A very unpopular suggestion (But needed)

[Allfd]

5 hours ago, Medi said:

I like this, it does make sense but my only concern is antag balance given that officers can be hired during shift or made priority. Thus, players hanging back and not queuing up as sec and joining late would be a meta to break antags and prevent them from being too numerous.

Example: 3 randos queue at round start for sec during high pop. 1 - 2 antags made as a result. Then comes HOS, Warden, Pod pilot, 3 more officers who join late.

  

Potential fixes: either lower the number of available sec slots at round start, based on antag have a minimum of potentially 3-4 antags at round start, or create rules against this which would realistically be hard to enforce.  

 

I don't see this as a problem.  We actively monitor the rounds and add more antags, or alter the midround antag type or adjust when it occurs.

What we don't have is a good way of doing is removing antags, other then disabling the mid-round event.  Its easier for us to add antags, then it is to remove them or add security.

[Medi]

@Kyet

 

Any input so we can make a change?

[Kyet]

In general:

1. I think we should look to code-based solutions, not simply admin-policy solutions. Admin-policy solutions exist to do things we cannot do with code, NOT to do things we could instead do with code.
2. I think that any solutions we do implement should be carefully thought out and aimed at (A) making security more fun, so more people want to play it (B) making security more competent, so it has a better reputation, and (C) making the crew treat security better.

Some specific ideas:

1. I still think we should have a device in processing that automatically times how long suspects/prisoners are in there, and generates an alert on security radio when someone has been in there over 10 minutes. This would help cut down on people being left in processing far too long, which always results in a worse relationship between security and crew.
2. I also think that batons should have an inbuilt sec radio, which generates a one-time message on sec comms the first time each baton is used on harm intent. This would help magistrate/HoS/Captain notice and stop shitty officers.
3. I'm also inclined to believe that security should get automatic basic department access on red. This means security officers should be able to simply walk into medical, eng, science, etc on red. The airlocks should open for them. It doesn't make sense to me that security are supposed to have access to these areas... yet they usually don't.
4. I believe that yelling 'shitcurity' over radio for no good reason, or otherwise needlessly antagonizing security, needs to be a crime under space law or a SOP violation. Security should feel like the crew will treat them with respect, and we should make whatever changes are needed to ensure that happens.
5. I'm still keen on my idea of 'give the head of every department a medal in their locker that they can award to excellent crew from their department'. Something to reward players for being great at their jobs. In fact in this case I'd go further and I'd deem the magistrate a head for these purposes, allowing them to give out a 'Legal Excellence' medal to whoever they feel is the best at upholding space law each shift, including say IAAs who challenge unjust sentences.
6. I am skeptical that security cadets would be a good idea, as I think they'd just end up as loot pinatas. Even with lesser gear, merely being able to get a stunprod, sec ID and sec comms from them is already reason enough for antags to kill them for their gear. However, I am willing to let the idea be testmerged and trialed, and willing to admit if the results of such a test prove me wrong.

[Coul]

Woah, those are some really good suggestions, especially the first two.

This would really help raising the competence of security in general

[Medi]

I still say give cases of "shitcurity" calling and unwarranted abuse and toxicity towards Security treated as "Harassment" under SOP. IAA / NT Rep / Magistrate can easily sit there and help moderate that portion and make the recommendation for demotion / levy a punishment against them. It can be something as simple as freezing their financial account so that they are reliant on the chef to cook food rather then being able to use vending machines.

Additionally, Security Cadets would have merit on a system what was more prolonged then ours. As Kyet said, they're just loot pinatas. You are either security or you aren't on this kind of fast paced server and the cadets would get lost in the mix quickly.

[Allfd]

My concern is that none of the suggestions make security more fun.

[davidchan]

On 7/9/2019 at 12:32 AM, Kyet said:

• I believe that yelling 'shitcurity' over radio for no good reason, or otherwise needlessly antagonizing security, needs to be a crime under space law or a SOP violation. Security should feel like the crew will treat them with respect, and we should make whatever changes are needed to ensure that happens.

This is a bad idea. The biggest complaint against security is they use their power to abuse people they don't like or find annoying. Making it a crime to criticize them only legitimizes that behavior, especially when no other part of your post implies any enforcement of security being professional themselves. This is literally going to lead to security players baiting people they don't like into vocalizing their distaste and critisms so they can arrest the person. 

If security mains think security should get more respect, they need to actually play the role in a manner where they are respectful to the crew and not needlessly making the round worse for non-security players for their own benefit.

[IntentEldiablo]

4 minutes ago, davidchan said:

This is a bad idea. The biggest complaint against security is they use their power to abuse people they don't like or find annoying. Making it a crime to criticize them only legitimizes that behavior, especially when no other part of your post implies any enforcement of security being professional themselves. This is literally going to lead to security players baiting people they don't like into vocalizing their distaste and critisms so they can arrest the person. 

