NT Rep/Law Dept Policy Change

[Streaky Haddock]

 

Creation of a Law Department

 

The Law Department technically already exists. Though it's not an official department,the Magistrate and IA Agent/Lawyer/Public Defender are already completely outside of the Chain of Command and are their own self-contained capsule of unbiased judgement.

I just want to make it an official department just for clarity's sake. I also want to change IA's relationship with Command, and for that, I need to discuss changing the NT Rep's relationship, too.

 

Magistrate's Role

 

The Magistrate I feel would remain largely unchanged.

They deal with sentencing, although I think that the Magistrate's stated role to only judge only Major Crimes is impractical and seldom followed. Magistrates shouldn't interfere with minor crimes since it's not worth doing, but sentences that would otherwise exceed 20 minutes should warrant a Magistrate's attention, because 20 minutes is a sizable chunk of play-time and you'd better have got it right.

 

The Magistrate will also remain in charge of Internal Affairs, assuring their quality and effectiveness. The Magistrate must also review all completed

cases but is not to interfere with Internal Affair's work. The Magistrate is also the authority figure IA bitch to if they're ignored.

 

Central Command should be faxed before a Magistrate is recruited from the Cyberiad populace

 

 

Internal Affairs' Role

 

Internal Affairs' role will change slightly. They will still represent crew-members in cases where Imprisonment or Execution is a likely outcome, they'll still investigate cases of incompetance/shittery and resolve disputes between crew-members peacefully. They'll still be able to request job bans to admins, and recommend terminations to command.

 

However, I want to restore the IA's purview to Command. Before the NT Rep was implemented, they had free range over everybody with the caveat that they couldn't act/investigate unless A) they were asked to or B) the shittery was so massive and colossal that it couldn't be ignored.

This will give IA the power to investigate Heads once more, although it will take this ability away from the NT Representative.

 

In addition, Internal Affairs Agents will no longer be civilians. They will not be Officers or Command, either. They will however become Central Command Officials, lending weight to their 'Agent' title.

 

In an attempt at Quality Control (I am determined for IA Agents not to require karma at all) Security must fax Central Command whenever a Central Command Official is arrested. Failure to take reasonable measures to inform Central will result in the termination of the HoS or Officer involved. Reason being that if an IA Agent got arrested either he or the HoS must be colossal shitbags, and somebody needs to be removed from their position. Particularly shitty displays will result in job-bans, but hey. Admins didn't need an IC reason to jobban shitty IA's or Sec beforehand.

 

NT Rep

 

The NT Rep's position will probably be changed the most. Instead of being a Regulatory role, they will be changed to a mostly advisory role. If you think of Internal Affairs as IC Moderators, the NT Rep will be the IC Mentors. They will accompany the Captain and the Heads around the station and give advice and recommend the best courses of action for a particular scenario.

Regular Crewmembers will be able to see them to ask for advice, or to help work out disputes (where IA will sort out disputes with authority and injunctions, the NT Rep will do it quietly and with tea).

The NT Rep will present crew concerns to them as Nanotrasen's Ambassador (which will be ignored) and present NT's concerns to the crew (which will not.)

Heads of Staff have the authority to install the NT Rep as the Acting Head of their department until they are available to lead it again.

 

Though the NT Rep will not be able to discipline and investigate, they do have one power available to them.

 

The Departmental Review. The NT Rep will have the right to go into a department, talk to the staff and have full length and breadth of any department. The purpose of the review is to identify understaffing problems, friction between staff, Head competancy, resource issues and any damage to the Department. The NT Rep will then send copies of this report to the relevant parties. (Security/IA if there's danger or a threat in the department, Engineering if there's damage, Psychiatrist if someone's mental etc).

 

If a Head is acting severely out of turn, the NT Rep must inform the Captain and Internal Affairs. If both are unable to investigate due to overwhelming workload, inability or death, the NT Rep is able to conduct their own disciplinary review. Faxing Central will be a LAST RESORT if they can't get the head demoted/removed through any other method.

 

[DZD]

The changes to the NT Representative's role are certainly interesting, although I'm curious if it still includes faxing periodically Central with reports on the state of the station.

[Streaky Haddock]

Yeah I'm not taking that from them, they need something to live for.

[Allfd]

 

I like the overall change and have a few thoughts on all three. Below is a combination of my understanding along with any thoughts on the changes.

 

In the interests of full disclosure I often play Magistrate and NT Rep.

