HoS application: Ishmael Belmont (attempt 2)

[SomeOlFellow]

Characters: Ishmael Belmont, Athena Europa, HZ-931 Kingfisher, Anna Wager
BYOND Username: SomeOlFellow
Discord username (if you are on our discord): SomeOlFellow
Recommended by (if applicable): 
Goon servers you play: Both RP servers


Reason for application: I am looking to be a Head of Security to help train officers, gain more experience in a new role, and be able to help struggling security teams. I also feel it’d open up new opportunities for me in roleplay and teach me things I couldn’t learn as a regular secoff.


Security experience (300-word minimum): I play almost exclusively security, with some command play here and there as Athena, who often helps security if a HoS isn’t present. I have always found security to be the most enjoyable department to work in, as it allows me to engage with antags in a way that no other job can, except perhaps the captain. I’ve won plenty of fights and lost just as many, learning the best I can whenever I can. As a secoff, I try to be a bit of an anchor. Trying to keep radio chatter going, making sure an officer is alright if they aren’t responding on the radio, and following hunches if we lack evidence to set us on the right track. Being reliable is what I aim for: someone you can look to for solid advice, someone who will back you up if you call for them, and someone who will try to help things escalate at a reasonable pace, taking things slow and rationally early round while becoming more aggressive and distrustful later on. Although I always take it on a case-by-case basis, if someone seems like a new antag, I’ll generally point this out subtly to the team and suggest we be a bit easier on them, and ask in OOC if they’re confused on anything and assure them that the first arrest isn’t an immediate execution.


I’ve taught a fair number of people not only the department's fundamentals, such as secmate and how the barrier works, but also various combat tips, including how to flip someone over or block a grab to help them survive against some of the challenges we may face. Many of these skills took me a long time to learn, so teaching how blocking works and some hotkeys, such as C, V, and Z, is something I enjoy doing. People appreciate it, as it makes the game much easier to play.


I’d also add that I’ve fought every threat a station can face besides a werewolf and a flock mind, but as I play exclusively on RP, I don’t think this is a big concern. I also gained a decent amount of experience as an antag and know how they work, allowing me to adjust my approach to them accordingly.


Answer two or more of the following:

• What advice would you give to other sec players?
  

The biggest skill in security isn’t necessarily your ability to fight; it’s the ability to communicate that matters most. Listen to the radio, talk to people, and ask for something to do if you’re lost or confused. Good communication is the key to winning most situations, or at least making the round fun and giving people the opportunity to get involved.

• What was one of your favorite security moments?
  

One of my characters has a mental issue that manifests as a traitor, where they act to appease an entity. I love roleplaying the madness aspect of it. During one of these rounds, people noticed that my character was not mentally well, although they were challenging to aid due to their hostility. At one point, they ended up cornered, C-saber in hand, in an enclosed room. It was a stalemate: nowhere to run, panicking, and afraid. The security team noticed this, so instead of trying to disarm me, they attempted to discuss the situation and resolve it peacefully, hoping to convince me to surrender. Someone came to my character’s defense upon realizing that they were just scared and mentally unwell. Eventually, another antagonist entered the scene, causing chaos and sparking a massive fight. Security eventually subdued us both, and I ended up being taken to CentCom in cuffs,  with my character regretting their actions and dreading the consequences.

• What improvements or changes do you think would benefit security players?
  

I’d like the security pod bay improved. Big pods struggle in podfights, there’s only enough mats in the fabricator to make two locks, and we don’t even get a smelter to add more materials to our fabricator. It would also be nice to be able to print new security communications for pods, so that any new pods we build can have access to security’s hangar. Perhaps we could make it so that you need security access to print one of these, or install it. I also think security pods could benefit from a unique paint job to distinguish them from other pods with heavy armor, thereby preventing misidentification. 

• Describe any differences in your playstyle when part of a full security team and when being the only security officer.
  

With a whole team, I like to contrast the general atmosphere of the team. If everyone is all serious, by-the-book tough guys, I’ll be more outgoing and prone to being aggravated; that way, antagonists still have someone to escalate to verbally and get into a fistfight with. Vice versa is also true, if everyone is a bit uppity, I’ll be more reserved and calm so that I can be the “reasonable officer” of the team that can reign in the others if they get out of hand (provided we lack an HoS). When I run solo, which is rare as I play on high-pop, I often end up having to rush through things. Get people processed quickly and make all the tough decisions myself, depending on whether the captain has even made an effort to help. I’ll generally allow the crew to arm themselves to a degree with microphasers and improvised weapons to defend themselves, as I can’t be everywhere at once, and I could die without them knowing. They also often assist when dealing with louder antagonists, a help I greatly appreciate, as most guns can kill a lone officer extremely quickly. I’ll play it cautious, taking in the general pacing of the round to determine how much talk I can do. While some antags will take things easier so as not to overwhelm me, just as many are willing to jump at the opportunity that there is only one officer and all they have to do is kill me, take my equipment, then they’re basically unstoppable unless the captain is really good with an egun and doesn’t get jumped (or the crew happens to be robust). It only gets worse if they team up with other antagonists, but at that point, the whole station gets riled up to help me. It's a lot about knowing what to prioritize, keeping my eyes glued to the radio every free second, and trying not to die. This doesn't happen often enough for me to have a set-in-stone playstyle, though.


