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Regarding the Departmental Security Test Merge


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Guest Marlon Phoenix
Posted (edited)
14 hours ago, ParadoxSpace said:

I think it should be important for the Heads of Staff to also retain control over their officers on blue alert. They need to be decentralized from the main Security body where possible (except, I guess, on code red, and manhunts/*severe* emergencies) or it's completely missing the point. It turns from 'departmental security' to 'security stationed in departments.'

Removal of the head of security is the only effective way of decentralizing security control because any officer will default to the HoS in almost all situations.

Currently it does play like security stationed in our departments. With no protections against searches of the department (as flimsy and easily circumvented warrant requitements were) we always have an officer near us and being involved within the department.

They also seem to still run off with the HoS and fight as a team in just what ive seen. But based on that it's gone how I hypothesized it most likely would.

Edited by Marlon Phoenix
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Posted

I think I've changed my stance on this. Call me unsusceptible to change, but this doesn't feel like it holds up to its planned effect that well. Security's influence is only expanded with this and it takes less time for any department to be SWAT'd down or even just searched.

 

Warrants are not as powerful- even for officers that do look to get them, because it's technically a depsec's "job" to report or take anything out-of-the-ordinary. You can expect breaking into any non-civ dept to be harder now given that if a depsec sees- they'll arrest you, or look for prints on whoever did it. Security isn't really decentralized, and they only have increased influence and access.

 

It doesn't seem nor feel that useful, and also allows validhunting to be a lot easier to perform.

Posted
On 02/03/2020 at 22:43, Scheveningen said:

They should be having a social visit somewhere else in a place where relaxing is appropriate.

What is the function of the office if not face to face socializing.

On 03/03/2020 at 08:47, Scheveningen said:

Yes, it does matter where you socialize. There exist inappropriate places to socialize. Two officers who are responsible for two completely different departments that are chatting in a departmental security office, is a pretty big deal considering it pertains to one's dereliction of post whereas the other is tolerating their colleague's dereliction of post.

So by your standard, it's okay for them to meet in the bar- both of them leaving their assigned areas- but not okay for them to meet in one of their offices.

Posted
On 03/03/2020 at 12:24, ParadoxSpace said:

I think it should be important for the Heads of Staff to also retain control over their officers on blue alert. They need to be decentralized from the main Security body where possible (except, I guess, on code red, and manhunts/*severe* emergencies) or it's completely missing the point. It turns from 'departmental security' to 'security stationed in departments.'

The only way to effectively keep Sec from rallying around the people they know to be capable of organizing them is by removing the HoS. I've nothing against this, really. The HoS is a bit redundant, given the Captain ought to be able to handled it. Frankly, if you really want to restructure command, the Director of Research should be at the top, followed by the Head of Security in a smaller position of authority with the CMO and HoP beside them in rank.

Posted
On 03/03/2020 at 08:47, Scheveningen said:

Likewise, if an antag does something nearby, those two officers will most likely instantly respond. And a problem such as this is what departmental security was supposed to defeat from an OOC standpoint, was it not?

I mean, what's the real difference here? You have two officers immediately available in one area, and none in another, or an officer available in both areas. What antag is at a loss if there's two officers that isn't also at a loss if there's one? Either way, you've alerted Security. Only difference is now you're more likely to be apprehended than if there was one- but also more likely to deal with one third of the security force.

Posted

Whenever I have to sit in on an interview, I have a habit of following the party in question up until the doors. With the current layout, this means that once the two parties enter, I have to hustle my way through 4 rooms just to get to the other side. If we could put the two doors near one another again I think that'd be all swell and dandy.

Example:

Spoiler

distance.thumb.png.7bd305f16b628d31b8e47edd6db31ee2.png

 

Posted

hi! i sure hope i'm posting this in the right thread

i was really against department security at first, but it's really started to grow on me. however, i do get other people's complaints about warrants being kinda useless and validhunting becoming a bit more of an issue. i DO very much enjoy the fact that it's helping people stop with the "security man bad" mentality, at least. i could go either way with it, at this point. 

