Machofish
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Posts posted by Machofish
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Cecilia Fleming:
Low-key rounds of loitering around the brig.
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"What's that, Lassie? Jimmy got stuck in an airlock?"
I am thoroughly against the idea of Vulps having a garbled DNA scanner on them. It would not only be a big step towards making the actual detective obsolete, but it would give the Vulpkanin a tremendous advantage when dealing with anything concerning antag roles. Unless you're referring to the boxed emergency injectors everyone gets at round start, the bundled downside of 'all stimulants are harmful' is far too mild and situational, compared to the bonus which is all-encompassing. Again, even if it did include emergency injectors, I'd prefer not to have a species whose special ability lets them stay two steps ahead when it comes to fighting or playing as any antag that relies on infiltration.
Even the default 'vulnerable to fire' debuff that the Taj and Vulps both share is a relatively situational debuff as it is. I wasn't even aware the Tajarans still had the ability to get themselves functioning nightvision, which seems more than a little absurd, all things considered.
While I agree the Vulpkanin shouldn't just be an alternate version of the Tajara, I disagree with these proposed changes at present.
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Of course, the underlying question of all this is:
While selectable traits or quirks could be interesting, are they really needed? Part of SS13 is that it is designed as an environment in which the social constructs carry primary importance: the game mechanics should be there to support the social environment, rather than the social environment being a backdrop for the game mechanics. This not only extends through discussions on these RPG-style 'traits' or 'perks', but also contributes to the generally dubious opinion this server's community holds towards proposals for new species. Considering the sheer volume of coding that would be required to add a trait system in, and to work out the subsequent bugs, etc., I would personally prefer to see greater depth in the jobs and roles available on the station, before we start exploring the idea of adding inherent character traits.
That being said, I'd be impartial to the idea if someone stepped up to code it.
I'd say if traits were implemented, the bonuses would have to be fairly minor, and very carefully considered, as others have said. Alternatively, I think traits could be presented in the forms of tradeoffs or a 'double-edged sword', in that a relatively minor bonus comes bundled with a severe drawback.
A handful of example traits:
Fast Metabolism: Chems in the bloodstream are consumed at an additional +0.5u per tick, and beneficial effects are felt faster; however, harmful effects are also processed faster, and take 15% more damage from harmful chems. Whilst good for medical chems, this also causes painkillers and autoinjectors to wear off faster.
Hypovolemic Shock: Blood loss from brute damage occurs 15% slower; however, bleeding causes additional stamina damage.
Dependency: All chems have their addiction thresholds set to 'medium'; this includes chems that are not normally addictive. (e.g. "GIVE ME A HIT OF ORANGE JUICE! RIGHT NOW!")
Surge Suppressor: Reduces burn damage received from electric shock by 15%; however, being electrocuted results in an extra +10 seconds of being stunned - this includes mild electric shocks that would not normally result in being stunned.
Word Salad: Getting stunned or heavily injured while speaking will no longer interrupt your text input with "-ack!" or "-glorf!"; however, speaking while under any temporary IC speech impediments - such as slurring and stammering - causes impaired speech to dissolve past the point of being even remotely intelligible.
Uncertain footing: Be 10% less likely to get knocked down with an unarmed punch or a disarm-shove; however, become completely unable to knock others down with punches or disarm-shoves.
Thin wrists: Struggling out of zipties, handcuffs, and cablecuffs takes one less tic; however, become unable to struggle free of aggressive grabs or choke-grabs.
Flinch: Receive 5% less damage from brute and burn sources; however, pain threshold is lowered by 20% (character collapses/falls unconscious from pain faster).
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So, good news and bad news: Bad news is that a windstorm caused a mass-blackout in my area. Good news is that I used that time to do more sketches rather than do something useful.
This looks maddeningly familiar - can't remember where from.
I was a little weary of Tristen when he first joined, but I think it's high time he got some fanart. As you may notice, I tried signaturing my own work - that starts and ends here. I figure if anyone genuinely wants this stuff, they can have it.
A variation on a familiar theme. I personally enjoy the challenge of drawing faces: relying directly on facial characteristics to differentiate the two characters, in spite of having a near-identical expression, clothing, sketch setup etc. was an interesting exercise.
I initially wasn't planning to add this one in - I usually don't trust my own sense of humor. Eh, might as well.
