Kyet

Ages ago, in PR https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/3179/files I implemented the "7 is spacevine/virus, 5 is blob, lower numbers = more danger" rules for rating the levels of biohazards. I also mentioned in deadchat that 3 is terror spiders, and 1 is the worst biohazard you can imagine, e.g: space worms. Space worms aren't actually viable as a biohazard though, because they delete (not kill, not destroy, but delete) things they eat. Including players. This makes the chances of respawning, if you are eaten by one, almost nil. Their "dead" state sprites also look ugly as sin. They cause issues if spawned, and as such, admins generally shouldn't spawn them. So, no, we can't really make space worms into a biohazard of any level. Not without fixing the problems, at least.

Janitors who leave the floors wet. Just use space cleaner instead. Blood trails aren't annoying. Having to slow down, or slip, is annoying. Janitors shouldn't be annoying. Their job (cleaning the floors) generally isn't as important as other peoples' freedom of movement. Exceptions: cult rounds, blood-transmission viruses, etc. Clowns. Their pranks are rarely amusing. Most of the time, they're a waste of space at best. Many of them seem to treat the job as little more than a license to be annoying and mess with people. That isn't what Clowns should be. A clown should strive to entertain everyone else, not just themselves. Player-controlled pets who steal items, and otherwise act in implausible ways. Bonus points if someone kills them for it, and they ahelp afterwards. Doctors who don't know how to treat injuries. If you're new and need to practice, that's fine. Use a monkey. Or a civilian. Don't be the person who keeps the HoS under for 20 minutes while you figure out he needed mutadone. By that time, security has likely fallen to pieces. Mimes who break into everything. Fair enough if you're an antag, but just for once I would like to actually see a mime that mimes things. People treat it as a license to greytide, which it shouldn't be. Civilians who run into maint as soon as shadowlings are called out, in order to get thralled. Captains who don't know how to do their job. E.g. run around wearing their space suit on green. Characters who are IC-racist towards other species. Why would such a person even take a job on a station as diverse as the Cyberiad? HOPs and QMs who make you fill out forms for harmless, trivial things. Do you enjoy wasting other peoples' time? That's the only explanation I can think of for this. Security officers who run around with tasers out, especially on green. Inevitably, they encounter a clown, and lose their weapon. Wardens who insist on riding around the station on the secway. AIs who bolt upload without a good reason. Botanists who distribute bananas / banana peels. Bartenders who don't man the bar, but then scream bloody murder if you hop back there to make your own drink because they are too lazy to. Anyone who says 'Captain' to the Captain in the hallway. If it was important, you'd have PDA'ed them earlier. "Captain!" requests are usually not something that requires the Captain's attention. Usually, they're just bugging the Captain because the Captain is there, and they can't be bothered to take it to the proper person. Cultists who get caught 5 minutes into the round, thus ruining stealth for the rest of the cult, before they've converted anyone. Wizards who try to act friendly. You're a wizard, dammit. HOPs who go unresponsive 10 minutes into the shift. Brig Physicians who act like sec officers with medical access. Chaplains who act like a cross between a sec officer and Van Helsing, monster hunter. Robotocists who make unauthorized AIs. Xenobiologists who let their monsters roam free with no authorization or even warning. Medical Chemists who don't stock the fridge.

Why not simply walk up to them and punch them? Mech punches hurt. Not saying that they should be able to dodge bullets by standing on a copier (they shouldn't)... but at the same time, the situation doesn't seem impossible to work around.

Things a HoS should do: Remind their officers to max sensors. Encourage their officers to patrol with a buddy, so they don't die horribly. In some cases (vamps/slings) this is pretty much a requirement if you want to live. Help swipe to raise the code to red when needed. Also tell the Captain when the code needs to be changed. Ensure lethals are distributed at the correct time. Regardless of the code, you don't want to be taking on poison spiders with stunbatons. Handle high-profile prisoners, like heads, or changelings. Ensure SOP and Space Law are upheld in their department. Identify, and demote, officers who are a liability. In the absence of a magistrate, decide when/if trials should be held. (usually, NO) Keep an eye on the Warden, ensuring that they mostly stay in the brig, don't deploy flashers on green, etc. Keep the rest of Command informed about important events, like hostile agents, people endangering the station, etc. Also be ready to stop people for demotions if the other heads ask for it. Make sure the records are up-to-date. Warden can do this. But they don't always do it. Ensure the HoP isn't appointing people to Security without the HoS' permission. Chew out the Captain if they insist on running through maint alone. Attend to sec emergencies in areas that normal Sec officers cannot access. Remember that you AREN'T just a better-equipped officer. You're leading a team. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty, but most of your value is as a manager and member of Command, rather than an extra front-line grunt.

