On the subject of RP Security Officer access

[Cherman0]

I just cant in good conscience say that it makes any sense to cater design to an extremely small number of players (half of whom are playing an observer anyways and are therefore unaffected) at the expense of the broader playerbase. It brings to mind https://xkcd.com/1172/ , the one about spacebar heating. You just cant design around every user and it makes the most sense to design around the most typical user.

[Zamujasa]

At a certain point I think we need to admit that its not possible to design the game around an arbitrarily small number of players. Like, if there's 4 people on the server, yeah things are going to break down. Same deal as 100+ pop where theres like 30 staff assistants. Designing around such an extreme edge case at the expense of the much more common 20 - 60 pop doesn't really make sense to me and I feel like a lot of cool ideas for interdepartmental cooperation get held up on the point of "but how will it work if nobody is online". Which is unfortunate.

the difference between designing with lowpop in mind and designing with absurd highpop in mind is that one of these only happens in stretches once every couple of months at most, and the other happens almost every day on a specific server. to simply say "yeah lowpop players are just gonna have to cope" regarding one of the most wide-ranging, broadly affective changes on the rp servers is essentially giving a huge middle finger to 4 specifically

This also ignores the fact that lowpop hours hit 3 as well, not just 4.

"Lowpop" can be as low as sub-20 people. Allowing the game to be playable with lower populations is a feature worth targeting because those times do happen, and people being able to play during them sets up more people to join and push it back towards typical pop counts.

[444explorer]

Interested to see how this does, seeing it (test)merged would be lovely. I'll be keeping a close eye on how RP Security's perceptions and the 'norm' of how to deal with Antags change due to the lesser access, if any change at all.

[Waffleloffle]

I just cant in good conscience say that it makes any sense to cater design to an extremely small number of players (half of whom are playing an observer anyways and are therefore unaffected) at the expense of the broader playerbase. It brings to mind https://xkcd.com/1172/ , the one about spacebar heating. You just cant design around every user and it makes the most sense to design around the most typical user.

it's not about "catering" to people, it's about designing with consideration to the fact that plenty of people can and do mainly play rounds with 30 or under people on-station, whether due to timezones, preferring that experience, or just plain unwitting circumstance. designing a critical gameplay balance element with that context in mind is not the outrageously pandering task you seem to consider it to be, it is a necessary consideration for an inevitability. making the game not accommodate lower pop counts for the sake of a hypothetical "typical user" just seems like a design choice that, itself, will drive pop counts lower through alienation

[Silent Majority]

It feels very dismissive to refer to an entire service as a niche thats half observers.

And yeah that is what worries me. Is exactly how it will effect lower populations that worries me. As a sec main Who does sometimes play off hours, i have had to frequently perform a variety of tasks and work. Sometimes i have set up the engine or rescue.someome that got teleported or clear out critters in an unused department or provided basic forst aid puttting someone in a cryopod.

Instead of helping with these said issues i would instead do nothing. Or hack doors which i should not.

I do feel thar i creased access globally at low pop isnt a bad idea.

[Ikea]

A lowpop threshold seems like a reasonable solution to the issue of this change messing up lowpop. When the station is populated, antags get more safety from sec and sec has the station to help them out, but when its empty sec off can help out where needed.

[Lord_earthfire]

It feels very dismissive to refer to an entire service as a niche thats half observers.

And yeah that is what worries me. Is exactly how it will effect lower populations that worries me. As a sec main Who does sometimes play off hours, i have had to frequently perform a variety of tasks and work. Sometimes i have set up the engine or rescue.someome that got teleported or clear out critters in an unused department or provided basic forst aid puttting someone in a cryopod.

Instead of helping with these said issues i would instead do nothing. Or hack doors which i should not.

I do feel thar i creased access globally at low pop isnt a bad idea.

I feel like security should not be the one these tasks fall onto. Currently they do because of their access, not because they should do it.

I feeel these are tasks thst should fall unto the hands of command. And the captain or HOP very often already do these things.

What could get problematic in low pop is the non-avaibility of command staff. We already got a system in place that automatically elevates someone to a command role.

What i could see is a proper mechanical way to make someibe acting captain. Currently you need a HOP or to break into the captaibs office and get the spare. That could be handled differently.

[Chasu]

Personally, I think that lowering security‘s access on RP is a good idea for many of the reasons that have already been mentioned, however, I have an idea that could perhaps, maybe, potentially, be a compromise. It’s probably overly complicated, but hear me out:

Search warrants. Security can print them either from a special machine in the office, or security consoles. There are department-wide warrants (Engineering, for example) and warrants limited to a certain area of a department (e.g. Mechanics). For a certain amount of time (max ~15 mins), they‘d allow security to enter the department and do their thing.

