VoltageHero

Goodnight.

My threads aren't lame, they're the real OGs.

Round it up to a nice even 10 and you have my attention.

"It's just a prank, bro."

I think the fact of the matter is that the FT and Detective can both do each other's jobs, and often times are forced to when the other isn't around. That is an issue, and kinda highlights the fact that one or the other is redundant. As someone who hates playing Detective and loves FT , I honestly do believe that FT should go and just merge Detective with the FT. Them being too reliant on one another can slow down a case when one isn't on board (although, they both can solve a case without the presence of the other but it's simply easier with both), and by giving one role more access means that this issue isn't a factor. As well, while the whole investigative work could be time consuming at times when the two roles are merged, at the same time it means that one player has this information a lot sooner, and doesn't have to wait for Joey Barsitter to come back to their office and hand over a folder. I genuinely can't see any real drawbacks to merging the two, besides maybe making the Detective players be a little less lonely upstairs.

I played F.T. for a couple of months (or, at the very least a few days away from two months). I feel as if, while I think without a doubt thing F.T. should become more complicated, this is kinda going about it in the wrong way. That said, due to my experience a lot of this is going to be anecdotal. First off, let's start with the biggest problem I have with it personally. It makes the F.T. even more of a pure supporting role to the Detective. As it stands now, the F.T. is designed to be a support role and help figure out cases without getting (personally) involved by chasing down criminals and so forth. Along with that, many officers seem to disregard evidence from the F.T., but will listen if it comes from the Detective. Not to mention that more often than note, Detectives won't really share information they get with the F.T. but except information from the F.T. themselves. Now, in my experience there ARE exceptions to this rule, and there are some really good Detectives who will do all in their power to keep the F.T. in the loop, but I found that in maybe one Detective regular. By doing this, you're simply giving the Detective even less reason to keep the F.T. in the loop, because the Detective is going to know what they saw and interviewed and so forth. To phrase it better, the F.T. will just be handing off really simple information that they personally can't link to anything, and giving it to someone who can link it to something. While that may sound like a good dynamic on paper, this dynamic already exists at our current level but ensures the F.T. can actually contribute more to the case. Being a glorified assistant to the Detective has always been all fine and good though, because as it is now, the F.T. can solve a case on their own, and that's part of what made F.T. really enjoyable. Being privy to information nobody else has, and being able to link blood samples with fibers and so forth to be able to solve a case was incredibly rewarding. By removing their ability to distinguish the specific articles of clothing, you lose out on that ability. Now, the F.T. is incredibly reliant on a Detective being present and willing to work with their results (which could be a mixed bag). Sure, the F.T. could go around questioning people themselves, but at the same time if that was the case what's the point of having the two be separate jobs. Not to mention the fact that I could already see this being a headache to try and figure out for a F.T. since you already have issues with things at the scene being contaminated. The issue of contamination has been a discussion a few times in the past, and is relevant here again. For example, let's say there was a break-in on the bridge. You have fibers from the Chaplain's jumpsuit, an Engineer's jumpsuit, the Captain's jumpsuit, black gloves, a labcoat, and a tophat. This gives the Detective and F.T. a starting point to go off of. It allows them to know who to question, and try to help deduce the likelihood of possible suspects. Maybe these people just bumped into the door, maybe they broke in. You don't know until you question them, but at least you have a starting point. With just giving colored fibers, there's basically no starting point for the Detective or F.T. to go off of. Blue fibers could be a random blue jumpsuit from the locker, or it could be the Captain's. Or maybe it's a blazer, or maybe it's a suit. Now all of a sudden your suspect pool is still the entire station with something blue because you can't narrow it down. The F.T. should have specific readouts, because it ensures that there's a benefit of actually having them on the shift, and gives both the investigative members someone to talk to which in turn ensures the Detective has something to do, and the person they're questioning is being given roleplay. With fibers, the Detective may just decide it's too much work and forget about it OR the last issue could crop up and nullify the results. Time. Time goes by really fast compared to real life on SS13. A medical procedure that would normally be rather relaxed is now suddenly hectic because you're having all these patients coming in and you're having to triage every single one of them at a fraction of the time you would have in real life. In the case of security, once a situation occurs where the F.T. is needed, the situation is going to expand rapidly. As a F.T., you're having to try and piece together information from blood samples, fibers, and fingerprints by going through the records to try and find a connection to a crime and a suspect. For example, when I played F.T. I would leaves notes for the Detective/HoS regarding how each piece of evidence connected to each other, and would put them in a stack before handing it off to the Detective. That sounds like it'd be short, but it take up a considerable amount of time (especially when you're factoring in the F.T. having to handle autopsies on top of all that), since you're having to cross-apply all the evidence you're getting and present credible linkage. By the time you do it in the normal style, while you can usually get this done with enough time to help aid the case, you still might find out that the case has ended, or that the Detective has caught their suspect (even though the case started not even five minutes ago), or simply that more important matters have come up. By giving the F.T. generic fibers instead of specific ones, you exacerbate the issue here. Suddenly, the Detective and F.T. both have less time to work with and are much more rushed to get things done which can lead to the evidence being dismissed or just outright ignored because of the lack of time. In a real life setting, this may work but with most single cases taking up (usually) less than an hour, it's simply not feasible for the F.T. or Detective to run around trying to interview every single person with a set of fibers while at the same time trying to link other pieces of evidence and interview statements. In the end, no. The F.T.'s results aren't "utterly broken" because without them being as specific as they are, it takes away from the role which in turn makes the role even more boring which then causes less people to want to play.

