OolongCow

Honestly? All you'd have to do is steal the code from crumpling paper. If someone picks up the positronic and activates it on harm intent, they start a channel bar action to crush it underfoot and destroy it.

The overwhelming majority of charges filed are due to antags, which aren't canon and can't be IR'd. So that only leaves canonical charges against someone who committed a crime, which rarely happens because people don't generally play criminals on the flagship of a megacorporation. And when that does happen, as someone who plays HoS, either it gets handled by the normal procedure of charging someone, or it's IR'd because it's too close to the end of the round / an investigation couldn't be performed / it's a serious enough crime to require an IR regardless. I've genuinely never seen an officer get upset about a canon charge filed and IR to argue about it, even when the quality of security was significantly lower than it is now. Can you give an example of what you're claiming happening? I genuinely can't think of a single one.

Yes. Because those are OOC rules made to stop CCIA from tearing their hair out over constant, stupid, and frivolous IRs. People being terrified of "punishments" that literally don't mean anything is not CCIA's fault. It's the fault of people who perpetuate the idea of "OH MY GOD YOU MADE SOMEONE MAD YOU'RE GONNA GET FIRED!!!" Like the people I was replying to. You can literally just ask Bear how many people CCIA has actually fired for reasons that aren't actual crimes after multiple offenses. It's not a lot. Except I'm not disagreeing with you on that. CCIA only actually does anything meaningful when it's an actual issue for the SCC. They LITERALLY don't care about workplace arguments unless they have a reason to think it'll affect productivity. "We'll look into it never" is pretty much exactly what "a warning was given" means in the DO notice section of the WI. It's literally just there for posterity.

You know what I mean by "bad". I am not being unclear when I say that. People who break laws are, IC, doing wrong. And they would be fired in the setting we have. If this was a pirate ship it wouldn't matter because of course it's understandable they'd do those things. But they're on a flying office building. I said that under the presumption the people I was speaking to (mostly N8) wanted CCIA gone, as that was an entirely reasonable takeaway from how he was speaking. Except that in this context, it's not dictating the rules, it's dictating what people are allowed to roleplay, which is bad. Under the current system, admins only care about rule breaks, which two Unathi getting into a knife fight for understandable reasons is not. Without CCIA, it would be turned into a potential breach of the rules, which is basically up to the admins to decide on the spot, with no time to think it over or speak to people outside of ahelps. CCIA prevents admins from having to treat everything like it might be a rule break. It stops them from having to constantly tell everyone "okay stop playing the game and respond to my questions". That is a net positive that outweighs its current negatives, in my opinion. I already stated that I think CCIA can definitely be improved (which was the ORIGINAL point of this thread, before people started replying with how much they think it's a bad thing while not submitting any actually helpful suggestions). The problem, Fluffy, is that IRs take place outside of the round. They take longer, but they don't stop the round or anyone in it from playing the game while it's happening. Ahelps HAVE to happen and be resolved in the SAME round the currently IR'able event occurred. If someone does something that would get them IR'd at 2:00, admins have to be online, take the ahelp, then delay the round end until the issue is closed, because the in-game moderation tools just do not support long-term solutions besides a ban. If they let it slide so they can "get to it later", they just have to perform an OOC IR equivalent anyway. If a Guwan stabs someone at 2:00 and their player logs out when the round ends, the process of dealing with the issue becomes unbelievably messy and stops saving any effort at that point. I personally don't mind that behavior at all. I mind when it happens and the character destroys the setting by just getting away with it forever. If you play a criminal character, you're behaving no differently from playing an untagged shell or IPC-loving Dominian. If you do bad things, you are agreeing that it could go south and that character could be lost. And that's okay. They explicitly do this. Every punishment for similar IRs is literally just a slap on the wrist that affects you in no way whatsoever except character records. They would, because people being shitty and drunk loses them money. By your own logic, why would they ever give anyone even the slightest hint of clemency? More than being uncaring, why wouldn't they be firing people on the spot for the tiniest of infractions? Because that sucks for the players and nobody wants to deal with that. They care, because it makes the most number of players happy for things to be that way. Your comparison is backwards. They aren't apathetic, those companies actively protect those people, because getting rid of them would collapse their structure. Just like firing a captain for calling a Tajara "cat" would be stupid, so CCIA doesn't even bother doing anything but putting a token footnote on his file.

