Facehugger 0.2 hr,

Anything else you’d like to add?:

I appreciate my xeno hours are a tad low, but I feel mentors do not have to be absolute masters, elite players in every subject, but simply able to resolve basic questions and occasional niche questions about actually playing the game: Its about as likely someone is going to ask for a play by play guide as queen in Mhelp as a XO is going to ask for one. It is entirely possible one might ask how to set a leader, or load the OB- I can explain both. I have interacted with most abilities and can explain them.

I am willing to defend my competency by answering any mock Mhelps you send my way.

I have also familiarized myself intimately with SEA rules.

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Forgive the minor formatting gore- I realised I had truncated my ASO hours and intel hours out by mistake and attempted to quickly edit them in- its for some reason tabled them.

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Hello Vaughn!

I know you well, and I’d trust you to be a mentor anyday, and have a ton of knowledge in everything marine related. However…

The biggest problem, is that you have zero queen hours, and you will get an Mhelp related to queening at some point. Not just the mechanical aspects, but general advice for new queens how to run their hive, what to do in certain situations, etc. Stuff that you cannot look up on the wiki, and will need a bit of experience to answer well.

Get those xenos hours up in general, but especially get some queen hours in. Then I will give this app the biggest +1 I can.

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Can’t comment about hours but I’ve played with you a bunch when you were XO, SL, and CE! You have had some pretty unfortunate marine attitudes to work with when SL and XO but you’ve absolutely never crashed out no matter how difficult others were making it. I 100% believe you have the temperament and enthusiasm to be a mentor, and one that people will really like interacting with! +1

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I have been on the other side of being subpar in performance- the last thing people need in those situations is someone berrating them. Thank you for the support.

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I have since arranged to have some queen hours under my belt. Far from the best- but I can with certainty say I can give basic advice and guidance and know the interface (A special thanks to those that informed me of the advice I will share going forward, WAR, FOE, and EVIL.)

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Heya Vaughn!! :smiley:

Ive seen you around for quite a while now, i know youre an experienced and knowledgeable player. I dunn realy have questions about your hours, ill just leave you some questions an absolute newbie player would ask (couldnt come up with anything harder :skull:). You have my +1 regardless your answers. See u around

“My screen is getting blurry and I’m moving slow, what’s happening?”

“How do i fix an IB?? I didn’t bring any surgery tools”

“I was a marine and then my screen went black, now I’m a small slug thing. What do I do?”

“How do I climb into vents?”

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Without any much specific I can tell, Russel is a solid person to be a SEA, mentor, that’s all together.
Definitely well-versed on everything for the marine side, and constantly learning the xenomorph tricks ‘n gameplay when told to so, fixing up those hours and becoming able to respond to what he wouldn’t know while applying intiailly. That’s something you should note.
Zero reasons to deny this. +1

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  1. Hello Hello marine! You are likely suffering from blood loss, or have been poisoned! This can be caused by injury, creating convenient exits for the blood in your body, (not so helpful for you) or some xeno attacks, such as large gas clouds you may have inhaled. If it is poison, it will pass with time, or resting with Shift R can speed recovery of some types. If you are getting messages about feeling woozy, you are likely instead suffering from bloodloss- you will want to see a medic rather quickly, as this could mean you are bleeding internally! They are the chaps with little red cross type icons. Eating some food like your MRE will help slow it down in the mean time, and bandaging any bleeding wounds you have too.

    1. Ouch! Bad situation to be in, but not unfixable. To fix Internal bleeding, you first of all need to of been trained to do so by the Marines. Only some jobs have this training. If you are a medic you certainly do. If not, the best thing you can do is carry them to someone who is trained such as a medic or officer (the guys with stars above their head). If you are trained, there are some items that can be used to perform improvised surgery! Assuming you have your boots on, you already have most of the gear you need- your trusty boot knife. You will also need either your green surgical thread or wire. The engineers almost certainly have spare wire if you ask. They have the little wrench icon. Take off any armour that is blocking the site (their vest, or helmet if its in their head) get them to lie down, preferably on a roller bed, atleast a table- then Shift E to pull your knife. You can then, on help intent (Green intent bottom right of your screen) click once to cut them open, and then when that is done, again to widen the cut with the knife. You can then fix the IB using either the green thread, or the cable. You will then want to close them up either using the green thread or cable again. Alternatively, you can borrow a welder off an engineer to close with. Improvised surgery is a rather wide field, and there are many things you can use rather than traditional tools. It can be fun to find some nicher ones.