If security mains think security should get more respect, they need to actually play the role in a manner where they are respectful to the crew and not needlessly making the round worse for non-security players for their own benefit.

As one of these "security mains" i find that statement somewhat offensive, you make it seem as if security mains DON'T act in a manner where they are respectful, this is aimed, primarily, at new players who don't ask for assistance, and use the role as a power move to be an asshole and unstoppable, when in retrospect, most of us "security mains" have and continue to arrest and demote these sorts of players to remove them from play

 

What kyet is referencing is when a person is legitimately arrested for legit reasons and yelling shitcurity and the whole crew jumps on the bandwaggon, i cant count how many times i have had a random greytide triggered by someone shouting shitcurity and me getting jumped by the greytide to free them

Edited July 10, 2019 by IntentEldiablo

[TyOmaha]

1 hour ago, davidchan said:

The biggest complaint against security is they use their power to abuse people they don't like or find annoying.

This mainly comes from people who skirt around space law and are a general nuisance towards security, so if they don't want security being a nuisance back then don't dish what you can't take.

[Kyet]

3 hours ago, davidchan said:

This is a bad idea. The biggest complaint against security is they use their power to abuse people they don't like or find annoying. Making it a crime to criticize them only legitimizes that behavior, especially when no other part of your post implies any enforcement of security being professional themselves. This is literally going to lead to security players baiting people they don't like into vocalizing their distaste and critisms so they can arrest the person. 

If security mains think security should get more respect, they need to actually play the role in a manner where they are respectful to the crew and not needlessly making the round worse for non-security players for their own benefit.

I'm against making it a crime to merely criticize security.

I'm for making it a crime or SOP violation to needlessly antagonize security.

There is a difference.

"Security confiscated my stuff when they shouldn't have" is a criticism, and fine.

"SHITCURITY ABUSING ME IN PROCESSING HELP!" (when security are simply processing you without actually doing anything abusive) is needlessly antagonizing security.

Basically, if your complaint is reasonable, and/or expressed in a constructive way, its fine.

On the other hand, if you're going out of your way to make life as difficult as possible for security, and you are not an antag, you shouldn't be doing that. Nobody should.

Even if security is bad at their job, making life extra difficult for them WON'T improve matters.

[Regular Joe]

9 hours ago, Allfd said:

My concern is that none of the suggestions make security more fun.

Though I like Kyet’s referation of ideas to be worked with - especially the processing timer and the harmbaton-alert sound like neat little tools making it more easy to spot and correct the bad stuff - I affirm with this here. While it’s hard to say any reasonable suggestion that would improve this, or, that we knew it would improve this.

Making needless antagonizing of security a  SoP/law violation - maybe, as of that could scratch some useless negative shit off the seccies.

Yet, personally I’m not very concerned of the tideys, but of the flow of events, rather, as discussed earlier. Sec gets too overwhelmed, too often to do it fair, especially so with the HoS and warden, if they do their jobs at all. So I would see tackling this issue a buff to the effectiveness of sec and taking some stress away of it, thus making it bit more fun.

(Edit: reading what Allfd says below, tideys are indeed a concern for the more new officers as of surviving as fine-doing sec, not against antags but tideys is a problem indeed, one root of the tase-cuff stuff. This mine from a sec regular viewpoint.)

Say, I enjoy HoS a lot, still I seldomly take it, as of playing that role properly will by 60/50 chance be extremely demanding. It should be rough, yes, but then there are the useless bad things which you can’t handle, but exactly you should be the one to take action against those, and you cannot, because of you got too much on your plate. By these I mean by foremost abusive seccies, which the HoS should deal with. They’re hard to spot outside the brig, and if deep shit has hitted the fan (per usual), they are also hard to deal with just by the lack of time, if spotted. Let alone to prevent them. During highpop, you’ll often be too busy with co-ordinaring, sharing information and making decisions that officers expect from you, to do that efficiently. I try to watch over processing usually, can’t do much else of quality control. IAA’s, yes, but they usually need the HoS to perform the sanction they suggest. So I’m advocating some change to sec organization: try to think a new role there, to take something off HoS or Warden in order to make it bit less demanding to them to do it good.

I don’t say that the situation is deeply bad in this. It just feels to happen quite often and is so the main concern I could think about.

In the other hand, what I described is a part of the game, sec shouln’t be perfect either and the roles mentioned should give the challenge. This is a difficult topic. Agreeing and liking most suggestions hereby, though. Reasonable, less grave things in comparison to any organization tweak.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Regular Joe

[Allfd]

4 hours ago, Ty Omaha said:

This mainly comes from people who skirt around space law and are a general nuisance towards security, so if they don't want security being a nuisance back then don't dish what you can't take.

