Captain, Security and RSR 4 (and RSR 9)

[Archie700]

Bottom post of the previous page:

(Yes, it's based on the note appeal)
RSR 4

4. Non-security may only actively hunt global or round-ending threats.
You should not act like a vigilante if a security force is present unless you have a good in-character roleplay reason to believe a global or round-ending threat exists. Restricted antags that are not automatically global or round ending threats may still become so through their actions in the shift, the stronger your reasoning the more action you can take against them.

You can always defend yourself and others from violent antagonists.

Players that choose to act as security will be held to the same standards as security.

Per the admin's ruling, captain isn't security and should not act like a vigilante (i.e. fight/hunt antags when they are exposed), however other admins have disagreed and said that captain should be allowed as part of their "your duty to ensure the stability and productivity of the station".

This also, by extension, applies to RSR 9, on what "lane" the captain falls under.

[Constellado]

I think captains should be able to help security as if they are a HoS, or HoS+. Even if a HoS already exists.

Why is that?
1: Captains START with security comms and command no other. They will hear every single bark and callout from the sec team, and will be asked questions by the sec team if the captain talks in there even once. The captain is part of the sec team in the comms channel even if they like it or not.

2: The captain starts with armor, and gear to defend themselves. It is also gear that is good at stopping criminals. The captain has sec gear even if they like it or not.

3: The sec team must ask the captain to authorise executions. The captain has to make decisions for sec even if they like it or not.

4: The captain's job is to protect the station IC. If shit goes down they are heavily encouraged to defend the station even if they like it or not. We will need to change server culture to remove this one.

Notice how none of the above applies to the HoP. This is why people hate HoPcurity, because they do not have the above things.

If we punish captains from doing sec work as in RPR9, we will end up having to bwoink them constantly because they will inevitably have to do some kind of sec job eventually. Heck, when I am acting captain I try to avoid doing sec stuff because I dislike doing the work, and I still end up having to act as sec sometimes. I do not want to be bwoinked for doing things that the game and policy HEAVILY ENCOURAGES.

[Higgin]

I don't think the captain should concern themselves with chasing down bad guys unless there is no security presence on the station, it is simply not their job to be doing that. The captain spawning with a mindshield is a rather moot point to me, it doesn't make their job any more or less security, it just restricts them from being an antag.

I don't think it's a healthy call to restrict the captain like that without there being some sort of carrot, support, or safeguard to account for the pressures Constellado brought up - even on captains or acting captains who do not WANT to be involved in security affairs.

For those that do, I see no good reason that they shouldn't be able to get involved until the point that they're stepping over security to where security themselves take issue.

It's a choice to risk AA, high-value items, and your precious head on going into danger. It's a choice we might make less attractive against other options, but I don't think it's one we can (or should) remove without addressing other things to account for why people naturally fall into this role as Captain (and may even enjoy it!)

Kind of irrelevant, admins can already action things which were not ahelped. https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Headmin_Ru ... 20ahelping. If no one is doing the job or no one is willing to do it it's not an RPR 9 issue.

It's not to say that you can - it's to say with RPR9 in particular, "this rule relies on people feeling that their toes have been stepped on, so it should probably come from a person actually saying that they were or some sort of consensus understanding like RPR10 so it isn't an invitation to proactively police somebody's lane in one round that doesn't hold up to another when nobody's coming up to say 'this is making things worse for me.'" That's the hesitation I'm feeling about it, not about the general principle - I've known people who would invoke a similar claim against roboticists for making medibots and dropping them off in the medbay lobby.

edit just to clarify my preferred approach on stuff like this in the past: in order to make actually interacting with medical more attractive, I nerfed medibots to make them slower than they are here by about five times.
Nudges can work to change behavior.
edit2 to be complete and honest about it: this seemed to have lessened the medibot drum circle meta but shifted more people towards stuff like public chems. If I was doing it again, I'd probably do better by not having nerfed medibots as much but instead given docs back a surgery skillchip that made getting treated by them give a positive moodie or something. While still to my mind far preferable to robos getting bwoinked for making medibots if there were any doctors in the round, it was probably a bit too specific of a paring down of the 'carrot' of medibots without getting the chance to touch other forms of healing or making actually interacting with medical more attractive in its own right.

