(Proposal) Raise minimum expectations of security to at least not ignore crime.

[NamelessFairy]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Low effort idea thread just to see where this goes. Imagine a security rule along the lines of "As security you should attempt to resolve crimes that you witness or are reported to you unless IC circumstances prevent you". With precedents such as ignoring minor crimes to pursue a greater crime that's reported before/after is fine, or roleplay type interactions like a security officer taking a bribe to look away from a minor non-antagonistic crime being fine. Basically as long as you can come up for a reason why your ignoring a report about a stolen pair of gloves its fine.

Security tends to act like a anti-antagonist military in a lot of cases, ignoring some of the smaller crimes like theft and B&E requiring the victims of those crimes to take action themselves. This kinda sucks and I think it would be better if players could actually rely on the station security to help them when things go wrong for them.

[AlamoTurtle]

As with most opinions here, I'm also heavily against the notion of security being forced to play a certain way. At that point, you're giving a security-spinoff version of Asimov to all officers and forcing them to be the duty-bound slaves of the station to deal with crime, even when it would lead to a funny prank or event that would otherwise make the round more fun just because someone called security and the rulings say that officers must act. Holding players accountable for inaction is always unfun, and a few servers have even done away with it for the AI of all things.

People don't join sec to play cop simulator, and if they do, things would get plenty boring, fast (also why?). As said, it limits options and roleplay potential to force security officers to take arrests and resolve crimes they witness. There's not a role for all the gimmicks someone wants to run, so if someone wants to be a mall cop, they won't get to be if they see Gary Tyde in tech storage where he doesn't belong. At this point, security has to, as per the hypothetical rules imposed by this discussion, intervene, get robusted, and surprise fullstripped and flushed into a dumpster without an ID for being nosey, and now both players are probably upset that the shift went that way. This is all with the potential that other players would get involved for security handling an issue that petty and mobbing officers over nothing

[iain0]

if they see Gary Tyde in tech storage where he doesn't belong. At this point, security has to, as per the hypothetical rules imposed by this discussion, intervene, get robusted, and surprise fullstripped and flushed into a dumpster without an ID for being nosey, and now both players are probably upset that the shift went that way. This is all with the potential that other players would get involved for security handling an issue that petty and mobbing officers over nothing

This all already happens, not even over tech storage, just when security gets involved in anything. And the first part is against the rules. The second part may be contextually too.

[Cheshify]

Non-Antagonists Resisting Arrest
Non-antagonists should not harmfully resist or retaliate against valid arrests, but do not have to simply give up and allow the arrest to happen. They may instead non-harmfully escape or avoid the arresting officer in the spirit of the game.

In resisting arrest, non-antagonists should not loot officers and should not detain or incapacitate officers any longer than is necessary to escape or explain themselves.

If you're playing sec, and you have a valid reason to arrest someone, and they decide to fullstrip and shove you into a welded maint locker because the tider has 4,000 hours in the game, you can AHELP it. It's very much written into the rules that they're allowed to take reasonable steps to nonlethal arrests and acting like they just got an antag roll because they pissed security off is not one of those steps.

[TheLoLSwat]

Non-Antagonists Resisting Arrest
Non-antagonists should not harmfully resist or retaliate against valid arrests, but do not have to simply give up and allow the arrest to happen. They may instead non-harmfully escape or avoid the arresting officer in the spirit of the game.

In resisting arrest, non-antagonists should not loot officers and should not detain or incapacitate officers any longer than is necessary to escape or explain themselves.

If you're playing sec, and you have a valid reason to arrest someone, and they decide to fullstrip and shove you into a welded maint locker because the tider has 4,000 hours in the game, you can AHELP it. It's very much written into the rules that they're allowed to take reasonable steps to nonlethal arrests and acting like they just got an antag roll because they pissed security off is not one of those steps.

fullstripping and disposals dumping is overkill for sure, but getting your baton or disabler stolen for trying to stop an unimpactful B&E just doesnt seem fun on either end unless the tider was looking to bait sec.

