Quartermaster
| SUPPLY STAFF | |
  Quartermaster |
Access: Cargo, Mining, Vault Difficulty: Easiest of the command jobs Supervisors: Captain Duties: Manage the cargo department, ship orders, make sure miners don't die. Guides: Chain of Command, Policy for Command Quote: "Sign here, here, here, here and here... don't forget to stamp on page three." |
There are two things that a mega corporation such as Nanotrasen deals in more than the holy grail of plasma itself: shipping containers and paperwork. The QM is chief logistician, responsible for making the very world go round through the force of commerce.
Bare minimum expectations: Ship people's orders come hell or high water. Make sure there's enough materials for station life to proceed.
Bonus Skills: Full utilization of Paperwork, construction of quicker shipping routes and maximization of your profits.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Good day to you, Quartermaster. You've ground your way up from the ranks of the working class (the true part of the working class, anyway, those Engineering fellows can sod off) and found yourself with three main things: a private office, clothing more brown than your subordinates (but somehow more stylish) and an insatiable desire for both personal and Company profits. Speaking of the Company, they have invested in you tools which may be more mundane than that of the other department heads, but have a purpose in easing the lives of everyone on board. The relevant kit on your person, and in your locker, is as follows:
- Your clipboard. No joke, this is arguably one of the most robust tools in your possession. Use it to store paperwork and pen that you are presently handling. You could also just use it to store the billions of req forms your computers will print, but you should really have a filing cabinet for that.
- Permit HUD Sunglasses. These discount versions of sechuds provide you with both flash protection and the ability to see if John Syndicate actually bothered to get a legal permit for his private ballistic rifle purchase.
- Your ID. As the Quartermaster you are in charge of money, and your ID is used to authorize all sorts of transactions, therefore your ID is noteworthy as equipment.
- The Cargo Budget card. You use this to add personal funds to the cargo budget. You can't actually use this to buy anything or embezzle funds, though, so don't waste your effort.
- Your PDA. Specifically, the range of apps on your PDA make it noteworthy as equipment for the QM. NT IRN allows you to remotely order shit, GrandArk Exporter allows you to print barcodes for export when a universal scanner isn't handy, and NT Restock Tracker lets you see when vending machines need to be maintained.
- Cargo Teleporter. This device allows you to mark down areas to instantly teleport crates across the station, which saves transit time.
- Universal scanner, allows you to scan export values, place sales barcodes and adjust vending item prices in your custom vendors.
- Supply door remote. Noteworthy among door remotes as it is able to control the vault doors as well as all of cargo.
- Xhihao 'Rengo' precision rifle. It's a NRI/CIN Sakhno rifle given a new paint job, a few extra rounds in the magazine and a scope. It's still bolt action, and you will have to pull the bolt each shot. Uses .310 Strilka rounds, which you can acquire from CIN surplus or clever manipulation of an autolathe. You can also fit a survival knife as a bayonet for when you either run out of rounds or you have no time to cock the rifle.
- Telescopic baton, robust tool for stunning dissenters.
- Mining weather radio. Lets you know when shit is getting hot for your miners down on Lavaland, and can talk on the supply frequency in a pinch.
YOUR MINIONS
While you could, in theory, haul all the freight yourself, there are some tasks in the supply department that are too menial or dangerous for a command officer like yourself to handle directly. Fortunately, you should have no shortage of subordinates ready to do your bidding for hazard pay.
Cargo Technicians: These are your ground workers, and when they're not busy infamously unionizing or arming up on more guns, they are responsible for the day-to-day labor in and around the warehouse. Ideally, while you handle the paperwork and manifests, these guys are unloading the actual crates, and getting them where they need to be. It's also handy to have a cargo tech at the front desk to deal with all the minor requests you will get throughout a shift.
Blacksmiths: These artisans are assigned to the supply department due to the commodified nature of the wares they produce, and because the types of wares they produce are heavily dependent on resources from the supply department. Blacksmiths will typically spend a lot of their time producing antique-style tools and weapons, but the real money of the profession is in glassblowing, which you should attempt to get your blacksmiths to do instead.
Customs Agents: Unlike the department guards of other departments, the supply department's Customs Agent has a purview of both internal and external affairs, and is more than a simple low-budget deterrent for criminals. The Customs Agent is responsible for the legitimacy of all freight that is imported or exported through the cargo bay, which means that they are policing both YOUR PEOPLE and outsiders alike for potential contraband smuggling or embezzlement. Work with them to keep the Cargo Bay a clean and secure environment for legitimate commerce.
