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As far as ensuring a certain level of competence and understanding of not only the game itself but space law, I think time does a generally good job at managing that. I also think that Kyet's right that the culture around security is terrible and generally you can see that as a thing across many severs made worse by a lot of popular players propagating it. So it's not that just OUR server has a toxic attitude towards sec but MOST servers have a toxic attitude towards security. A lot of this has to be mended more or less by the Security team presenting itself in a better light to begin with. Frequently getting laws wrong, frequently harming people, frequently keeping people in processing for far too long with inadequate evidence. Cracking down and punishing actual shitcurity to at least a minor extent can help with this matter with the intent of the punishments being "corrective action" rather then trying to make them want to quit all together. On the flip side, giving security more freedoms to actually handle said toxic people would likely go over better as a community thing then having admin intervention for it. It's already in General SOP that creating a hostile work environment can get you demoted. Either way there needs to be a written, well understood, and easy bar to measure what is considered acceptable verses unacceptable when it comes to calling out security as it would be wrong to silence players all together when security is legitimately acting up.

Another part of this, is its just not fun to play security. A lot of the gameplay is forced and repetitive. As a small example The station will always end up on red, and you will always need to convince the warden to hand out weapons that you can't be trusted with on green, because security are the mall cops. The appearance of being mall cops opens security to random acts of greytide (I am guilty of this). Random acts of greytide disarm spam leads to many security players, just being on the edge of calling it quits. Part of the reason for this appearance of being mall cops, is that most of our players are based in the United States. In the US, all police, even volunteer ones, are armed. While mall cops are not, corporate security is often armed outright, this is especially true at things like chemical plants, or research labs. The harder it is for the police to get somewhere quickly, and the more expensive/dangerous the thing in question is, the more likely security will be armed. The private security guard who watches the self checkout machines at my local supermarket is armed. For the country most of our players live in, if you see unarmed security, their job is to call the police if they see something and not get involved themselves. (Source: I worked my way through college in Florida as a security guard.) Security in SS13 are mall cops, they are therefore treated like mall cops, and it should not be surprising if they have the same turnover (burnout) as mall cops.

Security being bad at their job, and players hating security, are both symptoms of the same problem: security has a very high player burnout rate. The burnout rate of sec means it is typically staffed by less experienced players, relative to other less stressful jobs. Fixing this requires efforts on both fronts - cracking down on players being shitty to security for no reason, AND helping sec get better at their jobs, faster. The former would require us doing things like bwoinking people who self-antag, harass security as non-antags, or just create a toxic atmosphere for security. The latter will require us to make structural changes that help sec be better at their jobs, such as having a 10m timer that's actually tracked in prisoner processing to prevent people being accidentally left in there too long.

we must have the moffs (from /tg/). boons: can move perfectly in no gravity, gains 2x nutrition from fruits/flowers/recipes that include these, BEING A MOFF maluses: being set on fire for more than 3 seconds ruins wings, 3x damage from fly swatters this post was made by the moff gang

See? I KNEW IT! I TOLD ALL OF YOU! The skrell boi is evilz! Get the fookin disk-

Personally I am all for increased playtime requirements, and some form of basic access to other departments, especially for medbay and engineering. Kyet also made a very valid point about cracking down on people being shitty to security for no reason. That is also one of the biggest grievances security players have, I think. I myself find that when you have people who actually roleplay and treat security properly, I can play decently with them in return, it goes both ways., It's not always the security player(s) that behave shitty. I am all for harsher crackdowns and punishments for self-antagging and for being toxic. I think that is one of the biggest problems, not so much the experience of officers. After all, even IF you increase the playtime requirements, STILL someoen who will play officer for a first time will have to get used to it, even if you have experience in other roles.

What do you think NT Rep stands for? NT repsected... that's how you spell it right