I'm not sure what sort of call you'd get or give on that here, but it's not the sort of conversation I'd care to see open without somebody actually having a problem with it in the first place.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I feel that "beat cop" activity as captain is pretty much in the same area as breaking open the gun case roundstart. I guess you can, but its petty and cringe and people should make more fun of players that do it. Captain should be stepping in for more serious situations, like leading manhunts for serial killers or responding to calls for help on radio.

(Captains that run off into danger alone and get killed have just learned a valuable lesson about the power of friendship.)

[MooCow12]

Security and HOS literally directly answer to captain.

Captain is literally the judge, jury, and executioner and has the ultimate say when a baddie needs to be dealt with.

You literally cannot say antagonists in general are not in the captain's lane, especially when captain has no mechanical gameplay loop like department heads do, captain's gameplay loop revolves around law and order just as much as security does.


Limiting captain from pursuing antagonists directly himself is like limiting a medical doctor from doing chemistry on their downtime, there is overlap in roles.




You'd have a better arguement in stopping captain from running to every department collecting his exodia cards and powergaming a combination of genetics, chemistry, xenobio, armory, and shaft mining gear. (And thats only if he was tiding the people that work in those departments because the entire station is in captain's lane and if admins were gonna do something they would have when we had dayton taking hulk + telebaton as captain every round and valid hunting until I got goof to nerf hulk using batons)

[Bmon]

I don't think it's a healthy call to restrict the captain like that without there being some sort of carrot, support, or safeguard to account for the pressures Constellado brought up - even on captains or acting captains who do not WANT to be involved in security affairs.

For those that do, I see no good reason that they shouldn't be able to get involved until the point that they're stepping over security to where security themselves take issue.

It's a choice to risk AA, high-value items, and your precious head on going into danger. It's a choice we might make less attractive against other options, but I don't think it's one we can (or should) remove without addressing other things to account for why people naturally fall into this role as Captain (and may even enjoy it!)

The captain's not forced to approve executions if there's a HoS who can approve executions themselves (this is rpr3 btw). Important to note the captain has the ability to overrule the HoS in sentences and usually steps in if there is no HoS, you could also just make an acting HoS as captain.

Although it kind of feels as if you've lost the scope of my point here, I just don't want captains going around chasing spies for stealing something from RND or hunting down a traitor who assaulted someone unrelated to them, I feel as if these things should be left to security if they are present.

You've always been able to defend yourself and others from antagonists and this has never changed in my time on manuel and I don't want that to change.

It's not to say that you can - it's to say with RPR9 in particular, "this rule relies on people feeling that their toes have been stepped on, so it should probably come from a person actually saying that they were or some sort of consensus understanding like RPR10 so it isn't an invitation to proactively police somebody's lane in one round that doesn't hold up to another when nobody's coming up to say 'this is making things worse for me.'" That's the hesitation I'm feeling about it, not about the general principle - I've known people who would invoke a similar claim against roboticists for making medibots and dropping them off in the medbay lobby.

edit just to clarify my preferred approach on stuff like this in the past: in order to make actually interacting with medical more attractive, I nerfed medibots to make them slower than they are here by about five times.
Nudges can work to change behavior.
edit2 to be complete and honest about it: this seemed to have lessened the medibot drum circle meta but shifted more people towards stuff like public chems. If I was doing it again, I'd probably do better by not having nerfed medibots as much but instead given docs back a surgery skillchip that made getting treated by them give a positive moodie or something. While still to my mind far preferable to robos getting bwoinked for making medibots if there were any doctors in the round, it was probably a bit too specific of a paring down of the 'carrot' of medibots without getting the chance to touch other forms of healing or making actually interacting with medical more attractive in its own right.

I'm not sure what sort of call you'd get or give on that here, but it's not the sort of conversation I'd care to see open without somebody actually having a problem with it in the first place.

I mean yeah it takes at least two people to enforce RPR 9 because if no one is present in a department then it's not really a valid enforcement RPR 9.

