EmilyFontaine

Hostage situations are a rare sight on Paradise, and I imagine most other servers as well. I had only attempted it once before, and as you can imagine, to no great success. This time was different, though. While it was ill planned and rushed, the setup was almost perfect - put the hostage inside the plasma filled turbine chamber, a button press away from turning the slime girl hostage into a Creme Brulè. The plan was to get the CMO there alone, with the hypospray to trade for her wife’s life, but security soon sniffed things out, and I was forced to make it publicly known - any interference would mean the woman’s life would end. Soon after, security was at the door, the Captain too, ready to make the trade. The Captain was to enter alone, but as you can imagine, the indifference to the general safety of the crew that every security officer harbours in their blackened hearts proved too strong - the urge to baton and disable too intoxicating. One officer tried to contain his bloodthirsty colleague, but he could not keep them all back. Forced to activate my adrenal implant, I rush for the button, the room filling with a blaze - only for the hostage to be rescued by an engineering cyborg in the last second. Defeated, I make my escape. I change my disguise and blend in with the crew once more, unsure of what to do next. Passing by the bridge, I spot the heroic cyborg receiving a medal for its actions. As it proudly drags the medal behind it as it leaves, triumph running through its circuits, I hit it with my flash and open its cover, overloading it’s system with my emag. My objectives forfeit, I give it one single task to wrong the right. Kill the hostage it rescued. It has no choice but to comply. It begins its search as I make a desperate attempt to fulfil my duties - leading to my death. From the afterlife, through the salty tears, I spot the cyborg deep in space, broken beyond repair, the body of the woman it saved floating lifelessly beside it. And a carp. There was also a carp. I learned that the officer responsible for the mishandling of the situation had been demoted on the spot, but being the beast of pride that he was, he ended his own life right then and there. There are many things to fear on the Cyberiad. But there is nothing more dreadful than he who believes he can do no wrong - he who’s crusade for justice leaves a trail of mangled bodies in his wake, all in the name of turning a line of text from a green color, to a red color.

I like this idea. An alternative could be the spark effect that IPCs have when they're drunk. Noticeable and a constant reminder for roboticists to fix the dead borgs standing around in robotics.

Goon station has a system similar to what you're suggesting. Goon generally has a lot of cool changeling stuff that I hope makes it onto Paradise one day.

I agree to a certain extent. I think the less doubt there is, the better everyone involved can enjoy their rounds without getting their time wasted. The issue I've run into is that people get brigged for 15 minutes for snipping a couple of wires on a camera. You and I know this is DtSA, but the new and aspiring sec officer might not. There might be experienced people around to correct it, but then they ctrl + f in space law for "cameras" and find nothing. I'd argue that camera cutting happens often enough that I don't see a reason not to include it in space law. I don't think that every single possible scenario should be considered when it comes to space law, but I'd argue that this is something that happens often enough to at least get a mention.

Going with my general theme of clarification to prevent speculation, I'm suggesting adding a couple of very small additions to Space Law. Firstly, adding the act of cutting cameras to code 100, "Damage to Station Assets". I've included a screenshot of the law below. I experienced a round where Security were debating whether cutting cameras would be a code 100 (DtSA) or 300 (Sabotage), and discovered that neither mention cameras. Obviously, cameras are station assets, and I personally believe that screw-driving a camera and snipping some wires isn't really worth throwing someone in the brig for 15 minutes for, as it's easily done and easily fixed. Adding a small line of text in the notes to Code 100, something as simple as "cutting cameras" would help. Secondly, adding camera removal to code 300, "Sabotage." Screenshot of the law below. Removing cameras is more time consuming and damaging, as it takes a while to fully replace it. You have to take the time to get a camera assembly, take it to the location, and set it up to the network. Like above, adding a line of text to the notes of the law, like "fully removing cameras", would help clarify and it cuts down time spent in processing. Helpful to Security and crew alike, as less time is spent speculating on the how-to's. Lastly, while camera removal might be more appropriate for a medium level crime, like code 200 (Workplace Hazard), it doesn't fit the theme of the crime, as it concerns itself with lesser acts of sabotage that are physically harmful to crew, like accidental plasma leaks or shocked doors. Sabotage is more fitting. Alternatively, we could add both camera cutting and removal to code 100, though I personally think removing the camera entirely is worthy of a higher sentence, due to the effort required to repair it.

