A humble request to /tg/station admins

DrPillzRedux · Post by **DrPillzRedux** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:12 am #39162

So goonstation is trying to setup an RP server, but they have no idea on how to do it. They hardly know what RP is actually. So I have a request, you don't have to do it, but it'd be nice.

Could some of the more seasoned /tg/station admins post in the thread here: http://forum.ss13.co/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3825

/tg/mins who've been around for a while know the policies here. The RP and rules on /tg/ are a good balance for a medium RP style server. I'm sure the goons would appreciate your feedback as they've been looking to /tg/station for ideas. They also really want to know how to combat ERP at its source.

Thanks.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:53 am #39167

It seems like first they need to figure out exactly what it is they want when they say "light rp".

They're talking about enforcing certain things for job performance, for example. Something we only do in small doses. I wouldn't want to post in that thread unless they specifically say in that thread "we want help from other admins of other stations". Otherwise it can easily come across as kind of elitist to bust in there and start telling them how to do things.

DrPillzRedux · Post by **DrPillzRedux** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:57 am #39168

It's not so much as telling them how to run it, it's more of giving them guidance. Telling them what's worked to promote a fun, RP server over what hasn't for /tg/. They don't want it to be bay-tier, but they also don't want it to be like normal goon, AKA extremely little RP. They want something in the middle like /tg/, but they don't know if there should be restrictions regarding jobs, knowledge, etc.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:31 am #39179

They're gonna have to get over their stigma of ERP.
They don't have to promote it, but they shouldn't flail and turn circles while wiping their hands on their shirt at the sight of departmental flirting.

Goon has always been this hilarious claim of "WE'RE BIG BOYS AND MATURE PEOPLE except when someone mentions boobies in a way i don't like."

Other than that, its not like our rules/standards are that difficult with half a brain.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 5:39 am #39182

I don't think they have to concede one bit on the ERP.

It's quite possible to have a fun game of semi-serious spessmen pretend without pulling out your dick or trying to touch someone's tits.

It's apples and oranges. ERP is a whole different beast in its own box you can allow or disallow at will.

Surely there will be some players who will balk and say "I can't FULLY REALISE THIS COMPLEX CHARACTER if I can't poon that poon" but you don't have to cater to them. They can find somewhere else to play or learn to keep their pants on.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 6:27 am #39191

I think ERP on SS13 is about as dumb as it gets, the only thing i've seen dumber than that was discovering people trying to ERP over the chat in Quake 2 back in the day.

I forgot where I was going with this, I just wanted to take a jab at goon for being the cooties police.

DrPillzRedux · Post by **DrPillzRedux** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 6:55 am #39196

It's more of the don't be creepy rule. You can say boobs, dicks, whatever. Just don't like, be creepy about it. EAT A BAG OF DICKS isn't okay. YOURE A DICK is JUST FINE.

Why do you need to talk about genitals in a 2d spaceman game anyway?

Jacough · Post by **Jacough** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:22 am #39198

DrPillzRedux wrote:It's more of the don't be creepy rule. You can say boobs, dicks, whatever. Just don't like, be creepy about it. EAT A BAG OF DICKS isn't okay. YOURE A DICK is JUST FINE.

Why do you need to talk about genitals in a 2d spaceman game anyway?

What's creepy about "Eat a bag of dicks"? It's just a stupid harmless insult. Don't tell me Goon's reached full blown workplace harassment levels of retardation and telling someone to suck a cock somehow qualifies as sexual harassment

Biggest thing they need to do is cut down on the sheer amount of murderboning and powergaming. The last couple of times I tried playing on Goon the rounds only lasted 15-20 minutes, if even that, thanks to the antags just sort of going all out and killing everyone in sight in a mad rush to complete their objectives or just kill as many people as they could. I'm not saying they should take Bay's near zero tolerance for murder but a server where they encourage at least some level of roleplay or subtlety as antags before resorting to pulling out the big guns and blowing the fuck out of everything in sight would be nice.

DrPillzRedux · Post by **DrPillzRedux** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:33 am #39200

Goon has a sort of weird way of how it goes. It's a public server where every baddy can join. RP isn't non-existant there, it's just light. Most people stay IC, but some will ooc in ic if someone needs help on how to do stuff. Emoticons and shit like irl, wtf and all that are tolerated but frowned on. It's a nice mix between the crew companionship you find on /tg/ with the chaos of, say, /vg/. I went through a 2 hour solarium round with 3 dudes on goon and in the special round mode you get after we all died one after another. It was sad.

