/tg/Station 13

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The detective is the origami killer

I played a round as a security officer where the detective was antag.
We did a big investigation then he sided with the traitor and shot me with an actual revolver in interrogation and teleported out with the suspect.
It was brilliant and I never saw it coming.

DETECTIVE

TO BE TRUSTED
OR
TO BE SUSPECTED

Steelpoint wrote:Then he shouldn't have antag status!

Either all of Security (barring HoS) can be a traitor or none of them can.

Otherwise this is a inane inconsistency for the sake of someone wanting to play out their fantasies of being a rogue detective.

This is my point. The detective shouldn't be part of security proper, but rather a contractor of sorts that works closely with them (like lawyers). I think Metastation even has the office way outside of the brig.

Metastation has the office inside the brig. It's really deep in there.

Yeah, in fact that is probably my only criticizm with metastation. I want to be able to take private clients and shit

Wyzack wrote:Calm down people it is just a detective trope. I just want a HoS to make me turn in my gun and badge for once

The thing is, you already could play detective like this (that is, in a Dirty Harry style, blowing people away with your gun but ultimately being a benefit to the police). Making the detective a potential antagonist will only make that more difficult, since it makes them much more scrutinised. I used to play detective as a violent thug, more willing to kill someone than arrest them, and I never got bwoinked for it. Now, as the meta will shift, doing that will mean I'm searched for traitor items instead.

This change will simply make it even more impossible for your RP Detective fantasy to play out.

What do you think is more likely to occur if your suspected of doing wrong, the HoS asking you to come into his office and turn over your gun, or he just shoots you with a Taser, cuffs you, takes your gun, ID, and whatever before tossing you on your ass, into perma.

You don't fuck around with someone who has access to any fire arm, and the Detective has one.

Either bring back traitorsec or don't.

Don't halfass it with detectives only. It screw with the concept that roundstart implanted can be trusted, if you cut out his implant then he just becomes an OP gang target, potential rev, etc...

Distancing detective from sec is just a bad idea. You distance him from sec by design and sec players will distance him from sec in practice... he will become less of an investigator and even more of a validhunter with a revolver if you take this route.

I treat detective like greytider trash now
Thanks guys

Steelpoint wrote:This change will simply make it even more impossible for your RP Detective fantasy to play out.

What do you think is more likely to occur if your suspected of doing wrong, the HoS asking you to come into his office and turn over your gun, or he just shoots you with a Taser, cuffs you, takes your gun, ID, and whatever before tossing you on your ass, into perma.

You don't fuck around with someone who has access to any fire arm, and the Detective has one.

The people of this station don't trust me anymore. "You're too much of a loose cannon," they tell me. "You're going to stab us in the back.

Looks like I'll just have to prove myself. Syndicates, watch yourselves. I've got a mission now.

This just invalidates the Detective and encourages Security to take his spare scanner.

If you want to make the Detective irrelevant to the rest of Security then please keep this change as is.

You've spent more time posting here than testing the new feature.

I've played long enough to know how any form of antag security goes in the long term. There's nothing to indicate this will have a different outcome.

Oldman Robustin wrote:Distancing detective from sec is just a bad idea. You distance him from sec by design and sec players will distance him from sec in practice... he will become less of an investigator and even more of a validhunter with a revolver if you take this route.

Before this change, the detective was a security officer with a private office. He even had access to the security lockers to take whatever he pleased.

If that's not bad design, I don't know what is. At that point you just give every officer a forensic scanner instead of having a snowflake security officer.

Critical difference is that the Detective is meant to conduct forensics examinations of crime scenes to figure out who the perp is and find out what really happened.

That takes time and effort to do, something Officers don't oft have in the course of events. Having a dedicated role that does all of this as their job is a good thing and differentiates the Detective from a Security Officer.

----

Worse case you could just make the Detective a Private Investigator and remake the Detective into a 'Forensics Investigator'.

Scott wrote:Before this change, the detective was a security officer with a private office. He even had access to the security lockers to take whatever he pleased.

If that's not bad design, I don't know what is. At that point you just give every officer a forensic scanner instead of having a snowflake security officer.

They only had access to Security lockers on lowpop (sub-30). Before this change, the Detective was a Detective; someone who assisted Security in solving crimes, or - if there wasn't enough Security (often the case when there are less than 30 people) - in catching criminals.