You can also gib people with genetics syringes. Imagine a traitor running around with a rapid fire syringe gun loaded with 6 gibbing injectors and a backpack full of more injectors. It's a cheesy and objectively broken way to kill people. It's not even difficult to get a gibbing injector, it's probably the easiest one. You can still use the injectors for your antag needs, you just have to be creative about it. Like soap slipping an officer chasing you and then injecting them with every disability known to man.

I like this idea as well, as it eliminates the NEED for a hud implant and replaces it with an OPTION for a welding shield implant. I can imagine Kidan playing security and antag would still opt for the welding shield implant, though while useful, not always necessary. It would, however, free Kidan playing mining, medical and science from getting mandatory implanting.

I forgot that was a thing. I do agree with the general consensus on this thread, though. Vox maluses outweigh their boons. The speed burst ability might be neat, though it should be short duration with a hefty cooldown. Might encourage security to start aiming more for legs instead of head/chest with lethal weapons. Might also encourage security to just blast them because they expect changeling or adrenals right away. Hard to predict, but I'd like to see it in practice.

That's what wrongful testing is. I agree. There's been a lot of interesting points brought up here, but I feel like the thread has derailed at this point. I'd like to maybe see an SOP change, but to be honest, as a sec main, I don't really see this problem occur often enough. Wrongful testing is a symptom of shitsec, and from what I've seen lately, they don't last long. The admins have been doing a good job of cracking down on them. That's not to say that the better variety of sec doesn't make mistakes, but if an overly suspicious crew member get deconverted by sec, then who's really making the mistakes?

The problem isn't with testing for cultists, there's ways for that already. The problem is wrongful tests. I don't see how adding more tests is going to solve that.

There are many examples of harmful chemicals being mixed together to become a harmless chemical or, in some cases, a beneficial chemical. While it wouldn't be odd, that's not necessarily how chemistry works. Turning this into a mechanical issue won't fix the problem, it'll only add to it. Cults are nebulous by nature and security often make mistakes in an effort to stop them, due to ignorance of the gamemode or impatience. Punishing crew by dealing toxin or brain damage due to security's mistakes isn't gonna make the issue less of an issue, you create a new issue. As I stated earlier in the thread, you sometimes attempt to decult people who aren't cult to begin with, because there is reason to believe they could be exposed, despite the lack of physical evidence. If the cult is running rampant, you now have to pause the effort of chasing them, because you've just heavily damaged, or killed, an innocent crew member who now requires your attention, while the rest of security falls apart because word gets out that you're wounding or killing innocents. Security's least favorite gamemode (to me and many others, at least) has now become that much more of a chore to deal with. Nobody wants to risk punishment in a round they're already reluctant to play, so the number of security personnel who cryo during a cult round rises. If we want to make this an IC issue, let's find a way to do it without punishing people who shouldn't be punished, i.e. the innocents. There are already plenty of examples of security killing people who shouldn't be killed, let's not add to it. Making the null rod changeable would be nice, but prayer beads does not cut down on the "just in case" testing in the slightest, it only increases their frequency. (Usually "just in case" testing happens in processing for seemingly unrelated crimes) Alternatively, make this an OOC issue, under either the metagaming, powergaming or validhunting rule. The problem here is that, again, the cult is nebulous at the best of times. Should a security player be warned, or even banned, for cult testing someone running through maintenance with no ID and their face hidden? Probably not. Should they be punished if they force holy water down the throat of everyone staying safely in their department during red alert? Absolutely.

Depends on who's in security. I'll pass out sentences to officers as HoS.

It takes 50u of holy water to deconvert cultists, if I'm not mistaken. Also, If this does nothing to cultists, then you can easily track the damages to non-culted individuals and instantly know they're not actually cultists, which seems pretty meta. I agree that there's an issue of security giving holy water to anyone who wears a gas mask in maints, but there are actual instances where security have to give holy water to suspected individuals with no cult items on them. An example could be a known cultist is apprehended in a room in maintenance with runes and a cuffed crew member. They're caught with their pants down, and you're unsure if the person in question has been converted. They'll tell you the same in either case. "I'm not a cultist." So you naturally apply holy water. Probable cause. I seem to remember that giving out holy water randomly to try and catch cult and vamps was against the rules under validhunting at some point? Not sure if I'm just imagining that, though. In any case, I'm definitely in favor of some kind of measure to prevent security from rampantly testing random people who don't have supplies beneficial to cult on their person (Stacks of paper, cuffs, stunprods, etc.) but cardiac arrest seems excessive. Perhaps a base amount of brain/toxin damage to people, no matter if they're cultist or not, but not lethal? If they're cultists and get converted, worst thing is they need to spend some time to get medical assistance. Cuts down on reconversion (which happens a lot). If they're not a cultist, and there was no reason to believe they're a cultist, the officer in question could get an aggravated assault charge. There's also the issue of vampires. If holy water also adds brain/tox damage, vampires are in even more trouble when they get put into processing. 5u is enough to test and empty a vamp of blood, but it still harms them quite a bit. Often security gets overzealous and overfeeds the vampires holy water, though. Something to keep in mind, at least.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. This'll help avoid misunderstandings, and I'm excited to see how it works in practice. Would it be possible to add possession of weapon, assault and aggravated assault to escape attempt and attempted murder, murder and manslaughter to a successful escape? An often seen problem in perma is when security gets disarmed of their weapons and assaulted. Rarely do they die from what I've seen, though. Something like this might help further clarify in situations where officers are involved.

