Nerf/Tone down security somewhat

[unfunnyperson]

Today in the goon station general chat I noticed a few people discussing how sec is slightly overturned. Figured I’d make a post on it as I feel it’s an issue. Mainly the issue is super coordinated security teams combined with very powerful security gear can lock down and end an antagonist with a large amount of players an firepower. This leads to antagonists being killed fast with little counterplay resulting in boring rounds. 

Possible solutions 
*Maybe just tone down security gear slightly as a whole(more hits to stun, less charge in batons/tasers)
*Less security slots or make it slightly harder for them to communicate 


This would lead to more interesting rounds as antagonists are harder to defeat.

[Cal]

Make Security worse for new players so they get trampled on because Security is being coordinative? Makes no sense.

If people REALLY want to kill antagonists, they'll work around nerfs. New players will not.

Less Security slots make little sense. Making it harder to communicate means little sense.

EDIT: I would be okay with antag items being looked at and prices adjusted, though.

[Lady Birb]

I would remove sec implants or replace them with normal health implants, so you can kill an officer without immediately alerting the entire department to your exact location.

[Cal]

I would remove sec implants or replace them with normal health implants, so you can kill an officer without immediately alerting the entire department to your exact location.

Health implants also alert Security iirc

[Ikea]

While the complaints about sec have always and will always exist due to them being the ones who will oftentimes be the end of peoples antag rounds, the amount of complaints in the past two weeks has skyrocketed. Some of this is simply people parroting talking points, when people complain about something other people will often begin complaining about it too, however I dont think you can reduce all of it to that. Something must have changed with the security antag dynamic in the past few weeks. The odd thing is, the most recent major mechanical change with security was around a year ago.

Security is now filled with mostly competent and experienced faces, not only decently robust, but more dangerously, talkative. The crew however, has yet to catch up. This isnt the first time its been like this on classic, nor will it be the last, this is a temporary arrangement which makes things really tricky to balance around. Any changes that will be the thing thats good for this server in this current arrangement, could very easily be terrible in another arrangement. Not only that, but this is a short term development for classic, meaning that collecting data for balance is tricky. Fortunately however, we do have a server(servers?) where hyper communicative and competent sec is the norm.

While individual robustness definitely helps a lot as security, take one look at roleplay to show that group cohesion is what really matters. While the robustness of roleplay players is often very underexxagerated by classic only players, there is a truth to roleplay players being less good at combat. Despite this however, security officers are really effective on roleplay against any antag. This is due to a mix of antags causing less damage due to roleplay rules, and lots of communication between sec offs. Normally this is fine enough on roleplay due to be nice to antag rules, meaning even if antags lose the battle, they can still win the war. The thing about classic currently is that due to them being new, antags cause less damage, and security currently has lots of communication between them, and unlike roleplay, loosing the battle is oftentimes losing the war. In an odd twist of fate, I feel as if balancing around this current situation security is in should use roleplay as a guide for the changes.

People who primarily play roleplay's opinion here would be highly appreciated. I feel as if a lot of this stems down to communication. In specific, the most common complaint and the one I feel is the most practical to address is communication leading to security swarming antags. While attacking the wasp should lead to the hive getting angry, having the whole nest float off the branch and go after the attacker is a bit too far (Ill admit this is a bad metaphor, I only kept with it because I think its a funny one.). One of the main causes of this swarming is the alert button, which immediately tells security to be ready for combat, and the location with the click of a button. Personally the nerf I feel like would be best here is something similar to #6979, having the alert button trigger a sound queue and map text. This means that the antag would be warned of the swarm before hand, and be able to react appropriately. 


A more ambitious nerf would be a bug fix. When hit, you will automatically say what you were typing, with it cut off by an -URK. The thing is, you'll only get this interaction if you use the say command, which is done through the taskbar. Making this behavior work for the normal way of speaking would mean that trying to speak on comms while getting beat up would lead to it being fragmented. This would reduce the amount of information that you can send out while getting beat up, which means you can delve less into specifics. This would effect a lot besides sec however, and needs lots of deliberate consideration.

[Yellow]

There have been a lot of rounds where sec is 25-35% of the entire server population on RP. This can lead to sec getting very very oppressive due to the lack of chaos to contend with since anything that happens is handled by 5 officers because they’re bored nothing is happening. All while the 2 antags don’t have the opportunity to do anything because sec is too highly populated.

Having 11 sec when the population is 60-70 is fine because they have a bunch of stuff to contend with and requires sec stretched out.

Having 11 sec when the population is 30 is absolutely awful for pretty much everyone involved

Having sec be population balanced like how antags are population balanced would be a good idea imo.

[Katzen]

Population balance for sec seems like the most reasonable idea. Having 11 possible slots is a bit extreme until you are getting 60+.

[RGBDeadSilent]

Hos + NTSO + Officers + Detective + Assistants is pretty nuts honestly. The Detective and the Assistants can be very hit or miss, and sometimes the officers themselves as well but the fact that you have so many can be daunting to some folks. Hos + four officers is a good start, and then one or two rookies.

As a HoS i've found it a bit hard to train more than one person a shift, two is if you're lucky and they both decide to actually stay there and learn the whole time. Cut down Officers to four and S-Assistants to two and you've got a start. If you have so few officers due to Pop balance that you can't even cover each corner of the station we've got too few security honestly, all i'm saying.

As far as security equipment goes, its good but not end all. You can still bulldoze right through security with the tools antags have at hand.