Bluntly... this is impractical. You'd need two sets of everything. And I'm not just talking about physical things. You'd need two crew manifests. Two sets of sec records. Two sets of priority announce channels. Two fax networks. Copies of every radio channel. Two sets of emergency shuttles. Etc. In short, it would require taking almost every functional system on station, duplicating it, and then making sure the duplicates don't interact with each other. That is a LOT of work. Now, a separate Cyberiad where only material things are duplicated... and everyone starts off dead.... murdered by something horrible.... like a mirror universe.... that is actually doable. But making it convincing enough that the second Cyberiad wouldn't be able to tell, within 60 seconds, that they were in a Gateway mission, and not 'real'? That would require an enormous amount of work.

This.

All of this is true. Admin-wise, I have a standard policy of never giving any ERT, gamma alert, etc when nukies declare war, because in my experience, war ops almost always lose even without CC helping the crew. If CC helps the crew, war ops have no chance. The thing that often does war nukies in, though, isn't actually all-access. It is cargo ordering shotguns and handing them out to everyone. Shotguns are extremely robust, especially given that nukies' eshields reflect laser shots, so bullet weapons are your best option. Cargo is the best source if you need a high volume of bullet weapons. Nukies don't declare war because they think it will help them. They do it for fun, and extra TC.

If you want to stop people handing out all-access during war ops, the simple way to do it is to add a 20 TC item that lets a traitor spoof a war ops announcement. Traitors could use it to get legit all-access and then complete their steal objectives. Crew's only counter would be.... not giving out all access indiscriminately during war ops. Adding a server rule to prohibit this behavior is a bad idea. Server rules shouldn't force people to behave in blatently unrealistic ways. When a nuclear team has publicly broadcast their intention to nuke you and kill everyone, doing whatever you need to do to survive is the realistic response. Worrying about SOP isn't. SOP exists to serve NT's interests. It is not in NT's interests for their station to be blown up.

I don't see a problem with awarding all access. IC-wise, nuclear operatives have declared their intention to destroy the station and kill everyone on it. You know they will be arriving shortly, armed to the teeth. It is only natural for SOP and standard behavior to go out the window in such a situation - everyone is in it together, fighting for their lives, whether they want to or not. Giving out all-access still means people with certain jobs can take the job gear first, if they want it. It just means that if they don't take it, someone else can, since it is such an emergency.

The telegun is only available to RDs who are also traitors. It has limited charge, and only teleports people to specific places with a beacon, most of which are on-station, like the bridge and arrivals. It also costs 12 TC, which is a lot for a traitor gun. There is one place it can teleport to which is off-station in space, but many people know where it is, and its easy to go there and recover the bodies. I have seen it done several times. Are you, by chance, one of the people that I killed with it today? If so, you should be aware that it wasn't solely the telegun that did that. I also used EMP flashlight, guns and other things.

I don't see a reason to nerf it either. The healing rate on it is too slow to be useful in combat. If you nerf this, then the people who carry SGS/drink SGS will just carry a big patch or two instead. Unlike SGS, patches are an instant heal.

Thoughts: Letting prisoners file legal complaints from inside their cells, while they have nothing better to do, seems guaranteed to result in waste-of-time complaints. If most complaints come from prisoners, and most prisoners write 'SHITCURITY!!!'-style complaints just because its like yelling the same but sticks around longer... then everyone who gets notified of complaints will probably end up dealing with multiple, terrible complaints per shift, and that will just encourage everyone to ignore the system. I assume admins are going to get the ability to lock/delete/etc complaints? How is this going to work if there are no IAAs on duty? How is this going to work if the IAAs on duty have the legal skill level of assistants? IE: they have no idea what they are doing? Why 100cr? Is it possible for someone's start balance to be too low to file a complaint? Will there be a required format for complaints? E.g: requiring the exact SOP number that was violated? It would help cut down on spurious complaints. Will heads have some authority over complaints of SOP violations for members of their own department? At the very least, the ability to view them? Perhaps have a setting where complaints go to the lowest level who can handle them first (IAA) and then only get bounced upwards to, say, Captain if the IAA don't claim/handle/resolve/close them in a reasonable period of time. Otherwise the Captain will be getting random complaints every shift. Consider showing 'approved' tickets on the round-end scoreboard? Could be interesting. What happens if you emag a legal terminal?