Yeah, the detective on box with proper population couldn't get into the security equipment room, couldn't open any lockers there, couldn't access areas like arrivals security, couldn't go into perma or the gulag, and was therefore realistically a class apart from normal sec officers. Just because when you play him on lowpop he's got more sec access doesn't mean he's just an officer with an office.

Steelpoint wrote:This just invalidates the Detective and encourages Security to take his spare scanner.

If you want to make the Detective irrelevant to the rest of Security then please keep this change as is.

I usually gave the warden my spare scanner anyways as det because its not like I need both, plus the warden can scan things officers bring in without having to wait on me to stop roaming about scanning tags/runes/dropped mags

Was that a good idea?

So far, every time the game picked me for Detective (which I usually keep on low), I've been the tator. And every time objectives were a breeze. You can achieve almost everything from the position of your authority, without resorting to violence. But when you do have to get violent, it's much easier to do than when you are HoP. Especially given all the traitor tools you can get.

So my idea would be to make him a real loose cannon, not just a another tator. Remove the uplink, and add some creative objectives. Maybe "Put 5 greyshirts into crit and escape not in custody". Or "Put X into perma and do not allow him to escape on the shuttle". Roughing up and framing people.

I don't know. I don't feel Detective as a syndicate agent.

Lumbermancer wrote:Was that a good idea?

So far, every time the game picked me for Detective (which I usually keep on low), I've been the tator. And every time objectives were a breeze. You can achieve almost everything from the position of your authority, without resorting to violence. But when you do have to get violent, it's much easier to do than when you are HoP. Especially given all the traitor tools you can get.

So my idea would be to make him a real loose cannon, not just a another tator. Remove the uplink, and add some creative objectives. Maybe "Put 5 greyshirts into crit and escape not in custody". Or "Put X into perma and do not allow him to escape on the shuttle". Roughing up and framing people.

I don't know. I don't feel Detective as a syndicate agent.

That would require putting in what github would call "snowflake" code.

It's pretty frowned upon in here.

Shaps wrote:Having it so a loyalty implanted position can still be traitor is weird and breaks the rule of thumb that roundstart loyalty implanted crew are trustworthy, but I guess we'll see how it goes

Having crewmembers that are 'perfectly trustworthy' and immune of any claims of antag-edness at roundstart is a blight upon the game. Giving the detective potential antag might make people think twice, give it a shot, see how it goes.

Archie700 wrote:That would require putting in what github would call "snowflake" code.

It's pretty frowned upon in here.

It could be a part of non-antag (civilian) objectives. We want those, right?

I haven't enjoyed seeing it so far, but the arguments for and against it haven't changed. If it was good enough to merge then, it looks like it's here to stay.

Lumbermancer wrote:

Archie700 wrote:That would require putting in what github would call "snowflake" code.

It's pretty frowned upon in here.

It could be a part of non-antag (civilian) objectives. We want those, right?

Actually if you add this as a config option to enable shitcurrity semi-antag bad cops, etc, it wouldn't be snowflake.

tfw detectives are actually veteran officers

if you want the detective to be a contracted, outside force somewhat separate from security a la lawyer, change his job name to Private Investigator. The tropes people associate with the Detective actually fit the idea of a P.I. more anyway, may as well get the name right. Instead of working specifically for Security, he'd be someone to go to when Security couldn't be trusted with it; a more quiet or questionable approach. He'd still have his trenchcoat and such, but I figure he could have a few randomized disguises too each round in his office. Barring that, he can procure his own disguises from the various clothing lockers.

The Private Investigator's ID could function similarly to that of an Agent Card without stealing access or barring the AI from following him. He could change his own name and profession listed on it as many times as necessary for undercover jobs (or otherwise going to the HoP for a change, but this would arouse quite a bit of suspicion from those at the HoP line and would ruin his chances of sneakily stalking the HoP themselves). Maybe there could be a sort of concealed carry holster that he could store his revolver in without it showing up on inspection. It'd be sort of like hiding something in a boot, but he'd have to use a concealed holster on the jumpsuit first to make it able to hold the gun. It'd be good to be able to remove it as well so it could be put onto a different jumpsuit for changing disguises or getting back into official work attire.

