by Scree » Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:10 pm
Personally, I see pilots as being in the same place as chemists in relation to medbay (thanks to thedavestdave for bringing up this comparison in the github chat).
And by that, I mean it's fine for flying the shuttle to be "their job". As in, if a shuttle needs flying and there's a pilot around, then it's the pilot's job.
HOWEVER, if the pilot is not around, or is unavailable, or eaten, or just didn't join that shift, or is flying the shuttle for a different department and despite there being spare slots nobody's joining as the third pilot because they can already see two on the manifest and they just assume that three departments are unlikely to need a shuttle at once (which may well be true 95% of the time), then it's not fine for other players to be locked out of playing the game as a result.
There's precedent for this - the excursion shuttle can already be flown by the pathfinder, so while it's preferable that the pilot flies it, the exploration department isn't forced to grind to a standstill and wait, hoping that a pilot will arrive to allow them to do their jobs. If the PF doesn't want to do it themselves, they can designate a pilot among the explorers and give them a guest pass. This is fine, and it's exactly the place where any departmental shuttles should be in my opinion.
Maybe the basic rank and file of a given department shouldn't have pilot access to stop some day 0 fucking off with the shuttle and crashing it at roundstart, there's also precedent for this with explorers. Heads though? It kinda goes without saying that the head of a department should be able to access (or give access to) all the resources of that department, including shuttles, and we have an existing requirement for head players to be at least semi-competent.
As for "what does the pilot do if a department doesn't need them", that's what the tour bus is for. That's the pilot's shuttle. I don't see any advantage to adding a bazillion pilot slots to cover every department when nobody will join as them and not every department will need their shuttle every shift, nor do I see an advantage in making everyone a pilot and spawning arguments over who gets to fly the docwagon that day.