Table of Contents
Guides
Guides to performing various tasks aboard the ship, including everyday crew duties and more devious matters.
Most of the activities that take place aboard the ships are intended to advance the causes of Science and Profit, in simple terms. Dead or injured crewmembers typically reduce profits; new discoveries advance science; trade with other civilizations increases profits; and so on.
Player Guides
Game Mechanics Guides
General Character Guides
These apply to no department in particular, but are important for any crewman (or passenger) to know about, or esoteric enough to not be relevant to a particular department.
Command Department
The Command Department is responsible for the ship itself as a space vessel representing NovusCorp's interests, protecting its allies, and neutralizing adversaries. The Captain and Commander, along with the Helm Officer, Weapons Officer, Comm Officer, Munitions Officer, and Weapons Technicians all belong to this department.
- Chain of Command: Who's in charge, and who's in charge when they're unavailable.
- Guide to Factions: Who's who in the complicated intergalactic universe of high-stakes capitalism.
- Guide to Space Combat: Managing to keep your ship intact while destroying your enemies.
- Guide to Enemy Ships: A guide to enemy ships.
- Guide to FTL Travel: A guide to FTL Travel.
- Guide to Boarding: A guide to boarding 'live' ships.
- Guide to Bridge Officers: What the Helm and Weapons Officers deal with.
- Standard Operating Procedure: Expected practice for the ship and its crew.
Military Department
The Military Department is NovusCorp's combat arm; expected to go through a few vatclones in their career, these brave soldiers give their lives again and again to preserve the lives of their comrades. As such, they have skills that most non-military individuals do not have.
- Guide to Grenade Construction: While the Science department can also construct grenades, the Ordnance Technician is expected to do so for the good of his companions.
- Guide to Requisition Crates: The various things you can order from NovusCorp's military supply network.
- Guide to Marine Law: Marine Law and how it applies to the Marines and their interactions with civilians.
- Guide to Fightercraft: A guide to the fightercraft aboard your typical NARV.
- Guide to Munitions: A guide to servicing the various weapons utilized in space combat.
- Adventure Zones: Ever wonder where the Gateway opens to?
- Guide to Fire Support: Calling in the heavy guns.
- Guide to Emergency Squads: When battle calls, the crew answers!
- Guide to Weapons Mechanics: A guide to the mechanics of various military weapons.
Corporate Department
The Corporate Department exists to advance company interests and profits directly, and to supply the other departments with what they need to do their jobs. As such, the Resource Director, Internal Affairs agents, company Lawyers, Magistrates, Secretaries, Interns, Assistants, and Asset Protection Teams (a cross between military and security called in for emergencies) are some examples of these workers.
- Guide to Faxes: What to send to Corporate Command in order to expect a response.
- Guide to Paperwork: Bureaucracies run on paperwork. Here's how to fill things out, create new forms, or just scribble notes to show the AI cameras.
Security Department
IntSec, Loss Prevention, call them what you will - they maintain the security and safety of staff, whether against the evils that exist outside the corporate enclave or the evils that creep in. The Chief of Security, Security Officers, Detective, Brig Physician, and Forensic Technicians work for Security.
- Corporate Regulations: The current regulations followed by NovusCorp in regards to criminal and civil penalties.
- Security Protocol: A guide to standard security protocol.
- Guide to Trials: A guide to trials as handled by SC13.
- Guide to Forensics: How to find space criminals, whether hardened killers or simple litterers.
- Guide to Combat: Technically useful for everyone to know, but Security has to learn non-lethal and lethal means of incapacitating an opponent, as well as how not to be the one getting incapacitated.
Medical Department
Biotechnology is NovusCorp's expertise, and this science in particular is managed under the Medical Department, and is one of the best in the galaxy. As such, the Chief Medical Officer is a very important role, managing Medical Doctors, Surgeons, the Psychologist, Virologists, Geneticists, Medical Assistants, Nurses, Paramedics, and Xenobiologists.
- Guide to Modern Medicine: A guide to treating the ailments of your fellow crewmembers, as well as the sorts of ailments they might suffer.
- Guide to Hyposprays: How hyposprays can make your life as a field doctor much easier.
- Guide to Defibrillators: Those magical resurrection machines that can restart a stopped heart.
