Time to improve security (wall of text)

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Topics on this forum like ‘Maxcapping security’ and ‘The Chill Sec Charter’ clearly show that there are some issues with how security operates. I have no doubt that we can never come up with a perfect system and even if we did we would still have complains but I believe that we can still improve since current state of sec is far from good and acceptable. I can bring up a lot of examples how I was personally mistreated even though I’m usually avoiding any conflicts. Things like being thrown into cell without being given any reason are not uncommon, same goes for being put in perma for being ever so slightly associated with antag behaviours. I can’t even count times I died in cell as plasmaman after having my possessions taken off me by someone incompetent (I am actually willing to bet this may be number one cause of plasmamen deaths). Prisoners come and go, they are brought by random officers who immediately leave brig without really consulting it with anyone so nobody knows for what reason someone was put in cell, complains of arrested people are ignored since there’s no one around who would be even able to verify their words when it comes to the reason of arrest and how the process went. This forum, discord and OOC in-game channel are full of such stories.

Before I start let me just apologize for my broken english, haven’t been using it for quite a while. Hope you’ll still manage to get through my wall of text.

So what do I propose?

Security officers

Security officers should lose cell permissions and be able only to access holding cell. Holding cell is just a temporary solution that is able to hold multiple detainees (however with multiple criminals in one room its easy to lose control so there’s in-game incentive to actually deal with them properly), from that point arrested people are Wardens problem, they should be processed and then moved to proper cells

Mapping changes could be made to accommodate it. I’m more than willing to map it if we would actually decide to go with proposed changes or something similar. This is just an example how it could look:

Before:

before
before1120×681 266 KB

After:

after
after1144×665 273 KB

Also, if someone’s worried about low pop hours we can use already existing mechanism of skeleton crew to actually give cell access to officers or preferably lawyers, which will be explained by my next point

Lawyers

One of the lawyers should be representing prisoners while the other one should be representing Security and Command. That should guarantee that prisoners would be able to actually talk to someone, voice their objections and explain their side of a story. Lawyer representing the prisoner would then discuss that with other lawyer, they would battle it out between themselves and then inform Warden or HoS about their decision which should be binding.

We could prepare fancy forms to make it all more formal, so Warden would receive official document signed by both lawyers that prisoner should be released or their sentence should be shortened.

Court should take place if lawyers can’t reach an agreement and one of the sides requests it.

That would make lawyers actually not useless, with changes made they would be no longer just RP role but have a vital role with sentencing criminals since they can have a say in any case and once agreement between both lawyers is reached it should be followed by Warden.

Detectives

Currently detectives are security officers with cooler clothes, they sure do act like that. Can’t even count how many times detective ignored or straight up refused to investigate things like cut cams, emagged airlocks to engie or bridge or even poison kits by openly saying they don’t care.

In my opinion detectives should lose brig access all together, they are already special by having a firearm and sec radio to be in the loop when it comes to informations about committed crimes and being in easy touch with officers once they get a breakthrough, I don’t think there’s need for anything more. Let them focus on building cases, collecting evidences, cataloguing them and doing all the ground work needed to get that saboteurs and murderers. Their good work would naturally affect lawyers which would have more to work on so there’s incentive to put some effort since quality of detectives work will be checked by others and if done properly would lead to antagonist getting arrested and sentenced, on the other hand poorly prepared case could lead to them getting released.

Trials

Currently trials are just completly made up by people involved, there’s really no official stand on how should they look.

We should actually make proper guidelines, that people are expected to follow.

For minor crimes I recommend there should be just lawyers representing each side and one other person serving as arbitrator. That way trials could be a smooth and fast process, not big event that takes time from multiple heads and is usually a perfect opportunity for some separated incidents to happen. We don’t want trials in most cases to be a big hassle, we don’t want people to get out of their way to actually organize them. It just 3 people, one of them sides with one of two if two can’t reach consensus. That’s all there is to it, so we can have multiple trials each round without slowing down sec department.

We could get heads or jury made of 3 or more crewmates involved in more serious crimes, Those trials could be more like spectacles that we’re used to.

