Job selection and assignment
Preference Ranks
In the job selection window of your character setup you can select how much you would like to play as a job.
There are seven levels of priority:
- [High]
- [Medium]
- [Low]
- [Never]
- Banned
- Young
You can only select one job as high, the other ranks do not have limits. Banned is shown to players who were banned from playing the job (received a job ban). Players who are job banned cannot spawn as that job, they can however appeal the job ban on the forums. Jobs a player is banned from will show as [BANNED] no matter if it's a temporary job ban of a permanent one. Jobs the player is too young to play are jobs which require a player to have played a certain number of days as other roles before they are unlocked. Security jobs, head positions and silicon positions are the jobs that have this enabled. A [IN x DAYS] message will appear if you are too young to play a certain job, indicating how many more days need to pass before you can spawn as that job. You can still get the job by visiting the Head of Personnel though, or by being borged or stuffed into an AI. Ultra is a rank which gives you a higher chance of becomming that role, available to head roles and AI only. To get the chance to put these jobs on ultra, you can apply for the rank on the forums. Finally, [NON-HUMAN] will appear by some jobs if your character is not of human race, as they are prohibited from taking Head of Staff roles.
Antagonist Assignment
Before jobs are assigned, the game will decide who the round antagonists are. A player who would normally have spawned as Security will spawn as a different job instead if they are selected as Antagonist.
This means you can have Security jobs on HIGH without having to worry about never getting antagonist roles.
How Jobs are Assigned
Once the game is about to start, jobs are assigned to players.
Pre-emptive Assignment
- Assistants are assigned
- One head is selected
- The AI is selected
High Selection
Loops through a list of all players (randomized), if the player has a job set to high, and it has open slots, they receive it.
Middle Selection
Loops through a list of the remaining players, if the player has a job set to medium, he receives it.
Low Selection
Loops through a list of the remaining players, if the player has a job set to low, he receives it.
Post Selection
Any player who was not assigned a job spawns as a random job from the (probably small) pool of remaining empty jobs. This depends on what they selected in their character setup's occupation page (there is a toggle at the bottom).
Tips for Job Selection
As you can see, people who have a job set to ultra or high are far, far more likely to get the job, since if there is only one slot available for a job - like HoS - and there is one person who sets that job to high and 20 people who set it to medium, the one person who set it to high will always get the job.
- Have your favorite job set to ultra or high, if you have two favorites or more, set one of them higher than the others. Do not have all three set to medium as you will very likely not get them - especially if the jobs have very few slots available.
Available Slots
This is a list of the number of slots available on station. This does not count reassignments done by the Head of Personnel. The AI and Cyborg cannot be late-joiners, however you may be turned into either of these in-game. The default player age restriction is shown in brackets.
- Assistant: Unlimited
- Tourist: Unlimited
- Bartender: 1
- Clerk: 1
- Cook: 2
- Botanist: 3
- Quartermaster: 1
- Cargo Technician: 3
- Shaft Miner: 5
- Mining Medic: 1
- Clown: 1
- Mime: 1
- Janitor: 2
- Librarian: 1
- Lawyer: 2
- Chaplain: 1
- Station Engineer: 5
- Signal Technician: 1
- Atmospheric Technician: 3
- Roboticist: 2
- Medical Doctor: 5
- Paramedic: 3
- Chemist: 2
- Geneticist: 2
- Virologist: 1
- Psychiatrist: 1
- Scientist: 5
- Warden: 1 (min 7 day player age)
- Detective: 1 (min 7 day player age)
- Security Officer: Scales with population: Minimum 5 (min 7 day player age)
- Chief Medical Officer: 1 (min 7 day player age)
- Chief Engineer: 1 (min 7 day player age)
- Research Director: 1 (min 7 day player age)
- Head of Personnel: 1 (min 10 day player age)
- Head of Security: 1 (min 14 day player age)
- Captain: 1 (min 14 day player age)
- Cyborg: 1 (available at round start only) (min 21 day player age)
- AI: 1 (available late-game only if an empty core is available) (min 30 day player age)