The P.I. could keep his implant or not, either way doesn't particularly matter. If he's meant to be suspicious and could possibly be investigating anybody, maybe take away the implant just for that added paranoia. He's technically not directly a part of Security, so he wouldn't have to submit to a loyalty implant unless reasons arose to implant the entire crew. If any of you were to plead that they'd use him carrying a revolver as enough reason to need an implant, remember that miners in particular carry some very nasty equipment primarily used as weapons and do not require implants. Albeit their main weapon isn't very effective on station under normal circumstances, but still.

And this role would, once again, be willing to work for whoever he wanted to. Of course, this does not make anyone a valid target for murderboning and he can't just act as though he is an antag without a valid reason, but subduing and arresting people on suspicion and hunches is a part of the lone P.I.'s job description. All he has is his gut instinct, his Carp Classics, and his trusty .38 on his hip or under his shoulder; a shoulder he'll be constantly looking over now that he doesn't have any official backup. Dunno if Sec HUD NVG's would be too much; maybe just give him Mesons I suppose and see how it goes.

Of course Security would have authority over him and could very well order him to butt out of an investigation, but that's not in the P.I.'s blood; no, he gets the job done no matter what. Or he doesn't. It's up to the player, really. Is he a worn-out Private Eye just monologuing to himself until a dame walks in with legs up to here? Is he a drunkard trying to forget times past? Is he a quiet crusader looking for crime in places sane sec officers would never dare to look alone? Who knows until someone takes on the mind of this wild card and takes him for a spin?

I did once make an outline of a security overhaul that was to make the HoS less over burdened with commanding his officers by introducing Detective Sergeants under him.

So the CoC would've been:
HoS
Warden
Sergeants (x2)
Two teams of two or three officers directly commanded by their relevant sergeant.

And the useless lawyer would've been replaced with one or two PIs.

Malkevin wrote:I did once make an outline of a security overhaul that was to make the HoS less over burdened with commanding his officers by introducing Detective Sergeants under him.

So the CoC would've been:
HoS
Warden
Sergeants (x2)
Two teams of two or three officers directly commanded by their relevant sergeant.

And the useless lawyer would've been replaced with one or two PIs.

Elite Sec without the special gear, more or less? Hell, maybe even with some of it. I dunno.

And yeh, some people might disagree, but the idea of replacing the role of Lawyer with a PI would most likely result in more roleplay and action for them. It's not as though trials take place that much anyhoo.

Malkevin wrote:I did once make an outline of a security overhaul that was to make the HoS less over burdened with commanding his officers by introducing Detective Sergeants under him.

So the CoC would've been:
HoS
Warden
Sergeants (x2)
Two teams of two or three officers directly commanded by their relevant sergeant.

And the useless lawyer would've been replaced with one or two PIs.

If anything it sounds fun for the RP reasons, but there's already not enough security most of the time to properly do its job.

Point of reference, 6 rounds in a row last night EU Prime Time/ Early US TZ roundstart security numbered 0 or 1.

Two of those rounds were rev so you can imagine how fast that was.

Bluespace wrote:I played a round as a security officer where the detective was antag.
We did a big investigation then he sided with the traitor and shot me with an actual revolver in interrogation and teleported out with the suspect.
It was brilliant and I never saw it coming.

See? THIS SHIT right here is the sort of roleplay and gameplay that emerges from sec antag and is impossible without it.

Honestly, I think the opposition to detective antag has everything to do with the fact that for months people played detective basically as auxiliary sec officer, rather than a detective. Which is their own fault, they were wrong, and they are now feeling the consequences of being wrong.

I would not be opposed to adding PI tools to the lawyer but that's a separate issue.

What did you expect? He is part of the security. Sometimes he is the only security, which forces him into grunt role.

Lumbermancer wrote:What did you expect? He is part of the security. Sometimes he is the only security, which forces him into grunt role.

Pretty often what ends up happening is the Detective is solo sec for the majority of the round. He literally has to do the grunt work.

The reason people don't play security is because they don't want to die.

But that's fine

The game in general lacks easy ways to get back into the round as a human or something humanlike, so people are incentivised to not join security due to not wanting to be a loot pinata. If players had some sort of respawn or anything like that, security would be far more popular because people wouldn't be as afraid of dying.

I still like the Malk's Security Sergeants idea.

Also I think not as many people play sec due to it holding the player to a high level of expectations and responsiblites, far more so than most station jobs.

Steelpoint wrote:I still like the Malk's Security Sergeants idea.

Also I think not as many people play sec due to it holding the player to a high level of expectations and responsiblites, far more so than most station jobs.

