Change magistrate qualifying hours so IAA hours also contribute

[Tenheydes]

• Background:

Currently the experience requirement for Magistrate is 100 hours played as a member of Security.

Sec is required to have an understanding of Space Law for both enforcement and sentencing purposes.  Yes, playing as sec provides a background in Space Law which is necessary for the Magi job.

However "time spent as Sec" does not make sense as the role requirement.  When you promote cops, you get police chiefs, not judges.  Judges are what you get when you promote lawyers.

• Proposal: 

change the "100h as Sec" Magistrate requirement to "100h as Sec or IAA" 

• Benefits:

Makes sense IC.  The IAA role definition directly requires them to know and apply space law, and if done right, should be providing them trial experience at times as well.  Sec role matters too -- In terms of experience relevant to a Magistrate, a 100 hour IAA ought to be a better qualified than a 100 hour Security Officer, but comparably qualified to a 100h Warden or 100h HoS.  

Makes sense OOC. The RP focused IAA role is better at preparing the player for the RP focused Magistrate role than the often combat-mechanics focused Sec Officer role. 

Makse sense from a job experience mechanics perspective. (per the wiki) "[Magistrates] ... are not part of the Security Team, nor do they manswer to the HoS or Captain.  ... IA Agents... report to the Magistrate." Now, Playing as a doctor qualifies you to be CMO.  Playing as CMO qualifies you to be Captain.  Every other (non-service) job in the game, playing as the role helps you unlock your boss.  IAA is the only one who gets stiffed.  The wiki says that IAA is "Legal Department" and their head is the Magi.  However from a codebase perspective, we list IAA as a "service" job and they get no qualifying experience.

Drives Engagement.  Provides people a reason to play the underused IAA role. 

• Implementation:

Not a byond coder (yet?), but some look through code, seems like every job contributes to one and only one experience type.  I'd propose

• Adding a new experience type, EXP_TYPE_LEGAL.
• ensure EXP_TYPE_LEGAL is persisted appropriately across rounds.
• When the merge occurs, ensure the on-disk records for EXP_TYPE_LEGAL are set equal to EXP_TYPE_SECURITY so players don't lose existing qualifying sec experience.
• log time in security roles as both EXP_TYPE_SECURITY and EXP_TYPE_LEGAL
• log time as IAA as both EXP_TYPE_SERVICE and EXP_TYPE_LEGAL
• Make sure EXP_TYPE_LEGAL doesn't contribute to EXP_TYPE_CREW so that it isn't double-counted.
• Make Magi depend on EXP_TYPE_LEGAL instead of EXP_TYPE_SECURITY.
• Make it show in the job prefs UI as "xxxH as Sec/IAA"

There's an alternate approach which would have Sec contribute to EXP_TYPE_SECURITY and have IAA contribute to both EXP_TYPE_SERVICE and EXP_TYPE_LEGAL, and this would require a way to set datum/job/*/exp_type to a list and read multiple times and add them.

• Possibly create a new job category in the crew manifest, "Legal" and move Magi/IAA out of service and into that job category.   This might help people notice it more and proactively approach the IAA with problems, instead of the IAA being lost with in the middle of a pile of assistants and cooks and bartenders.  If so, IAA (and magi) contributes to EXP_TYPE_LEGAL and stops contributing to EXP_TYPE_SERVICE and then EXP_TYPE_LEGAL does contribute to EXP_TYPE_CREW. 
   
• Consider adjusting so HoS/Warden/IAA qualify, but Sec Officer and Detective do not.  If so, consider dropping the hours requirement since it's harder to get HoS/Warden time

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Tenheydes
Fixed spacing, Added clarification on counting time if separating legal department

[Mitchs98]

No, IAA hours shouldn't count. IAA does not have nearly as much hands on experience with Space Law as you would get from being an officer. Magistrate is 90% Space Law and 10% SoP. Whereas IAA doesn't have to deal with 90% of the situations that an officer would(or shouldn't be if they don't want to get job banned.).

The logic of promoting IAA to Magistrate doesn't hold, as the job hour requirement is for security experience, so that Magistrate's are able to ascertain and judge certain situations based on context and not just quoting a Space Law book. So that Magistrate's have a good hands-on knowledge of security regardless of Magistrate being a combat role or not.

I can absolutely guarantee you that, no, an IAA with 100 hours is NOT more qualified than an officer with 100 hours. Hell, often times an officer with 100 hours isn't qualified. Magistrate is a VERY complex job that is more than being able to quote Space Law directly without copy pasting. It requires a lot of knowledge on how security works, dealing with grey area situations personally, and a good head on your shoulders. IAA deals with none of these and almost always does not have a good head on their shoulders until a good few hours into playing IAA, as they believe they have more power than they actually do and interfere far too much in situations they shouldn't.

 

It should also be noted IAA's job isn't primarily to deal with security, it's to deal with the station on a whole. IAA's that hover in the brig like a hawk are, in-fact, not doing their jobs properly.

[Sirryan2002]

not really a fan of creating a full separate tracking metric for a max of 2-3 jobs which are half-security anyway.

[AffectedArc07]

Not in favour

[Tenheydes]

Fair enough.  Retracted.