As for antags killing, I play on goon 4 regularly and I rarely see blatant murder these days. Last time an antag got me was by slipping me with a banana, blocking me into a corner, feeding me chems that make you fart, and placing me over a bible. If you fart on a bible, intentionally or not, you gib. Sure you can go on murdersprees on goon with an esword but you won't last long unless you're on drugs. Damage for most things is doubled or tripled on goon. While the esword will crit you there in 2 hits and cut off the targeted limb, that assistants fire extinguisher has a huge knockout chance.

Mat13295 · Post by **Mat13295** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:49 am #39208

May as well jump in here...

Since everyone is already talking about it, ERP:
/EVERY/ game that has an RP element in it will have ERP and admins/devs will need to decide how they wish to deal with it, either allowing it or banning it.
First things first, they need to decide what constitutes ERP (Fairly simple mind you compared to what is "Light RP"). If even remotely mentioning genitalia in the game slaps you a ban you got the "Yogs syndrome" where even yelling "Eat a dick" at someone nets a ding-dong bannu. Essentially, anything past a kiss/hug/Rabid insulting would be considered ERP.

Now to the actual discussion:
Don't enforce RP, or at least don't enforce it to Hitler levels for light RP. You want to encourage it. Things like permanent med/sec/employment records and character flavour text allow players to estabilish a character better, hell Baystation recently implemented a new char set-up option that includes citizenship, solar-system of origin, work faction (E.g. Naotrasen, Vey-Med, Einstein engines etc) and even religion (Dunno if signing up as chaplain auto-selects your char's religion or not). Adding in /me along with custom would also help since it will allow players to emote easier. Rule-wise, they will want to only ban people that are heavily and constantly mucking up the RP environment, OOC in IC/IC in OOC, blatant griff, traitors constantly murderboning every chance they get without a word. Goon would be /FANTASTIC/ for RP shenanigans due to the multitude of different systems and recipes they have in their code.

TL;DR: Decide what you consider is ERP and setup rules accordingly, encourage, don't enforce RP. RP isn't something that can be forced, it thrives when it is allowed to happen on its own and has systems in place to encourage its growth.

Aranclanos · Post by **Aranclanos** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:56 am #39209

mat where the hell were you when I was asking how to encourage roleplay all this time

Cheridan · Post by **Cheridan** » Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:15 pm #39223

While Mat brings up some great points, I think he fails to address the need for a proper, set backstory. For example, he mentions the ability to set star-system of origin and work faction.

What would /tg/station players fill into these fields? Because we don't have any star-systems defined in the backstory besides Earth, people would be justified in entering anything at all; anything from the Solar System to the Algol System to the Cogginbawls-Fukt'Urmum System.

What work faction would they select? We have minor corporations mentioned in certain places in the code, but a lot of them are just dev in-jokes or self-inserts, like pepper spray being manufactured by "UhangiCo". Aside from those, our only other established factions are Nanotrasen and the Syndicate.

Even our Syndicate sub-factions that have been used to influence design, such as the Gorlex Marauders (aka nuke ops) and the A.R.C, are technically unofficial in the sense that... there's no established way for something to be declared "official" lore. They were just written up by Doohl for his proposed Traitor Factions overhaul, and a couple coders have been using it as a guideline since they thought it was neat.

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:46 am #39308

Shit, we have been trying to weasle stuff from Goon's closed source code forever, haven't we? We should have some of our people do RP consulting in exchange for sweet sweet company secrets.

Additionally, what level of light RP are they looking for? Sybil and Basil both have pretty different general arrpee levels, even though both would likely be considered medium-lite rp.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:54 am #39310

Truly we need to appoint some /tg/station loremasters who have good writing ability to sit down and hammer out an official backstory for our server and some choices for players to make to help further define themselves.

Cipher3 · Post by **Cipher3** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 1:59 am #39312

>Loremasters.
They'll be working off a solid foundation, won't they?

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:25 am #39314

If by "solid foundation" you mean arguing about head canon and whether the honkmother is real.