Nobody says that shouldn't be allowed, and it explicitly IS even under the current system. You have to make mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake to get fired under the current system. People who do bad things over and over again should naturally face punishment if they refuse to be sneaky or underhanded about it. People who cause issues, will rack up IC charges. That is just a fact, and isn't something someone who wants to play those characters should try and "dodge", especially by implying that nobody should have any authority to do anything about it. If I had to play command in a world where people are just immune to consequences of their actions, I wouldn't play command. It would turn into an incredibly ugly mess of OOC resentment and back-and-forth where being around those characters actively discourages me and multiple people I know from playing. It's hard enough dealing with unactionable apathy from your department's members, I can't imagine how hellish it would be to have to command a department when they can tell you to go fuck yourself and there's nothing anyone can do about it because the person refuses to roleplay wanting to keep their job. There's a difference between a detective with a five o' clock shadow that keeps a handle of liquor on his desk and is charismatic and coolheaded, and the reality HoS players face of "sprints to the bar, drinks until slurring, then vomits on the floor". Nobody plays the former, but I can't count the number of the latter I've seen on both hands. Every single one of these exists and is currently actively played by server members. The only people fired since Konyang started that weren't one-off characters played during events that honestly could've been slapped for OOC rule violations are Bava and Firetalon. Bava operated a hard drug smuggling operation in her workplace and is STILL able to come back in a few months after being released from prison if their player is interested. Firetalon was a literal pirate who got into multiple violent fights aboard the ship that resulted in serious injury. I don't understand how you can genuinely look at their cases and go "CCIA is too harsh..." You don't see those "hard" characters again, because they're usually played by newer players, or discarded as boring by existing ones. They aren't fired and it's incredibly misleading to state you see them "getting binned by CCIA". People harassed the CEO of NanoTrasen's relative when she visited and they were barely slapped on the wrist. You are absolutely exaggerating an issue that does not exist. It's not CCIA's job to "make it fun"? Without CCIA, an admin would've just pointed at Bava and said "you never did that, your RP is deleted" and that would be that. CCIA actively prevented admins from just telling people "no, you CANNOT do that". THAT is what CCIA's job is. Making it so the fun police don't show up and go "you RP'd wrong, don't do that again". Only insofar as actual server rule breaks are concerned. Admins have no obligation currently to bwoink people and go "why did you stab that guy?" unless they think it's someone griefing the server, because if you stab someone, CCIA will handle it. They don't have to micromanage everyone's RP and are allowed to actually play the game most of the time, only worrying about server rules. Which leads to fewer ahelps, bwoinks, and so on. If there was no CCIA, suddenly it is their job to stop what they're doing and ask "why did you stab that guy?". Then instead of a slow review process like CCIA uses, the admin is forced to either ban you or ban/delete your character before the round ends. If you think CCIA makes bad calls, just wait until admins have to delay round end for forty minutes to ask the Guwan chef why they stabbed the Biesellite security officer, check logs, and then make a judgement on what to do under a time constraint. Because that is what will happen in a HRP environment. That already happens in LRP with much lower standards.

The pre-teleport holding area for actors absolutely needs a clothes and headset vendor. You need them EVERY round, just as much as the species changer, so they may as well be added next to it. And please, PLEASE add the ability for storytellers to send and see faxes. I'm allowed to create a 100 tile wide bomb, but I can't privately correspond with command in an IC way?

