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I've brought this up before elsewhere as a means of balancing out raised requirements to play security (like more time - No I am not letting that go). The best way to approach giving them more access is if it's general access to departments / and only works on Red. That way, if it's an extended round or all the antags are handled, security isn't able to waltz about getting in the way of everything and everyone. Additionally, it also means that security has to consider the pros and cons of having a higher degree of access at higher threat levels.

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of poor-quality prayers. Want to be sure your prayer isn't one of them? Try following these tips. 1) Don't confuse prayers with ahelps, faxes, etc. Anything regarding rule violations or OOC problems belongs in an ahelp, not a prayer. Trial admins cannot see prayers, so putting your report of a rule violation in a prayer, rather than an ahelp, may prevent admins from helping you. Any question about game mechanics belongs in mentorhelp, not a prayer. Let the mentors help you. Do not decide your religion is 'The Syndicate' or 'Central Command' or similar, and act like praying to these 'gods' gives you a hotline to CC/Syndi/etc. It doesn't. CC/Syndi/etc are not mind-readers, and these types of prayers won't be heard. If your character has a religion, make it something at least vaguely sensible. Prayers should be messages intended for the gods - and nothing/nobody else. 2) In general, don't pray for obvious material aid, especially aid that compensates for your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes in SS13. Sometimes, you die as a result. That's part of the game. We don't want to encourage people to pray every time they think they can get some material benefit out of it, and as a result, we can/do often send lightning bolts instead of healing when people ask for heals without a really good reason. Instead of asking the gods for material aid, ask your fellow crew members. There are entire departments (medical, sec, etc) that are there to help you. Use them. 3) Put effort into your prayer. For example, assembling some objects in a pattern and praying for something related. RP a little in your prayer. Make the prayer about something that would truly add to the round, and be fun for all - not just fun for you. Low-effort prayers, like 'help?' are typically ignored. Higher-effort prayers are more likely to be answered. 5) Understand that there are many gods, and they range from friendly, through hostile, to insane. You have no idea which god will get/answer your prayer. Prayer is like spinning a roulette wheel. You never know what the result will be. Even two identical prayers, by the same person, in the same round, can have opposite results. You simply never know. If you haven't figured this out yet, that means prayers are HIGHLY RISKY, and generally not something you want to do unless you have no other options left, or you're RPing a religious character. For example, someone recently prayed to be turned into a dangerous beast with a secret mission. They got turned into a crab, with the objective to snip their claws at every head of staff. They were shortly turned into crab soup by the crew. Making a prayer is rather like asking a genie for a wish - it can do amazing things, yes, but you have zero guarantee that the genie granting the wish isn't malicious, insane and/or dedicated to granting the letter of the wish but not the spirit. There's also a good chance that the god answering your prayer will be outright evil, or simply choose to answer it in the way most amusing for them. Gods normally stay out of mortal affairs, but if you pray to them, you invite them into your life, and that will, quite often, end badly for you. 6) Understand that praying "I am bored" will result in terrible things happening to you. In a shift yesterday, the head of security made the terrible mistake of praying "I am bored, I wish something would happen". Shortly thereafter, CC announced an unusual event: "Many tears in the fabric of time and space have opened. Expected location: EVERYWHERE". The HoS' office alone contained three tears, and thus three tears' worth of