I don't think I ever made my department management console boards buildable. So you may be able to add those to the list.

@Purpose2 https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/6470 Should have prevented late-round blobs from having a period where no player was controlling them. Originally, it also tried to move blob spawn points out of stupid, obvious places, but that part got shot down by the maintainers. Maybe I'll put up a new version.

Awhile back, I considered doing a PR that adds an "ID Termination Console" to CentCom. This would be a console usable only by admins, to remotely deactivate an ID in the event of a CC-enforced demotion. I decided against it, even as an admin-only feature, as I felt it was gimmicky and not fun. Having demoted people actually chased down and demoted by security/HoP is more complete, and, frankly, more fun for everyone involved. I agree that IAAs may be a bit weak right now. However, remotely locking IDs is nowhere near a good solution. IMHO, a better solution would be: (A) IAAs sending in faxes as early as possible, and (B) admins making sure to respond to faxes more promptly. The times I've seen the IAA's efforts be fruitless, either (A) they sent in the fax so late in the shift it made no difference, or (B) there was no admin replying to faxes.

Not wise. Antags will just emag the lockboxes. Even if they don't have an emag, they can steal the upload board from secure tech storage, and get a hacked law board from their uplink. Non-antags aren't rewriting AI laws anyway, as this is generally classified as self-antagging.

What do you think is the best way to ensure heads are competent?

ZN23X: - I do think there is value in having a "threat is suspected, but not confirmed yet" alert level. It encourages people to investigate and confirm/deny. If you eliminate that level, people will just loosen their definition of "confirmed" and jump up to the "confirmed" level instead. Because there won't be a "suspected" level anymore. - Security NEVER sends people back to their workplaces on red. EVER. I have never seen it happen even once. This provision of red alert is completely ignored, by everyone, all the time. This is one of the pieces of SOP that may as well not exist, because literally nobody ever heeds it, nor cares to enforce it. You wouldn't want to enforce it anyway, as it is anti-fun. - Often, people will try to run away from you if you want to search them. Yes, this includes non-antags, with no contraband on them. I don't know why they do it. It happens a lot though. - Searching people in the halls, rather than bringing them to the brig, is also impractical in many cases. Just last shift I was playing a sec officer, I tried to do exactly this (search someone in a hallway) and within seconds a random crew member (neither were antags) grabbed the person I was searching, and legged it. Both of them got away. Sure, they were arrested later, but this sort of thing is common. Sadly, as a sec officer, often you cannot afford to search people in public spaces simply because random crew will try to steal them away from you while you are busy with the search. Taking them to the brig for a search is one approach. If that's far away, at the very least you should avoid searching them in a public area. - IMHO, the biggest problem with how security works now is that often, crew who screw with security can't be charged with anything at all. Covering the brig lobby with 'shitcurity!' graffiti, thus ensuring that anyone who is brought in gets encouraged to take an anti-sec mindset right away? Graffiti is not a crime. Constantly complaining about 'shitcurity' over radio, such that the crew stop wanting to help security? Not a crime. Stealing someone away from sec custody while they're being searched? (as happened in my last shift).... you can only charge them with the same sentence as the original criminal. Which, if you're just doing a random search and they don't have anything on them.... is nothing. I actually had to let both of those idiots go, last time I played security, because although they were consuming sec's time, triggering manhunts, etc, I did not think I could actually charge either of them with anything. The ultimate example of this sort of thing is the clown trying to slip security on red alert, with confirmed cult/shadowlings/etc. From the Sec Officer's point of view, they have no idea if the clown slipping them is going to get them killed, yet, despite the stress this causes the officer, its hard to charge the clown with anything in cases like this. Even if they do it constantly and you can find something to charge them with, it usually isn't worth the cries of "SHITCURITY ARRESTING ME FOR SLIPPING!" and inevitable IAA hassle you get as a result. Yeah, it would be nicer if there was a larger gap between blue and red, but we shouldn't eliminate blue, and I am skeptical that the issue of people acting like jerks to security will be solved easily.