[massa]

nothing like being micromanaged by some loser burger king manager taking it out on whoever they consider an outsider to flex that yummy power flex muscle

with such nonsense expectations just make a freeform law for admins. autistic black-ink-on-white-paper chicanery is the path to a healthy community for sure. people playing security staff are already trying sincerely to maintain order;those acting in bad faith are VERY swiftly resolved. it is clear to all, admins most of all, and is stepped on quickly.

[iain0]

Some players want more things handled IC

Some players don't want anyone to take responsibility for handling things IC

I've pondered this one a bunch, I guess there's some ideal utopia where I wish more things could just be left to IC handling but it probably just plays into the wrong things too much, and maybe is too much to be reliant on or have to check up. Admins are the true security?

[Higgin]

Some players want more things handled IC

Some players don't want anyone to take responsibility for handling things IC

I've pondered this one a bunch, I guess there's some ideal utopia where I wish more things could just be left to IC handling but it probably just plays into the wrong things too much, and maybe is too much to be reliant on or have to check up. Admins are the true security?

at the end of the day basically

policing is dealing with deviant behavior, but not all in-game crime, cruelty, and conflict are deviant - the game is basically built around them with the goal of everyone having fun

if the clown trolls sec a bit and sec beats the clown, but both sides have fun, nbd

if a tider breaks into tech storage and gets punished for it IC, up to at least a point, it might not be fun for the tider saying "but i was just doing a funny/who cares bro" but it"s probably fair for sec to treat it as a crime within the context of there being antags like BBs, and it might be an issue for engineering to the extent we want different jobs to feel like they matter (apply the same to other depts., set your level of tolerance - MRP has "stay in your lane," LRP does not)

at the end of the day, the calls about whether or not, in the balance, any of that is truly deviant are better made by staff because they've got the ultimate ability to see folks' statuses, history, and judge the health of the experience over time

Officer Friendly fighting nuke ops and pissed at the clown because he got slipped, at his best, will still try to act with everyone's best experience at heart, but he doesn't have the power, knowledge, or detachment to do it reliably even if he has a lot of tools to change other folks' experiences

[Redrover1760]

The policy is just unfun. People should be allowed to choose how they want to play. Existing policy "Dont suicide log out afk" is more than sufficient to not be encroaching upon player freedom and a lack of expectations to handle every single random crime, properly and correctly, including only allegations by people, and shit.

The recent sec note appeal is a great example of why this policy is so shitty, really.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35337

You want people to handle crime. One seccie at least tries by arresting a greyshirt with a saw who tried to resist arrest. They get bwoinked for being wrong despite it being IC issue by the same rules.

There's no fun to be had here by anyone.

[oranges]

good change I support, ignore the whines of people who play sec only to valid hunt antags.

[CPTANT]

The policy is just unfun. People should be allowed to choose how they want to play. Existing policy "Dont suicide log out afk" is more than sufficient to not be encroaching upon player freedom and a lack of expectations to handle every single random crime, properly and correctly, including only allegations by people, and shit.

The recent sec note appeal is a great example of why this policy is so shitty, really.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35337

You want people to handle crime. One seccie at least tries by arresting a greyshirt with a saw who tried to resist arrest. They get bwoinked for being wrong despite it being IC issue by the same rules.

There's no fun to be had here by anyone.

he wasn't even wrong, assistant did attack the chemist with the saw in the pharmacy.

good change I support, ignore the whines of people who play sec only to valid hunt antags.

All it will lead to is even more breathing down on securities neck for being put in an impossible situation. Trying to solve IC minor crime should be a roleplay suggestion not an OOC enforced rule. Also wtf, are you shitting on sec now for trying to keep the station safe from antagonists?

[sinfulbliss]

You want people to handle crime. One seccie at least tries by arresting a greyshirt with a saw who tried to resist arrest. They get bwoinked for being wrong despite it being IC issue by the same rules.

This is why people who play a lot of sec are overwhelmingly against this sort of policy.