monsters. There were 50+ monsters on the station overall. The entire security team died fighting a horde of xenomorphs through the halls of the brig. I believe the HoS' last thoughts before passing away were "why oh why did I make that prayer?!?!?". Normally "I'm bored" prayers won't wreck the whole station, or even your department. But they often end very, very badly for you. A crew member praying "I am bored" is rather like a mouse standing atop a human-sized chair, squeaking "everything is perfect. Nothing can go wrong now!" - in an apartment with several cats. It is tempting fate to an astonishingly dangerous degree, so much so that even clowns would recognize it is a bad idea. Y'know how people in movies say "nothing can go wrong now!" and then they die horribly? Same idea. Do not tempt fate. 7) The gods do not care if you are a Chaplain, or Clown. No, Chaplains are not more likely to get their prayers answered than any other crew. Chaplains work for their gods, NOT the other way around. A Chaplain who treats their god like a free-stuff dispenser will end up on that god's bad side fast. Clowns aren't taken seriously by their fellow crew, let alone the gods. Indeed, sometimes the gods love to see clowns suffer just as much as crew do. Don't think that "because I'm a chaplain" or "because I'm a clown" is a good reason to get what you want out of prayers. It ISN'T. If anything, higher standards of prayer RP are expected from Chaplains. 8) Good results from prayers are not always obvious Suppose you make an awesome prayer, and the gods grant it. Will you notice? MAYBE. Gods tend to work in mysterious ways. If you pray for a light source while exploring dark maintenance tunnels, maybe you find one in the next room. Was that the result of your prayer, or just luck? You'll never know. If you pray that someone finds your dying, crippled body, and then someone does... was that luck? Or your prayer? You don't know. If you pray that the Captain suffer for their gross incompetence, and later on, their office is blown up... was that luck? You don't know. I'm sure you get the point by now. Much of the time, responses to prayers that are granted will not be obvious. You won't know if your prayer did anything, and if so, exactly what it did. 9) Watch out for hints after praying. If an admin decides to send you a message in response to your prayer, the two typical ways it might appear are SubtleMessage (SM) and DirectNarrate (DN). SMs are prefixed with "You hear a voice in your head...". If you get a message like that, especially shortly after praying, take it as a tip from the gods. You don't have to follow it, but in most cases, it would be extremely unwise not to. SMs are typically sent to people who pray for help with something they ought to know, but don't, like an engineer praying for help with engine setup, or a captain praying for guidance about what to do when the station has lots of antags. If your character gets a SubtleMessage, treat it as an extreme life protip. Often, people who fail to heed these suffer greatly as a result of their own actions. You can ignore subtle messages, but it is very unwise to. If the subtle message asks a question, the best way to reply is by praying again. Most subtle messages won't be questions, though. DirectNarrates are different. Personally, when I reply to prayers, I tend to use DN to produce messages like "The Communications Console catches your eye." which act like hints. They're so subtle, you may not be able to tell them apart from normal game messages (except by looking at the game source code, and realizing there's nothing in the code that could produce a message like that). These too are usually ultimate protips, intended to help you without obvious divine intervention. The exception is if you get a message like "You feel a terrible [something] wash over you". A message like that indicates the gods may be cursing you for your prayer. If everyone suddenly has a wave of dread wash over them, especially if the message stating so is in bold, red text, that indicates that either a singularity has consumed a supermatter shard, likely reaching stage 6 and turning into one of the most destructive forces of nature in the game... or the dark gods are about to make life very interesting for the Cyberiad's inhabitants. Or a good god is sending a mass-protip to everyone that they need to have their wits about them in the near future, if they want to survive. That message can mean multiple things, but it generally always results in an adventure. After praying, watch your screen carefully for subtle hints. Look around yourself carefully, too. Items may have moved, or appeared, while you were not paying attention. 