Mail Courier

CIVILIAN DEPARTMENT
Mail Courier
Mail Courier	Difficulty: Easy Requirements: None Access Level: Cargo Bay, Bridge, Medbay, Research Sector, Tech Storage, wherever there are mail chutes thanks to your mail courier suit Additional Roleplay Access Level: None Supervisors: Captain, Head of Personnel Subordinates: None Responsibilities: Deliver things to the crew Guides: This is the guide.

Neither storm nor shower nor fire nor vacuum of space shall sway the Mail Courier, also known as the Mail Bringer or Head of Deliverying (despite not being one of the Heads of Staff), from delivering mail and other goods to the crew. With relatively few responsibilities, low expectations, and a surprisingly generous amount of gear and access, it's suitable for both newbies and old-timers. The mail system is relatively simple while still being engaging, but you can also safely ignore it if you'd rather do your own thing.

This job appears as a job of the day on Wednesday, available exclusively to people who join after the round has started. Since they're latejoin-only, this locks them out of roundstart antag selection. They can still be an antag by some other means, e.g. the game makes them an antag upon joining, the Syndicate randomly awakens them as a sleeper agent, or a Revolutionary converts them over to the cause.

Courier Accoutrements

The most important part of being a courier is, of course, the clothes! Besides the iconic satchel and postmaster's hat, you also get a special mail suit (which is technically a Syndicate item) that allows you to ride mail chutes in a similar manner to disposal chutes. Unless you are also assigned Traitor, you can't get any more, so keep it safe.

If you lose your suit and don't care about being able to travel through mail chutes, it's also possible to obtain standard-issue postmaster's jumpsuits (which, again, do not let you travel through mail chutes). You can find these in Cargo Bay; every Quartermaster's locker has a "Postmaster's equipment" box, and that contains an extra postmaster's jumpsuit and hat. You can open these lockers since you have Cargo Bay access. Depending on the map, there may also be standard postmaster clothes hidden somewhere; either both will be in Routing Depot, or one piece will be in Routing Depot and the other in Disposals.

Besides your uniform, you also start with wrapping paper and scissors for those extra special gift deliveries. In addition, you also spawn with a rubber stamp and a paper bin, in case you'd like to get your inner bureaucrat on.

As for access, you have access to the Cargo Bay, so you can process the mail and, potentially, deliver any crates the Quartermasters order. However, you do not get access to the consoles, so you can't order anything yourself. Besides this, you can also enter the Bridge, Medbay, and Research Sector, though you're restricted to the general department lobby areas and, barring mail chute travel, usually cannot enter the job-specific areas within (so no Captain's Quarters, Robotics, Artifact Lab, etc.) Notably, you also do not get maintenance access. <--==United Space Postal Service== -discuss mail pinpointer, general mail strats -revise passage below, ripped from Quartermaster, and make it more relevant to the mail courier job Every other market shift, Cargo receives a mail crate loaded up with mail. Deliver each piece of mail to its intended recipient, and you'll get a little payout. The first piece of mail is worth 95 credits, and every piece of mail afterwards is worth 5 credits. The amount of mail received is equivalent to about 25% of the number of people alive. It's not much, but the work is pretty easy, and every piece of mail comes with a nice little gift for the recipient, catered to their job. Each piece of mail is DNA-locked, but if you're feeling mean, you can slice one open with a knife (and only a knife) to yields its contents—but you wouldn't stoop so low as to commit mail fraud, right? -->

A (Not So) Brief History of Blueshirts

This job was previously called Mailman, even though mail workers could also be women or non-binary. This job originally appeared on June 4th, 2010, during the early history of Devstation. Back then, all the station's mail went through chutes going to and from a central hub called the "Mailroom", and the Mailman's job was to sort the mail as it came in and distribute it to the correct destinations. Back then you had to click on the mail chute to open it, since the chute did not automatically open. Besides this extra step, it worked much like today's mail chutes: afterwards you'd click on the chute with the item to be delivered, then click the chute, and hit "Engage". There were a couple hazards with the job: the chutes area was often low on air, but luckily the Mailman often spawned with an air tank, and poo was a game mechanic at this time, so people occasionally sent literal shit through the mail (and sometimes the Mailman sent it too), which would often splatter across the room.

The big issue with the job was that no one would send mail (correctly), and the Mailman would often disappear somewhere. The job was quietly discontinued from normal play months later. It was not missed. Some few years later, on August 27th, 2014, the Mailman was bought back as a job of the day for Wednesdays. In the intervening years, the station's mail system was vastly automated and simplified, so when the job came back, it was sort of a curious relic of the past without much to actually do.

It was the August 29th, 2019 update that gave Mailman their Cargo Bay and Bridge access, chute-compatible suit, and gift-making supplies, shifting the role from a novelty of the past to a legitimate job about delivering the right packages to the right places. Back then, the QM console required the general Cargo Bay access level rather than the specific Quartermaster Supply Console one, which didn't exist back then, so they could also place cargo orders. When the console got its own special access level on September 28th, 2020, Mailman lost this ability since they didn't get said access level after the change. This was less a deliberate attempt to weaken the job and more an unforeseen side-effect.

Mailman was renamed to Mail Courier on January 12, 2024; this update also retired one of their other names, Head of Mailmanning, and replaced it with Mail Bringer.

Fun fact: the day after this job was added, Mr. Muggles was re-added (yes, he was removed before) to the game, ostensibly as this job's assistant. He technically still is, but it's like an Office Space situation where NT stopped paying him years ago but never got around to telling everyone the news.

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