- Guide to Modern Genetics: With modern genetic printing techniques, a mind can be resleeved into a body with relative ease and biomorphic enhancements are easily installed.
- Guide to Surgery: A guide to surgical techniques and their field-expedient equivalents.
- Guide to Wounds: Extra effects of injuries beyond simple health loss.
- Guide to Cadavers: Autopsies must be performed by the Chief Medical Officer or Coroner.
- Guide to Diseases, Viruses, and Infections: The various viruses, infections, and diseases that your spaceman can catch, as assisted or countered by your friendly neighborhood Virologist.
- Guide to Brain Traumas: The unpleasant side effects of suffering a brain injury.
- Guide to Decomposition: What happens when a corpse is left to rot.
Sciences Department
The Research Director keeps an eye on the biotech department, particularly when it comes to genetic research, but also has to make sure the Chemists are mixing chemicals safely, the Roboticists are building useful robots, Xenoarchaeologists are looking for relics and artifacts, Researchers are studying the items found, and Scientists are being given new projects to work on based on the research thus far. Botanists are also ostensibly under the Research Director's control, particularly when xenobotany comes into play.
- Guide to Research and Development: Developing new things for SCIENCE!
- Guide to Modern Chemistry: A guide to making the various chemicals that can save or end lives.
- Guide to Robotics: How to build interesting robots, augment crewmembers with cybernetic upgrades, build cyborgs and even make artificial intelligences.
- Guide to Nanites: How to build, program, install and update nanite clouds to improve the lives of your spacemen on a space lab in space.
- Guide to Grenade Construction: Building newer and deadlier armaments to provide your military boys with better gear.
- Guide to Making Explosives: Useful for mining, destroying rampant singularities, and packing into a torpedo to send as a gift to visiting adversaries.
- Guide to Telescience: Teleporting things with the awesome power of SCIENCE!
- Guide to Ordnance: The Ordnance Lab, where scientists make big booms for science and the Ordnance Technician prepares them for practical purposes.
Engineering Department
While research improves the realm of science, and corporate keeps the profits rolling in, the engineering department is responsible for keeping the ship functional. Engineers keep the power running, Network Technicians fix computers and telecomm systems, Atmospheric Technicians keep the air running, Mechanics maintain equipment and build or upgrade machines as necessary, Maintenance Technicians conduct running repairs, and Technical Assistants work with Engineers and Mechanics to solve minor problems.
- Guide to Engineering: Keeping the engine running and the power flowing.
- Guide to Atmospherics: Keeping the ship's crew breathing instead of breathing down your neck.
- Guide to Mechanics: Keeping the ship in good repair and making sure that vital components and machines are upgraded and ready to be replaced if necessary.
- Guide to Constructions: Building and disassembling objects.
- Guide to Advanced Construction: Building and disassembling machines and other large objects.
- Guide to Wiring: How to lay cable properly.
- Guide to Repairs: How to fix the ship, station, colony, etc.
- Guide to Machine Hacking: Modifying machines to do things they aren't normally supposed to.
- Guide to Telecommunications: Guide to the telecommunications system.
- NovusCorp Scripting Language: Guide to the NCSL programming language.
- Ship Superstructure and Armor: Guide to the hull and armor, and how to repair them when they're taking damage in combat.
- Guide to Tools and Mods: A guide to the various tools available to starfarers and their relative effectiveness.
- Guide to EVA: A guide to spacewalking.
- Guide to FTL Drive and Shields: Engineering is expected to make sure the shields and FTL drive have power at all times, whether the ship is actively using them right now or not.
- Guide to SMESes: Building and upgrading those wonderful power storage devices.
- Guide to Repairing Robots and Prosthetics: Fixing up your robotic pals and prosthetics.
- Guide to Optics: How to use prisms to increase the power of emitters.
- Guide to Packets: How network packets make the various machines aboard ships and around stations work.
- Guide to Plumbing: Building piping systems to create factories for aspiring chemists to make massive amounts of helpful chemicals.
Services Department
While not considered the most impressive department, the functions of the Services Department make everything else run more smoothly – Janitors must keep things tidy, Entertainers, Clowns and Mimes keep the crew happy, the Quartermaster and Cargo Techs order crates and deliver goods where they are needed, the Bartender serves drinks while the Chef serves food, and Assistants help any department that is understaffed. The Botanists and Ranchers are responsible for growing food.
