Assistants are the most versatile and expendable workers on the station. They are recommended to new-comers who have read or are reading the tutorial and are still getting their space legs.
Assistants begin their shifts around the station but usually congregate in Primary Tool Storage, where they can acquire some basic tools such as screwdrivers and wrenches. If you are charismatic or lucky, the Head of Personnel can add more access to your Identification Card. With more access and perhaps a custom job title, perhaps you can find a purpose on the station at last.
Sometimes you are a God among men and sometimes you are dead within twelve seconds of round start. It all depends on how you set up and the luck of the station.
Bare minimum requirements: Don't be a total shitler.
Actually Assisting People
If you are an assistant and wish to actually assist people, you can try asking over the radio if anyone needs help with anything. This may or may not work. You can also approach people in person, which has a higher chance of success. Live out your dreams of being a 22-year-old coffee bitch intern IN SPACE!
Particularly helpful assistants may want to have a more permanent job on the station. The HoP can promote you to a position if you ask nicely and convince them that you're not a traitor (this is particularly useful if you are, in fact, a traitor). It helps if that job is urgent, like doctors when the crew is dying or engineers when the station is a hole in space. However, the HoP does not have to, and you will just have to live with that. Unless, of course, you're the traitor.
Assistants usually get into non-lethal fights often due to accidently or intentionally causing trouble and are seen the most in places called "rage-cages". Therefore, assistants sparring with each-other and other crew members in both rage-cages and outside of them usually trains up very Robust individuals. If you're looking to become robust, this is the role for you.
Duties? What Duties?
Assistants are usually the most aware civilians on the station due to the fact they're constantly on the move. You'll find that that assistants make great informants!
Into the ghetto
As an assistant you may not be given the same gear or access others have, even if you ask nicely. Therefore, you'll sometimes may have to rely on yourself, scavenge or potentially, steal. But when you don't have much to work with, it's always nice to do things ghetto.
Ghetto Engineering
As an Assistant, Engineering and Cargo sometimes may not allow you to take a Multitool from their lathe. In this case, you'll have to rely on
- Gloves protect you from both the heat and the cold, and work great for hiding fingerprints (although most variants will leave fibers of their color behind instead).
- Two Remote Signaling Devices and a screwdriver, attaching a signaler to a wire then taking a step back and pulsing it can be a safer, but slower alternative than testing your luck with Budget Insulated Gloves. But you know what they say, "Don't work hard, work smart".
- Wirecutters, these are only to be used if you cannot find a multitool or signalers, but in order to get anywhere with these, the formula is simple. Cut and mend wires until you find the power wires then crowbar open. Bring grey bull if you have to.
- Crowbar, An invaluable tool in making your way around the station, also an invaluable tool in forcing unpowered doors open too.
- Grey Bull, if you want to hack doors the fast way without shocking yourself, this is the way to go. Drinking this will make you immune to shocks for a while, so you can quickly pulse all the wires to find out which ones do what. One can per soda vendor. Expensive.
- Insulated Gloves, this is your holy grail as an assistant, if you can manage to get these, you probably do not have to rely on ghetto methods. Can be disguised as normal, non-yellow gloves with a Laundromat or Spray can.
Ghetto Security
As an assistant, Security may treat every word you tell them as a lie, here's how you can and what you need to do Security's job when they're incompetent and it's been announced that there's a rampaging antagonist on the station.
Notice
- Remove your PDA with your ID in it and put it in your backpack. This is useful as a monkey and also useful when you want to remain unknown with a mask on. Like a monkey mask, griffon mask, animal mask, fake moustache, you name it.
- The firesuit and emergency firesuit can make for some pretty decent armor at the cost of making you slow. The emergency firefighting helmet also has a toggleable flashlight.
- If you ever doubt that your robustness will be enough to take on a certain antagonist, train with the sparring Chaplain or convince the Station Engineers to build a rage-cage so you can hone your robustness.
- There are many more things you can do, but some things are best found out on your own. Try to experiment as much as you can and see what works best for you.
Ghetto Medical
As an assistant, medbay may not want to patch you up. Hence why you must learn how to heal yourself without their help.
- Having the "Drunken Resilience" and "Light Drinker" quirks will allow you to heal faster depending on how drunk you are. Since being a light drinker makes you get drunk more easily, use this to your advantage, find exactly of how much you can take without passing out and dying then chug to the limit of how much booze you can take.
- Bungo juice, Banana Juice, nothing, silencer and blank paper can allow monkeys, clowns and mimes to heal at a decent rate. If you're a monkey, clown or mime, get this whenever you can.
- Chugging Lime Juice, Tea and iced tea all together can make for a semi-decent toxin heal. But spinning until you vomit heals toxin damage too, so if you really don't have access to the bar and you have toxin damage, spin until you vomit several times somewhere safe.
- Having a buddy in the tide do ghetto surgery and ghetto revival with a Stunprod in a secluded Maintenance room can prove useful if the Chief Medical Officer and his entire team won't serve you.
- It also helps to have your personal plant trays, a steady supply of fertilizer and water along with some reliable seeds from the Botanist.
Gimmicks
Due to the lack of responsibility, you'll usually find that assistants are the ones responsible for renovating the bar with a dance floor or boxing ring, converting the dorms into interrogation rooms, and all other sorts of wacky projects. An assistant is also good job for playing a single-round gimmick.
- Acolyte
- Actor
- Animal Handler
- Athlete
- Bean Counter
- Beggar
- Bro
- Boxer (at your own risk)
- Coach
- Consultant
- Daredevil
- Delivery Boy/Girl
- DJ
- Drunken Wreck
- Emissary from Another Planet
- Fanboy/girl
- Former Head of Security
- Gambler
- Gourmand
- Junk Collector
- Junkie
- Musician
- Paralegal
- Political Activist
- Political Prisoner
- Private Investigator
- Receptionist
- Safety Inspector
- Salesperson
- Stowaway
- Masked Vigilante (at your own risk)
- Student
- Terraformer
- Test Subject
- Tour Guide
- Trader
- Waiter
- Robin hood-like figure (at your own risk)
- Thief (at your own risk)
Ghost in the System
It's easy to stay under the radar as an assistant, as you have the least-respected job on the station (aside from that other guy). You have maintenance access, but to go anywhere else you need to be creative. Loot a belt and budget insulated gloves from Primary Tool Storage if you can and set out!
The number one advantage of traitor assistant is your opponent's arrogance. Security and other crew members will typically assume you are inexperienced or stupid, so surprise them with your knowledge of the game's mechanics.
This doesn't mean you won't run into a particularly savvy security member who knows the potential danger of an assistant, though. Keep alert at all times. In the rare case that someone actually asks you to assist them, draw them into a quiet place and execute them.
