FPK

Botanists shouldn't be doing any experimenting with deadly chemicals, that's science's job. There is zero reason for botany to possess dangerous chemicals that can only be used to cause harm. Botany even has a guideline in SOP regarding dangerous chemicals: This guideline will probably have to be expanded to include a few things: Harvesting illegal, harmful drugs in their raw form (grinding up plants) is illegal Plants that produce illegal, harmful drugs and provide no other services are illegal Injecting bees with these drugs is illegal (no more CLF3 bees).

Saw you a few times in security today. I play Maya Stewart, you can usually see her either in the brig or the IA office. Welcome to the forums, don't be afraid to ask stupid questions or make stupid posts. It's always refreshing to get a noob's point of view.

Welcome to Paradise Station, the server where everything's made up and none of it matters. Enjoy your stay!

Welcome to nerd central the forums, nerd.

@Fox McCloud You were the one who ported tgstation's botany, so your input on botanist SOP would be greatly appreciated. Same goes out to any skilled botanists out there.

A few things I would want changed with the bartender's SOP: It should be stated somewhere that the shotgun is licensed to the bartender and the bartender only. They're not allowed to trade it away or give it to someone else, and anyone else possessing the bartender's shotgun is guilty of theft. It should be obvious, but the bartender is not permitted to use their shotgun outside of the bar. Any bartender who uses their weapon outside of the bar should be arrested and demoted, and their shotgun confiscated. Additional charges apply if the bartender actually shot at someone/caused property damage. Science can produce stun shells, which are much less lethal than beanbag slugs. With permission from the HoS/Warden, they should be allowed to load their shotgun with stun shells. If the bartender's shotgun is missing/stolen, i.e. the last bartender ran away with it, the bartender should be allowed to seek a replacement, with authorization from the HoS/Warden. Remove the exception from guideline 4. This is Standard Operating Procedure, Nukies and Blobs are not standard. I'm not sure what should be done, if anything, about the bartender possessing drugs to make drinks like the Gin and Sonic or Hippie's Delight. ICly, spiking drinks with drugs is illegal, even if you're only doing it for the flavor. OOCly, meth is a powerful stimulant, and letting the bartender possess it freely seems like a bad idea. I'm in favor of making drugged drinks illegal, though we would have to decide which drinks are illegal. (Suicider has epinephrine in it, does that count as drugged?). The bartender should always call security if unruly patrons keep coming back. Also, the bartender is already allowed to maintain a de facto ban list, so why not add banning people from the bar to SOP? Getting people hammered, then forcefeeding them even more, is NSFL: Not Safe For Liver.

In my opinion, the chef shouldn't be required to comply with every request he gets from every assistant. Part of the fun of being a chef is that you get to pick what you want to make, within reason. I like this, the bartender should always keep their shotgun on them or secured in the bar. Point 1 of Bartender SOP partially covers this, but it could be expanded. The real problem with botany is weaponized plants. It's possible for botany to mass produce exploding plants that stun, burn, and shock someone all at the same time. Botany can even grow .357 revolvers, if RnD helps. While ICly botany really shouldn't be making weapons, OOCly the new botany system encourages botanists to create wacky weaponized wheat and such. I'm okay with botany making weaponized plants, but they should never leave botany unless security is picking some up, they're experimenting with them in research, or if it's a dire emergency. I like this, deputizing the chaplain has become so standard that Holy Warrior ought to be an alternative job title. Chaplains who want to enlist in security should be treated like security. Janitor SOP already covers this with point two, though it only applies during emergencies. I don't know about forcing janitors to use space cleaner, as the janitor's work (slippery tiles) should be treated as a natural environmental hazard of the station. Short of completely blocking off the hallway, busy hallways tend to stay busy too.

I'll start off with the chef's SOP. The chef should only be getting their bodies from the morgue, which is implied here, but not specifically stated. We have a coroner job now, maybe the chef can only use bodies once the coroner is done analyzing them. Bodies that can still be cloned or borged should always be off-limits. If security wants someone borged after executing them, the body is usually delivered directly to robotics, not the morgue. I would rewrite point one like this: This way, the body has to be completely un-clonable or marked as DNR, stripped of gear and ID, analyzed by the coroner and recorded in an autopsy report, and approved by the CMO. I changed "used for meat" with recycling, because it sounds friendlier. If security needs to gib a changeling, they can do so freely, as changelings are not personnel. Three dishes every 20 minutes and 15 minutes without food at all is painfully slow. This is incredibly redundant: "Failure to do so is to be considered a breach of Standard Operating Procedure". If the point of point 3 is to make sure the chef is always producing new food, then it's negated by point 4, whose point is to make sure the chef always has food. I say that we just remove point 3, and reduce the timer on point 4 to ten minutes. Fifteen minutes is an eighth of the round, while ten minutes is a twelfth. I would like to add two more points to the chef's SOP: Both of these additions are IC. The chef should be expected to keep a clean kitchen, to serve food that won't make the crew addicted to meth or puke green goo, and to provide a little variety for alien diets.

