Security Population & Competence

[Steelpoint]

I think its safe to say from my experience that right now Security is at its lowest point, both population and competence wise.

I'm constantly seeing rounds with fifty to seventy people with barely two, maybe three officers, a Warden and no HoS. Less than fifty and you may usually only see a Detective and one other security player. This is further excacerbated by how most security players are new players (they'll admit it) with little to no combat experience.

Almost all veteran players will never play security on any regular schedule, and why should they? You can get all the thrills of SS13 playing as a Assistant, Miner, MD or Engineer without any of the massive responsibilities and stress of security.

Its become common to see low level assistants, engineers and whatever being capable of easily killing a armed security officer simply because the officer has no idea what they're doing and they end up throwing a turned off stun baton at someone who's wielding a spear, a cocktail of chems or any whatever who clearly knows how to fight, or they simply lack any sense of direction, common sense and situational awareness.

This leads to a viscous cycle as actual vet players will stop playing sec due to how frustrating it is to play with either no one or other incompetent people.

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Lets also combo this with how shat on security is in a OOC manner. You'll oft see dead chat and OOC chat filled with absolute vitriol against security players for anything and everything they did in a round, they were not good enough, they were too good, they just existed, they spend the entire round in the escape pod! Everything is shat on.

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I don't profess to know the solution to this problem, but we need to encourage more skilled players to want to play security. Because right now its a shit show and a massive turn off for new and veteran players.

What will we do when no one plays security?

[Zilenan91]

Why would you play security ever. Literally the entire job is getting shit on. If you want to valid it's honestly more effective to just build a spear and walk around as an assistant, so security doesn't really have a purpose outside of having gear that will be stolen by people.

[TechnoAlchemist]

Security is in a place where if you do your job you get called a validhunter and everybody hates you, and if you try to be easygoing and let people off easy you end up dead with the rest of the security team.

[Actionb]

Security is in a place where if you do your job you get called a validhunter and everybody hates you, and if you try to be easygoing and let people off easy you end up dead with the rest of the security team.

Pretty much.
Either you're a complete ass, seemingly powertripping, to everyone or you don't play security and have fun. There rarely is a middle ground and I really don't see the point of playing security and betting on the off-chance that 90% of the crew isn't a bunch of line-toeing shitlers, when I could just sit in the bar/fuck around with no responsibility whatsoever. It's a game, after all.
Randomly give out antag tokens/admin BJs to well behaved security players?

Spoiler:

I remember a round from a few days ago. As an officer, I tend to be very lenient when it comes to minor stuff like B&E. So I see this assistant in EVA gear breaking into the teleporter. I don't really care about some junk EVA space suit, but teleporter is just off-limits so I chat em up, trying to persuade them to stop. They play along for a few seconds, before just carrying on hacking the door. They were through the airlock and closing it again too quickly for me to react. Turns out the assistant went to the abandoned teleporter - 'just exploring' I told myself.
Later on, I stop a small fight in robotics between a miner and a roboticist; impatience meets incompetence sorta fight, you know. Roboticist bleeding like a pig while the miner is unharmed, clear cut case of assault. In order to talk things over in peace, I cuff and bring the miner to the brig, obviously while being barraged by swear words. Turns out the miner also had the detective's revolver. The full spectrum of linguistic rage producing all possible insults almost deafening me, I give him 3 minutes in a cell. After a few seconds I was able to verify the miner's story about how he got the revolver from the braindead detective, so I tell the warden to let the miner go. Response from the warden: "He suicided."
DELTA ALERT VOODOO BULLSHIT HAPPENING IN: Abandoned white ship. That assistant from earlier was a cultismer. White ship cult base too stronk.

[paprika]

Security has nothing to do but either act stupid when antags do antag shit or try to ''''win''' by denying greentext

both are unfun as shit

[PKPenguin321]

steel"stop saying i only buff security guys"point is back with another round of hot spicy security meme discussions and buffs

[TechnoAlchemist]

Buffs wouldn't make sec any more fun

[Actionb]

steel"stop saying i only buff security guys"point is back with another round of hot spicy security meme discussions and buffs

No buff in the world is going to make security less aggravating and unrewarding to play.

