/tg/Station 13

With all this talk about merging perma and gulag it reminded me of this idea I had for a security overhaul.
See original thread here: http://www.ss13.eu/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=4477

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Security hierarchy is thus:
<Captain>
HoS
Warden
Detective Sergeants x 2
Officer x 3 per Detective (for a total of six officers)

Departmental security is gone - it split sec up everywhere and caused sec to loose its cohesion

Lasers are getting buffed to 20 shots, the two extra shots coderbus approved was basically taking the piss.

Security officer jumpsuits are now interwoven with bullshitinium, giving them a much greater stun resistance.
Sec armor vests also have PANIC boxes, they can be whacked via a hud icon to broadcast a distress message over the sec channel (and probably emit a klaxon), and are usable whilst stunned (these will be held off until phase 2 to see what affect the bullshitinium weave has) Nah, with the way stuns are now not much point.

HoS gets one of these in a glass cabinet

Detective Sergeants
As the detective is the more popular role in security there are now two detectives, they also have the role of Sergeants - each in charge of a group of three sec officers (Red troop and Blue troop (they have a coloured arm bands to denote which team)).
They'll have full departmental sec access and most basic department access
Their revolver is replaced with a 357 or the 38 will receive a damage boost (intention is the sergeants are meant to order their subordinates to arrest people, their gun is only for blowing away enemies of the station)
(And before anyone goes "B-b-but the detective is a private eye", read below)

Lawyers and the courtroom.
Courtroom is gone, its a massive waste of real-estate that only gets used once every six months...it can be put to better use (more on this later)
Lawyers are no longer lawyers, they are literal 'Private Investigators' - their role is to be the ambulance chasers they were intended to be, going after health and safety issues, really petty crimes, and the like. Basically the small shit sec doesn't care about but does provide a lot of opportunities for mah arrpees
They get no special access other than their office (either relocated to the vacant office or a new spot near arrivals) and probably maint access if assistant maint is turned on.
Their equipment is what they have now plus hazard vests and hard hats (for their health and safety inspector image), and scanners (maybe the full forensic scanners, but I'm learning more towards 'classic' fingerprint scanners)


Brig Redesign.
As sec is returning home to the brig the brig going to need a redesign to fit all the equipment, the additional officer, and the offices of the two detective sergeants.
There will be two lockers rooms (one for each team), each contains three equipment lockers for the officers and an office for the detective.
The court room will be replaced with one of the locker rooms, perma will be replaced with the other.
The current locker room will be replaced with a dark smoky briefing room.

The Gulag.
The original design of the gulag to be used for timed sentences as well as perma was fucking retarded,
One: stripping them of all their things, giving them a prisoner ID and sticking them in the gulag would take longer than the timed sentence and was overall a shitty experience of loosing all your stuff and most of your round time.
Two: Perma prisoners are murders and other antags with a license to griff and nothing to loose... who have pickaxes. Ah duhhhhhh, did you really think this was going to end well?

So the Gulag is going to replace the perma brig.
It'll have the current features of the perma wing, such as the arcade machine, book computer, and shower/toilet with soap.
The ore conveyor goes straight to the normal mining station, all processing will happen there. There'll be some glass sheets for emergency repairs.
It'll also be host to my gas chamber design.

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As for department access and checkpoints...
I think I'll leave the check points for now, sans equipment lockers (probably replace them a camera console or a tiny holding cell.)

What I've been thinking about for department access is that giving basic access to all departments for all officers would be a much too much, so what I'm planning to do is divide the access evenly between the two teams.
Red team getting the west side (engineering, cargo, mining), blue getting the east (medbay, science (including botany))

The Sergeants would have a both teams access, for emergency access to the other teams jurisdiction if need be.

Malkevin wrote:Detective Sergeants
As the detective is the more popular role in security there are now two detectives, they also have the role of Sergeants - each in charge of a group of three sec officers (Red troop and Blue troop (they have a coloured arm bands to denote which team)).
They'll have full sec access and most basic department access
Their revolver is replaced with a 357 or the 38 will receive a damage boost (intention is the sergeants are meant to order their subordinates to arrest people, their gun is only for blowing away enemies of the station)

So there are now basically three heads of security. With full security access, which includes access to gear in armory.