 

I also was unaware the IAA lost any of its authority, more on that at the end in the section titled “Why I don’t think this will fix IAA.”

 

Magistrate

 

Magistrate out of the way first as I have the least to say on this. I think that outside major crimes the Magistrate’s involvement in sentencing should be at their discretion with the facts they have available combined with their good judgment.

 

Central command should be the only authority able to appoint a magistrate as a magistrate has great power to ruin a players rounds.

 

NT Representative/IAA Agent

 

I have always viewed the NT Representative in this advisory role however I feel that while this may be an issue of semantics the NT Rep does have an investigatory role, although one very distinct from IA or security and one which often will be a mostly paper based exercise utilizing reports from the IA office and other sources. I think you have captured the spirit of this nicely with the term “Departmental Review” this difference I think is best explained with a somewhat hypothetical example and I believe we may be using differing definitions of investigatory.

 

In the hypothetical case of a research director burning NT flags both the IAA agent and the NanoTrasen Rep would have an interest in the outcome of the investigation. The IAA should focus on determining guilt and the facts surrounding the act of sedition and if anyone else provided material support such as the lighter used or helped with access. The NT Rep should be able to investigate or preferably learn from the IA report whether any additional elements of the research department provided non-tangible support, displayed other forms of problematic disloyalty directed at the corporation, or appear unable to finish all allocated research projects.

 

Simply put in my understanding the IAA is concerned with space law and threats to life and property where as the NT Rep should be focused on loyalty and threats to NanoTrasen interests and station profitability. Even more simply stated, Law vs. Politics.

 

Obviously the NT Rep and IAA would have some interrelation, as I would assume the IAA would be doing most of the leg work and report writing with the NT Rep informed of any findings that would affect station profitability or effect crew moral/loyalty. For this purpose it would be nice if the fax machine did not require recalibration when sending memos internally.

 

I do not like the idea of any restriction of the NT Rep faxing CentCom, while they should not be stepping into the IAA’s role they are the liaison between NanoTrasen and the station for much of its day to day bureaucracy. If an agency problem exists between the interests of NanoTrasen and the interests of the command staff or station crew the NT Rep should ensure that CentCom is fully informed.

 

As for interactions with crew, primary point of contact should always be with department heads, the chain of command should only be bypassed when for whatever reason a department head is unavailable or has a conflict of interest. This is after all the purpose of a chain of command.

 

 

Why I don’t think this will fix the IAA

 

Until this post I was completely unaware the IAA could not investigate whomever they wanted or had any sort of caveats on their authority to investigate heads of staff. I was also under the impression that they had the ear of CentCom if you did not listen to them. My reference for this belief was the wiki http://80.244.78.90/wiki/index.php/Internal_Affairs.

 

As a NT Rep, Head, or Magistrate I routinely attempt to route any complaint through IAA and ask that they then send it on to CentCom. I do not like dropping everything I am doing every time someone complains about a head of staff. I would love to just forward every accusation against a head to IAA via PDA and have it off my plate, a professional well investigated report from an Agent is worth the word of whole departments. When it happens If I am in command I tend to make at least somewhat of a show of writing a report praising their work for CentCom and sending it along. I wish I got to do more of these, instead this is what usually happens in order of diminishing frequency.

 

1) IAA Agent not on crew manifest.

2) No response.

3) IAA Agent is in the brig for spacing the clown.

4) IAA Agent is now the clown.

5) IAA Agent is on the clown planet.

6) Response but no follow up.

7) Honk?

8) A well written report that is faxed to CentCom.

 

Mostly because of this list and the interactions with IA Agents it represents I do not support a mandatory CentCom arrest report for any unrestricted positions outside of captain.

 

I also do not think a drastic reduction of the authority of any other jobs not mentioned previously to support increasing the popularity of the IAA would serve its intended purpose. I have spent hours of game time writing reports as an IAA, Magistrate, and NT Rep. The most common response is silence. Instead I support a change that would enable the IAA agent to take maters directly to the captain and enable the captain to make decisions that would normally require CentCom approval if he has written concurrence from the Law Department, along with an acceptance that the IAA position is a role play intensive role and what attracts people to those roles can be hard to alter without unintended consequences.

 

Sorry for the unintentional length of all of this, to end.

 

Yeah I'm not taking that from them, they need something to live for.