You can’t really solve squabbles as sec. Think about it. Sec is called to a scene. You arrive there. Player A says player B assaulted them, or broke in somewhere, or stole something. Player B says they didn’t — or that player A started it by doing something else. You have two options now. You can (1) choose to believe one of them, and brig the other, or (2) ignore it and move on. This policy wants (1), and although that in itself is a bad idea, I find it laughable only a couple weeks after the proposal we see a sec player noted for doing (1), with the admin in the ticket saying a better investigation should’ve taken place. Incredibly easy to say, but try playing sec yourself . Sec are not admins and are not able to dig into the logs to find out who did what. Sec have to operate on incomplete information, often just hearsay, and an admin with experience in the role will be aware of this and give sec some leeway (precisely why there’s policy stating sentences under 10min are IC issues, but we’ve seen in this recent appeal that can be completely ignored by saying “rule 1”).

Why bother with all of that nonsense if you can just ignore the crime? If there’s a murder right in front of you then sure, that’s an easy situation to resolve, but little crimes here and some tiding there — interfering in that accomplishes nothing except pissing everyone off, and having to field bwoinks from those pissed off players. Or worse, a ban appeal.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want to force sec to micromanage people, then you have to accept the consequences of that — sec fucking up and making mistakes, resulting in people brigged unjustly over inconsequential crimes. Personally I consider the risk of unjustly brigging someone over a minor crime greater than the harm of ignoring the minor crime altogether, so I find it poor practice to intervene in all but the most egregious and obvious cases.

To force sec to abide by these standards, and then bwoink them when they make a mistake trying to do that, is completely ridiculous, and I can’t honestly think of a better way to kill the role off.

[massa]

You want people to handle crime. One seccie at least tries by arresting a greyshirt with a saw who tried to resist arrest. They get bwoinked for being wrong despite it being IC issue by the same rules.

This is why people who play a lot of sec are overwhelmingly against this sort of policy.

You can’t really solve squabbles as sec. Think about it. Sec is called to a scene. You arrive there. Player A says player B assaulted them, or broke in somewhere, or stole something. Player B says they didn’t — or that player A started it by doing something else. You have two options now. You can (1) choose to believe one of them, and brig the other, or (2) ignore it and move on. This policy wants (1), and although that in itself is a bad idea, I find it laughable only a couple weeks after the proposal we see a sec player noted for doing (1), with the admin in the ticket saying a better investigation should’ve taken place. Incredibly easy to say, but try playing sec yourself . Sec are not admins and are not able to dig into the logs to find out who did what. Sec have to operate on incomplete information, often just hearsay, and an admin with experience in the role will be aware of this and give sec some leeway (precisely why there’s policy stating sentences under 10min are IC issues, but we’ve seen in this recent appeal that can be completely ignored by saying “rule 1”).

Why bother with all of that nonsense if you can just ignore the crime? If there’s a murder right in front of you then sure, that’s an easy situation to resolve, but little crimes here and some tiding there — interfering in that accomplishes nothing except pissing everyone off, and having to field bwoinks from those pissed off players. Or worse, a ban appeal.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want to force sec to micromanage people, then you have to accept the consequences of that — sec fucking up and making mistakes, resulting in people brigged unjustly over inconsequential crimes. Personally I consider the risk of unjustly brigging someone over a minor crime greater than the harm of ignoring the minor crime altogether, so I find it poor practice to intervene in all but the most egregious and obvious cases.

To force sec to abide by these standards, and then bwoink them when they make a mistake trying to do that, is completely ridiculous, and I can’t honestly think of a better way to kill the role off.

We have the tools to launch an investigation and settle cases. We should be doing our due diligence as the hands that deal and define justice, which is blind. Crime is crime. We cannot set down one crime to pursue another. A stolen pen is still a crime and we must investigate and punish appropriately with the scanners, tools, testimonies and court that we have been given to enforce the orderly vision of the coders.