They have a chilling effect on IC bad behavior. If you remove CCIA, you would be FORCED to enact a process by which command players can fire people who are way out of line IC. If I play HoS, and an investigator who gets drunk because "that's my character" starts slurring over the channel EVERY round, what is the process to punish them without CCIA? Ahelping them so admins can argue with them about what a believable character is? The guy will just go "you're impeding on my roleplay, self-destructive and abusive people exist, deal with it" and then cry endlessly if the staff actually punish them for it. It forces admins to OOC state what is and isn't acceptable behavior, which already varies wildly between staff members. "Well [Staff member] didn't get upset about it" will become an excuse for setting yourself on fire or punching your coworker in the face. It would also MASSIVELY increase the workload of the staff team, by requiring them to actively police people's behaviors in-round since there would no longer be any way to actually address what someone did besides ahelping when it happens and screeching the round to a halt as everyone stands still and responds to ahelps. What if Bava's smuggling had been handled by an admin? It almost WAS, and originally the handling admin was just going to tell them "no, retcon it, it never happened and don't do it again". That was EXPLICITLY what would have occurred before the parties involved insisted it should be handled by CCIA. Now it's an interesting bit of server and character history. I think CCIA can definitely be made better (the total lack of transparency, seeing outcomes being limited to command WL holders, etc.) but I still think that the cost of doing away with it would be greater than improving it. I'd also like to point out that the future people who dislike CCIA are suggesting is not the future that will actually exist. We are not going to remove CCIA and suddenly you'll be allowed to do whatever you want. Aurora will turn into "haha I am having good roleplay with this person and we got into a fistfight" only for *BWOINK* "Why did you punch that guy?" Followed by five minutes of not playing the game to explain, with potentially twenty more minutes of arguing with admins afterwards over whether you were justified or not. With CCIA, you can just punch the guy and explain later, if it even gets to that point. You won't even be fired, and the charges only "stick" to that one character, instead of you potentially getting temporarily banned if you run out the admins' patience. Removing CCIA also makes admins responsible for handling RP standards in-round, with no way to go round to round with it. You'll be seeing a LOT more "An admin has delayed the round end" messages at 2:20.

I think there's a common misconception by people newer to the server that CCIA is meant to be the end-all be-all for conflict resolution and punishing someone, when that's not really the case. It's explicitly preferred for command to handle it in-round. CCIA exists to handle things command isn't able to, either due to the constraints of round length, or because of the severity of what happened. A perceived overreliance on CCIA is in part because command players feel like it's their only means to control people, mostly due to not having any punishment to leverage except fines (pointless if the other person doesn't feel like RPing that they care, since money is genuinely worthless and round-to-round) and suspension for a single shift (and usually not even a full one). I think that if command was given more levers, even if it's just leaving notes on their employment record similarly to how brig charges stick, there would be a lot fewer frivolous IRs.

+1 for sure. Their XO is one of the most consistently organized, helpful, proactive and professional people in the command department. Issues don't get dropped or people left out to dry asking for help on common with them around. I want shajo's trial to succeed for entirely selfish reasons: because it makes my life as a fellow command player much easier and more enjoyable. I also haven't seen them ever unreasonably screw over an antag, which is also nice to see.

Most of the "anger" at the other role comes from a feeling of "stealing" the only meaningful gameplay most engineering players get in the form of fixing things. No engineer actually cares if atmos does something engineering-related when they didn't want to do it in the first place (lightbulb replacements, fungus events, etc.). They care when the only meaningful gameplay they might get that round is "stolen" from them. So why do we keep trying to make it impossible for the "other role" to do these things, instead of give each role useful and fun things to do besides repairs? The turbine I suggested for atmos last year that was added and the INDRA are good steps, but engineering genuinely needs a REASON to do crazy setups and optimizations. The ONLY thing that regularly matters beyond the basic setup is thruster mixes, and that's both a lost art and something that still only occasionally comes up. There's no point to creating a super stable, or super hot and energetic supermatter setup. There's no reason to experiment with the INDRA to maximize output. There's no appreciable difference between four hydrogen cans and 30 shots and a min-maxed supermatter setup riding the red line so precariously that it takes constant babysitting to keep it going. It doesn't actually do anything besides let the really jankily-coded shields take one more small asteroid before you turn them off and on again to repair them (because for some reason they don't regenerate). The engineering department has three separate energy sources where half-assing a single one fully powers the ship and makes doing anything with the others pointless. There isn't even the satisfaction of being able to quickly charge the Leviathan anymore after its removal. I don't suggest requiring multiple engines be on for the ship to work. I suggest adding things that are just nice to have that engineers can be proud to have turned on.. Features and fun things for them and others, akin to R&D, that incentivizes pushing the limits of the engines and being good at your job. What that could be would have to be discussed, but I feel really strongly that the answer to the problems people have is not to keep removing gameplay from engineering jobs so the other can have it, but to just add more new things for each of them to do.

