[Make blob cores un-telesci-able]

 

Well, yeah. Pretty much anything is possible code-wise. You could make attempting to teleport anything near a blob spawn psychedelic technicolor pandas who make anyone who looks at them vomit rainbows.

 

The question isn't 'is it possible?' but 'is it a good idea?'

 

[Make blob cores un-telesci-able]

I think the idea is mostly to teleport bombs onto the blob, not yourself.

[New Baystation Code of Interest]

 

A science borg is completely pointless.

 

Lets replace all squishy humans with cyborgs because why not amirite?!

 

That argument might have a lot more weight if the modules of the cyborgs were remotely balanced. They're not. They never have been.

 

The 'standard' module can do precisely nothing of use.

 

The mining module is pretty much exactly as good as a miner.

 

The engineering module on the other not-hand-because-we-can-never-let-cyborgs-have-hands-because-reasons can (a little shakily and with a lot of running around) replace two entire multi-person departments.

 

If people wanna play a Science robot, let 'em play a science robot.

 

IPC's already exist. Robots have taken your durn job already, and did it while having a big TV screen with a bright pink heart on it for a head.

 

[arrivals station.]

Just have them get despawned. When they log back in, they pick "Join Game" a second time and end up in a new pod.

[arrivals station.]

 

One option is to just create say, ten pods, and spawn people in the pods. The pods just have a computer that launches them in response to the code.

 

Have people despawn if they're inside the pods for more then a minute.

 

No SSD. No spawn camping. No bottleneck.

 

[Toxins - Land of Excellence]

 

Isn't the whole point of Toxins in the first place to have it explode every round?

 

I thought that was what it was there for.

 

[Nuke Ops]

 

NFI how possible it is - but what about the oldest account is leader?

 

What about rank priority by the total number of times you've been a newcop?

 

Winning counts as double.

 

[Seed of Nar'Sie; Cult Change Proposal]

 

Yeah I made the Mask. I ended up not finishing it for a variety of reasons. It's literally in debug mode on this server, none of the powers are finished, none of the abilities are balanced, I think you can only speak once every five minutes or something.

 

I'm amazed it's on this server. I submitted it to Bay, like a year and a half ago, mainly so that the work I did on the camera networks wouldn't get lost. I have no idea how it made its way here.

 

[Seed of Nar'Sie; Cult Change Proposal]

 

You do realize that the mask already does most of that stuff right? Like, it sees through runes and cultists, it can talk to cultists, that kind of thing.

 

It's not finished by a long shot, but it already does the thing.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

Also, the other departments do their damnedest to eliminate awful medic/engies/scientists. That happens less often in security and bad officers are often supported by the rest of the department.

 

That's one of those tricky things. If every time you did anything in medbay (treated an infection, healed a burn) you got people shouting over the radio that you were horrible and needed to be fired, it wouldn't take long for doctors to start filtering that kind of feedback in exactly the same way that security does. The signal to noise ratio of complaints about various departments are not equal. You have to screw up spectacularly badly for someone to complain about you if you're a shaft miner.

 

Everything you do as security, including doing your job 'correctly', is cause for complaints. It's very challenging, as a member of security, to determine if the person complaining has a legitimate grievance against a fellow officer or is just fucking with you and trying to cause trouble.

 

[Body Language]

 

Perhaps not a visual indicator, but it might be a good idea to show their intent when they're examined.

This seems like better way of doing it without making it really easy that defend yourself before the attacker gets a chance to attack.

 

That is kind of the idea. Blitzing a single person would still be possible though of course (byond has low priority for icon propagation).

 

The main thing that I want this for is crowds. If I walk into the bar and there are twelve people there, a situation that happens paradise sometimes, and something is happening, it would be nice to be able to quickly understand that those three guys over there are fighting, and that guy is choking that other guy to death, but the three people by the kitchen are just spectating, without having to read the chatspam for attack messages and match names to mouse-overs.

 

[Body Language]

 

So, had a thought today. Might be terrible, thought I'd throw it out there.

 

One of the reasons that stun powers are so amazing in SS13 is that usually you can't tell when someone is going to try to gank you. There's no way of telling. In real life, people telegraph intent through body language. A person approaching you to shake your hand walks differently then someone coming to bash your head in with a rock.