    2. This is a bit odd- I believe what has happened here, is you disconnected due to high lag, and then during that period of disconnect, you have become a larva- you now play for the xeno team! if you need help on how to evolve or fight, I can walk you through it.

    3. hi there - to climb into a vent, Approach a vent, and alt click. Bear in mind, only “small“ xenos will fit easily

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Hello, Clockworks

You certainly have the support of the community and a wide range of marine knowledge. However, you do need to increase your xeno hours and experience, as your overall xeno hours seem to be less than 50 as of the moment. I advise that you keep playing xenomorph castes to accumulate the experiences you will need to help assist future xeno players. Here are a few questions I’ve written up to test your current knowledge of the game. Best of luck.

Q: I’m a sentinel and I can’t seem to land my paralysis slash. What’s the best way to do it?

Q: I saw my xeno sisters able to build up hive cluster construction nodes, even when they aren’t a builder caste. But when I click on it, nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

Q: I saw a defender able to completely destroy an APC like a T3 caste, but I can only destroy its electronics and not the entire frame. How do I destroy an APC completely?

Q: How do I give jellies as a Queen?

Q: I’m playing a burrower but I keep dying in a fight. How do I properly fight as a burrower?

Q: There’s a marine with 400+ burn damage and his vitals are blinking. What should I do?

Q: I’m trying to set up a firemission but the numbers don’t make sense. What do they mean? And how do I fire a firemission?

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Hey there! There is alot of little tricks that can make your time as xeno significantly easier once you have them down, I would not worry too much if you are having trouble initially. do you have directional assist on? If so, I suggest the following combo for landing a paralysis slash: First, use your slowing spit to make the marine move significantly slower. Then, use your scatter spit, to stun them for a split second. Finally you ought to be able to run up and slash em with your paralysis slash. Some people like to do the scatter spit first, and then use the slowing spit before the slash- experiment with what you prefer. (or just go for a marine already stunned by something else, if it works it works haha)

It appears your queen has limited construction to leaders and builders, or you are out of plasma or on the wrong intent. You need to be on help intent with plasma to contribute.

For mechanical reasons, defenders are considered a larger caste while fortified- this is to stop them being stunned by things like a PB. This has the side effect, that if you fortify right besides an apc, you can then slash it to the point of complete destruction like your larger brethren. Jury is out on if this is considered an exploit.

To reward your ever loyal subjects, you want to open the hive management (the box with a blue tick in it) this will open a menu, you can also buy boons here, and exile non compliant xenos, making it your one stop shop for anything management wise in your hive. The lowest option is “award jelly“ which will open an interface, where you select the type of jelly to award, and then type in your heartfelt message of support for the help that sister offered you, explaining why they got the jelly. They do nothing, but are effectively xeno medals.

There is no one “proper“ way to fight as any caste, but there are two main ways you can fight as a burrower. One is direct combat and one requires some intellect and thinking ahead, including being able to roughly predict what marines may do.

It is important to realise in both situations- you are not a front line combat caste, and trying to be one will likely not end well. These all work best in smaller groups, and you ought to be catious if anyone has a shotgun. Excess point blank lead intake is the number one cause of death for ambush castes.

Method one is direct combat, and involves burrowing, and tunneling to directly under a marine- this stuns them, and you can then emerge and slash them twice before needing to go back under for safety. You can stomp, to get another two slashes before needing to head back down, or stun anyone else near you. Then head back under. Rinse and repeat this until either they are all dead, or you feel you are at major risk. Target medics first if there are any- once those are down, the marines ability to fix your damage is limited.

