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Yet another collab with @PhantasmicDream, I cannot thank them enough for bringing this image to life, and if you somehow haven't taken a look at her work please do so right now. From left to right: Heather, Heather, and Heather Vespa, Cecilia, and Tetra.

Wow! You and dream did such a good job! I'm astounded and impressed, you've both got such a neat style. I love these three.

Just a fun thing to maybe set up, so if any of the artist of Paradise wanted to collab together the could!! Maybe you have already collabed with someone and just don't know where to post it, we'll here's you're chance. It can be fun working with someone, but at the same time it can be hard, but in the end we can all just have fun. So everyone, get together and have fun!! To start it off here's something Machofish and I did together last year, Macho did the original sketch and I went over and coloured it.

Norwest’s post is mighty fine description on the issues of the security, and the suggestion there to tackle them seem very reasonable to me. I just love that idea to implement a junior role to sec. It would both answer the call of Medi’s original suggestion here and add to the sec gameplay, make it more fun, by adding there some variation. As of, the junior sec role as ”constable” would definitely not be just a pinata with different name - in contrast with cadets discussed earlier, as the constable role would have its own, meaningful share of the sec cake and the restriction to not to go after EoC-type threats like regular officers. I would, in certain, take shifts as departmental constable officer, for just having more time to interact with people, instead of running after the bad guys taser hot, which often has to be the case due the situation, even if the main reason I like the game and sec in specific is the interaction, paired with meaningful action. Then have an instructor to herd the red goons in general and the constables in specific, so that a) that kind of activity would actually happen and b) the new constables would have an overwatch that have time for their doings. HoS would have their time in making decisions and maintaining contact with their department, as it is (or should be) presently. As in the instructor thread, I support a tweak to sec’s organisation, to have some more designated jobs there, to make the good things happen more often.

I'm a longtime Seccie myself, and I'd have to agree with many of the earlier issues raised in this thread. More to the point, I'd argue that quite a few of them are closely connected: -The learning cliff: Security is an extremely difficult job to learn, requiring both robustness and knowledge of station SOP, server rules, and a thick enough skin to survive a storm of criticism. -Actual shitsec: While often just undeserved whining, much of that criticism is actually quite fair. I've seen prisoners left in cuffs for 15-20 minutes in Processing, utterly ridiculous criminal records placed (a 15-minute charge for just "resisting arrest," lol), and more undeserved harmbatoning than I can count at this point. -Poor oversight: Between the HoS, Warden, IAA, Magistrate, and Captain, there should be enough on-station personnel to correct bad behavior. I'd argue that much of the problem preventing that from happening is simply being overwhelmed: the HoS is desperately trying to keep a semblance of order, the Warden's watching over officers in the field, and every officer is desperately needed to fight the baddie of the week NOWNOWNOW. This leaves the IA agents and Magistrate with little to do, and when coupled with the high requirements for Magistrate and low job options for IAA, results in the positions usually being undermanned. This, of course, then worsens the problem of "bad apple" officers in the first place. -Staffing: All of the above, coupled with the reasonable likelihood of dying to valid-salad, makes Security a chronically understaffed force. Any measure to address Sec's issues must mention its horrible, horrible staffing problem, because everything else is secondary to it. No one's got time or energy to train newbies when they're constantly running after the next threat, and no one's got time to process prisoners properly when there's an officer down in Med-Sci Maint yada yada yada. And when there's no "low-speed" Security role, no one signs up for the job if they want a slower shift; it's either ASS TO THE GRASS BALLS TO THE WALL HARMBATON IN FREEFALL YEEHAW or it's playing Janitor instead. Note that this is a well-known real life phenomenon, often called a "staffing crunch:" with too few staff members on a job, pressure and requirements increase on the remaining ones, increasing their stress and causing them to quit (further worsening the staffing problem). Poor staffing is the heart of Security's woes; we can put patches over other issues, but none of them will stick unless we can ensure that there'll be more than just the Detective and Warden at roundstart. The term I've heard in RL law enforcement is "paradoxical policing," where inot only are there too few cops, the ones that remain are tired, burned out, and angry - and it shows. Conclusion: Recruitment&Retention is the key, everything else is secondary. I'd love to see a lot of the ideas in this thread implemented, from 'slings getting another rework to additional Code Red access, but ultimately the biggest problem with Sec is simply that there aren't enough of them around. Any suggestions for fixing Security's issues should