Problem is, attempted murder is an exceptional crime and not capital, so it's not grounds for execution. I absolutely agree that they should be viable for execution here, but again, not according to space law/legal SOP

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

Thanks for your comment @Abydos Many people, including myself to this point, would consider entering the "little area," is to be considered escaping, including one of the admins. Perhaps adding what you're saying to legal SOP to clarify an escape would help us all understand it better, and avoid misunderstandings in the future. And still, the matter of procedure during an attempt to escape still remains. There is some documentation on actual escapes as I mentioned, and that you kindly provided screenshots of, but nothing on attempts. Generally you'll stick them in solitary, which often has the issue of prisoners breaking the window and shocking nearby officers. This can be prevented and fixed, of course, but that largely depends on the round. Again, the issue is the lack of documentation, and now seemingly also conflicting messages from the admin team. This seems to be an area of wide speculation on all parts, further enhancing my belief that Legal SOP and possibly Space Law needs clarification.

As it stands, Legal SOP has very little information on what to do in the case of an escape attempt, or an escape at all. In fact, if you search the word "Escape" in legal SOP, the word appears once. Space law adds slightly more clarification, in that "Any prisoners that escape Permanent Imprisonment or Exile may be detained, executed or killed on sight at the discretion of Security." The same applies to people who escape execution, which makes sense. Now to what doesn't. Space Law has a modifier/special situation clause that guides security in what to do, when a brigged crew member escapes, or attempts to escape, their cell confinement. At first glance, there is nothing wrong with this clause. It very clearly guides you in what to do in the event of an escape or escape attempt, even clarifies what is considered an attempt. Except, this doesn't mention perma. You can extrapolate that this applies to perma as well, which many people, including myself, have insinuated to be the case. However, my most recent round as security has proven, that it is not actually the case. To avoid turning this into a story thread, I'll be brief. If you want additional information, feel free to ask. Additionally, if I get something wrong about the events, feel free to clarify in the comments. I was a late joining HoS, playing as Cherry Waves. There were three vampires in perma. They had successfully managed to break two windows, exposing the electrified grilles, broken the flasher in the middle of perma, broken the N2O outlet, and in an attempt to apprehend them, they manage to almost kill the warden by disarming his weapon and firing upon him. If we take the "Escape from Brig" example from above, this is absolutely an escape attempt, but according to Legal SOP and Space Law for Exceptional and Capital crimes, this does not count as an escape, meaning that execution cannot be done. Further, as the Captain had cryo'd, and there were no present Magistrate, we had to fax CC on what to do with the attempted escapees. We were met with this fax, that the late joining Captain were kind enough to read aloud. To clarify on the fax response, Jade was killed in the struggle. She was, admittedly much, later revived. Despite all the 4 vampires being apprehended, security was spread extremely thin with the added five traitors that an admin introduced, thus the delay in Jade's revival. Now, every admin ruling is different. What one admin says isn't necessarily what another one would say, and I can imagine that to be the case in this situation. The problem is that this situation came to be at all. If someone as much as breaks the light bulb in a brig cell on a temporary sentence, their timer is to be reset or five minutes are to be added, due to it being classified as an escape attempt in Space Law. However, as stated above, someone can break almost all the functions of keeping perma prisoners in check, the flasher, the N2O outlet, as well as exposing electrified grilles, and there is no clarification in Legal SOP or Space Law that it's to be treated as an escape or escape attempt. The only option is to throw them in solitary, which has it's own issues. I am not saying that we execute every single prisoner that breaks the windows in perma. That's what solitary is for. But there has to be some clarification as to what an escape from perma is. Currently, and this isn't even in writing in Legal SOP and Space Law, an escape from perma requires the escapee to actually leave the confinement, either through a broken window, or an open door. It so no small secret that playing as security can sometimes be very stressful. The round that prompted me to write this suggestion has absolutely, with no contest, been the most stressful round I have ever encountered. Legal SOP is extremely lacking in this case, and the "Escape from Brig" adds too much speculation. Does it apply to perma, too? It doesn't say, so you have to assume that it doesn't. I would very much like to see a change in this, as it would cut down much unnecessary speculation. Sadly, it's not as simple as adding the word "perma" to the "Escape from Brig" modifier, as that would most likely trigger an increase in unnecessary executions. However, a separate modifier similar to it, with clarifications suitable for perma, would be a step in the right direction.

