Contraband rework - Also helps with forensics, kinda!

[Monochromatism]

So, Wisecrack and I got into an extended discussion on the discord about forensics, spinning off of their idea for the Kitchen Gun.  As it happens, gloves are currently kind of overpowered; it's nearly impossible to find a certain pair even if you have their ID. Wisecrack's suggestion was to have security scanners/metal detectors report the glove ID of those who pass through them, but this reminded me of an idea I and a few secoffs had last night:

Let those with Security records access alter the contraband level of items.  It would solve a lot of problems all in one broad mechanical sweep.

• Is there a blob on station? Is Beepsky constantly arresting the heroes who are trying to stop it?  Now you can set flamethrowers and flare guns to not be contraband, until the crisis is over.  No more issues!
  
• Are you trying to roleplay a funny gimmick where you declare clothes illegal? Now you can make jumpsuits level 10 contraband!  Go nuts!
  
• Are you trying to find a specific pair of gloves?  You can declare specific items as contraband too- including gloves, by their forensics information!
  

This will make a lot of security officers' lives a little easier, while letting security and command staff lean harder into the funny stuff they can do (enforcing silly rules on the station).

[Bartimeus]

I approve of this idea. I do agree that gloves are kind of overpowered, switching your gloves after comming a crime makes it entirely impossible to trace it back to you. I suppose that some sort of 'Contraband Gun' like the Securitron would work. Shoot it point blank at an item of your choice and they are all set to contraband.
The only issue i see is if it gets stolen. A traitor or some no good doer could just declare the very concept of existing illegal and tag absolutely everything, which would make the officer's life pure hell.
Maybe a limit to the maximum numbers of items allowed to be designated as contraband needs to be limited to prevent this behavior.
While i think its a great idea that could provide some fun gimmicks and help officers locate some specific item wielders, im unsure if it will really help the glove situation. You can simply put gloves in your backpack, wear them when you do something naughty then toss them aside when you are done. I think the glove issue has to be treated differently. I still wholeheartedly approve of your idea though.

[Boxta]

Ooh i actually really want this because its fun to be able to catch a crimer from their prints, but gloves which are practically everywhere completely break that
and ruin fornestics.

[Frank_Stein]

I can see it being useful if you could trigger scanners to check for things they normally don't. For instance, if you found a murder victim, you could set the scanners to track their blood, in case their murderer walks past a scanner while still having blood on them.

[Wisecrack34]

I'm not a fan of the gun idea but yeah, I agree with Mono (Who should go here: https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=3034)

I think that it should absolutely be tied to the Records Access, as it should be fairly difficult for a crimer to make everything illegal by busting in with AA. I think that making items illegal or not should display a PA announcement that "Joe Shmoe has set ___ to be illegal", while having a separate function/option to have detectors ping specific gloves/blood samples/uncovered fingerprints

[GORE]

Setting glove IDs to arrest would be great! Holy shit - yeah!

[aft2001]

I actually really like the idea of scanners doing more than just blaring out when a baddie walks though - the logging of contraband and particularly gloves sounds fucking wonderful. I'm not too sure about adjusting what and what isn't considered contraband, but if Sec was alerted via PDA whenever it happened then I think that'd be okay. Just concerned about someone abusing it, but that's what playtesting is for - seeing if something is actually OP as shit or not!

[Sundance]

A sound idea. Key issue is how to implement it.

This will be available on the Security records, I got that much. I'm assuming along with all the other options, there will be an option to [Adjust Contraband]

The problem I see is that contraband is effectively a whitelist. And I'm not sure if you can just "add" or "remove" any item to this because if you think from a logical perspective, there are hundreds of items on the station. I'm not sure if it would be a simple to type in "Mop" and then all things that are called "Mops" are considered contraband, unless the scanners are just simply checking for the name of the object. I'm talking out of my ass here, I just feel that this seems a bit iffy to implement.

There's also the issue of what's Contraband and what's Weapons Clearance, which are two different things afaik.

I think it might be easiest to just have an option to disable weapons clearance (which is all NT station weaponry) which requires two swipes (in comparison to the three swipes on the armoury) on the computer.

As for the gloves idea, again this is a sound idea, but there's an incredibly easy way to avoid this. Say some dork hacked his way into the armoury and you have his glove prints, and you enter his glove prints so that the scanners detect them. The problem is that the perp can just simply put his gloves inside his bag and avoid this trouble altogether. It's just an extra annoyance for the perp and I'm not sure if it will actually tackle the issue of gloves disrupting forensics.

Instead, perhaps all gloves have a unique identifier to their origin? So say you have insulative gloves with its corresponding glove ID. Entering this into the security records will spit out if the gloves originated from: Engineering, Mechanics, QM (if they've been purchased) or Unknown (if they originate outside the station). This basically what officers do already but instead of boiling down to one job, they've an entire Dept to decipher which is next to useless.

So to reiterate, scan insulative gloves, get job, now you have 1-3 players to pin it on, rather than potentially 8-9+

[Frank_Stein]

A sound idea. Key issue is how to implement it.

This will be available on the Security records, I got that much. I'm assuming along with all the other options, there will be an option to [Adjust Contraband]

The problem I see is that contraband is effectively a whitelist. And I'm not sure if you can just "add" or "remove" any item to this because if you think from a logical perspective, there are hundreds of items on the station. I'm not sure if it would be a simple to type in "Mop" and then all things that are called "Mops" are considered contraband, unless the scanners are just simply checking for the name of the object. I'm talking out of my ass here, I just feel that this seems a bit iffy to implement.

There's also the issue of what's Contraband and what's Weapons Clearance, which are two different things afaik.

I think it might be easiest to just have an option to disable weapons clearance (which is all NT station weaponry) which requires two swipes (in comparison to the three swipes on the armoury) on the computer.

As for the gloves idea, again this is a sound idea, but there's an incredibly easy way to avoid this. Say some dork hacked his way into the armoury and you have his glove prints, and you enter his glove prints so that the scanners detect them. The problem is that the perp can just simply put his gloves inside his bag and avoid this trouble altogether. It's just an extra annoyance for the perp and I'm not sure if it will actually tackle the issue of gloves disrupting forensics.

Instead, perhaps all gloves have a unique identifier to their origin? So say you have insulative gloves with its corresponding glove ID. Entering this into the security records will spit out if the gloves originated from: Engineering, Mechanics, QM (if they've been purchased) or Unknown (if they originate outside the station). This basically what officers do already but instead of boiling down to one job, they've an entire Dept to decipher which is next to useless.

So to reiterate, scan insulative gloves, get job, now you have 1-3 players to pin it on, rather than potentially 8-9+

That's a good point Sundance. Forensics should be about narrowing your pool down, until you've got a clear case on why it's a certain person so you can justify an arrest.

I think more interactions with wanted posters and scanners would be nice too. Maybe feed a scanner a wanted poster and it notes their physical characteristics (A list of visible gear, clothing, hair and eye color, hair and facial details, etc)
Afterwards, the scanners could be rigged to scan and report back stuff that is say, a 65 to 100 percent match, or auto snap photos of people who had matching forensics