focus primarily on getting more people to stay in the job. Issues and potential solutions: It's very, very difficult for even an experienced player to transition into playing Security. Others in this thread have already covered most of the reasons why, so I'm going to cover some of the issues inherent in resolving the problem and my proposals for addressing 'em: a) Hostile learning environment vs. protecting the "learner" role: Unsurprisingly, no one in red catches a break. I think there's simply no substitute for a "learner" Security role, a la the cadets that Kyet proposed earlier (personally, I'd go with "Constable" myself to avoid too much newbie stigma; I personally wouldn't mind playing a low-speed Sec role sometime). To separate cadets/Constables from the rest of Security's valid-salad, I'd suggest trying to draw a divide between them and the rest of Sec. Keeping other Sec roles more exclusive could be done with either a minimal karma-lock on Security roles (5 points to unlock "Security roles," a.k.a. the Brig Physician, Sec Officer, Warden, and HoS), or simply requiring a bunch of playtime (6+ hrs) in the "learner" role before being able to play as a Sec Officer. Combine this divide with limited equipment for cadets/Constables, restrictive instructions, and a limited degree of social protection. We can't entirely stop the low-speed Sec role from being a loot pinata, because they'll still need Brig/Holding Cell access and Security comms to do their job. However, limiting their equipment to less-effective tools like flashes and pepperspray a) forces them to actually use that gear, instead of relying solely on the holy harmbaton, b) limits their ability to get rekt by their own weapons used against them by greytiders, and c) makes them less attractive as a target. Similarly, the starting instructions (and hopefully over time, the basic standard and expectation) should tell cadets/Constables to remain in public areas and to not go patrolling off alone. There's no guarantee that they'll follow it, but it should keep at least some newbies on the straight and narrow. And finally, this divide between "always legit" Security targets and "try not to kill/humiliate" newbie role can be enforced through social interaction. Public shaming for antags, or even greytiders, who deliberately dunk on newbie Seccies can limit some bad behavior, especially if there's a clear divide between who's obvious valid-salad and who isn't. b) Lack of connection vs. a physical presence: One common problem with Sec roles is that there's no 'belonging' to the rest of the station. You've got antags to fight and greytiders to bash, and there's very little interaction between you and other departments. Even within Security itself, there's very little face-to-face time outside of hanging around in Processing at the same time, and the constant barrage of trouble on the radio means that there's very little of the team-building off-topic conversations which are so common in other departments. This worsens the issue of poor communication between Security and the rest of the station, increasing the divide and allowing for an easy bandwagoning of "shitcurity!" calls, whether deserved or undeserved, which make people that much less likely to play Sec again. I'd like to suggest departmental offices if feasible, the standard 3x3 (or 2x3 in a pinch) cubicles that come with basic ID access and departmental radio encryption. I'd suggest that cadets/Constables spawn at these offices right at roundstart, and serve as their public face of Security to different departments; I imagine this'd provide a more supportive environment for someone to learn the job, and would in turn provide that department with a tangible Security presence. Having a department to guard and a little Security checkpoint office to call their own would help make the role more than just a "learner" one. Security's currently responsible for the entire station at all times, which in practice means that you're running around pissing on brushfires here, there, and everywhere. Having a single department to guard and a small group to watch over would let someone play Security in a relaxed manner, only dipping their toes into the regular chaos when they felt like it. c) Lack of education vs. having a designated teacher: I've seen someone previously suggest a "Security Instructor" role, which was shot down on the basis of "experienced Seccies can teach newbies already." Without getting too confrontational, lemme put it like this: I've played an absurd amount of time on Paradise, let alone other SS13 servers, and in all that time I've seen a 'Sec training exercise' happen exactly once. On extended. That was it. Barring extended all day erryday, we need a framework of regular newbie education. Relying on charity, on someone experienced having the means, motive, and opportunity to take newbies under their wing during a busy shift, is not a viable solution. The poor staffing problem is the root cause of Security's issues, and lack of help for newcomers in the role is a significant contributor to the issue. Other players can certainly contribute, but we need someone whose role is focused primarily around education, to teach newbie Seccies everything from prisoner processing to shooting, and who won't bin all that teaching the moment a 'ling pops up in Sci Maint. I think the previous "Security Instructor" role addressed it handily, and I'd suggest a separate radio channel for "cadets/Constables" to give them space to ask dumb questions like "how do I use