This.

I have begun observing security regularly to try and get a understanding of the situation.  A little more then half the people getting pulled in are greytide.  Of the problem security officers we have, almost none of them are regulars or high time security/command. 

 

6 hours ago, davidchan said:

If security mains think security should get more respect, they need to actually play the role in a manner where they are respectful to the crew and not needlessly making the round worse for non-security players for their own benefit.

They do.  The crew does not do that in return.  Security players tend not to be mains, and tend to be less experienced then the tide they confront.  If they don't insta taze and cuff, they are going to get disarmed spammed, robusted for all their things and flushed down disposals.  Its too easy for your average tider to overwhelm a new officers, it happens once and they are never off their guard.  This is just one of many examples.  It sucks, but this is not an easy fix, the mechanics of our server encourage this behaviour.

I unlocked Vox, IPC, NTRep, and Pod Pilot, all through security karma back in the day.  As things changed I started playing blueshield, as I still saw a fair amount of action, did not have to deal with rando tide, and got to feel like a real bodyguard with a baton and laser pistol.  (At the time it was a massive revolver, I miss that).

I can't speak for other former mains, but I remember when security was more often armed, had webbing, and could switch out the power cells in their weapons.   As things got more and more mall cop, I just stopped playing security.  When that was the norm, we would not wear armour or helmets until at least blue.

I don't bring this up to sound "Back in my day."  but I do believe that if we are looking for why attitudes may have changed, we should look for causes.

[Medi]

I'm still advocating that we use the assets we have on hand to deal with the problem on the short hand while we wait for more code based solutions, as Kyet suggested, to become an actual thing.

 

1. Allow IAA / NT Rep (in cases of Command) / and the Magistrate to investigate and recommend action against Harassment of Security as a SOP violation with the possible penalties of: Increased time on a separate sentence, garnished wages, demotion, etc. These are to be treated on a case by case basis and supported with facts. If Harassment of Security is a pressing issue and cannot be resolved locally, it can and should be sent to CC for further action as they deem necessary.

2. Increase the expectations of the Pod Pilot to include being considered the "Senior Patrol officer" of the shift. They can serve as a mentor to the rest of the department without flexing authority. Their role would then be to help those fledgling officers who are a greater risk to themselves then others. They are in no way obligated to baby sit but are encouraged to help quell problems regarding training.

3.  Implement everything Kyet went over except the Cadet idea. They're not going to be practical in our style of gameplay being so short and chaotic. If we're worried about people not being ready to be in security, then they shouldn't be in the role at all and the time requirements need to be higher then they currently are. As for the rest of the ideas, they're mostly going to take some coding and adjustment to the server as a whole so it will take some time to actually pull that one off.

[Fursamie]

3 hours ago, Medi said:

I'm still advocating that we use the assets we have on hand to deal with the problem on the short hand while we wait for more code based solutions, as Kyet suggested, to become an actual thing.

 

1. Allow IAA / NT Rep (in cases of Command) / and the Magistrate to investigate and recommend action against Harassment of Security as a SOP violation with the possible penalties of: Increased time on a separate sentence, garnished wages, demotion, etc. These are to be treated on a case by case basis and supported with facts. If Harassment of Security is a pressing issue and cannot be resolved locally, it can and should be sent to CC for further action as they deem necessary.

If this is a procedure  that applies for everyone then I'd be fine with it, but /just/ security seems a little off, in my opinion, medical gets shit, science gets shit, service gets shit, supply gets shit, so why should security be special?

[IntentEldiablo]

2 hours ago, Fursamie said:

If this is a procedure  that applies for everyone then I'd be fine with it, but /just/ security seems a little off, in my opinion, medical gets shit, science gets shit, service gets shit, supply gets shit, so why should security be special?

because you wouldn't walk up to a police officer and give them shit would you?

[Gaty]

2 hours ago, Fursamie said:

If this is a procedure  that applies for everyone then I'd be fine with it, but /just/ security seems a little off, in my opinion, medical gets shit, science gets shit, service gets shit, supply gets shit, so why should security be special?

Because sec is who deals with the shitters and the antags of the round.

[Fursamie]

2 hours ago, IntentEldiablo said:

because you wouldn't walk up to a police officer and give them shit would you?

I understand that point of view but you just cannot apply it to paradise as a server. I could, as an assistant, break into science, and start working on toxins or xenobiology (mind you extremely dangerous research if put in the wrong hands both IC and OOC) and very few people would care(Source : Have done this before several times). The same goes for employees calling heads of staff curses and the like - if your boss did something stupid, you wouldn't call him a walking, talking pit of human feces, would you? No, but because of how roleplay is enforced here, you may on paradise - sometimes, with no IC repercussions(however a warning / ban may be coming your way if it isn't entirely IC).

