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The only good vulp is a dead vulp.

The guy who plays Logan had his computer blue screen.

So the admins (a consensus of whoever was in staff chat at the time) have decided that not recruiting sec from the manifest is against the rules because it is done to keep antags out of sec using meta knowledge. Regardless of whether or not its meta, Game balance should absolutely be trumping meta here. Sec cannot be round start antags except for blob for a reason. Sec do not need this knife in their back. If not recruiting from the manifest is meta, sec may as well be allowed to roll antag, since under this new ruling any antag can just go to ask to be sec on round start and will actually get away it because of HoS's fearing bwoinks. This should not be a thing for the same reason that the PR about making brig phys being able to role traitor was closed, except this is even worse than that, especially on low pop when there's even less reason to turn down sec hires. In addition to that, this is very difficult to administrate (intention of whether or not the HoS said no to that hire because meta or other reasons is very difficult to tell) and it can be very easily explained IC: Mind shielded personal are subject to much more in depth and expensive background checking than the rest of the crew. When I ahelped and asked about this I was told something along the lines of "whats the IC reason people are always turned down." And My response to this is, Whats the IC reason that mind shielded people cannot be antags, that is the reason.

It really is a pleasure to finally join your guy's main website. I've been Shaft Mining with Paradise for roughly a year now and it's hands down the only station / community for me. I dont say that lightly, as I haven't joined a group like this outside of a small circle of steam bro's for almost 10 years. I've come to know only a fraction of you over my time here and I look forward to meeting many more of you as time passes on. And to ACU-15 if he's in here somewhere,

Even prior to being an admin I've never been bwoinked for not recruiting from the crew unless I had absolutely no reason not to and the person trying to be recruited was putting in decent effort IC to get recruited (I'd also never think using "they aren't mindshielded" isn't a viable reason). However I also HAVE recruited from the crew. Is sec understaffed? Is the person persistent? Did they actually fill out paperwork and accept an interview? I base hiring from the crew on the effort put it and circumstances. If someone just PDAs me or just asks out of the blue I'll say no. Zero effort. As for meta knowledge and mindshields. Why are you so worried about game balance and losing? Afraid something new and interesting might happen? More than anything, most of the people I hired from the crew were just newer players who wanted to give sec a shot but essentially just be a "cadet" rather than a "full blown officer" cuz they felt it was too much responsibility. Showing them the ropes was fun, and it was satisfying to see some of them eventually grow into good sec players. Have I accidentally hired antags from the crew? Yup. Has it screwed sec over? Absolutely. One time the officer used his status to frame and get his targets executed, but other than that he was actually a very efficient officer. Stop worrying so much about winning and allow something interesting to happen. The biggest crime of meta knowledge is it leads to repetitive, predictable, and boring behavior. Not just sec is at fault for this. Everyone is to some degree.

"Mike scares me..." And what do you mean by Benjaminfallout quality? ._.

