Mixer21

So, the detective can be fun as a role but in my opinion it's not really in a great spot. It's not just the fact that you're mainly a scanning machine, it's actually worse than that. Roleplay-wise you're a skilled technician able to recover and identify evidence, a vital part of security forces; in game however a lacking detective is not really a problem, HoS can just go into his office, grab himself a scanner and drop it into processing, available for the (RP-wise uneducated, inexperienced and unable to properly handle evidence) rest of security. Here's how I think it can be changed: Every single generated trace (fingerprint or fiber) will have 15% chance to be "hard to spot". An inexperienced eye i.e. everyone except a shuttle arriving detective (to prevent abuses) will not be able to spot anything, the surface will not show any scanning results (except food and chemicals, you would still be able to scan them for contents). The other 85% of the traces would be scannable by anybody like now. I think this change would be subtle enough to not upset security's work but mighty enough to turn detective into a necessary component of the departament. The % chance can obviously be tuned to your liking. Tell me what you think.