Intercoms in courtroom should be set by default to frequency other than common channel, maybe we could actually get that channel a name and colour. That would both remove spam from common channel and make it easier to follow the trial for people actually interested in it. If needed we could also get that channel a server so it would be possible to check what was said.

Space law

I propose we get admins and people who main sec to sit down together and tweak space law so its actually useful for situations that happen in game. Please don’t tell me space law is good as it is, security officer guide on wiki, same wiki that is a source of space law, clearly states ‘You are generally recommended to not follow Space Law for minor and medium crimes’. If space law was actually working as it should there wouldn’t be that annotation.

I believe it would be wise to encourage gulag sentences. Its more impactful to make people actually work to pay off their crimes than just putting them completely out of a game for 3-5 minutes. People with time sentence just go AFK for few minutes and watch YT or something, they don’t feel the weight of the punishment and they are even more disconnected from round once they leave the cell so they are out of the loop about what’s going on and don’t feel that much empathy for other crewmembers. That mindset could only encourage someone to continue being a shitter.

Gulag could be revamped to accommodate more people, we could work out other physical punishments as well. For example I imagine it would be fairly simple to prepare a new location, one disposal outlet is ejecting crates or other objects and players have to pull them to chute on the other part of room/set of rooms. Simple, repetitive job with clear point system. We could probably figure out something better, that’s just off the top of my head.

Summary

In my vision of security Warden is the one giving all sentences, making them the first instance in stations judiciary system. Since all sentences are given by the same person, it would make them consistent at least within the round, contrary to what we have now-people arrested for same crime by two different officers get different sentence time. Since Warden is stuck in brig anyway, there’s bigger chance that they would listen to objections of detainees and adjust their crime and punishment instead of sticking to what the arresting officers initially said. Also with one person handling all sentences there’s no more of ‘What are you in for? Why was he arrested? Who arrested him? Guess I’ll leave him to rot in cell with extra long time since I’m not paid nor care enough to find out why that prisoner is actually in cell’.

Then we got lawyers, they would talk to people in cells, get their side of story and question warden and officers or other people involved, then they would argue it out with other lawyer representing Security and Command, they either both agree to change sentence, release prisoner or anything like that and present their decision to Warden or HoS and prisoners status should be changed according to it.

Or if they can’t reach agreement they decide to take it to court.

Trial is really just an arbitration. Lawers present their opinion on how the sentence should be changed. 3rd person (or in case of serious crimes Head or some kind of jury) is siding with one of them and prisoner is treated accordingly.

While my proposal is far from perfect I think its a move in right direction or at least a good starting point for discussion about changes. Not everything could be enforced by gameplay mechanics but at least tweaking sec officers access would force sentencing by just Warden, and that’s a big change in my opinion. Things like following the Chill Sec Charter would be actually possible.

Let’s discuss

Calling @Ruko and @Caecilius since you seem to be the most active admins in topics concerning security matters

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I already provided a space law rework to Crossedfall, Francium is working on another.

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I think we should only have trials for Perma or Capital Punishment, because for any other crime by the time the Trial starts and ends their sentence will have completed 2 or 3 times over.

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You are fundamentally advocating for a slower game. And while I personally am not against it, it is not something feasible.

Reality is that as the round goes on, security threats multiply EXPONENTIALLY. To the point where as a sec, between walking all over the place to reach where the incident is, there is another incident occurring on a different part of the station. It gets so bad that you barely have time to charge your stuff and replace spent equipment by the time you are needed somewhere else.

If you really want to improve security, what would be cool would be a DISPATCH system. Where the warden and HoS can assign people to their call. Normal crew and AI can call sec from a device, console, thing on the wall whatever. This adds the possibility of deceit as well, especially in the case of revolutions. To make it better we could reuse the nukie system for suits, but make it so it points to a call that you take/get assigned to.

Once that is in place, playing sec would be less of a constant rush as they could coordinate to a higher degree. (While also leaving a lot of space open to antags, with things such as signalers being used as bait or individuals wasting sec time.

