Hiring Sec From the Manifest

[SkeletalElite]

So the admins (a consensus of whoever was in staff chat at the time) have decided that not recruiting sec from the manifest is against the rules because it is done to keep antags out of sec using meta knowledge.

Regardless of whether or not its meta, Game balance should absolutely be trumping meta here. Sec cannot be round start antags except for blob for a reason. Sec do not need this knife in their back. If not recruiting from the manifest is meta, sec may as well be allowed to roll antag, since under this new ruling any antag can just go to ask to be sec on round start and will actually get away it because of HoS's fearing bwoinks. This should not be a thing for the same reason that the PR about making brig phys being able to role traitor was closed, except this is even worse than that, especially on low pop when there's even less reason to turn down sec hires.

In addition to that, this is very difficult to administrate (intention of whether or not the HoS said no to that hire because meta or other reasons is very difficult to tell) and it can be very easily explained IC: Mind shielded personal are subject to much more in depth and expensive background checking than the rest of the crew.

 

When I ahelped and asked about this I was told something along the lines of "whats the IC reason people are always turned down." And My response to this is, Whats the IC reason that mind shielded people cannot be antags, that is the reason.

 

Edited May 5, 2018 by SkeletalElite

[R1f73r]

I was told by a lot of people that sec was also EXTREMELY vetted ICly so that’s also another reason.

[Spacemanspark]

It's never been against the rules to not hire from the manifest to my knowledge, and there's a fairly good reason not to... 

[Rurik]

I never really considered not hiring from manifest meta, I just thought of it as the anti-fun thing to do. Of course there is a element of meta to it, but there is also IC reasoning backing it. That being said, I'm curious why this has become a subject of debate whether or not its against rules. I mean, pretty much everyone has a 50/50 chance of joining sec depending on the HoS, its not like it is never happening. Perhaps its my own experience, but I can manage to get hired fairly often. 

Only time I ever saw there was a issue is when it is lowpop, and the HoS decides not to hire from manifest even when there are NO officers (with no officers and still refusing sec hires generally oversteps into paranoia imo, but hey, if people wana dig their own graves by not having officers, whatever).

Edited May 6, 2018 by Rurik

[ZN23X]

Even prior to being an admin I've never been bwoinked for not recruiting from the crew unless I had absolutely no reason not to and the person trying to be recruited was putting in decent effort IC to get recruited (I'd also never think using "they aren't mindshielded" isn't a viable reason). However I also HAVE recruited from the crew. Is sec understaffed? Is the person persistent? Did they actually fill out paperwork and accept an interview? I base hiring from the crew on the effort put it and circumstances. 

If someone just PDAs me or just asks out of the blue I'll say no. Zero effort.

As for meta knowledge and mindshields. Why are you so worried about game balance and losing? Afraid something new and interesting might happen?

More than anything, most of the people I hired from the crew were just newer players who wanted to give sec a shot but essentially just be a "cadet" rather than a "full blown officer" cuz they felt it was too much responsibility. Showing them the ropes was fun, and it was satisfying to see some of them eventually grow into good sec players. Have I accidentally hired antags from the crew? Yup. Has it screwed sec over? Absolutely. One time the officer used his status to frame and get his targets executed, but other than that he was actually a very efficient officer. Stop worrying so much about winning and allow something interesting to happen.

The biggest crime of meta knowledge is it leads to repetitive, predictable, and boring behavior. Not just sec is at fault for this. Everyone is to some degree.

Edited May 5, 2018 by ZN23X

[Kyet]

As far as I know, we do not require HoSes/sec to accept transfers into their department.

Edited May 6, 2018 by tzo

[SkeletalElite]

41 minutes ago, tzo said:

As far as I know, we do not require HoSes/sec to accept transfers into their department.