Shaft Miners: While miners are technically under your command, odds are that these adventurous souls will run off to Lavaland or the depths of your assigned planet within the first five minutes, and either come back victorious or end up a dead mess for you and the paramedics to try and rescue. Controlling them fully is often an exercise in futility, instead you should just remind them that ore and vents come first, and hunting fauna comes later. Hopefully they will have delivered at least one load before going on the warpath.
Bitrunners: Apparently, Nanotrasen has figured out how to exploit the realm of cyberspace for caches of resources, and Bitrunners are the gamers who go forth to meet the challenge of virtual domains. Unless you join in on the gaming yourself there is not much you need to do in order to direct the bitrunners, basically, when in between domains, have these guys lend a hand in the bay, and once the quantum server cools down, send them in for the next round. Make sure the ores in the encrypted caches reach the ORM and everything's fine. If you want to go the extra mile, maybe pester the chemists so you can keep a stock of medicine on hand to heal the brain damage from their inevitable screw-ups.
IMPORT-EXPORT
The crates must flow. Cargo is the silent lifeblood of the station, responsible for both gathering minerals, and importing goods onto the station that are either hard to produce, or unable to be reliably made at all! This is why, as QM, you must direct order within the cargo bay. Every order prints a WHITE sheet of paper. These tell you the order, as well as who or what department ordered it. It's not imperative that these be used, so sticking a clipboard or folder at each cargo console is a good idea.... Provided, of course, that the laymans care for order, which in most cases, they don't, requiring you to be the one shoving the papers into the folder. When a shuttle is called, a BLUE sheet is printed, from the computer that called the shuttle. KEEP THESE ON YOUR PERSONAL CLIPBOARD. They are a full manifest of everything arriving on that shuttle, with order numbers, and who or what department the crate or case needs to reach. With these papers, you'll be able to properly delegate the task of offloading and delivering the orders from the shuttle.
But this flow is not one-directional. After all, if we didn't deal with the empty crates, there would be no space for us to walk around on the station! Thankfully, NT offers a crate recycling program. Simply load the crates onto the shuttle, and sent it back to Central! You'll get rewarded for your efforts. Every crate also comes with a paper to send back to Central with it, with a place for a stamp. NT likes paperwork, and to know if their crates arrived properly. So, approve it with a green stamp or your special golden QM stamp, or deny it with the red one. Generally, you won't deny much, but sometimes, due to a clerical error, the name of the station may not match the paper, or the crate might have been empty... Stamp correctly, and you'll be rewarded. Stamp poorly.... And you'll get a penalty!
There are two other ways to export goods. You can simply dump loose items onto the shuttle, where they will be sold off for pure profit to the budget, or, you can wrap them with some paper, and stick an ID-linked barcode to the wrapped object. The barcode will give up to 50% of the profits to the ID, while cargo scoops up the rest! A good example of items for you to sell for budget are surplus materials.... Just don't be surprised if science gets mad when they run out of iron for their exosuits! In some stations (only Moon at the moment), you may even find the GALACTIC MARKET. This is a POWERFUL tool, allowing you to buy and sell materials directly from the ore silo! Buy low, sell high. You can influence the market by messing with supply and demand, but you may crash it, preventing any buying or selling for several minutes. Furthermore, it's easy to lose everything, as when you "sell" you actually just create an insanely high value bounty cube which will lose its value if not sold off on the shuttle soon enough, but you're the QM, responsibility and order is your game! You got this!
MUCH NEEDED RENOVATIONS
Cargo is fine as-is at start of shift, but you could always make it better. Consider buying or acquiring tools to move things around your office. Being pestered to use the autolathe inside the office from greytiders assistants is annoying, so why not take a wall out and shove the lathe into the empty spot? May as well go and make racks outside to hold all the mail and private cases you're acquiring too.... Oh, those bounty cubes are piling up, make a disposal system to launch them onto the shuttle's conveyor's! And boy, would it be useful to have longer conveyors on the shuttle itself to help move crates around... So long as your ambitions don't get too far ahead of you, there's a lot you can do to upgrade the workflow! At the shift start, consider buying an RCF from the company imports, and giving it a silo link. RCFs can self-replicate, so print another one off and deliver it to another department. Science, especially the RD, would love to have a spare link for their own renovations at shift start, so while you don't need to, you can be a pal, and help make someone else's workflow just all the more easier.