- Guide to Food: Making meals in space that would make a restauranteur proud!
- Guide to Drinks: Bartending for those who cannot!
- Guide to Hydroponics: Agriculture in space!
- Guide to Beekeeping: Boosting crops and making honey with space bees!
- Guide to Ranching: Raising animals for food and supplies.
- Guide to Leatherworking: When only the finest space leather will do.
- Guide to Keeping Fish: For the dedicated decorator or the sushi chef waiting to be expressed.
- Guide to Supply Crates: The various things you can order from NovusCorp and other merchants.
- Guide to Smithing: Taking things back a few centuries with modern tech.
- Fabricators, Manufacturers, and Lathes: Making things the futuristic way.
- Guide to Cash Registers: Point-of-sale technology hasn't changed much.
Expedition Department
Technically a subdepartment of Services, the Expedition department consists of explorers, miners, and others willing to embark in strange and foreign environments for scientific and financial gain. While the Xenosciences have their own category, this covers most other instances of exploration.
- Guide to Mining: Whether planetbound or asteroid-bound, you dig to gather resources for the ship.
- Guide to Expeditions: Away missions and preparing yourselves.
- Guide to Snow Planet: A guide to survival on snow and ice planets.
- Guide to Hypothermia: The effects of hypothermia and how to treat them.
In-Game Books and Manuals
These are books found within the world of SS13, and as such may not be entirely copacetic with SC13. Many are produced by Nanotrasen, and as such will have numerous errors. User discretion is advised.
- Command
- Engineering
- (other engine guides?)
- Supply
- Military
- Medical
- Research
- Civilian
- Security
- Syndicate
Department Guides
Engineering Making and Breaking · Construction · Gas · Powering the station · Singularity · Mining · Materials and Crafting · Wiring · Hacking · MechComp · Mechanic components and you · Control Unit · Reactor Statistics Computer · Cargo Crates
Medsci Doctoring · Genetics · Robotics · Telescience · Plasma Research · Artifact Research · Chemistry · Chemicals · ChemiCompiler · Decomposition
Security Security Officer · Contraband · Forensics · Space Law · A Treatise on Space Law
Service Foods and Drinks · Botany · Writing · Piano Song Dump · Instruments
The AI Artificial Intelligence · AI Laws · Chain of Command · Guide to AI · Humans and Nonhumans · Killing the AI
Computers Computers · TermOS · ThinkDOS · Packets
https://wiki.ss13.co/Frontier_Justice:_A_Treatise_on_Space_Law
Civilians
Not everyone aboard a NovusCorp vessel is in their employment! There may be tourists, survivors, traveling merchants and other odds and ends, as well as freshly recruited individuals looking for work under the NovusCorp banner.
- Guide to Franchising: Your guide to setting up, running, and being a part of a franchise business. Give people a chance to pay off their debt to the company, or just live out their dreams of being a fry cook in space!
- Guide to Stocks: Playing the stock market, whether you're a department head interested in investing your revenue or a passenger looking to do some -serious- gambling.
The Esoteric Xeno-Sciences
These are the various sciences that delve into the truly unknown – things man doesn't understand. By understanding the technology, biology, and relics of other civilizations, NovusCorp hopes to develop new sciences and make new discoveries for science and profit.
- Guide to Xenoarchaeology: Exploring strange new worlds and discovering the remains of lost civilizations, a Xenoarchaeologist specializes in searching for these lost relics. Alien relics may be useful for scientific research or salable on the open market, making the Xenoarchaeologist's work very helpful for both science and profit.
- Guide to Xeno-Artifact Research: Determining the strange abilities of xenological artifacts is the realm of the Xeno-Researcher. Xeno-Artifacts can accomplish miraculous things, and by unlocking their secrets you can vastly advance scientific progress… or get everyone killed. Try to work towards that first one.
- Guide to Xenobiology: Raising alien life forms for fun and profit is the realm of the Xenobiologist; they search for new lifeforms to experiment on, the better to advance the workings of science while looking for profit applications.
- Guide to Cytology: The science of raising living cells into whole new creatures, for when the xenobiologist gets bored with slimes.
- Guide to Carp Breeding: A guide to breeding the dangerous space carp.
- Guide to Xenobotany: While most foreign plants are merely unusual or interesting, some rare discoveries can be extremely valuable!