ANYWAY: my main reason for posting here.

i just wanted to talk about issues that i've noticed in the cargo department as far as mapping and access goes. i'm so happy that we finally fixed the abyss that was just outside of cargo in the vending machine area. there's still two main issues in cargo, however:

in the warehouse, the bottom right corner is COMPLETELY dark. there used to be a light in that corner before the warehouse was made a bit smaller to fit the security office, and i think the light in that corner was just forgotten about after it was shrunk a bit.

the second thing is that there's weird access issues on the security doors. QM, Techs and miners can't get in through the main entrance, which i'm assuming it's supposed to be like that. however, (and i dunno if this is just for QM or not since that's what i main) the door leading to maintenance from the security office in supply seems to have no ID lock on it whatsoever, and as QM i can bypass the main door very easily. again, i dunno if this is a feature or if it's just leftover from changing stuff around

either way, i appreciate the work that's gone into this merge and i'm sure we can work out the kinks with time!

Posted

I disagree with this being a nerf to antags. It's so much easier to run rings around security now as you know where everybody is going to be, and taking out an officer gives you so much more access than it used to. Likewise, high value targets like the armory/vault are much easier due to having fewer people around to notice anything is going wrong. 

The lack of warrants is def annoying though. Almost as bad as random security officers thinking they run the department and questioning every little thing whilst hunting for their valids.

Posted

While I do see depsec as a buff to sec, it works for antags too as the above post has mentioned. Especially the rather common antagonist security officers, who now have expanded access and comms on top of their usual advantages. Not too uncommon for the armoury and other areas to be easily cleaned out by them or others, especially on lower pop.

Posted

Personally I like departmental security as an officer, since it allows me to be more present in a department rather than just visiting in the lobby or asking to be let inside to enact a warrant. It makes security officers feel more like members of the crew rather than entities that only leave the security office to hunt an antagonist down. It's very nice, and it seems to do a lot to encourage trust in security when your officer isn't an absolute glue-huffing idiot that attempts to arrest engineers for hacking into atmospherics or science for building guns.

But I do have some concerns, particularly in regards to the extremely fun experience that is the antagonist security officer. Not only do they have authority and the best armor and tools you can get as a regular member of the crew at round start, now they also have access to most of your department and your radio channel. We had a round last night where two departmental security officers rolled traitor and took it upon themselves to become the Gestapo of the station, and they mostly got away with it since the non-traitor members of security that were still alive were otherwise indisposed. It was an utterly miserable experience to watch a security officer roll into a department loaded to bear with traitor equipment and walk straight through the door, the threaten the (unarmed) department with his traitor revolver and edgy black voidsuit. Overall, however, I like departmental security a lot!

Finally, I'd also like to see departmental heads have more control over their officer (particularly on code blue). It's meant to be a departmental security officer, not a security officer that happens to be in your department.

Posted
14 hours ago, NewOriginalSchwann said:

Personally I like departmental security as an officer, since it allows me to be more present in a department rather than just visiting in the lobby or asking to be let inside to enact a warrant. It makes security officers feel more like members of the crew rather than entities that only leave the security office to hunt an antagonist down. It's very nice, and it seems to do a lot to encourage trust in security when your officer isn't an absolute glue-huffing idiot that attempts to arrest engineers for hacking into atmospherics or science for building guns.

But I do have some concerns, particularly in regards to the extremely fun experience that is the antagonist security officer. Not only do they have authority and the best armor and tools you can get as a regular member of the crew at round start, now they also have access to most of your department and your radio channel. We had a round last night where two departmental security officers rolled traitor and took it upon themselves to become the Gestapo of the station, and they mostly got away with it since the non-traitor members of security that were still alive were otherwise indisposed. It was an utterly miserable experience to watch a security officer roll into a department loaded to bear with traitor equipment and walk straight through the door, the threaten the (unarmed) department with his traitor revolver and edgy black voidsuit. Overall, however, I like departmental security a lot!