2 hours ago, Gaty said:

Because sec is who deals with the shitters and the antags of the round.

As well as every other department. I've seen shaft miners throw hissy fits when scientists aren't always at RnD regardless if it's completed or not, and I've seen scientists curse out miners for not getting all / a majority of the minerals 15 minutes in the round. Shitters are everywhere, and antags are naturally drawn to departments like atmospherics (technically engineering), science, and security for either the possible mayhem or gear that can generate from these departments. Some others like supply and service don't experience it too much, however if you've ever played QM or Bartender, you will be able to recall a story when after leaving unattended for less than a minute, you come back to find everyone's partying in your backroom / supply office.

[Medi]

The frequency by which a person harasses a department is disproportionately leaning towards security. Yes, people will shit talk between departments but rarely if ever does this effect employment. We dont have a shortage of miners, scientists, qm, or bartenders. We do, however, have an increasing number of shifts where 1 security officer will be the only person at round start. It's been so bad that the shortage makes the round painful as there is no one to check the antags or tiders, thus they have free reign which ends the shift early. 

When other departments are THAT bad because of the culture, we can address that. Till then, the only real department hurting right now to really need this sort of SOP help is security. Now, I am not against expanding it to other departments but the severity and priority of focus is with security for a good reason.

[Allfd]

11 hours ago, Fursamie said:

understand that point of view but you just cannot apply it to paradise as a server. I could, as an assistant, break into science, and start working on toxins or xenobiology (mind you extremely dangerous research if put in the wrong hands both IC and OOC) and very few people would care(Source : Have done this before several times). The same goes for employees calling heads of staff curses and the like - if your boss did something stupid, you wouldn't call him a walking, talking pit of human feces, would you? No, but because of how roleplay is enforced here, you may on paradise - sometimes, with no IC repercussions(however a warning / ban may be coming your way if it isn't entirely IC).

1)  A ton of our game modes feature security heavily, yet they are frequently under/not staffed.  Inexperienced security players have a massive effect on the round.  Hence we have a actually need to fix the causes of the staffing issues.
2)  When Tide breaks into science and needs to be removed, who gets called?  Science is not usually the place people go to harass because its a slow shift.  Security has to deal with antags, people harassing them, and people harassing other departments.

[Medi]

As a note, I have seen a LOT of new players in both security officer and warden positions. These players are new to the point that they were not aware of the following:

- What is an EOC? (Warden asked me this)

- How do I Perma? (Warden again)

- How to use handcuffs.

- How to uncuff.

- How to have someone get off a chair/bed.

- Where is science?

- Where is engineering?

- What is SOP? (Reflected in them arresting random people for not crimes)

- How to not harmbaton.

- What is a wizard/what is an antag?

- Why cant I tase/stun a spider/xeno/blo /etc?

- Why should the warden hand out guns for the above antags?

- Why are crew members armed when there is a wizard/other major antag?

 

Some of these aren't even so much security related as they are core game concepts. Now that's not to say every officer/warden is this behind but it's been with surprising frequency that I have seen / heard this sorta stuff. Thus, I still believe that the time for the average person to play security roles needs to be increased. I believe that as more veteran players feel assured that they will have the support of other experienced or veteran players they will feel comfortable going into it.

 

[Medi]

@Kyet

 

Can we make any headway on this? Can we at Least increase the time requirements for positions like warden and head positions? Stronger leadership would at least be a plus, especially since we've had an influx of new heads who don't know how to do the basics of their jobs.

[Machofish]

As I understand it, the general issue we're talking about here is "The Security department doesn't have enough competent regular players; how do we change this?"

I can't guarantee I have a great answer, but as someone who plays HoS on a regular basis and, as a player occasionally described as "competent" by members of the community, I'll offer my two cents.

I'm going to start by saying something obvious: Playing in the Security Department is very tense and nerve-wracking by its very nature. Playing as Warden or Security Officer in the early round is tense and yet also very boring, as anyone in those roles essentially needs to wait for the antags to make their first move before the action can really start. Often times I'll see the security department start with 5-6 officers, only for 3-4 of those officers to jump into cryostorage before the first 30 minutes of the round have passed.

This is why I love playing HoS but cannot stand playing as a regular officer and can barely stomach warden: the HoS almost always has something to keep them busy from the start of the round to the end, but regular officers are often stuck wandering around aimlessly until they get that call of "H-H-HA-A-LP M-M-A-A-IN-T-T-T!", or they run face-first into an antag. Since antags are packed to the gills with easy methods of killing someone without warning, the average sec officer will not survive the latter scenario.