Gooood morning/afternoon/evening legalese nerds. This thread is a follow-up to Tully's SOP Update thread, if you haven't already read it I highly suggest taking the time to do so. To repeat what Tully has already said, SOP is has become somewhat outdated, and is in need of some general maintenance. We've already highlighted some problems with SOP, but now we need to work on actually fixing them. In this thread, we'll focus on Service SOP. I chose to start here because Service is probably the easiest to work with, but will still provide a challenge in the form of dealing with the new botany changes. Identified issues from the previous thread: Botanists letting growshrooms spread out of botany. Chaplains acting as holy warriors. Janitors obstructing busy hallways. Botanists can create deathfruit, which is currently unregulated by SOP. Exploding lemons, phlogiston tomatoes, ect. Botanists can harvest a wide variety of drugs and deadly chemicals, while SOP only has regulations for amanitin. There's no mention of bees in SOP. Points 3 and 4 of the chef's SOP need reworking. Chefs aren't required to serve food for specific diets, i.e. herbivores and carnivores. Bartenders shouldn't be allowed to trade their gun away A reminder, this isn't an official SOP rework thread. I just want to get the ball rolling with reworking SOP. @Anticept just made a good point in the last thread that I would like to have preface this one: https://nanotrasen.se/forum/topic/10010-standard-operating-procedure-update/?page=5#comment-90263 As always, remain civil and respectful of other's opinions, and avoid ridiculing opinions you think are ridiculous. There's always a nicer way to go about things.

Tully's been busy recently, and the thread has been dead for a month. I was thinking of starting an unofficial Service SOP rework thread, which would at least get the ball rolling. It wouldn't be to actually update SOP, as that's Tully's dominion, but instead to propound and discuss changes to SOP. EDIT: There, it's up.

Bumping the thread because it's about time we got started on revising SOP in a separate thread. Asking anyone with any input on the matter to contribute now. Remember, this thread is about highlighting problems with SOP, not fixing them. Fixes will be done in individual threads for each SOP document.

What are you saying, you and Alissa are made for each other. You're both weirdos.

Thick cut cucumbers and tomatoes on a toasted plain bagel smeared with cream cheese... Add cucumbers now.

While I approve having a slowdown effect while dragging someone who has harm intent on or is incapacitated, I don't think it should be walking speed. Walking speed is unbearably slow, so much that walking serves no purpose other than to prevent slipping or during low chaos RP scenarios (office RP)

Alright, I'm going to make the comparison to goon again. They reverted most of the pulling changes, a move that I don't really agree with but I understand why it was reverted. There's a feedback thread up on their forums discussing the pulling changes, I suggest reading it to get a better understanding of what it's like to have this feature. Currently on goon, only pulling people slows you down, but only if they're incapacitated or don't have help intent turned on. Pulling containers with bodies in them also slows you down. In practice, this makes dragging off unconscious and unwilling captives slightly harder, but not impossible. I suppose walking is much faster on goon than it is here (make walking a little faster, please!), but the slowdown effect is hardly game breaking, and instead nerds the "stun+drag away to hell" technique that most players rely on, which can be nearly impossible to combat if the kidnapper has extra movespeed, or additional access like vox (space isn't all access).

I very rarely use newscasters, a crime considering how cool they are. I approve all three proposed changes, let's spread some FAKE NEWS. Wanted posters are pretty good too, I enjoy using them on goon, but not really for legitimate purposes. On goon, security is allowed to punish people by dropping two or three flashbangs on their face, so the standard they're held to is nothing like what we have here. I usually use wanted posters to get vigilantes to beat up nerds in exchange for cash.

Why not contact an IAA directly? Just reach out over PDA, knock on the office window when there's someone inside, or contact the next best thing, a NTR or Magistrate. I don't see what these booths will bring to the table that flyers advertising the legal office won't. Adding an additional level of complexity to a job that is already complex enough doesn't seem like the right move.