Then again... it's been like this forever, so bleh.

[Steelpoint]

I have been introducing a few positive changes to security, mainly the new Box sec medbay, my proposed armour values are another buff.

The only real way I can see use encouraging people to play security is with the idea of rewarding good sec play with commendations, medals or even a rare antag token. But that's bound to be highly controversial.

[paprika]

sec should just fight space monsters and get sweet loot

it works for mining

[Actionb]

The only real way I can see use encouraging people to play security is with the idea of rewarding good sec play with commendations, medals or even a rare antag token. But that's bound to be highly controversial.

Having experienced, responsive players in your sec team has led to some of the most amazing rounds I have played. Anything that can be done to make a skilled sec team less of a freak occurence, should be alright in everyone's book (unless you're some kind of retarded anarchist, in which case you're not even allowed to have an opinion on this).
It's a bit of a snowball effect:
A) you join and see a half-way competent sec team on the manifest; 'Hey this might be not so bad and possibly fun! I will join as officer!'
B) 25 assistants and five clowns vs only one detective: 'All aboard the sinking ship? Security? No thanks.'

[ShadowDimentio]

The only real way I can see use encouraging people to play security is with the idea of rewarding good sec play with commendations, medals or even a rare antag token. But that's bound to be highly controversial.

You're right. The only way to get good players to play security is to incentivise holding your head high through assblasted douchebags yelling at you all the time.

INTRODUCING: SALTY CHUCK'S REWARD SYSTEM!

At the end of the round, the crew are presented with two votes. A most valuable player vote, where you can pick anyone to nominate as the MVP, and a prestigious security vote, where the best officer is commemorated for his service. Both are decided by a popular vote.

The reward for winning are discount antag tokens or something.

(No I don't really think this is a very good idea but it's literally the only way to incentivize players to play security)

[Actionb]

(No I don't really think this is a very good idea but it's literally the only way to incentivize players to play security)

It may not have to be for rest of eternity. Just to get the ball rolling.

[oranges]

to the cuck shed we go

[ShadowDimentio]

Damn Steelpoint trying to improve the game LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE MEMES WEW LAD EXDEE AYY LMAO

[J_Madison]

Player problem.

Nobody wants to play sec on Sybil. It's masochism. You might as well suicide.

Here's the reasons;
Player problem assistants - almost every assistant under the sun tries to be as shitty as possible toward sec. If it was sec vs traitor that's alright, but you have shitty players making it even more of a nightmare.

Admin buttons - there's no satisfaction for playing sec. Why try and do your job when the admin will just spawn more xenos or some other shit and make life difficult for you. What happened to letting sec catch their perp? No there has to be more antags all chaos all the time.

Content problem - population numbers wise sec just doesn't do anything in the big picture. Especially with antags having the element of surprise. The security team is one stunprod from dying. It's not a case of git gud when single digit antags have alone stopped a double digit sec population.

Balance problem - everything weighs down against sec. Every bit of content fucks with sec. You can give it your all but sec is horribly weak no matter what you throw at an antag. Nobody wants to cooperate with sec.

Gameplay issue - summarising everything, do you know how hard it is to enjoy playing sec when at any moment you can be stunned cuffed and stripped of all of your equipment? You're helpless at any given time, weaker than all antagonists, lose numerically, get spit on and shunned, and if you do succeed what ounce of satisfaction is immediately taken away by a shitty admin event.

Face it, playing sec is like playing unbalanced assfaggots alone.

[Lumbermancer]

sec should just fight space monsters and get sweet loot

it works for mining

Please no.

[Xhagi]

to the cuck shed we go

It's no wonder no one wants to play security when not only do they have to deal with all the grief and yelling in game, but this is the sort of attitude they get out of game as well when they want to improve things.

People enjoy playing the game different ways, and I don't see why we should have these shitty attitudes toward those people.

[Davidchan]

Well one the one entertaining Security role was removed [Hint, rhymes with SecGorg] because a few shit players we abusing every thing they could, those players were made to take on carbon roles which involve being even more shit to get the result they want: Killing antags and getting their valids.