This isn't a situation that necessarily can be changed, nor am I certain that it even should be changed. But it's worth keeping in mind that the feeling of vulnerability and nervousness tends to make playing regular security a pain in the ass on its own. On top of that, nobody really expects much of you as a regular sec officer: You have access to basically nothing other than a few doors in the brig, your body armor is useful for essentially jack shit since EVA boots, area-of-effect stuns and stun resistance decide the outcome of more battles than a few points of reduced brute damage ever did, and default security officer uniforms are honestly pretty ugly to look at. These are conditions that, while unfortunate, can't really be changed without asking coders to invest exorbitant amounts of free time into designing new systems from scratch, so it's less stressful in the long run to just accept them as things that cannot be changed.

I cannot speak to what other "competent sec regulars" think about the above conditions, but I personally get around it by playing as HoS. That said, there's still quite a few circumstances and situations that appear repeatedly, and whittle down my enthusiasm to continue playing and often contribute to my decisions to go on hiatus from SS13. I'll outline a few below, and in each case, I've put some thought into why they generally irritate me and how I think small adjustments could make those situations easier to handle:

 

Situation 1: Unstoppable Space Assholes

The first situation I'll describe is when security has simply become outclassed by one or more antags. Either sec has lost too many officers in a single really bad engagement, or an antag has a particularly brutal gimmick that they used to systematically kill off security officers (such as a gimmick combining spacelube with holo atmos barriers and several extremely well-placed holes in maint leading into the deadly vacuum of space). The armory is empty, pod pilot's dead. Bonus points if the antag(s) in question continuously taunt security over the security radio channel using bowman headsets looted from dead security officers, additional bonus points if the antag(s) have killed the pod pilot and are camped out in EVA knowing that security cannot follow them effectively due to all EVA suits being taken. Extra-Bonus Bonus Bonus points if the antag(s) set up a security records console offstation and uses their stolen security IDs to constantly set everyone on the station to arrest with cheeky messages left in their notes. There's a specific player or two I could name who absolutely love to pull this every time they're selected for an infiltration antag role, but it's by no means exclusive to a few individuals. This is annoying when it's just one player doing it, but sometimes there'll be a round where it's two or three extremely competent changelings working together or two or three vamps who've reached fullpower. I have yet to see a security player get trapped in this sort of a situation without getting extremely tilted over it.

I have a suggestion on how these situations could be made more bearable, but I'll leave it to the end.

Situation 2: Mary Sue Edgelord Antagonists Shadowlings

Go to youtube, crank "In the End" (or any other Linkin Park song that puts a little too much work into being "dark and edgy") at full volume, and you have a summary of your average Security experience during a Shadowling round. Except the average Linkin Park song only makes you suffer for about three to four minutes while the suffering of a Shadowling round can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour and a half depending on how quickly the Shadowlings gather up thralls.

More than anything else, Shadowling rounds in specific burn me out and turn me away from Paradise more than anything I've experienced in this game. (Yes, that includes rounds where I've been transform stung, cluwned, laughter demon'd, ganked by vindictive AIs moments away from the shuttle, and mindswapped by wizards who devote the rest of the round to doing the most embarrassing shit imagineable while mindswapped into my character's body).

I list this as reason #2 as Shadowlings are considerably rarer than hyper-competent antagonists, but even one Shadowling round is more than any security player needs to put up with. I have had the intense misfortune of playing as HoS during multiple Shadowling rounds and not once have I ever had fun, even the few times where the Shadowlings didn't ascend and kill everyone, and not once have I ever seen a Shadowling round through to the end and seen, "OOC: Man, that shadowling round was so fun!". Nobody has ever said that. It's an antag type that, despite receiving several adjustments, was built upon horrendously and fundamentally flawed design principles.

You want an example of these design principles? When Shadowlings were first added, they could use their area-of-effect stuns on people through walls with no direct line-of-sight (they still can if I'm not mistaken), Shadowling enthrallment not only skipped over mindshields completely, but was also impossible to detect and impossible to reverse, Shadowlings could use guns with no restrictions, stun and enthrall crew members without even hatching first, and even shadowling thralls used to have a single target stun+mute ability of their own that lasted several times longer than the average stun weapon or slip--this particular thrall stun worked even when the thralls were blindfolded and cuffed.

Shadowlings were ported from another codebase, so our coders are not responsible for their initial state. However, while the coders have put an immense amount of work into making Shadowlings something that isn't, well, fucking bullshit, my experience of reading dchat and OOC after Shadowling rounds leads me to conclude that the only players who enjoy themselves during a Shadowling round are the Shadowlings themselves, and nobody else. My personal aversion to Shadowlings is enough that the simple possibility of being duped into playing sec during a Shadowling round often has me choosing to observe instead of play, or just to close BYOND altogether and find something off my Steam library rather than inflict a Shadowlings round on myself.