10) Cookies are not always your friend, but you should eat them anyway One of the many standard options for admins responding to prayers is to spawn a cookie. While the cookie is usually just a normal cookie, and means "we heard you, but we aren't going to do anything about that", there are variations. Some of the cookies will kill you, or turn you into a monster, if you eat them. Others may give you super powers. There is no way to tell what a cookie will do, short of eating it. If the cookie is cursed, throwing it away, or making someone else eat it, won't help you. It will probably just make your curse stronger. The gods really hate it when mortals try to turn curses placed on them to their own advantage. Such mortals typically end up as cluwnes or worse. 11) Max one prayer per round Don't pray more than once per round. The more prayers you make in a round, the more likely you are to get a bad outcome. The gods get annoyed by repeated prayers from the same person in a short span of time. One prayer per round might seem like a low limit, but consider it an incentive to make your one prayer really good. 12) Don't treat prayers as get-out-of-jail-free cards The purpose of prayers is NOT to give you some advantage that helps you out of a difficult situation. The purpose of prayers is allowing your character to ask, ICly, for divine intervention that will make the round better for the crew at large. Now that you know what NOT to do, let's look at some good prayers... As crew, with a terrible Captain and no IAA: "Lord Istomar, I pray, see this fool Captain suffer for their incompetence. They run around in their suit, for no reason, brandishing the nuclear auth disk, on green alert. They are an embarrassment to Captains everywhere. Amen." As a mime, tending to your fallen comrade, with incompetent medbay: "Divine Light, please help my comrade, Maximillian Arcturus, for they have fallen in battle with the dread spiders. Their body is wracked with poison, and their chances look grim. Medbay is overwhelmed with the injured, and you are their only hope." As clown, in a dull shift: "Great Honkmother, I pray, grant me something harmless but amusing, that I might bring cheer and HONKs to this dreary station." As chef, after some greytider murders all your animals: "Lady, the vile ruffian Joe Schmoe has snuck into my workplace, and murdered all my beloved animals. I beseech you for aid in bringing them back to the land of the living, or seeing Joe cursed for his attacks on the defenseless farm animals." As HoP, after Ian goes missing: "Great God of Paperwork, I have served thee in filling thy forms and dotting thy divine i's. I ask: help me find my poor lost dog, Ian, who needs me." As Chef, after an hour of Botany not doing their job: "Spirit of Summer, bringer of bountiful harvests, I beg thee: help me acquire the produce I require to bake my great feast. Botany has made not a shred of food this shift, and I am despairing. At this rate, I will never be able to feed the crew." Lessons you can learn from the good prayers: If someone needs help, explain why, and mention why you can't get help from the regular mortal authorities. If someone really deserves to be smited, explain why. And mention why the regular mortal authorities cannot do it. Always focus on how your request helps someone else, or at least makes things more fun for the crew (ie: players). Never focus on how the request benefits you personally. Don't be afraid to use old-fashioned and descriptive language. Remember, this is meant to be a semi-formal request for your god. Not a throwaway line. Make it obvious which god you are praying to, both by name (e.g: Spirit of Summer), and function/portfolio (god of the harvest), so the admins have some context for which god they might pretend to be while they're replying.