@Allfd, "accurate count" was not the main reason this PR was rejected. Looking at Crazylemon's explanation for the PR closure, at the time it was closed, it doesn't even reference that at all: The reasons cited here were (A) that the tracking was per-department (B) that it would support further gating, and (C) that it would support gating based on department playtime. Objection (A) is an objection that would affect ANY proposal that tries to tally up playtime on a per-department basis. It is an "I don't like the general idea of this." Objection (B) is an objection that would affect ANY proposal that tries to introduce ANY kind of gating, for ANY reason. It is a "I don't like the idea of more gating, IN ANY FORM." Objection (C) is similar to (A) in that the thing being suggested in this thread (gating based on department playtime) is exactly what was cited as being unwanted by the heads/maints. It is another form of "I don't like this as a concept." The problem wasn't technical. The problem was that the heads/maints don't like the idea of department-based playtime tracking or job gating. Or, for that matter, any kind of further job gating/progression. The problem was conceptual, not practical or technical. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Anyone who remembers the original playtime PR (https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/5224) should remember it was an uphill battle to get merged. It went through many rounds, and by the time it was merged in the end, I felt it had lost many of its best features. Still, getting at least a little of it merged was better than not getting any improvements at all. For what it is worth, even a relatively simple, pared down playtime system has proven very popular since it was implemented. If the problem really were "accurate counting" of playtime for each department (taking into account cross-department transfers, for example) then that problem has an easy solution: simply update mob & mind variables of crew when they get job transfers. Doing that would ensure the tracking could handle people who get job transfers. I chose not to do that in my PRs, because I felt that it was at best a side-issue, and the real reason people were resisting the PR really had nothing to do with technical details like this. The real reason they were resisting it was that they were opposed to the very concept, and they were just using things like that as an excuse. Crazylemon's eventual summary of the reasons for PR rejection were all conceptual, and did not even reference the counting issue, so I took that as confirmation I was correct, and that folks' major hangup was always conceptual. Not technical, and not based on accuracy. Concerns about "accuracy" were merely an excuse, not the real reason that people were opposed to it. @ZN23X I did, a long time ago, consider having a progression system that detailed, where you had to move through each rank sequentially, thus ensuring that heads had at least some experience playing each major role in their department. I quickly abandoned the idea because I reasoned that it would never get the support needed to pass. Even general "time spent as crew" playtime tracking/gating was difficult to get added. Thus far, department-based tracking/gating remains elusive. To make it so granular as to consider individual jobs... seems too difficult to get passed through Github. That said, as of recently, TG has an open PR for it... Also, on the subject of Captains, you can't expect the Captain to have great knowledge of every department. At least one, sure. Two or three, probably. But not *every* department. Most people have one or two departments they tend to stick to. It isn't reasonable to expect that the Captain know *everything*. Just that he has enough experience as a head of staff to know how to manage people, delegate, etc. The Captain's job is not to manage everything, it is just to manage the heads. @Solless There are many possible explanations of what you saw: 1) That CMO could have been a regular doctor, appointed acting CMO, without ever having been a CMO (or even a doctor!) before. The job unlock system for head jobs does not prevent people from being transferred into these jobs, regardless of experience, by the Captain/HoP. All it prevents is ineligible people from getting assigned those jobs at round-start. We could fix this by preventing Captains/HoPs from appointing people without the relevant playtime stats to these positions... but I am not sure if a PR that added this limit would pass. At best, it might be possible to add some sort of warning when trying to appoint someone via the ID console to a job that they would not ordinarily be eligible for. This could actually help prevent people with job bans from getting that job via the HoP as well. I'm just not sure it would pass Github. 2) That CMO might have extensive medical experience, but none doing surgery. Not everyone knows *every* part of the departments they play in. They might have been an expert virologist, chemist, shrink, etc, who'd never done surgery before. Department-based playtime wouldn't be able to screen them out in this case. It would just see them as having experience in medical, without knowing they'd never done surgery. 3) That CMO might have enough playtime to play heads, via playing in other departments, but they had no experience in the medical department at all. This is the scenario that department-based playtime (and unlocks for head positions) would address. It isn't the best argument for department-based playtime/gating (that might be a 10-round civilian playing HoS without ever having played in Sec before), but it could be an argument. 4) That CMO might have a ton of experience, even in medical, but just not learn or know anything. In this case, there really isn't any experienced-based system which would be able to identify that they were unsuitable to be CMO. Only a skills-based test (aka: answer a multiple-choice test to be whitelisted to play head positions) would be enough, and I highly doubt any form of "prove your competency via a written test to play X jobs" system would ever pass Github. The best thing you can do if you notice situations like this... is to ahelp it and bring it up with IAA / the Captain. The IAA can advise them on SOP. The Captain can replace them if they're incompetent at the job. And we admins can try to understand *why* they don't know what they're doing. Could be that they're drunk, or they're playing on a friend's account, or they have a terrible memory, or they haven't played on our server in years, etc. If you let us know when you see heads who are terrible at their job, we can try to figure out why, which is really valuable information for us to have, both from an enforcing standards POV, and also for those of us that code so we can better design systems to address the specific causes of the problems that you see.