It wasn't the first time I played SS13, but the earliest memory I have of the game. I had been playing security officer for a few months, and this was a couple years before servers had set in stone brig times. Once, the HoS called me into his office because I put a criminal in for like ninety-nine minutes. He basically told me to stop and actually put people in for reasonable times. I told him I saw a space carp out the brig airlock and when we went to check, I tried to space him but ended up spacing myself instead.

An alarming issue I noticed you brought up early into the adminhelp, was that you stated you were partially motivated by OOC circumstances so that it would "create conflict". You should not be factoring in your IC actions based on your OOC relationship with the current round and taking into account what will "make the round more eventful". Now, this could have been a mere handwave as an attempt to look at both IC and OOC reasoning but this still doesn't devalue the fact that this was a factor in your actions. Moving onto the actual statement, nobody is asking you to play a perfect character, but instead a realistic one. The issue with this being is that you are still held to a higher standard as a Head, and by creating conflict where you shouldn't be doing so creates a strange atmosphere for future players to attempt to mimic. As an example I pointed out to you, if the Research Director decided to run off with a patient from medical after believing they were being mistreated, this would not stand because it lacks a degree of realism. Intervening in a circumstance where you believe it is being mishandled would, from a professional standpoint, not include taking people and running off with them. Instead, as I mentioned, there were a lot of different ways to handle this professionally. You stated that you didn't want to create an IR report in regards to the situation, and that you alerted the command staff previously, but going off the logs you posted it seems like you only gave them a short statement about it being abuse. As you already mentioned, the round itself had been hectic and unless there's evidence of you trying to raise this issue with more depth to any of the Heads, it looks like you weren't doing much in the way of informing the Command staff of your qualms before your actions leading to the Wizard's escape. In fact, from your logs, it appears that the Head of Security was going to speak to the offender(s) after the fact, which further leads question in to why the Chief Medical Officer would take the approach they did. As well, I consulted fellow staff during the leadup to the warning, in which it was determined that the actions weren't really fitting for someone in your position. While I understand your character isn't "perfect" and still has a personality, they should be less likely to just break under pressure and resort to drastic measures.

Again, this isn't dealing like the overall issue that was raised by OP. You cannot report someone who runs through a crime scene when you're not there. The complaint wasn't "I'm watching people run into my crime scenes", but instead "people are touching everything and therefore it's ruining my stuff and the HoS doesn't listen to me."