Post by **oranges** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:13 am #39323

>implying the goon code is good

130 players no lag baby

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:28 am #39332

I also believe that some backstory could help with RP but I also think that it shouldnt go into the core elements of the game, like what Nanotrasen is/ cloning & crews on the station / centcom / etc.
Being specifc about these things could have a restricting effect on our roleplay and to me it just seems more fun when every player has a different idea about things.
It is possible that I am wrong though and maybe these details could provide a solid foundation, but I dont believe that one story can satisfy every player.
So maybe the ideal thing would be to build the lore with a series of unconnected stories from the world of SS13, but not necessarily about the life of the Station.

Silavite · Post by **Silavite** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 4:30 am #39342

Backstory for chemical drama if it's needed.
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=547

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 4:00 pm #39390

In order to have meaningful RP you need social constructs and preexisting relationships.

We already import a lot of social constructs from real life into the game. The roles of workers, bosses, men, women, etc. We've cobbled together some sort of new concepts for some of our heads, security, etc.

Nanotrasen itself is both a loosely defined construct (it's a kind of megacorp) as well as a set of per existing relationships (all the an tags hate it for some reason, most players during a round work for it).

It wouldn't be bad to flesh those out and add more things if the people doing it were good creative types with an eye for making interesting nuances.

There already is a lot of stuff that is just known and sets off our bad RP detectors. If a Wizard appears and says Nanotrasen has sent them to perform tricks for the crew we know already that doesn't fit at all with the little background we've established.

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:28 pm #39439

An0n3 wrote:There already is a lot of stuff that is just known and sets off our bad RP detectors. If a Wizard appears and says Nanotrasen has sent them to perform tricks for the crew we know already that doesn't fit at all with the little background we've established.

You couldn't go along with that because of your preconceptions?

Cipher3 · Post by **Cipher3** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:33 pm #39441

leibniz wrote:
An0n3 wrote:There already is a lot of stuff that is just known and sets off our bad RP detectors. If a Wizard appears and says Nanotrasen has sent them to perform tricks for the crew we know already that doesn't fit at all with the little background we've established.
You couldn't go along with that because of your preconceptions?

Because we at the least agree that Nanotrasen is here for production, not for cheap entertainment, and the manifest of possible threats delivered to the Captain specifically lists the Wizard as an escaped criminal and highly dangerous.

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 10:23 pm #39451

Cipher3 wrote:
leibniz wrote:
An0n3 wrote:There already is a lot of stuff that is just known and sets off our bad RP detectors. If a Wizard appears and says Nanotrasen has sent them to perform tricks for the crew we know already that doesn't fit at all with the little background we've established.
You couldn't go along with that because of your preconceptions?
Because we at the least agree that Nanotrasen is here for production, not for cheap entertainment, and the manifest of possible threats delivered to the Captain specifically lists the Wizard as an escaped criminal and highly dangerous.

Just like traitors can have a story of how their family is being held hostage by the Syndicate, wizards can have a story of how they were an innocent stage magician imprisoned wrongly by the corrupt Council of Archmages, now on the run towards a place without extradition laws.
Is creativity really dead around here?

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 10:35 pm #39460

Okay but that is a lot different than the scenario you initially proposed. I don't mind a little roleplay on the part of the wiz, but you also need to remember that the roundtype hinges on the survival of the wizard, and there will always be shitters who try to lolvalid the wiz simply because "muh winning"

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Wed Oct 29, 2014 10:37 pm #39461

Wyzack wrote:Okay but that is a lot different than the scenario you initially proposed. I don't mind a little roleplay on the part of the wiz, but you also need to remember that the roundtype hinges on the survival of the wizard, and there will always be shitters who try to lolvalid the wiz simply because "muh winning"

Well, that is given. There is a false assumption that you peacewizards dont have to do anything, but actually self-preservation can be demanding.
Wizards are valid, you have to play with that in mind.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Thu Oct 30, 2014 5:20 am #39503

leibniz wrote:
Cipher3 wrote:
leibniz wrote:
An0n3 wrote:There already is a lot of stuff that is just known and sets off our bad RP detectors. If a Wizard appears and says Nanotrasen has sent them to perform tricks for the crew we know already that doesn't fit at all with the little background we've established.
You couldn't go along with that because of your preconceptions?
Because we at the least agree that Nanotrasen is here for production, not for cheap entertainment, and the manifest of possible threats delivered to the Captain specifically lists the Wizard as an escaped criminal and highly dangerous.
Just like traitors can have a story of how their family is being held hostage by the Syndicate, wizards can have a story of how they were an innocent stage magician imprisoned wrongly by the corrupt Council of Archmages, now on the run towards a place without extradition laws.
Is creativity really dead around here?