As I see it the primary problem with IAA is that you can not go into it expecting anyone to answer your faxes, knowing this other players have little incentive to listen to IAA beyond good roleplay on the part of the IAA's player. As a player who enjoys playing NT Rep I would prefer not to end up in exactly the same boat.

 

[Scrat]

 

In response to the fact that IAA has slightly diminished power due to nobody ever listening to them, as well as IAA seldom or never getting a response, I would like to raise the point that faxes arent being replied to often because admins have a lot on their plate. Even though I'm only a mentor, I've been one long enough to see how stressful and round-consuming it is. I would personally like to see something done to ensure that faxes that are worth responding to are given replies, but the only thought I have in mind is a Karma Job, high cost, that answers faxes. Not a very good idea however.

 

More on topic, I always saw NT Rep as an adviser for the Captain and command team, as after all their goal is to serve NT's best interests. Personally I believe that IAA should remain as the investigation team for the crew as a whole while the Rep should ensure that the heads of the staff are correctly directing their teams and not making decisions that would burden NT.

 

[Streaky Haddock]

 

That makes sense. It's taken me a couple of days to respond to this since I was trying to find a way to counter both points, but eh. I think you're both right. I've always felt as though the IA's were forbidden from touching heads because the NT Rep was around, but I realise that I actually have no evidence or whatever to support this.

 

I, however, would still like to push a faxing for IA Agents arrest. Since i don't want to block them off to the public, but I definitely want to discourage IA shittery and I want to suggest putting them on tier with Officers and Heads to their standards. I want to make them more respectable as well, so people actually listen and trust them instead of viewing them as some whiny buttlord who hasn't got a grasp of space law and just wants to make their lives difficult so they can feel important.

 

[Allfd]

 

Mostly because of this list and the interactions with IA Agents it represents I do not support a mandatory CentCom arrest report for any unrestricted positions outside of captain.

 

 

In the inconsistent way my brain works I am now somewhat supportive of this concept in a sense that I think it could work, however I would like to see it more inclusive. Anytime a head of staff, IA Agent, Magistrate, NT Rep or Blueshield is arrested someone should probably notify CentCom that they have a somewhat senior level employee that in many cases appears to have a malfunctioning loyalty implant.

 

It is up to the admins with how they handle this but perhaps it would have positive results? At the very least it could in theory (depending on how the admins want to handle this) reduce the amount of loyalty implanted Self-Antagging.

 

The core issue still remains that this would require a fax to be responded to by the very busy admin staff. It may make some sense to explore opportunities to require chain of command concurrence on IAA arrests.

 

[Rumiluntti]

IAA are usually baldies that can't yet play as a sec officers due to the timer. It's been so for as long as I can remember

[Streaky Haddock]

Yes, I'm aware. Does IA have a shorter limit than Officer?

[Rumiluntti]

 

Yes, I'm aware. Does IA have a shorter limit than Officer?

 

It's been "a while" since I have seen the timers, but from what I remember, IAA does not even have a timer.

My knowledge is old and clouded, take with a grain of salt.

 

[Plotron]

 

When I joined the server, I could play IAA practically straight away. Then after a few days/a week it turned out that IAA was put on timer. It confused me greatly as I could no longer play my (back then) favourite role.

I honestly have no clue.

 

[Allfd]

 

I would like to raise the point that faxes aren't being replied to often because admins have a lot on their plate.

 

Having just completed a shift as IAA, this is what I now view as the core issue. No matter how much time you invest in report writing or investigations. Or how detailed and spell checked the faxes are, if nobody at CentCom responds you may as well be a civilian with a sec headset.

 

The admins are very busy with things arguably more important then responding to IAA faxes. I think any solution to IAA needs to involve solutions separate from CentCom. As it presently stands, IAA probably won't be high on my list of job choices due to the unreliability of role play experiences and general lack realizable purpose.

 

[Streaky Haddock]

 

Hm. Well, I always try to respond to faxes and here are my many quibbles with the system:

 

Faxes do not stand out fantastically from common radio, as it is written in green text, its stand-out features are the (PM SM JMP RPLY) links next to it.

 

If you miss a fax (which is entirely possible given an admin, observing or playing, will have speech, text, attack logs, msay, asay, dsay and ooc enabled to keep an eye on things) then the only thing you can do is scroll up. Faxes aren't archived anywhere. I thought that there was a fax machine at central that all the faxes were sent to, but I was wrong. You miss a fax, its gone for good.

