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My name is Benjamin. I love pixel art, role playing, and being a huge nerd. That being said I was happy to find SS13 a few years ago. It had everything I listed and even more. A somewhat complex system to learn for all departments, a mostly friendly community, forms full of stories and guides to learn from, and most importantly it was a great escape for the real world for me. I found the game a year or so and I've dumped a laughable time into it. Over 2000 hours in total and 1800 of them being on Paradise alone. I've lived, I've loved, I've cried, and I've had my fair share of fun stories to share. Both embarrassing and impressive. I can still recall my first round ever playing. I was a janitor named James weasley. I join just after the round started and did my best to fit in. As I said it was my first round so I was still learning the controls and trying to find out how the heck the hands worked. I cleaned the halls and chatted with a few people. I wish I could remember her name so I could thank her since she was why I didn't quit the game. I told her I was having a hard time with the new job and she just told me to keep trying and that everyone "was a janitor at some point" To be honest it may seem like nothing but coming from toxic games on PC it was both extremely kind and encouraging. It shows how much a simple act of kindness can do. I played for a few more round and changed my name to Benjamin Betterwater and later Jessica Betterwater. I loved the fact that actions and conversations that happened in past round would be cannon and it encouraged me to act like a person. I kinda take pride in all the history Jessica Betterwater, now known as Jessica Connor, Pretzel, and all other of my snowflakes have. The stories I can call that no one will ever experience in the same way I did. How Jessica fought a rage cage and beat down any and all challengers. How a skeleton came out of the shadows to fight me for my soul in the ring. How I won and got a neat crown for my efforts. How she talked down a xeno queen and convincing her I was also a queen since we could both have children. How She cut down half of the station with a chainsaw just to be brought back for round two by another traitor. and with all the storied I gained I also gained friends to go with them. Logan Connor, Beer, Moi, Amy Page, Winter, Boris, "Boris's Sister", and many more have been permanently engraved into my mind. Each names bringing both a smile to my face and tears to my eyes. The plan to kill the Chaplin with a fake wedding turning into true love to only turn into the slow and painful realization that the love was born out of adrenaline and poor dissension making. All taking over a real life year to slowly fall apart with more stories then I could ever tell. How a brand new IPC walks into the bar to ask the bartender that a doughnut box was and leaving after making a new life long friend and thinking that pianos hurt organic livers. Then needing to break both SoP and Space Law as an IAA to keep him and his family safe. Telling her father figure she didn't want to speak to him when she was normally overwhelmed with joy to see any of her friends. How her sister and brother where forced to watch a demon talk to her and freak out when she talked back. The demon only asking her to draw a flower and being super nice to her as they freaked out. How this demon became a friend she talked to even when she knew he wasn't around. A voice in her head telling her to stay safe and tell her friend he said hi. I can honestly say the Forgotten One will be something that I think of for years to come. Beer in someone both Pretzel and I looked up to. Both a father figure and a mentor. I showed my love for his character and his kindness by making him a bunch of lame art. Something I loved doing on the forms. I would actually post something then constantly check my phone to see what people would think of it. It may sound stupid but people giving me the little hearts and the dancing rainbow guy used to kinda make my day. I'd share screenshots and my ideas for the game and I loved it when people told me they liked it or would even go on to improve my idea with me. It both make me feel like a leader and a possessive addition to the community. Overall Space Station has been a wonderful and life changing experience that anyone and everyone can contribute and learn from. I've been gone for a few long months and I'd love to come home, grab a plate, and stick my fork into our little slice of Paradise.

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I actually don't mind this suggestion at all. Increasing the time required to play security, even if just a bit, would only benefit the server, if you ask me. A single, experienced security player is generally far more competent in dealing with most situations than three new security players, so having the entire sec team be comprised of people who actually know how to play the game, and know how rounds run, would generally reduce the level of abuse across the board, and quell the shittyness of shitcurity a bit. Also yeah, having a junior security role, or something similar to it would help players with less time start to learn the department, without having the responsibilities or equipment of actual security officers. Maybe this role could be restricted to helping out in the brig most of the time, since the warden could definitely use some help there on more hectic rounds.

The weapons are not actually for combat purposes but for RP purposes. Having multiple reskins of the same weapons is made so you can choose the skin that sticks better with your religion.

I like the first suggestion, but not because that way people will win more karma or the system will get fixed or anything like that. Is just because sometimes I really liked two characters and I can only give karma to one which makes the little baby jesus and me sad.

Shutting down second suggestion immediately - karma will never be farmable. At least until heads change their mind. It was suggested and discussed many times. First... hm... I dunno

I totally support this one. People say it's unbalanced, but IPCs are one of the squishiest races on the server, and can get damaged very easily, so having a way to repair some very light damage to themselves wouldn't be too much to ask for, especially since everyone else starts with autoinjectors, which are plenty useful at doing the same thing, more or less. With how little fuel an emergency welder has, and only having a few wires in the wire stack, it'd only really be useful in repairing them enough to get to robotics, if they get heavily damaged. Plus, every other race aside from them has the ability to regenerate blood passively, so having them start with a bit of oil wouldn't hurt anyone.

I guess I never made one of these. I've been here a little.. I actually started playing SS13 3 years ago but the controls made me give up the game. I tried it again a year later and I hated combat controls. I tried it again a few months ago after being introduced to Paradise and it turns out hey this is pretty neat. So I learned everything about SS13 basically with I first started Paradise this year. I play the following in order of most (IN)FAMOUS: Vin Croi: the female snarky serious vulp who has a major in psychology and a backstreet major in.. surgery? X.V.M.: the sad little security IPC robot that wants to be respected but everyone just rubs her head instead Dayana: just a character I rarely play who is mostly an innocent slime character who never does anything wrong or evil and just wants to do good for the station and help everyone. yeah sure. I also have art for my characters but I am in bed and I can't sleep please send help I have a Inorganic Chem lab in 10 hours oh god oh fuck

unfortunately the most fun paperwork ive seen are against the rules to share

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.