Honestly I wouldn't mind bumping up the security officer playtime compared to the other jobs just because it's such an abusable role, especially for greytide/power-tripping new players. If you don't have at least a basic grasp of robustness, space law, and hell even the station dynamic, then you're going to have a bad time. Hell, I don't see this being an unpopular opinion at all, it's just common sense. Now for an opinion that may very well be unpopular! I'd say this is less of a pickle than it seems. Station incompetence is a fundamental part of as to why this game is still a game. It's a disaster simulator. Yes, choosing a department and being able to master it (such as learning how to be an extremely robust Doctor or robust Engineer) is immensely satisfying for a lot of people, and there are many people that come in time and time again that learn, grow, and become valuable assets. But when there are 100+ moving, individual players, all with different ideas roles and routines, it's easy for things to fall apart and not work smoothly. You can play scientist and not be able to do anything cause the entire mining team died on Lavaland. You could be a doctor and be overwhelmed by patients and have zero chemists. It's part of the game. If everything ran smoothly every single shift there wouldn't be a point, cause when it does run smoothly it's boring (play medical with a fully competent medical staff and no antags, you'll find yourself tempted to cryo from boredom) My problem is that people sometimes get used to the status quo of a perfectly running station. You get killed by bullshit (which is normal), get mad at it, and then get even madder because a newbie doctor fails to revive you or an newbie engineer failed to cover a breach. Everyones gotten mad at this game for it's bullshit, including me, including every admin, including every veteran player that's been on the station for a year. As counter intuitive as this might sound: stop it. Let the doctor fail to revive you one time without bitching at him. Let the engineer fuck up and shock himself. Let mining die (you can't help it). Every mistake pushes people to get better. But it's important to remember that with every outburst and every yell of "worst medbay ever" may absolutely crush some poor clueless kids motivation and prevent them from reaching their full potential. Now then, Security. The biggest exception. Security (or shitcurity) isn't just hard because of the power and responsibility; doctors and engineers also have power, except in different fields. It's because it's so confrontational. When you fuck up people will without fail call you shitcurity. When you let them go they will continue calling you shitcurity. Even when you were 100% in the right and justified you will still be called shitcurity. It is without a doubt the most thankless, abused, and misunderstood job in this fucking game, and playing or maining it is honestly exhausting, emotionally draining, and sometimes straight up not fun. People walking into that job for the first time not knowing what kind of hell that job is will be absolutely crushed. Job timers are only the half of it. They should be upped for security, or a bigger and bolder warning should be put on the job so that people fully understand why not to play it. But honestly, if people truly want security to be better they're going to have to stop treating security like shit. Good security players have thick skins by default so stop intentionally trying to break them and make them feel bad. They won't lash out at you, they'll just give up on the job and leave. You're not making it worth it. Appreciate and respect them, and if you don't like what they're doing then go play the role yourself and set a good example to others instead. And also don't be afraid to have fun sometimes as a sec officer: roleplay, dick around in the bar, let them miss a couple obvious antags because the department is a mess, understand the difference between a power trip and a legitimate mistake. TL;DR: Game is fucked and chaotic, don't expect perfection from anyone. Edit: I uh, almost forgot to add my opinions on the main suggestion -Raise time for Security, other jobs are probably fine but Sec because yknow, abuse of power and also no one wants to play sec -The station fundamentally hates sec so much anyways that I don't feel like any more incentives would bring anyone back unless they were security buffs. Hey, the department changes made in the past 4 years (there's been like 2 reworks) might be enough for *myself* to start up the job again. Pardon the rant and don't be afraid to respond to me, I didn't proof read.

Some doodles!

Tit for tat. Ruin a player's round by grabbing early, get shit on and have the same happen to you.

@MrMagolor Grabbing the AI at the start of the round, like you did in your example, was pretty crappy imo, you blinded and imprisoned someone with the intent for them to remain that way for an entire round, and the price for that is that you have to then struggle to keep said AI contained. The later into the round you take the AI, the easier it will be to get away with should you succeed. Trying to just mute people and have them trapped like that all round, without even the dead to talk to, is unacceptable.

I always get to these late, so I'll keep it short and simple. Ziiro made a pr that made emp's heavily damage and stun IPC's, but not instant kill. This allowed for antags who were specifically targeting them to keep the lethality and get the easy kill, while also allowing IPC's that happened to be in a emp blast zone, and thus a unintended casualty, not be instantly killed. This would also let antags use emps in a larger radius with a more carefree attitude to disable sec weapons (their intended use mind you) without fear of killing unseeable bystander IPC's around the corner, or through a wall. It was a smart, logical change that would keep the best of both worlds. It was shot down. I'm confident that should that change ever make it in, it would be positive and a solid step in the right direction towards balancing them.

The game server has been moved from MIAMI to NEW YORK. This means 20-30ms lower pings for everyone in Europe. Enjoy. Only read below this point if you are a nerd. If you want to measure exactly how your ping has changed, try this: In windows, run cmd.exe. You can find it if you search in your start menu. Enter 'ping miami.nanotrasen.se'. See what average it gives. Enter 'ping newyork.nanotrasen.se'. See what average it gives. The difference between the first and second average is how your ping has changed. An example of doing this: C:\Windows\System32> ping miami.nanotrasen.se Pinging miami.nanotrasen.se [199.127.60.40] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 199.127.60.40: bytes=32 time=112ms TTL=116 Reply from 199.127.60.40: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=116 Reply from 199.127.60.40: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=116 Reply from 199.127.60.40: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=116 Ping statistics for 199.127.60.40: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 112ms, Maximum = 113ms, Average = 112ms C:\Windows\System32> ping 185.150.190.156 Pinging 185.150.190.156 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 185.150.190.156: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=118 Reply from 185.150.190.156: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=118 Reply from 185.150.190.156: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=118 Reply from 185.150.190.156: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=118 Ping statistics for 185.150.190.156: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 80ms, Maximum = 80ms, Average = 80ms 112 minus 80 = your ping has improved by an average of 32ms.