[Guide to Internal Affairs]

Here's some tips as to how to do Internal Affairs at a reasonable manner that will at least help you be listened or not be considered as incompetent.

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Appearance:

As a IAA, appearance is able to make you look more credible and less likely to be ignored, keep in mind the following: Name, clothing, and body appearance.

Name: A name that isn't memey or isn't too weird will make you less likely to be seen as a joke.

Clothing: 

• Dos
  • Wear muted color clothing, such as suits - Darker clothing, especially business suits or similar variations will help you look more that you are intending to work and not waste time.
    • Recommended clothing includes: All dark colored suits, suit jackets, laceup or brown shoes, white gloves, leather satchel (grey satchel is also a alternative, but may make you be associated with assistants).
• Don'ts
  • Do not wear clothing associated with civilians or other departments - Civilian clothing tends to look unprofessional (especially the grey jumpsuit), along with other department clothing which will make you look less competent or not serious at all.
    • Avoid gloves that are not white gloves. Wearing insulated gloves, which is not part of the IAA description, makes you seem more like greytide.
    • Avoid hats all together. If you have a somewhat reasonable hat, such as bowler hat, fez, boater hat or similar, do not use it while attending to business.
    • Avoid shoes that are not the brown or laceup ones.
    • Avoid the grey backpack, it seems too ugly and usually associated with assistants.
    • Avoid accessories that stand out too much.
    • Avoid wearing belts. None of them will go with any suit.
    • Avoid any armor/jackets that are not the suit ones.

Body Appearance: Don't stand out too much, never use neon or overly bright colors for your character's body, along with any overly large, spiky, or weird hair/facial styles. A bright green neon vulpkanin, with a huge neon pink afro, IAA is less likely to be listened to compared to a vulpkanin with light brown colored fur and a short or normal looking hairstyle that is a also a IAA.

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Cases

As a Internal Affairs Agent, you are expected to see to certain cases. Unfortunately, cases tend to last too long or information ends up not being given or it's sources goes missing, you have to remember to be both efficient as best as you can, along with making sure that you don't waste time with unreasonable cases.

Remember to get as much information as possible, and quickly, before it goes missing and record it!

All involved parties should be interviewed or it may look biased!

Remember the following points to ask for at the beginning of the investigation for all parties: Who is involved, when did this happened, where did this happened, what exactly happened, how can it be resolved, and why did it happened?

• Reasonable Cases: These are cases that have some merit on being investigated and will most likely get results if investigated and dealt properly.
  • Command Incompetence: Usually a command member doesn't know what they are doing, are breaking Space Law and or Standard Operating Procedures, or has done no work at all. Recommendations for how to deal with it includes, depending the severity: Demotion, reprimand, or having the Captain, or a higher level official, to speak to the command member.
  • Crew complaint: Usually done because  two or more parties are at a conflict, usually at the expense of the other. These recommendations includes: Exchange of money, having the parties involved to talk it out, demotion (if the conflict is caused within the same department for the involved parties) or brigging (if a crime is actually involved).
  • Break of the Standard Operating Procedures: With exception of certain circumstances, SOP should be avoided on being broken. If there is a emergency, the breaking of SOP is fine as long as it doesn't have a severe effect on the station or the crew. Recommendations for a illegal SOP break includes: Brigging (if a crime is involved), demotion, or a reprimand.
• Unreasonable Cases:
  • Dumb or unreasonable complainer: Usually the one who is complaining is straight out salty, an example is a legal brigging, and clearly wants revenge for having faced a legal procedure. It is recommended to at least listen to them, but at most you could just make a note of it to the relevant staff and/or tell them there is no grounds to continue the case.
  • Legal Break of Standard Operating Procedures: In extreme cases, SOP is fine to be broken as long as there are severe circumstances present, such as a bio hazard and guns are needed for the crew to deal with it. Please note however that certain SOP should not be broken at all, due to the consequences it may have on the station. Examples include the bio hazard handling procedures and unmerited tampering with the AI (such as giving them dumb free form laws).

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Central Command:

You have access to a fax machine that can contact Central Command, remember the following tips.