a flash anyway?" The obvious response to the concept of a separate radio channel would be "just use mhelp," but as an admin with access to the mentor channel, I can definitively say that they don't. People often just won't ask for help without some prompting ("hey, I saw that scuffle over in Processing, lemme show you how to take cuffs off a prisoner safely"), and other people just won't offer it without a little push. The "Sec Instructor" role is meant to provide that push, because when you log in to that job, you know that you'll need to step up to the plate to help teach newbies. This doesn't stop other Sec players from helping instruct newbies; matter of fact, I'd argue it would make them more likely to do so. It's the basic "bandwagoning" effect in action, where one person setting an example encourages others to join in. The goal here should be to prompt people towards better behavior, to give them that initial push, and to let them carry it the rest of the way. Tl;dr version: I could go on for ages about stuff I'd like to see implemented: additional minor antags like smugglers or drug dealers to add some early-round shenanigans, renovating IA so that people actually want to play the role, improving antag gameplay so that they have greater freedom to act and are rewarded for interesting or exciting acts of villainy, etc. However, none of those things deal with the basic issue of Security staffing, and there's no point in trying to add new antagonists or tweaking high-level gameplay if we don't address the more basic, fundamental problem of "people just don't play Sec." I've seen a lot of proposals to reform Security in the past, and I've thought a lot of them had merit myself. They were almost universally shot down, primarily by admins and coders; in my *ahem* years playing on Paradise, I haven't seen Security itself change. I have seen admin policy towards antagonists and on-station troublemakers get more restrictive, however, and much of that is due simply to Sec's inability to handle anything significant. As @Ping mentioned on the first page, there's an expectation of peace and order on-station, which Security simply isn't able to fulfill. The current system just isn't working, and our piecemeal efforts to address it aren't fixing the fundamental problem. Unless we make a 180 on the idea of station chaos tomorrow, we'll need a larger Security force to maintain order. No matter whether we adopt a "newbie Seccie" role or not, we need to change things up, because the current system isn't functioning reliably. I've seen frequent suggestions made on the forums about antags being too restrictive* and Security being constantly understaffed; once again, everything comes back to Security staffing. Threads like this or this are symptomatic of the larger problem we have downstream of Security's ineffectiveness, not to mention the perfectly valid complaints about Sec misbehavior and general shitcurity-ing. I'd like to think that my proposals above would address a good deal of the "learning cliff" problem, and I'm open to suggestions and trying something entirely different. Ultimately, though, I really don't want us to put our collective heads in the sand, and pretend that the problem can be resolved with a few tweaks - or that it can't be addressed at all. This is a major issue, and adequately addressing it will require a major rework. *Honestly, even as an admin myself, I've disabled most antag roles rather than play them due to being too restrictive. Having to look over my shoulder before doing anything is way too much of a hassle.

Some may recognize this one, due to me currently using it as my discord profile. Going to little retro in here... because why not? Originally it was going to be a beautiful sunset at a beach, but my hand slipped. Got a new drawing program sometime last month, and this was what I decided to draw in it and then after that I got a iPad Pro and another drawing program, so here's some thing's I've drawn using that

I remember the round of The Voice In Your Head case, was a sec back then. Great deciption of the outcome. And Robert Pond, well, is Robert Pond. Didn’t need to see the hidden comment to notice that’s him, it’s just as if I saw him in the station. Sketches are my personal favourite. You do them great and I once had a habit to play arond with them, but that was years ago and I’ve lost the ability, yet not the favor on them. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Hello everyone. I've had a blast playing the past week and thought I'd drop by and introduce myself. The community have been awesome and helpful so far. I used to play SS13 a few years back and stumbled upon it again last week, and now I'm hooked. I thought about aiming towards the Heavy RP servers at first, but I must say that the faster and a bit more actionpacked rounds that this server runs are so much more fun. The description "The perfect mix between action and RP" is really spot on. Still figuring out some of the mechanics, but I've read up on almost the entire wiki, rules, and lore. Got any tips? I'm currently playing a character named Johnny Pain and trying to flesh him out. I've used the same character and just switched occupations so far.. I assume that's alright, or should I make a bunch of other characters with more solid backgrounds connected to their area of expertise? Then again I think I'll stick with Johnny for a while to make it easier to get to know people. I'm from Sweden btw. See you people in game! :DD

I like Reagan. They're a good CMO.

