The HoS - The Horror of Security

[EmilyFontaine]

I play a lot of security. A lot. You may have seen me around as Cherry Waves, often playing as the Head of Security. It's a thankless, stressful job that, I for some reason, love above all else on the station.
If you've played security, or ask security, you'll often hear stories about what they hate, or fear, the most about working security, and sure enough, I also have something that I hate/fear the most.

If you've seen me around, you'll probably have heard me moan about certain antag roles that I loathe going up against as security.
Let's take vampires, for example. You hear the stuttering call for help over the radio, followed by silence. Twenty minutes later, and there's a powered vampire running around, and he has the tasers from two of your officers. This is followed by a chase through maintenance, sometimes spanning an entire shift. Security dreads vampires, not out of fear of death, no. Death is sweet release. They fear the vamp because of the predictability. Yet this is still not the Horror of Security.

Another one is cultist. Loud cultists are interesting and fun to deal with. Stealthy off-station cult? Not so much. As security, you have no reliable way of dealing with them, other than trying to pick them off on station when they pop out. Like whack-a-cultist. Sure, you can send the pod pilot out on a search, followed by an expedition force, who then get slaughtered due to the poor planning of your boss (me). Not to mention the absolute mess processing turns in to. Three cultists in at the same time, and one officer is left behind to deal with them? Not great, especially when they're all miners who, if deconverted, rush back to Lavaland to "do their jobs," only to get reconverted. And that's if you even know they exist. You might just patrol the halls, thinking you're keeping the peace during an extended round, until suddenly Nar'Nar pops out from beyond the veil of time and ruins your lunch date. Yet again, this is still not the Horror of Security.

"Enough foreplay, Fontaine, get to the point."

The TRUE Horror of Security is -drumroll- The Warden.
The Warden is an unpredictable beast. Vampires are predictable, and to a certain extent, so are cultists. But the insane machinations of the bald-headed Warden are beyond mortal comprehension. Every shift I start as a the Head of Security, I don't worry about cultists, vampires, nukies. Any of those have the power to put me out of my misery. No, I hope for a Warden that, isn't necessarily incredible, just not a mouth-breathing troglodyte who hasn't even bothered reading a single line of Space Law. To avoid coming off as an elitist, let me give you an example.

To clarify, most of us know how to identify the wild Warden that doesn't play by the rules. It's easy. Are they on the secway, zooming around on the station on green, swinging their baton and brandishing their taser? He's the Warden of your nightmares, and he makes his own laws. This is a story thread, so naturally here's a story. This one is recent.

It's Vampires. We heard the call for help in science/med maintenance, as is the standard. We rush there, Vampire is no where to be seen, but thankfully the victim is alive, although a panicky mess. Time goes by, and the vampire increases in power. Not much time, mind you. Like fifteen minutes. Now the Vampire is spotted in it's natural habitat of sci/med maints again, and the Warden judges that no other man on the station is up to the job. He rushes out, ignoring his trusty Secway, as it'd only get in his way. He reaches his target, and is ready to dispense justice. Except, of course, he doesn't. He dies. Alone and unafraid in medical maintenance. His body is easily recovered, and even his ID, to the great surprise of everyone. So we just revive him and move on, right?
Nope. I keep his ID on me for safekeeping, and to swiftly demote him when he makes his return. Except he doesn't. I ask the officers if they ever encountered him after his tour of medbay, but no luck. He's not even on the cryosleeper logs. We brush it off, there's other things to deal with. Then an entire HOUR later I get a call from the HoP. The Warden is asking for his job back. I go there, and sure as hell, he's standing there. With half an hour left of the shift, I ask him where he were for the last hour. He claims he was asleep. No one I asked knew where, and he was too busy asking for his job back to clarify further. I inform him about the added workload with no Warden, how I felt about it, and declined his re-employment.

I have quite a few horror stories from playing Security, and largely they don't feature antags. They're the character who gets a laugh-track when they enter the door. Most of them even star me as king moron. If you read this far, let me know if you want to hear more, or share your own Horror of Security.

[WingedYordle]

Would love to hear more.

[Kyet]

On 8/27/2020 at 11:12 AM, EmilyFontaine said:

Now the Vampire is spotted in it's natural habitat of sci/med maints again

More seriously:
https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/13765 should increase the experience requirements for wardens in a way that decreases the odds of bald wardens.

You have a department management console in your office that lets you demote members of your department. You can even transfer them to Civilian, which frees their job slot and lets you get a (more competent) replacement from CC. You can even do this using their ID, while they are dead, and put their demoted ID back on their body, for a demotion they cannot resist.

