[Relay] Rule suggestion: There is no such thing as a residential deck security detail/militia

[Ricky_the_banshee]

After some conversations on the relay, and some suggestions made by staff to make a thread about this to garner some feedback, I've decided to make this thread now (after another staff member suggested wait this out a couple of days for a possible response or input by the staff team). This thread was a response made to an IC-made message made on the relay server, which sparked a conversation that itself lead to the creation of this thread to put something, which I believe, shouldn't happen.
 

Due to the nature of setting, the threats the crew face are considered a ship-wide threat, meaning even those down in the residentials decks are alerted of this incident and could possibly face ramifications depending on what occurs above. It's a nice way to remind people that the residentials themselves are a location on the ship, where progression and character engagement can still persist. Which it does, with the existence of the Relay Discord allowing people to play their characters "off-duty" and sociably within their quarters

. However, once in a while these events also make headlines within the relay ICly, and sometimes that leads to implications such as these: 

The message implies the establishment and presence of a security detail on the residential decks when NO such department or detail exists, let alone existence of some weapons stash or depot that could justify the organization of one: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=SCCV_Horizon#Residential

The residentials also prohibit weapons carry or storage of any privately-owned firearms, so even without the lack of a proper "resdeck emergency armory", there would still be nothing to fortify any defenses with in the emergency of a hypothetical "residentials invasion":

 

While the message itself does not make any suggestions nor mentions of combat (thankfully), there have been talks that this has happened before in the past. It doesn't change, however, that it goes against the established rules regarding residentials. There is no security department down there, and there are no implications that command may continue to assert authority downstairs when they're not assigned sa the ones top deck do (hence why an off-duty command character cannot assert their authority when on-duty command is present at the time, or at all for that matter.)

It also implies that players can assign their characters within  the residentials with some "essential role" (Aka being "the commander present and active on the residential decks". It suggest players not directly participating may still assign their characters with a significant enough role such as being part of an off-screen security detail on-standby, when othing stops another Command character from proclaiming the selfsame duties. In my opinion, this smells of snowflakism (No disrespect towards the player who wrote this. This may as well have been an unintentional implication.) 

That's why I believe a rule should be established to prevent the Relay from being used as some platform during events where characters could make (outlandish) claims of off-screen participation with a (somewhat) significant role (lsuch as preparing or taking part in a defense against an off-ship threat during an event) when they were NOT even part of the actual event taking place on the server/occupational deck. This could be solved by eliminating the suggestion that residentials can form a "defense"against any threats. These are the responsibilties and duties of those on the occupational deck, where the ships' ONLY armories are present, and should remain as such.

 

[greenjoe]

I'm mixed on this, while op claims of a resdeck milita is not ideal, there canonically being ZERO protections down there other then the stuff upstairs seems a bit hard to believe too.

[Ricky_the_banshee]

2 minutes ago, greenjoe said:

I'm mixed on this, while op claims of a resdeck milita is not ideal, there canonically being ZERO protections down there other then the stuff upstairs seems a bit hard to believe too.

I had considered that the lack of defenses itself could be something notably odd about such a large ship. However, I still think its a more preferable outcome than having each canon event result with characters making claims of a "kill count" due to some off-screen fight that might've taken place. I think the last thing the relay could use is post-event IC relays stacked with messages of characters claiming how "Coalition pirates" bursted into their quarters and how the ended up in a firefight that miracuously led to no casualties other than the attackers.  I think would only worsen my concerns about snowflakism and self-imposed credit from events.

[restricted]

12 minutes ago, greenjoe said:

I'm mixed on this, while op claims of a resdeck milita is not ideal, there canonically being ZERO protections down there other then the stuff upstairs seems a bit hard to believe too.

In previous arcs there was an entire resdeck militia coordinating their combat actions via the relay, or so I've been told. This black hole needs to be sealed.

[N8-Toe]

yeah I think people shouldn't be able to claim action or heroics in a cannon round from Residential unless otherwise specified,

 

on the existence of if there is departments below decks. I mean I dont use the relay but I've used it as an off handed excuse for some characters as to where they've been during long times "Oh yeah I've been fixing some stuff on residential deck" or such. I don't think that's harmful. But I think the rule should be any heroics or actions of note have to occur in round, in game, on the work deck.