I realize that inspiration comes and goes for me: I'll have months where I do nothing but crank out sketches in rapid succession, then dry spells where I can't even put a pencil to paper without being immediately bored. Not sure how long this particular wave of inspiration is going to last, but might as well make the most of it. From a wizard round: The wizard had a belt of soulstones and was turning crew into Wights everywhere. Sadly, the chaplain--the one player role that's basically dedicated to taking down constructs--was amongst the first victims of the wizard's soul shards, so Cecilia ended up salvaging the chaplain's chainsword and holding back the wights with Sec until the crew could corner the wizard properly and kill him. While I'm glad that I managed to get a hold of the chaplain's holy weapon at such a convenient moment, I still feel sorry for the chaplain: By all rights, it should've been him in this image, not Cecilia. Also large kudos to Nina Kurilyochov the brigphys for managing to apply Styptic Powder patches in the middle of a crazy melee fight with perfect timing: Cecilia very likely would have been knocked into crit multiple times over otherwise. For every badass moment I've had as Cecilia, there have been... not-so-badass moments. For instance, a traitor named "Abducty the Meth Clown" got a special objective to get a picture of Cecilia in a ridiculous costume and fax it to the Syndicate. He greentexted. Spectacularly. I'd like to say Cecilia took it fairly well, everything considered. While this wasn't exactly her finest moment, I've come to see these moments as a sort of 'memento mori': Regular reminders that popularity does not equal robustness. With that in mind, I felt it was a good idea to take a break from sec and get some experience in other departments. Empathy is a huge part of doing well in sec, and the best way to develop that empathy is of course to understand what it feels like to play outside of sec: Meet Kirsten. Playing as her taught me that while playing in security is stressful, playing outside of security can be honestly worse for different reasons. "I'm really sorry, but I'm gonna need you to give that back before you blow us all up." First round as Kirsten went remarkably well: I was planning on trying out a few different character concepts and names before settling on a new staticname, but Kirsten's first round in science was a War Ops round. With 15 minutes of prep in Science's chemistry lab, 2 grenades, and 6 units of azide, Kirsten did more damage to the nukeops than Cecilia's ever managed during a single round as HoS. Goonchem is some terrifying shit. Anyway, enough flexing. When throwing her first grenade, Kirsten took an LMG round in the leg and got a serious limp, so I thought she'd be better off giving her second grenade away to a security officer in the hopes he'd make good use of it. Immediate regret. Still, everything turned out alright in the end. Next couple of rounds, less so. Kirsten being ignored by her coworkers in science. I've often heard it remarked that the Sec department 'community' tends to show a little more integrity than the other departments. Science's community is definitely a mixed bag. If you play a 'staticname' character, I really do recommend trying a brand new character for a round or two if you haven't done it in a while, just to see how everyone's behavior changes the moment you're someone they don't recognize. You'll find a few good eggs who still talk to you if you're lucky, but overall it makes me appreciate all the remarks from new players about how this community is hard to warm up to. Tried a bit of Gateway Exploration, and salvaged some Hybrid Turret Guns that I didn't want to leave lying around. Now, being the helpful law-abiding nonantag I was, I thought that Security might appreciate getting some new toys in the armory, and brought the salvaged Hybrid Turret Guns up to the brig. What follows is a rant, so I've put it under a spoiler: Steve. From CentComm.