Unfortunately, that takes 30 fucking minutes in a game that lasts 50 and the scene of the crime just got suicide bombed or covered in ass lube and eggs and I'm being shot at by pirates and bald strangers on my crew trying to jack my shit, I'm deaf, and there are spiders everywhere.

Really, security players are just bad people who just want to kill other players! I don't like that behavior I've projected onto them, they should do what I want, which is talk at a bar with a bad gun.

[MooCow12]

low level crime tends to fall under crime that doesn't negatively impact any single player at all and to enforce security to react to it rather than as something they can pick and choose to use to validate spending their time investigating someone reduces their agency to a fraction of what it currently is.

You just push even the damn sec department into feeling like a job simulator.


Would you rather have restricted sec officers valid hunting or unrestricted assistants who quit playing sec because it blows?


There is literally nothing stopping assistant players from forming their own security force that is not on a leash. I know because i've done it before by building a brig in maint and hiring people to arrest do-badders.

[xzero314]

I play a lot of Sec officer. This is simply a bad policy. Forcing sec officers to deal with assistants that want Eva gear to go so space under fear of betting bwoinked if the don't, isn't making the game better for anybody. It makes Sec not want to play Sec, It makes the assistant players hate you even more for wearing red, It means I am going to get meta grudged by those assistant mains that will want to go to space again.

When a sec officer arrives on a scene of "Person A says Person B bad, BUT Person B says PERSON A is bad!!" Am I supposed to just pick a side? These situations are by far the worst part of the sec officer experience. Am I going to get bwoinked for taking the only appropriate option of "You guys sort it out yourselves"?

Yesterday I joined as a Sec officer and the Hos was aggressively citing this new policy to arrest every assistant that wanted to go to space or the gate way. None of them were doing anything to ruin the round of others. You can argue they could have RP'D and should have asked, but the Cap was SSD so there was no way for them to get actual authorization. I just waited for the hos to leave and lowered all their brig timers because it was ridiculous. The hos says to me "Gotta brig all assistants from now on or Ill be getting in trouble with cent comm" This is the only thing I see this policy ever accomplishing. "Act like Shitsec or get bwoinked".

[Diasyl]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".
Tiders should have a bad time. If you want to access something - ask for it, if you don't want to - break in and get it with the risk of getting arrested.

This is just a risk factor for going with a more straightforward way of acquiring things.

[wesoda25]

I think the ideal role for security is to act as peacekeepers as opposed to enforcers or a militia. In practice that means both curbing antags as necessary as well as settling crew disputes, but not just fulfilling a quota. All I see this policy as doing is slightly shifting security from a milita to enforcers, which doesn't actually guarantee a better experience for anyone. Yes, anti-antag militias who ignore everything but their valids suck and are lame, but this simply isn't a proper solution imo. We should either consider other policy solutions or simply encourage admins to use the play2win rule more often.

Also, it's worth mentioning that although chronic validhunters do suck, sometimes they're all that stands between you and a shuttle call at 30 minutes. There's a delicate balance between security and antags and average round enjoyability and that's worth keeping in mind when you get into abstract policy brainstorming like this thread

[xzero314]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".

If all you are doing is ruining somebodies day because they wanted to space explore and committed the victimless crime of asking ai to open EVA then yes you are infact being Shitsec for enforcing the law.

[CPTANT]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".

If all you are doing is ruining somebodies day because they wanted to space explore and committed the victimless crime of asking ai to open EVA then yes you are infact being Shitsec for enforcing the law.

Come on this is part of the game. Evading sec for minor crimes is fun.

[Vekter]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".

If all you are doing is ruining somebodies day because they wanted to space explore and committed the victimless crime of asking ai to open EVA then yes you are infact being Shitsec for enforcing the law.

Ask the HoP or captain for access. It's not going to kill you to use your words for once.

[xzero314]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".

If all you are doing is ruining somebodies day because they wanted to space explore and committed the victimless crime of asking ai to open EVA then yes you are infact being Shitsec for enforcing the law.