Malkevin wrote:There will be two lockers rooms (one for each team), each contains three equipment lockers for the officers and an office for the detective.
The court room will be replaced with one of the locker rooms, perma will be replaced with the other.

So one of them is much easier to break into than the other one?

Malkevin wrote:I think I'll leave the check points for now, sans equipment lockers (probably replace them a camera console or a tiny holding cell.)

Officers are not only guys who loot these lockers.

Oh my god you can't emag into departmental security offices to get easy tasers and recharge said tasers what a fucking bummer time to kill myself because traitor is now so hard for me that i'm throwing my keyboard against the wall in agony every time i get robusted because I can't get easy tasers

I like it - In theory, the Sergeants provide the organization and small-scale leadership the HoS never really provides, as well as providing an 'Elite Mook' for the HoS's 'Boss'. The quad-barrel shotgun just seems silly - I'd much rather see him with an E-Gun+ or a unique revolver.

The more tiers of command security has the more likely it will be broken up and the HoS will be irrelevant. Detective is a perfectly fine role me and a lot of players enjoy playing and removing it will rob sec of a good loose cannon only semi-affiliated job that is pretty fun. Just remove lawyers and the court room, they serve literally no purpose outside of rare, RARE roleplay in there. As for contributions to the gameplay? Nil.

Warden is perfectly fine as it is too, I don't understand the restructuring at all -- especially when it looks like you want to combine the ideas of 'private military' and 'space police', which is what we already have. Detectives are technically a higher rank than officers in most REAL police departments but here they serve more of a forensic technician role and do some offhand robusting when a dual esword or nuke ops pop up with their shields. .357 is fucking laughable and I don't know why you're even considering that, at all.

Gulag is whatever, but the permabrig not being on-station is dumb as shit for some pretty obvious reasons. One half of the warden's job is watching the permabrig to make sure nobody escapes so if they do he needs to park his fucking ass in front of that monitor console and watch them every 5 min or so.

2 detective sergeants (behind the scenes)
0 Head of security
0 Warden
0 Security officer
0 Inspector
14 Assistant

Oh yes, creating jobs with less responsibility and more access and fire power is a great fucking idea

Also I like lawyers

While I like the idea, I disagree with giving Detective Sergeants full Security access, they should not have access to the Armoury, Warden's Office or the HoS's Office.

Uhh, full as in full departmental access.

Warden and HoS are still in charge of the armory.

Ah good, the "full sec access" was a bit ambiguous.

Hmm. One one side, it creates an interesting, organized system, provided everyone is being responsible. On the other side, it's less chucklefuck-proof than current system due to being more complex.

To be fair, there aren't really a lot of jobs that are chucklefuck proof.

Psyentific wrote:To be fair, there aren't really a lot of jobs that are chucklefuck proof.

There are no chucklefuckproof jobs, but they can be more or less chucklefuck proof. Adding complex structure makes it more vulnerable, e.g. in this situation officer is answering to sergeant who is answering to HoS, though HoS has authority over officer, and if sergeant is bad and HoS is great, things are getting ugly for the officer who can't while to HoS every time sergeant screws up.

Each and every department uses boss -> everyone else chain of command, with the sole exception of cargo where it's HoP -> QM -> everyone else, but that's because HoP never ever rules cargo. It means that as long as the boss isn't an idiot, things will be going more or less smoothly. More steps -> more commanding positions -> more potential for screw ups.

The problem is that, while the HoS is supposed to provide co-ordination and leadership in the current structure, he seldom does. This is really more of a problem with the players, and it won't be solved by a new sec structure.

What I'd like to see is a buddy system that pairs off Sec at roundstart or when they join.

Granted I'm rarely on much anymore but sec generally does follow the CoC.

More commanders means there's more likelihood that atleast one of them will be competent enough to give orders and organise stuff.
Same reason for the extra detective, its likely that atleast one of them will be competent enough to do forensic investigations properly. And if not there's always the private investigator you can hire.