 

Some people, myself included, freeze if we click on the SS13 chatbox. When it comes to adminhelps I use the player-panel-new, jump-to-mob/key verbs and admin-pm-key/mob verbs. There is no fax verb I can use to avoid clicking on the chat history (meaning I HAVE to click the RPLY link) and 80% of the time when I do that, my client freezes and stops responding and I have to relog. Once I relog, the fax is, once again, gone forever.

 

I made a suggestion for a Fax logging panel which should log every fax made from which office and by what ID and enable us to respond to them without having to click on the chat box. MarkVA said he'd look into it. Hopefully it's possible.

 

If a lack of CC response is the problem, then dealing with those issues would go a long way to addressing it.

 

[Sparkyninja]

 

Last round there I tried starting out as a more advisery Representative than a sit in the office one. Well, it gave good insight as to how you perhaps SHOULDN'T advise Command;

 

Round started pretty badly, CMO SSD on round start, included that in my opening fax. Then the Captain SSD'd, "advised" strongly that he be put in cryo, stripped, which happened. We also didn't have a HoS, which became important when the HoP pretty much flat out refused to take up acting captain

He was a traitor

The warden was then to be promoted to HoS and then straight away to Captain, which I didn't think would be the best, for the player playing the warden nor command (Considering someone playing warden basically never expects to end up commanding the station) So I advised a compromise, 50-50 in regular times, or HoS's sole commands in times of emergancy. I feel this kinda tied me to my fate however, as after this I didn't get a moment of time, outside of getting a termination reinstated due to a misunderstanding, to write down, sit back and advise as a third party. I felt I ended up becoming a major part of the decision makings of Command, such as a loylaty implantation, an execution(!) and several other actions throughout. I basically felt more like a Captain than a Rep, not an issue usually, but I didn't expect it for that round, so felt a little overwhelmed. The situation wasn't even alliviated by the arrival of a new Captain, who pretty much tossed around doing whatever fitted, checking in every so often but otherwise not being a fixer the station needed!

 

Sooo to Tl;Dr this little tale; I can see how being more advisery would be great to even mentor new Captains in and remind Command and indirectly though heads, other staff of their roles, however Reps in this role WILL find themselves drawn into actually COMMANDING parts of the station, by virtue of Heads relying too heavily on their advice.

 

[Cineic]

 

What i usually do as IAA, is that i make this freaking huge Status report paper. I go from department to department, interviewing people about the situation around the station. I ask simple questions like.

 

"How would you rate the overall security of the station/Do you feel safe on the station"

"How would you rate your co-workers, is/are there any particular person(s) in your team that is/are noteworthy?"

"How many meals/drinks/minerals/veggies have you managed to produce during this shift"

 

then i keep rolling around, writing down any good or bad things that happen around me (like HoP giving access to people without proper paperwork, When security officer uses too much force on cuffed person or when bartender/chef is being kind and serving people quickly). I usually just emote "Frank Anderson is writing something in his memo", then shake or nod my head, smile, fix my tie, cough etc etc etc. I let the people know that i am present, and let them figure out if they did something wrong or not. I am just an observer, who's weapons are pen, paper, fax machine and a cup of coffee.

 

I usually send my report to the NT rep (if there is one), and captain (if there is one), and then i usually ask them to review it together with me and then we will choose the best course of action. But captain is usually too busy, and he keeps running around the hallways with guns blazing but now and then i have had some good chats with NT rep. Then, if both of them ignore me, i write that shit down on the paper, and fax it to the Centcomm, and tell them that Captain is being a comdom, and NT rep is sleeping on duty. I rarely got reply from centcomm, but i usually just keep camping around the fax machine, and hope that they will send reply.

 

After writing multiple report, best quotes are

"i would rate science, Blown up/10"

"Captain is being a massive comdom.. again"

"Warden is out there, arresting people instead of watching over the prisoners"

"What do you mean there is something wrong with my grilled burned mess?"

 

My guidelines for IAA

- Observe and interact with crew. Note all the good and bad things that happen around you. Try to stay out of the harms way and stay neutral.

- Show your paper work to Captain/NT rep, and suggest the course of actions that should be taken to improve the situation on the station.

- Always tell/write the truth. You are loyalty implanted and you can't lie.

- Experiment and improve your paper work. Make the reports look neat and professional!

- Stock your office with food and drinks. At least you will have enough supplies to survive the shit storm that is happening around you.

- Write that fakkin report and fax that damn thing into space!