Buff security all you want, give em deathsquad armor, stronger weapons and even more crap, you're not going to bring competent players into the fold of security. You're just going to get more power gamers and more antags trying to liberate these items from sec's possession to fuel their own murderboning.

imho Sec doesn't have much of place on a low RP server that thrives off its pvp functions when any regular assistant can hunt down and kill an antag given the right tools. Few sec players give a damn enough to enforce space law and protect the crew when doing so doesn't give them a reason to beat a person's skull in and/or kill them and loot anything useful from their corpse. Least a rogue/overzealous secborg could be remotely locked down if they seriously harmed anyone not guilty of a capital crime. Might as well go full judge dread.

[Wyzack]

I find it amusing that people can still pretend that there are no issues with sec even when no one plays it anymore

[Cik]

nerf everything i don't play

buff everything i do play

[TheNightingale]

Security used to be fun when it was "protect the crew from threats". Now it's "protect yourself from the threat of the crew". The only fun way to play Security is to lock yourself in the Brig with the remote and some barricades, and shoot anyone who comes too close before they smash your windows.

[Steelpoint]

When people say having all the power gamers and such play security is a bad thing, I actually disagree and say that would not be a bad thing.

If they're not playing security they would be playing assistant, or any other job on station.

[J_Madison]

One of the earliest threads I made here was about making security more playable in the form of making them far more resilient against crew.

I've played sec on Sybil and it's nothing but a nightmare;

1. People purposely cause trouble. It's bad enough that you have to waste time on it, but one wrong move is the difference between they get escalation valids from you and you need to git gud, or you get banned/noted for shitcurity.

2. They have the element of surprise. I can't stress how absolutely disgusting it is that you can land 99 perfect hits on someone but the minute you get touched by a stunprod it's over. Since day 1 I've wanted to make stuns more of a feature in combat rather than the defining metagame of combat.

3. People already play other roles than security. People play assistant to suicide when it's a round mode they don't like. As security you have to follow an already arbitrary bullshit list of dos and donts, and you'll get banned if you don't want to play in the round, and you have to take whatever is thrown at you.

Fuck. That. Rounds are getting shitty, game modes are getting shitty. Why play a role you're forced to play if you don't want to?

I've said this before; shave 2 seconds off every stun, slip, or weaken and you'll have people return to security because all their work and skill won't be undone and lost to a greytider with a stunprod. Sure it'll make arrests a little harder but I think it'll change security population.

[Ezel]

One of the earliest threads I made here was about making security more playable in the form of making them far more resilient against crew.

I've played sec on Sybil and it's nothing but a nightmare;

1. People purposely cause trouble. It's bad enough that you have to waste time on it, but one wrong move is the difference between they get escalation valids from you and you need to git gud, or you get banned/noted for shitcurity.

2. They have the element of surprise. I can't stress how absolutely disgusting it is that you can land 99 perfect hits on someone but the minute you get touched by a stunprod it's over. Since day 1 I've wanted to make stuns more of a feature in combat rather than the defining metagame of combat.

3. People already play other roles than security. People play assistant to suicide when it's a round mode they don't like. As security you have to follow an already arbitrary bullshit list of dos and donts, and you'll get banned if you don't want to play in the round, and you have to take whatever is thrown at you.

Fuck. That. Rounds are getting shitty, game modes are getting shitty. Why play a role you're forced to play if you don't want to?

I've said this before; shave 2 seconds off every stun, slip, or weaken and you'll have people return to security because all their work and skill won't be undone and lost to a greytider with a stunprod. Sure it'll make arrests a little harder but I think it'll change security population.

But then they be barely cuffable

[J_Madison]

One of the earliest threads I made here was about making security more playable in the form of making them far more resilient against crew.

I've played sec on Sybil and it's nothing but a nightmare;

1. People purposely cause trouble. It's bad enough that you have to waste time on it, but one wrong move is the difference between they get escalation valids from you and you need to git gud, or you get banned/noted for shitcurity.

2. They have the element of surprise. I can't stress how absolutely disgusting it is that you can land 99 perfect hits on someone but the minute you get touched by a stunprod it's over. Since day 1 I've wanted to make stuns more of a feature in combat rather than the defining metagame of combat.