The problem is not lack of slots for competent people. The problem is lack of competent people.

For that matter, competent people don't need ID to lead. I guess incompetent people need to see the ID of competent people to follow them, but still.

This system is too complex to support the security numbers as is. Most rounds as HoS, I'm lucky if I have at least two officers.

And besides, I don't think we should add more voices that could potentially contradict the HoS. The last thing a competent HoS needs is insubordinate sergeants who think they're hot shit just because they're one step above cannon fodder.

The problem isn't the structure of the chain of command, the problem is that almost no one in the playerbase takes the chain of command seriously, regardless of role.

Actually, most of security players follow chain of command.

The problem is that you should have to give as few orders as possible. That's not usually the case. Usually you have to give orders to everyone about everything if you want it be done.

Sec sees low-pop very frequently and I doubt you'd often see any sort of sec team functioning like what Malkevin envisioned. Sec teams working together, never mind having the numbers to function as one, would be rare and I'm guessing sec would operate the same as it always has, i.e. individual patrolling and (if you're lucky) sec rushing in to take someone out regardless of rank or teams.

Giving lawyers forensic scanners is a great idea. I never knew why a 'roleplay' job meant to be at least a notional counterbalance or at least something marginally useful to security didn't even have scanners.

As noted, the only problem with Security I am seeing is a lack of cooperation and team cohesiveness. We don't have the tools (to an extent) nor the competent enough personnel for a well oiled Security team all the time. Its the people, not the tools, that make the team. Creating a more robust and reliable Security hierarchy like Malks, which is great by the way, only benefits Security teams that are competent, knowledgeable and...... well, good!

I still think this is a good system though, It takes pressure away from the HoS and means the HoS can simply order around two people directly instead of up to six people, it also means the HoS can actually act as more of a leader instead of a overglorified Security Officer. It keeps Security personnel together and makes them tougher and gives them a more powerful presence.

Its a good chance I think, and I think the positives outweigh the negatives. This won't solve the problems Security faces, but nothing's ever going to fix that.

(Its easier for me to keep track of two squads of Security Officers (Each with a easy to remember ID system) who are working together, that it is to keep track of five individual Security Officers)

((I also did like the internal alarm each Officers vest had, reminds me of Payday 2's "stealth system"))

Let's be honest though.

There is no opportunity for the HoS to act more like a leader or give orders than they currently do. All they mostly do right now is yell to get to X to stop Y or tell officer A to give punishment B to C.

When there is combat, the roles blur even further. There is no time for a HoS to issue command to a detective sergeant for the detective sergeant to disseminate further down to his troop officers. When there is combat, it's usually the closest person rushing into a place while being yelled at by the AI to do something. If not that, then it's the HoS and the rest of sec bunching near a door without a single entry or breaching plan discussed. Which brings up a few points, those being

- You simply cannot expect teamwork and cohesiveness from a bunch of strangers that have wildly varying degrees of competency, have not trained together and do not have quick and easy method of communication in a fast-paced game.
- The AI, perhaps sadly, is and will be more of an important part of the chain of command than the HoS or warden ever will be. The AI has the luxury of having the time and resources to constantly direct security while not having the responsibility and burden of having to operate at the same time.

Honestly, the best idea for increasing teamwork may be to have a third server of some kind with weekly training sessions or something. Get a bunch of long-time sec players, get them to brainstorm what competencies they'd enjoy a regular officer having, and put them through drills until they walk away with some understanding of what it's like to have teamwork and cohesiveness.

imblyings wrote:Let's be honest though.
The AI has the luxury of having the time and resources to constantly direct security while not having the responsibility and burden of having to operate at the same time.

This is because the AI is the only player on the station with to tool to quickly survey the entire station. An AI who is keen to look out for human harm is a boon to security attempting to catch a murderer. The warden has more than enough time on his hands to fulfill this position, he just needs the resources.

