Space law and the new mentality of SEC

I am not a murder seccie pre-amble

I’ve been playing SEC for Roughly 159 hours now, as far as I’m aware, I’ve got some of the most rp out of the role not counting all the times I’ve been “Acting captain (HoS)” and sole commanding officer are from bickering discussing sentencing with lawyers, officers and the warden. Sitting in interrogations and hammering the coy mood out of traitors with evidence, witnesses and some minor pushing of buttons on a unlocked uplink one time to get the “hostile agent” charge across to a lawyer.*
And Twice now I’ve entered the infuriating dance wherein changelings have had the Decency to co-operate with Sec and actually submit to terms of incarceration and the second time a traitor was gunning to kill them the entire time. I’ve also released some folks with hostile agent and assault charges, much to the semi-exasperation of both officers and assault victims alike, all in accordance with space law

I’m stating this to say definitively, I’m not a blood thirsty perma-happy Seccie and am suggesting some changes to the handling and operation of SPESS LAW!

The two areas I have issue with are; 1 - The length of sentencing. 2 - Charge stacking in sentencing. 3. Serious repeat offenders

Starting with the length of sentences with charges, some of these are wildly shorter than their current according to the wiki while others can have minor counts can add slightly extra time en-lieu of fines.

Adjusted times rundown:

Infractions or 0XX - 30 seconds.
Minor crimes or 1XX - 1 Minute.
Medium crimes or 2XX - 2 Minutes.
Major crimes or 3XX - 5 Minutes

Capital crimes and Modifyers are unchanged in procedure.

While that sounds Very lenient this is where charge stacking comes into play.

Charge stacking:

Now currently Charge stacking says “default to the highest crime and disregard others” but that is boring as fuck and is considering the long sentences of current SPESS LAW. I will only advocate for charge stacking if the shortened sentences are what is being considered. but in the case of these drastically shortened lengths, the only people who get 10 minutes or more really fucked up in the eyes of DAS LAW

The results? well the greytider who got caught with insuls (contraband in their case) while tress-passing, only gets about 6 minutes, probably less if interrogations clear things up and he Co-operated in the arrest from a reduction to 2 minutes and confiscated insuls or just being put out the door cause he actually had permission and this was determined in interrogations

Meanwhile the Hostile agent who also Murdered, and committed theft gets a maximum 20 minutes while SEC and Command get to bicker discuss about the absolute ruckas this guy has caused and let the station crew cool their heads.

Moving on, We’ve all seen the “Repeat offender” modifier and at this point what that means is very much in the air, I’m alot more iffy about this myself but personally it’s lead to 3 major out comes:

The outcomes
  1. Mr murderous hostile agent gets 4 to 5 minutes for being very suspicious in his break and enter, along with the tools and insuls he very obviously used in the deed.

  2. The mime who decided to run around SEC with soap and pies for 2 minutes after being politely asked to leave FOR THE SECOND TIME! gets to stay another 2 minutes in a cell with his pie and soap taken away too, because he did this once already and the humor has worn off!

  3. THE CONTRACT. Hidden within the Bee station Wiki’s Paper markdown page is the rarely written or understood “ENEMY OF NANOTRASEN RETIREMENT CONTRACT”, The purposes of which are unclear but most obviously applicable to Hostile agents, Revolutionaries (not active in code as of writting!) Nukies, who will explode before they sign this, and Changelings, who will try something before they sign this assuming they honor it.
    Thusly while it says “Enemy of Nanotrasen” this is less of a Trial and more of the poor trouble making treacherous sod admitting to what they are with dignity and letting them choose between permanent residence in brig/gulag, being canned and packaged in a borg body and lastly just plain dying. This of course should signed AT LEAST in the presence of a lawyer, but having the HoP, Captain (or acting so long as it ISN’T THE HoS) or preferably 2 or all of them is better. it must be honored to the letter by SEC, this is of course an admission of guilt for a degree of forgiveness.

All that said, thanks for taking the time for reading and considering what I’ve said.

Maybe to you it is, but if sec locks me in a 2x3 room with absolutely nothing to do for any longer than 20 minutes and I will absolutely ghost.

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Getting rid of that is how you get people to ghost. Anything more than 15 minutes is a punishment to the player rather than their character. You have to consider that sometimes realistic roleplay is bad because it’s not fun.

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This is the scenario where you start pleading for lighter charges, and/or co-operate in the arrest, a good lawyer, officer, warden or HoS will recognize co-operation and lighten sentencing.
Meanwhile the stealthier and cleaner you are with tatoring means a lawyer can fanagle some considerable drops in charges. No weapons found in search? Boom dangerous contraband has to be dropped, unless there are more witnesses than arresting officers.
Mudered some one but no connection can be made to the murder? now Sec can’t charge that either.

Additionally, capping the time at 15 minutes before necessitating command deliberation would probably work well, perphaps anything over 30 minutes warrants a Captain or HoP signing off internment perma, with an issue of parole after the 30 Min?