Situation 3: Surprise Adminbus

I initially really didn't want to make this its own entry for a few different reasons, but I still have faith that Paradise's admins prefer to hear feedback and criticism rather than let it fester silently until their players leave without a word, so I'll out and say it: Admin events often paint a giant crosshair on the security department that nobody in security is ready for, and having the department wiped out by admin-spawned or admin-controlled antags is not something that feels fun, ever. This has happened enough times in recent memory (as in, three times in one month) that I feel the need to point it out.

This includes more than one situation where the admins have admitted to spawning in as Terror Spiders and giving themselves free breaks such as spawning in swarms of NPC Terrorspiders and forcing eggs to hatch instantly and mature into full-grown terrors without any delay, another round where a Syndicate Infiltration Team was spawned with the intention of assaulting the Brig in particular (and a Terrorspider batch spawned directly after the Syndicate Infiltration Team withdrew, and no ERT was called because fuck me for liking security I guess), and a round where a 'pirate raid' event basically degenerated into "five syndicate agents and five nukeops in pirate costumes are given a green light to murderbone all of sec without warning."

I don't think tallying up grudges against individuals on the staff team is really worth the energy, and I don't want to burn bridges here, so I'll try to put this as directly as possible: I want to continue playing and enjoying Security. When Admin Events take that enjoyment away, I lose the desire to continue playing security.

Situation 4: Greytide?

To be honest, I don't actually find that I have a huge problem with greytide on the server at present. On an average shift, truly dedicated 'greytiders' never number more than 1-3 at most, and they're usually not coordinated with eachother, nor do they inflict undue harm. The admins, I find, are very active and effective when it comes to curbing more extreme and harmful Greytiders, while I perceive minor acts of Greytide as a sort of departmental inoculation, in which new officers learn how to avoid getting sucker-punched, blindsided and humiliated in safe non-catastrophic manner, without disastrous consequences for the rest of security.

For instance, if an officer repeatedly refuses to listen to their HoS and fellow officers telling them that, "Dude, wandering around with a taser in one hand and your active stunbaton in your other hand on code green is a bad idea" then by all means that officer deserves to get robusted and dumpstered like the securitrash they are: Having a tolerated margin of greytide just means that when this robusting and dumpstering inevitably happens, the greytider will usually turn in their stolen gear afterwards or limit the amount of chaos that comes from testing security's weakest link. If not for Greytide, then that same officer would be getting dragged off and straight out killed by an antag without anyone in sec knowing, granting that antag free stun weapons, a sec headset and a sec ID which generally paves the way for Unstoppable Space Assholes to occur, as described above.

For instance, I once had a warden who silently wandered off into maints on their own and tried to act like a security officer, silent and taser in-hand. A changeling promptly captured the warden, mindswapped into him, and nobody in sec knew until the Warden-changeling had already killed the detective and HoS, and released other lings from custody. Now if a casual greytider had intercepted the warden and given him a well-deserved asskicking before his fateful run-in with the changeling in maint, things probably wouldn't have descended into utter shit for the rest of security.

It is the job of HoS to identify and deal with incompetence in sec: If I can't rely on an officer to save themselves from a literally unarmed civilian using nothing but disarm intent, that same officer is going to be nothing but a liability and a dead weight in a crisis situation where, for example, a traitor-changeling with sleeping carp, an armblade, and several beakers of meth decides they're going to give the brig a fresh coat of red paint. That situation is cancerous enough to deal with when there's a competent security team; you don't need a useless assclown Officer tasering you in the back of the head because they hadn't been tested and washed out by the greytide.

Situation 5: Radio Abuse?

Much like I don't have a huge problem with greytiders, I've never really had a significant issue with people screaming about shitcurity over the radio. Don't get me wrong: it can get risky if you try to simply ignore it without justifying yourself. Honestly? If someone's having trouble because they're getting yelled at by the crew the advice I give them is "suck it up, buttercup."

Now, if someone is cussing you out on the comms, the worst thing you can do is lose your head over it. Nothing screams "I AM COMPLETELY IN THE WRONG AND FAIL TO JUSTIFY MYSELF" like responding to verbal criticism with physical force. It's just a pattern of human nature: How many oppressive regimes accidentally sparked violent rebellions because they tried to suppress non-violent protests using violence? If someone is accusing you of monstrous behaviour, the least useful thing you can do in that situation is gratify those accusations by acting like the monster they're accusing you of being.