It is bad enough we have lockboxes at all. Lockboxes are already more secure than the vault. More secure than the Captain's safe. More secure than the armory. Nothing short of traitor gear or legit access opens them. They're one of the most secure things on the entire station. More secure than most things only the Captain is meant to have. If you think that we should make them invincible to literally everything but legit access, I'm not even sure what to say to that. Other than: hell no.

Obligatory mention: https://kyep.github.io/paratools/rndtool/RDT.html# This tool works like the old R&D tool, in that it tells you which items will increase tech levels in R&D. However, it has a few advantages over the old tool: It is based on current R&D / github tech level data. It highlights items you can deconstruct to get multiple levels at once. It highlights items from Xantholne's item list. It supports weird objects, like brains, which aren't produced in a machine. Pretty much anything with a tech level. It supports the abductor tech tree (you will probably never use this, but, should you ever want to). Known bugs: Combat shotguns, riot shotguns, and bluespace crystals are not guaranteed to show up in the list of items.

For reference, the playtime requirements for antag roles are defined here: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/6eabd49a02e11a5778987714db77051f88363ec4/code/game/jobs/job_exp.dm#L3 The numbers listed are in hours. For consistency, there are time requirements defined for all antag roles, even roles not currently enabled, like Vox Raider and Giant Spider. We could raise the requirements for certain antags, but bear in mind that not everyone acting foolishly is new. Playtime gating can help prevent 4-hour-old players from attempting to play nuke ops (yes, before playtime gating was implemented, I saw this happen), but it cannot solve all skill/competency problems.

Personally: In general, I don't find "department ratings" faxes useful. If you do one, be sure that all heads get a copy of it (as this may prompt them to fix issues, which is probably the biggest benefit of doing them). If you send it to CC, don't expect CC to respond. The major thing with faxes is: always try to solve the problem locally first. If a sec officer harmbatons a prisoner, take it up with the HoS. If the HoS doesn't listen, take it up with the Captain. Only when you're sure its a serious SOP violation, and both the relevant head and the Captain are unresponsive to your concerns, should you be faxing CC. Even in this case, the real problem is the Captain not enforcing SOP sensibly, and you MUST describe the efforts you went to to try to resolve it locally within the fax you send. Heads are expected to manage their departments, and Captains are expected to manage their heads of staff. Any issue with a department should be resolvable by working with the head. Any issue with a head should be resolvable by working with the Captain. This is how the chain of command works! It is only when the Captain themselves is failing to address the problem adequately that you need to contact CC. Don't be the asshole IAA/NTrep who faxes CC directly about every little issue, without even bringing it up with the relevant head/captain so they have a chance to solve it. Nobody likes an IAA/NTR who thinks their job is 'get people in trouble'. Not even CC likes that guy! Rather, your job as NT rep (and IAA) is to work WITH command to resolve issues. That means providing information, advice, etc. Faxing CC to request CC-level intervention is a last resort, generally only used to deal with Captains who are incompetent, or who refuse to follow policies. In such a case, include documentation on what happened, how you asked Command to deal with it, and how they failed to do so. Remember: listen, think, advise, escalate to the head, escalate to the Captain, and then, only if everything prior has failed, fax CC.

Much of the time, medical is incompetent, absent, busy, or played by very new players who have no idea what they're doing. Sometimes several of the above. Even when they aren't, they are often very slow to respond. In an emergency, anyone can grab some metal and patch a hole, or haul a crate, or disarm the psycho killer. I see no reason that we should prohibit people from taking medicine that could save their lives from the fridge, given that they're already in medbay. Even if you limited this, all that would happen is that people threw themselves in medical cryo instead, which is a *bigger* waste of resources than people taking things from the fridge. If you're a doctor who wants to stop patients bypassing you, then act like a head of staff who wants to be listened to. Don't just hang back, waiting for someone to call you - because nobody ever will. Get out front. Talk to people. Understand what is going on. Take proactive steps. If people see that you're on top of things, they'll be a lot more willing to ask you for help, and less prone to writing you off and taking matters into their own hands.

I play RD a lot. I see Xenobio routinely create tons of monsters, including fake xenos. If we allowed them to create real xenos, there would be xeno outbreaks far more often. I don't think it is a good idea.