OPINION ALERT OPINION ALERT OPINION ALERT

Now we're in it. The difference between a good roleplayer and a bad roleplayer. A bad roleplayer comes to the table with a character he already wants to do and if the source material doesn't fit it he cooks up mary-sue type exceptions, "head canon", or other weird shit that try to crowbar whatever it is he's thinking into the play. Because his character is flat and inflexible, it's easier to argue against "the rules" than it is to make alterations or start over.

A good roleplayer looks at what's on the table first, thinks about the moods and tone they want to portray, and then builds that vehicle for that expression inside the box of the world. At the very least when they think of something ahead of time and become married to it, they're witty enough to think on their feet and make minor adjustments TO THE CHARACTER to get it back inside the box.

Why is one good and one bad?

Because the good player's character and role is like a USB device. It fits anywhere in the world we've built together, it can have an interaction with any group that makes sense. It's not a weird shape that prevents someone else from "plugging in" to the game. It doesn't need story "patches" to make sense.

Creativity aint dead, it's just not easy to do it well. There's a difference between being creative and just making stuff up. You can't just force stuff into a group game and expect others to accept it when it often flies in the face of what the established world. Babby's first attempt at making a great character is to make something that is really huge in scope. "My wizard is the princess of all wizards but is also the heir to Nanotrasen!" *gasp wow*. It's much more difficult to take simple everyday characters and make them great.

It's why superheroes only appear in comic books and not the great American novel. Wit is learning to say a lot more with a lot less. And wit is priceless, it can't be faked or forced.

The bottom line is that we're not drawing a comic book and we're not writing a novel. There's a game to be played here, and if your character is a bundle of reasons NOT to play the game like you're supposed to or reasons NOT to follow the rules, you're fucking up twice over.

Miauw · Post by **Miauw** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 9:50 am #39698

oranges wrote:>implying the goon code is good

130 players no lag baby

This pretty much. I fear that most parts of gooncode are unusable for us.

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:37 pm #40209

Didn't they achieve that by 1. increasing tick speed, 2. cutting power net and atmos simulation and 3. running even better hardware than SoS?

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 1:58 pm #40222

Its a bit disappointing that goon's foray into 'light' RP starts off with talks about ERP and limiting what jobs can do, sure it makes sense with the confinements of the current day that people can only learned a limited number of things due to the time investment, but this is the future where a new body can be vat grown in three minutes and the conscious/soul can be downloaded direct to it, the ability to download knowledge direct to the brain isn't that far fetched.

Whats always annoyed me about Bay is that their idea of RP is 'Present day office simulator... in SPACEEE".
Its a game set 500 years into the future, god only knows how things will be then. Christ look back 500 years and laugh at how we were all shitting in ditches and stunk of dung.

So what they need to do is think on what they want to let the players do, whether restricting certain behavior is good for gameplay - it might seem like a good idea to make it so that job workers are the only ones that can do their job, but is it really a great experience to be stuck in medbay waiting for a surgeon to arrive because none of the half dozen people around you 'know' how to treat your internal bleeding?

So come up with what style of play they want and then fit the fluff to that.
Want the lowest assistant to able to perform complex brain surgery? Fluff is that prior to deployment everyone gets every bit of knowledge they needed downloaded straight to their brain, like the matrix.
Want people to have an excuse to raise up a revolution? Nanotrasen are giant dicks, rev heads know how to modify a flash to implant a hypnotic suggestion playing on that to revolt, loyalty implants block that suggestion but can't prevent wanton traitory (i.e. they don't 'cure' traitors or other antag types.)

-----
What ever happened to the fluff we used to have?
That Nanotrasen was a massive megacorp, with the power and influence of a sizeable country, that was a largely dystopian society that practically enslaves its employees in multi-lifetime contracts.
A company that will happily send in a not-so-secret death squad to shoot anything that moves whilst they activate the onboard nuke so that the station and its secrets don't follow into enemy hands.
A company that employs a sec force that isn't your friend but jack booted thugs that are employed to make sure the rest of the crew does their job and beat down any that don't.

A company that is for all intents and purposes, a giant bag of dick.