As I understand it, the general issue we're talking about here is "The Security department doesn't have enough competent regular players; how do we change this?" I can't guarantee I have a great answer, but as someone who plays HoS on a regular basis and, as a player occasionally described as "competent" by members of the community, I'll offer my two cents. I'm going to start by saying something obvious: Playing in the Security Department is very tense and nerve-wracking by its very nature. Playing as Warden or Security Officer in the early round is tense and yet also very boring, as anyone in those roles essentially needs to wait for the antags to make their first move before the action can really start. Often times I'll see the security department start with 5-6 officers, only for 3-4 of those officers to jump into cryostorage before the first 30 minutes of the round have passed. This is why I love playing HoS but cannot stand playing as a regular officer and can barely stomach warden: the HoS almost always has something to keep them busy from the start of the round to the end, but regular officers are often stuck wandering around aimlessly until they get that call of "H-H-HA-A-LP M-M-A-A-IN-T-T-T!", or they run face-first into an antag. Since antags are packed to the gills with easy methods of killing someone without warning, the average sec officer will not survive the latter scenario. This isn't a situation that necessarily can be changed, nor am I certain that it even should be changed. But it's worth keeping in mind that the feeling of vulnerability and nervousness tends to make playing regular security a pain in the ass on its own. On top of that, nobody really expects much of you as a regular sec officer: You have access to basically nothing other than a few doors in the brig, your body armor is useful for essentially jack shit since EVA boots, area-of-effect stuns and stun resistance decide the outcome of more battles than a few points of reduced brute damage ever did, and default security officer uniforms are honestly pretty ugly to look at. These are conditions that, while unfortunate, can't really be changed without asking coders to invest exorbitant amounts of free time into designing new systems from scratch, so it's less stressful in the long run to just accept them as things that cannot be changed. I cannot speak to what other "competent sec regulars" think about the above conditions, but I personally get around it by playing as HoS. That said, there's still quite a few circumstances and situations that appear repeatedly, and whittle down my enthusiasm to continue playing and often contribute to my decisions to go on hiatus from SS13. I'll outline a few below, and in each case, I've put some thought into why they generally irritate me and how I think small adjustments could make those situations easier to handle: Situation 1: Unstoppable Space Assholes The first situation I'll describe is when security has simply become outclassed by one or more antags. Either sec has lost too many officers in a single really bad engagement, or an antag has a particularly brutal gimmick that they used to systematically kill off security officers (such as a gimmick combining spacelube with holo atmos barriers and several extremely well-placed holes in maint leading into the deadly vacuum of space). The armory is empty, pod pilot's dead. Bonus points if the antag(s) in question continuously taunt security over the security radio channel using bowman headsets looted from dead security officers, additional bonus points if the antag(s) have killed the pod pilot and are camped out in EVA knowing that security cannot follow them effectively due to all EVA suits being taken. Extra-Bonus Bonus Bonus points if the antag(s) set up a security records console offstation and uses their stolen security IDs to constantly set everyone on the station to arrest with cheeky messages left in their notes. There's a specific player or two I could name who absolutely love to pull this every time they're selected for an infiltration antag role, but it's by no means exclusive to a few individuals. This is annoying when it's just one player doing it, but sometimes there'll be a round where it's two or three extremely competent changelings working together or two or three vamps who've reached fullpower. I have yet to see a security player get trapped in this sort of a situation without getting extremely tilted over it. I have a suggestion on how these situations could be made more bearable, but I'll leave it to the end. Situation 2: Mary Sue Edgelord Antagonists Shadowlings Go to youtube, crank "In the End" (or any other Linkin Park song that puts a little too much work into being "dark and edgy") at full volume, and you have a summary of your average Security experience during a Shadowling round. Except the average Linkin Park song only makes you suffer for about three to four minutes while the suffering of a Shadowling round can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half depending on how quickly the Shadowlings gather up thralls. More than anything else, Shadowling rounds in specific burn me out and turn me away from Paradise more than anything I've experienced in this game. (Yes, that includes rounds where I've been transform stung, cluwned, laughter demon'd, ganked by vindictive AIs moments away from the shuttle, and mindswapped by