Was thinking that maybe people with less than 4 hours playtime get an extra flavor text like "they look unfamiliar" or "they don't look like they're from here" so experienced players don't get too angry when some random person who doesn't know the rules murderbones them, grey tide style, and so mentors may have a higher priority on certain players that may not even know the controls

Bang, bump.. The sound of more useless junk bumbling around in the disposals pipes. It doesn't really bother me anymore, just more white noise to add to the rest. Walking down the narrow, dimly lit, rusting maintenance shaft, I find two pairs of chairs, a box of cigarettes and a box of matches on one of them. "Must've been one of the construction workers," I mumble quietly, walking towards the chairs. They're facing out to a window, and as I approach it, displays the vacuum of space surrounding and engulfing the Cyberaid, illuminated by the lights of various stars. I pull a chair out as I approach it, sitting down on it. I grab and throw away both boxes of cigarettes and matches from the other chair - you'd be a fool to put anything in your mouth that you find in a maintenance tunnel. I whipped out my PDA, checking the messages tab. Nothing, as usual. Not like they'd get an interesting story out of an assistant. I double check the crew manifest, wanting to see if any crew have transferred to the Cyberaid. Captain, Head of Staff, Security, Science, Engineering.. All filled with people I don't know nor people that I really care about. Thump! Thump! The sound of jackboots. Standard issue for security personnel - for what reason, I don't know. Probably because some corporate jackass thought a pair of boots would be intimidating. I know a security officer in maintenance isn't good news. Some trouble-maker has run into a shaft, looking to avoid the law. I mean, I did, and still am, but I'm sure they've forgotten about me by now. It's a bother, because when the new security transfers see me, they always ask the same questions - "Why are you in here?", "Who authorized you to enter the maintenance shafts?", "Where is your ID?", the likes.. I quickly glanced about. No easy way to get out of this hallway, no conveniently placed lockers or tables.. Shit. I turned to the sound of the jackboots, which was the other end of the hallway. Was slowly getting louder by the second, until I saw the bright, almost neon coloured red jumpsuit pop out from the corner, flashlight in hand. Took me a bit to get adjusted to the bright light of the flashlight, or should I say "seclite".. Corporate and their nicknames.. When my eyes got used to the light, I could get a better look at the officer. Brown hair, wrapped into a bun. A beret, an armour vest with one set of plating, a security jump-skirt, with her rank on the right shoulder & collar, bags under her eyes and a cigarette in her mouth. I barely glanced at the ID, to make sure they weren't some shmuck in an officer getup. "Who are you?" She said, with a certain grit in her voice. "Nick Pierce, ma'am." I replied, sighing, turning my head to look out back into the window. "You do understand that there is a changeling running about the shafts, right?" She hissed, sounding a bit annoyed. "Well, ma'am, how do I know you're not the changeling?" I chuckled. She stared at me for a moment, in silence - her lack of a reply caught my attention, so I turned to her, to see this mix of fear and anger on her face. It scared me a bit, seeing this initially gruff, grizzled looking security officer now before me, looking like a guilty child. "Looks like we got a smartass, huh.." She finally retorted. I shrugged, turning back to the window without saying anything. I hear the jackboots come closer, as well, as her flashlight being shut off, and shoved into what I think is a pouch or a pocket. I turn around to see her behind me, staring out the window as well. Weird. I turn back to face the window, and after a few awkward seconds of silence, I try to occupy myself. I lay my satchel in my lap, opening it up, and taking out a notebook. I close the satchel up, putting it by my side, and take the pen out of my PDA, opening up my notebook on a new, blank page, to detail my day so far. "Got onto shift station today. Said hi to captain. Didn't respond. Typical. Went to maintenance airlock, explored shafts. Doodle in book (tis this one). Watch stars. Creepy Weird Stupid Odd officer talks to me and is now watching stars with me. Don't know what to do." Surprisingly enough, the officer doesn't mind the notebook, nor the fact I'm slandering her in it. I turn to her, and she has this dull, blank look on her face as she stares out into the window. I wave my hand infront of her face. No physical response. "Fuck, man, you turn into a statue over a little joke?" I questioned, quite obviously visibly disturbed by the immediate change in personality by the officer. I watch as her cigarette just drops from her agape jaw. Ooooooh shit. That's not good. "I think, I'm, ah, gonna be going now.." I said, nervously, closing my notebook and hurriedly shoving it in my satchel, raising my body just a bit off the chair before she grabs my shoulder. "Hey, man, what the hell?" I turn around to see her staring at me with the same dull, blank expression. She started gripping onto my shoulder slowly, and the pain started to seep in. She was grabbing it so hard, I felt as if my scapula was going to shatter! "Ahh, fuck!" I moaned, before feeling a sharp sting in my neck. Oh shit. She was going to cut my throat. I tried to elbow her in the stomach, but to no avail, as she evidently had abs of steel. I quickly came to the conclusion that this was not a human before me. The next course of action was to take whatever that was in my neck, OUT, of my neck. I grabbed the foreign object stabbed into my neck, to feel the warmth of flesh. I slowly turned my head to look at it, partly because of my unwillingness to know what it was, and partly because of the massive pain in both my shoulder and neck. Once my head rotated, I saw a massive tube-like tissue formed from the officer's "tongue", into my neck. Immediately afterwards, I felt a sucking sensation in my neck, as if the cells forming the blood and muscles in my neck were slowly being escorted out of my body. I felt immensely weak, and slouched back in my chair. I went to cry for help over my headset, but she was quicker, and slapped it out of my hand once she saw me grab it, letting it skid over the dusty plating. "Mmmnhh.." I could only utter, as all the energy in my body to do, well, ANYTHING, was sucked out by this vile creature. "Tis the fate of a maintenance dweller", she said, all innocent like, before letting go of me, letting me fall off the chair, and with the last moments of consciousness I had, I saw her face, as she mugged me of my clothing & belongings, slowly morph into mine.

