flash stuntime wasn’t changed, cuff time was
HoS and Warden both have safety and free time to teach new bees how to officer
Not sure about HoS to be honest. On Sage, things usually get bad and I’m not sure HoS should be teaching instead of helping security detain or destroy active station threats. On Acacia, it’s rare to see a single head at all, so HoS usually ends up pulling quadruple duty as HoS, keeping track of the disk and sometimes doing command tasks such as HoPline, checking on the Vault, helping explo with the nukes and blackboxes and such.
Warden is literally the only security officer who is (usually) to avoid direct combat themselves, doesn’t need to patrol and can accomplish all of their duties by remaining in the brig.
Most of it to me is just incompetence, it’s the reason why when I play sec I almost purely play as the warden. Half the time people in a cell or perma haven’t been completely checked and the same people breaking into places where they aren’t suppose to still have their tools on them (assistants don’t need insl gloves to assist departments, especially if they already know the wires) or sometimes don’t even remove high value items that have been stolen out of packs. The amount of times people just didn’t take the hypospray or even weapons out of my pack after being released is stupid, literally if I see those items they are going into secure evidence first thing.
People are just lazy or don’t think, we just need more wardens and HOS’s that remind people to check boots, jackets, and hats for items and for the love of god don’t open a random pizza box in someones bag
This actually happened not so long ago. An antag gave a newbee Assistant insulated gloves, so the assistant could tide into HoP’s office and murder Ian. Said assistant then got lynch-chased across the station, causing general chaos which the antag exploited.
When the HoP eventually caught up with them, the assistant was put in their cell as is … WITH THE TOOLBELT AND INSULATED GLOVES. Which they immediately proceeded to deconstruct the cell with, bail and resume tiding for yet another hour, nearly killing an engineer which was conscripted by HoP to help them. (Which, in the end, the Assistant actually DID do, dragging the engineer into an escape pod while sawing them to death)
For a moment, Acacia became golden again. The very confused, but happy antag proceeded to greentext and half the station looked like a derelict by the time the shift was over.
(Though, admittedly, it was the HoP doing the arrest, not a security member, since there was no sec at the time. So I can’t really blame them)
Another one was a detective learning a more traditional job and trying their hand at manipulating a prisoner in their cell … Which resulted in the prisoner shoving them down, grabbing their gun and attempting to cuff them. Luckily I flashed them into submission as I had a hunch something like this would happen.
Many newbees also make the mistake of not securing their weapons properly. There’s no reason to hold your weapon in your hands unless you’re quite literally in combat, right that moment. It’s basically begging to get slipped/shoved and your weapon taken away.
I was literally caught breaking into CMO’s office, stealing the hypospray and a few other medical items. After my jail sentence I got my things back and all the items I stole was still in the bag. I didn’t get a greentext though because of a botched murder attempt but I just kind of look inside the bag like, “Seriously?”. That and people will argue “Hey I paid for those gloves and tools with my own credits”, but you still broke into CE’s office to try to steal things so guess you’ll have to save up again. Insul gloves really are only required 24/7 if you’re an engineer and working with power wires, don’t even fucking need em to find wires for doors. Just buy greybull or get some from the bartender.
Though I feel like sec will forever be incompetent until we require a quiz to be allowed to play sec. Just something that goes through space law and scenarios, just to weed out the total dumbasses and have them at least read some of the wiki.
I’m not sure even that will help, to be honest. Too many people just don’t give a damn about the actual SoP or Space Law.
As with JGatling mentioned above, the player spent more time meta-grudging for something that isn’t against SOP or Space Law, than actually investigating and responding to potential crime.
It’s not that they don’t know SOP, or Space Law. It’s just that they do not care and play security to have a power-trip, and then write falsified report tickets when anybody dares suggest that their power isn’t absolute.
It goes both ways too, and not just security, command as well. When you get a HoP pretty much demanding a suspect be borged (something that, according to space law, can only be decided by the Captain, and only in the most egregious cases) for assault with a deadly weapon, just because they want a borg, you can tell it has nothing to do with SOP or Space Law.
In such cases … I’m not even sure the problem can be completely fixed without upping RP standards to HRP and then enforcing that. And you can imagine what that will do with the playerbase, when we already get people who still play like it’s Golden.
Yeah, that makes sense. I wouldn’t want to fight that.
You’d have play to winners not play to Roleplay and there are still plenty of sec veterans who play
I’d be down for forcing new Security Officers/Detectives to play a newbie sec role first and make them learn how to do brig procedure properly. There might be a problem if there isn’t a Warden on however, or if the Warden doesn’t want to or can’t teach basic security gameplay.
