Adding Patrol Sergeants to Security

[Jarl_Elbow]

After a while of discussing things in the NT-ISD Discord with a few people, a lot of us believe a new job in the security department titled something along the lines of "Security Sergeant", "Senior Officer", or "Security Supervisor" could be quite beneficial for most people on the server and should be added.

Starting off here, there are pretty much only two jobs that have any authority over security officers onboard the station, which are the HoS and The Warden, the latter of course only having any sort of authority within the brig itself. So, the HoS is often left completely alone when it comes to keeping an eye on all of the officers, who could be present all over the station. With most departments, this is not really an issue, as their staff is only stationed within the department area itself. However, in Security, it is quite difficult to supervise officers who could be anywhere on the station at once. This lack of supervision often leads to officers either abusing their powers or being left without any sort of guidance within their department from others. Many of the more experienced Security players have often expressed the want to play as a higher-ranking officer, yet still, wish to conduct patrols around the station and keep most of their regular duties.

Adding in the suggested job would most likely alleviate quite a bit of the burden of these issues. The job itself would act mostly the same as regular Security Officers, with nearly identical gear being given to the player at the beginning of the round. There could be a slightly different uniform for people to differentiate regular officers from their supervisors. The job would pretty much act as Senior Security Officers for the players who have had more time in Security than anyone else, and would become unlocked after an even longer period of time than it takes for a new player to be able to access regular officer. These players would answer directly to the HoS and report to them on the actions of other officers, as they are able to patrol like a regular officer would, sometimes offering up their experience to new officers and cadets alike to prevent other players from not knowing what they are doing. Overall, the job itself would add an immense amount of organization to a department which can often become chaotic due to the lack of supervision officers receive during their shifts and would make rounds much more fun for both security and non-security players alike.

Of course, many may bring up the complaint that it could add to the already bloated list of jobs within security. There are a couple of solutions which would be able to fix this. The job itself would only have one or two slots and would either take up its own job slot or act as a sub-job of the Warden or regular officer. Many members of security have already suggested using one of these solutions to implement the job, and think it could be a valuable asset to the security department.

In conclusion, I believe that adding a Supervisor sort of job to the security department would not only add some much needed organization to the department as a whole, but would improve the RP throughout the entire server, and reduce the risk of officers either being inexperienced in their jobs, or downright abusing their powers without any sort of punishment being handed out to them. Not convinced yet? Many players, specifically ones in Security have already stated this suggestion would be amazing to see implemented. I am of course able to take criticism or other suggestions to improve my current idea, and I hope to recieve some feedback on this. Thank you!

[Chada1]

Well, i'm here. I have concerns about this. I'll start with the first. This would make Security way more organised, that's true, but it would also streamline the department maybe a tad too much, and this removes some of the skill in being a communicative Officer or a good HoS when you already have a solid chain of command delegated.

More or less, i'm saying, the factor of being able to stay organised and communicate well to your peers is a quality of good Security and Command play. You are making this an inescapable factor by adding a Seniority role.

That could prove to be strangulating for the typical opponents of Security which would have to deal with an automatically much more organised and cooperative team which already numbers more than 6 characters that wouldn't have to even try to be so, just by following the already existing and well-established chain of command. I think Security should have to work for this level of organisation, not have it handed to them on a round-by-round basis.

In these Chaotic situations where Security has allowed their chain of command to fall apart, Heads could be calling an ERT. You shouldn't be making changes to a department to account for the players incompetency.

I don't agree with this change, but if it were done, I think it would be really cool if the 'Seniority' role were locked behind X number of rounds in Security. Somewhere around 10-30.

[Zundy]

Is this not what a security officer level 2 is? Why not just flavor text yourself with sec officer level 2 and label your uniform thus?

[Skull132]

As a side note. If added, this job would be added in stead of one of the existent ones (most likely a security officer spot would be lowered). The amount of folks in sec, otherwise, would be too overwhelming.

[Munks]

The only people this would benefit are those who get a kick out of authority but are too incompetent for a Head whitelist. If it's a timed unlock, then it'd just be the same situation we're in now except now bad players would arbitrarily have authority over other officers, and if its a whitelist thing then we could do a lot more good by just making cadetship itself mandatory for new Security characters

[Skull132]

I'm going to provide an actual longpost here as well, because it concerns topics that I have an innate interest in.