 

We have the concept of intent in SS13. What if we had some kind of visual indicator, a tiny icon or something, when someone wasn't on help intent?

 

It would mean that people would only switch to harm/disarm when they were actually fighting, but that's probably a good thing. This would let you sort out who is actually fighting and who isn't in a crowd.

 

Wouldn't work perfectly out of the box, a lot of weapons will do damage when on help intent, but it might help.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

You can't win when you're in a catch 22. They're a lose-lose situation. That's what they are by definition.

 

You can't get out of them by being skilled, or knowledgeable. The only way to lose the least in those situations is to be lucky, to pick the option that, this time, is the least wrong one. Next time? The same option may end in catastrophe. The time after that, all options may be wrong. There often is no 'correct' option.

 

You can't know. You can only guess, and hope, and do your best.

 

By your definition, a good officer is simply someone who happens to be unusually lucky. Who, during the brief period of time that they're interacting with you, appears to have picked the right options.

 

I wasn't listing those possible rationales so you could refute their validity. I was listing those options because I wanted to show you that there are often reasons for things that appear at first to be meaningless.

 

An officer enters atmospherics and after an argument tries to arrest you. Why?

 

We don't know. You don't know. The only person who knows is the officer in question. Their reason may have been a bad one, it may have been against the out of game rules, or against in-game laws, but it existed.

 

I'm tried of getting dunked as a sec officer, but all the people who did that to me had a good reason for doing it. I even know the reason for two of them, they were revolutionaries, it was their job to dunk me. The third one? I'm not sure, but I'm going to trust that it made sense to them at the time.

 

SS13 is, ultimately, a game about incomplete information. That's it's strength, the engine that makes the whole thing work. However, this has the unfortunate habit of causing us to paint other players actions as arbitrary, idiotic, or cruel because we lack the context necessary to understand their decision making.

 

EDIT: I'm pretty sure that if Security was better able to convey that context, to other security members and, most importantly, to the rest of the crew, most of these problems would go away. In addition, it would become far easier for security to police itself and eject the chucklefucks who are really just there to fuck with people.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

I'm not even sure who you're arguing with at this point davidchan, or what you're trying to get at.

 

You don't seem to be really talking to me, and if you think you are, we're definitely talking past each other.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

Somehow, I've had them break into atmos (or the idiot AI would them in) countless times. After walking through the atmos maint door into the control room, I even had an office behind me just walk into the doorframe.

 

I yelled at him to get out of a secure area. I screamed at him to get out of a secure area. He then tried to nail me with a stun baton. So I disarmed him, stunned him and then threw him out of atmos and chucked his baton into disposals.

 

Ah, see I think this is where we get to a very interesting part of this problem, because I imagine, were you to ask the security officer in this situation, their summary of events would be much different.

 

You portray their actions as without intent. You're there, doing your job, and they randomly wander into a secure area for no reason, and then randomly attempt to arrest you when you yell at them to get out.

 

That might have been what happened. I have seen some players who would do that, but I've seen a lot more who are simply unable to properly communicate their intent.

 

Security's information problem is immense. It is probably the source of most of their issues, and most of the issues that non-security players have with them. They almost never have accurate or complete information about what they're doing and they are terrible at sharing the information they DO have with the players they're interacting with.

 

So, in this particular case, with an officer coming in from maintenance into atmospherics, what could they have been doing there?

 

Here's the options I can come up with off the top of my had:

 

 

• The officer was responding to a call for help. This call for help might have happened ten minutes ago, while you weren't there. Security is not good at responding quickly to calls for help over the radio. They should have communicated this, but your immediate hostility causes them to think that you're the cause of the call for help.

   

• The officer was ordered to go to atmospherics by a superior. Chances are, they were not told why. "Sec to Amos!" says the Captain, and then vanishes into the Command ether and stops responding to the security channel. There may be no reason, the Command Staff who issued the order may have been working off of outdated or inaccurate information, but orders are orders, so Security goes to Atmospherics, and your immediate hostility causes them to think that you are the reason they were ordered to go there.