Finally, I'd also like to see departmental heads have more control over their officer (particularly on code blue). It's meant to be a departmental security officer, not a security officer that happens to be in your department.

i do agree with a lot of this. my only question would be since the QM isn't exactly considered a head... (i mean, they don't even have access to their depsec office (but i also don't know if other heads do)) and the fact that qm is, at least, afaik, still not even soft-whitelisted, would that still mean that depsec needs to listen to the qm as well?
i mean what do we do if Shitter McGee comes in as qm and starts ordering the officer to do shit way out of their scope and/or jurisdiction? and how would we go about making sure that officers listen to the qm anyway?
so far, the latter that you mentioned is the only kind of interaction i've ever seen. right now, depsec feels more like we're having an officer loaned to our department instead of actual departmental security, if that makes sense. i know that a more thorough mesh will come with time, i'd just like to figure out how we do that sooner rather than later.
i do really like depsec and like i said in an earlier post, it definitely has kinks to be worked out. i'm at least willing to work with it because it really has helped drive RP and has increased cross-departmental bonds a bit. 

Posted
6 minutes ago, Natiform said:

i do agree with a lot of this. my only question would be since the QM isn't exactly considered a head... (i mean, they don't even have access to their depsec office (but i also don't know if other heads do)) and the fact that qm is, at least, afaik, still not even soft-whitelisted, would that still mean that depsec needs to listen to the qm as well?
i mean what do we do if Shitter McGee comes in as qm and starts ordering the officer to do shit way out of their scope and/or jurisdiction? and how would we go about making sure that officers listen to the qm anyway?

QM is NOT a head of staff role. They answer to the HoP. The HoP is cargo's Head of Staff. Now, it's reasonable to assume that the officer should marginally listen to the QM when within the confines of the department, but in an emergency they over-ride that for the safety of the station and crew IMHO. Remember, that with the exception of the QM being over CT and miner, all non-head/non-apprentice crew are considered equal in rank. The QM and CT are both equal rank to the officer.

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Well fuck I need to write this shit up a second time because I decided to hit an unknown combination of buttons and Windows's response to that was, "WELL I GUESS YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS WINDOW OR ITS CONTENTS EVER AGAIN THEN! BYE!" I am saying this to vex my frustration, I hope this is clear.

So the Player Feedback

We got over 100 99 responses on the questionnaire that we released. Which is I think a solid 10+% of our monthly unique player count? Something like that. And hey, that's good! 54.5% of the respondents had played security during the test merge; 32.3% of the respondents had played antag during the test merge. Here's a short rundown of key results:

  1. 62.6% of the respondents rated departmental security a 4-5 / 5 in gameplay.
  2. 74.7% of the respondents said that departmental security made it easier for security to exercise authority over them and their department.
  3. 74.1% of the responding security players said that this had a positive effect on their game play.
  4. 50% of the responding antag players reported that this change made their setup period more difficult.
  5. 56.3% of the responding antag players reported that this change made it more difficult for them to avoid being captured.
  6. In contrast to the above numbers, 72.2% of the responding security players said that these changes did not make spotting antags easier.
  7. 42.6% of the responding security players said that these changes did make it easier to spot other criminal or suspicious activity.

So, what can we take away from this? Well, the majority of the player base appears to like the change. For one reason or another. So hey, that's good! Sec players also seemed to like the change!

But this comes at a cost. The rest of the numbers aren't all that positive, with regards to what we, the leadership and development team, were trying to achieve. To use the touting of a loud mouthed security player on Discord to illustrate the matter, "Hah, you just gave us easier access into departments!" Discussions with other players and members of staff pretty much confirms this, that the largest change here was increasing the effectiveness of the centralized security team, by virtue of giving them more access. Which is, completely and utterly counter to what we were trying to achieve.

The Changes & What's Next

The player base wants dep sec merged. Alrighty. But this comes with 3 changes that are to be done.