wizards who devote the rest of the round to doing the most embarrassing shit imagineable while mindswapped into my character's body). I list this as reason #2 as Shadowlings are considerably rarer than hyper-competent antagonists, but even one Shadowling round is more than any security player needs to put up with. I have had the intense misfortune of playing as HoS during multiple Shadowling rounds and not once have I ever had fun, even the few times where the Shadowlings didn't ascend and kill everyone, and not once have I ever seen a Shadowling round through to the end and seen, "OOC: Man, that shadowling round was so fun!". Nobody has ever said that. It's an antag type that, despite receiving several adjustments, was built upon horrendously and fundamentally flawed design principles. You want an example of these design principles? When Shadowlings were first added, they could use their area-of-effect stuns on people through walls with no direct line-of-sight (they still can if I'm not mistaken), Shadowling enthrallment not only skipped over mindshields completely, but was also impossible to detect and impossible to reverse, Shadowlings could use guns with no restrictions, stun and enthrall crew members without even hatching first, and even shadowling thralls used to have a single target stun+mute ability of their own that lasted several times longer than the average stun weapon or slip--this particular thrall stun worked even when the thralls were blindfolded and cuffed. Shadowlings were ported from another codebase, so our coders are not responsible for their initial state. However, while the coders have put an immense amount of work into making Shadowlings something that isn't, well, fucking bullshit, my experience of reading dchat and OOC after Shadowling rounds leads me to conclude that the only players who enjoy themselves during a Shadowling round are the Shadowlings themselves, and nobody else. My personal aversion to Shadowlings is enough that the simple possibility of being duped into playing sec during a Shadowling round often has me choosing to observe instead of play, or just to close BYOND altogether and find something off my Steam library rather than inflict a Shadowlings round on myself. Situation 3: Surprise Adminbus I initially really didn't want to make this its own entry for a few different reasons, but I still have faith that Paradise's admins prefer to hear feedback and criticism rather than let it fester silently until their players leave without a word, so I'll out and say it: Admin events often paint a giant crosshair on the security department that nobody in security is ready for, and having the department wiped out by admin-spawned or admin-controlled antags is not something that feels fun, ever. This has happened enough times in recent memory (as in, three times in one month) that I feel the need to point it out. This includes more than one situation where the admins have admitted to spawning in as Terror Spiders and giving themselves free breaks such as spawning in swarms of NPC Terrorspiders and forcing eggs to hatch instantly and mature into full-grown terrors without any delay, another round where a Syndicate Infiltration Team was spawned with the intention of assaulting the Brig in particular (and a Terrorspider batch spawned directly after the Syndicate Infiltration Team withdrew, and no ERT was called because fuck me for liking security I guess), and a round where a 'pirate raid' event basically degenerated into "five syndicate agents and five nukeops in pirate costumes are given a green light to murderbone all of sec without warning." I don't think tallying up grudges against individuals on the staff team is really worth the energy, and I don't want to burn bridges here, so I'll try to put this as directly as possible: I want to continue playing and enjoying Security. When Admin Events take that enjoyment away, I lose the desire to continue playing security. Situation 4: Greytide? To be honest, I don't actually find that I have a huge problem with greytide on the server at present. On an average shift, truly dedicated 'greytiders' never number more than 1-3 at most, and they're usually not coordinated with eachother, nor do they inflict undue harm. The admins, I find, are very active and effective when it comes to curbing more extreme and harmful Greytiders, while I perceive minor acts of Greytide as a sort of departmental inoculation, in which new officers learn how to avoid getting sucker-punched, blindsided and humiliated in safe non-catastrophic manner, without disastrous consequences for the rest of security. For instance, if an officer repeatedly refuses to listen to their HoS and fellow officers telling them that, "Dude, wandering around with a taser in one hand and your active stunbaton in your other hand on code green is a bad idea" then by all means that officer deserves to get robusted and dumpstered like the securitrash they are: Having a tolerated margin of greytide just means that when this robusting and dumpstering inevitably happens, the greytider will usually turn in their stolen gear afterwards or limit the amount of chaos that comes from testing security's weakest link. If not for Greytide, then that same officer would be getting dragged off and straight out killed by an antag without anyone in sec knowing, granting that antag free stun weapons, a sec headset and a sec