Also, the Deputy role is kinda confused on what it’s meant to be. Over on Fulpstation, it’s basically just a Security Officer but without a gun, flashbang protection, or armor. There’s something about them being supposed to stick to their assigned department, but there’s no flavor text telling people that so most of the time they just act as a normal secoff.
They can also be antags for some reason, or at least they could while I still played Fulp.
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Sticking to one department as a secoff should only ever be done if its medical, screw the other departments, cargo does not need a 24/7 sec presence anymore ever since gun cargo was removed.
Based take, imo engineering is the most influencial department if taken over by an antag, second comes science with their toxins and maxcap.
To be quite honest, I still think cargo needs a security presence. Not due to cargo itself, but rather mining. I just came out of a round where a traitor miner, fully kitted in Lava artefacts, simply walked into the station and then proceeded to murder half of it with Hiero-staff and PKC, all the meanwhile snacking on cores.
Not only was I unable to stop them before they killed their targets, but the only reason I even survived was stacked nano-machines which up-armored me and basically made me nearly immortal due to absurd amounts of regen. And even then, I nearly got killed twice before I managed to catch up and shove-disarm the perp.
They weren’t even all that robust in PVP, through their own admission. Yet they successfully took out at least 3 people, all of them coordinating to try and take the traitor miner down.
Medical is just as important, because of Chemistry godlikeness, but it’s still somewhat easier to always keep an eye on the chemist, granted they can fuck off to maints and either ghetto or build their own station.
Science has maxcap, but I rarely actually see that used by traitors. To be honest, most maxcap I see on the servers are people griefing. Nanomachines is what worries me more, as it’s not all that complicated to sync a strain for yourself, empowering the traitor, all the while keeping the rest of the station synced with a different strain which the traitor can then alter just as they’re ready to attack. End result is a near godlike supersoldier, fighting a bunch of weakened crewmen. Curbstomp.
Engineering seems a little less important to me, for the same reason science maxcaps are. I just don’t see the more experienced traitors use Atmos to wreack havok. Partially because anti-murderbone rules, and partially because the more experienced players seem to prefer stealth and blowing up half the station is the opposite of that.
Killing SM and tcomms gives a good advantage, but can be easily countered by a careful HoS/Warden who instructs the security team to carry station bounceds in their emergency kits.
Another important department that I didn’t see mentioned here is Botany. And while it’s true that botanist end-game is much more of a hassle with the balance adjustments, the Botanist still has near-Chemist like overwhelming power.
But that’s getting into too much details. I can’t expect newbees to understand how to fight a chemist, to know the possible patterns for a hiero staff or to anticipate a bluespace tomato in the face.
I can expect newbees to summon beepsky to compensate for their lack of robustness when they go into a situation they don’t know. I can expect them to keep a station bounced radio with them and coordinate with the rest of the team when tcomms go down. I can expect them to actually call out contacts and request reinforcements. A lot of times, two unrobust players can hold their own and even win against an experienced player in sheer numbers, and the element of surprise.
In fact, I’d say that a lot of things that apply to antags, also apply to sec. Here are a few relatively simple pointers, from the top of my head:
- Don’t jump someone you know will fight back when they expect it.
- Don’t jump someone you know is good in a fight on your own.
- Don’t jump into a fight you’re not sure you can win. If the antag gets away and you get to live, you get to regroup and fight. If you get gibbed and debrained, the security team just lost an asset, even if the only thing you can do is draw fire from the antag.
- Use the environment. You don’t HAVE to risk yourself and jump the antag with a baton. Let beepsky at 'em.
- COMMUNICATE for fuck’s sake. Tell your team you’re going into the decomissioned office BEFORE you do, so that you’re not struggling to type it out as you’re dieing and the antag is gutting you.
- Request equipment from the Warden and HoS. I make it a point to distribute sawn off shotguns with rubber shells when we have a confirmed armed antag, but some of the more aloof wardens won’t think about it if you don’t ask.
- Interact with the AI. They watch everything, for a reason.
- Routinely verify high-security areas. Ask the AI to check it’s upload, vault and core every so often. Stop by head offices to take a look at the lockers.
- On Red alert or higher, use smartmines. Nothing quite beats the feeling of hearing a “ZZZAAAPP!” from all the way in the vault at Box-station because the antag just stepped on a smart-mine you left there for them.
- Tweak your flashbangs with a screwdriver. The vanilla 5 second fuse leaves a lot of time for antags to react. Shorten it to 1 or 3. You have flash and bang protection for a reason. And if you do flash a bystander, well, it’s not like you lethaled.
But the bigger problem is … Many newbees simply do not give a damn. They won’t be here to read these tips, they won’t be reading the wiki which outlines SOP and Space Law and they won’t even talk to you beyond “k, thx, bai”. At a certain point, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. Of course not all newbees are like that. But so long as some are, we’re never really going to get rid of unrobust sec, or just plain old shitsec.