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One concern I have with this would be from conflicting expectations, or inconsistencies of what is 'convenient' and what is 'expected'. I've had more than one situation where situations or details that CC dog-piled in one round suddenly rate little more than a sidebar in another round. As it stands, it feels like CC tends to go against expectations more often than not: I can point to two different rounds of Vox raiders, one where CC directly ordered the unconditional execution of the Vox and the destruction of their shuttle, and another where CC threatened to BSA sec for attacking the Vox after they subverted the AI with the hacked law board they start out with.
If there was a comm officer job, I think they would need to thoroughly discuss the content of their reply faxes with the admins before sending it out. On that note, I'm under the impression that most of the admins see CentComm fax control as one of the highlights of receiving constant abuse and server threats over the ahelp system being a member of the server staff, and I'm not sure it'd be fair to take that away from them.
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Wow, no 'thralls are innocent' and not cultists? Honestly its better to kill the thralls since surgery is so damn hard to do to begin with. lets just take the tools from medbay, and bam, useless. Vox Raiders? Validhunt them.
Best option is literally to remove the law, it is bad. Shadowling Thralls, Shadowling, Wizards, Vampires and Changeling got magical abilities that can't be removed easy. This will not solve the issue of 'cheesing' for protection, just remove the law.
Before I start trying to nitpick, I think there is a strong underlying disagreement about the role space law should serve in terms of influencing security's actions, preferences for keeping people in the round, and - probably the most important - how sec would act in the absence of space law.
For the sheer benefit of the doubt, I'm going to assume that by saying "remove the law", you're referring to the proposed changes, and that you're not actually suggesting removing space law entirely.
First and last, the role of security, in my opinion, should be to preserve the crew and the station, and make sure everybody manages to keep doing their jobs without being interrupted by antags. By killing cultists or thralls outright, that is not facilitating the smooth function of the station. I'd draw an analogy to treating an infected wound by amputating the whole limb, or treating a psychiatric disorder with a lobotomy - sure, you've stopped the problem, but ultimately there's a net loss of value. Invariably, choosing to kill convertees rather than reclaim them is a sign of security being harmful to the smooth functioning of the station, and ultimately being hypocritical. As for Shadowling Chysalids and Wizards, they are already kill-on-sight. Preferring to kill players outright simply because the process for pacification is 'damn hard to do' is a sign that someone needs to get better at their job, not that we should start stooping to accommodate lazy and casually brutal behaviour from security.
Personally I feel that validhunting changelings and vampires would greatly reduce the RP content of the server. Characters are allowed to hold IC knowledge of most antags, which is already good enough in my opinion.
Sec still has a lot of trouble with being brutish and invasive even with space law keenly, explicitly, painstakingly telling them not to act like the MNU mercenaries from District 9. I do agree that trying to capture certain antags alive - changelings in particular - often proves to be considerably more trouble than it's worth. However, that is one of many challenges that sec should be able to handle. If they're unable to handle it, that's the fault of sec not being able to step up to the plate.
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I think the main attraction of this is the idea of swirlies having functionality.
-Loving the idea of de-converting a cultist by repeatedly swirlie'ing them.
-Loving the idea of extinguishing someone who's on fire using a swirlie.
-Loving the idea of lighting vampires on fire by giving them a swirlie in a holy water toilet.
Big concern about this is the possibility for exploitation, as I'm not aware whether or not toilets have an upper limit on the amount of reagents they can contain. Using a toilet as a source of infinite holy water could be a problem in that respect.
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Gray Tidingson for Captain honk but for real I'm serious about this one
Scoots for clown
Tristen Edwards for HoS
NOVA for Roboticist/Research Director
Jack Price for Chemical Researcher/Research Director
Heather Somna for Doctor
Willow Walker for Chaplain
Lala Lalira for Warden
Laskorreshkor S. for Officer
SHIP for officer; "
"ORION for officer
Spark 5.5 for AI
NYMPH for botany
Squishika for chemistry
Sirius for cultist
Nina Kurilyochov for Brig Physician/Medical Doctor/Surgeon(?)
Sergey Kurilyochov for Security Pod Pilot
Simon Grey for Chief Engineer/Regular Engineer
Garoon Garuda for engineer
Isaac Lifof for engineer 9/10 would watch delaminate supermatter again
David Buck for bellowing "FFFFUUUUUUUCK!" Atmos tech
Jonah Bright for Detective/Surgeon/Geneticist
Zeke Varloss for Bartender
Von Bon for CMO
Bulma Briefs for greytide
Alice Pierson II for NT Rep
Cy Roberts for NT Rep
Elliot Campbell for Civvie;
Carson Wilheim[sic] for Civvie;
WIllow Walker for RIIIIIOOOOOOOTT!!!