Like for example if I see a captain barge their way into robotics and start to make a mech for no reason at all and I see a roboticist get mad at that captain for going around them and using up their bay I shouldn't have to wait for that roboticist to ahelp.

also about your medibots idk man you kind of lost me there, i just know something like that wouldn't be an issue on manny because it is the roboticist's job to make bots

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I don't think it's a healthy call to restrict the captain like that without there being some sort of carrot, support, or safeguard to account for the pressures Constellado brought up - even on captains or acting captains who do not WANT to be involved in security affairs.

The captain's not forced to approve executions if there's a HoS who can approve executions themselves (this is rpr3 btw).

The only rpr3 precedent for executions is just "ask a superior before carrying out severe punishments like perma or executions", which is annoyingly vague and kinda implies that you can just ask the warden.

[Higgin]

Although it kind of feels as if you've lost the scope of my point here, I just don't want captains going around chasing spies for stealing something from RND or hunting down a traitor who assaulted someone unrelated to them, I feel as if these things should be left to security if they are present.

I guess I just don't want to take that away from them when all of that stuff still has to do with the good running of the station and they have a reason to do it.

If they're gonna be delegating, doing gimmicks, command shit, I want it to be because it's what they want to do and it's natural and fun to use the role that way.

I think we could shift up the balance of how people feel about playing cap by changing the balance of what the role sets you up to do and rewards you doing.

The bind right now sort of seems like the cap is set up to be an action hero and lawgiving roamer when needed, which is often, but less to do other shit and still realize a payoff when not.

I mean yeah it takes at least two people to enforce RPR 9 because if no one is present in a department then it's not really a valid enforcement RPR 9.

Like for example if I see a captain barge their way into robotics and start to make a mech for no reason at all and I see a roboticist get mad at that captain for going around them and using up their bay I shouldn't have to wait for that roboticist to ahelp.

also about your medibots idk man you kind of lost me there, i just know something like that wouldn't be an issue on manny because it is the roboticist's job to make bots

I trust you to recognize and reach out to protect somebody who might not know well enough to speak up for themselves under the rules in that situation, when pursuing it IC is at a massive disadvantage, and I don't wanna say you shouldn't.

My sense with cap-sec is that a lot more often the relationship may be complimentary, and security can often deal ICly with a captain who's feeling their oats a little too much and shitting up their lane.

At least for what RPR9 is angling to address, that feels like an area where we might be reading in problems not for the people RPR9 is meant to protect without at least checking in with them personally first.

[Timberpoes]

Cap and sec get on well with RPR9 because the lane is inherently combat dangerous, the main people who protect the cap are sec, Oxford comma and if sec don't like it they can just arrest the cap. Who's gonna stop them? Security?

[Archie700]

The captain should not be discouraged from responding to the call of people screaming for help when someone is trying to kill or kidnapped others, or when they're escaping because of said attempt to kill or kidnap others, I feel that what you're trying to do is just limit the role to delegator instead of caretaker of the crew.

This limits any roleplay the captain could have for being the caretaker of the crew, they are basically the highest, trusted authority in the station, so why not let them have their day?

As for him being a loot pianta when alone, you could say the same for any sec or command when they're fighting someone alone in maintenance., this is a general skill issue not exclusive to the captain. And since when has "they are holding the nuke disk so they shouldn't go and fight people" valid except in nuke ops, where the captain (or diskholder) is basically forced to fight for his life anyway due to the nuke ops constantly trying to make his life short?

[dendydoom]

many thanks to everyone who has participated in this discussion. the point of it to begin with was to try and uncover how much the consensus varied across the playerbase and admin team. it seems to be that a lot of us are in agreement, and our headmin discussions have also supported our initial thoughts in the overturning of clara's note.

there is no change being made to existing policy here, rather a simple clarification on our interpretation of the existing rules:

the captain can involve themselves in security matters at their own behest if they have an IC reason driving their actions, beyond an OOC desire to use their position and gear just to hunt antags. this is especially true when it concerns matters of command - heads in danger, critical station infrastructure in danger of being destroyed, whatever the case may be. the captain can choose to take the risk to put themselves in harms way if it's a logical choice for them to make in that IC situation.

captains should not be made to shy away from utilizing their role fully if there is an IC reason to do so.

questionable acts of using/abusing authority to validhunt WITHOUT an IC reason is still disallowed - this includes examples such as the captain using their access roundstart to equip guns from the armoury before any threat or IC reason has presented itself.