Its HoP SoP

The Head of Personnel may not transfer any personnel to another Department without authorization from the relevant Head of Staff. If no Head of Staff is available, the Head of Personnel may make a judgement call. This does not apply to Security, which always requires authorization from the Head of Security, or Genetics, which requires both Chief Medical Officer and Research Director approval. If there is no Head of Security active, no transfers are allowed to Security without authorization from the Captain;

[Tayswift]

It's not really meta. In real life, you wouldn't hire random peeps into a private security force either. People go crazy with power as the Stanford Prisoner Experiment shows. Recruiting a random person off the street and giving them a gun and a badge is a terrible idea, ICly and OOCly. Security officers are supposedly trained and vetted somewhat extensively, which is why they're always loyal to NT.

[Kyet]

41 minutes ago, SkeletalElite said:

Its HoP SoP

The Head of Personnel may not transfer any personnel to another Department without authorization from the relevant Head of Staff. If no Head of Staff is available, the Head of Personnel may make a judgement call. This does not apply to Security, which always requires authorization from the Head of Security, or Genetics, which requires both Chief Medical Officer and Research Director approval. If there is no Head of Security active, no transfers are allowed to Security without authorization from the Captain;

That isn't what I meant.

What I meant is: HoSes have the freedom to REJECT transfers if they want.

They are not obliged to accept transfers.

Edited May 6, 2018 by tzo

[SkeletalElite]

The problem was just that an admin had announced oocly that it was meta, and that he asked in staff chat just to make sure. He also told me to ask a headmin and no headmins have responded here yet so we'll have to see.

[Fethas]

To put it simply, rejecting a person solely on the basis they did not late join and were on the manifest to start with is both meta and power gamey. We do have a powergaming rule now.

It is WITHIN RIGHT for a hos to reject a transfer when asked. IT IS NOT COOL if the mindset for rejection was 'well they may be bad cuase they were already on the manifest and did not late join the shift.'

Thats what bad.

The reason it probaly hasn't been bwoinked in the past is cuase people didn't notice and the powergaming rule is fairly recent. Also it should have been bwoinked in the past but that was then and in hindsight.

[Allfd]

Its not clear to me how you require a transfer, and not have security become even worse of a job.

We have a moderately capable security staff, that at least if the crew is hostile, it needs a good reason.

If it were actually possible for security to be antags, shitcurity would be replaced and every arrest would be suspect.  So many of our game modes now revolve around the security/antag dynamic its not clear this would not cause a significant unbalancing and make security an even less attractive job.

[davidchan]

7 hours ago, Fethas said:

To put it simply, rejecting a person solely on the basis they did not late join and were on the manifest to start with is both meta and power gamey. We do have a powergaming rule now.

It is WITHIN RIGHT for a hos to reject a transfer when asked. IT IS NOT COOL if the mindset for rejection was 'well they may be bad cuase they were already on the manifest and did not late join the shift.'

Thats what bad.

The reason it probaly hasn't been bwoinked in the past is cuase people didn't notice and the powergaming rule is fairly recent. Also it should have been bwoinked in the past but that was then and in hindsight.

I'll take reasons Security shouldn't be 100% garunteed to never have antags in their department for 200 Alex.

[EvadableMoxie]

It doesn't sound like the problem here is choosing not to hire from the manifest.  The specific issue is choosing if they should hire off the manifest based on if the person joined at the start of the round or mid-round. I can understand how that is a problem. The solution, to me, is to simply not hire off the manifest at all.  There are RP reasons given for not doing it. 

[Rurik]

20 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:

It doesn't sound like the problem here is choosing not to hire from the manifest.  The specific issue is choosing if they should hire off the manifest based on if the person joined at the start of the round or mid-round. I can understand how that is a problem. The solution, to me, is to simply not hire off the manifest at all.  There are RP reasons given for not doing it. 

I haven't thought about that point, thanks for bringing it up. That being said, I feel the solution would do more harm than good.

