Bridge Officer

COMMAND STAFF
Bridge Officer	Access: Maintenance, Outer Bridge, Bridge, Tactical Consoles Additional Access: None Difficulty: Medium Supervisors: Captain, Head of Personnel Duties: Fly the ship, shoot at enemy ships. Guides: Guide to Bridge Officer, Department Standard Operating Procedure Quote: ...I hope you all realissse I can't drive ssstick...

You are the Bridge Officer. Depending on when you joined, you're either the Weapons Officer or the Helms Officer. The Weapons Officer is in charge of the ship's anti-ship battery, and the Helms Officer is the one in charge of actually flying the ship. Both jobs are vital to completing the mission, and unless the other officer is absent, dead, or never showed up, you should remain at your console at all times, and listen to your superiors.

ROLE RULES:

Never abandon the ship. You should never intentionally be on a different z-level from the ship without admin permission. This does not apply when docking with a station to retrieve an objective, though that should be delegated.
Be active when playing a Head of Staff. If you’re playing a command role and need to go AFK, offline, or otherwise leave then adminhelp to notify admins. WHEN YOU LEAVE, DO NOT SUICIDE OR GO BRAINDEAD. Enter a cryopod to free up the job slot for someone else. Do not join a round as a Head of Staff if you know you cannot stay for the entire round.
Do not play the department’s Head of Staff unless you have experience and a basic understanding of performing all of the department’s jobs.
Know and follow Ship Law and Standard Operating Procedure.
Heads of Staff are, unless otherwise stated, expected to follow the role-specific rules of their underlings in addition to their own.
Do NOT fire on either NanoTrasen or SolGov unless either:
- An admin gives you permission.
- Your mission objectives state you have to.
Follow the Chain of Command. Know who you do and don’t outrank.
Do not fire a MAC shell unless it is targeting a hostile ship. Wasting MAC ammo is griefing.
Do not FTL jump while docked with a station or landed on a planet. Bad things happen.
Do not leave anyone behind, except in an emergency such as the engine overheating or the ship being fired on while landed on a planet. Return for anyone left behind after the emergency has passed. Note: Stations and planets despawn in FTL if they do not have an active telecomms relay. This removes anyone aboard from the game.
Unless the other bridge officer is absent on the bridge and you have a good reason to do so, do not touch the other bridge officer’s console.

Bare minimum requirements:

Weapons Officer: Know how targeting works, know how to fire the weapons. Communicate with the Munitions Officer about what rounds to load into the MAC.
Helms Officer: Fly the ship into and out of danger. Warn the crew when you go to jump or fly into orbit.

Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Your Pilot Speaking

As a Helms Officer, your duty is to fly the ship. Your seat is front and center on the bridge, so you have the best view to parallel-park by an orbital platform. The Helms Console is fairly self-explanatory, and is discussed more in-depth in this guide.

Sometimes Centcomm will ask you to head to a specific planet. It's up to you as to how you plan to get the crew there. When you go to make the initial jump, you should check with Engineering and make sure the TEG is making power, and the plasma cans to the FTL drives are connected. Generally speaking, it's also a good idea to make sure your first jump is into friendly territory to ensure if something isn't set up, it can be fixed up without being shot to pieces.

If you jump without warning and it causes the death of a crewmember (i.e. leaving a salvage team behind), you may face both IC and OOC consequences.
It is also a VERY good idea to undock from Centcom and any other stations BEFORE using FTL, otherwise the ship suffers damage and the station hates you.

The Art of Not Being Able to Shoot at Something On The Other Side of the Star System

As a Weapons Officer, your duty is to defend your ship from enemy ships. This is done with the Tactical Console and the ship's onboard anti-ship battery, which consists of a mass accelerator cannon and a phase cannon at roundstart. You are responsible for coordinating with the Munitions Officer about what shells to load. If one phase cannon isn't enough firepower, you can nag Engineering to get a spare circuit board out of Tech Storage and set up a second phase cannon: just know if a shot destroys your phase cannons, you won't have a spare board you can use to get that back online.