Well, it can be an issue if you're not there to witness it, which I think is the underlying issue here. You can have Joe Blow come by and put his hands on everything then run off, and Jane Doe comes by and does the same, so forth. Suddenly, you have a bunch of fingerprints that belong to people who never were anywhere near the crime when it happened but yet they're fingerprints are all over everything and so are their fibers, making separating the prints from the actual crime from the people who came up and touched their fingers on everything just to do it difficult. It's your job as a CSI to figure out who's involved in the crime and who isn't. Real CSI have to do this regarding fingerprints, with new technology being developed to help this. People could have visited the scene before, or after. It's your job to find out. Real life CSI also have a lot more tools at their disposal. Fibers and fingerprints in real life also aren't as black and white as in game, and can be found on more places in real life which allows them to better fit pieces of the puzzle together. Not to mention that in real life, you don't have everyone coming along to touch everything, not to mention that real life crime scene investigators usually have much more time and manpower behind them to be able to analyze every single detail, a luxury that in-game CSI/FTs don't have. In game, this can end up being a wild-goose chase, given the fact that many fibers can come up that don't belong. For example, a killer is a doctor who was happened to grab a patient as they went past a hall. Before you could get there, an engineer, the HoS, the CMO, and another doctor all touched the body. Suddenly, you have the fibers from insulated gloves, white gloves, black gloves, an engineering jumpsuit fiber, a HoS jumpsuit fiber, fiber from a labcoat and fiber from the CMO's jumpsuit. Now, how exactly are you supposed to separate anything from that and get any lead? Unless you want to question every engineer and every person in medical, that piece of evidence (assuming there is no eyewitness account to get any possible link) is effectively useless because everyone touched it. You have no idea if the killer stole some gloves, if they stole a labcoat and ran around with it, if it was the CMO trying to cover up a murder they've committed or what-not. On the other hand, if nobody has touched the crime scene, you get white gloves and a labcoat. That drastically lowers your suspects and makes questioning for the Detective a whole lot easier and it ensures that you have a general idea of anyone who possibly saw the offender last. Players interfering with crime scenes is an issue, and a pretty annoying one that a lot of people don't run into, so therefore don't realize how annoying it is.

Do you mean.... Sabotage? But really, none of this is an issue - if someone contaminates the scene, tell your Head of Security and continue to collect evidence. Well, it can be an issue if you're not there to witness it, which I think is the underlying issue here. You can have Joe Blow come by and put his hands on everything then run off, and Jane Doe comes by and does the same, so forth. Suddenly, you have a bunch of fingerprints that belong to people who never were anywhere near the crime when it happened but yet they're fingerprints are all over everything and so are their fibers, making separating the prints from the actual crime from the people who came up and touched their fingers on everything just to do it difficult.

I kinda brought this up as a potential issue in my original post. I believe that due to the fact that I was becoming a moderator during a time in which I was finding myself exceptionally bored with SS13 in general, I was more prone to leave it. Therefore, due to the fact that I have managed to rekindle an interest in the server and the community as a whole I believe I'm much more likely to be staying around, combined with the fact that I won't be too terribly busy even with the internship going on (hopefully). Again though, I totally understand this issue and I do also think that it could be a possible obstacle. When looking at attitude changes, I personally believe that drastically changing your personality to suit your environment puts on a false identity and kinda makes you look to be someone you're not, so therefore I don't believe I would be trying to do any drastic changes in personality, although I do know it would be best to not be making constant "your mom gay" jokes or similar things all the time. The answer was in response to a question, I'm not attempting to talk about my grievances without any causation, but I suppose it come look that way. To your actual question, I have brought it up a few good times in general conservation in both the Discord and off the Discord where I mentioned that there needs to be a better implemented way to engage players with the lore. That said, I haven't directly sat down one-on-one with a lore developer and discussed this with them. I apologize if you felt that I was trying to imply that working as a moderator is easy. To be reiterate my statement from the original post, a moderator should be willing to work with people and try to reach a possible conclusion that is utilitarian, because of course you can't please everyone. That said, attempts should be made to communicate with the person first, instead of reaching a far end (in either direction) in how you're dealing with someone. Again, I apologize that you feel that way. While I wasn't always playing in the round, I was indeed still taking tickets and trying to interact with people to the extent of my capabilities up until the point that I left. As I mentioned to Coalf, I believe a lot of the reason for my inactivity was due to a general lack of boredom with Space Station 13 after having playing pretty much everyday for quite some time. I believe that due to the fact that I have both more free time once I've reached college, and and am able to better allocate any time I do have to manage, not being on the server may not be as big of an issue as it once was, although I can still understand how it can possibly become one.