What is a security gimmick you’ve wanted to run?
I think it’d be fun to have everyone go undercover. Wear the clothes of other jobs, fake IDs, all that stuff to catch antagonists off-guard and confuse the crew. This is bound to backfire spectacularly, but it’d be fun to play out and see what happens.

[Lefinch]

Heya, you asked for some feedback. Please bear in mind I'm not a security player regularly, it's just my personal feedback and others or you might disagree with good cause on it. Also bear in mind due the fact I just happened to catch you quite a bit recently to watch and one particular shift has a lot of good case-example stuff this might be a little long. Believe me, I've cut it down but I'll summarise at the end for anyone not interested in reading and just wants a "I think this person would be good, or bad and what key things there are to support that."

One area this feedback does not cover is training: I didn't see any, however, I did not actually see any opportunities. I -have- seen you train assistants in the past prior to your application and it looked good to me. It's important as a part of being HoS, I think you can do it, but I wanted to quickly cover it here and say it didn't actually come up, so it might be good for others to get a bit of training in if you can to demonstrate. Or you might be already and I just missed it. 

So, I had the chance to watch a few non-security rounds and a couple of security rounds I've condensed into this first section of fairly generalised feedback. I've made it as brief as possible but I think there's some useful things in here for your application and the admins, to avoid being redundant although some of these apply for the second section I won't repeat them there, but please assume it applies in general throughout unless I specify something specific:

• This is short but important: you know your stuff. Watched an antag shift for the other side too and you're plenty competent as an officer or threat. So no worries there. 
  
• In general, though not HoS or security specific, I think you have a really nice habit of what I call "Talking aloud" an example being you'll mutter "that's strange" into the dark emote scratching your character's head when confused. It's little stuff, but it adds some nice colour to an RP round and give some nice subtle cues you're present and aware for people to engage with and reacting back even if you're not sure anyone's around. 
  
• In general a theme you seem to have while playing is that you'll work around obstacles most of the time. If someone isn't engaging. perhaps they're distracted or busy, you'll move down the chain to the next person without griping about it. That's a good attitude to have, as its always going to crop up and sometimes it's going to be in stressful situations. I'd try and really hold onto this, as being willing to refocus seems like a pretty important skill as a HoS player. There is gonna be times people have an initial reaction that's not great, and being able to let that slide off and react well is what's an good example for the HoS
  
• Another important general skill you in general seem to have is that you can remain "cool" in a stressful situation. This will contradict a later piece of feedback but I'll explain why I think this is your general behaviour and also draw attention to the fact you're capable of doing this. A good example was when you were actually an antag: You were very patient with what I call target-screening behaviour, someone wasn't quite following you were escalating and you took some extra time to escalate to make sure they got where you were going with it. This is harder than it sounds, especially when there was lots of people around who at any time could have come across you (and did later). I think for the HoS that'll probably help both for you understanding when to be a bit "blind" to antags doing their thing for round pacing, so keep that in mind when compared to feedback later. 
  
• Good general delegation: When the detective had forensics to do, you let them do it. When officers already were handling things, you stepped back. If an issue wasn't being covered by anyone else, you generally picked it up. All good stuff.
  

Section two covers a single shift, but it's got a lot of stuff in that will hopefully be useful that happened however long it takes me to write this ago involving a changeling shift in which there was a fine art display, the HoS got eaten and so on so you know which one I mean. One specific note: This was a challenging shift for security. This is not a mitigating factor statement though, this is more something I'd say to bear in mind if you want to be a HoS, that sometimes it's going to be like this with the added caveat that a sometimes unfair amount of responsibility for the challenge will be squarely on your shoulders. 

• To give you whatever the opposite of the "benefit of the doubt is", I'm going to credit you with something that might have been a coincidence, but actually to me seemed like a brief moment of genius that I appreciated: There was a health implant report of the captain's death after seeing an officer was at the bridge doors you: Jumped on the cameras. You used this first to note the captain's locker was open, which lead to unveiling of a clue, which is all good but here's the part I liked: When the HoS was in there alone, you for no IC reason jumped off the cameras and started paying a lot less attention to the situation
  

         It was early in the round, there was already plenty of chances for the changelings to now be caught eating the HoS, but you backed off from it. I'm saying here if it wasn't intentional, I think this would actually be fairly good intentional behaviour for giving an antag breathing space to do their thing. That's a Really hard thing to do in the moment when your job role is also to actually stop antagonists but a very important HoS quality. So if you meant to do this and I think you did: Well done, genuinely. 