If any coder wants this challenger, I can provide examples of an implementation in a different game.

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It’s almost like PDAs exist, and this is exactly how I call and communicate with Sec already.

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I’ll play devil’s advocate here, and address a few of your points:
Security Officers
You mention that a big problem with sec is people being dumped into cells and left without anyone really knowing why, since the officers just rush off as soon as possible. Holding cells would magnify this problem significantly. Instead of officers putting someone in a cell and at least setting a timer, or asking warden “what’s the time for this crime?”, you’re going to get people tossed in the holding cell without a word, and then Warden is going to have to sort it all out somehow. The holding cell has no way to keep track of how long someone has been in there, so by the time the warden can ask over comms why Breaks-the-Kneecaps is in holding and get a response from an officer, it’s quite possible Breaks-the-Kneecaps has already served their time. Time imprisoned will go up because now there’s an extra step of processing between being captured and being put into a cell to serve your sentence. Sec officers definitely have a problem with communicating (although sometimes justified when things get hectic), but I don’t think holding cells are the way to go.
An alternative fix: have the brig cell timers require an input for crimes in order to set the timer, so the warden can just click on the wall display to see why someone is in the cell. If we want to get fancy, we could link it up to the pre-existing security records system so you can update their record directly from the brig cell timer.

Lawyers
The idea of having a lawyer each represent the accused and security respectively sounds pretty good, but if you’re saying that each and every criminal requires a discussion by the lawyers before you can put them in the brig, this is also going to slow down processing drastically, and in some situations would be near-impossible. Lawyers can certainly talk to prisoners already, and go for reduced sentences/pardons if they can convince sec, and I think the court could be used more than it is, but making it near-mandatory in this way is too clunky and time-consuming.

Detectives
Detectives are near and dear to my heart, so when you say you can’t count how many times detectives have just said " I don’t care about investigating serious things", it hurts. I’ll just point everyone to rule 14 of Sage: “Non-antagonists are required to perform their assigned job in good faith. Breaks are fine, but ignoring your department and obligations is not. This goes especially true for Silicons, Heads of Staff, and Security…” If a detective is abandoning their duty and just not bothering to investigate anything, I say Ahelp or player report that. If they want to play supercop, then they should put sec officer to high priority, not detective.

Trials
Guidelines for trials would be nice, but I would keep an allowance for captain to do weird things like trial by combat, etc. Trials for minor crimes. This would be nice, but ultimately I think it would just be too unwieldy. only 3 people involved sounds nice, but it’s going to be 4 minimum, and one of those 4 is going to be a sec officer who is now unable to patrol during that time. You need your 2 lawyers and arbitrator, yes, but then also the arresting officer who actually knows what went on, and then the detective and/or reporting witness who led to the investigation or arrest in the first place. Take the number of minor crimes you see at any given time, and that’s a lot of sec officers sitting around in court instead of keeping an eye on their assigned department.
The new intercom channel is a great idea though, love that, and serious crimes could probably use some more trialing as well.
Space Law
Space law needs some love, absolutely. I think the “don’t follow space law for minor or medium crimes” is more directed towards LRP, but it absolutely happens on MRP as well. Laws should get a once over and maybe some clarification (and some tightening up of the number codes, why is a 104 possesion of drugs but a 204 isn’t distribution?? no logic to them).

Anyways, there’s my take on things.

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But what I am proposing is an entire dispatch system, not calling a specific sec member that may be dead/busy or sending out those “security needed at …”.

If you want a quick way to make the system better, all sec PDAs should receive a message and sound notification whenever a security alert triggers.

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How about the ability to message everyone within a specific department at once.

Being able to message all of Sec, Supply, Medbay, Science or Engineering at once would be a useful function in general. Would also make getting a PDA from a specific department very handy for traitors.

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Yeah, I support that, I believe it would help. Add a charge in space law for misuse of mass messaging that comes with a fine and repeated offences come with brig timers and we’re already on the way forward.

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mandating 2 lawyers probably wouldn’t work. Especially because usually if there’s 1 they’ve got no interest in the role and were actually probably overfilled into it so they can be a traitor.