Edit: Oh, and most of the crew are basically borderline crazy space hobos that were picked up out of the gutter, thrown in the Skill-O-Tron, and forced to sign a multi-lifetime contract of resentment and regret.
Which is why they arm themselves to the teeth, pack rat anything useful, and have a hairline trigger to bludgeon someone with the nearest blunt heavy object

Ricotez · Post by **Ricotez** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 3:40 pm #40246

We keep our fluff vague on purpose. It makes it much easier for people to invent stuff on the fly. Everyone is a special snowflake on Space Station 13!

But seriously, I think it would scare off a lot of people if they first have to learn a massive backstory before they can properly RP on the station. Right now you only really have to know that Nanotrasen == The hand that feeds, The Syndicate == Valid, and Plasma == The reason people kill each other in this particular part of space.

Miauw · Post by **Miauw** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 4:58 pm #40254

Ricotez wrote:Didn't they achieve that by 1. increasing tick speed, 2. cutting power net and atmos simulation and 3. running even better hardware than SoS?

aka they did bandaid fixes, which we try to advoid as much as possible.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:37 pm #40341

Malkevin wrote: -----
What ever happened to the fluff we used to have?
That Nanotrasen was a massive megacorp, with the power and influence of a sizeable country, that was a largely dystopian society that practically enslaves its employees in multi-lifetime contracts.
A company that will happily send in a not-so-secret death squad to shoot anything that moves whilst they activate the onboard nuke so that the station and its secrets don't follow into enemy hands.
A company that employs a sec force that isn't your friend but jack booted thugs that are employed to make sure the rest of the crew does their job and beat down any that don't.

A company that is for all intents and purposes, a giant bag of dick.

Edit: Oh, and most of the crew are basically borderline crazy space hobos that were picked up out of the gutter, thrown in the Skill-O-Tron, and forced to sign a multi-lifetime contract of resentment and regret.
Which is why they arm themselves to the teeth, pack rat anything useful, and have a hairline trigger to bludgeon someone with the nearest blunt heavy object

If we were to ever sit down and seriously talk about expanding our "/tg/station lore" I'm totally cool with this as a base.
My assumption has been that Nanotrasen is kind of like the Weyland Yutani of its time. It's the biggest fish. The only reason it doesn't own a competitor is because they aren't worth owning.
But meanwhile it treats its employees like expendable garbage and there are just as many enemies within the corporation as there are without.

Aranclanos · Post by **Aranclanos** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 10:55 pm #40640

for a project this old I don't think anyone should be allowed, not even myself, to make up an entire universe of lore to justify the events in the game

callanrockslol · Thu Nov 06, 2014 4:07 am

Aranclanos wrote:for a project this old I don't think anyone should be allowed, not even myself, to make up an entire universe of lore to justify the events in the game

No need for a stupidly larbe universe, just context, the big players vaguely mentioned and a whole heap of gaps to be filled in with rumors and suspicion.

Also im the lorefag now, if anyone has any problems fite me irl

Cheridan · Post by **Cheridan** » Thu Nov 06, 2014 8:51 pm #41559

Aranclanos wrote:for a project this old I don't think anyone should be allowed, not even myself, to make up an entire universe of lore to justify the events in the game

The thing is (and I was ranting about this in #adminbus the other day) people need a good platform for roleplay to happen in, before it can happen. Warhammer 40k, Shadowrun. These tabletop roleplaying games have fleshed out settings with prominent NPC characters and factions, like Kharn the Betrayer or the Saeder-Krupp megacorporation, while still allowing people lots of freedom to create their character's own role.

The fact that people can just make up their own backstory to be whatever they want can be problematic. Look at Malkevin's post. It highlights something I've had a problem with for a while; RP justification of poor behavior:

Sec aren't supposed to be jackbooted thugs. The admins, coders, and host have all tried to make steps to end this kind of behavior with things like Departmental and No-Antag Sec.
People justifying incinerating changelings who haven't done anything harmful because "they had to eat someone to get on the station", even though elsewhere in the lore it's said that changelings are a species unknown to Nanotrasen and that they should be captured for experimentation. Not to mention it's not even congruent with the current code.
Grabbing gloves, guns, toolbelt, ablative at roundstart? I'm not powergaming, I'm roleplaying paranoia!

Even though a backstory is technically a constraint, it exists to give people a backdrop to 'paint' their character onto. The magic of a blank canvas is that people can do anything they want with it. But I don't think that's ideal here. We need some lines drawn, so players and admins can tell when they're coloring outside of them.

