General Sec Token Chat - Replacement and Improvement Brainstorming Here!

[Leeanei]

valid hunters already go for those three roles because they can valid hunt and be extremely oppressive antags when they aren't killing the antags.

Overall tokens solved a problem about 95% of the way because people aren't losing their minds about it near as bad. I agree with Sundance's general statement that the system would feel better fully fleshed out. My personal idea was actually just to make the core loadout baton+belt, then have sidearms being the existing weapons(taser, wavegun, taser shotgun, maybe even a sec-phaser for people who want to be ineffective) and then have equipment tokens include things like CC grenades, morphine, robust donuts, night vision goggles, etc.

[Wisecrack34]

On Sundance's Deputy idea, would anybody be opposed to having an actual mechanical way to deputize someone where they get dispensed a silver badge and a token? It would obviously need to be card locked to either HoS or say 2 Badges for that "2 keys turn at the same time" action. If this is a good enough "concept" that it could be fleshed out and made non-exploitable then I'd like to make a thread for it.

[Chayot]

Really like a lot of the suggestions from Sundance, I can see how his suggestions may prove useful and varied.

I love the idea of SEC having dedicated department funds, this can create all sorts of wacky scenarios aside from its blatant usefulness.
This will in turn (possibly) allow SEC item prices to skyrocket as it technically will not eat away at QM/Station's general funding. (loyalty kit prices excluded.)
Thereby further reducing the ability to order weapons with the ease that we currently can.

All said It may be quite a bit of effort so, not sure how feasible it'd be.

[phyvo]

I'll be honest here, I don't see how the token system has solved anything or why it's necessary. People still go on rampages and when there are no sec officers or sec is killed the crew is even more screwed than they were a few months ago before they made all these changes to equipment access.

I don't blame tokens alone for this, they're just part of a larger design philosophy of late that makes it difficult for the crew to rise up against a rampaging antag without actually being in an organized mob. If there's a rampager I know that when I latejoin or otherwise spend my first 30 minutes not powergaming I find it much harder to get to where I can do more than just run away. That is, unless I specifically latejoin sec, because yes, not having to worry about every taser being stolen from the gun rack is nice for that.

The equipment tracker has theoretical uses but practically speaking I think it's pretty much useless. If you get your gear stolen as sec then you're probably dead, so if you actually live to use it you're either lucky, you hid it somewhere else and got cloned (the most likely use case), or you're chasing a non-antag crime clown. I haven't once had occasion to use it yet despite playing way more sec lately. No one steals my gear unless they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Honestly, I don't think that the loadouts themselves need much change. There's actually not a lot of variety you can get at the moment with the current sec items in the game and even if you add more I do not like the idea of sec turning into "nanotrasen nukies" in terms of gear options.

[Chayot]

Phyvo, it's not about stopping rampages it's about the use of SEC equipment in said rampages.
Yes, they can steal it off a SEC officer.
Yes, they can order it and Packet/ID it open.

It's about making it harder, less accessible. If you were playing prior to tokens, more specifically in SEC department you may understand not only how frequent but how nerve-racking it is to have to make sure the weapons in SEC are secure.
(Armory excluded, that's easier to deal with for many reasons.)
Most rampages committed were with SEC gear, to the point where it was a problem--that's probably why the token system was introduced.

There are plenty of ways to "Rise up" against an antag.
Many items have recently been introduced and buffed across ALL departments to make standing up to Antags feasible.

I find the tracker to be VERY useful. Do I use it every round? No. But it certainly works out very well for when it is needed.
Please do consider it more and take note of the changes and how they affect the game if you haven't noticed yet.

[Frank_Stein]

(Typical well thought out Sundance Post)

We definitely need more things, and honestly it should work a bit more like how the Syndicate option does, where you pick several items from different categories.

How about belts that "hold" a weapon not in their storage but in a built in holster. Clicking on the belt when a weapon is holstered draws it, while click dragging opens it's inventory.

The we have storage options like belts that have a left and right holster, with which weapon you draw being hand dependent (Cross drawing possible if the other holster is empty).

Bags could have large item holsters for long guns like rifles or shotguns.

[Erev]

(Armory excluded, that's easier to deal with for many reasons.)

If we are ENTIRELY honest here? The armory is - and always has been - easier to break into than the secured lockers. This is even with the new (and admittedly better) security now in place. There's a limited number of people that are bothered to learn how to packet hack, fewer still who take the extra step to learn to pop lockers. Dismantling walls, however, is right on the wiki - to say nothing of the old 'cut and pulse' method of door cracking.

[Frank_Stein]

It's about making it harder, less accessible. If you were playing prior to tokens, more specifically in SEC department you may understand not only how frequent but how nerve-racking it is to have to make sure the weapons in SEC are secure.

Huge second to this. Going into Sec and seeing an empty taser rack or opened and emptied out wasn't stressful because I didn't have the guns I wanted. It meant there were 5 to 10 unaccounted for weapons just out there in the ether

[Technature]

I think the purchasable tokens will have the potential to reintroduce the problems that tokens were supposed to solve in the first place, since it means the HoP, Captain, or anyone given Sec access can potentially order a shit ton of tazers and then go on a rampage.

I feel the idea reinstates the previous problem with tazers and just introduces a middleman to go through.

[Wisecrack34]

Armory Bad

Agreed, Perhaps it should be converted into a room with some extra sec supplies such as batteries and such that gets one of those "Men In Black" weapon reveals when the HoS uses a keypad or some such thing. It would make the armory nigh inaccessible unless you have his ID. 



^ Like this but on a smaller scale, the walls of the armory get removed, floors placed and crates get teleported in

[Erev]

Or even a one-time 'emergency deployment' teleport from CentCom.

