ClemTheDuck

Sec was originally in the brig responding to a call that the other vampire of the round Solomon Shaw was inside, the call came from the investigator who when we arrived was actively being kidnapped by Shaw and his thrall Mae Lin (who we had detained earlier and was in the communal brig), since the last time we tried to aim guns at Shaw resulted in him just running away, i decided to open fire and retrieve the investigator, which was successful. Maybe less than a minute after this, as i drag the investigator out to uncuff them as the other sec officers move around to find Shaw, i see Stacy Keely in full ballistic armour and a rifle walk out of the communal brig (the same brig Shaw just busted his thrall out of). So i assume they are working together and i am about to be shot, so i shoot first. I did not know that Keely was there for unrelated reasons i just assumed this was a planned assault and attacked as I thought I was alone in the hallway with just the investigator who was still cuffed (the other officers were offscreen for me, and my thinking at the time was that they were all chasing Shaw). Basically we had already escalated and i saw someone in full combat equipment walk up behind me, so I shot

The first issue here is an issue for both antags and security. There are many instances where you cannot take non lethals in the first instance because the first instance is seeing a dude with a rifle in a voidsuit/hardsuit/heavy armour. For sec you are likely just walking into a deathtrap by going up against antags without lethals or heavy armour as any traitor can suddenly pull out an LMG in the blink of an eye with no escalation or prompting. On the other side antags feel like they need to go hard early otherwise sec will roll them with heavy armour and rifles. Its a self repeating cycle of both sides expecting the worse of the other. The second i dont really see having rifles as being LARP. The horizon isnt some second rate research station like the aurora and is expected to deal with and has dealt with, paramilitary, military, and pirate forces. Security is far from a milrp environment, even accounting for PMCG characters. Narratively the horizon returning to the Aurora's sec armoury would make little sense, espescially now after the dreary futures, and konyang events. Alot of these arguments about departmental inclusion and sec vs antag balance i feel, take away from the core focus of roleplay/narrative/and canon. Antags are there to drive a story and generate conflict. They arent there to fight everyone and everything in an even fight. With that being said they still need to be able to generate that story/interaction, which is why i think we should focus more on tools and equipment that improve their survivability than who gets which gun. More ways to disengage from fights and more ways to keep themselves alive.

Im going to say this as someone who played when security had only 2 laser rifles and e carbines as primary weapons. I do not want to go back to that era. From a balance standpoint, the armoury is not the big issue with antag/sec balance. Besides the specialised armour, Security has 2 sets of corporate heavy armour, which have identical protection values to the heavy armour that is available to all uplink antags. On the weapons side, you have 4 weapons with reliable damage and AP at any range, Laser rifles and Burst rifles. On a damage level, a burst rifle firing 5.56 polymer only does a maximum of 15dmg through heavy armour, this is less damage than a 9mm round to an unarmoured target. Laser rifles can do a flat 18 damage through heavy armour, still less than 9mm to an unarmoured target. Compare this to 7.62 ammo, which all uplink antags have access too (mercs get 2 7.62 ARs for free and most military style gear crates give one). 7.62 ammo does around 18-19dmg per shot against heavy armour. While the difference is only really 3 points, ARs also have the ability to go full auto, which drastically ups the DPS and effectiveness compared to the two round burst of a Burst rifle. The existence of specialised armours does negate most of the damage for their respective type while leaving the wearer open fully to others. I would honestly say that ballistic armour is more oppressive than coporate heavy in most practical situations, due to its protection from bullets which most antags have easy access to. Ballistic armour being able to drop a 7.62 round to just 7-8 dmg. While on the topic of weapons, besides the burst and laser rifles, security also has access to the 9mm machine pistols, .45s, e carbines, and shotguns. Shotguns aside for now if we look at the performance of 9mm, .45 and the e carbine lethal laser we see that the only one with appreciable AP is 9mm with 15ap. Against STANDARD security plate carriers as well as any combat voidsuit (think sol gargoyle, CoC vulture, zavod, etc), 9mm will do around 5-6 dmg per shot. Against heavy armour which traitors and mercs have access to, 9mm .45 do ~3.5 and ~5.7 dmg respectively. E carbines do around 6dmg to heavy armour users. While shotgun buckshot can do up to 80 dmg, in point blank range to an unarmoured target, it also requires the user to enter point blank range. The main point being made here is that the armoury weapons are not really in any way ultra powerful when compared to the weapons easily accessable to any uplink antag. However I do want to point out one big difference that ususally tips the scale for security vs merc encounters is logistical support, either from medical or engineering. For traitors and other onship antags alot of their problems isnt really weapons and armour, but numbers. Even with an LMG and heavy armour, if four people with rifles run up on you, you will very likely die. Overall however, i personally believe that instead of removing things we should improve more on the tools and equipment given to antags. If the issue is that antags are feeling oppressed by dying in firefights and haveing to constantly be wary of being caught out, we should give them more tools to escape, and increase survivability. The addition of Sanna, the healing chem was a step in this direction allowing antags to heal from grievous wounds provided they can escape into saftey for a small amount of time. More additions like this, and more additions to support this would be much more effective at giving antags more breathing room for gimmicks.