If you want to see how much of an issue giving security more access would be, try playing a few shifts as a security borg and compare the difference, catching criminals in restricted areas becomes trivial

as a security main i am horrified of the fact that i'd be getting more access. it would take away precious seconds that an antag has to think of a plan to get out of escape-or-capture scenario. plus its funner with the chase

So. I was playing Bobbie Wilkins, a Chemical Researcher, and I was playing it hard. My goal? Create life through chemistry, analyze and record it, and submit my completely pointless and arbitrary findings into the RD for a fat bonus. Suffice to say, things didn't go according to plan. Initially, things were great. I got all my chemicals quickly, even the coveted Omnizine, which I need to reach my goal, set up my station, and had the first call-out of changelings on the station after a lucky escape from an incredibly unstealthy doctor examining their newly obtained armblade, but this is when things started to fall apart. A doctor reported one "Bobby Wolinoski" attempting to murder them with an armblade, and unfortunately, due to the fact that Bob W. is a relatively rare name on the station, they completely bypassed the actual guy and went after me. The AI shut down the power for the Sci-Chem lab, and trapped myself and three others inside. And then it dawned on me. Two of my fellow chemists had the same name, Alorea Bennett, the same face, and I went into panic mode. On a false accusation, I had been caught in the quarantine zone, and there was a very viable threat. Security was no help, in fact, as the later reveal changeling began to work, my station, the area in which I was waiting out the quarantine in, became filled with noxious gas, and as I was crawling around on the floor, fainting and vomiting, they were entirely oblivious to my plight, and the Detective requested that I, incapacitated and choking on the floor, go and meet him on the other side of the door. I didn't know what to do. So I did the only thing I could think of, I went ahead with my plan, and through the magic of chemistry, the first of my creations were born. A beacon, a xenomorph, a bear, a koi and an icewing watcher. It was amazing. I was going to be able to document my findings, and bring this newfound knowledge to the scientific scene. But, again, I was stopped in my tracks. As the AI finally opened the door, security flooded in and painstakingly check everyone in the room for signs of being a changeling. Somehow, they did not find the changeling, who was hiding in the disposal chute. Then security left, only myself and the two dopplegangers left in the room with me. As one, who I deemed the changeling, approached towards me, I set off another one of my concoctions, this time in the main chemical station, not in the testing chambers, and ran like hell. As a small horde of creatures rampaged through Sci-Chem, killing the innocent doppleganger in the room, security was once more called to the scene to take care of the threat, which they did shockingly well, and then left. Finally. I was to have peace with my creations, contained and able to be studied further. But, one of my fellow chemists wanted them all dead, them all blown to bits, and I, seeing as I still had some concoction left, reluctantly gave them permission to destroy my subjects. I'm not sure what this particular chemist was thinking, because, instead of procedurally filling the chamber with flamable gas and igniting it, they opened the main door and attempted to throw a grenade in. Seeing the door open, the original subjects of my experiments were freed, killing the chemist, pursuing me through RnD and calling security once more to the scene. The xenomorph intently followed me through, all the way from RnD to North of the Bridge, when it got distracted. I was then arrested, for which I, at the time, was unaware as to why. Apparently, I was still under arrest for being an accused changeling, even after being tested, and I was brought to processing. Through no little effort of my own, I convinced security that I was not, in fact a changeling, and also that I was not, in fact, responsible for the creatures ravaging through the science department. Upon returning to my station, albeit, tired and still damaged from the changeling's gas, I announced a third trial of my experiment, in order to make sure that everyone was aware of what I was doing, and to under no circumstances open the testing chamber. However, threats from all manner of the other RnD staff forced me to leave, and go into hiding, the RD threatening a demotion of the entire department for whatever reason, and then proceeding to actually demote Alorea, the innocent chemist who I had inadvertently killed earlier. Hiding in North Arrivals Maints, I heard a report of some else opening the chamber and letting the creatures out, which, as they were dead, left me to take the fall for the damage done. A brief exchange with the AI and some command staff later, I remained hiding, as I was to now be arrested on sight for not surrendering my possessions. It was at this time that a Syndicate Comms Agent, known as Havoc, first contacted me, probably having overheard discussion on the station of how I was a changeling, a traitor, liable to treason and death. Anyways, Havoc made me an offer. They would attempt to get me passage off the station, on the condition that I bring with me some sensitive materials from RnD. I initially agreed to Havoc's request, but then proceeded to walk into the main Arrivals Hallway, where I was seen by the Assistant RD and within 10 seconds, I swear, the Captain, HoS, RD and half a dozen security officers had cornered me in the Vacant Office. My possessions were confiscated, and I was brought to the Brig to serve my time, a measly 15 minutes after gaining favor with the Warden, a stark difference from the promise from the Captain of "never seeing the outside of the Brig again". I served my time, walked aboard the escape shuttle after a crew transfer was ordered and left, being proto-fired from Nanotrasen. And thus, I was finally free to go about my research, no bureaucracy or incompetent co-workers to mess me up.