Ask the HoP or captain for access. It's not going to kill you to use your words for once.

I am not speaking from the perspective of somebody that goes to space. I have done so maybe three times ever? I am speaking from the perspective of somebody that plays Sec. This is a remember the Human moment. Yes we are playing a roleplay game with roleplay expectations, and yes I will arrest anybody who tides into a department without asking. EVA is victimless. I have no reason at all to stop you from doing what you signed up into the shift to do. If the issue is that people tiding Eva needs to be inforced then why is The Onus of administrative punishment in this case being put on sec and not the people tiding EVA?

[Vekter]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".

If all you are doing is ruining somebodies day because they wanted to space explore and committed the victimless crime of asking ai to open EVA then yes you are infact being Shitsec for enforcing the law.

Ask the HoP or captain for access. It's not going to kill you to use your words for once.

I am not speaking from the perspective of somebody that goes to space. I have done so maybe three times ever? I am speaking from the perspective of somebody that plays Sec. This is a remember the Human moment. Yes we are playing a roleplay game with roleplay expectations, and yes I will arrest anybody who tides into a department without asking. EVA is victimless. I have no reason at all to stop you from doing what you signed up into the shift to do. If the issue is that people tiding Eva needs to be inforced then why is The Onus of administrative punishment in this case being put on sec and not the people tiding EVA?

I mean, that's a very specific situation. I don't think sec is shitty for arresting someone for breaking into a department or tool storage, but EVA should really be public access at this point and I'm not certain why it's not.

[Istoprocent1]

Making security run after every minor infraction is probably not fun for anybody.

Even saying "hey, you cannot ignore crimes listed as felony in the new space law" backfires instantly when there is WarOps in progress and all these "crew aligned" antags come out of the woodworks.

[TurboForgotPassword]

Enforcing the Law is not being a "shitsec".

If all you are doing is ruining somebodies day because they wanted to space explore and committed the victimless crime of asking ai to open EVA then yes you are infact being Shitsec for enforcing the law.

Ask the HoP or captain for access. It's not going to kill you to use your words for once.

I am not speaking from the perspective of somebody that goes to space. I have done so maybe three times ever? I am speaking from the perspective of somebody that plays Sec. This is a remember the Human moment. Yes we are playing a roleplay game with roleplay expectations, and yes I will arrest anybody who tides into a department without asking. EVA is victimless. I have no reason at all to stop you from doing what you signed up into the shift to do. If the issue is that people tiding Eva needs to be inforced then why is The Onus of administrative punishment in this case being put on sec and not the people tiding EVA?

I mean, that's a very specific situation. I don't think sec is shitty for arresting someone for breaking into a department or tool storage, but EVA should really be public access at this point and I'm not certain why it's not.

Probably because command and security wouldn't want random people taking EVA gear then fucking off to space without any paperwork or logging.

[Yulice]

This would quite literally just tank sec playrate to 0 and just make it so cargo becomes the new psuedosec because then they just order mosins and kill people who are too ornery.

[BonChoi]

This would quite literally just tank sec playrate to 0 and just make it so cargo becomes the new psuedosec because then they just order mosins and kill people who are too ornery.

To be fair this ruling has been in effect for more than a few months now and I would say that security numbers have not particularly diminished a significant amount.

[kieth4]

We have decided to repeal the ruling made in this thread of:

This is being addressed with the updated Rule 5 rework we're taking a crack at. Sec should generally be following rule 1, not allowing tiders/antags to get away with whatever unless there's some kind of roleplay, and doing their job to some extent. If you don't want to handle crimes, don't play security. Reasons for a secoff to not do their job if it benefits the round quality can be handled under rule 0 (letting an antag go 'by mistake' to keep the round interesting, accepting a bribe to be elsewhere when someone is hacking into tech storage, etc.)