 

Starting off here, there are pretty much only two jobs that have any authority over security officers onboard the station, which are the HoS and The Warden, the latter of course only having any sort of authority within the brig itself. So, the HoS is often left completely alone when it comes to keeping an eye on all of the officers, who could be present all over the station. With most departments, this is not really an issue, as their staff is only stationed within the department area itself. However, in Security, it is quite difficult to supervise officers who could be anywhere on the station at once. This lack of supervision often leads to officers either abusing their powers or being left without any sort of guidance within their department from others. Many of the more experienced Security players have often expressed the want to play as a higher-ranking officer, yet still, wish to conduct patrols around the station and keep most of their regular duties.

 

Issues presented:

• Security staff are deployed throughout the station, and there exists no way for the HoS to be present on all sites.
• From this stems a lack of oversight and correction as proves necessary.

 

 

Adding in the suggested job would most likely alleviate quite a bit of the burden of these issues. The job itself would act mostly the same as regular Security Officers, with nearly identical gear being given to the player at the beginning of the round. There could be a slightly different uniform for people to differentiate regular officers from their supervisors. The job would pretty much act as Senior Security Officers for the players who have had more time in Security than anyone else, and would become unlocked after an even longer period of time than it takes for a new player to be able to access regular officer. These players would answer directly to the HoS and report to them on the actions of other officers, as they are able to patrol like a regular officer would, sometimes offering up their experience to new officers and cadets alike to prevent other players from not knowing what they are doing. Overall, the job itself would add an immense amount of organization to a department which can often become chaotic due to the lack of supervision officers receive during their shifts and would make rounds much more fun for both security and non-security players alike.

 

(I skipped the next paragraph because it had fluff in it.)

 

In conclusion, I believe that adding a Supervisor sort of job to the security department would not only add some much needed organization to the department as a whole, but would improve the RP throughout the entire server, and reduce the risk of officers either being inexperienced in their jobs, or downright abusing their powers without any sort of punishment being handed out to them. Not convinced yet? Many players, specifically ones in Security have already stated this suggestion would be amazing to see implemented. I am of course able to take criticism or other suggestions to improve my current idea, and I hope to recieve some feedback on this. Thank you!

 

Solution presented:

Add 1 - 2 senior officer roles to oversee patrols and report directly to the HoS. They would also be expected to assist and train new officers.

This would in turn:

• Reduce the amount of unreported incidents of bad conduct from security officers. Specifically ones that that stem from the fact that HoS is not with the officers patrolling.
• Increase organizational capabilities of the department, probably by having someone directly manage officers so that the HoS doesn't have to worry about them.

 

Well okay. There's a bit of truth here but also some issues.

First, a bit of leadership theory. It is correct that the HoS position is a bit too straining as far as textbooks are concerned. The optimal amount of people a leader should be directly in charge of is somewhere around 4 - 5. The HoS has 4 officers, 2 detectives, 2 plebs, 1 warden. Which neatly exceeds that limit. So, according to the textbooks, it would be preferred if there was someone else in charge of, say the officers and plebs, someone subordinate to the HoS. Probably from this stems the issue of some HoS feeling like there's a bit too much on their plate. The solution would ideally require a managerial and oversight role.

However, the presented solution is that of officer+. Someone who goes on patrol, while somehow being able to solve the presented issue? That's not exactly how it'd pan out. It might help a little on the patrol side of things, if you run strict buddy teams of senior-junior, whereby you'd be able to trust the senior to make the good call. But the HoS would still be in charge of organizing patrols, officers otherwise, the brig, investigations, and threat management. There would still be no filter between the HoS and the rabble of patrol officers.

There's also the issue that everything proposed could be executed by simply establishing common protocol between the HoS-s and security members. If the ISD community is organized enough to put together this draft, then they should be organized enough to establish common protocol which would basically implemented this role. By simply, each round, establishing a simple chain of command verbally and dispatching patrols in pairs. That's really all this suggestion is providing. They could also work on their PR a little, if the issue of unreported abuse of position is an issue.

With that said. What would be an actual issue would be a "Dispatch Officer" type of role. You need a coordinator who send officers to where the HoS wants them to be and makes sure all of the small details of a security operation are covered, while the HoS worries about the larger details.

[Scheveningen]

Nothing I love more than the consistent repeat suggestions we get asking for new roles people will compete viciously for and not actually have a broad understanding of what the role is intended for, but would rather hold what power they think the role has simply for the bragging rights of saying, "We are the elite!" -- and only proving what a ponce they'll be in that role.

Adding auxiliary support functions to departments are neat but not when they include a shred of higher authority than the other more standardized jobs yet not being above their head of staff. This creates more problems pertaining to adding useless middleman figureheads to fix issues solely pertaining to a lack of proper leadership and team management and not an issue of being stretched thin.