ID which generally paves the way for Unstoppable Space Assholes to occur, as described above. For instance, I once had a warden who silently wandered off into maints on their own and tried to act like a security officer, silent and taser in-hand. A changeling promptly captured the warden, mindswapped into him, and nobody in sec knew until the Warden-changeling had already killed the detective and HoS, and released other lings from custody. Now if a casual greytider had intercepted the warden and given him a well-deserved asskicking before his fateful run-in with the changeling in maint, things probably wouldn't have descended into utter shit for the rest of security. It is the job of HoS to identify and deal with incompetence in sec: If I can't rely on an officer to save themselves from a literally unarmed civilian using nothing but disarm intent, that same officer is going to be nothing but a liability and a dead weight in a crisis situation where, for example, a traitor-changeling with sleeping carp, an armblade, and several beakers of meth decides they're going to give the brig a fresh coat of red paint. That situation is cancerous enough to deal with when there's a competent security team; you don't need a useless assclown Officer tasering you in the back of the head because they hadn't been tested and washed out by the greytide. Situation 5: Radio Abuse? Much like I don't have a huge problem with greytiders, I've never really had a significant issue with people screaming about shitcurity over the radio. Don't get me wrong: it can get risky if you try to simply ignore it without justifying yourself. Honestly? If someone's having trouble because they're getting yelled at by the crew the advice I give them is "suck it up, buttercup." Now, if someone is cussing you out on the comms, the worst thing you can do is lose your head over it. Nothing screams "I AM COMPLETELY IN THE WRONG AND FAIL TO JUSTIFY MYSELF" like responding to verbal criticism with physical force. It's just a pattern of human nature: How many oppressive regimes accidentally sparked violent rebellions because they tried to suppress non-violent protests using violence? If someone is accusing you of monstrous behaviour, the least useful thing you can do in that situation is gratify those accusations by acting like the monster they're accusing you of being. So, as arresting someone for screaming "shitsec" is off the table, the best thing is really to challenge and defeat them in their own arena: public debate. If someone accuses you of being shitsec, ask them to explain why with specific evidence. If they explain why and their reasons are valid then, well, unfortunately that's kind of your fault or the fault of someone in your department that you need to address. If they're just screaming shitsec because they're incompetent self-centred morons or they just want to stir shit up, then you calmly and systematically point out all the gaps and contradictions in their logic before dismissively telling them to stop embarrassing themselves. There may be a temptation to descend into ad hoc attacks or fabrications, but make sure you stick as close to objective fact as possible, and demand as much from whoever's trying to insult you. If you make your point and they don't respond for a few minutes, don't press the matter or you'll just look conceited; they'll probably resume their verbal abuse in a few minutes once they think you're distracted, but the important thing is to take them down a few pegs in the arena of public debate, which seriously hampers their ability to gather much support. If it's just a case that greytiders are causing shit and screaming verbal abuse at you and hurting your feelings because you stopped them from doing annoying stuff, just ignore them and process them in accordance to law. Do give them a chance to explain themselves. Speak calmly and politely, ask them for their side of the story. If they respond in kind or with any sort of eloquence or RP at all, then process them properly and maybe give them a few minutes off if they calm down and have any sort of plausible explanation for their behavior. If they give you an utterly shitty zero-RP response like "No U" or "FUCK YOUR MOM SHITCURITY CUNTS FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!" etc. then here's what you do: Laborcamp. Actually, laborcamp has a very unique quirk to it that you should keep secret until it gets patched, but I'll get to that in a moment. Making Security More Attractive So, enough of the kvetching about what situations make players feel punished for being security. What do I think could help Security players feel better about playing and less likely to say 'fuck it' and play another role or another server? Well I'm glad I asked me, because I've got a few suggestions. Laborcamp So, back to 'laborcamp'. You know how I said it had an unusual quirk to it? Well, here's the deal: It's broken. The Laborcamp is intended to be a system in which prisoners with temporary sentences are forced to do mining, meaning that the only way they can return to the station is if they contribute quantifiable repayment to the station in the form of mining materials. Most greytiders, when sent to the mining camp, will die. This is because greytiders have a deadly allergy to being anything other than useless pieces of shit and the sheer idea of being forced to do something that could