Alright, lets call this part one of my reasoning for saboteurs, or at least the saboteur objectives. I'll be going over how these objectives will increase tension. First of all, what makes a round of SS13 tense or suspenseful? From personal experience with the game, I know that actively hostile threats that directly affect me make me feel anxious. During shadowling rounds, the atmosphere in surgery is tense, because of its close proximity to maintenance and its critical importance in the game mode. Being so close to maintenance, many patients and doctors keep a watchful eye on the south wall, expecting shadowling thralls to burst through at any second. Security almost always has an officer or two posted at the doors, to make sure no thralls escape surgery and to protect the doctors. This is the kind of atmosphere we're looking for on Paradise, one of suspense and paranoia, where mechanical play and roleplaying can meet to create memorable experiences. Cultists, shadowlings, revolutionaries, and abductors all create an atmosphere of tension. Their presence can be felt across the entire station. No location is secure from assault, no players are out of their grasp. They keep the station on its toes, which makes combating them all the more satisfying (when they're balanced of course, but lets not get into that). The feeling that nowhere and no one is safe is one that we should strive to encourage on Paradise. However, only the few antagonists that I've listed give this feeling. Why don't traitors make people anxious? Traitors are the classic SS13 antagonist, yet it seems like we've nerfed the ability for them to strike terror into the heart of the station, unless they have an objective that lets them rampage in the hallways. For the most part, traitors combat security while actively avoiding the crew, with the exception of kill objectives and people they need to steal from. For a station population of even 60 players, this affects very few people. With 120 players, the traitors might as well be some distant enemy across the ocean, for most of the crew. The sabotage objectives I've listed above seek to fix the lack of tension that traitors bring to the table. What's says "terrorist organization" more directly than an antagonist tasked with bombing the station? The purpose of the bombing objectives is to bring antagonistic chaos to the masses. Bombs are fairly underutilized on Paradise, with antagonists being limited in where they can bomb, and for what purpose. However, bombings (with an emphasis on the plural) increase tension in a way that no other method can. Bombings create environmental hazards, cause direct harm to players caught in the blast, and disable parts of the station. Forcing players to navigate around a breach, or to acquire space-worthy gear, adds to the feeling that the station really is a metal deathtrap in space. Cutting off the station's power gives depth to a system that normally goes untouched, with the exception of engine releases or power sinks. Once solars has been set up, the only that that could possibly undo it is a meteor shower, or some catastrophic event that overshadows the loss of solars. Cutting wires to departments like medical or science would force engineers to actually go into maintenance to preform maintenance, as well as hampering departments that are only hampered through their own incompetence or lack of cooperation. The power grid in general just goes untouched for a majority of rounds, eliminating the need for back-up power, additonal SMES units, or all that extra wire we just have laying around. Hampering a department's work through sabotage again brings an active threat to places where there wasn't one before. Several departments can "finish" their work by locking themselves off from the rest of the station, never leaving unless it's to gather supplies or to reveal their finished products. These departments are safe place, with no natural antagonistic behavior to pose a threat. Virology, botany, genetics, RnD, chemistry, scichem, mining (to a lesser extent), cargo, all of these departments can do their jobs without worrying about external or internal threats. When these departments are allowed to do their jobs without interruption, it causes an imbalance in the level of chaos vs order on the station. As I've said before, SS13 is a game about entropy. These departments can produce products or provide services that greatly increase the level of order on station, making inherently chaotic beings like antagonists have an even harder time than before. Sabotaging these department's efforts will go a long ways in bringing the game back to it's roots of tension and paranoia.

I don't know what point you're trying to make in relation to this proposal @ZN23X, could you try to restate it in different terms for me?