   

They're responding to a suspicious sound, such as a flash on a Rev round, or sounds of violence and they have inaccurately determined that they're coming from atmospherics when they're really in the janitors closet or the paramedic station. They should have communicated this, but your immediate hostility leads them to think you are the cause of the problem and are trying to cover something up.

 

They are in hot pursuit of a known hostile and either the hostile has given them the slip, or has ducked through Atmospherics without you noticing. They should have communicated this, but your immediate hostility leads them to think you're either in league with, or ARE the hostile in disguise.

 

The officer is responding to a call in engineering and is cutting through Atmospherics to save time. This is a dumb thing to do, and probably shouldn't be done, but it is a reason, if not a very good one. Their reaction to your hostility in this case was inappropriate, but waiting for an explanation might have been helpful on your part.

 

The officer is a chucklefuck and is doing it for no raisons. This is the option you've selected, and is typically the option that people select when telling stories about security. It is the least charitable option. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it isn't the case most of the time.

 

 

To end this rant....being ok security really isn't hard. Not being shitcurity is a simple thing as well.

 

You acknowledge all those catch22's I listed, right? Not being shitcurity to you will often mean being shitcurity to someone else.

 

What if they were told you were a traitor, and waiting to explain everything means giving you time to flood the station with lethal plasma? That's pretty shitcurity to the guys in the bar who are now choking to death.

 

What if they are doing the dumb thing and cutting through Atmos to get to someone being beaten to death in engineering? Waiting to type out an explanation to you means that they get their head bashed in. That's pretty shitcurity to the dead engineer, isn't it? He called for help five minutes ago!

 

This is not an easy problem to solve. It is not a simple thing.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

This isn't usually a matter of 'Ask first, shoot later'. The three times that I was killed while trying to talk people into an arrest, it went something like this.

 

"Excuse me, sir. You're under arrest. Please drop what you're holding and come with me."

 

"What? Why? Where's your proof?! I'm innocent!"

 

And while I'm typing, "You are literally standing inside EVA wearing a stolen space suit while your job is bartender. Two people called out over the radio that you were breaking in and you're wearing protective gloves. This doesn't exactly need Sherlock Holmes to figure it out."

 

They shove me, or hit me with a stun-prod, and then I'm on the floor where they introduce me to Mr. Cable-Cuffs and Mr. Toolbox-To-Face.

 

I may just have had a run of horrible luck, but it felt like people would ask for an explanation specifically so I would start typing and then attack me while I was unable to defend myself.

 

I have to admire their strategy, but I don't feel obliged to keep playing into it.

 

[Comm upgrade]

Ahhh, my bad. Working on old data apparently.

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

It's bad form, yes, but it does cut down on the 'me getting horribly murdered' part. I rather enjoy cutting down on that part. It's a pretty crappy part.

 

You'll notice that the 'experience of resistance' I mentioned happened while I was trying to not do the bad form thing, it happened while I was trying to talk. If I were getting lethal push-back all the time for stunning and cuffing people, and having an easier time doing otherwise, I would gladly do otherwise, but I don't, so I don't.

 

Instead, I get lethal push-back when I try to be Officer Not-A-Jerk, which means the incentives system for security is badly broken. Theoretically, the optimal way to handle any given situation, such as an arrest, should be the most interesting and enjoyable for both parties.

 

But it isn't.

 

[Suggestion for an addendum to rule 5]

 

Hmm... a cheap tool that just removed entry requirements from a door might be interesting. Like, you hit the door with it and now anyone can go through that door, like the public doors in the hallway or library. You could make it fixable by pulsing the ID control wire.

 

It would be identifiable, but not immediately so, and more subtle then the crypto.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

Always tell someone what they're charged with, preferably before you arrest them.

 

Emphasis mine.

 

I used to do this, then I got dunked and brutally murdered three times in four rounds doing this, so now I stun and cuff before informing people that they're under arrest and what they're under arrest for.

 

It makes me feel like a jerk at times, but I am really sick of being brutally murdered while I'm trying to explain the charges.

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

am a helpful and productive crew member."

 

I still got bloody arrested even when doing that.