I think balance wise we should keep longbows and above for cruiser and frigate sized ships, ghostrole offships should stay using the grauwolfs.

+1 no issues with how they play HoS, good at keeping sec organised, follows escalation properly, gives fair ground to gimmicks and antags

honestly emergency RIG releases would be nice as a standard or a module for regular hardsuits in general.

+1 Gill has always been consistently enjoyable to play with,

Dont really mind either way, but Zavodskoi is not human and ZI-IPC only. Unathi and Zo'ra Vaurca are also allowed

i really like this idea, Flight/crew Chief is very distinct and fits the Horizon setting, as well as giving the role itself an actual focus.

I will go and say that i think no highlights work the best. @Carver Sums up my thoughts on it pretty succintly. The appeal of the PMCG versus the other security factions is lack of standardisation among its members. The PMCG is one of the more unique faction concepts in terms of how they can be represented in game, and this aspect of non standardisation should be leaned into rather than moved away from. Otherwise, what is the point of having named sub contractor groups, giving them lore and unique aesthetics if we are just going to just make them all look samey? While developers do the hard work to make the game enjoyable, i feel that player feedback should not just be discounted, there was no issues regarding the uniforms beforehand, people were genuinely excited for their designs. People arent against change, this isnt arguing or contesting for the sake of it. These are items that are used and will be used by players, and the general consensus of players (so far) has been in favour of the original and unique designs.

i feel as though if armour is changed to compensate, then this will only serve to make unarmoured combat much much much more deadly which negatively benefits antags like ling, vamp, and traitor. Only other thing i can see this doing is turning every fight into a slog since the increased damage will mean longer trips to the medbay and longer stays in the surgery box which is just not enjoyable.

i dont think we need to fully revert to the old sensors, especially since the issues with the new sensors are very easy to fix (and are currently being fixed). The new sensors have more interesting features and also more potential than the old ones, id rather we work on improving them over discarding it all entirely

im still unsure of what exactly is broken the thing here is that, staff have said multiple times the ruling and how the punishment was given in resposne to that rule being broken, and even said that to initiate change on this ruling you should make a policy suggestion. This all seems pretty straight forward so i dont know why im still lost on the plot here. I keep hearing the system is broken but no one is really putting up any reasoning, explanation or reiteration beyond just constantly saying something is wrong. Either way though like what has been said ad nauseum, if there is something wrong and a change needs to be made it should be done via a policy suggestion, not whatever this is in the general boards. Way i see it, all roads are leading back to this ban, as much as you say it isnt relevant. But what i believe is the point being missed here is that there is a clear way on how staff rulings are done and there is a clear way that you can illicit change in how those rulings are done, so i dont see the point of this thread conitnuing here besides everyone rehashing the same things over and over and over again.

They likely do not really replenish losses like crew and ships in traditional senses as i doubt there are alot of shipyards readily available outside of San Collette. Its implied the FSF keep to a Navy structure in terms of onboard operations despite the fact they tend to act somewhat decentralised.

while the new sensor system has a lot of flavour and potential, it seems that it has taken us a step back. With planets getting harder to find in an event arc that has a huge focus on visiting planets. I dont see why planets would be something so easily hidden in space considering their size. This also leads back to nearly every hazard on the overmap blocking your view. I understand this is supposed to be based of radar but we are also IN SPACE. Its huge and it also realistically in a 3D environment even if the overmap is a 2D representation. Having every hazard on the overmap block view makes the process of finding places to go in the new system even more clunky and unenjoyable. The system as it is would have been fine if we were using the old overmap size and hazard spawns but with how the overmap is now this current system just makes finding the interesting places people want to go much harder with very little in the way of positives. to put things concisley -Planets should be much more visable, why are they constantly just not visible despite you being on them or next to their grids -Not every overmap hazard should block sensor vision, the old rules of asteroid fields and dust clouds were good, i dont know why a shoal of carp needs to have the blocking capability of a bunch of fucking rocks. -Horizon shuttles should start datalinked or at least make it so datalinking isnt broken by docking and reliant on sensors being on (as you cant turn sensors on while docked)