So, as arresting someone for screaming "shitsec" is off the table, the best thing is really to challenge and defeat them in their own arena: public debate. If someone accuses you of being shitsec, ask them to explain why with specific evidence. If they explain why and their reasons are valid then, well, unfortunately that's kind of your fault or the fault of someone in your department that you need to address. If they're just screaming shitsec because they're incompetent self-centred morons or they just want to stir shit up, then you calmly and systematically point out all the gaps and contradictions in their logic before dismissively telling them to stop embarrassing themselves. There may be a temptation to descend into ad hoc attacks or fabrications, but make sure you stick as close to objective fact as possible, and demand as much from whoever's trying to insult you. If you make your point and they don't respond for a few minutes, don't press the matter or you'll just look conceited; they'll probably resume their verbal abuse in a few minutes once they think you're distracted, but the important thing is to take them down a few pegs in the arena of public debate, which seriously hampers their ability to gather much support.

If it's just a case that greytiders are causing shit and screaming verbal abuse at you and hurting your feelings because you stopped them from doing annoying stuff, just ignore them and process them in accordance to law. Do give them a chance to explain themselves. Speak calmly and politely, ask them for their side of the story. If they respond in kind or with any sort of eloquence or RP at all, then process them properly and maybe give them a few minutes off if they calm down and have any sort of plausible explanation for their behavior. If they give you an utterly shitty zero-RP response like "No U" or "FUCK YOUR MOM SHITCURITY CUNTS FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!" etc. then here's what you do: Laborcamp.

Actually, laborcamp has a very unique quirk to it that you should keep secret until it gets patched, but I'll get to that in a moment.

 

Making Security More Attractive

So, enough of the kvetching about what situations make players feel punished for being security. What do I think could help Security players feel better about playing and less likely to say 'fuck it' and play another role or another server? Well I'm glad I asked me, because I've got a few suggestions.

Laborcamp

So, back to 'laborcamp'. You know how I said it had an unusual quirk to it? Well, here's the deal: It's broken. The Laborcamp is intended to be a system in which prisoners with temporary sentences are forced to do mining, meaning that the only way they can return to the station is if they contribute quantifiable repayment to the station in the form of mining materials. Most greytiders, when sent to the mining camp, will die. This is because greytiders have a deadly allergy to being anything other than useless pieces of shit and the sheer idea of being forced to do something that could be described as 'helpful' in order to go back to being a useless fuck is enough to make them alt+f4.

Here's the rub, though: The laborcamp is literally broken. As in even if you give a prisoner a reasonable point quota, the laborcamp's shuttle airlocks are not set up properly to allow prisoners to return to the station even if they actually mine and gather minerals. It's basically a secret death sentence you can give to unrepentant greytiders, and I'll confess that if a greytider fails hard enough at RP'ing and has a clearly rule-violating name then I might end up sending them out there despite knowing full well that the laborcamp is in fact bugged and is literally impossible to complete a mining quota there in its current state without an officer actually going up to the labourcamp to tally the mineral stacks by-hand. I figure that the fact the laborcamp does not work properly is on the coder team and the admins, not me as a player, and I'll also send out an ahelp asking for permission to use the laborcamp for temporary sentences before sending anyone out there.

So, that's the first item on my wishlist: Make the laborcamp actually work properly. It's a great way to separate the truly malevolent greytiders from players who just went a little too far but are willing to calm down and mine some materials for science in order to return to the round. That basically solves the more severe greytide problems right there.

Note that Space Law NEEDS to be updated with a section that specifically states that laborcamp can be used for temporary sentences. Last time I tried to use the laborcamp to dispose of greytiders I got in an extremely pointless and frustrating argument with the HOP who insisted that the laborcamp could not be used for temporary sentences since spacelaw does not explicitly say so (despite the fact that prisoner IDs are supposed to have mineral quotas set for temporary labor sentences and why the fuck would the laborcamp be called the laborcamp if there is literally no incentive for the prisoners to do labor out there at all?)

Reduced Powergaming Stigma in Crisis Situations

So a few people have suggested giving security more special items and buffs to entice people to play: I strongly disagree. Not only are basically no coders willing to go through all that, but offering sec cool new guns, gadgets or mechanical bonuses is likely to attract exactly the wrong sort of players--namely, the ones running around with both their taser and baton in-hand on code green, ignoring radios, and wearing the default HoS armor. (As an aside, I'd love if donuts actually healed security like they used to before goonchem, but I know even that's asking for too much).

Generally, security already can get access to some incredibly potent gear by the end of a productive shift: Genetics powers, RnD guns and implants, and of course robotics usually has at least 1 durand if mining wasn't spawncamped by a colossus or ashdrake. It's my opinion that durands ought to be a bit of a contentious topic, seeing as it's basically impossible for the average antag to actually take down a durand without breaking server rules regarding excessive destruction, let alone rounds where robotics just decides to crank out 5 durands in a row and give them all to sec because they've got nothing better to do (I'd actually be fine with durands being nerfed slightly or at least having a higher resource cost to prevent this sort of mass-production from ruining an antag's round, but that's for another thread). I'd prefer if security had to rely on the competency, cooperation and goodwill of other departments to obtain strong late-game gear, as it gives security a much greater incentive to protect those departments from danger, stay on good terms with the departments, and keep them operational.