Greytide Unit Beta for civvie; "It's not like I want you to survive being lit on fire or anything! S-shitcurity!"
Kachihikiyahihachaka for Barber; "Is very skrexxy yaya?"
Slade for Trader
Nat Adams for Tourist
Kaukata Zikar for Blueshield
N'ildrask Vaalkom for Blueshield
Neri Nalvi for Pod Mechanic
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Personally, I think it would be good if law 404 still kept parole mentioned as a possibility - to be considered at the leisure of the appropriate acting authority. Additionally, I think there might need to be a small detail on vampires mentioned. If only to say that impromptu chapel-burnings or death by holy water are not necessarily NT-approved methods of eliminating vampires.
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I think regarding the '404' charge, there needs to be much more clarity as to what constitutes antag activity. If a traitor has been found with a used mindslave implanter in their pocket, does that count as criminal activity? If a traitor was found exchanging syndicate documents, does that count as a crime, even though there are no direct 'victims' aboard the station?
Additionally, I've found a lot of situations where antags have been identified, and let off the hook with a tracking chip even though they've committed mild-to-moderate criminal activity - assault, infiltration, attempted-but-failed murder, etc.
One major concern I have with the new space law is that identified antagonists now have no incentive to be co-operative or truthful about anything, because they know the worst that'll happen to them is parole - so long as they keep their mouth shut.
Personally, I'd like an adjustment to allow the Magistrate/Captain/HoS to permabrig a confirmed enemy of the corp, if there is enough evidence to establish Probable Cause linking them to high-profile criminal activity. In this scenario, the tracking implant parole would be considered only after the traitor has shown a willingness to confess and co-operate, or if additional evidence exonerates them from the crime.
Some moderately-salty examples from my own experience:
Traitor A is brought into sec, after being found with a Syndicate-encrypted headset. Traitor A gives up their PDA code, and admits to their sole and singular objective of stealing 28 moles of plasma. In this situation, Security should issue them a tracking chip, confiscate the PDA, and release them for parole. Instead, the magistrate demanded that this individual be recovered and permanently assigned to the labour camp.
In a more recent situation, Traitor B was brought into sec, having been initially charged with assault. When searched, Traitor B is found with a spent mindslave implanter and a set of syndicate documents. When questioned, Traitor B utters a string of slurs and expletive epithets towards sec, denounces them as incompetent, Crtl+V's "I'm innocent" 8 consecutive times, and refuses any and all responsibility for the illegal gear that was found on them. In this situation, Traitor B should NOT be going on parole: security is still in the dark about Traitor B's motives and intentions, and thus cannot assure the station's smooth functioning if Traitor B is released - particularly due to lack of information, let alone Traitor B's godawful behaviour. However, this result was that Traitor B was given a tracking implant, and released for parole.
Overall, the problem I'm seeing here is that the relative power dynamics have been completely inverted due to this law: Security receives more pressure to accommodate and reward suspects who act abrasive and shitty - meanwhile, Sec is also now encouraged to punish co-operative behaviour from antags.
As of this current change, security has no bargaining chips they can bring to the interrogation table. If I were caught as a traitor on the current Space Law and dragged into processing, I could get myself released by nothing more than the sheer virtue of ctrl+v'ing the words "fuck off" in response to each and every question.
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More simply, I think putting someone into a choke-grab (kill) should stop them from screaming, as well as speaking. While I think it would be more logical for duct tape to be used as a gag, the idea of being able to make ghetto-gags would be a little too overpowered, seeing as they would be much faster to use and harder to escape than a choke-grab.
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One thing I've noticed about Araneus is that it'll defend itself against some hostile mobs, such as space carp, who attack first. I think if Araneus's mob code was adjusted so he could be equipped with a leash, and would automatically attack hostile non-crew such as: Xenomorphs, Cortical Borers, Cult Constructs, other spiders, mice, lizards, etc., it would be a good way to give him a use without jumping through too many hoops in regards to server code.
As much as I like the idea of him being a Beepsky variation, I feel as if Araneus would need his own niche in that respect.
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I personally don't agree with the idea of permitting internet slang to be used IC. I see it used in deadchat and OOC quite often - which is fine seeing as that generally isn't meant to be involved in the round itself.
You're better off just not typing it IC'ly, I'd say.
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Name: Laskorreshkor Ssesiskaklas
Commendation: Medal of Loyalty
Reason: For showing exceedingly refined powers of perception, and steadfast commitment to the appropriate restoration of NT Command structures during a crisis situation.
