EmilyFontaine

Hostage situations are a rare sight on Paradise, and I imagine most other servers as well. I had only attempted it once before, and as you can imagine, to no great success. This time was different, though. While it was ill planned and rushed, the setup was almost perfect - put the hostage inside the plasma filled turbine chamber, a button press away from turning the slime girl hostage into a Creme Brulè. The plan was to get the CMO there alone, with the hypospray to trade for her wife’s life, but security soon sniffed things out, and I was forced to make it publicly known - any interference would mean the woman’s life would end. Soon after, security was at the door, the Captain too, ready to make the trade. The Captain was to enter alone, but as you can imagine, the indifference to the general safety of the crew that every security officer harbours in their blackened hearts proved too strong - the urge to baton and disable too intoxicating. One officer tried to contain his bloodthirsty colleague, but he could not keep them all back. Forced to activate my adrenal implant, I rush for the button, the room filling with a blaze - only for the hostage to be rescued by an engineering cyborg in the last second. Defeated, I make my escape. I change my disguise and blend in with the crew once more, unsure of what to do next. Passing by the bridge, I spot the heroic cyborg receiving a medal for its actions. As it proudly drags the medal behind it as it leaves, triumph running through its circuits, I hit it with my flash and open its cover, overloading it’s system with my emag. My objectives forfeit, I give it one single task to wrong the right. Kill the hostage it rescued. It has no choice but to comply. It begins its search as I make a desperate attempt to fulfil my duties - leading to my death. From the afterlife, through the salty tears, I spot the cyborg deep in space, broken beyond repair, the body of the woman it saved floating lifelessly beside it. And a carp. There was also a carp. I learned that the officer responsible for the mishandling of the situation had been demoted on the spot, but being the beast of pride that he was, he ended his own life right then and there. There are many things to fear on the Cyberiad. But there is nothing more dreadful than he who believes he can do no wrong - he who’s crusade for justice leaves a trail of mangled bodies in his wake, all in the name of turning a line of text from a green color, to a red color.

I like this idea. An alternative could be the spark effect that IPCs have when they're drunk. Noticeable and a constant reminder for roboticists to fix the dead borgs standing around in robotics.

Goon station has a system similar to what you're suggesting. Goon generally has a lot of cool changeling stuff that I hope makes it onto Paradise one day.

I agree to a certain extent. I think the less doubt there is, the better everyone involved can enjoy their rounds without getting their time wasted. The issue I've run into is that people get brigged for 15 minutes for snipping a couple of wires on a camera. You and I know this is DtSA, but the new and aspiring sec officer might not. There might be experienced people around to correct it, but then they ctrl + f in space law for "cameras" and find nothing. I'd argue that camera cutting happens often enough that I don't see a reason not to include it in space law. I don't think that every single possible scenario should be considered when it comes to space law, but I'd argue that this is something that happens often enough to at least get a mention.

Going with my general theme of clarification to prevent speculation, I'm suggesting adding a couple of very small additions to Space Law. Firstly, adding the act of cutting cameras to code 100, "Damage to Station Assets". I've included a screenshot of the law below. I experienced a round where Security were debating whether cutting cameras would be a code 100 (DtSA) or 300 (Sabotage), and discovered that neither mention cameras. Obviously, cameras are station assets, and I personally believe that screw-driving a camera and snipping some wires isn't really worth throwing someone in the brig for 15 minutes for, as it's easily done and easily fixed. Adding a small line of text in the notes to Code 100, something as simple as "cutting cameras" would help. Secondly, adding camera removal to code 300, "Sabotage." Screenshot of the law below. Removing cameras is more time consuming and damaging, as it takes a while to fully replace it. You have to take the time to get a camera assembly, take it to the location, and set it up to the network. Like above, adding a line of text to the notes of the law, like "fully removing cameras", would help clarify and it cuts down time spent in processing. Helpful to Security and crew alike, as less time is spent speculating on the how-to's. Lastly, while camera removal might be more appropriate for a medium level crime, like code 200 (Workplace Hazard), it doesn't fit the theme of the crime, as it concerns itself with lesser acts of sabotage that are physically harmful to crew, like accidental plasma leaks or shocked doors. Sabotage is more fitting. Alternatively, we could add both camera cutting and removal to code 100, though I personally think removing the camera entirely is worthy of a higher sentence, due to the effort required to repair it.

You can also gib people with genetics syringes. Imagine a traitor running around with a rapid fire syringe gun loaded with 6 gibbing injectors and a backpack full of more injectors. It's a cheesy and objectively broken way to kill people. It's not even difficult to get a gibbing injector, it's probably the easiest one. You can still use the injectors for your antag needs, you just have to be creative about it. Like soap slipping an officer chasing you and then injecting them with every disability known to man.

I like this idea as well, as it eliminates the NEED for a hud implant and replaces it with an OPTION for a welding shield implant. I can imagine Kidan playing security and antag would still opt for the welding shield implant, though while useful, not always necessary. It would, however, free Kidan playing mining, medical and science from getting mandatory implanting.