[Chayot]

Exactly So Franken. And you KNOW they're hunting you now. It fills you with dread.

Erev, no problem at all.
Yes people break into SEC armory via Packet/wallbreaks.
Aside from the turrets defending it on some maps, It's just way easier to defend it/catch people that break inside.
The items therein are in my opinion often ineffective. Not only my opinion but also Packeters and antags that get appropriate access.
How is it I know that? They hardly ever break in there. Really. I am confident with Basic SEC gear to fight someone who broke into armory.

Also, I don't want to take away the *opportunity* for antags to steal weaponry and rampage. Not my point! Simply that the lockers were TOO convenient and the items therein TOO effective.
The tokens therefore were a balance and have been effective in this regard.

Technature, I'd have to agree. Though they CAN still order SEC equipment and do it without the token even now.
Often when I deputize someone, I give them flashes, cuff, headset & pda, send them off to fight crime. It just works™
That said, love the idea of official silver "STAR" to hand out. "Use" it for a one-use name engravement for them!
---
And actually, I'm sorry Erev. You made this threat probably to get away from neigh-sayers and simply gather ideas for alternatives to non-token SEC/departments. If I'm abstracting from your original thoughts for this thread please let me know & I'll desist.

[Sundance]

On Sundance's Deputy idea, would anybody be opposed to having an actual mechanical way to deputize someone where they get dispensed a silver badge and a token? It would obviously need to be card locked to either HoS or say 2 Badges for that "2 keys turn at the same time" action. If this is a good enough "concept" that it could be fleshed out and made non-exploitable then I'd like to make a thread for it.

My deputize concept isn't so far away from this actually. This might be worthy of another thread.

Reminder that Security, Captain and HoS have unique spawn only IDs which can be used as key for the 3 step auth armory. 

A secure level below this would be authorization of another token which would require a 2 step authorization from those unique IDs (or 1, if HoS)

There's two ways of balancing this, further to the two step auth. 

1.My concept would be a Secure QM Requisition computer, which can order tokens if unlocked by the two step auth. This would be tied in with a separate Security budget where fines could be fed into. It does require security to pick it up at QM. 

This is balanced by the fact it's tied into a budget. Giving the budget 6000 credits with tokens costing 3000 each, that's only 2 tokens security could purchase without outside interference (such as the HoP/Cap/AI transferring funds)

This adds a real corporate element of "Cops for Hire" and while the fining function seems a bit arbitrary, I think it would be very rad. Remember again that fining has to be approved by the Captain/HoS and the fines are automatic and added back into the budget already, this would just add a different pool, like engineers and their big ol lazer.

2. You got get rid of the entire corporate end / QM side of it and just make a wall mounted device that requires two swipes of a unique sec spawn ID to dispense a token. 

The balance here is that you could simply put big ol cooldown the dispenser. It's HIGHLY unlikely that two security would enrol via deputization at the same time and far more likely of someone wants +1 token they are likely gangs/traitors/shitsec. 

The issue I have with this is that it's too simple and doesn't have room to grow. But could absolutely be feasible and might be the solution to the problem in the short term.

---

I think the purchasable tokens will have the potential to reintroduce the problems that tokens were supposed to solve in the first place, since it means the HoP, Captain, or anyone given Sec access can potentially order a shit ton of tazers and then go on a rampage.

I feel the idea reinstates the previous problem with tazers and just introduces a middleman to go through.

Hard disagree. You can add checks and balances to make purchasable tokens viable, see above. 

Adding a middleman works, if it doesnt you add two. See QM security crates. All you need but it's locked behind Sec ID and a heavy shipping cost. It can certainly be done, but it's not like the buffet previous security was.

[phyvo]

Phyvo, it's not about stopping rampages it's about the use of SEC equipment in said rampages.
Yes, they can steal it off a SEC officer.
Yes, they can order it and Packet/ID it open.

It's about making it harder, less accessible. If you were playing prior to tokens, more specifically in SEC department you may understand not only how frequent but how nerve-racking it is to have to make sure the weapons in SEC are secure.
(Armory excluded, that's easier to deal with for many reasons.)
Most rampages committed were with SEC gear, to the point where it was a problem--that's probably why the token system was introduced.

There are plenty of ways to "Rise up" against an antag.
Many items have recently been introduced and buffed across ALL departments to make standing up to Antags feasible.  

I find the tracker to be VERY useful. Do I use it every round? No. But it certainly works out very well for when it is needed.
Please do consider it more and take note of the changes and how they affect the game if you haven't noticed yet.

I've been playing for over a year. Every random item buff that I've seen so far is pretty meaningless unless you're in a messy impromptu brawl where neither party has powerful stun weapons. Every rampage I've seen since those changes still involves an antag with powerful stun effects at their disposal, many of which were taken from sec. I have yet to see a prepared rampager get put down by the everyday items that were buffed. Sure, a buzzsaw might end up dealing the killing blow, but it's not what caused the rampager to fall in the first place, because it's stuns that are king. Plates are not terribly useful unless you can catch the rampager in melee with their weapon in hand, so it's chiefly useful against csaber/samurai nerds.

I already noted that joining late as sec feels less dangerous now because you are almost guaranteed a ranged weapon. There being an empty rack or not hardly even matters when there's a rampager loose, but being denied a taser matters. But as regular crew I feel more naked now against a serious threat, not less. Again, stuns are king.

[DJ-Fireball_did_this]

Please don't make breaking into the armory impossible. Harder, maybe, but it getting broken into is a key part of the game. That being said, yeah, nobody ever does. I stand by what I've said that maybe it should have more dangerous shit. The station is flooded with things easily more deadly than phasers, even excluding antag items.