The main issue here is that there is a rather strong stigma discouraging security from 'powergaming' behaviour that means sec rarely gets their hands on this sort of lategame gear:  genetics powers like x-ray, utilities like bags of holding, accelerator lasercannons, anti-stun tooth pills don't see very frequent use amongst security, even when the antags have availed themselves of many of these sorts of upgrades alongside their starting antag abilities and powers. Back all the way to "annoying situation 1", it'd be considerably easier to deal with a gang of fullpowered vamps or rampant changelings if security had more leeway to escalate by getting antistun dental implants or collaborate with the other departments to cook up a few nasty surprises of their own to respond to the powered antags with.

 

TL;DR:

People don't play in security because officers dumb; antags smart. Shadowlings dumber than sec most times but shadowlings win anyways because designed by edgelord coder who never wanted his precious creation to lose even when played by imbeciles. Greytide annoying but greytide can be dealt with using laborcamp. To fight smart antags officers should be allowed to escalate and meme it up just as hard as the antags with goonchem meth memes and genetics fuckery if things get far enough out of hand.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Machofish

[Medi]

Appending to this that there be some additional restrictions on things such as Golems and other "new sentience" creatures preforming security duties as there is no way to ensure that they are in anyway knowledgeable or have the level of prior knowledge to be effective.

Still saying that letting newer players have access to security is dragging the entire department down. I know we're not trying to "scare them away" but at current, allowing new players who don't even know how to ctrl drag, how to recharge a baton, how to use a flashbang, how to properly and safely restrain people, or even how to assess a situation based on game knowledge. It's not that a new player is "bad" but they lack the knowledge required to actually do this job and that's something you learn with time, experience, and study. Jumping straight from assistant into sec officer is how we get so many ahelps, the stigma of of shitcurity, and such.

[dotagamer]

This is a very unpopular solution/suggestion from me, but personally whenever i wanted to try out new jobs I'm not familiar with i go to a small pop server that have similiar jobs to the one in the main server i played at just to learn from it, the benefit from small pop server since they have low amount of players they all kinda agreed anonymously to not acting harshly to other without reason, removing one of stress factor coming from in this case security job, furthermore there's less cases of problem to dealt with and generally everyone are kinda on the same side to not mess up the station too quickly, lastly on the antagonist since small pops mean small security number sometime even just 1, new player who are starting out security roles might be able to learn the pressure a lot of the jobs with simple objective in mind, to catch that antagonist without worrying about lack of coordination cause again, Low pops.

 

So what I'm saying is, ask them if they ever had experience as security on other server, if yes taught the basic of space law in here, if not well good luck and suggest them to either read or try it out on other server first <- (very dumb idea)

That's all what my retarded mind wanted to say

[Machofish]

On 9/1/2019 at 1:25 AM, dotagamer said:

This is a very unpopular solution/suggestion from me, but personally whenever i wanted to try out new jobs I'm not familiar with i go to a small pop server that have similiar jobs to the one in the main server i played at just to learn from it, the benefit from small pop server since they have low amount of players they all kinda agreed anonymously to not acting harshly to other without reason, removing one of stress factor coming from in this case security job, furthermore there's less cases of problem to dealt with and generally everyone are kinda on the same side to not mess up the station too quickly, lastly on the antagonist since small pops mean small security number sometime even just 1, new player who are starting out security roles might be able to learn the pressure a lot of the jobs with simple objective in mind, to catch that antagonist without worrying about lack of coordination cause again, Low pops.

 

So what I'm saying is, ask them if they ever had experience as security on other server, if yes taught the basic of space law in here, if not well good luck and suggest them to either read or try it out on other server first <- (very dumb idea)

As someone who learned the basics from another server, I actually will say this is decent enough advice.

There's a saying that goes, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Low-pop servers make for excellent learning areas since most of the people playing are still learning the basic mechanics of the game, and there's less overall pressure to deliver. Systems that are considered the bare minimum for competent Security here:  like knowing how to use the security records to set wanted status, knowing how to identify mindshield implants, knowing how to use tracking implants, would make you seen as a robusting God on some lowpop servers. Furthermore, less players means fewer distractions on sec's plate at any given moment. Something as simple as checking a guy's PDA for a Syndicate telestore uplink was held up as an apex of competence.

Of course, Para is a unique server and not everything carries over, but I can recommend using lower-pop servers just to figure out things like how to avoid tasing your own teammates in a fight, how to avoid getting blindsided by less-intuitive game mechanics (such as anyone hiding in a locker will get a free hit if you open the locker at close range), knowing how to equip and activate internals in the event of a gas leak, that sort of thing.