I’d like them to be able to demand trials for executions on blue alert perhaps, but giving them teeth is a bit difficult so I dunno.

You could expand prisoner processing greatly, on other servers it practically often functions as the actual court with sec gathering in there, pouring out their bags onto the table and then discussing it. A lot of these other changes are very much long-term ideas once sage is actually being played by MRP players

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All sec should have mech suits with SRMs at round start, remove space law, all sec now become Judges who decide punishment on the spot. Being a clown is punishable by death. :3

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do you honestly think any secmain is going to listen to lawyer and prisoners

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At the moment, people are getting bwoinked for letting traitors go with tracking and chem implants, sec won’t improve unless the admin team stops micromanaging IC actions. Let’s say you found a traitor that has nothing other than an emag, what do you do?
I’d confiscate it, brainwash them if available (if it’s not, then convince them to give you the uplink code to buy said brainwashing disk, or keep them in perma untill it’s researched)
I’d then give them a new face and ID and demote them to janitor, the objects would be something like, you remember nothing but your undying loyalty to NT.

And while I’m at it, stop banning captains and heads for getting fuckin talked into doing things by traitors (insert captain ban appeal here), it was pure IC, QM convinced the captain to allow null crates. That’s what a traitor SHOULD do instead of going loud and killing people for no real reason

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Is that true? I’ve had the opposite, admins encouraging tracking and chem implants.

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I haven’t played in awhile, but it depends on the admin yeah, “antags are there to be killed and kill”

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@anon82996225

Did you post it somewhere or is it more of behind the closed doors proposal? I’m curious about space law changes at least to know what direction would others want to take with it

@Arbalezt

I was especially worried about slowing sec down, I had no intention of slowing sec officers by swamping them with additional work. From perspective of regular officer not much is changing, instead of putting detainee in cell, taking their clothes off and setting their timer they leave it all to warden who sits at brig anyway, they just verbally tell them what that person was arrested for and leave them in holding cell. Warden takes it over and officers are free too go.

The way I see it the only thing that sees a limitation is detective, since in practice security loses one of officers. Wardens responsibilities got reshaped and lawyers actually get a real purpose instead of being assistants with brig access.

I must say I like the idea of dispatch system, although I guess most calls would have to be manually entered by warden or HoS. There are just few consoles you mentioned (pretty sure its one per department and i’m not sure service related places got them). In most cases people can contact sec faster by just screaming on radio or sending message on pda.
Don’t know, maybe people could actually use pda to message ‘dispatching system’, warden/hos would either accept or reject them and only accepted calls would pop up for regular officers to limit spam. Then officers could be assigned by Warden/HoS or straight up accept it (maybe on their own pda with sec cartridge).
However I’m not sure exactly how much helpful it would be for security. It should in theory make communication more clear, it would be easier to follow what needs to be handled and if an officer disappears at least there’s a way to see where they were heading last time they were heard from.

Also we could have police radio classics like:
Officer Johnson: Johnson, show me going
Dispatcher: Johnson, I have you going

So I guess its worth doing just for that

@Ravencorp

Thanks for great feedback

Idea of holding cell was to make it actually impossible to hold people inside there for longer time. People would be put there while wearing whatever they had on them while arrested, they’d be cuffed and could be additionally buckled to chair. Warden could slightly increase time they have before arrested person in holding cell frees themselves by using wall mounted flash.
Each sec officer is able to bring one person, and how often more than one officers bring someone at the same time. Holding cell serves purpose only in that scenario, Warden is expected to immediately take prisoner over, lead them to single cell, take off their gear and set the timer.

I think I wasn’t clear enough in original post.
Lawyers input is not necessary at all to sentence anyone. Warden sentences people and their sentence holds until lawyers decide it has to be changed.
In most cases that’s it, Warden puts them in cell, timer is set, once its done counting prisoners are free to go. In special circumstances if lawyers feel like the sentence doesn’t serve law and justice they have initiative to overrule Warden and change their sentence (Please note that lawyers got the initiative, not prisoners. Prisoner can scream all day about injustice if lawyers feel like the sentence is right…or at least one of lawyers but then we would get to trial).