@ValuedEmployee, this is a response to wrill but it’s applicable to your issue aswell.

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actually, if we can’t actually go over 15 minutes in Sentence why even allow the cell timers to any higher than that?

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Lawyers have no authority so it’s not like they can get charges dropped. Not even mentioning the average lawyer is there to act as extra security most rounds.

A good lawyer and warden will sit down in interogations with the evidence and suspect and RP out the sentencing if the lawyer is smart then they can convince the ward/hos to raise or lower charges based on observations,.

It hinged on security being good roleplayers(rarely happened). You could be the best roleplaying lawyer ever, and security would say something along the lines of “No, lol”. They had no real teeth, so even good roleplay would get you nowhere.

Quote from DatBoiTim on a previous thread talking about security, still relevant here. A whole whole lot of security thinks their entire existence is to make antags redtext and with that mind set they aren’t going to ever do half the things you want them to, even if the round pacing allowed it, which it doesn’t.

How is losing your gamer gear, likely your job, ~15% of your round, and possibly getting tracking implanted not a big enough loss as it is? You don’t need to increase the timer.

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At least Corg gives them tablets to play videogames on the regular cells, but yeah, at the very least when i’m with a player with a sentence of 15 minutes as a Warden or Det i try to talk with them and keep the busy so they don’t get bored to death(and to maybe obtain information, do some RP, etc), as JOYK1LLZ said there are a tons of things to consider than can lower a sentence, many players both on the antagonists and security side doesn’t seem to be aware of that and they tend to just tank the 15 minutes(antagonist not pleading or cooperating thus they just stand still) or just not reduce it (from the officer side, they’re unaware of modifiers that lower timer or just don’t want to)

For sentences longer than that a.k.a perma there’s a reason why so many servers do a little revamp of their prision perma area, so they provide extra stuff to do(For example our new lavaland gulag has some new stuff to mess around with) though if a Player is gonna do perma-ble crimes they should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions, if they manage to outrobust security and command, congrats they get away if they don’t they serve the time

Perma players usually:

  • Cryod because different reasons, no team-mates, cooperators, no hidden stuff to bounce back, bored, etc
  • Attempt parole after sitting for a while
  • Use the hologram messenger to talk with AI, Lawyer, etc
  • Break shit just to cause chaos and attempt to flee by out-robusting warden/whoever goes tocheck
  • Suicide on space on attempted space walk

I’m fine with the 15 minute sentence when it’s someone that has caused a ruckus, murdered people, etc mostly so sec can catch a break and situation gets to cooldown for both parties, i do agree some Warden/HoS/officers should try to get rid of the ‘‘oh? contraband? (that maybe didn’t even use) 15 minutes bye’’ mentality and try to apply modifiers according to the context.

I have no clue why lately we had like two-three reports and discussions regarding incident where people yelling ‘‘EOTC EOTC PERMA PERMA EXECUTION EXECUTION’’ My best guess is some players returning to sec/lawyer not aware of the space laws… Personally when i play i haven’t run into any issues, in fact i though finally security players were aware that Traitor =/= EOTC.

In any case, to answer to your ‘‘why timer goes to 20 minutes’’ probably never got fixed and it got left there in case of modifiers from a previous era.

Regarding Lawyers we have very few… robust lawyers, most of them sadly don’t try enough since they’re usually trashed and ignored by rude security players, i would’ve liked for CAA’s to be merged since they at least get a better position of power that security itself can’t ignore in regards of respecting SOP.

Final note is, since we have so many different type of players, you will always have a round with good/bad sec and good/bad antags, i don’t think the current space law timers needs to be changed, player mentality slowly changes depending on different factors, one of the most important one in this case is when HoS, Warden and some specific Officers do the best to improve RP and enforce RP, if you have a shitter HoS and Warden that kicks out lawyers out of brig and execute everyone the rest of the officers and crew eventually learn ‘‘that’s how it is’’ and replicate it if they became hos/warden/captain/officer or just add more coal to the burning fire of ‘‘shitsec’’

What we need to attempt to implement more is for modifiers so certain antags can bounce back if they play well (and there’s also the side of the antagonists that needs to take in consideration an early loss and plan correctly instead of going full ham, one single plan and if they get caught rip)

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I don’t understand your goal at all, maybe I’m misunderstanding something here.

You want to allow stacking of crimes, presumably so you can essentially perma people without needing them to have committed a capital crime, yet you also want people to cooperate and get back down to only like 3-5 more minutes than what we have?

Why even bother changing anything if the end result is the same?

I probably shouldn’t have hammered the ending details of this out at 9pm, but yeah you make a pretty good point about the whole 15% of the round and gamer gear thing, I’m just considering how both Perma is used so little and also consider that if wardens/hos have a means of more readily using it (see repeat offenders and THE CONTRACT) then maybe we’ll have less mouth frothing executioners. Also I think the Enemy of Nanotrasen Retirement contract is NEAT.

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