Quite the group of vox there

Are we playing the same game? Sorry for my own snark, but the SS13 departments are so siloed that it spawned its own gamemode. "Departments should cooperate" is certainly a nice sentiment, but mechanically-speaking, it's a Herculean task. Let's go over the specifics: -Poor communications: Departments have different radios, and with very few individuals having the encryption keys for multiple departments (Geneticists and the Brig Physician being interesting exceptions). Even Command members are generally restricted to the comms of their own departments and the secret Command channel, with any inter-departmental communication being carried out either in person, via PDA, or over the spammed Common chat. GoodSam the Helpful Scientist might want to give Medbay a hand, but he has no easy means of communicating with them, nor of listening to their issues to know exactly what they need and when. -Territory and territoriality: Departments have their own, well-marked turf, and departmental members are justifiably cantankerous about others stepping foot in that area. ID-locked doors and trespassing laws keep departmental members away from each other outside of emergencies or antagonist activity. Face-to-face interaction between members of different departments is generally rare and limited to common areas (or Medbay, since Mebay gets traipsed over despite doctors' protests nearly every shift). When your only interactions with another department are via yelling at them over general comms or banging on their front door, I think it's fairly obvious why inter-departmental relations might be somewhat strained. -Few means of inter-departmental compellence: As a frequent Chief Engineer, I see this issue crop up quite a bit with regards to the station goals. I need Cargo to send me the BSA crate, or Botany to actually get some plant DNA samples for effing once. I ask 'em over general comms to carry out whatever action I need done, and wait, and wait, and wait...When Cargo blows its points on pizzas and party hats instead of ordering what I need, or Xenobiology dismisses me outright, my options are extremely limited. I can ask 'em nicely or try to guilt-trip the offending party into compliance, ask the relevant Head of Staff to discipline them, or hope that the Captain will take time from every other task they have to address my fairly minor inter-departmental issue. My only other forceful options are downright illegal: refusing medical care to another department as the CMO, cutting power or venting atmos as the CE, telescience-stealing gear as the RD - well, I'm sure you can see how practices like those were institutionalized into the Nations gamemode. It's downright infuriating at times, and it shouldn't be any wonder that more-seasoned players spend extra effort to avoid ending up reliant on other departments in the first place. These are all examples of centrifugal factors, as Hartshorne would call them: social forces which divide people and push them apart. The station has divided physical geography, segregated communications, underdeveloped command structures, and a siloed departmental architecture which encourages strife rather than cooperation. Forcing cooperation, like with the science R&D update a year or so ago (removing Science's autolathe in the hopes that they'd go to Cargo instead) largely just results in players implementing a work-around. In cases where one can't be implemented, such as the station goals, there certainly are interactions, just not good ones. The flipside is categorized as centripedal forces, or things which bring people together, and currently there's a lot missing: -Few shared departmental goals: Engineering keeps the lights on, Medbay keeps the crew healthy, Sec keeps 'em safe, Research powergames like crazy...all well and good in theory, but in practice these general aims don't interact closely with each other. There are a couple exceptions to this rule, such as the station goals (primarily Cargo/Engineering, although Botany and Science get involved in the BSA and DNA Vault), but by and large different departments don't have much reason to go out of their way to cooperate. -A lack of focus on individuals: as a Engineer or Scientist , for example, your remit is (technically) the entire bloody station. You're supposed to either maintain or improve, respectively, the entire Cyberiad - or worse, Metastation - with no guidance provided beyond that. I'm sure you've heard of the importance of singling people out when trying to compel action during an emergency, i.e. pointing at someone when saying "call 911" instead of just asking a crowd as a whole? Consider that same phenomenon here, and how to overcome it; I've got some suggestions below, but I'm sure there are others. -Few means of rewarding good behavior: As a frequent Command player, I would kill for my own medal box - and I'm not talking about that bloody captaincy medal. There's a quote attributed to Napoleon about how "a soldier will fight long and hard for a length of colored ribbon," and as a Captain, I've seen clear positive effects of handing out medals appropriately. I try to do my best by congratulating helpful people via announcements, but I'd love to see actual mechanical, institutionalized means of promoting and rewarding cooperation and good player behavior. You've argued pretty clearly how you want to encourage inter-departmental interactions, and at least in theory I'm not opposed. My issue with that is that not all interactions are good ones, and that the current game mechanics allow unwanted player behaviors while preventing or suppressing desirable ones. Using that as a rhetorical starting point, let's talk about achievable means of encouraging positive behaviors: -Medal box: As mentioned, gib relevant medals plz. Seriously, I would love to be able to decorate helpful people in an in-game way. Other means of giving either individuals or departments an 'attaboy' would always be appreciated - a "Most Helpful Department" trophy that the Captain could hand out, for instance? -More inter-departmental goals: Additional means of congratulating one department assisting another at round end, for instance. Game mechanics like Medbay getting a tally of how many members of other departments were healed or saved during the shift ("3 Security Officers, 1 Scientist, and 2 Botanists were revived inside Medbay this shift/8830 health points were gained back in Medbay," etc.), or everyone getting the option to commend a particular department at round-end ("[Science] was commended the most this shift, by 12 non-Science players"), would provide some means of encouragement for desirable behavior. -Departmental assignments: The generic members of large departments (Scientists, Engineers, Security Officers, etc.) start with an 'assignment' to another department. They get an armband and relevant radio encryption key in their packs at roundstart, along with an initial briefing reading something like "You have been assigned to the Medbay/Science/etc. department. You are to assist them as best you can." This would cut out the issues of a lack of comms and the deindividuation issue of being a single person in a larger department: when someone in Medbay starts complaining about the broken window in the front lobby, Joe Schmoe the Medbay Engineer is positioned to both hear about the issue (due to having access to Medbay's comms) and act (due to having a greater sense of responsibility towards Medbay than any other Engineer). Of course, I'm sure any Sec players reading this are already wincing at the thought of Sec comms being compromised from the very start by some well-meaning effort like this - but if the person with Sec comms is mindshielded, then the issue is moot, no? I'd trace the efforts which led to the Brig Physician and this proposed Brig Technician as trying to overcome the antagonist issue in this same way, and although I agree that the proposed Brig Technician role doesn't have enough to do currently, I do appreciate the effort at making a Sec/Engineering hybrid rather than the usual in-game response of "say ; ENGIS TO BRIG PLEASE and pray that someone actually responds." Certainly, as CE I've blown off Sec asking for help with something in order to deal with some other issue, because I've no particular attachment to dealing with their issues, and no reward for prioritizing helping them. In that sense, I would argue that the Brig Physician is largely a positive force for inter-departmental cooperation, rather than being a "departmental island," as you put it. They have both Medical and Security comms, along with access to both departments, and remit to help patients in both areas. In practice, while Brig Physicians will set up surgery nearly every shift, I honestly can't even remember the last time I've seen one set up cryo or cloning (sometime this past January, perhaps?). Brig Physicians carry out surgery because the two ORs are usually overworked by the massive player population and all the injuries they accrue, but for other issues (making meds, cloning, getting viruses, etc.) Brig Physicians work through Medbay in an honestly-heartwarming example of inter-departmental cooperation. If you want to make them more inter-departmental, then I'd suggest making the BrigPhys a Medical role rather than a Security one, and placing them under command of the CMO rather than the HoS. While they'll still spend most of their time in the Brigbay due to simple circumstance, it'll provide the Brig Physician with more of a reason to be in the Medbay, and encourage them to participate more over there rather than just staying in Sec. You could do the same with the OP's proposed 'Brig Technician' role, too. Rename them to the 'High-Security Engineer' or something similar, and have them start in Engineering under the command of the Chief Engineer; their only Sec-specific gear would be Brig access and a Security encryption key. Rather than being just responsible for helping in the Brig, they'd be responsible for any restricted area that needs a pair of hands (or when there's no engieborgs, again); you could further encourage that by having them start with a basic trashbag and a box of lightbulbs to indicate their role's mundane remit. With a roundstart mindshield, they could be trusted have Sec comms without turning it into a massive RNG gamble of "will they roll antag and compromise Security comms from the get-go?" Without their own office to turn into a fortress, though, and still being otherwise treated as a regular Engineer, the role's mechanics would encourage them to act merely as an Engineer with the goal of helping out Security in particular. Tl;dr version: Departments can interact in bad ways (yelling over comms) as well as good ones. The focus should be on encouraging good interactions, rather than just any interactions whatsoever.