You can also just offer them a job transfer to sec officer "so they can go out there and go after CRIME". May not keep them alive but will at least reduce the chances that EOCs get armory access.

 

 

[ZN23X]

On 8/27/2020 at 7:12 AM, EmilyFontaine said:

Now the Vampire is spotted in it's natural habitat of sci/med maints again,

This line made me laugh so heartily I startled my dog

My greatest horror story in security is kind of the opposite. When I'm HOS I don't mind having a bad Warden because I can get rid of them and replace them fairly easily. What I HATE is when I'm like "Not in the mood for HOS right now. Yup...I'm gonna set Warden to high and just hang out managing the brig" It's probably my favorite thing to do in this game. Except there's one catch. I'm fully aware that I'm blindly going in having no idea what I'm getting as a HOS. Knowing that if there is no HOS or a bad HOS that it will eventually disrupt my serenity. 

My favorite rounds ever are when I get to be the warden for a HOS like Cherry

I have a similar thread from YEARS ago I posted in a similar thread telling some  of the stories of me as noob security and a few interesting stories I entitled "Tales from Shitcurity" 

Spoiler

There are some good stories early on but this thread eventually turns into people just shitting on security/

I'm at very least sharing THIS one here because its my favorite...I call this one "The Pimp Warden"

Spoiler

 

I'm playing as sec and we don't have a warden long enough for me to volunteer. I get my ID changed from pilot to warden, but the HOP doesn't close the warden slot so within 10 minutes another warden shows up. Can't remember his last name but his first name was Ricky. I meet him in the wardens office to give him a rundown of what's been happening, he opens his locker, points at me and says "BITCH! GIVE ME MY PIMP GLOVES!"

I'm thinking great...another asshole warden who just wants to be a glorified officer with cool gloves. I give him the gloves and beg him not to be bad at his job. He's just like "BITCH I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, DON'T ORDER ME AROUND, I OWN YOU"

Oh lord...I go to the HOP and revert to pilot. This warden is acting very questionable. I run into him walking around the ship and his title has been changed to "Pimp" and he points at me as says "Hoe, how are you supposed to service customers in all that armor?" (Was wearing my EVA) I'm like "Are you fucking kidding me?" Tell him to get back to the brig and do his damned job. I inform the HOS and captain of his antics and the round proceeds with him continuing this routine, butting heads with everyone in Sec, various complaints about him doing a bad job to which he argues "You bitches may not understand my methods, but I'm really INSPIRING you to work harder"

HOS either dies or cryos...can't remember, Captain asks me to come be promoted to acting HOS, Ricky argues it's his job per SOP. I'm mortified by the notion of this fool being HOS so I protest, but IAA gets involved and the Pimp is now our HOS. He does this routine where he literally refers to officers as his "product" and criminals as "customers" and keeps complaining that he shouldn't have to service customers  (process prisoners) and that his hoes (officers) aren't doing thier job.

At this point I've had enough and I AHELP because this is just absurd. I explain a routine like this would be sort of acceptable for a greytide but we can't have something as important as the warden and especially the HOS acting like this. I was fairly new at the time so wasn't aware something like this could be handled IC. I beleive the captain was one of the admins so we end up going through a process IC where he gets demoted...forcefully...and that's pretty much that..

 

I also understand that a higher playtime limit will HELP reduce the number of bad HOS and Warden but I seriously think we could raise the cap of HOS to 100 hours and it still wouldn't be enough for some people.

...but anything helps.

Edited August 28, 2020 by ZN23X
edits edits and moar edits my god

[Mitchs98]

I'm not sure which story I laughed my ass off about more. Tetra's or Cherry's(Though it was me that found the Warden and everything not you >:C...unless this was another round in which case carry on.).

Also in the running would probably be this one Warden that came into the bar carrying as much(maybe all) of the armory that he could on his person, stating that it was safest with him. It was great.

[EmilyFontaine]

14 hours ago, Kyet said:

More seriously:
https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/13765 should increase the experience requirements for wardens in a way that decreases the odds of bald wardens.

You have a department management console in your office that lets you demote members of your department. You can even transfer them to Civilian, which frees their job slot and lets you get a (more competent) replacement from CC. You can even do this using their ID, while they are dead, and put their demoted ID back on their body, for a demotion they cannot resist.

You can also just offer them a job transfer to sec officer "so they can go out there and go after CRIME". May not keep them alive but will at least reduce the chances that EOCs get armory access.

 

 

I don't know why I always forget about that console. It's been there for years.