• Dos:
  • Keep your forms short and concise, remember that Central Command (aka admins) usually are busy seeing to other things, keep it short with a quick summary, along with a quick recommendation, request of action, or question.
  • Remember to stamp, sign, and add a time stamp. It makes your forms more official, along with making it more credible to be read.
  • Remember to label your paper. By default, the normal paper shows up as 'paper', by right clicking it, you get the option to relabel it. It is recommended that you give a title that includes: The station's name, the department it is from, and what the paper will be on. (e.g. NSS Cyberiad - Internal Affairs - Captain Incompetence).
• Dont's
  • Never EVER send a butt picture to Central Command, you will die, be demoted, cluwned, or worse: Be ignored for the rest of the shift.
  • Don't send trivial cases to Central Command, such as a complaint of the clown calling a crewmember as fat, such issues can be deal with the station command staff.
  • Don't ask for stuff that are not bureaucratic in nature (a good example is asking Central Command to have the Captain to comply for a legal investigation, a bad example is asking for a bike from Central Command).
  • Do not let any other crewmember use your fax machine. Only authorized personnel, such as yourself, the Magistrate, Head of Security, Captain, Head of Personnel, and Nanotrasen Representative, should be given the chance to use it. Any other crewmember usually has no business contacting Central Command.
• Chain of Command:
  • Remember that all legitimate issues, especially severe ones, should be dealt with on the station first, specifically by the command staff. If a command member doesn't resolve the issue, despite having the time and resources to, the issue should be taken the Captain, the issue becoming a failure to perform their duties within a reasonable window. If the Captain fails to deal with it, then it becomes a failure to peform their duties on remedying their command staff and should have Central Command informed about it.
  • Example: A issue of constant workplace harassment within the station can become more and more severe towards the command staff if not dealt with, as they have failed to managed their department.
  • Note! Reporting a failure to perform duties of a command staff should avoided if the initial issue is not severe enough (the janitor not using signs when mopping in green alert is a bad example, station engineers not working at all to deal with severe damages, the Chief Engineer ignoring it, and the Captain also ignoring it is a good example).

 

 

[Remove Telescience]

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/11374

[500 Grand Lipsticking]

Strongly disagree, fashion crimes should instead be implemented, each sentence being a + 10 minutes for every fashion crime of a clothing the criminal scum is wearing.

[Remove Telescience]

45 minutes ago, Dinarzad said:

Secondly, I don't think it's entirely fair to say "Remove Telescience cuz it's OP" as some others have. Because if we're gonna talk about 'no counter' antagonist fuckery (Even though in my years of playing on paradise I have never once seen it happen.) then we also have to talk about CHEMISTRY. The nature of "Hellmixes" and other meme chems that cause near instant death with a single click

Science in GENERAL is full of issues, but that isn't the topic on hand.

45 minutes ago, Dinarzad said:

And lastly, the counter to Telescience is pretty easy.

Not if you are a blob or a regular AI (who can have their cameras removed to shut down the area the telescience equipment is in), none of which can easily move their cores, and especially the AI getting the coordinates to where it is is largely trivial since it has the same spawning point each round. Traitor AIs, while they can counter telescience, can only do much, besides fully disabling science (e.g. destroying all the RnD consoles). I had been a traitor AI where in two times I have died, it was due to telescience, one from where a crewmember teleported in in the wall behind my core, with no chance of me being able to attack the crewmember, the other time ended with me being hit with a BSA after a gps was teleported in (which I wasn't nor have I armed the doomsday device.

1 hour ago, Jazz said:

2.) A large amount of space ruins are procedurally generated, all non-procedural telesciencable loot can be found by a google doc I created here. After using telescience dozens and dozens of times for multiple rounds, I've found that the combat gloves are the most teleported item I get from space ruins (even though there's a free double barrel shotgun, white ship circuit board, infinite hardsuits, and abandoned crates).

That's just overly cheesey, knowing the near exact spots items are in.

 

Chances are that telescience will not removed, considering how hard it is to even nerf science (and even /tg/ of all places thought telescience was a issue and removed it).