The buddy system is a tried and true system that works, it's been the security meta for goodness knows how long because no other strategy really works to such effectiveness as the buddy system. For as long as the pair is alive, they keep themselves accountable (I.e., they will report on one another if the other fucks up catastrophically, or they'll keep absolutely subtle about their security corruption because they cannot possibly get away with an accusation that both officers abused someone. Additionally, if one tries to kill the other and succeeds, the murderer is rather cut and dry) and more importantly they try to keep themselves and each other alive, assuming neither is a bad guy. Without one the other is weak alone, but together they are quite strong, especially considering the amount of pressure it creates for any single individual that dares attempt to take on two officers alone.

There's no need to add a dispatch role. Priority of response and who gets to response simply operates on a "Dibs'd it" principle. A duo must dibs the case first, if they don't get it first, then they don't go and they remain on stand-by to handle a secondary issue in the event it happens, or to backup the primary responding team if necessary. This prevents the entire security force showing up at once to deal with a bald janitor stealing ice cream from the kitchen robot.

There is no need to add more admittedly useless bureaucracy to the already barely functioning system, even if it's intended to create more order. The system is, to its merit, simple enough that it is difficult to properly break without taking a mighty sledge to the issue by way of removing the officers through brute force. Making simple systems more complex may add additional depth to them, but depth causes an array of unforeseeable minor issues that may pile up and cause more chaos rather than bringing order to the original problem. Reasoning explained in a couple questions;

1. Well, what if the Patrol Sarge is an idiot?

2. Well, what if the Patrol Sarge isn't where he needs to be?

3. Well, what if the Patrol Sarge isn't communicating on point in an emergency?

4. Well, what direction am I supposed to be taking if the person designated to dispatch me just stopped existing?

In which, people defending this will respond with, "Officers clearly need to grow a brain, a pair of nuts and learn to think on the spot, be more independent and proactive with decision-making."

And in which case we're back to square one because apparently that's a different intention from what this thread is suggesting. Community member wants more officer babysitters, despite individuals who already encompass that responsibility in a very simplified and gauche way, happen to already exist on-station.

From my experience, these microissues either make or break a security team. Either they're worked on and made into non-issues, or the microcosms pile up and create a much larger picture of chaotic team structure.

So, do we need another job that may only exacerbate this issue rather than try to fix it? Issue being; "Officers need more oversight and the HOS can't be everywhere to deal with it and also objectively dole out fair justice, because of the burden of proof."

No, definitely not. Communication must be facilitated by the responsible parties. If they want their teams to function, they need to set boundaries, expectations and systematically engineer their own cogs of a well-oiled security machine themselves and enforce their team members to go along with it without incurring mutiny. If this doesn't happen under a HOS it means they're doing a fuck-up job of team management. And it will show and globally broadcast to the entire crew when it does.

[Scheveningen]

Also, Senior Department Member roles are a joke. Nothing screams 'power player' like those job titles and I'm somewhat glad I've not seen that trend anymore ICly. I've no idea what the NT-ISD secret elite club comes up with in addition to that but that being one of the things discussed in that discord tops one of my many things that I dislike about the numerous server-related secret clubs. Ability must come before mediocrity and nepotism. You either know your place or you don't.

[Skull132]

I must point one thing out.

 

server-related secret clubs

 

The server is linked in the Aurorastation public discord and promoted both via LOOC and general chatter on the main discord. It is by no means secret. It is your choice not to get involved there.

But that's enough of that.

[Scheveningen]

Whatever. It masquerades as inclusive but promotes ideas of exclusivity. It's elitist through and through.

[DatBerry]

Not really a fan of this idea, the warden was made equal to officers because as munks said, people incompetent enough to get whitelisted used it to swing their powerboner around incompetently. If we need such a role added the warden can do it, they have nothing to do most of the time and you won't have to worry about them running off.

 

Whatever. It masquerades as inclusive but promotes ideas of exclusivity. It's elitist through and through.

 

I mean, it's made to teach clueless new cadets/sec players but I guess you're out of touch with the server now

[Scheveningen]

I mean, it's made to teach clueless new cadets/sec players

 

Sure wish to know how discussions relating to giving security more inherent power and shiny new occupations for nothing other than principle somehow benefits new players. I'm sure they all work very hard coming up with new ideas to promote more newbie outreach. But I guess I'm too out of touch to be reasonable in saying that people aren't going the right direction with security play when they make suggestions like these huh?

