Cogmap1/Research Director

Your office.

What have I gotten myself into?

Well, congratulations! You're a Head of the station, as well as being the boss of the rarely competent Research team. Your job is mainly just to prevent Research from blowing up, burning, and getting covered in radiation for as long as possible. Chances are, you won't be successful at that. It's okay though, as an RD you have arguably the most relaxed and easy Head job on the station, yet you're also the most potentially dangerous. If you're interested in trying out a Head job but you're afraid of being awful, RD is the job for you. As long as you don't blow up the Research wing or send your unstoppable Guardbuddies on a rampage/let a traitor do these things, it's almost impossible to be a bad Research Director.

So what's my actual job?

Whatever you make of it! Explore space in the Teleporter lab, make explosives in Toxins, set Chemistry on fire, or accidentally kill everyone...

That being said, your basic job (and really only task) is to be the boss of the Research team. Typical RD activities include ordering chemists to create dozens of chicken soup pills, having Telescience steal all the monkeys on the station, and making sure Toxins and Artifact Research don't spiral out of control. However, you're also a Head, which means you also have some say in big decisions regarding the shuttle. You can call and recall the shuttle, and you have Bridge access for when you just feel like drinking wine with the HoP and ignoring your duties.

Failing your own creativity, here are a few things you can do.

Get the Guardbuddies moving

Using the DWAINE terminal in your office, you can assign your Guardbuddies to various jobs. To start playing with your buddies, follow these instructions. Italicized words are commands you input into the computer:

• Insert your ID card into the terminal
  
• term_login
  
• su
  
• term_login
  
• Eject your ID card
  
• cd /mnt/control
  
• prman list

You are now in the folder with the guardbuddy controls, and you have big boss access so they actually listen to you. The list you see before you will show your little minions with their network IDs and their equipped weapon. For now, pick a buddy with a taser. Make a note of the network ID, and be ready to type your name without any spaces. So if your name is 'Joe Smith', you're going to type it as 'joesmith'.

Assign a buddy to guard

• guard_script (network ID) (name without spaces)
  

The computer should respond Transmitting wake command. Leave your office and the buddy should be active, with a small face on its viewscreen. When it gets close enough to see whomever they are guarding, they will point at that person and announce they are under guard. If the guard target does not have access to the Guardbuddy bay, you might need to drag it out to meet its ward.

You definitely assign one to yourself since it's one of the big perks of being the RD, but you have many other Guardbuddies at your disposal. Think of other people you want to help out/suck up to. The Captain is a good person to have a guard. You may also assign a guard to the Roboticist or Geneticist, who crew two of the most popular bomb targets on the station. You might also toady up to an Electrician, who might allow you to mass produce Guardbuddies if they're in the right mood. Don't always think a guard is a good thing, though...many flavors of Guardbuddies are capable of friendly fire, and that can leave you vulnerable to antagonists - perhaps even the devious RD who assigned the buddy in the first place!

Assign a buddy to patrol

• patrol_script (network ID)
  

The computer should respond Transmitting wake comand. The Guardbuddy will wake up and behave much like a Securitron, roaming the halls and arresting people doing bad things. This is a good thing to fall back on if you don't have something better for the buddy to do, but don't want it idle.

Assigning a buddy to purge

• prman upload purge (network ID)
  
• prman wake (network ID)
  

This one doesn't have a fancy control script with it because you really, really should not be uploading this command unless you are a traitor or everything has completely gone to hell. When under these orders, the Guardbuddies figure 'if it ain't a Head, it's dead.' They will roam station and arrest anyone not showing a Head ID, causing mass havoc. The AI can shut down guardbuddies remotely, so if you are a traitor and want to start a mechanical revolution, you should probably corrupt or kill the AI before setting about it. Laser blasts from one of the eguns around the station will also stun a buddy and make it a sitting duck to repeated blasts.

Recall the buddies

• prman recall (network ID) OR
  
• prman recall all
  

This will order the buddies back to their charging bays and cancel all standing orders. This is useful if a traitor got into your controls and corrupted the buddies.

Figure out Telescience

Telescience is often ignored during games because it requires cooperation from other people to do anything really fun. However, as RD, your entire point is to foster cooperation and efficiency among departments, so figuring out how the teleporters work this round is very helpful. If you've figured out how the teleporter works, all sorts of fun can come of enabling other peoples' gimmicks. Space explorers can be beamed back to resupply and offload their finds, or even better their finds can be beamed back for them. All they need to do is to feed you the appropriate coordinates and you can take care of the rest. One of the few always-legitimate uses for bombs is to beam them out to dangerous derelicts to crack them open like a peanut. If you know the location of something you want on the station, you can just teleport it straight to Research. Are those lazy-ass miners not doing anything with their space suits? Lock in on their locations via the space GPS, teleport them to Research, and distribute them to your staff! Are the Electricians illegally building a bunch of guns? Teleport them into Research and give them to your chemists! Is the Captain brain dead in his quarters? Teleport him to Research and steal his ID!

Convinced? You should be! Check the Telescience article for more details.

Screw around with Chemistry

Failing all that, being the RD is pretty much carte blanche to waste your entire round trying to figure out new and interesting ways to cause misery in chemistry. Or maybe you want to buck the trend and actually be helpful by filling a fire extinguisher with space cleaner and showing the Janitor he's a useless piece of shit. The possibilities are endless!

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