IC fluff, and a general overview of what saboteurs should be like: Similar to traitors, saboteurs are Syndicate agents tasked with crippling Nanotrasen, but are on a lower rung than full blown Syndicate agents. Saboteurs are tasked with weakening NT from the inside through acts of terror and chaos, as to give the real agents an easier time with their objectives. Saboteurs are either on their way to becoming full fledged Syndicate agents, are being blackmailed into working for the Syndicate, or are brainwashed NT employees. Because saboteurs are considered far more expendable than the average Syndie (which really goes to show how little the Syndicate cares for these people's lives), saboteurs are given a lackluster selection of gear, given more risky (to themselves) objectives, and are frequently made into cannon fodder. Saboteurs are given very little information as to who they're helping (assuming there even IS someone they're helping). Syndicate agents are given information about saboteurs in order to identify them: A name, a race, a job. Saboteurs are given nothing more but code words. While saboteurs are in the dark, agents may choose to reach out to them in order to gain an ally. A saboteur's objectives are similar to a syndicate agent's, but with an emphasis on crippling the station. The Syndicate frequently tasks saboteurs with objectives similar to the following: Bomb a public area to seed chaos. Saboteurs are usually given a specific area to bomb: Department lobbies, the bar, in front of the bridge, brig cells, windows to space, ect. The extent of the bombing can be variable too: multiple minor bombings spread across the station, or a single major bombing in a specific location. Sabotage the station's power grid. A station without power is a station without hope. Saboteurs aren't expected to take down the entire power grid alone, but are instead tasked with dismantling or disabling parts of it. Cutting wires in maintenance, destroying APCs and SMES units, bombing solar arrays, sometimes even sabotaging the entire engine (but not releasing it! Remember, there could be other agents on board too). Hamper a department's work. Grinding the station's development to a halt will give agents more time before the crew can prepare tools to fight back. Preventing virology from releasing beneficial viruses (or curing said virus), stopping genetics from turning the crew into superheroes, stealing crates and ore from cargo, stealing the surgical tools from medbay, dismantling the R&D server, bombing robotics, burning medicine from medbay, killing botany's plants, breaking the chef's microwaves, freeing prisoners from the brig, spiking the cyrotube mix with toxins, welding departments shut, and so much more. And anything else the Syndicate wants them to do. Shut up and dance for us, monkey! Actual mechanics of the saboteur role: None of this is set in stone. This is just a WIP idea, please provide feedback. Saboteurs will spawn during traitor, nukie, vampire, changeling, and wizard rounds. Saboteurs should get some gear, depending on their objective. Most objectives can be fulfilled without traitor gear, but bombing objectives would work best with syndicate bombs and minibombs. I would like to avoid giving saboteurs items on round start, so that saboteurs will complete their objectives later in the round, and keep the tension up for longer into the round. Few ideas on how gear should work: A traitor or different saboteur has to unlock the saboteur's PDA, which starts off with less TC and a limited selection. The saboteur's PDA doesn't unlock until a certain point in the round. The saboteur has to find their items on the station, using their PDA to locate/reveal them. Saboteurs plain don't have traitor items. Not my first choice, but I don't want saboteurs to just be alt-traitor. Saboteurs will affect the station by indirectly causing chaos. While antagonists get into fights with security, kill people, and steal important items, saboteurs will be tasked with hampering the station's efforts and causing trouble that antagonists are limited from doing. This is something I've been toying around with in my head for awhile. It stems from multiple places, some of which I can actually point to! The point of adding saboteurs is to increase tension, promote teamwork between antagonists, hamper non-antagonists who think that it's their job to make antagonist's lives hell, and add to the feeling that the Syndicate really is a terrorist organization. I would love to keep writing this, but I've got shit to do. I'll make another post explaining my justification later. For now, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Faxing CC usually results in CC telling the agent not to bother them before doing everything they can to handle the situation on station. CC has set a precedent that it should only be contacted as a last resort, and that preemptively faxing CC can result in punishment. I understand that every admin has their own stance on how CC should respond to things like this, but this is what I've experienced so far. Honestly, I don't see the harm in contacting CC before or during an employee investigation. If anything, it will alert CC that there is an IAA on station doing their job, and that CC should be prepared to receive additional faxes.

Make the makeshift shotgun recipe work with duct tape or wrapping paper. Small and tiny items can be duct taped to the wall, because why not. I think /vg/ station lets people tape forks to medibots and janibots, which makes them poke people when they pass by. If the attached forks kept some forensic material, I would approve this. Using duct tape on cardboard boxes should seal them up. Sealed boxes can't be folded or have their contents dumped on the floor. Attempting to open a sealed box will take a second to remove the tape. Using a pen, scissors, or some other sharp item on the tape will instantly remove it. Duct tape could be used to temporarily seal vents, assuming the vent is outputting at normal pressure. This would come in handy for plasma leaks. Not sure how it would affect game balance, but not many people flood plasma anyways. Duct tape could be applied to the eyes to work as an impromptu blindfold. These are all just random ideas, I'm not sure how balanced they are. Just spitballing here.

Departmental alerts would give the department priority over the rest of the crew, with exceptions of other departments currently on alert. All members of a department on alert would be expected to do their best to reduce the alert level, or be considered for demotion for failing to do their jobs. Also, it would help add to the immersion of the setting, beyond just bland general alert levels. In ESOP, there is a clause that allows the CE to declare an area "condemned". Perhaps the CE could declare an area as being heavily damaged, which makes trespassing in the repair zone a crime (just to keep wanderers out, for their own safety), as well as giving engineers full access to the area. Medical alert would probably be the most boring, but would help keep doctors focused on their job. Not sure what medical players would want out of a medical alert.

I like this, adding different alert levels for different threats. Maybe we could have the alert levels be departmental? Medical alert for virus outbreaks, security alert for rampaging traitors, engineering alert for asteroid hits.

@necaladun I used "to the letter" to refer to officers doing the job correctly; applying the law where needed, using context to judge what sort of action (if any) is needed, providing security to the crew rather than providing the law, ect. I was not referring to officers who rigidly apply space law without taking in context.