An analysis of the biggest problem with goonstation: apathy

[Roomba]

As for vigilantes, I'd recommend a bit more lenience on murder, mainly to ease up fears of killing the wrong guy and getting banned as opposed to going to prison. I'd say that if you killed someone (mostly) innocent, but were reasonably sure that they were a badguy and you didn't permanently take them out of the round, and you're not a total jerk about it, you should be punished by in-game methods than by administrative intervention.

Or it's always been that way and I just never noticed. I dunno, I don't make a habit out of killing people.

Despite how it may seem at times, not everyone is a raging validhunter who would be a syndie-slaughtering machine were it not for those pesky admin laws holding them back. What needs to be encouraged is people playing sec, not people playing vigilantes. The people who would be empowered by this aren't the helpful MD hamstrung by being unable to use his gun, they're the jerk MD who shoots assistants for the crime of standing in medbay at the wrong time. Easing up on vigilantes doesn't mean the average Staff Assistant is going to become a hero of the station, it means that guy who spends every round simply shoving you and stealing your ID for no reason now has a license to strangle and space you on the basis of 'they looked shifty'. And IC consequences? The only people who could reasonably enforce that are sec, and even on the off chance they exist, the vigilante has free reign to slaughter them for the crime of 'SEC ROGUE', and often the skills and weaponry to do it too.

Also, take out the bit about minimizing collateral damage and it'll just be suicide bombs for days. (I know I'm hardly one to be too sanctimonious on the subject, but I do try to ensure absolutely no one except me and/or the antag is going to be hurt if I use one as a non-antag.)

tl;dr: easing up on vigilantes isn't going to make the station at large less apathetic, it's going to give jerks free reign to be murderous jerks