Actions leading to Commendation: During a stint aboard the NSS Cyberiad, a member of the space wizards federation was apprehended single-handedly by Luigi Belducci, the blueshield, when the wizard was caught off-guard while changing their wizard robes for a NASA Voidsuit. Due to a mistake and careless handling by the serving Head of Security [spoiler2]that was me. Oops[/spoiler2], the Head of Security was compromised by a mindswap spell in the brig security office - outside of immediate audiovisual range of any other crewmembers.
Upon arriving to the scene, Officer Laskorreshkor displayed an immensely well-honed judge of character during the ensuing debate between the HoS and the wizard, accurately determining that the Head of Security had indeed been compromised.
After making this correct assessment, Laskorreshkor stood by his conclusions - successfully alerting co-worker security officer Matt Smyth, Blueshield Luigi Belducci, and acting Captain Colin Black of the mindswap between the HoS and the Wizard. Through this, the NSS Cyberiad's security department was able to proceed with counter operations.
What I believe sets this situation apart is that Laskorreshkor's correct judgement, and decisive actions in this particular situation not only prevented the loss of his commanding officer, but averted a potentially catastrophic breach of security within the NSS Cyberiad's security force and command structure. While qualities such as martial prowess, discipline in following orders, and in-depth understanding of enforcement procedure are all esteemed and admirable qualities for a security member, it is my personal philosophy that what truly separates a good officer from a great officer is the ability to "read" a situation: the patience and state of mind to analyze even the most absurd situations with careful attention to detail, in order to make the right conclusions. While I believe this action should warrant a greater gesture of gratitude than just a bit of coloured ribbon and brass, it is my personal stance that Laskorreshkor's actions, at the minimum, have earned the honour of being commemorated by nothing less than the Medal of Loyalty.
Recommending Person:
I, Cecilia Fleming, do solemnly swear the above account is true, made in good faith, and understand that lying upon this commendation is grounds for immediate dismissal from NT and further penalties may apply.
OOC: Writing this at 1:30am is harder than I thought. I'll probably edit this some more later. Now I may have gotten the name wrong. If there's more than one regular sec Unathi who goes by the firstname of Laskorresh, that's not my fault. Huge apology to whoever plays Laskorr if I ended up remembering the wrong name.
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Disabler would set this on par with the HoS's gun. I think it's fine with the taser and laser.
On the related topic of flashlight mounting, the HoS's sidearm still can't mount flashlights, when compared with e-guns or tasers. While this doesn't exactly stop the HoS from being one of the most heavily-armed and equipped individuals on the station at any given time, it's still a lost utility when compared to similar sidearms.
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I've been thinking of something like this - I salute you for making the thread for it.
If you've checked out botany, they get a backpack water mister for their plants, which is essentially a backpack item that holds about 500 units of liquid, and sprays it through a hand-nozzle, deployed in a similar way to the defib units from medbay. The janitor also gets a wearable water tank which functions along much of the same lines.
As for the chemical that ignites on contact with air, I believe you're thinking of chlorine trifluoride ("ClF3"), which ignites immediately after being sprayed out of a spraybottle, at least. What would be awesome with this is that it would soak its victim in flammable liquids, making it harder for them to put themselves out with stop-drop-roll.
I think something like a reskinned water backpack filled with ClF3 would DEFINITELY have the potential to be a great nukeop weapon: You can't bring your duffelbag onto the station, but in return you get a stable, high-damage flamethrower with a large pool of ammo and impressive crowd-control abilities (or maybe mixed with napalm for prolonged area-denial?). It could also be refilled with random fluids found on the station just to make it last longer - diluting the base solution with household chems like weedkiller, alcohol, space lube, sulfuric acid, etc. to give it a variety of horrifying effects.
Alternatively/additionally, something like this would be a cool delivery to come bundled with the "experimental weapons" crate at cargo bay, which already comes pre-loaded with incendiary grenades and the cruddy plasma-based flamethrowers.
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I'd love to see you and PhantasmicDream do a collaborative work some day
[spoiler2]I'd be down with it![/spoiler2]
Yes.
This is going to be awesome
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A shot at drawing an Unathi Sec, with a human for height comparison.
This one was from a round a while ago where all of the vox in sec grabbed eachother and made a piggyback tower. Eventually they started grabbing other sec officers, reaching critical mass and becoming the ultimate securigularity.
"Yeah? Well it sure as hell sez' so right 'ere, bub."