3. People already play other roles than security. People play assistant to suicide when it's a round mode they don't like. As security you have to follow an already arbitrary bullshit list of dos and donts, and you'll get banned if you don't want to play in the round, and you have to take whatever is thrown at you.

Fuck. That. Rounds are getting shitty, game modes are getting shitty. Why play a role you're forced to play if you don't want to?

I've said this before; shave 2 seconds off every stun, slip, or weaken and you'll have people return to security because all their work and skill won't be undone and lost to a greytider with a stunprod. Sure it'll make arrests a little harder but I think it'll change security population.

But then they be barely cuffable

Stun baton - cuff or disabler cuff.

[Anonmare]

You smash brig windows sec's allowed to smash your head in tbh.

[Malkevin]

Security is in a place where if you do your job you get called a validhunter and everybody hates you, and if you try to be easygoing and let people off easy you end up dead with the rest of the security team.

I played a round on basil last weekend.

By the time I'd found my way to the brig some Ayyliums had turned up, some of sec was arguing against 'hunting valids" and that the "Ayyliums aint dun nutting wrong" - ffs this is security, its not about fucking valids its about doing your fucking job - taking out threats to the station and crew is your fucking job you fucking twat waffle.

Other highlights of that round include:
-HoS ordering the release of some scrub that had broke into the HoP office to steal all access - giving the reason "I'd do the same thing" for releasing him. You're the fucking HoS, if you've got all access you're not going to abuse it to steal every thing (probably), or give everyone else all access (a colossal fucking nightmare to deal with), or an antag thats going to do antag things like release the engine.

-Warden bitching at me because I'd literally just hauled someone in the brig a second ago because I hadn't set them to arrest or wrote a note of their crimes - thats YOUR fucking job asshat.
What do you think I'm going to do? Stand in the middle of a hallway whilst the guy resists out of his cuffs or calls his mates over to release him?


Playerbase has always been a problem for being sec but its at its absolute worse now.

[Wyzack]

>Sec complaining about dindu xenomorphs

Yeah no. Player xenos will always come for our face hole eventually, no matter how many of them try to play nice. Exterminate with prejudice

[dionysus24779]

I may have a weird sounding idea to somewhat counter this lack of security in both quality and quanity.

Now it's true that in the majority of rounds security at least starts with very few members, often just a Warden, HoS and maybe a detective and many sec officers are new players.

However, many rounds start with at least one cyborg player and often get 2-3 additional once they are borged. Many (but not all) borg players are also relatively experienced.

Maybe we should add some sort of module that would allow a borg to assume the role of a security officers. That way you could counter the lack of quantity and quality, the silicons would have a strong tool to enforce laws and to combat antagonists, and since a lot of players are unable or don't know how to deal with borgs a single one could be as good as two sec players.

This would also allow borg players to react in emergency situations much better and could be a boost to malf AI's who have to rely on pretty indirect methods of offense.

Also since borgs would still be bound by its laws instead of space-laws it would prevent murderboning of converted people.

You could even make the sprite red-colored.

As for tools the borg should have the harm-alarm of peacekeepers, should have zip-cuffs, a disabler and I dunno.

It's just a thought so, after all security only exists to validhunt antags and maybe it's for the best that nobody wants to play them.

Though I admit it's more of a band-aid for the problem than a solution, but at least we would have some sort of security presence again.

[Tornadium]

I'm legitimately done playing security.

As long as admins keep doing shit like giving gangs Marauders during a 70 man round through some stupid fucking trader event while security has a grand total of three members then there really is no reason to play the role anymore.

You are literally targets for the rest of the server.

Edit : I'll rephrase, you are literally there as sec to suffer through the grief so other players can have someone to have fun killing.

[allura]

massive responsibilities and stress of security.

Security has no responsibilities

[ShadowDimentio]

Are you retarded

Sec is the second most high-stress high-activity job on the station, right below AI. If shit starts going down you're expected to either be there or be running there, and if you miss it EVERYONE gets mad.