I'm not sure this is necessary to be honest. It's just common decency to not go being a dick / getting angry to people when they don't know how to do something. Rather, direct them to mentors, help them yourself, etc.

Think it should be longer than 4 hours, since at least for me, it took a good day to get down the controls, forget anything else

I WILL BE THE BAD GUY AND JUST PUT IT OUT THERE: We really need to up the time it takes to play Security even at a basic level. Very often, I am seeing extremely new people get excited about being in security but by the end of the shift they're so blown out that they're either quitting earlier or not coming back if they somehow managed to survive that nonsense. With that in mind, it's also extremely frustrating to the rest of security who are contesting with antagonists that require a high level of cooperation from security to effectively handle the threat without becoming food / additional access for the bad guy in the process. Now I am not trying to say that security should only be for elitists nor am I implying in the least bit that I have a perfect track-record of being a security officer despite many hours in the roles and roles around it. Now, given that, why do we think its a good idea if people who are super new are being hip tossed into a role that they are not mechanically ready for in anyway shape or form? Few ways to potentially handle this: Require several hours in all job fields (except silicon, command, and special for obvious reasons) OR a total number of hours slightly higher then the sum of those hours in the various fields. Example: +3-+5 hrs per field OR +20hrs total. Require an increased number of overall hours of general playtime (non-ghost) that will hopefully have players get exposed to enough outside of security to allow them to go into it more experienced. Due to this sorta move you kinda need to compensate security for the increased requirements. This is due to the fact that as you raise the requirements, people will likely be less inclined to want to reach those requirements. Consider adding new cosmetic options for security. Consider giving sec Combat Gloves rather then Black Gloves. Consider giving sec Additional Access at round start. Small additions that feel like they're enough of a perk to want to strive to that degree without being gamebreaking.

I think one thing that would help keep rounds interesting for people who play a lot of engineering (such as myself) would be additional station goals, while the three we have are quite enjoyable they tend to get repetitive after you've done each two or 3 times. As such adding a few extra goals could be interesting. Some suggestions for goals which could be implemented using existing mechanics would be: Constructing a supermatter/thermoelectric engine, and adding it to the grid. A going green goal where the singulo and tesla being built causes the goal to fail. Would give engineering the task of upgrading solars in order to meet demand or using a tertiary engine source like the turbine. Renovate mining station, adding an autolathe, protolathe, cloning bay and cryotube. Renovate con site, have X rooms with a breathable atmosphere, charged apc, fire alarm, intercom, camera, etc. Could also add goals of having a functioning set of lathes, cloning pods, ai, etc, on the site. Anyone who has any other suggestions feel free to add them to the thread. Also worth mentioning these are entirely engineering focused goals, it would be nice to see other departments getting goals such as cargo, botany and specific science departments like xenobio and toxins.

We actually full on had this feature, years ago. Every round every officer (myself included, shameless admission) would rush tech storage for a better power cell.