Another one of Slade, this time trying to lean more heavily on a sort of "wandering desperado" kind of theme. I always imagined him as being slapped together using cyborg parts provided by various different corporations and interest groups from the Syndicate. Also some shitty attempts at logo type.
"Nothing to see here yaya?"
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I'd personally be curious to see how the forum can be improved. I know most people tend to find comfort in familiarity, so changing the base design of the site might garner a bit of opposition.
If you're looking for somewhere to start, I've personally noticed that the website's layout could stand to have a bit of adjustment for media-responsiveness. For example, accessing this site by smartphone loads the same layout as if the site were being accessed by computer, which can be a bit of a pain because a touchscreen doesn't have the pinpoint precision of a computer mouse. If you're looking for an area where the site can be improved, reconfiguring the site's layout to respond to mobile devices would be my suggestion.
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I'm on board with this idea. I know the OP specifically indicated that this would be able to exist alongside the pre-existing Heist gamemode, but personally, I'd go as far as to support removing Heist and implementing this as an alternative, were that possible. The big grievances I keep hearing repeated about Heist mode is that it often results in RP that gets derailed by a sudden helping of validhunting, and/or a RP dynamic that generally only includes the heads of staff - and tends not to involve the rest of the crew as much. Having them appear alongside other antags would mean that they'd spice up the round without completely overshadowing whatever else has occurred during the round. On top of this, having the vox arrive in the middle of a round that includes other antags will make their objectives slightly easier, as sec's attention would be divided between the raiders' activities and other antags.
Good thing about Vox is that while they usually do have some questionable end-goals, they never have objectives that include outright assassination or large-scale destruction. Their limited arsenal prevents them from wreaking too much havoc or posing too much of a threat on their own, which is better suited for this.
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(Humongous wall of text ahead, be warned)
It feels like discussions about proper sec have been recurrent over the last few months. I've thought again and again about making my own thread about it, but I think I may be able to weigh in on this here. Keep in mind that this is written entirely from the perspective of someone who primarily plays HoS, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Throughout this, consider all uses of the word 'you' to be referring to an officer in a given situation.
I feel that the root of the problem is a lack of transparency and accountability within security. Often, most people do not get a chance to examine the inner-workings of the brig firsthand - so when their friends start getting dragged off, there is the assumption that sec is avoiding accountability because they did not stop to explain themselves. In this event, I've seen well-adjusted and normally mild players suddenly stand up against sec, interfere with prisoners in transit, etc. Every now and then you'll get an out-and-out asshat who'll knowingly co-operate with antags just for laughs - I'll address that later.
As above, the first and foremost thing that sec should do is always ask themselves how their actions are ensuring the safety of the crew, and whether or not the crew have been made aware of this. It requires a lot of dexterity with the keys, but managing hammer out a quick, "Greyshirts McGee, you've been implicated in the murder of Urist McWeedsmoke, the Botanist." immediately after putting on the cuffs can do wonders for staving off metafriend interventions.
Copy/pasting into your IC notes is vital for this. Trust me, when you're asked to name witnesses, you don't want to be scrolling up through walls of text just so you can remember whether it was Skratiiycaityktac the vox engineer or Skreyakkitachiat the vox paramedic who reported the crime.
In this situation, your arrest declaration should justify yourself along the following:
1. Why you are making the arrest.
2. Why the crime has threatened crew safety or interfered with the smooth functioning of the station.*
3. Why any bystander would be doing more good for the station's social cohesion by allowing you to proceed with the arrest.
*Generally, 'the smooth functioning of the station' should refer to any department outside of sec. It tends to lend you a bit of legitimacy if you can name one or two people from another department who have suffered due to the criminal's activities. In fact, if you can't imagine any group or individual who is victimized or upset by the crime, it probably isn't worth your time to make a full arrest - just see if you can quickly undo any damage they might've caused, and tell 'em to scram.
There'll be times when the person you are arresting will try to call out of help - for this, you should be well-informed about the situation. Remember all that stuff above I said about making sure you can name at least 1-3 people who's rounds have been made worse from the criminal's activity? If you can call on one or two people outside sec who'll testify, that breaks the enmity between sec and the whole crew; it stops being "Sec vs. Station" and becomes "Station vs. Criminals" which generally makes things easier.
In the entirely likely situation that the person you've arrested is unrelenting in their quest to slander you...
Well, two can play at that game.