[Nerf Telescience]

My suggestion is to nerf telescience, since I don't think suggesting it's removal will go through (although it has it's own issues, and even /tg/ removed it from their own code).

Science already has enough stuff to do antag stuff, without having something so strong, because they can easily steal stuff from the armory, they can steal/destroy the AI without warning (and with the AI with almost no counter to it).

My suggestions are these:

* Randomize the telescience coordinates each round, so people don't just keep it in mind the exact coordinates each round they do telescience.

* Blacklist certain areas - Not allow high secure areas to be used with telescience, such as the AI core, the armory, and the secure tech storage.

* Not allow telescience to work on solid structures - As in not letting anything teleport in or out of walls and other solid objects, like airlocks and tables.

[Space Law Overhaul Suggestion]

2 hours ago, Shadeykins said:

Repeat offender based off getting brigged again might work, but mostly repeat offender is to deal with that one shit who keeps disarm spamming people.

I also agree, if someone ends up in the brig more than twice, they are clearly a issue to the station.

On that note on Space Law, I think grafitti should be made a minor crime, since it tends to end to be a massive eye sore (e.g. someone writing "shitcurity" all over the brig lobby and the hallway leading to it) and that janitors somehow tends to be incompetent/go missing early on. Not sure how it should be added however, since Vandalism was changed to Damage of Station Assets.

[Add cremator usage to Space Law]

This has been a bit consistent for a few years now, where Security, specifically new ones to the server for some reason goes and takes the bodies of dead vampire to be cremated in the chapel.

This behavior, from what I gather, seems to come from some other servers that does have vampires, but their mechanics are a bit different where they are able to revive after a short while after being killed (while ours do not).

Not only is cremating the body of a vampire crappy to the vampire player, but it also removes all chance for the vampire to be properly "processed", meaning that if later evidence is found that a vampire didn't kill a person/isn't found to be powered, the vampire in question is pretty much hosed as they have no way of being revived.

My suggestion is adding a part to Space Law with disallowing the usage of the cremator on non-changelings, standard EoCs (as in traitor and vampire),  and (along with probably tying in the gibber in) pointing out it's usage in terms of changelings.

[What's your favourite job?]

Head of Personnel: trying to deal legitimate/reasonable crew issues, forcing said crew to do paperwork, and watch said crew die in the inside due to paperwork.

Also the relentless bureaucracy when the other command members tries to break the standard procedures of command.

Acting Captainship is a pain however

[Construct Balance Change]

I do agree there should be a chance to revive sharded crew members, especially since these are usually security staff.

Cultists get protection when captured, if they don't start teleporting out that is, and if they die, security has to revive them, if circumstances permit, but constructs end up dead and stuck out of the round when dealt with.

Maybe have the constructs drop the brain of their old body when destroyed?

[Pet Peeves of Paradise]

3 hours ago, Xyd said:

Blueshields...

Also Blueshields that feel entitled to have the Captain's spare ID, and ends up mad/passive aggressive towards you during the rest of the shift when you don't give it to them

Blueshields that do actually get the spare ID but uses it to get RnD stuff without asking or telling anyone.

Blueshields that hunt down command members that turns out to be EoCs because "they are command".

Blueshields who, for whatever reason, are given the Captain's spare headset and decides to bother/get in the way of the department's communications.

[The Mailbox - NAS Trurl Employee Teamwork-Building Initiative V-5112]

Message from: S. Shesikor.

Message to: Comms Officer Jenkins.

Message Title: Raise request (34th message)

Message Content:

Hello Sir! I was wondering if you were able to see my previous 33 messages concerning my request to ask the Accounting department about raising my pay, since they have blocked off my messages, Sir.

I know the company is a bit strapped in resources, Sir, but 3 steaks a hour is starting to not cut it out for me.

As a side note, is it true that people get paid in credits?

Thank you for your time, Sir.

Sincerely,

Skakreshss Shesikor.

[SOP Suggestion: Departmental Tranverse]

That's a bit different, @Trubus, as it largely focus on the construction aspects of rooms, as in actually building rooms and such (what SOP was that by the way?).