I thought voxxie cant love? Shame on you, Biki.

I can just about guarantee what will happen with the "Brig Technician"; invariably, he'd probably have basic engineering access, much like the brig physician has basic medbay access. On the whole, much like the brig physician, there's not going to be a whole lot of pressure or responsibility except when things go wrong in a major way (ie: sec gets bombed or something). This gives them an incredibly amount of free time to do whatever he wants. We already know what this leads to, with the Brig physician. The job was originally created to patch up beat up/hurt suspects/detained individuals, not security personnel. What the brig physician has become is security's private medical doctor, with setups like this considered something noble to aim for: I can easily see things developing the same way for this job. The pitch is that it's to help security patch up/fix up things that go wrong. It may very well be that, at first, but having access and tools (not to mention a huge one; legitimacy via antag immunity and mindshield) will see said individual helping out security via other means. My best guess? The "gold standard" for a brig technician will end up being raiding tech storage and building security their own personal R&D lab. It also has another nasty feedback loop in that it makes it even easier for the Brig physician to do the above because it provides an easier method for acquiring various medical circuits. Another issue is that it's also going to provide security with a dedicated, go-to, trustworthy hacker for breaking into just about anywhere. This is what I'm getting at with self-sufficiency. Small, seemingly innocent additions can have large impacts on the behavior that develops within a department. Brig physician is a key example of this.