[Leeanei]

Like other people have said we are currently experiencing very skilled players in sec and newer players as antagonists. The inevitable result is less dead antags, because otherwise those very skilled players could just validhunt. On RP, we don't even fill all our sec slots and antags are rarely killed by sec. Or even get arrested because they have a tendency to be very evasive and mindful.

Scaling security pop does have an argument to it, but I'd rather see scaling employed on all jobs than just security alone. Five scientists on 15 pop has always struck me as absurd.

Just to be clear here, sec implants are fine. They do alert sec to security deaths, but they frequently send sec in like lemmings one at a time unless a HoS wrangles them. Just learn to play around with how implants make the crew act rather than whining about a mechanic that many others have successfully exploited.

[NOOT]

Make security and health implants send the information at a 30 second delay. This makes you far more likely to be able to finish what you are doing murderwise before the ai eye, ntso, hos, detective, rest of sec, and whoevers decided to steal a sec pda for the round, show up to gatecrash your party. Maybe youll even get a a chance to steal a toolbelt too.

Make sec data disks part of the utility credits system in the sec vendors. That would make the chance that you can actually permanently kill your target higher before they are cloned and able to spill the beans on your entire kit when revived. Also make clone disks come with genetic defects and the multi-clone max hp defecit by default.

turn NTSO into a latejoin available slot only after 20 minutes have passed or a % of active players on station (say 20%) are dead after roundstart. Too many people seem to just roundstart latejoin as NTSO because HoS is filled for the round and they want to be the second HoS.

[Cal]

Make security and health implants send the information at a 30 second delay.

Makes them useless. "Your friend's body is in the debris field looted to shit." Great.

Make sec data disks part of the utility credits system in the sec vendors. Also make clone disks come with genetic defects and the multi-clone max hp defecit by default.

A purchase, and THEN punishing? Why the extra punishment when they'd have to be purchased and then clone you with defects at that? Any player can save clone scans onto a disk already.

This makes you far more likely to be able to finish what you are doing murderwise before the ai eye, ntso, hos, detective, rest of sec, and whoevers decided to steal a sec pda for the round, show up to gatecrash your party. Maybe youll even get a a chance to steal a toolbelt too.

Act faster. All I can say to this.

Or keep them alive and restrained or KO'd then strip their earpiece and take their shit before offing them. Or set a trap, open a canister of N20 and watch them choke out on the floor as they pour in.

turn NTSO into a latejoin available slot only after 20 minutes have passed or a % of active players on station (say 20%) are dead after roundstart. Too many people seem to just roundstart latejoin as NTSO because HoS is filled for the round and they want to be the second HoS.

Genuinely don't see a problem with two capable whitelisted people training Security. If people are silently validhunting, ahelp it. It might not be against the rules, but i'm sure admins would have something to say about people applying for a role only to wordlessly kill antagonists playing around, round after round.


Honestly, Security players are currently quite skilled. That is the issue. They are responsive, communicative, and coordinated. Maybe current HoS have been training them a bit too well!

On the other side of this coin, the amount of vitriol I've experienced in this game for being a regular HoS player is tiring me a bit, It's why I've currently laid off playing it. The amount of people and borgs calling me scummy or whatever for trying to call the shuttle "only" 35 minutes in when an antagonist is rampaging, Security is dead, and the station is in shambles and then continuing to do so on Discord is something that would surely wear down any player.

[Jakson]

I really like NOOT's idea of the NTSO becoming somebody who latejoins after shit has become fucked, like after a bunch of the security team has died. However if we were to move the NTSO in this direction I think his toolkit could really use a few buffs if he is going to become the "oh shit everybody is dead fuck fuck fuck" kind of guy.

[Lucky.Cobra]

on classic i think is cause we have lotta new HOSes, that and lots of players that have sec exp are playing it more this days

[Cal]

After thinking about it, the delay on implants is probably fine since I remembered it still announces critical status

[Bartimeus]

A lot of good officers have surfaced, and with experience comes more communication and a desire to improve. As someone that plays security on both RP and classic i can say that while classic is certainly getting quite busy in terms of communication lately, its not quite the same compared to RP. On rp, security officers will speak all the time about their current whereabouts, what they're doing and how the situation is going. I think ikea did point out an important difference however between security and rp when it comes to handling antags, and that's mostly coming down to the fact that an antagonist on rp being arrested usually leads to some fun interactions, while an antagonist being caught on classic is fairly likely to have their round ended on the spot depending on who caught them and what they did so far.

I think that once some of the newer players get a good grip on being the bad guy, the issue will get better, but i do agree that there is fairly little counterplay for antagonists when it comes to preventing or disrupting sec's communication.
Perhaps some antagonists could have some of their powers adjusted to affect communications somehow? I do like ikea's proposition of your speech being interrupted if you take a certain amount of damage as well.
The alert button is instant and powerful, and will usually lead to a bunch of sec flooding in without warning. The PR proposing to give a clear warning to onlookers that the alert button has been pressed sounds appropriate.
Maybe health implants should only notify medical? I get that it's sec's job to go on a search and rescue mission, but maybe they should be working in tandem with medbay in order to rescue a crewmate's life. Medbay has the stabilizing meds but requires security to come as an escort, makes for an interesting dynamic, and that way a secoff can still get notified if they choose to plug in a medical cartridge, but they lose the easy access to the strong options the R.O.B.U.S.T cartridge offers like the port-a-brig.

In my opinion, there just needs to be more ways to mess with a screaming secoff's distress call. Like making it slightly garbled, or cutting off abruptly.