I forgot that was a thing. I do agree with the general consensus on this thread, though. Vox maluses outweigh their boons. The speed burst ability might be neat, though it should be short duration with a hefty cooldown. Might encourage security to start aiming more for legs instead of head/chest with lethal weapons. Might also encourage security to just blast them because they expect changeling or adrenals right away. Hard to predict, but I'd like to see it in practice.

That's what wrongful testing is. I agree. There's been a lot of interesting points brought up here, but I feel like the thread has derailed at this point. I'd like to maybe see an SOP change, but to be honest, as a sec main, I don't really see this problem occur often enough. Wrongful testing is a symptom of shitsec, and from what I've seen lately, they don't last long. The admins have been doing a good job of cracking down on them. That's not to say that the better variety of sec doesn't make mistakes, but if an overly suspicious crew member get deconverted by sec, then who's really making the mistakes?

The problem isn't with testing for cultists, there's ways for that already. The problem is wrongful tests. I don't see how adding more tests is going to solve that.

There are many examples of harmful chemicals being mixed together to become a harmless chemical or, in some cases, a beneficial chemical. While it wouldn't be odd, that's not necessarily how chemistry works. Turning this into a mechanical issue won't fix the problem, it'll only add to it. Cults are nebulous by nature and security often make mistakes in an effort to stop them, due to ignorance of the gamemode or impatience. Punishing crew by dealing toxin or brain damage due to security's mistakes isn't gonna make the issue less of an issue, you create a new issue. As I stated earlier in the thread, you sometimes attempt to decult people who aren't cult to begin with, because there is reason to believe they could be exposed, despite the lack of physical evidence. If the cult is running rampant, you now have to pause the effort of chasing them, because you've just heavily damaged, or killed, an innocent crew member who now requires your attention, while the rest of security falls apart because word gets out that you're wounding or killing innocents. Security's least favorite gamemode (to me and many others, at least) has now become that much more of a chore to deal with. Nobody wants to risk punishment in a round they're already reluctant to play, so the number of security personnel who cryo during a cult round rises. If we want to make this an IC issue, let's find a way to do it without punishing people who shouldn't be punished, i.e. the innocents. There are already plenty of examples of security killing people who shouldn't be killed, let's not add to it. Making the null rod changeable would be nice, but prayer beads does not cut down on the "just in case" testing in the slightest, it only increases their frequency. (Usually "just in case" testing happens in processing for seemingly unrelated crimes) Alternatively, make this an OOC issue, under either the metagaming, powergaming or validhunting rule. The problem here is that, again, the cult is nebulous at the best of times. Should a security player be warned, or even banned, for cult testing someone running through maintenance with no ID and their face hidden? Probably not. Should they be punished if they force holy water down the throat of everyone staying safely in their department during red alert? Absolutely.

Depends on who's in security. I'll pass out sentences to officers as HoS.

It takes 50u of holy water to deconvert cultists, if I'm not mistaken. Also, If this does nothing to cultists, then you can easily track the damages to non-culted individuals and instantly know they're not actually cultists, which seems pretty meta. I agree that there's an issue of security giving holy water to anyone who wears a gas mask in maints, but there are actual instances where security have to give holy water to suspected individuals with no cult items on them. An example could be a known cultist is apprehended in a room in maintenance with runes and a cuffed crew member. They're caught with their pants down, and you're unsure if the person in question has been converted. They'll tell you the same in either case. "I'm not a cultist." So you naturally apply holy water. Probable cause. I seem to remember that giving out holy water randomly to try and catch cult and vamps was against the rules under validhunting at some point? Not sure if I'm just imagining that, though. In any case, I'm definitely in favor of some kind of measure to prevent security from rampantly testing random people who don't have supplies beneficial to cult on their person (Stacks of paper, cuffs, stunprods, etc.) but cardiac arrest seems excessive. Perhaps a base amount of brain/toxin damage to people, no matter if they're cultist or not, but not lethal? If they're cultists and get converted, worst thing is they need to spend some time to get medical assistance. Cuts down on reconversion (which happens a lot). If they're not a cultist, and there was no reason to believe they're a cultist, the officer in question could get an aggravated assault charge. There's also the issue of vampires. If holy water also adds brain/tox damage, vampires are in even more trouble when they get put into processing. 5u is enough to test and empty a vamp of blood, but it still harms them quite a bit. Often security gets overzealous and overfeeds the vampires holy water, though. Something to keep in mind, at least.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. This'll help avoid misunderstandings, and I'm excited to see how it works in practice. Would it be possible to add possession of weapon, assault and aggravated assault to escape attempt and attempted murder, murder and manslaughter to a successful escape? An often seen problem in perma is when security gets disarmed of their weapons and assaulted. Rarely do they die from what I've seen, though. Something like this might help further clarify in situations where officers are involved.

Problem is, attempted murder is an exceptional crime and not capital, so it's not grounds for execution. I absolutely agree that they should be viable for execution here, but again, not according to space law/legal SOP