[greenjoe]

9 minutes ago, restricted said:

In previous arcs there was an entire resdeck militia coordinating their combat actions via the relay, or so I've been told. This black hole needs to be sealed.

that is indeed an issue I know about, so something should be done, though saying straight up "There is NO security here" that starts to raise questions of a baddie taking the elevator and going postal in the resdeck

[Carver]

I'm in support of no residential 'heroics' in general, security or otherwise (since you often have EMTs and Engineers claiming similar feats). There's no value in allowing people to assign their characters medals of heroism over nothing that happened, merely because they said something first.

Unless the ship goes down entirely, I'd prefer residential to remain (mostly) unaffected by events. No boarders, minimal damage (certainly no breaches or fires), just a bit of rocking and shaking so that nobody can claim this or that act of great heroism with zero consent from staff, writers or their fellow players.

[Happy_Fox]

People implying they are part of some command or staffing structure below decks is nonsense and we should just keep it as a very basic place where people are all off-duty.

[CatsinHD]

I am, like many people here, all for making a rule restricting the use of "below-deck" work, especially during events. However, buy in large I am not adverse to the general use of "I had to do some maintenance on rooms below deck" and that general concept to explain why characters may have been gone for some time as long as it's within reason. This is entirely for people trying to claim heroics during a canon event they had no joined. It may not have a complete logical throughline, but that is less important in this situation and must be stored away with the other gaps in logic that are present when dealing with the messy world of off-server RP and continuity.

[Fluffy]

We could establish an IPC / Viax / Borgs based residential security/medical/engineering/whatever NPC group that takes care of all that happens below decks

People who work above deck (aka any player-played character, excluding appropriate staff) cannot work or do anything of note below deck, the above group takes care of it

I believe this could solve the believably points mentioned (how can there be no security, no holes made while the upper decks were half exploded etc.), allow the appropriate staff to create some under-deck offscreen narration if they want, solve other pain points during rounds (where did the antag that we brigged go if they enter the residentials?), and solve what OP's indicate

 

Do note, however, that nothing prevents character from having similar things in the background as long as they are believable, people can have characters that fought boarders/pirates/whatnot off-screen as long as they are believably done and don't conflict with lore, through headcanon, the proposals you (OP) and I suggest would only prevent them from having done that on the horizon's residential quarters, and would be limited to things that happens to the horizon only

 

.2c

Edited September 26, 2023 by Fluffy

[Comet Blaze]

I agree with the idea characters shouldn't be claiming credit over actions that happened below deck, however the proposed solution of claiming there is no security/militia in what makes up a significant portion of the ship is not something I can get behind.

The residential deck is part of the ship and as such is just as susceptible to hostile incursion. While it doesn't have any high value items or data like what one would find above deck, it does have a rather large amount of people, including both diplomats and command, which probably shouldn't be left without protection.

In addition, people don't suddenly learn to behave just because they're in residential. While yes, running into someone else is less common, it doesn't mean there will never be a fight or dispute that needs to be settled, not to mention things like theft.

That being said, I will echo @Fluffy in saying that the best solution would be saying engineering/medical emergencies are handled by borgs and security is done by owned IPCs/Viax with no involvement from people above deck.

[DatSamTho]

Absolutely all for this. Residential has always been a bit of a grey zone, with people making their own headcanon for it, I am all for clarifying what's actually going on down there.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

9 hours ago, Fluffy said:

Do note, however, that nothing prevents character from having similar things in the background as long as they are believable, people can have characters that fought boarders/pirates/whatnot off-screen as long as they are believably done and don't conflict with lore, through headcanon, the proposals you (OP) and I suggest would only prevent them from having done that on the horizon's residential quarters, and would be limited to things that happens to the horizon only

None of the pirates made it to Residential deck, no one fought pirates off screen. Claiming to do so is unrealistic and should be sent to an Admin. 

[ReadThisNamePlz]

I think there needs to be an established Security team for the Residential deck. People are living there. Who's enforcing the regulations below decks? Who's responding to calls if someone is assaulted, or someone is doing something illegal? 

All four of the on-duty officers? Lol. 

A Res-deck militia doesn't make sense, but a Res-deck security detail does. 
 

[Fluffy]

3 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

None of the pirates made it to Residential deck, no one fought pirates off screen. Claiming to do so is unrealistic and should be sent to an Admin. 