[Zundy]

If the ISD community is organized enough to put together this draft, then they should be organized enough to establish common protocol which would basically implemented this role. By simply, each round, establishing a simple chain of command verbally and dispatching patrols in pairs. That's really all this suggestion is providing. They could also work on their PR a little, if the issue of unreported abuse of position is an issue.

 

Skull hit the nail on the head. I'd suggest the HoS at the beginning of the round assigns a number of Level Two Sec Officers as """"senior members of staff""". You guys at the ISD can iron out the procedure and present it to CCIA via forums for their approval and community critique. It could then be made standardised on server if it's approved.

The only issue I can see with this is cronyism but who cares.

Thoughts on this?

[Scheveningen]

You don't need senior officers to make a communicative team work, tho. Your senior members of staff is anyone who isn't a pleb-cadet. Officer-cadet, officer-cadet and officer-officer is the ideal pairup for teams. That's four officers and two cadets with all of them partnered up.

[Kaed]

I generally have to agree with Scheveningen on this. Wow that felt weird.

Namely, the bit about buddy systems being much more effective than any seniority role would be, especially since people are prats and enjoy using authority as a baton or merit badge rather than for why it's there.

However, I should point out that 'the buddy system' of officers has some fundamental flaws. The flaws are less in the concept of officer buddies and more in the medium and playerbase. Here are a few

-The buddy system inherently assumes there is an even number of players or someone is left without a buddy

-The buddy system effectively makes every two officers/cadets a unit for the purpose of 'presence'. This means that, functionally, you are halving the area your department can cover for influence in vision, discovery, and capture of threats. In a much bigger, multilevel station, this can be a problem in certain situations,

-The buddy system requires people to adhere to it for it to matter. I have frequently assigned partners at round start, and found out, half an hour in, that they walked off in different directions about 30 seconds after leaving my line of sight. A number of players hate being assigned a partner, for various reasons. I've heard everything from 'my character is a lone wolf' to 'it's code green who cares', to purely OOC reasons like 'I would like to give antags more of a chance to do something by not double teaming them' and 'I hate HoS players who try to force me to work with people I don't want to (so I'm going to passive aggressively rebel even though IC I have no reason to)'

It's honestly the last bit that causes me the most trouble in my experience as a HoS. However, I don't really have a solution for it. I can tell you that senior/patrol officers is not the solution.

The security department exists because antagonists exist. It doesn't matter how many layers of 'high roleplay' a server tries to put over conduct and job responsibility - it's why they're there. They're the anti-antag department. A lot of people join with that mentality, and it often makes then really bad security officers. They have tunnel vision on finding and getting the bad guys, and forget to do the whole 'part of a station crew' thing. You can't fix that with new positions. You can't fix that with a buddy system. The best you can do is try to educate people on how not to be validhunter prats and hope they can disconnect themselves enough from 'just a game lol' mentality to not be horrible to play with, or that they end up getting a sec ban.

[Azande]

Whatever. It masquerades as inclusive but promotes ideas of exclusivity. It's elitist through and through.

 

No, its quite inclusive. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Now onto this thread - why not add a second Head of Security?

[Scheveningen]

The buddy system is ideal for code green situations. Generally speaking you only need one officer to deal with a single situation but it is 2x safer of a bet to send just two for one, and even on such a large station as the new Aurora, rarely does more than 2-3 violent situations ever break out.

 

-The buddy system inherently assumes there is an even number of players or someone is left without a buddy

 

I put anyone left over on desk duty whether they like it or not. Better sitting at the brig desk than out on their own without a shred of accountability.

 

-The buddy system effectively makes every two officers/cadets a unit for the purpose of 'presence'. This means that, functionally, you are halving the area your department can cover for influence in vision, discovery, and capture of threats. In a much bigger, multilevel station, this can be a problem in certain situations,

 

You rarely need vision so much until you confirm there are antagonists on the station. Tactics change based on the situation but the buddy system is pretty safe for usage on code green and blue.

 

-The buddy system requires people to adhere to it for it to matter. I have frequently assigned partners at round start, and found out, half an hour in, that they walked off in different directions about 30 seconds after leaving my line of sight. A number of players hate being assigned a partner, for various reasons. I've heard everything from 'my character is a lone wolf' to 'it's code green who cares', to purely OOC reasons like 'I would like to give antags more of a chance to do something by not double teaming them' and 'I hate HoS players who try to force me to work with people I don't want to (so I'm going to passive aggressively rebel even though IC I have no reason to)'

 

That's their choice and my HoSes will punish them for disobeying orders and abandoning their posts accordingly. Disobeying reasonable orders is almost as bad as being a traitor! If they don't want to play along with the rest of us then maybe they don't deserve to do what they want, either.