This is unfortunately a grey area where it doesn't exist for gameplay considerations, even though it occasionally causes issues like these. As Bear said, you should apply the assault charges in-round and follow up with a more thorough offering up as to what exactly happened in an IR if applicable. Keep in mind, the security team isn't actually granted authority by a civil government to levy legitimate criminal punishment. They aren't uniformed representatives of a government granted power by civil contract. Character security records have no weight outside of the corporate setting, as the SCC, while partnered with the Republic of Biesel and granted a LOT of far-reaching power, doesn't actually have the authority to send someone to an "SCC court" and put them in an "SCC prison". If the crime is serious enough, they're going to be handed over to the government for punishment. But only CCIA can decide to do that. Your job is to decide whether the extent of what someone did is something the ship can handle (in-round punishment), or something CCIA should handle (an IR). CCIA then decides if the company will handle it (probation, demotion, firing), or something the Republic of Biesel's justice system will handle (criminal charges). You personally deciding whether they assaulted someone or tried to murder them is less relevant than CCIA's findings, which depend on the records you took, the observations you made, and the evidence you gathered. Your opinion matters, but what charge you give that person is just an admission of your opinion, rather than a Judge Dredd-esque declaration of someone's guilt and summary punishment. Security and command only really reserve the authority to declare someone guilty of small crimes. You don't get to decide "this guy is a murderer" without a trial. You just get to say "we suspect he is the murderer and will be holding him until Biesel comes and gets him". That's why execution is off the table, and marooning and cyborgification are supposed to be close-to-the-chest and extremely heavy decisions only captains can make in the direst of circumstances. Because every bad man the ship catches is supposed to be handed over to Biesel for their day in court. Basically, in instances like these, you should worry most about gathering every single scrap of evidence you can for CCIA rather than "deciding the fate" of the perpetrator. Because you really aren't. You're the lawman who catches them and handles the immediate issues, not the justice system that punishes them for what they did.

I think the best way to do it would be requiring the Intrepid need a filled out flight plan, but on green, the Spark will just auto-announce it's departing over the operations and command channels with a list of all mobs with a CKey attached aboard.

My biggest concern is one I haven't seen brought up: If the usual gamemode becomes Odyssey, doesn't that make the setting of the server in the majority of rounds whatever mission we're on, rather than the Horizon? What are we losing if the majority of rounds are about going to a map divorced from what's arguably the main character of the server, the ship? And what's the motivation for mapping for the ship when realistically 75% of rounds won't take place on it? Why add a cafe or put miniature plant pots on tables if no one will ever see them? I'm not trying to naysay these changes, but I do think it's something that should be thought about and mitigated. Adding Odyssey maps that are functional shuttles that can dock with the Horizon, and the crew can board, would be a great alternative to "everyone has to always leave for something disconnected from the ship". Consider stuff like the Orion Express ship docking to refill our gas tanks, or the Tajaran circus ship being expanded on and letting actors put on a show. I've always thought it's incredibly strange how little the Horizon interacts with other friendly ships and their crews. We have overmap vessels for ghost spawns, but the rules around those are intentionally very wary of them stealing the show from antags. Putting more fleshed out ones front and center as Odyssey maps the Horizon MUST interact with would be a good change. A crewmember aboard the other ship might decide to steal from the Horizon, pick some pockets, and trick the crew out of their money. A cargo technician might get in a barfight with another patron on a Dominian vessel using space to circumvent gambling laws. I'd really like to see maps like that so that we don't lose the Horizon as an important part of rounds. I don't want to see it being populated relegated to Extended only.

I'm still working through a lot of this, but I'd like to quickly comment that an idea I don't think has been suggested is implementing a system whereby canon roundtypes can be either canon or noncanon, and if the exact same mission has been canon recently, automatically swaps to noncanon. This way we dodge the "this is the third Golden Deep merchamt we've saved this week" issue without requiring admin intervention/announcements.