I play a lot of security. A lot. You may have seen me around as Cherry Waves, often playing as the Head of Security. It's a thankless, stressful job that, I for some reason, love above all else on the station. If you've played security, or ask security, you'll often hear stories about what they hate, or fear, the most about working security, and sure enough, I also have something that I hate/fear the most. If you've seen me around, you'll probably have heard me moan about certain antag roles that I loathe going up against as security. Let's take vampires, for example. You hear the stuttering call for help over the radio, followed by silence. Twenty minutes later, and there's a powered vampire running around, and he has the tasers from two of your officers. This is followed by a chase through maintenance, sometimes spanning an entire shift. Security dreads vampires, not out of fear of death, no. Death is sweet release. They fear the vamp because of the predictability. Yet this is still not the Horror of Security. Another one is cultist. Loud cultists are interesting and fun to deal with. Stealthy off-station cult? Not so much. As security, you have no reliable way of dealing with them, other than trying to pick them off on station when they pop out. Like whack-a-cultist. Sure, you can send the pod pilot out on a search, followed by an expedition force, who then get slaughtered due to the poor planning of your boss (me). Not to mention the absolute mess processing turns in to. Three cultists in at the same time, and one officer is left behind to deal with them? Not great, especially when they're all miners who, if deconverted, rush back to Lavaland to "do their jobs," only to get reconverted. And that's if you even know they exist. You might just patrol the halls, thinking you're keeping the peace during an extended round, until suddenly Nar'Nar pops out from beyond the veil of time and ruins your lunch date. Yet again, this is still not the Horror of Security. "Enough foreplay, Fontaine, get to the point." The TRUE Horror of Security is -drumroll- The Warden. The Warden is an unpredictable beast. Vampires are predictable, and to a certain extent, so are cultists. But the insane machinations of the bald-headed Warden are beyond mortal comprehension. Every shift I start as a the Head of Security, I don't worry about cultists, vampires, nukies. Any of those have the power to put me out of my misery. No, I hope for a Warden that, isn't necessarily incredible, just not a mouth-breathing troglodyte who hasn't even bothered reading a single line of Space Law. To avoid coming off as an elitist, let me give you an example. To clarify, most of us know how to identify the wild Warden that doesn't play by the rules. It's easy. Are they on the secway, zooming around on the station on green, swinging their baton and brandishing their taser? He's the Warden of your nightmares, and he makes his own laws. This is a story thread, so naturally here's a story. This one is recent. It's Vampires. We heard the call for help in science/med maintenance, as is the standard. We rush there, Vampire is no where to be seen, but thankfully the victim is alive, although a panicky mess. Time goes by, and the vampire increases in power. Not much time, mind you. Like fifteen minutes. Now the Vampire is spotted in it's natural habitat of sci/med maints again, and the Warden judges that no other man on the station is up to the job. He rushes out, ignoring his trusty Secway, as it'd only get in his way. He reaches his target, and is ready to dispense justice. Except, of course, he doesn't. He dies. Alone and unafraid in medical maintenance. His body is easily recovered, and even his ID, to the great surprise of everyone. So we just revive him and move on, right? Nope. I keep his ID on me for safekeeping, and to swiftly demote him when he makes his return. Except he doesn't. I ask the officers if they ever encountered him after his tour of medbay, but no luck. He's not even on the cryosleeper logs. We brush it off, there's other things to deal with. Then an entire HOUR later I get a call from the HoP. The Warden is asking for his job back. I go there, and sure as hell, he's standing there. With half an hour left of the shift, I ask him where he were for the last hour. He claims he was asleep. No one I asked knew where, and he was too busy asking for his job back to clarify further. I inform him about the added workload with no Warden, how I felt about it, and declined his re-employment. I have quite a few horror stories from playing Security, and largely they don't feature antags. They're the character who gets a laugh-track when they enter the door. Most of them even star me as king moron. If you read this far, let me know if you want to hear more, or share your own Horror of Security.