The buddy system naturally wasn't designed to be flawless, smart traitors will completely avoid unnecessary conflict and I personally chalk up a 1v2 as completely unnecessary and bad odds to play with. The buddy system is intended to keep officers safe primarily from themselves before antagonists really have a chance to be included in the equation.

I'm sure being double-teamed is a sour experience for everyone but I had to contend with stun talisman cheesers and a wide range assortment of other stun fishing tactics antagonists choose to use to take me out of the round "just cuz antag lul." You don't play most antag types to have the numbers advantage anyway.

[Scheveningen]

Whatever. It masquerades as inclusive but promotes ideas of exclusivity. It's elitist through and through.

 

No, its quite inclusive. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Now onto this thread - why not add a second Head of Security?

 

Boy how else do we make this suggestion thread even worse. Need I go on about how the very idea of it will undermine chain of command and line leading further, and create more drama to the security job that nobody wants?

If you've ever worked at a job where there are multiple shift managers and two of them are working the same shift, you'll know exactly how awful it is to have to work with two heads that manage the same thing but aren't on the same page on what they want their subordinates to be doing.

More unnecessary confusion, making a very simple situation more complex than it needs to be, and otherwise not a productive line of thinking.

If you want to make security's job easier, dumb down some of the restrictions without doing too much takeaway from original mechanics if necessary. Focus on making less mean more rather than trying to make adding more things will make security suffer less stress to playing the job that they can't be set up for failure, but will inevitably do so anyway because you piled on too much.

[alexpkeaton]

Now onto this thread - why not add a second Head of Security?

 

Would Eleanor Shen want to deal with being the arbiter of two HoS's in conflict with one another, giving conflicting orders?

It just wouldn't work. The idea of a sergeant is not a terrible idea, however short of a whitelist and some pretty defined boundaries, it will end up terrible. And having a whitelist for a sergeant is like having a whitelist for Warden... or Quartermaster...

[AmoryBlaine]

Also, Senior Department Member roles are a joke. Nothing screams 'power player' like those job titles and I'm somewhat glad I've not seen that trend anymore ICly. I've no idea what the NT-ISD secret elite club comes up with in addition to that but that being one of the things discussed in that discord tops one of my many things that I dislike about the numerous server-related secret clubs. Ability must come before mediocrity and nepotism. You either know your place or you don't.

 

1. It's a not a secret club. Go join it if you want to.

2. This guy is not endorsed by the NT-ISD, why he would try to suggest that with his opening, having said, "After a while of discussing things in the NT-ISD Discord with a few people, a lot of us...", confuses me.

Overall, this is un-needed as the four Officers we have- FOUR, not a big number- are expected to work autonomously without the direct supervision of a superior. If there are Officers failing in this aspect they can be reported to CCIA in reports, ahelped or have complaints written against them. This only has application if the team were to GROW in size, not shrink. So unless for some strange reason they decide to bump the Officer numbers to six, rather than four, I don't see this being a good idea.

[NoahKirchner]

-1, allow the HoS and HoP to work together if they'd like a seniority role, but as it stands, it's just turning security officer into cadet 2.0.

[MO_oNyMan]

The problem here is the fact that security management roles have too much shit on their plates to deal with and are easily overwhelmed. Managing ISD icludes more than several activities:

1) Supervising and managing 4 officers and 2 cadets (HoS)

2) Communication with the rest of the chain of command (HoS)

3) Processing convicts (warden)

4) Managing convicts (warden)

5) Writing up warrants (HoS and warden)

6) Reviewing cases (HoS)

7) Managing armoury (HoS and warden)

8) Dealing with internal conflicts (HoS)

9) Updating security records (warden)

10) Talking to people that come directly to security with whatever they want

It might not seem like much but when 2+ duties stack up on you, it all goes downhill very fast.

What was discussed a couple of times is adding a managing role that would take some of the responsibilities from HoS and warden to ease their life just a notch. Now i don't think that sergeant that would have authority over officer is the way to adress the problem but an additional helper is definitely needed and i don't really care how it's going to be called.

Dispatcher (that would take over managing officer and helping them with communication and updating records)

Brig assistant/correctional officer (that would take over processing and managing convicts, updating records and talking to people at the lobby)

Sergeant (that would take over the armoury and reviewing cases)

To clarify, none of these roles would be having authority over their collegues.

In conclusion i would agree with Armory about the fact that we would have to increase the number of officer to implement something like staff sergeant (who would review cases and be actually supervising officers in the field), but that would require the server population increasing a bit