• At a time command was compromised you asked to grab the e-gun from the contraband locker, seemed to hear a NTSC command to pop it back but they promptly had to cryo. You held onto the gun at the time, all fine here I think personally. You clearly communicated to the team you still had it, and used it reasonably enough. Later, when reporting you had it to the HoS (which is still good) they ordered you to return it. You didn't for some time, remembering it much later though you actually came close by the RD later on and had multiple opportunities and quiet moment. Going the other way with the benefit here: this felt a little like you wanted to hold onto a really useful weapon as a pocket ace. I think the shift was a bit more challenging than normal, and I'm ultimately not saying this was a bad decision (and it's subjective, and you simply could have forgotten) but I would give feedback that it's important to remember that security is balanced around the tools it has and if a superior gives a command it's generally a good idea to make sure it's followed, because they might be thinking the same thing. I think this was a bit of a special case where it actually made enough sense, but keep it in mind. 
  
• Speaking of command being compromised, the team lost its HoS and the NTSC was not really functioning for irrelevant reasons. I feel you made a really good effort (and the rest of the team did) to collaborate and listen to each other well. I do think honestly you were all a bit shaken to lose your HoS so soon but there were some good examples here: You specifically called for an outline of facts and listened to them, there was a good rallying call for how to punish and antag issued by you, and you listened to a (very good point) about working with the acting captain to authorise that. It was all calmly done and without any snappiness. Good stuff. 
  
• On the flipside, you also seemed to sort of forget we -had- command staff still. You rallied well when other officers mentioned it and went with working with them, but there's going to be weird situations like this on some rounds so just mentioning it here. 
  
• A lot of times during the shift you kept demonstrating well you were willing to engage with the crew, there was an inspector's gimmick that was quite forward and at a difficult time but you did engage with it. There was also a moment you sort of blanked a scientist trying to get your attention but: It was also mere seconds before you were going to storm the bridge. I think that was reasonable demonstration of "Pay attention and engage with RP, but sometimes you have to prioritise" so all good there.
  
• I honestly think there's a few outside factors with this that are a bit lengthy to go over but i'll summarise for now: Changelings being a bit more dangerous and the HoS dying early and the NTSC not quite being there made you all what I'd call a little execution happy in my non-sec opinion. However, it's an opinion, you all took a vote on it, and cleared it with the RD in the end, so it's ultimately subjective. So I'm mostly just noting it here but also saying I think that just demonstrates people are going to have differing opinions on situations. 
  
• You did have an awkward experience with a hall monitor. It was a situation essentially mid antagonist chase. I think you knew you went a overboard and de-escalated it by apologising first and directly to them. Good. There's going to be times you screw up as HoS and will need to quickly recognise it and respond to it. Just really keep in mind that it's only going to be magnified as a HoS and how you feel you could cope with that without it getting to you
  

There's honestly quite a bit more I'm not covering here because this is far too long as it is but this feels like it fills out a good general theme of what you're doing. So I'm going to move on to summary.

Summary for anyone who doesn't want to read all that: From what I saw, you know what you're doing officer wise. I didn't see any training during this period but I've seen it before and it was alright. I think you can delegate, and self-delegate quite well and I like your general RP style and think it might go well as a HoS, and that I saw multiple good examples of your understanding to give antags breathing space. My critiques were to be very keenly aware of not falling for the trap of obtaining tools so security gets to win and heed as a priority, and that to be aware that it's going to be a stressful time on some shifts so make sure you can consistently keep the cooler head I've seen you have. 

Given all that, I'd honestly say a good +1. Hope this is useful and apologise for the length of it.

[Pixie]

Ishmael keeps good and regular communication, has a strong sense of what to do to keep the round balanced for both Security and antagonists and can stay calm when things don’t go their way during a round. Whilst I can’t recall seeing Ishmael training, I have seen Ishmael occassionally give brief advice for new security members and not put too much pressure on them during action. This is good enough for me and shows leniency and support for new players.

+1 from me!

[Drakios]

Ishmael is an officer I often had to work with together and they were always reliable, they are good at communicating, I saw them giving orders even when an HoS is there which is very helpful, they keep a calm head from what Ive seen and their Rp is very good. 
In general they are a player I enjoy to see in sec. The only thing slightly negative I can say is about the application itself at least for me it felt a lot like they were talking about how to use skills and stuff so basically how robust they can be, not that being robust or talking about that is a negative thing but I just would've liked to see more in the experience which is not focused a lot about fighting. But yeah thats just a very small negative point and its more of a personal opinion and I could be wrong about it or the only person who felt like that.
Otherwise I think they would do good as an HoS I wouldn't be concerned of them being one so I would give a +1