I just came out of a round where a traitor miner, fully kitted in Lava artefacts, simply walked into the station and then proceeded to murder half of it with Hiero-staff and PKC, all the meanwhile snacking on cores.
Yo yo. I’m here to help you out. A lot of people get an impression that miners are strong just because they look intimidating, in reality they’re just as tough as most other departments and just have their gimmicks.
PKC
The crusher is a melee weapon that must be two-handed. The miner will struggle to do things quickly while wielding it. Disarm or shove since you’ll be in melee range. The crusher’s ranged attack does nothing to you unless you’re in a select group of mobs. Any ranged attack can also counter it.
Hiero staff
This used to be strong but got turned into a joke. It looks scary but can’t do jack shit to anyone that knows the item. Hell I’d even argue the nerf wasn’t needed as it just requires people to learn like a lot of attack strategies. Against the staff, always move so he can’t click you. This limits the miner to spamming crosses with high cooldown. If you get clicked and a chaser goes after you, dodge it or run. The Chaser does not necessarily track your location and tends to just move around you. You can use this chance to rush the miner. Lastly, the staff is actually pretty good in a very specific situation, that is if you’re right next to the miner and have nowhere to go. If you get melee’d by hiero, you can move out of the energy field before it actually hits you. Besides all this, the hiero deals very low damage. This means you can easily run straight into the miner and disarm that shit even through several hits.
General tips
Miners lost all their pvp artifacts. (Saw isn’t good against people). Just because the guy looks tough shouldn’t mean you should be scared. In general, miners’ biggest strength is the regeneration they get through cores and pens, but neither can be used in emergencies more than once. All of these also deal with brute/burn. You can kill miners easily with a stunprod or any other means of doing stam damage. They also tend to forget that their mesons are bad for pvp. A single flash can kill them. If you’re in the right department, also look into toxins which cores do jack shit against and pens do almost nothing against.
Also, not mentioned here but if a miner comes at you with a PKA, remember that it’s incredibly weak out of low pressure environments. You can probably beat that miner with any improvised weapon.
I hope this will be helpful the next time you see a miner and get scared. The real people you should run from are botanists, chemists and xenobiologists. Edit: and the exploration team, which is basically mining on steroids.
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Thanks for the tips, oldtimes. I should’ve mentioned that the round in question was Acacia and we had no security. I basically faced down the miner with a spear. The only person who was actually armed, aside from the miner themselves, was an explo dude. Who didn’t bother tiding into sec to replace their firing pin.
I personally am not too intimidated by miners and, in fact, did exactly what you said and simply shove-disarmed the staff and PKC off of them.
But still, it feels like fighting miners requires some intermediate knowledge, or at the very least experience using the staff yourself, which newbees sparsely if ever get.
The Goliath hardsuit and cores are what intimidates me most against miner traitors. And usually not due to their inherent value on their own, but because those work in tandem with ranged traitor weapons. It’s still very feasible to force an antag to retreat, or even force them off of the station completely, but actually intercepting them becomes difficult.
Then again, I tend to have a policy of almost always trying to take the antags alive, even when they’re trying to lethal me, so it might very well be a skill issue on my part.
Remove SOP
Remove space law
Remove murderbone rule
simple as
You might as well just play on /tg/ then.
Oh wait, you’re banned.
I also heard something about Ash Drake armor getting nerfed on-station? Not really sure on the details of how that works.
It was made weaker while on station. That’s literally it.
Summary
The objective truth is that old miner items had no purpose in mining. Despite exploration being way stronger than mining, people don’t call it bad because they actually use the 10+ guns they find to kill things during their job. On the other hand, half if not more of the old mining artifacts (pre-removal) were for pvp and weren’t good against lavaland mobs. With that in mind, one shouldn’t think too hard about the nerfs and removal, the real question is when the update that adds good things instead comes (probably never since I’m not doing it).
The well known take from Cae of proving someone wrong by the virtue of own popularity:
wiznerd used to be rare, is rare and will continue to be rare. Also ‘’‘most’‘’ wiznerds are new people that get killed by gamers from security.
Nuke ops are a 50/50 every time, either nukies get 2 robust people or crew does.
same for blood and cock cult and incursion.
So 5 modes that depend purely on whether a 1000h person gets them or not and we should balance that around the thing?
Or… wait… maybe let antags (skilled or not) do whatever they want to without them fearing an admin intervention? (and make an excpetion that if a too skilled gamer comes in then admins may smite them, is that too hard to implement?)
Edit: yeah it’s easier to call someone’s idea (because they are Wilchen) stupid, and provide nothing else.