Admins should not be banning secoffs for "not doing enough" if they're at least trying or have a roleplay reason for not handling something. This could be more of an issue in the case of "Hey admins I called for a nearby officer to help me and they watched a tider beat me to death."

kieth4: I am an LRP sandbox absolutist- I am not a fan of holding one job to a standard whilst others are not. I also do not feel that this rule was particularly well written nor the example good enough to demonstrate the rule in use(as I have tried to explain in posts within this thread). I think that per this ruling admins having to rule 0 seccies for them to be allowed to do things other than validhunting is creating a minefield that I do not want to navigate. Ultimately, I do not feel that we need this rule- I cannot say that I have seen great enforcement of it nor can say that it is needed.

dreary: WIP

tattle: I think that this is way too hard to enforce fairly, and that there are just as many good faith reasons to ignore a crime as bad faith (afk, getting backup, doing something more urgent, crime triage, etc). We don't punish players for not doing other jobs, and as mentioned in the thread, there is always the threat of being fired. If they are so disruptive that they can't be dealt with ICly, that's when it falls under other rules that we already have.

[dendydoom]

hello,

i said i would elaborate on my thoughts on why i supported this application of policy being repealed. i then forgot because i went home for a week, and only just now did i remember.

my feelings are mostly unchanged back on page 1 of this thread. after having the policy greenlit, i cannot recall any particular application of it which was effective or positive for the requirements of sec on lrp. it seems to me that, while the idea of the policy is positive and seeks to improve upon real issues present in lrp, it does not address the reality of what in-game sec is like to experience on lrp.

to this end, i don't believe it's right to pretend that this resolves the issue that it set out to. it does not feel fit for purpose. this is not to say that i don't think that any application of such a policy could work, but rather the opposite: the discussion could be restarted with this experience of the first attempt of this policy in mind. pretending that this policy has fixed the issue that started this thread feels untrue, and that bothers me.

i don't play a lot of lrp, but feedback on this policy and investigations into situations surrounding it brings a few things to my mind:

firstly, the policy sets up expectations for sec which can feel daunting on top of the already intense gameplay of sec. playing security is chaotic and constantly feels like fighting a rising tide. the implication of administrative punishment being applied to someone who does not meet the "minimum expectation" will turn people away from sec who care the most about those expectations and following the rules. it creates an uninviting atmosphere for sec which first and foremost affects the mentality of good-faith players in whether they want to risk engaging with it, lest they be unable to keep up with those expectations and might have to explain to an admin why.

secondly, validhunting rules on lrp are already minimal, and my concern is that a growing minefield of expectations that invites punitive actions will simply make people who care about fighting antagonists not play sec where they are beholden to roleplaying a proper security force, and will instead just turn to things like a mob of assistants who are not held to such standards. this, to me, worsens the issue that this policy was attempting to resolve.

thirdly, i believe that it's an intrinsic part of the security experience that you make your own mind up about how you triage threats against the station. oftentimes you will have to make a choice between multiple issues that you cannot seek to resolve at the same time. there are lots of good faith, IC reasons to choose to not engage with a crime that goes beyond the capabilities of a single security officer. the looming feeling of administration checking your work harms the IC aspect of this part of the role. players should not seek to optimize their behaviour in an OOCly motivated way in order to appease an OOC expectation, this is entirely antithetical to the core of rp in the game overall, not just sec.

finally, i believe that the root of this policy in the first place was to address the concerns of constant minor crimes, primarily that of greytiding, to not be considered a "real" crime on lrp sec. i believe that we should just have a discussion about this directly, rather than creating policy which skirts it and holds sec accountable for an issue they didn't really cause and can't really solve without addressing the greater culture and threat levels that dynamic brings. this is a multifaceted issue that i believe is trying to be resolved with a bandaid policy that wasn't achieving what it was supposed to.

i don't know what the beginning of that discussion could look like, but in my mind in some way it will need to address the concerns of bad-faith tiding and low-level non-antag crimes that have become commonplace on the lrp servers, and what our desires are around how much they should be allowed, how much of these situations should be handled IC, where it passes over into a pattern of anti-social gameplay that defies RP and harms other parts of the game, etc.