They could work by either…

-Granting access to the holder like an ID card would

-Granting all of security access to said area/department, activated by being put on a wall/door belonging to that area/department (like a „wanted“ poster or sticker)

Pros:
-Could encourage RP („Do you have a warrant to search my department?“)
-Could prevent security hacking into places or getting AA just to chase after one person.

Cons:
-More time intensive than getting AA / hacking
  -> The target in that department could‘ve fled whilst security was getting a warrant.
-Probably hard to code (?)
+Many, many more (Handling lowpop; faster paced classic rounds, etc.)

[KingMorshu]

At first I was rather opposed to this as stated in my previous post, however I really liked Zamujasa's post about potential solutions:

Departmental sec:
I actually think this would facilitate RP. The officer can still go an patrol, however they would be talking/interacting with one department for an extended time. If an antag is in said department, this gives them time to either trick the officer (dialogue wise as to what they're up to) or at the very least they have one officer to contend with instead of the entire sec department beating down the door immediately if something happens.

Alert system:
I really like this one. You could have it like the emergency button in the bridge. Green is safe and regular access levels, Blue is elevated, so this would give some additional access, and of course red is when things are hitting the fan. This way, even if there is one command member on lower pop shifts, one of them could potentially hit it. You could also have the button in the HoS's office. The only problem I could see here is if command members start disagreeing on threat levels, and it would probably be best if a HoS was on station, leave it up to them for guidance.

Lowpop threshold:
This is a good idea even for non-sec matters. This would allow for the crew to get something if in trouble (example, they need medical treatment but there is no staff to let them in and treat them) and this would allow officers to go more places. The antag would already have an advantage since they have many places to go and less people to track them down. This might even it out a bit on lower pop shifts.

I am by no means an experienced coder, let alone familiar with Goon code, so I don't know how hard these would be to implement. I do believe these are worth considering if they could be implemented code wise. Especially the first one. I've seen a good many posts that sec is considered by many to be isolated from the crew, and this first one would have officers interacting with the various departments.

[Zombie]

I think, without knowing, that people are too scared to try this out without testing it and come up with all sorts of solutions for work arounds. Yes, it works on classic and so can it on RP.
Before you mention "but classic can validhunt so it doesn't matter there", there are no rules against defending yourself on RP if you're attacked.

Lowpop threshold shouldn't be something given to sec, but more like "oh there is no chef, let's add kitchen access to bartender" or "oh, there are no botany, let's give catering hydroponics access"

[Silent Majority]

It feels very dismissive to refer to an entire service as a niche thats half observers.

And yeah that is what worries me. Is exactly how it will effect lower populations that worries me. As a sec main Who does sometimes play off hours,  i have had to frequently perform a variety of tasks and work.  Sometimes i have set up the engine or rescue.someome that got teleported or clear out critters in an unused department or provided basic forst aid puttting someone in a cryopod.

Instead of helping with these said issues i would instead do nothing.  Or hack doors which i should not.

I do feel thar i creased access globally at low pop isnt a bad idea.

I feel like security should not be the one these tasks fall onto. Currently they do because of their access, not because they should do it.

I feeel these are tasks thst should fall unto the hands of command. And the captain or HOP very often already do these things.

What could get problematic in low pop is the non-avaibility of command staff. We already got a system in place that automatically elevates someone to a command role.

What i could see is a proper mechanical way to make someibe acting captain. Currently you need a HOP or to break into the captaibs office and get the spare. That could be handled differently.

Its very rare to.have command

[Cherman0]

it's not about "catering" to people, it's about designing with consideration to the fact that plenty of people can and do mainly play rounds with 30 or under people on-station, whether due to timezones, preferring that experience, or just plain unwitting circumstance. designing a critical gameplay balance element with that context in mind is not the outrageously pandering task you seem to consider it to be, it is a necessary consideration for an inevitability. making the game not accommodate lower pop counts for the sake of a hypothetical "typical user" just seems like a design choice that, itself, will drive pop counts lower through alienation

You are missing my point and quite frankly being pretty rude about it too. I'm not saying we should disregard 4 or that its players dont matter or whatever. What I am saying is that for most players, playing on <20 population is an exception rather than the rule. It makes the most sense to design the default scenario to fit the rule and design contingencies to handle the exceptions, rather than trying to always be addressing every possible exception at once. Some exceptions (extreme lowpop and extreme highpop) are inherently contradictory and it is thus impossible to handle them both at the same time. The solution that solves one will likely make the other worse.