If they start an argument about sec's activity over public comms, argue back! If a point is up to debate, then debate it! If you can't clearly articulate how their actions have harmed the smooth functioning of the station, then you really shouldn't have brigged them in the first place. This goes beyond IC, mind you: Adminhelps and post-round debates in OOC also play out like this. Just keep a level head, organize the factual evidence that supports your position, and present it through a calm, non biased perspective. Most importantly, remember that there's always the possibility that you're in the wrong - just remember to accept responsibility if that's the case.
I know, it's a crazy idea, right?
One last thing about this - keep in mind that since most people you brig will stand to have nothing to lose, they will continually repeat "I've done nothing wrong" as if it was some sort of quasi-hypnotic mantra. They are not a jedi, and you are not a stormtrooper - for every time they recite their side of the argument, recite your own evidence to poke holes in it. If the evidence is debated, then invite the relevant parties to the debate: if the detective's scans are disputed, ask the detective to bring you a copy of the relevant scans, if the harm of the crime is disputed, bring in those individuals who have been harmed in order to testify.
As for self-antag behaviour versus actual antag behaviour, I try my best not to distinguish. Just keep in mind that while there are some dead giveaways for someone who's up to no good, from time to time you'll encounter someone who just flat out have no forethought or consideration. Particularly memorable things that come to mind are a janitor who made 3 tank transfer valve bombs because he wanted to use them for self-defence on a gateway expedition (He made the bombs BEFORE getting his ID switched over, keep in mind.), a miner who gibtonite-bombed the HoS office from space during an extended round, because he supposedly mistook Araneus for a threat, a roboticist who hacked into the secure vault just for laughs moments after the antags had been identified, also including pretty much every hulk that sec tries to arrest for illegally HNNNNG!!!-ing their way into someone else's department.
Play it by ear: gauge the amount of harm inflicted and time wasted - and adjust for intent.
Interfering with prisoners in transit tends to create a particularly special little situation. After all, space law does indicate that someone breaking prisoners out is essentially slated to have an equal sentence to the person they assisted. When someone's spending 20 minutes sitting in brig because they tried hacking their metabuddy (and/or a flat-out antag) out of jail, I can pretty much guarantee they're going to reflect on whether their decisions have enhanced their own enjoyment, one way or another. Conversely, if this happens and they both get away scott-free, that's unfortunate - but also kinda sec's fault; just try and identify where you screwed up, and remember it for next time.
Hate to say it, but as for verbal abuse - there is essentially no way to play in sec without being sustaining the worst insults that the server rules will allow, around the clock. I really hate it when people say "that's life," but in this situation, I'd say it's quite true.
TL;DR: Want to be hated less in sec? Work on your people skills.
Sec Cliques
in Public Archives
Posted
This description of 'clique RP' seems a little vague. This doesn't sound like something specifically related to 'cliques' but more to Security conventions.
Understand, that dealing with scuffles as a sec officer is very similar to being a gradeschool teacher: Every time someone comes to you with a problem, it's filled with conjecture and argument - vicious denials, and often very slim evidence. Anything short of seeing the attack actively taking place, or a visible armblade tends to generate a lot of ambiguity and confusion - and no matter what happens, you can guarantee that both parties will yell 'shitcurity' as soon as you try and reach a judgement call.
You said you've played as a security cyborg yourself - tell me there aren't situations where someone wants to waste your time by making a mountain out of a molehill, naming the wrong guy by accident, or otherwise working against your efforts to discern what actually happened. Again, the overall scenario you proposed was a bit vague, so it might be tainted by my own bias: If there's a situation where, for example, you call that you're being dragged into sci maint, I believe sec would take that more seriously than saying you were the victim of a bar fight. In the former situation, a delay would mostly emerge from trying to navigate the vast and questionably-structured maint tunnels - filled with pointless warrens and hallways that fold in on themselves for no apparent reason. In the later, a delay would emerge from skepticism of whether a conclusion would be met quickly, or if security intervention is going to make the situation better, rather than worse.
As for sluggish response times, that's something more inherent to the station and game mechanics. It takes about 3 minutes to navigate from one end of the station to the other - if you factor in possible obstacles like typing out a "I'll be there soon. Hold on!", slipping because of the clown/janitor being a prick, forgetting to feed your character, and various other things, that pushes average response times to around five minutes, if a sec officer isn't already near your position.
All that being said, this is not to say that cliques do not emerge in sec - I've seen quite a few certain players who join sec and spend the whole shift slacking in the bar; while that effectively wastes slots in the security department, I'm not sure if it's directly relevant to the problems you've been having with sec.
Could you provide some specific examples? You don't have to throw out specific names, but more detailed scenarios would make it easier to discuss.