Richard Harnley's HoS application

[GamerCake]

Hi Gamercake, we don't interact much at all but I've been trying to make an effort of catching people playing for their applications and I got a bit lucky this week. Bear in mind I'm not a regular security player, so please take my feedback with a pinch of salt, but hopefully what I have here will be useful to you and admins too (as well as bump up your application)

So in summary we haven't had a huge amount of direct interaction, so this is all coming from rounds I've watched and in general I really like your dynamic as a security officer: I think you have the skills down as well as some of the harder-to-teach aspects such as good communication, the ability to pace things with antagonists appropriately, and just in general a good attitude when things can and do go wrong. Plus I like your general moxxy. I'll go into some detail below with some example rounds but the general sentiment is that I think while I can't say +1 I think there's all the right elements there that with some feedback from security players you're there.

Okay so example 1 and 2 are actually back to back rounds. It just happened that these two have the best sort of notes and I'm not bombarding you with too much by putting it all in, but the other rounds had the same sort of theme. You were an officer in both. I do offer some critique here, but bear in mind both that for the most part it's fairly minor and that I would argue in some respects what I have is subject to personal opinion, so you might disagree. 

• You are regularly checking and communicating with the team, both via the radio, using the PDA, acknowledging crisis alerts and heeding orders generally even when its busy. One thing I really liked is that you were generally where possible giving feedback once you had an antagonist arrested or in sight with the HoS and team but also were willing to show initative if an incident was escalating. One area of critique I'd give was that at times you'd have a bit of tunnel vision and react a little late to things. One example was being asked to respond to someone in distress in space, it was pretty rapidly communicated over general radio and security that the situation had been handled, but you missed it until you'd fully responded. Easy thing to happen but it's sometimes good to do a quick double check every now and then to save you getting lost in the weeds. 
  
• I really liked your approach with antagonists. When things were not escalated you'd take a very stand-off approach and gave one antag who was taking some time to compose themselves and talk a wide berth to let them escalate. This can be very, very hard to do and be patient on, and I think it's something that's hard to teach, and you were always very consistent about this, letting people do their thing is an important part of the game as much as you're there for achieve your security goals, being a HoS is sometimes about letting people have their time in the sun as a bad guy and I really appreciate you will regularly make sure this is available to people. You also let some obvious stuff go, one example being an arcfiend cueing you by their noise in a maints because they gave you a plausible RP excuse. Always great to see. 
  
• You stayed in your lane well inside security. You'd delegate evidence gathering to the detective where they were available, and even checked back with them about their investigations. A big part of HoS seems to be that willingness to delegate. It was also apparent when a situation was being handled by other officers you'd stand back a bit, or head off to something else. I think this is another important aspect of letting stuff with antags play out without crowding them.
  
• One area that I didn't see much of (it might well be happening but I didn't get to see it) was training, with assistants you were fairly standoffish. You had an incident where you essentially picked up one to engage with someone else. It was frankly funny, but bear in mind a good way to make an impression with the security team is engaging directly with them all. I think they took it well and again it was funny, but just bear in mind sometimes that might feel a lot like being brushed off. 
  
• This is very much a personal thing, but I appreciate that there was a situation in which the rest of the team decided to resolve a medical issue in a way I'd personally grumble at for not letting medbay do their thing and you spoke up about it. You ultimately rolled with it which I also think was the right decision, but being willing to talk it out with the team politely when you're also outnumbered in opinions seems like a good thing to me and your heart was in the right place for letting departments do what they do. 
  
• I liked that you seem to have general background plan for a gimmick, every round I'd see you'd be doing a thing if it was quiet: Putting notes on things, doing paperwork and so on. It's not hugely relevant to HoS but I do think that kind of colour on RP is good for the game in general and I appreciate it.
  
• There was an incident with some rogue AI in one of the rounds where things were a bit hairy, your reaction after escaping was to communicate and try and touch base with the team and HoS, which when it failed you were rushing to break open the armoury. I personally feel with a functional Captain you were aware of and not any real indication the HoS was in huge trouble this was a tad rushed, but I also appreciate that one's a bit of a judgement call and you weren't doing it out of nowhere. What was good is once you did touch base with the Cap and HoS you dropped that, which I think shows good understanding of changing plans.
  
• it's a small thing but a nice thing good to see from security in general: Talking with the rest of the station. It's a thing that when you're trying to focus on dealing with antags its very easy to develop complete tunnel vision: only talk with your team, talk over or ignore antags, ignore crew complaints or talks. You never seem to do this unless you're literally fighting for your life. Even small stuff like greeting or acknowledging the crew when they talk is always good to see and I think a good example for a potential HoS to be showing the rest of the team. 
  

So again overall if you don't want to chew through that is I think GamerCake has fundamental skills and a great general attitude. What critique I have is pretty minor and subjective. In terms of direct advice I'd say maybe consider building those relationships and pair up a bit more with the team while on patrols, if only to get in their memory a bit and encourage them to come here and give you some feedback too. Hopefully this helps in the mean time. Look forward to seeing you more in game.

Hello!
I really appreciate you for taking the time and actually observing me while playing security and giving your criticism!
Yes tunnel vision is definitely I gotta work on, sometimes I just get *too* focused on something and take in my surroundings not as much.
I am trying to be a tad more social with my other officers, and I did actually do some basic training with some security assistants, which I do quite enjoy!
Social skills are definitely not my best set of skills, which to be fair who's are? But I do try to communicate and generally build friendships with other officers during the round, it's far more interesting to me that way.