[SkeletalElite]

Let me add some more context. In the round where it was relevant there was a HoP who was mad that HoS, Captain and Blueshield (me) were all yelling at him not to hire ANYONE into sec and he was mad because he thought it was meta. He hired someone into sec anyways and got fired. The next round an admin announced that not hiring anyone from manifest just because they aren't mind shielded/vetted/background checked was meta.

[ZN23X]

@SkeletalElite you did not actually suffer any punishment for failing to hire from the manifest. As far as I can tell this post originated from the fear you or someone else may get reprimanded for failing to hire from the manifest, but multiple admins have already said this isn't breaking the rules. What is the issue here exactly? We are arguing about punishment for something that doesn't yield punishment.

Edited May 6, 2018 by ZN23X

[SkeletalElite]

Just now, ZN23X said:

@SkeletalElite you did not actually suffer any punishment because you didn't hire from the manifest. As far as I can tell this post originated from the fear you or someone else may get reprimanded for failing to hire from the manifest, but multiple admins have already said this isn't breaking the rules. What is the issue here exactly? We are arguing about punishment for something that doesn't yield punishment.

I do not believe anyone was given any punishment in the circumstance but the admin announcement seemed to say that in the future, there would be. That is why I made this post, I strongly oppose not hiring ANYONE from the manifest purely due to the fact that they are not mind shielded to be against the rules.

[ZN23X]

Its not against the current rules (nor any possible future rule changes I'm aware of). Case closed.

Edited May 6, 2018 by ZN23X

[EvadableMoxie]

51 minutes ago, SkeletalElite said:

I do not believe anyone was given any punishment in the circumstance but the admin announcement seemed to say that in the future, there would be. That is why I made this post, I strongly oppose not hiring ANYONE from the manifest purely due to the fact that they are not mind shielded to be against the rules.

Again, the issue seems to be (as far as I can tell) using when they joined (at the start of shift or after) as the determining factor to if you hire them or not.  Choosing to never hire off the manifest is not against the rules.  You just shouldn't meta-game it to hire mid-round joiners but not start of round joiners. 

That is how I understand it but if an admin wants to chime in to clarify/confirm/deny it would be helpful.

Edited May 7, 2018 by EvadableMoxie

[Veloxi]

Sorry to Necro this from six months ago, but it's a tricky one for me.

OOCly, I understand exactly why manifest hires to security are bad news; they are potential Antags who might infiltrate security and do bad things.

ICly, I struggle with a reason to deny the hire. In my mind, Nanotrasen paid a lot of money to shuttle all of these people out to a space station. I assume all of them went through some kind of background check. Because Antags are present, we must assume this process wasn't perfect and let some bad actors slip through.

OOCly, we know people with a mindshield at spawn (start or late) are not Antags.

ICly, saying that a mindshield is an automatic good guy badge is equivalent to saying that Nanotrasen is perfect at handing out mindshields to only those who have been supremely vetted. In this case, it makes zero sense for a box of mindshields to be available in security, because there is no possible way for security to do the extreme vetting that Nanotrasen has done. In this case, SoP would be that only personnel previously mindshielded could have their mindshield replaced. And even this is dubious, as I imagine Nanotrasen would want to again redo the supreme vetting to make sure that a re-up on the mindshield is appropriate for a person who lost it.

I tend to agree with ZN23X that hiring from manifest adds a unique element of danger, surprise, and fun to the game. I had a crazy shift once where I hired two from the manifest; Parker Ringer and Dan Jello. Parker turned out to be a great officer. Dan Jello was an Antag with an objective to assassinate me, and actually did kill me *as I was attempting to implant his mindshield*! Despite paying the ultimate price for my manifest hire, this was a crazy fun round. Dan earned that karma point.

I guess what I'm saying is, if preventing manifest hires and keeping security pure is what the admins want, I'd like a standard/stock IC explanation that I can tell people who apply.
Otherwise, I want to continue hiring from manifest, knowing that I may have signed my own death warrant, but embracing that as just another reason SS13 is so much fun.