We've had like a million threads on this in the last year it seems.

Can't really get a definitive answer though. 70+ on the server with maybe 1 sec officer, no Warden or HoS seems to be the norm.

The Detective Antag is a horrible idea and serves just 1 purpose: To undermine and nerf Security even more.

Why Det cant be Antag:

1. Start with a gun that can be converted into a Syndie Revolver. (Screwdriver+Ammo from Lathe)
2. Starts with Brig access, which makes it easy to kill Security or steal from them.

Now here is the one big fucking dealbreaker:

3. The Detective is THE one person reponsible for investigating other Antags on the station, due to his forensic scanner.

This last point passively buffs Antags tremendously. A rogue Det will most certainly never do his job, giving all other Antags a free pass.

I think the introduction of the Antag Detective is just another bored coder decision to fuck with the game balance even more, in favor of the Antag players.
Its not fun to play Security with the new Detective, its not fun for the Non Antag crew members (MIND YOU: THE MAJORITY) to watch the only guy that job it is to investigate your death, to go rogue and fuck off/kill sec.

All in all a huge mistake and I for one would want the Det to have his gun and armor removed as compensation for his new antag status.

I have seen zero murderboner detectives. At WORST, the warden/HoS are a little less excited to give the detective security gear which is fine because the detective is not an officer.

Forensic evidence is largely ignored anyway.

Besides, the scanners can print a report, if you're not asking the detective for the printed report you're shit.
If you're not checking the prints of the perp you're shit.

FranzKrake wrote:The Detective Antag is a horrible idea and serves just 1 purpose: To undermine and nerf Security even more.

Good joke. ツ

Luke Cox wrote:

Steelpoint wrote:Then he shouldn't have antag status!

Either all of Security (barring HoS) can be a traitor or none of them can.

Otherwise this is a inane inconsistency for the sake of someone wanting to play out their fantasies of being a rogue detective.

This is my point. The detective shouldn't be part of security proper, but rather a contractor of sorts that works closely with them (like lawyers). I think Metastation even has the office way outside of the brig.

You know, it might be an interesting idea to make the detective separate from security. Detective has very little to do on this server as it is, most crimes are either 1: caught red handed or 2: close enough kill him anyway. Most detectives turn into "Security Officer with a better gun" anyway.

Detective as a 3rd party investigator might be interesting. Give him the ability to fax centcomm like IAA agents on other servers have. Make his role the investigation of crimes he already has, and add in investigation of corruption and abuse of authority. He's not the lackey of the HOS, but is loyalty implanted so when not a traitor works alongside sec. Maybe give him basic access to each department, like the access that each dept sec officer gets. He can peep in on R&D to see if the RD is making a bunch of guns for the clown. Stuff like that. He could report what's going on to the HOS for crime, or report to the captain or centcomm when someone with authority is abusing it.

I guess what I'm suggesting is more of a "private eye" job that incorporates a little of what the IAA does on other servers, but since this is LRP we don't want just IAA responsibility since that would just be like lawyer. Hell, maybe we could give the lawyer the axe and throw the job of watch dogging sec to the private eye too.

I may write this up a little more and make a thread for it. See what people think.

I agree with the idea of separating the Detective from Security entirely and giving it a different title, but only if the forensic scanner remains exclusive to the Detective.

Scott wrote:I agree with the idea of separating the Detective from Security entirely and giving it a different title, but only if the forensic scanner remains exclusive to the Detective.

I agree, if the HOS can just run in and take the spare scanner then the detective really does have nothing to do.

It's like the very concept of this was thought up from some imaginary fanfiction/green text story of 'Am le traitor detective, planted le evidence on innocent person, le epic win.'

We've had antagcurity way long ago, it was broken and any traitor that was security was a massive joke to the round and it got thrown back in that all crew didn't trust anyone in security.

The same now applies for detective: Sure he gets his antag roll but now no one cares for any interaction he has with the crew or his fellow security. Detective is now irrelevant and useless to security beyond an obvious roundstart revtide; every HoS would be better off just stunning the dude, jacking his gun, ID, radio, and forensic scanner and telling him to fuck off since you're not allowed to trust him anymore.

Then the HoS would get jobbanned from security forever

The phrase "loose cannon" is bandied about quite a lot. I'm not trying to start a discussion about realism, but an antagonist detective doesn't actually fit the core examples of the genre that well.