be described as 'helpful' in order to go back to being a useless fuck is enough to make them alt+f4. Here's the rub, though: The laborcamp is literally broken. As in even if you give a prisoner a reasonable point quota, the laborcamp's shuttle airlocks are not set up properly to allow prisoners to return to the station even if they actually mine and gather minerals. It's basically a secret death sentence you can give to unrepentant greytiders, and I'll confess that if a greytider fails hard enough at RP'ing and has a clearly rule-violating name then I might end up sending them out there despite knowing full well that the laborcamp is in fact bugged and is literally impossible to complete a mining quota there in its current state without an officer actually going up to the labourcamp to tally the mineral stacks by-hand. I figure that the fact the laborcamp does not work properly is on the coder team and the admins, not me as a player, and I'll also send out an ahelp asking for permission to use the laborcamp for temporary sentences before sending anyone out there. So, that's the first item on my wishlist: Make the laborcamp actually work properly. It's a great way to separate the truly malevolent greytiders from players who just went a little too far but are willing to calm down and mine some materials for science in order to return to the round. That basically solves the more severe greytide problems right there. Note that Space Law NEEDS to be updated with a section that specifically states that laborcamp can be used for temporary sentences. Last time I tried to use the laborcamp to dispose of greytiders I got in an extremely pointless and frustrating argument with the HOP who insisted that the laborcamp could not be used for temporary sentences since spacelaw does not explicitly say so (despite the fact that prisoner IDs are supposed to have mineral quotas set for temporary labor sentences and why the fuck would the laborcamp be called the laborcamp if there is literally no incentive for the prisoners to do labor out there at all?) Reduced Powergaming Stigma in Crisis Situations So a few people have suggested giving security more special items and buffs to entice people to play: I strongly disagree. Not only are basically no coders willing to go through all that, but offering sec cool new guns, gadgets or mechanical bonuses is likely to attract exactly the wrong sort of players--namely, the ones running around with both their taser and baton in-hand on code green, ignoring radios, and wearing the default HoS armor. (As an aside, I'd love if donuts actually healed security like they used to before goonchem, but I know even that's asking for too much). Generally, security already can get access to some incredibly potent gear by the end of a productive shift: Genetics powers, RnD guns and implants, and of course robotics usually has at least 1 durand if mining wasn't spawncamped by a colossus or ashdrake. It's my opinion that durands ought to be a bit of a contentious topic, seeing as it's basically impossible for the average antag to actually take down a durand without breaking server rules regarding excessive destruction, let alone rounds where robotics just decides to crank out 5 durands in a row and give them all to sec because they've got nothing better to do (I'd actually be fine with durands being nerfed slightly or at least having a higher resource cost to prevent this sort of mass-production from ruining an antag's round, but that's for another thread). I'd prefer if security had to rely on the competency, cooperation and goodwill of other departments to obtain strong late-game gear, as it gives security a much greater incentive to protect those departments from danger, stay on good terms with the departments, and keep them operational. The main issue here is that there is a rather strong stigma discouraging security from 'powergaming' behaviour that means sec rarely gets their hands on this sort of lategame gear: genetics powers like x-ray, utilities like bags of holding, accelerator lasercannons, anti-stun tooth pills don't see very frequent use amongst security, even when the antags have availed themselves of many of these sorts of upgrades alongside their starting antag abilities and powers. Back all the way to "annoying situation 1", it'd be considerably easier to deal with a gang of fullpowered vamps or rampant changelings if security had more leeway to escalate by getting antistun dental implants or collaborate with the other departments to cook up a few nasty surprises of their own to respond to the powered antags with. TL;DR: People don't play in security because officers dumb; antags smart. Shadowlings dumber than sec most times but shadowlings win anyways because designed by edgelord coder who never wanted his precious creation to lose even when played by imbeciles. Greytide annoying but greytide can be dealt with using laborcamp. To fight smart antags officers should be allowed to escalate and meme it up just as hard as the antags with goonchem meth memes and genetics fuckery if things get far enough out of hand.

@Spartan and I are in a bit of a disagreement?

I'm no artist, and this feels super selfish to ask, but I'd love to see some renditions of firebug, especially since I'm kinda proud of how the rework turned out. For reference:

Here's another thing with Macho~

Hadn't seen that before, damn good!