Yea I was not talking about the pirates in the event, I was talking in general, eg. if you fought pirates while aboard an Hegemony ship, in a Solarian ship or whatever

[Ricky_the_banshee]

Hey guys, I'm glad to see this suggestion is getting some traction, and I love all the different takes and proposals made for a possible new ruling on what exactly constitutes as acceptable for the residentials. I just wanna clarify some things in case I forgotten to express this in my original post

 

- The example I provided does NOT make any suggestions that the character or anyone under their supposed leadership engaged with any of the threats directly. However, events in the past did led to a off-screen participation of characters on the resdeck fending off a hostile force.

-  After some consideration due to all the replies, I think a small security presence could work. I believe Flully's proposal of relegating those services to an NPC-like off-screen team of bounds/synthetics/IPCs would make for the better compromise.

- Characer backgrounds are completely different topic in my opinion, and is something which itself already has written rules and guidelines for what's allowed.

-The residential decks have a couple of established rules but nothing that regulates the problem I presented in my original post. Currently there is nothing that stops the playerbase from making claims that their character was fighting off some Dominian Edict Hunters that are thrasing and ilegally searching their dorms while the Dominian Navy was holding up the Occupational Deck  in some future hypothetical Dominia event (such as the case with the residential decks militia fending off what I believe where SRF/SFA pirates which attacked the Horizon).

 

And to clarify further on this matter: At the moment the Residential Deck does NOT have anything akin to a security department downstairs, at least not according to the wiki. One could reasonably assume that there would be one, but thus far this is all largely headcanon and interpetrated in various ways, which I believe led to this suggestion that Command can simply take reigns as some 2ndary Commander with similar authorities within the residential decks. It's something that shouldn't be used lightly given its implications. Having an established NPC-like sec department that simply patrols and captures criminals who flee for their residence to seek shelter could be handled by these off-screen characters.

 

[Carver]

If we must have security for the residential deck, I’d merely suggest something automated such as cameras and turrets - or perhaps the old securitrons (i.e. Officer Beepsky). The sort of things that you could never go “why aren’t they coming up to help” like you could with security cyborgs or similar.

[N8-Toe]

I think we're over complicating this. Just having a hand wave of "there's some goobers down there for security and maintenance, who are they? doesn't really matter" I think works well. because pretty much everything else is gonna bring up questions

 

And on player characters just have a simple guideline. You can claim you've worked below decks as a hand wave for being gone or development or so on. But nothing heroic, or of major substance. IE "Yeah I picked up a few shifts doing appliance repair thats why I havn't been around lately" as acceptable and "I killed four SFA pirates and saved someone from a burning apartment" not so much

[dessysalta]

On 25/09/2023 at 16:16, Ricky_the_banshee said:

It suggest players not directly participating may still assign their characters with a significant enough role such as being part of an off-screen security detail on-standby, when othing stops another Command character from proclaiming the selfsame duties. In my opinion, this smells of snowflakism (No disrespect towards the player who wrote this. This may as well have been an unintentional implication.) 

Player who wrote the announcement here.

In all honesty, I didn't figure there was no such thing as a residential security force prior to being PMed by an admin after the fact to let me know that residential is a grey zone. My intent with the bulletin post was just to add additional depth and show that the events (of which I participated in both, albeit not crew-sided) had more impact than a simple 2 hour gameplay session (and I have no issue with my character not being the "hero" because I never wrote it with that intent or contempt). It felt unreasonable to assume that, in the event the Horizon is being bombarded and boarded by eight ne'er-do-wells, the residential deck is completely unaffected, moreover that a legitimately qualified Head of Security wouldn't try to organize at least a small squad in case things took a turn for the worst, and instead just kick their feet up like nothing's happening. In retrospect I probably should have consulted staff, but there's a good point to be made if I actually had no idea I should have done so in the first place.

How about having staff-written announcements directly after the event that details possible damage or conflict that occurred below deck? I.e. Another pirate event occurs with ship combat, and admins mention part of the deck is evacuated and sealed off. Player characters can be chosen individually or not at all to have been affected by this, which solves the problem of characters proclaiming heroic nonsense/wounds/etc whilst also allowing for participation or involvement with those who either couldn't attend or were playing as a different character.

[KingOfThePing]

Using the residental deck for roleplaying purposes is totally fine. If something is out of proportion should be decided on a case to case basis. Just use common sense.