Dirty Harry, probably THE example of a loose cannon cop, is called that because he's dangerous. He's willing to shoot his way out of hostage situations, to hunt down a criminal that's escaped justice one too many times, and even to punch a suicidal jumper in the face if he feels threatened by him. All that is exactly the sort of stuff we see normal security officers doing in game: taking things further than the law, beating criminals to death if they've led them on a long chase, being willing to shoot first and ask questions second. In fact, everything Harry Callahan does in the Dirty Harry films fits stuff that Security Officers can do in game right now and get away with just fine.

Where the line is drawn is that Dirty Harry (so named because he gets all the dirty jobs) is ultimately keen to give the system a chance. In Magnum Force, the second film, Harry is forced to choose between helping some traffic police that are murdering repeat offenders and being hunted down by them himself. He flees to an abandoned ship and kills in self defence after they murder his partner with a letter bomb. Harry isn't willing to just go out and murder people without them doing quite a lot to annoy him. That isn't where antagonist detectives tend to draw the line. Security Officers in game are loose cannons. Antagonist detectives are typically just murdering psychopaths, as willing to gun down their own side as anyone else.

No one has actually said why there's a good reason for Det-antag except this "Loose Cannon" meme [which you can roleplay as without having antag] and... that's it. This is despite the obvious drawbacks of being a less trusted member of sec [with the counters to this being nothing but "well enjoy your ban"], the ***free*** ***roundstart*** murderbone potential, and inconsistency [as said previously].

Do people want antagcurity back that badly that they'd do anything to try to shoehorn it into the game? I mean I'll be honest this is pretty uncommon to have [at least when I'm on] and people are probably being overly vocal about the minute issue, but it just seems ironic that most people who support this are the "roleplayers" of the community yet they can't seem to roleplay a "Loose Cannon" detective without wanting the chance to roll antag.

I'll roll detective to murderbone so it gets reverted

No one has provided a good rationale against detective antag either that does not involve metagaming ("security can be trusted because they're not antags!")

Conversely, since this has been merged I've witnessed a hell of a lot more actual interrogations, both with detective antags and not. If this proves anything, it's that people have gotten so used to detective being sec for no reason but antag protection that they've forgotten that this wasn't supposed to ever happen

CosmicScientist wrote:Personally this has made me more wary of a detective's evidence. I've had one round where the detective has had found fibres off of a janitor's jumpsuit, there were two janitors and they claimed the chaplain (eventually got it straight from the horse's mouth) saw a pink lizard trying to put implanters in the cremator. I weighed it up on the spot that not only was this flimsy as real evidence, as there was no lawyer I couldn't chance this to be an antag team up even though neither the chaplain nor the detective were hovering next to one another. The extreme desire to have the antag shot even after I declared they would be in perma (until a civilian could be drafted into being a lawyer to decide this, shuttle was called... and emagged so I had a chat with the lizard for the last few minutes of the round instead, wasn't even killed) made up my mind all the more. The detective was loyal and I got some minor OOC , might have been not knowing detective can be an antag or maybe something else.

I don't know whether you're agreeing with me or not, but all of these are good things. Far better and far more interesting gameplay-wise and roleplay-wise than "welp detective scanner shat out these fibers, detective can't be antag so he can't lie, gg, time to validhunt."

Seriously, I read shit like this:

TheWulfe wrote:every HoS would be better off just stunning the dude, jacking his gun, ID, radio, and forensic scanner and telling him to fuck off since you're not allowed to trust him anymore.

and wonder how the concept of "security must never be antag" got so burned into the playerbase despite all logic. No one is keeping you from trusting the detective except metaknowledge. When sec antag was removed they said it would result in a reduction in graytiding. There was no reduction in graytiding. They said it would result in people trusting shitcurity. People still bitch at security and call them rogue constantly. Which is to be expected, as shit players continue to be shit no matter what server configs are. Meanwhile, it coincided with a direct increase in validhunting-style gameplay (because security can't be antags) and metagaming (that quote above is a perfect example), which everyone agrees is bad yet is curiously unaware of the cause.

You could always grab the scanner and run a second test of the evidence, you could even grab the spare, or get RnD to print one off.

But the biggest issue with detective antag is probably going to be that someone thought it was a good idea to give a solo antag the option of an easy mode private traitor channel.

Detectives should only be able to roll double agent tbh