[Cik]

Are you retarded

Sec is the second most high-stress high-activity job on the station, right below AI. If shit starts going down you're expected to either be there or be running there, and if you miss it EVERYONE gets mad.

sec is higher-stress than AI.

AI usually has 1+ servants to help it out, a reasonable influence over the crew and several R-walls between it and threats.

security is 1 prod away from death at any time and has no real way of identifying hostiles before ggnore. you're also far more likely to be ahelped for things in the normal course of duty assuming baseline competence.

[Cik]

I may have a weird sounding idea to somewhat counter this lack of security in both quality and quanity.

Now it's true that in the majority of rounds security at least starts with very few members, often just a Warden, HoS and maybe a detective and many sec officers are new players.

However, many rounds start with at least one cyborg player and often get 2-3 additional once they are borged. Many (but not all) borg players are also relatively experienced.

Maybe we should add some sort of module that would allow a borg to assume the role of a security officers. That way you could counter the lack of quantity and quality, the silicons would have a strong tool to enforce laws and to combat antagonists, and since a lot of players are unable or don't know how to deal with borgs a single one could be as good as two sec players.

This would also allow borg players to react in emergency situations much better and could be a boost to malf AI's who have to rely on pretty indirect methods of offense.

Also since borgs would still be bound by its laws instead of space-laws it would prevent murderboning of converted people.

You could even make the sprite red-colored.

As for tools the borg should have the harm-alarm of peacekeepers, should have zip-cuffs, a disabler and I dunno.

It's just a thought so, after all security only exists to validhunt antags and maybe it's for the best that nobody wants to play them.

Though I admit it's more of a band-aid for the problem than a solution, but at least we would have some sort of security presence again.

amusingly secborgs were the only thing stopping every lowpop round being completely murderboned, because an average secborg was enough to stop your average murderboner semi-reliably.

i play in the early morning and it seems like every round someone waltzes into the armory and kills everyone essentially unopposed.

before i could offset low sec pop by just allocating more secborgs but now good luck.

PK borg "fills" the role but the only thing it's capable of stopping are barfights; security standing still and machinegunning antags, antags standing still and machinegunning civilians? it's helpless. if you take the role you still get yelled at for failing to prevent harm though :^)

they get what they ask for i guess.

[Davidchan]

Are you retarded

Sec is the second most high-stress high-activity job on the station, right below AI. If shit starts going down you're expected to either be there or be running there, and if you miss it EVERYONE gets mad.

sec is higher-stress than AI.

sec is higher-stress than AI.

sec is higher-stress than AI.

sec is higher-stress than AI.

I think I peed a little.

[Malkevin]

People think the AI is stressful?
Bwahahaha? What - you sad someone yelled at you because you didn't open a door fast enough?
Admins largely don't give a shit if you ignore harm because you've always got the excuse "I'm only a human, I can't see everything at once and sometimes I need to go for a pee".


Not like sec which would be paranoia incarnate if it was still paranoia when they're really out to get you.
That clown is going to slip you.
That mime is going to sabotage your doors
That greyshirt is going to shove you over and steal your weapon
That chemist is going to shoot you with a syringe of death juice
That engineer/miner is going to space your armory.
That HoP is going to give ever fecker all access everywhere
Cargo are going to pop open that weapons crate and shoot you if you try taking them
That geneticist is going to get hulk and beat the crap out of you with its unstunnable stunfists
That scientist is going to bomb the brig then shoot the survivors with an uzi.
That engineer has a stun prod and cable cuffs, as does the cargo tech, the assistant, and the robotocist.
Robotocist is going on a mech rampage.

And top it off you have a captain who's likely to be a comdom and an AI thats waiting to be an interfering Nanny if you try having 'fun' with prisoners.

[Scott]

You got the server you asked for, to be honest.

[Cik]

i play AI all the time and it's pretty easy, and the ease scales with how lowpop it is.

security doesn't scale at all and you're five seconds from life or death at any point.

but you know thanks for posting and whatever

[Super Aggro Crag]

they removed the inaction clause, AI literally doesn't have to do anything now, retado.

[Cik]

no they didn't you fucking nerd

what the fuck are you even talking about get out of here

[dionysus24779]

They did for like two or three days to test it, it was very relaxing and hilarious, plus it kind of made Peacekeeper and Mediborg obsolete.