Just a suggestion, but perhaps the warden could have a pseudo AI eye computer just inside the brig control? The security camera computers we have right now are so clunky and inconvenient to use, they are nigh useless. We could perhaps buff it a bit, meaning the computer has all the benefits of an AI eye, just without all the AI's fancy powers. This would allow the warden to direct security to warn potential hazards/alerts when raiding or in pursuit, etc. This may solve the security cohesiveness problem, but sight should be restricted to specific critical areas where a pursuit or a raid might take place such as the main hallways in order to preserve gameplay balance. Of course, such a powerful tool should be only limited to one, maybe two on the entire station, namely being inside the brig/bridge.

I like departmental security, the access to that area really helped out security, as even when security did not get maint two of its officers could...
The removal of the courtoom is a shame, and the removal of the gulag is silly to me.
Besides, the pickaxe thing? The ones there dont do damage for some reason.

Ok, so I wrote up a long ass reply, then the forum logged me out when I tried to post it, whelp.

Basically, I don't support the change because:

1) The sort of organisation of these teams that you're envisaging, simply won't happen. While sec officers will most likely follow the orders of sargeants, outside of perhaps a round start chitchat, it won't be any different from the current situation. This is mainly because shit happens way to fast for people to sit there and type, in practice sec people (other then the warden) wander on their own, then respond to situations as they occur in the only practical way: They run to the scene from where ever the hell they are. Putting people in teams won't change this, sec can buddy up and move around in groups now, there's nothing stopping them, and there's nothing stopping them from NOT grouping up with this change. And while some having more people giving direction in sec wouldn't hurt, this can and does happen perfectly well today, amongst normal sec officers. Making someone a higher rank won't make them better players, or better at organisation or leadership.

2) What are the real advantages of splitting sec into two teams? They share the same comms, they have the same gear, the same access, the only difference is a bit of coloured scrap on their arm. What are they going to do in a fight? Wait for their own team members rather than get right in there with someone from the other team?

3) Department sec is good. It helps evenly distribute sec officers, and means that there is (more likely, atleast) going to be a sec officer fairly close, if a crime occurs in any main part of the station. While having two sargeants will general departmental access works fine for reacting to crimes (mainly more significant ones), having an officer chilling at the department is much more useful for preventing crime (especially petty crime) as well as being a much faster response.

4) People like detective the way it is. Sec aren't space cops, the detective has his own style (I personally see them as a bladerunner type detective character, in how they tend to function). I don't see why it's neccesary to remove (because lets face it, the sargeant is a completely different job, merely one that happens to also have a scanner) a role that people enjoy playing.

5) The courtroom is fun. Admittedly it is fun that occurs very rarely, but none the less the very best rounds I have ever played have involved great trials. Sure the argument about space isn't terribly valid? There's no tight limit on how much space the station can take up, adding/extending a gear room hardly needs to also remove the courtroom, and the lawyer job.

Also in practice I think the sargeant role is just going to be people taking it to get more access/better gear compared to a normal officer. Scanners can be built at R&D now, so that's not the biggest issue anymore either.

What about this?
We do keep the courtroom and the lawyer, but allow the lawyer a camera/

We keep the Detective the same way and change the Sergeants to the Swat team members, they still behave has mini heads to the normal sec officers, but are given a more darker color scheme, Nightvision goggles and a sechailer in the form of a balaclava and higher power weapons with the exchange that they can't set the timers on the brig. (Think combat shotgun and the researchable SMG) The SWAT team members are a counter to the higher scale threats the space station may encounter such has Nuke ops, Wizard and the clown with space lube who knows how to use it.

lumipharon wrote: 2) What are the real advantages of splitting sec into two teams? They share the same comms, they have the same gear, the same access, the only difference is a bit of coloured scrap on their arm. What are they going to do in a fight? Wait for their own team members rather than get right in there with someone from the other team?

Different access.

Sec officers would have their teams access.
Blue team would cover Medbay, Science, bar, hydro
Red team would cover Engineering, Atmos, Cargo Bay, mining.
Detectives would have the access of both teams.
HoS would have both teams access, plus the armory, the bridge, teleporter, maybe some other command areas.


Not that this will ever get coded because neither code base is probably willing to give it a try

Not this will ever be played properly because neither player base plays organized sec enough to give it a try.

Try it on bay or something, malk.