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:47 pm #41576

I don't think lore really matters for a joke game which is basically tropes: the game anyway

People trying to make too much in depth roleplay out of the game kind of kills the fun for me and they're usually hated for it anyway. Roleplay just isn't going to happen like people want it to on /tg/ and the only roleplayers I've ever seen were also ERPers on server 2 who were chased off by admins who viciously hunted them whenever they were online just to fuck with them when they started doing anything remotely suggestive. It was funny at the time but I'm not sure if 'thank god they're all gone now we can powergame in peace with out those autistic weirdos' is really a good thing.

Jalleo · Post by **Jalleo** » Thu Nov 06, 2014 10:57 pm #41597

I agree with what Cheridan says i easily can fall into powergaming in a round. To promote RP you kinda need to create a understanding within admins when things go too far or toe the line constantly.

It cant be done overnight.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Thu Nov 06, 2014 11:42 pm #41611

Cheridan wrote: The fact that people can just make up their own backstory to be whatever they want can be problematic. Look at Malkevin's post. It highlights something I've had a problem with for a while; RP justification of poor behavior:

Correction:
That isn't my backstory, its the back story the server had. A legacy of the TLE days, who was a much different host/admin/project manager to what we have today.

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 4:38 am #41678

I don't think that sec being 'jackbooted thugs' is the right descriptor or what we want for that job. They're more like mercenaries that care more about their paycheck than oppression. Not mall cops, just normal security guards at a tech lab or something like you'd see here IRL. They aren't enforcing laws, they're just hired to make sure shit doesn't happen that impedes the progress of research and stuff. But they're not peacekeepers entirely either, they're also required to defend the station in case of a boarding party/blob/etc who their REAL enemies are. If admins tried to encourage people to play this kind of sec (a playstyle which still allows for a LOT of customization for roleplay) rather than powergame mcshitlord who brigs people for 20 minutes for something minor just because 'its lore xd'

I think space law should really just be removed and replaced with a more comprehensive 'guide to security'. There's no reason for the lawyer to exist anymore. IA from bay would work perfectly fine because they could report to admins through prayer or a special uplink in their PDA if there are IC situations that need to be diffused within sec, the #1 cause of most ahelps I tend to see. Space law as a concept is funny and all, but that's all it was supposed to be -- a joke, and people took it way too seriously. YOU BETRAYED THE LAW!!! etc. It's not judge dredd. It's just normal security guards being payed like any other job. That's why sec should be treated like any other job, just instead of healing people, mixing drinks, or repairing breaches, they ensure enemy corporation's spies do not make off with high tech gear or assassinate their employees to cause havoc on the station.

Kavaloosh · Post by **Kavaloosh** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 4:43 am #41679

we should add money

it'd be nice

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 8:48 am #41715

Jack booted thugs is a slight embellishment, I believe the actual original description was them being mostly a paramilitary organisation

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 9:27 am #41726

Paramilitary fits a dystopoian or cyberpunk 80s/90s retro future, but 'paramilitary organisation' describes the death squad teams more than the fucking redshirts. I'm sure NT has plenty of private military to send out to shit on other space stations trying to mooch off the plasma gas giant and the asteroids (after all, i really doubt NT is more friendly than the syndicate when it comes to boarding parties and station nuking). But security is nothing more than any decently-equipped sec guard. There's no reason for them to be faceless and equipped like shock troopers aesthetically. Crime and punishment is fun but it's really really damaged SS13 as of late; even if the never-antag-sec has sort of washed the potentially traitor stigma away from sec, replacing it with faceless goon 'ahelp as soon as you get arrested lol' is not better at all. They aren't the rest of the crew's fucking law-enforcing overlords, they're there to do a job and protect them. To security, the crew should be their paycheck, and beating your paycheck in the face with a stun baton when they aren't a traitor isn't really the best plan to not get the HoS to shoot you out of an airlock.

Admins should approach cases of security with this in mind in order to improve the server. I don't want admins enforcing "ROLEPLAY THIS WAY" but I would like some better banishment towards officers who are clearly just trying to be OOC assholes instead of doing their job. Nerfing sec's gear won't do anything, this is ultimately an administrative issue that needs to be solved by the HOPEFULLY reformed administration following the headmin elections here.

I will, OOCly, say that dunking antags can be immensely satisfying and I only ever play sec anymore because of how fun combat against nuke ops is.