I am referring to equipment, and have it written somewhere that personnel outside of department Y requires authorization from Head of Staff X for equipment M.

For example, a bit back there was this one engineer went and built RnD equipment in engineering near round start, they later complained when the boards were confiscated that it's not written anywhere that they can't have the machines

[SOP Suggestion: Departmental Tranverse]

Lately, especially recently, there has been departments that appeared to just acquire/build equipment that they do not have business having/have "authorization" to have it to begin with. In this case, specifically RnD equipment, usually near round start when there are no threats and it's usually green alert.

You sometimes see engineering, especially if it involves the mechanic's research server console, building RnD equipment near round start, which they often do not even ask the Research Director before hand and just acquire the boards from tech storage. RnD equipment is something the Research Director is supposed to watch over and see that isn't abused, the issue however is when other departments build it in areas the Research Director almost never has access to, hindering the fact that they have to watch it.

Currently however, there is no section to the Standard Operating Procedures forbidding departments from building machines/sensitive equipment of other departments. One could argue that it's common sense, but I believe it's better if it's written down in SOP instead of it just being assumed, as common sense and it being written out are usually two different things at times.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

I really think either way x-ray shouldn't be acquired via genetics. It tends to be rather unbalanced, not easy to tell when one has it (besides the forced eye light thing, but security/antags tend to wear glasses). Not only that, if a antag is discovered really early on, command usually goes to red alert, and if genetics readily hand out x-ray, the other antags are pretty much hosed, either their sneaking around is almost ineffective or they'll have to go loud.

Either way, two suggestions are these:

* Remove dark vision from x-ray, can still see everywhere but as long as said areas have light (also making the user require night vision items, which shouldn't be flash proof).

* Make the genetics SOP more restrictive on handing out genetic powers, both for command and security. As of now, genetics are free to hand out powers to security in red alert, and red alert usually ends up in place early on the moment any form of antag appears, and if a RD/CMO protests it, they end up being called shit. I think it should require CMO/RD approval on all circumstances, with powerful powers needing both CMO and RD approval.

[Excessive Adminbus during a Regular Round]

Admin(s) Key: Alffd, EvadableMoxie (very sorry, not sure who may had been behind it, but I saw them both on at the time of the occurance)

Your ckey (Byond username): bryanayalalugo
Your Discord name (if applicable): Paperwork Lizard

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): 12/16/2018, ~ 7:00:00 AM - 8:00:00 AM (GTM)

Nature of complaint: Excessive adminbus during a regular (changeling) round.
(Select all that apply: EG - clarification required, misapplication of rules, misconduct, abuse of powers, feedback, other)

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements):

Made the singularity to a advanced stage (level four to five) in containment, eventually breaking out and damaging the surrounding areas (even though it wasn't moving) and eventually causing damages to the bottom parts of the station after the shuttle was actually arriving. Along with it, excessive changes to the shuttle arrival times.

Full description of events:

At about 20 minutes or so into the round, I noticed, as a regular non-antag AI, that the singularity was at a unhealthy size, which I informed engineering about, and the PA was lowered in powered and eventually deactivated. Slightly later, I go to check if the singularity has become smaller, it did not and started to grow larger, eventually reaching to the size that made me ask command to either request a GOAT (as in Central Command removes the singularity) or a evacuation. After the GOAT request did not properly go through, a evacuation was called.

When the evacuation was called, the shuttle times were changed several times to excessive numbers, at two points reaching 60 minutes.

Afterwards, the singularity, while not having moved from it's spot, had eaten the surrounding area in engineering, even affecting atmospherics, damaging the loop, and the AI satellite.

After about 30 minutes, the singularity is made into a level 6 one (the big, yellow glowy one), 15 minutes later, the shuttle was allowed to be called under a reasonable time limit, and during that time, the singularity started to move from it's one spot in engineering to the bottom right parts of the station, eventually reaching escape moments before the shuttle departed (the shuttle wasn't severely damaged, but a wall or two ended removed).