The onboard anti-ship battery has a maximum effective range of about that of a planet - in other words, if you're at a nav beacon and you target a ship that's not at the same nav beacon as you, you're wasting ammunition. Wasting ammunition's a surefire way to piss off both the Captain and the MO, because the MO only gets fifteen shells to work with.

Also note that targeting different areas of the enemy ship will yield different results if you go to salvage: For example, targeting the hull will destroy the cargo holds and thus reduce the available loot you can scrap from the wreckage, while targeting the weapons will reduce the chance of salvaging a new phase cannon.

Your Chain of Command

Although the Executive Officer is technically your immediate supervisor, 99% of the time you'll be answering directly to the Captain or Acting Captain. It's important to keep the Captain informed and up-to-date on threat assessments. It's also generally a good idea to let them know when you enter or leave hostile space. If the Captain is dismissed or deceased, the Executive Officer becomes Acting Captain unless they or Centcomm elect someone else to be Acting Captain.

While the Weapons Officer generally orders the Munitions Officer around in terms of ammo-loading, you should remember that they are both on the same level in the chain of command - neither one outranks the other. For example, a Munitions Officer is not obliged to allow a Weapons Officer into the Munitions Bay if asked to do so by the Weapons Officer, but it's a good idea to do so anyway if you want good communication.

Tips

Helms

Being on a planet does not protect you from the enemy.
Coordinate with Engineering if you plan to stay planetside for a long time. If you are planetside, there is a planet blocking the heat exchangers from being able to radiate heat, and because of the way the TEG works, the Supermatter can easily delaminate from the cold loop being unable to cool.
Forgetting to warn the crew before you make a jump is bad form and annoys the crew. Ideally you should give them at least 30 seconds' warning, if possible, so they have enough time to object or get aboard.
A captain's order to jump does not override Centcomm's order to stay.
If you can grab a copy of a local station's yellow-pages, it will help in finding nearby stations easier.

Weapons

The onboard anti-ship battery will only hit targets at the same planet you're at. For example, if you're at a system's nav beacon, you will only be able to hit targets that are also at the nav beacon. This works both ways.
The MO only starts with fifteen rounds ammunition for the MAC: 5 high-explosive, 5 smart-homing, and 5 shield-piercing.
The enemy ships' cargo holds are within their hulls. Targetting the hull on the tactical console will most likely destroy the loot.
You start with one phase cannon at roundstart, but you can get Engineering to build another from Tech Storage. If you coordinate with the salvage team, you can easily get enough phase cannons to be able to destroy ships without firing the MAC ~~but that's no fun~~.
It is impossible to get Nanotrasen to stop shooting at you if you accidentally (or intentionally) fire upon them without admin intervention. If you do accidentally fire upon Nanotrasen, ahelp it as soon as possible.

Jobs on FTL13
	Command	Captain, Executive Officer, Bridge Officer
	Security	Head of Security, Security Officer, Master-at-Arms, Detective
	Engineering	Chief Engineer, Ship Engineer, Atmospheric Technician
	Supply	Quartermaster, Cargo Technician, Shaft Miner, Munitions Officer
	Science	Research Director, Scientist, Roboticist
	Medical	Chief Medical Officer, Medical Doctor, Chemist, Geneticist, Virologist
	Service	Janitor, Bartender, Cook, Botanist, Clown, Mime
	Civilian	Assistant, Lawyer, Chaplain, Librarian
	Non-human	AI, Cyborg, Positronic Brain, Drone, Personal AI, Construct, Adamantine Golem, Ghost
	Antagonists	Traitor, Changeling, Nuclear Operative, Wizard, Shadowling, Abductor, Xenomorph, Revenant, Space Ninja, Holoparasite, Swarmers, Blob, Devil, Clockwork Cult
	Special	Centcom Official, Death Squad Officer, Emergency Response Officer, Ian
	Races	Humans, Lizardperson, Flyperson, Plasmaman, Podman, Miscellaneous