I can only speak for myself of course, but my nr. 1 reason to play Secborg was that no security officer was present, otherwise I play engie borg.

I'm just saying that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to remove secborg so quickly. And I also have experienced many rounds in which all that was standing between an antag and his unopposed murderbone was a secborg, because nobody played security.

Though as far as I understand most players would prefer absolutely no security over having a secborg present, so whatever.

Maybe we should seriously test having no security for a while, maybe everyone will love having nobody validhunting them poor oppressed antags, maybe having no players wanting to play sec isn't a problem.

[Falamazeer]

Been saying it for years, Sec is all dicked up and I was just about to break my routine hiatus and start playing again.
But before I did that, I decide to look at the forums and catch up, then I see there's two active topics about the sad state of my favorite job.

Code can't fix this alone, We as a community need to stop treating the job and everyone who plays it as hollywood sugar glass, fit only to be burst through and shot to shit by all you protagonist mother-huggers.

Security needs skilled players to survive, and it will never attract the skilled veterans when we continue to shit all over anyone for daring to play it.
The only real fix is admin support, The "Higher Standard" that security is held to was a well intentioned shit show that only served to allow the disgusting anti-sec bias against the redshitcurity jackboot dicklords to thrive at higher levels. Not that you should be allowed to greytide as security, but the cure for that thus far has been almost as bad as the disease.

And the same anti-sec attitude discredited any attempts to add neat shit to security to attract those veterans, with the attitude of "HE BUFF HE OWN JERB!!!" screetches from the greytider asshats, and while some of that may have been true, it clearly developed into a deeper problem because now it's hard to add/fix anything for the job at all, My evidence, the gulag, Because it's STILL broken. anyone with the skill and also the motivation to make security a better job can't, because they only want to fix the problems they see, and they only see the problems when they play it in the first place.

Edit: Also, sec is higher stress than the AI.

[Incomptinence]

I wouldn't say sec is less stressful than AI especially with bottom of the barrel fellows like pkp around.

Definitely less rewarding though unless you have one of those rare rounds where group antags fail utterly and you basically get to cut through the crew like hot butter you don't really get the satisfaction of going rogue.

[onleavedontatme]

Falamazeer you're years out of date with your complaints.

Security can basically kill anyone they want at any time, attacking them at all when not antag will usually get you banned very quickly, and grey tiding in general has been heavily cracked down on.

Security has the best treatment of any role in the game rules wise, they're held to a lower standard if anything.

[Scott]

Security has all the tools it needs, it doesn't need more or buffs.

[ShadowDimentio]

>When you fail to read the thread title before posting

This is about security populations not equipment

[Scott]

That was clearly a reply to the pug.

[Tornadium]

Falamazeer you're years out of date with your complaints.

Security can basically kill anyone they want at any time, attacking them at all when not antag will usually get you banned very quickly, and grey tiding in general has been heavily cracked down on.

Security has the best treatment of any role in the game rules wise, they're held to a lower standard if anything.

Standards aren't really the issue.

As I said I'm sick to death of rounds where admins spawn overpowered shit or just keep throwing antagonists into the mix because CHAOS ALL THE TIME.

It's a complete clusterfuck to have gang marauders and pulse rifles for a 2 man security team.

[onleavedontatme]

Falamazeer you're years out of date with your complaints.

Security can basically kill anyone they want at any time, attacking them at all when not antag will usually get you banned very quickly, and grey tiding in general has been heavily cracked down on.

Security has the best treatment of any role in the game rules wise, they're held to a lower standard if anything.

Standards aren't really the issue.

As I said I'm sick to death of rounds where admins spawn overpowered shit or just keep throwing antagonists into the mix because CHAOS ALL THE TIME.

It's a complete clusterfuck to have gang marauders and pulse rifles for a 2 man security team.

I know, I was just replying to Falamazeer, not the rest of you.

And I recently demoted one admin (partially) for event spam and banned another, but

http://www.ss13.eu/tgdb/tg/ingamepolls.php#p139

It turns out players actually like that spam after all