[Ricky_the_banshee]

23 hours ago, dessysalta said:

Player who wrote the announcement here.

In all honesty, I didn't figure there was no such thing as a residential security force prior to being PMed by an admin after the fact to let me know that residential is a grey zone. My intent with the bulletin post was just to add additional depth and show that the events (of which I participated in both, albeit not crew-sided) had more impact than a simple 2 hour gameplay session (and I have no issue with my character not being the "hero" because I never wrote it with that intent or contempt). It felt unreasonable to assume that, in the event the Horizon is being bombarded and boarded by eight ne'er-do-wells, the residential deck is completely unaffected, moreover that a legitimately qualified Head of Security wouldn't try to organize at least a small squad in case things took a turn for the worst, and instead just kick their feet up like nothing's happening. In retrospect I probably should have consulted staff, but there's a good point to be made if I actually had no idea I should have done so in the first place.

 

Hey there. Just again, I didn't meant to personally attack you over this. I want to reiterate that this announcement happened to be one of the main topics of that night that became a discussion point on the relay, so I used it to present my case for what I deemed an issue following the chat.

I think what mainly caused some raised eyebrows was that very implication of assuming leadership "downstairs" through the choice of words. "As the commander present and below resdeck" implied your character assumed direct leadership over a off-screen detail. It was one of the problems people had back on the relay when it was first brought up. It may have been unintentional, but it still gave off a sense of self-importance towards the character that was imposed with little as much consultation from the community or staff for that matter,. a  I understand now that this was written without the knowledge of there not being any known security/armory present on the resdeck as per the wiki's information (which frankly, is still a problem with how the resdeck is mostly orientated around headcanon to allow the slice-of-life elements to blossom), but ultimately changes nothing about the issue regarding imposing one's character with a "self-relevant" role. 

After all the responses, I do agree that there should some security presence down in the resdeck shouldn't be ignored. I also agree that I don't realistically expect resdeck occupants to sitback and kick their feet up on their imaginary office desks like its all nothing, but I also think that becoming proactive shouldn't equate the shenaniganry of "resdeck militia" or "organized security details" when again, nothing in the wiki backs up the possibility. Not to mention on top of it all, it only hypes up people's self-importance when it comes to pretending their characters still had a "relevant" role in an event they were not actively present for during a round on-server. No command character should (un)intentionally impose this notion that their character can elevate themselves off-screen with a vital role such as this. The ambiguity of who or what organizes evacuation, security and emergency services on the resdeck should be left within that ambiguity. We have a rule/IC-regulation that only those on-shift as command staff are permitted to assert their authority as command staff, whereass off-duty command have little to no powers and are no different from a visitor/passenger/assistant.

 

On 16/11/2023 at 23:26, dessysalta said:

How about having staff-written announcements directly after the event that details possible damage or conflict that occurred below deck? I.e. Another pirate event occurs with ship combat, and admins mention part of the deck is evacuated and sealed off. Player characters can be chosen individually or not at all to have been affected by this, which solves the problem of characters proclaiming heroic nonsense/wounds/etc whilst also allowing for participation or involvement with those who either couldn't attend or were playing as a different character.

I was generally surprised this wasn't a thing in the first place, and staff-written announcements never hurt in these matters. I feel like alot of these problems during events would be solved if there was something like a resdeck bunker for players to (optionally) evacuate their characters to. Not everybody has to be present in it, and  the decision on whether their character remains in their quarters for safety or prefer this hypothetical bunker would ltimately still leave the choice with the player on where there character was off-screen.

On the note of player characters being affected by this, I never said that this shouldn't be the case. How characters are mentally or physiologically affected by this despite only being on the resdeck shouldn't be a problem at all. These events end up being high stakes, and with everything located on a single ship, its more likely for people to feel the (after)effects of tehse events more prominently than back when the station was just the workplace and people lived in their places of residence (sometimes these places being outside of Tau Ceti). So long as we don't have "John Chef mentioning that time when he built an improv flamethrower from his kitchen tools and equipment to fend off the invading lii'dra attacking the resdeck communal bathrooms" or "Jane Captain informing people they specifically were the ones that coordinated everybody to the resdeck vault because they are the ones who simply felt like promoting themselves with that vital position", these events can have lasting effects on even those who weren't directly involved in-round and that shouldn't change.