The first two are aimed to directly tackle the point we missed above. The idea of departmental security is that they are departmental security. Officers who are subject to the departmental chain of command they are stationed in. So to reinforce this, the following two changes will be done:

  1. SOP will be introduced to clearly state the departmental officers as having to listen to the departmental head of staff first and foremost. (At least on green.) Simple enough, will clarify the CoC. There will likely be other edge cases and matters to be tackled by @The lancer and his SOP team as well.
  2. Departmental officers will lose security channel access on code green. While I do wholly understand the importance of communication, I do also understand that undermining this point is the most effective way to get at what we want to get at. Removing the departmental officers from security net will make them more reliant on their own departmental chain of command. The alternative to this one, thus far, has been to nerf access of the departmental officers to just departmental hallways. But I believe that to actually run counter to what we're trying to achieve.

The final change is to do with basic arithmetic and numbers. 1 cadet slot will be removed. The reasoning is simple: security as a whole gained 1 officer slot in dep sec. Thus, instead of fielding 10 bodies that can be armed as needed, we're now at 11. Removing the cadet puts us back down to 10, and life will be fine again.

Is This All?

Well, yes and no.

SS13 is not a very static nor persistent game. Things will change, and the setup of security will likely change as well, again, in the future. So none of these changes will be Permanent:tm:. And specifically with this, we'll be re-evaluating the new implementation a short while after it's gone live. If shit suffers too much, there's always the :ree:vert button to be pushed. Or changes to be made, comms to be removed, access to be tweaked, etcetera.

But on a bit of a longer game picture. Security has an immense role and presence on the station. (This is followed by the AI and a few other things.) And this is limiting, from the perspective of gameplay development. Any obstacle we present to the station, anything remotely foreign or dangerous, security is going to be there, in force, to deal with it. And this is not necessarily a positive thing to work around. So I want to put forth the idea that this will not be the end of us touching security. NBT has a different suite of changes slated for security to undergo, ones that are not even remotely enabled by the current command structure, setting, etcetera. More details on this whenever NBT has actually passed pre-production entered production (otherwise I could be saying the same story over again for 5 times).

But, smoll steps at a time.

Posted

Personally as a sec main I'm largely unopposed to the changes as they were laid out here. I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other. I will say that I am very disappointed that a cadet is being removed in order to keep the manpower status quo - I think we'd be better off nixing the general officer. Alternatively, merging GO and warden - though that might run us into situations where the GO arms themselves. As it is, warden is a bit of a gimp role. Anyway, I view GO as a slot that adds nothing to the game except being a manpower buff to sec (An officer will always be better armed and regarded than a cadet, pure numbers aside.), and as a slot for the antisocial. 

Posted

Security commonly, and most of the rounds, discuss crew records which is actually, breaking regulations, talking about such in public, and only on the Security channel, is that allowed to be discussed. Perhaps you can do it via PDA, however, PDAs are not the most... EASY things to use, especially if you need to tell everyone in security about a certain suspect/person who has some interesting records and needs to be watched, and or, you put out a warrant for a search...

Though, that is what I will say on the radio subject, and nothing will stop us from using a staionbounced to make our own security channel...

Posted (edited)

I do not think that the radio should be removed on Green. 

1.) Petty crimes are a thing, and coordination is required for that. Should code blue be called for something as petty as a barfight, or theft? 

2.) Workarounds already exist, and short of OOCly preventing Security from using their stationbound radio or making a new channel entirely, it won't do much. This will also result in Code Blue being called a lot more often, and ensure that the code being lowered to green is rarer.

3.) It stops Security from roleplaying. Believe it or not, people in Security do actually talk to each other. With depsec already splitting them up, and Departmental Officers not being expected to leave their office, short of PDAing each other or setting up an IRC they have little means to communicate and chat to each other. Removing the radio will make roleplaying with each other incredibly inconvenient. DepSec was intended to allow Security to RP more with other departments, but I don't think it should prevent Security from roleplaying with itself. 

4.) Security is fucked during lowpop. There is rarely command during deadhour, and without anybody to raise to blue they're screwed.

5.) The radio was removed for the first testmerge of Department Security, and there were multiple complaints about it. As a result, DepSec had the radio in the next testmerge. While not completely the same, both will have the same effect. 

