Synnono

I was going to point out the combat utility of these myself. There's a lot of potential for abuse in just making this standard kit for miner job slots, though I agree with the intention of the suggestion. They make sense as something you would find on a hardsuit that is meant for someone who will be traversing uneven terrain and significant elevation.

Locking and archiving.

Due to the scope of this incident, this IR is being closed. If you feel the player or character's behavior warrants an OOC complant, you may post one here: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewforum.php?f=35

Interview with the applicant:

This report is being closed due to the small scope of the incident. If you believe this player or character's conduct to be sufficiently inappropriate to warrant it, you may still post a player or character complaint here: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewforum.php?f=35

Avoiding this perception is already part of our guidelines, and your concern will be taken into consideration. The next time you see staff that you feel are doing this, I encourage you to talk to them first, and if you have to after that conversation, consider posting a complaint. Since there appears to be no new policy being suggested here, I'm not sure if a dismissal vote is appropriate. Putting one up anyway so red names can see it.

Officers can already exercise their best judgement when it comes to protecting the station for violations they see or as a reaction to obvious danger, command or no. When it comes to people actually needing warrants because all they have is a suspicion, it's completely defeating of the warrant system to allow officers to just authorize their own searches and arrests. The Warden can already do this as a temporary stopgap when there is no HoS or Captain, and even that is a bit of a skeezy compromise because the Warden's minimum qualifications don't make them qualified for management of officer activities like that. Sec officers are neither police nor judges. Without management to authorize them to do things they wouldn't normally do, they still default to protecting the station as best they can - they just don't proactively discover and solve crimes. Formalizing a policy where officers can justify whatever they like in the moment, and then pass it off to be reviewed later, is too abuse-able for me to support. Playing at very low population times with a lack of Command, IA, and the Warden is a challenging and unrealistic scenario, but empowering officers to become THE LAW during those shifts just seems to be too much. I think it would shut down more antag rounds than it would enhance. Voting to dismiss this.

This is something I'd like [mention]CakeIsOssim[/mention], [mention]Senpai Jackboot[/mention], and possibly [mention]Zundy[/mention] as Mr. Biesel to weigh in on before I take a look at the regulation's impact on the station/game. Depending on their combined view of synthetic life in Tau Ceti post-Antag Contest 2, this might be implementable, or it might need tweaking.

Fraud was introduced back in November 2017 as a way to address credit amounts greater than 500cr being stolen from people. It had been observed by a staff member that, technically, someone could get away with a yellow infraction for running off with someone's entire bank account. Since Grand Theft is meant to cover high-risk items that are mechanically important to a round, and Petty Theft is meant to cover less valuable items and smaller amounts of money, Fraud addressed a gap in enforcement at the time it was introduced. That it hasn't been used much compared to the much-older theft regulations isn't necessarily a valid reason to get rid of it. Its scope is narrower than both others because it targets a specific gap. I'd be happy to talk the definitions and semantics over with the team, but those things aside, is there a gameplay issue you see being addressed as a result of your proposed changes?

As the character is this report is canonically deceased, this Incident Report is being closed. If you feel that the player's behavior was sufficiently inappropriate, you may submit an OOC complaint here: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewforum.php?f=35

This does not appear to be a policy suggestion, but rather a complaint regarding the activity of one or more CCIA staff in recent rounds. This may be worth moving to an appropriate complaints forum, depending on how [mention]Arrow768[/mention] feels. In the meantime, I'll try to summarize what I'm thinking so far: In the first case, in the merc round the OP indicates, the CCIA staff member was asked by Coalf to participate the way they did because the antagonists asked him for a high-value target. Yes, it was unusual, and regular antagonist players are probably aware that CCIA agents cannot normally be touched while they're aboard to do IR-related things, since we remind them in AOOC nearly every time we board. In this case though, antagonists were made aware of the agent's validity as a target. It was a round gimmick that was trying to fulfill a player-generated request. We work with admins to do things like this from time to time, and it's been that way for as long as I can recall. I spoke with Coalf, and it was not the CCIA staff member's own idea to become part of that round gimmick - they were approached and used because a CCIA agent is easy to justify on-station in the setting of the game world. This case wasn't an instance of us "trying to involve ourselves" in the round. Generally speaking, we do not try to board the station to direct a round or drive player behavior. We don't even try to do it via fax, unless someone messages us asking for exactly that, or there is a way we could help a crew player or antagonist escalate the round themselves. While some people are supportive of the idea of Central Command being more visible in the game world, it is not currently policy for us to go out of our way and be that, unless it's part of a lore or admin event and our assistance has been requested. Since ERT commanders weren't used in that round according to Coalf, I'm going to assume the commander behavior you're indicating is a separate issue. As was discussed a bit in the Github discussion of the pull request, the goals of an ERT commander character are: To brief the team as necessary, as you indicate in your OP. This is mostly for immersion and lorefluff, since it's more appropriate for the briefing to come from ERT's command structure. To curtail ERT authority if a team takes extreme/unnecessary measures, as was requested via player suggestion thread. To have a small degree of IC control of the late-round escalation of conflict, since escalation of conflict and flow of a round is something we are concerned with as a staff team. Our goal in having these characters is not to drive the round instead of the players. They provide an IC power check on a player role we give effectively unlimited authority in an emergency. They also empower those players to respond to a specific threat, without those players having to resort to meta-knowledge. They might provide objectives or create a sense of urgency, but they will not be calling the play-by-play tactics of an emergency response. If someone has been doing that, they should not be. I would like to ask you to be patient in that regard, though, since the functionality is less than three days old and I have yet to update our training materials with complete guidelines. There are some shorthand instructions that have been posted in the meanwhile in our Discord channel. With those two things addressed, can you elaborate on your larger concern? We cannot be as hidden away as BSTs by the nature of the roles we play, but what do you feel is at risk here?

I will try to address the rest of this post when I have some downtime at work, but as for this, these are currently the cases the feature was implemented for, and are currently the only things we should really be using Commander characters for.

I'm into it. Despite what people meme about, blurring the lines between machine and living thing is near to the core of what makes shells compelling synthetic beings, and making them more compelling can only do them good. They don't work as well the farther they slide into the uncanny valley.