 

Ah! Now this is interesting. When that happens to you, what are the reasons given for your arrest?

 

Are there any at all?

 

[Good Security is too rare, and here's why]

 

That sounds hilarious! And insane! I'm sorry I missed that round.

 

My experience with security has been... not great. I'd never played it before about three weeks ago, and then I tried to play it at least once a day to try to figure out why it's awful.

 

And it is pretty awful. There are not a lot of bright points in playing security.

 

I’ve been trying to catalogue what people complain about, without trying to figure out why. I think people offer theories of why this stuff happens too often, without really paying attention to the specifics of what people are complaining about.

 

Here are my lists so far.

 

People tend to complain about security for the following reasons (and we’ve seen most of these in this thread):

 

• security arrested me for a reason I feel was illegitimate (no evidence, crime wasn’t really a crime, it was my first offense for a minor crime and I should have been let off, I was being framed, it was part of my job (engineers hacking doors is a big one for this))

• security’s punishment for a legitimate arrest was too high

security’s punishment for a legitimate arrest of someone else wasn’t high enough (they let a murderer go after ten minutes when I gave them all the details and the bloody knife!)

security obeyed orders from the command staff when they were dumb (arresting everyone who is standing up)

security disobeyed legitimate orders from me, a member of the command staff, claiming that they were dumb

security was too slow to respond to my call for help

security was too fast to respond to someone else’s call for help (valid hunting!)

security treated me or another prisoner badly

security didn’t roleplay with me when they were arresting me, they just stunned and cuffed me without saying anything

security didn’t display mastery of their own mechanics (taser over flash, tried to use a stun baton in a brig cell, didn’t know how brig timers worked, didn’t know how security records worked)

security prioritized arresting me, while I was committing a minor crime, when a major crime was being committed elsewhere

security was unable to protect the station from the antagonists

security was too good at protecting the station from the antagonists, leading to a boring round in which not much happened (vox and vampires represent!)

 

 

Members of security tend to complain about other members of security for:

 

 

• losing track of criminals

• losing track of prisoners

not updating security records when bringing criminals into the brig, meaning that nobody knows what they’re in jail for

not updating security records when releasing criminals, so Beepsky stun-cuffs them the second they leave

spending too much time updating records

not collecting the evidence at a crime scene

not handling evidence properly (lockers, labels, evidence bags)

spending too long handling evidence

not responding to reported crimes

everyone responding to a crime in one part of a station while a crime is being committed in another part of the station

not knowing space law

knowing space law when the person complaining does not know space law

arguing about space law with a prisoner when it’s ambiguous (it’s always ambiguous)

arguing about space law with another member of security when it’s ambiguous (it’s always ambiguous)

asking the Warden to handle prisoner processing and sentencing

not asking the Warden to handle prisoner processing and sentencing

spending too much time trying to get the Captain or Head of Security’s permission to sentence capital crimes

not waiting for the Captain or Head of Security’s permission to sentence capital crimes

responding to crimes ten minutes after the crime has been solved

not talking on the security channel about what you’re doing

talking on the security channel about what you’re doing too often

not working with a partner because patrolling individually is a good way to get dunked

working with a partner when you should be patrolling individually because you can’t cover enough of the station if everyone is in pairs

fighting an antagonist without proper gear

waiting to get the proper gear before confronting an antagonist

 

 

There are ways, I think, of solving or mitigating most of these, but with with the way things stand right now it’s pretty painful.

 

Notice all those catch 22’s?

 

Playing security is a double bind, whatever you do someone is going to be angry with you.

 

[Local anesthetic]

 

well i did not thought about that.

in medieval times they use to bite on stuff instead of anesthetics. mostly because they had none.

that could be used in a gehto surgery

 

but the again, surgery should not be a gamble.

 

Hah! Oh my god yes! You could use your belt! In the cowboy movies they always bite either a bullet or a belt.

 

[Local anesthetic]

Theoretically, trained surgeons that know what they are doing would also know to not do open heart surgery or reset broken bones without some method of pain relief. Right?

[Local anesthetic]

You could just make it take way longer and introduce the possibility of failure. Ghetto surgery already does this so it would only nerf legit surgery done with no anesthesia.