You said it yourself

Lawyers can certainly talk to prisoners already, and go for reduced sentences/pardons if they can convince sec

Wiki says the same

Lawyers, and by extension the Head of Personnel, exist to serve as a guiding hand and the voice of reason within the judicial process, however they have zero authority over the brig, security personnel, prisoners, or sentencing.

Currently what lawyers have to say is a mere suggestion, they only get involved if Captain, HoS or Warden actually find lawyering amusing for one reason or another.

What I propose and actually believe to be a better solution is putting both lawyers above Warden when it comes to sentencing people. Their decision would be actually binding and Warden would have to follow.

making it near-mandatory in this way is too clunky and time-consuming.

It is, and that’s how system would partially self regulate. Nobody wants to waste their time. Prisoners don’t really have much say in anything that goes but I’m sure they opinion would be considered when it comes to trials and no prisoner would want to waste few minutes on trial if they will leave brig in minute or two. Same goes for lawyers, they most likely don’t want to waste their time on situations like that, not to mention sec officers. There would probably be more annoying lawyers that will try to get system involved for the sake for it, but you can only do something x times before gimmick stops being funny. Pretty sure that once dust would settle after implementing my solution most people wouldn’t be interested in making trial for every second case, if anything it would be rare oddity like HoP expecting paperwork and it such doze it would actually have its charm and made round unique.

I had same objections when it comes to trials as you do but I think they are not valid.

First of all, trails in most cases are only necessary so lawyers can’t just veto each other (and because of time constrains I think most of them won’t veto just in spite of the other).

Second, this is not real life after all, evidence is still quite arbitrary, I don’t think it would be necessary for arresting officers to be involved into each trial. If lawyers don’t see a need for their testimony they wouldn’t be asked for it, there’s also an option of written testimony or recording a tape with their description of events. If they would really be required to say few words but would be busy elsewhere that’s again where my idea of separated channel comes in-they could just tune to trial channel, say what they have to say and sign off.

Officers would be probably expected to get involved only during bigger crimes with one of Head/set of jury judging over capital (and maybe major crime). But that’s really not different from what we got currently, bigger trials still happen every now and then and half of sec department gets involved each time, some to testify, others to secure the event.

@Froststahr

Maybe my perception is wrong but I don’t think its uncommon to have 2 lawyers. If there’s only one present they would be having a discussion straight with Warden, Warden would kinda slide into role of 2nd lawyer, similarly to mentioned proposal of having lawyer taking over role of Warden if there isn’t any.

Also when talking about how popular lawyer role is keep in mind that we are talking about different position. Currently lawyer is straight up doing nothing, as I already wrote in this post (and brought up a quote from wiki confirming that) lawyer is around only to suggest things and those suggestions may be freely ignored. It goes as far as this:

Security personnel are under no requirement to listen to them and security channel abuse is to result in that privilege being revoked.

If the lawyer continuously acts as a disruptive influence Security are fully permitted to confiscate their access, remove them from the brig and bar their future access to it.

That’s quite different from role of someone who’s above Warden in judiciary system and can override their sentences.

A lot of these other changes are very much long-term ideas once sage is actually being played by MRP players

But that won’t magically happen on its own, if we don’t accommodate more RP approach both by in game mechanics and guidelines (whichever you want, wiki guides, council rullings) people will never change their approach…or what’s worse we will simply fail to change our perception on how people want to behave cause it may be just a perception after all-people simply act according to what they are given, if we’ll facilitate different behaviour they may happily go with it.

I’m not saying we should force people straight to my ideas.Quite the contrary, I want this to be a discussion so we could work out details, once we got them we may implement them and still observe and adjust, if something goes straight against nature of our players its not a big deal to change things back to how they were, if something partially works we could solve its issues and by the end of process come with something better than we initially had.

That’s the only way to go forward, people won’t behave differently if they are not exposed to different scenarios, we can only come up with new variables and see what sticks and what doesn’t

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