I believe this was a bit of a excessive admin bus, considering that it was a regular round (a changeling one to be specific) and that it ended damaging a definite source of power to the station, the engineering area, and atmospherics.

Quote

Engineering, around the place where the backup SMES and secure storage was at.

Quote

PA and station SMES area.

Quote

Atmospherics and the damaged loops.

 

[Reworking Chaplains]

You could make "evil" chaplains be unable to affect vampires, given that vampires are seen as somewhat evil entities at times. You could also make any "powers" they get be based on the chapel, since the area is "holy".

Rather cool however.

[Genetics rework ideas]

On x-ray, the genetics SOP should probably not allow any handing out of powers to security, requiring CMO/RD approval like the rest of the crew, since red alert tends to be called very early in the shift and usually persists for a long period of time.

[Genetics rework ideas]

You could do something like tg does, where x-ray doesn't grant you night vision.

So you can see everywhere, but if a area has no lights, you can't see into it.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

11 minutes ago, necaladun said:

1 hour ago, bryanayalalugo said:

And what about alert levels? Can they just still have said item if it's green, blue, or red? In green, it makes no sense for them to have it, and it goes against with the implied "privacy laws".

If they have the key, then there's confirmed syndicate activity aboard the station. If anyone else is talking on the channel, then it confirms other agents are on board, so it shouldn't be green.

I meant what if the station return to green? Like all threats had been dealt with or hasn't resurfaced. Sorry, should had clarified that.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

What about the ability on the key being able to listen into other channels?

Even if security is a trusted source on the station ( at times), I doubt command/the other departments wants them to be listening to their important discussions/department related discussion.

And what about alert levels? Can they just still have said item if it's green, blue, or red? In green, it makes no sense for them to have it, and it goes against with the implied "privacy laws".

[Let's talk about shadowlings]

I once made this recommendation on another thread:

Make shadowlings work against each other. As far as I see at the moment, Shadowlings, as long as they aren't working against the objectives, don't really need to interact with each other.

I think they should each be their own "collective hivemind", where they do not share thralls, nor the same hivemind chat, making them independent entities and maybe a objective of "Do not let the other Shadowlings ascend"? Instead of making a station vs Shadowling effort that feels hopeless when one side starts to lose.

And on the mindshields, I honestly think they should protect from thralling, because, usually, the moment one Shadowling gets a security officer, it's where the round starts to snowball.

[Which department makes the most money?]

It would be interesting if the service department charged people for stuff, like the chef with food, instead of just plopping the 1,853 pieces of slice bread, bartender charging their patrons attempting to have crippling alcoholism, chaplain charging for services etc, maybe giving the largely unused economic system a use.

Unfortunately, there are people that the moment they find out they have to pay 10 credits for a cake slice, a drink, or such, they decide to be garbage against the people who are charging for services, like opening a bar, disposing of their stuff and some other things.

[Construction Drone]

I was originally going to suggest some additions to the maintenance drones to make their work more easier, but I then realized that it would make Drones a bit too powerful in regards of whatever is happening in the round.

My suggestion is to make a version of the Maintenance Drone and call it "Construction Drone". Their main goal should be to build and fix up the construction station, for those players who want to just build stuff and keep away from the station.

I believe they should be given a device that spits out the normal circuit boards and some other basic items (airlock, APC, APC worthy battery, air alarm, fire alarm) and maybe(?) give them hands, and cyborg blueprints.

If there is some fear on these Drones getting off the construction station and get to the main station, they could be coded to make it so that if the Drone leaves the construction site Z-level, they should be destroyed immediately, along with given the basic Drone lawset but on keeping to the construction station.

[Dumb ideas and suggestions]

Solar panels that can be powered with light bulbs. See engineer fill up Maintanance with light bulbs and these panels before the station's breaker gets shot from all the lights.

[Economy from TG]

There probably should be a adjustment or removal of the casino machines if that is the case with persistence.

Alternatively, if you add a certain high random amount of money into your account, lose all the money you gained after Nanotrasen's Accounting Department notices the irregularity with your money deposits and gets you audited.