6.) Is it bad for departments to communicate? Science talks to each other. Medical talks to each other. Command talks to each other. Command is also important to how a round progresses, but removing communications from them on code Green would be incredibly obnoxious and unpopular. While it can be argued that they aren't the same, both Command and Security interact with the antagonists and determine how a round goes. "But Command talks about things other than combating antags!" So does security. During extended, a Head of Security might want to coordinate a training exercise or a meeting. PDAing everyone is a valid choice, but simply telling them to come to the brig over radio is much more convenient.

there are other arguments here but I'm not good with words and would rather have someone more qualified talk about them

Edited by Wigglesworth Jones
Posted
1 minute ago, Dark1Star said:

Though, that is what I will say on the radio subject, and nothing will stop us from using a staionbounced to make our own security channel...

Funnily enough, this was actually discussed!

We expect the laws of physics to apply here, though. Specifically ones around entropy, conservation of energy, and human laziness. Good luck!

Posted (edited)

From my experience, departmental officers use security comms in the following situations:

  1. To ask for a warrant from a warden
  2. To inform the warden that someone has been captured and is enroute to the brig for processing
  3. To request a general officer back them up, as the suspect is too well armed for a single takedown
  4. To request a code raise due to other suspicious activity relating to antags
  5. Idle chat with their other officer RP pals
  6. Requesting an officer from another department to ask a member of their department to come over or prepare for inbound crew. (Such as asking for a medic or engineer)
Edited by IAmCrystalClear
Added point 6
Posted

The ultimate goal is to ensure that departmental officers serve the departmental head of staff first and foremost; and that the enforcement of warrants and other matters does not fail as epicly as it did during the test merge. We deem that the most effective way we can make this point clear is to separate them from the general security information space. If this ends up being too much, for one reason or another, then we shall alter our approach. But for now, and because the only other alternative currently visible was deemed more counterproductive to the goal of departmental security, we're gonna try this first.

Posted (edited)

There are other ways to enforce this, in my opinion. Clearer guidelines and fixing the chain of command, for one. I think that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or some other saying. While I understand why people might think this is a good idea, I believe there are too many downsides for it to be the best solution.  @Skull132 Will this be testmerged before being added completely?

Edited by Wigglesworth Jones
Posted
1 minute ago, Wigglesworth Jones said:

There are other ways to enforce this, in my opinion. Clearer guidelines and fixing the chain of command, for one.

Its very difficult to attack a system that has the round's focus a bit too much with just policy. Mechanical restrictions should come in slowly first coupled with updates to SOP. Which is exactly what is happening here. 

Posted

That's why I said "for one." There are likely other solutions out there.

From what I remember of the DepSec testmerge, I didn't see the access being abused very often - though I admit that I wasn't present for the majority of rounds. I wasn't even aware of the poll in the first place, as well. 

Posted
2 minutes ago, Wigglesworth Jones said:

There are other ways to enforce this, in my opinion. Clearer guidelines and fixing the chain of command, for one. I think that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or some other saying. @Skull132 Will this be testmerged before being added completely?

We likely won't go for another test merge. Purely because long-haul test merges are assenine in terms of keeping the server up to date during them.

As said, the decision is to be re-evaluated following launch, so we'll see.

Just now, Wigglesworth Jones said:

From what I remember of the DepSec testmerge, I didn't see the access being abused very often - though I admit that I wasn't present for the majority of rounds. I wasn't even aware of the poll in the first place, as well. 

Well, you see. The stats say otherwise. As does enough anecdotal evidence which has reached me and the rest. And if we want to discuss representation of the numbers, this is 10% of the monthly unique player base that has spoken. Which is a pretty good representation as far as our polls go.

Posted (edited)

10 percent of the unique playerbase is not a lot, from an outside perspective. Again, why should the ability for Security players to roleplay with each other be taken away on Green? Unlike other departments, Security members are often mobile and as such do not have as much of a chance to just chat in the lobby. From personal experience, I use the radio quite a lot to chat and interact with other people, and I don't want to be forced to roleplay with people who think that hating authority is a good replacement for a personality, to paraphrase SueTheCake. I'd appreciate it if my arguments were addressed in full, but this is my largest concern at the moment.

Edited by Wigglesworth Jones

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