Method two, involves making a set of acid traps using your trapping ability. Your plasma regen is slow, so this needs to be planned in advance. You can dig a hole fill it with acid, and dig another nearby. When a marine triggers an acid trap, you can jump them, slash them, and drag them into the next acid trap. Keep slashing. Stomp them down if they get up and the acid does not get them back on the floor. The aim is to effectively perma stun them via dragging them into another acid trap every time they get up.

First things first pull rank on another nearby marine, and ask they CPR him. A simple middle mouse point, and “CPR” often gets the point across
this buys you time. Request aid from other medics too. Second things second, keep yourself on the level. A flapping medic saves no one. Scan them to work out their main damage types and where. Kit those locations rapidly by spamming 9 on your numpad to cycle different limbs. Once this is done, scan them again and take note of if any limbs still have massive damage. If so, pull the appropriate thread and get to work on it. The aim is to get their health percentage near enough to -100

Once you have got their biggest damage sources under control, its time to start the ancient art of defib spam. remove armour, apply epi, defib, and keep shocking till they breathe.

The first set of numbers you will be greeted with when setting up a fire mission are simply the weapon number, and ammo consumption.

Once you have started setting up the fire mission proper by editing it, and selecting what weapons you want to fire on this fire mission.

this will then open a huge set of numbers which can be intimidating- think about it as bloated oversized battle ships. All you are doing is selecting how many tiles you want to fire from the true origin of 0. For instance selecting 2, and approaching from the north, will mean you strike two tiles east. Down the left hand side you will see numbers 1-12. that is just what step of the fire mission the weapon will try and fire on.

Once you have set what step you want each weapon to fire on and its offset, its time to launch it when you next get a call for air support.

go into your menu as usual to do a direct strike, then click the STRIKE button. This will change it from directs to fire missions. Select the Fire mission set you want to use. You will then be prompted to choose a vector, any of the normal true compass directions. This decides what direction your 0 line is heading, e.g picking north will make any offsets fire east, picking east makes any + offsets fire further south.

once this is done, you can technically just select a TARGET and fire away via the FIRE button, but I suggest offsetting to hit xenos in ways they did not think possible. use the little Gamepad like buttons to offset. this just changes the point at which you start your attack- so you can center the attack on an imaginary flare thats say four tiles NE of the actual CAS flare.

Be aware that Offset and Vector need to be manually changed every fire mission if you do not want them to be the same. You can also view where your fire mission is due to start from with your camera to make sure you are not about to make the Captain angry.

It can be a bit much to talk through but once you have done it once or twice, you will understand it much better.

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I have additionally sunk some additional time into xeno to learn more detail, as you have a point- I am now at 50 hours

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Great answer.

Another alternative possibility is that the xeno caste does not have plasma at all, such as a default runner. And be sure to mention that you need to click on the construction node on help intent as well. Other than that, good answer.

Great answer.

Perfect answer.

Good answer.

Acceptable answer. However, another way is that they are able to defib + brute/burn kit as well (Use numpad 7 or 9 to cycle through body parts), while another medic will graft/line. The healing from the defib + kit + graft/line helps maximise all healing of a body while the patient is undergoing revive process.

Great answer.

You’ve proven to have solid base knowledge of xeno castes and that you are able to handle questions outside of your main roles as well. I have personally seen you interact well with the community and you have a good temperament and the patience to introduce new players into the game.

For these reasons, I will be giving you a +1.

I look forward to seeing you as part of our team.

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Before I forget to send this again; a HUGE +1 for you.

You’ve clearly been putting in great effort in getting those xeno hours, and your near perfect answers to both Scotty’s and Hades’s questions gives me full confidence in giving you the best +1 I can.

I hope to see you in the mentor mines soon o7.

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I will admit, kitting during the windup is something I know you can do, but ommited to explain, i sort of just assumed the hypothetical medic knew too- thats on me.

Thank you for your support. I’ll forgive you calling me a goober.

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. Clockworks to me has shown to be extremely kind to people both IC and OOC they also have shown to be extremely responsive to feedback which is great. Think they’re a good fit for a mentor. +1

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Approved.

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