Therefore, we should assume that most games have a few people in each department, a captain, and an AI at roundstart. There have been a few suggestions here that I like that handle the lowpop exception, such as generally expanding access during lowpop (ie most jobs can access their whole department and not just their area, say a miner accessing cargo). This could be designed to include giving sec wider access during lowpop. Another suggestion that I liked was having multiple station alert levels that reduce access requirements as they get progressively more severe. This means that in the exceptional case:

* An antag is hiding in an unstaffed department
* There is no AI, cyborgs, engineers, captain, hop, alternate routes, etc
* Security knows about and needs to get to this antag 

Security and/or heads of staff could raise the alert level to gain access to the antag's hiding place. Since in these extreme lowpop scenarios there is likely one or two antags and zero or one secoffs (and we can ignore the zero secoff case for the purposes of this debate since changing sec access would be irrelevant) there is very little that would divide security's attention away from the antagonist(s), a system that impedes sec until they activate a station alert would be helpful in giving the antag a bit more time to breathe.

[Chatauscours]

I would just like to remind to the people that are saying that security should call the AI / a cyborg in case of a door sec has no access to, that (if I am understanding the rules and AI laws well) the person inside the room can just law 2 the AI/borgs to not let security in, since security would have no legitimate access to said location. And even without the law 2 from the perp, the sillicons can refuse security access for pretty much the same reason.

I still don't believe that cutting away security's access wouldn't encourage RP, since the issue isn't security. Security already RPs in the bar, in the general hallways, the sec front desk, during arrests, etc..., hell it's one of the most RPing roles in the game, that's why I play it : you get to interact with everyone. The issue is the people inside of the said departments, that spend all 90 minutes in the department without going out not even once (in particularly thinking about science, genetics and robotics, the 3 main areas it is aimed to cut away security's access).

However, I would wholeheartedly support an introduction of alert levels or emergency levels or the similar on RP, but only if there would be more prerequesitions and accountability for the people that are supposed to raise said alert levels, AKA command. Currently on 3 every other captain is either fully incompetent or suicides/cryoes in the first 20 minutes of the round. If you want to include game mechanics that impact the flow of the entire round, you should ensure the reliability and accountability of the people who run the place. For that a purpose should be given to play command, changing the doxa than the MD is just a doctor with AI upload access and a flash and that the captain is a staffie with AA, and perhaps some small (5 round?) timelocks should be set for command to ensure a minimal bar of responsability. Some way to ensure there is constantly an acting captain that would keep an eye over alerts would also be needed for the alerts to work, in my opinion.

[Cherman0]

and perhaps some small (5 round?) timelocks should be set for command to ensure a minimal bar of responsability.

Captain does actually require 30 rounds played beforehand, but I feel like I could support a requirement to play at least 1 round in each subordinate department before playing a department head and say, 5 rounds total before you can play command roles in general.

I still don't believe that cutting away security's access wouldn't encourage RP, since the issue isn't security. Security already RPs in the bar, in the general hallways, the sec front desk, during arrests, etc... The issue is the people inside of the said departments, that spend all 90 minutes in the department without going out not even once (in particularly thinking about science, genetics and robotics, the 3 main areas it is aimed to cut away security's access).

I... dont necessarily agree with this. Broadly I agree that yes, people who make no effort to connect with other people cant really expect everyone else to deliver RP to them. But I also feel that one of the greatest potential RP scenarios that the game offers is situational roleplay: ie your character reacting to relevant events as they unfold. But for that to take place, events have to both

* Happen
* Effect people

And security having a large degree of independence from the civilian population in terms of how they respond to threats limits how much those threats tend to get other people rolled into them. In my view this is one of the major reasons that people complain that antags dont really antagonize anyone except security. Its also worth noting that security officers who chat up people in the halls and bar and whatnot are still doing their jobs, since patrolling the station and being available to people is under their job purview. But a roboticist who hangs out in the bar isnt getting anything done in terms of their job, which can feel weird in terms of the RP scenario (they presumably are paying you to get work done) and encourages people to stick to the locations that they have job mechanics for.

[Cal]

Cutting to the point here - If some automatic way to give Security access in some way isn't added, the flow of being forced to figure out how to get higher access, then doing so is always going to be a pain.

Perhaps a crew threshold or dead security officer threshold, though this would power up an antagonist that stole a security card as well