Reimoo wrote:Just a suggestion, but perhaps the warden could have a pseudo AI eye computer just inside the brig control? The security camera computers we have right now are so clunky and inconvenient to use, they are nigh useless. We could perhaps buff it a bit, meaning the computer has all the benefits of an AI eye, just without all the AI's fancy powers. This would allow the warden to direct security to warn potential hazards/alerts when raiding or in pursuit, etc. This may solve the security cohesiveness problem, but sight should be restricted to specific critical areas where a pursuit or a raid might take place such as the main hallways in order to preserve gameplay balance. Of course, such a powerful tool should be only limited to one, maybe two on the entire station, namely being inside the brig/bridge.

This sounds AMAZING. It would make wardens who are supposed to be the radio guy in every Singleplayer FPS ever much more efficient and potent at what they do (which arguably, they SHOULD be doing.) Although I personally think there should only be one in the wardens office.
Can we please have this?

Maaaaybe. I've had an easy time catching traitors using the cams as warden without it just by checking 'the usual' spots, honestly. The AI was supposed to fill this role but the AI doesn't get sec radio by default and is kind of finnicky when ti comes to reporting crimes because muh possible shitcurity harm!

Malkevin wrote: Sec officers would have their teams access.
Blue team would cover Medbay, Science, bar, hydro
Red team would cover Engineering, Atmos, Cargo Bay, mining.
Detectives would have the access of both teams.
HoS would have both teams access, plus the armory, the bridge, teleporter, maybe some other command areas.

On most maps cargo and engieland are across the station from each other, although medical is normally rather close to science and the civilian areas...

Other than that, I would support this excepting the NVGs and the detectives becoming full officers.

Malkevin wrote:Lasers are getting buffed to 20 shots, the two extra shots coderbus approved was basically taking the piss.

HoS gets one of these in a glass cabinet

AHAHAHAHA NO, no 20 shots lasers, 10 at most, 20 is literally gamebreaking.

Yes to the shotgun, as long as it comes with a little red hammer for smashing the glass.

Yes to removing department security that ruined many things, maybe keep a few rooms laying around though.

Less gamebreaking than a laser that recharges itself. That the captain already has and R&D can make radioactive versions of.

Lets not forget that most other firearms not only hold more rounds/charges, but deal equal if not greater damage, as well a some of them stunning as in addition to harming, and can be reloaded.

callanrockslol wrote:

Malkevin wrote:Lasers are getting buffed to 20 shots, the two extra shots coderbus approved was basically taking the piss.

HoS gets one of these in a glass cabinet

AHAHAHAHA NO, no 20 shots lasers, 10 at most, 20 is literally gamebreaking.

Yes to the shotgun, as long as it comes with a little red hammer for smashing the glass.

Yes to removing department security that ruined many things, maybe keep a few rooms laying around though.

Lasers are already at 10...

I kinda like it, but honestly, the biggest issue with sec is that nobody wants to play it because it is damned by the admins if you do your job robustly, damned by death by players if you try and do your job by space law. It is mega-not-fun almost every round.

If shitlord players actually got banned for attacking sec when they aren't antags, I would play more often, but I can't count the number of times I have died as sec because I am trying to avoid being shitsec.

Hierarchy is not, I think, a big deal in this shakeup: as other people have said, the way people play security means it wouldn't have a big effect. Probably the biggest problem is that the sergeants only have revolvers. The HOS is supposed to be able to nonharmfully detain if they must, the warden is supposed to be able to do it, and there's no reason these sergeants shouldn't do it. If they aren't working in teams already, not giving them stunguns won't help: it will only create a massive conflict between security and the ai that doesn't need to exist. The ai will be more hesitant to aid security because a bunch of their officers will be shooting on sight. Much better would be to give the detective sergeants upgraded tasers or some other boost to their equipment without making them fully lethal. In any case, they're not that necessary, though they are an interesting addition to give the update a really obvious symbol that things have changed.

I like the lawyer upgrade, at the moment this class isn't used well on tgstation and people aren't interested in a lot of the rp stuff. Full forensic scanners would help massively to increasing its cachet and getting a private eye who can't make arrests, for all the people that like that concept. Courtroom is indeed useless: you can hold a trial anywhere, and trials are indeed frequently held without putting it in the courtroom or calling it a trial. Once you have two sides giving evidence and a judge, a trial has in effect been held, even though it's often in the brig.

You talk about wasting real estate on the station, but then propose to get rid of the courtroom and waste the space just as much. If you're serious about a brig design with a gulag instead of a perma, the brig should become more compact. The perma wing is massive, way bigger than one locker room needs to be. The courtroom is equally oversized for a locker room. The current room appears to have space to brief people and provide lockers: it should really be possible, if you want, to cut out the entire perma wing (leave it to space), move the gulag shuttle, execution chambers, and 'sec office' (your briefing room) to the courtroom, and turn the entire sec office into a large locker room. The armoury and lockers would still be vulnerable to space, which is apparently a feature, the coutroom would be used up, and the perma wing would be gone.

As for replacing perma with the gulag? Quality idea. So long as escape isn't really likely (in the same way escape is tough from perma) it'll work well. You will face people blockading the gulag entry point with racks and stuff, so some system of an airlock with buttons from the security side should allow you to safely move prisoners into the area without experiencing trouble from pickaxes: rather like the current airlocks that are the three perma cells, with their lockdown and flasher buttons. Anyway, perma is made slightly more interesting, prisoners perhaps become slightly more productive, and so on.

Weapon changes: giving the laser more shots? Eh, I guess. Giving the HOS a massive shotgun? Given he has full armoury access it's probably not necessary, but you could do it without too many issues. Giving the sergeants high powered revolvers? Not a big fan, as I said earlier. Why not give sec access to disablers or something, for taking down hulks and other stun-immune creatures? I think that would be a useful and interesting addition to the armoury: perhaps the sergeants could carry those and a stun revolver instead of a gun?

Getting rid of department sec is great: the system currently doesn't work, because there aren't usually enough sec officers to cover all areas, those that are assigned basically have to go wherever they're needed rather than guarding their department, the stuff in the lockers gets stolen regularly, and so on and so forth. The only good thing that comes out of department sec is the radio access. Perhaps all these new tools for sec counters that. Anyway, temporary holding cells and console bases is an interesting idea, worth exploring. Maybe make the holding cell only settable up to two minutes? They'll probably get broken into anyway, but at least they'll be a place to search people instead of taking them all the way to the brig.

Red team/blue team division of access also seems like a sensible way of designing this. Otherwise a stolen sec card would be just too useful. Of course there'd have to be a way of assigning this stuff at the HOP console.

Would sec officers have maintenance access? They don't currently.

Could you automatically provide gloves in the locker rooms? It's kind of problematic if you're adding more forensic scanners.

* Get rid of departmental sec, all officers start at Brig and get basic access to all departments.
* When Security HUD is used to set someone to "arrest", it could ask for "crime committed?", would encourage communication.
* Upgraded AI Eye Camera Computer for the Warden sounds amazing, would encourage teamwork and give Warden something useful to do.
* Secborgs starting with access to sec radio channel would encourage communication.
* Beepsky announcing his catch over the radio would make the bot much more useful and not a safety hazard which gives out free cuffs to everyone in Arrivals.

The biggest problem with Security is that there's little to no communication, Warden needs to constantly ask "Why was this guy set to arrest?", no Officer ever asks for orders, HoS rarely gives out orders, and as an Officer I have no idea whether to patrol around or to guard my post. Also Warden has very little to do (AI Eye Camera for him?), Detective is almost useless (more access to him?) and I've yet to see a single useful Lawyer (remove he please).

kosmos wrote:* Get rid of departmental sec, all officers start at Brig and get basic access to all departments.

Would make me want to robust a Sec officer five times more because his ID is now one of the best around.

I should probably clarify that I've quit /tg station in all forms.
So this will never happen.

Malkevin wrote:I should probably clarify that I've quit /tg station in all forms.
So this will never happen.

Because you're the only coder.

thank god

Yeah... I'm just going to lock this thread because you tard babies arent worth the hassle