Let's talk about the Detective

[NanoDano]

I would love for the detective to be more than a secoff with lethals but buffing him in any way would make him get targeted by antagonists more than he already does. But perhaps we could lean into this idea.

I liked the idea of his gun being locked in a drawer that can be opened when the armory is authorized. Alongside that his forensics abilities could be buffed making him more of a high difficulty job and a high value target for antagonists to eliminate, sort of like the AI. Of course he would still need some way to protect himself, maybe an enhanced flash and/or improved sec alert button? Maybe even something else entirely.

Either way making him important for security to protect and for antagonists to kill would increase confrontation between the two, which in my eyes Is an improvement.

[KikiMofo]

The detective is straight up cool as hell so of course its going to be a popular choice.

[JORJ949]

What if the detective's revolver box could only be opened by:
-Armory being authed
-Anyone with armory access(the HoS)
-An Emag(permanently unlocking)

EDIT: Pull request for this change can be found here: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/21531, please discuss balance thoughts in this thread though.

[Spoodle]

I am extremely against the detective's gun being restricted, purely based off of cool factor. I understand, though, that with how it currently works it does give the detective quite a bit of power that either they can use, or that antagonists can steal. To resolve that, I think we could basically do what Snoid said earlier: nerf the stun rounds and restrict the lethals.

As for the actual implementation of these things, the stun rounds could disorient people without actually stunning (or something similar), like how Lt487 suggested, and the lethal rounds could be restricted in a way like others suggested, with them being in a drawer (or safe?) in the detective's office that unlocks when the Armory is authed.

Of course it'd also be great to give the detective some more abilities (I really like some of the ones suggested earlier in this thread), but I think this would at least partially resolve the mindhack issue (they will still always be a valuable target no matter what, imo), and also be a fine first step in narrowing the focus of the detective role onto more detective-y things.

[Emimiyu]

Honestly, as much as I do not really like people who pick det so they can sec with lethals, locking it up behind armory auth would probably ended up making it an antagonist loot and would probably used less by det, more by antagonists.

I prefer if their lethals are locked behind armory

[JORJ949]

I will admit here that I know the PR has a lot of issues and is essentially the nuclear option, I did it mostly to spark further discussion and because I was bored and wanted to code something.

[Cropsey]

Ammo is already limited. I already said this but we don't need to essentially chop a job in half because one or two players (especially on CLASSIC when det is particularly RP based) can't behave.

You need the gun for the blood-trak. Detective is supposed to be more independent from security (hence they're not implanted and at least used to roll antag) why would the gun be locked up on the armoury?

This also means for an execution or a kill on sight order or whatever, any time where there isn't a HoS and the captain is dead/has a sword/is thralled/any number of things, you're going to auth the armoury and suddenly sec is armed to the teeth for the rest of the tound. It doesn’t work well.

Security should not be mechanically encouraged to auth the armoury. Give them the one guy with the shitty little potato gun to cap some syndies, and deal with the powergamers by the rules instead of nerfing everyone to stop them.

[IncendiaryCrocs]

Hello!
Firstly, for me at least (who has not played #1 in a considerable amount of time) I have not seen lethals used without prior authorization first - mostly because the stuns are just so much better than the lethal bullets.

Though I hear on #1 there is a big problem with detectives being repeatedly mindhacked - I don't think this is an issue with the .38 special (my beloved) and more with the idea that somebody who "might as well" be security can be subverted with little to no effort. The detective can get all sorts of other dangerous items directly from security with no repurcussions (grenade launchers, flashes, barriers, armor, stun grenades, etc). It's in my belief that removing the gun is basically just removing the Detective role entirely since every other security role can do forensics. 

I for one am not against the detective having a mindhack implant - I still think they should be able to roll antagonist because the detective being as dangerous as they are is fun & interesting (as long as it doesn't happen all of the time which seems to be the current issue).

Here are some alternative ways (some not mine - mainly from the discord discussion) that I thought were fun ways of getting around this.

• Making forensics more in-depth and include the Medical Department, and making it more difficult for other roles to do forensics, or giving the Detective additional tools for crime solving - I like the idea of chalk you can use on crime scenes that show you where the victim died, what was used to kill them and some other info. This way you could remove the gun without destroying the job (i'd still be a bit pissy about it tbh) - this would take time to program though, and because I don't program for this server I don't think suggesting this really has much merit. 
  
• Put lethals in the armoury and have the Detective just use stuns? I don't see why we'd remove the entire gun because they're used lethally when we already have a strictly non-lethal ammo type for it.
  
• May I recommend comically bouncy rubber bullets that do BRUTE and send people flying?? Instead of LETHALS, they would be LESS-THAN-LETHALS; they can still kill, but it's much less practical to murder people with while still being funny and dangerous. This way, a detective rampage would be a lot more of people getting injured and thrown far away instead of being shot 3 times in the head and instantly dying.
  

Thanks for reading.
Complimentary cat image:

[Cal]

Ammo is already limited. I already said this but we don't need to essentially chop a job in half because one or two players (especially on CLASSIC when det is particularly RP based)

Detective has been around since like, 2009. Way before we had an RP server.

Anyway I think Det's gun could be toned down and Sec could be encouraged to actually use the armory more. I've seen traitors with guns on both Classic and RP with security loath or afraid to open it, despite the vast majority of it being nonlethal.

Shift lethality away from the detective, give Security better reason to bust out the nonlethal stuff.

[Lefinch]

I will admit here that I know the PR has a lot of issues and is essentially the nuclear option, I did it mostly to spark further discussion and because I was bored and wanted to code something.

I can respect this and before anything else accept it's a very valid discussion, it certainly spurred some on the discord while I shook the cages like a stirstir about posting it on the forums. Also, I don't play detective, it's my last role I've really just not played, so I'm not dying on the hill of my opinion here and please take everything I say with this in mind. It's good to discuss things if they don't seem to be working out right.

As for the PR itself: It's absolutely the nuclear option. When I first saw it, my initial impression is "I see the item gathering dust on the RP server alongside the RP4 phasers and that feels like a shadow-removal of it more than an adjustment of it to dissuade negative behaviour with it" also a slight side of "Well what are people supposed to knock out of the detective's hands now?" but hey they've still got the cool forensic scanner.

To explain my initial thoughts, I make the entirely personal observation (that's again, restricted to just RP) that the RP-4 phasers are essentially a kind of weapon clutter: By the time the armory is being opened, its likely not for the lethal-only tool that has limited application. It's not the shiniest sunday best in there, and lacking blob-type enemies who might need a bit of burn-based energy whacking, they just sort of get to sit around for salvagers to maybe pinch out of confusion and the very occasional nukie round where someone remembers to hand a few out. I would expect that much the same for the revolver fairly or unfairly. It's a pretty minor thing, but this also would seem to make the trick revolver a tiny bit more conspicuous. I'm not sure if that's good or bad though.

Then I had a nap, and I guess my concern more here is that it feels like this is something worth trying last if we couldn't find a better alternative. It just feels a little wrong to lock away a department tool whose stated current problem is only half of the functionality of the tool. There has to be something we try first. This feeling is mixed with: It actually feels like this is a discussion about the detective's place on the station itself both practically and philosophically, and the conflicting interpretations of that. There, I think it would be a lot easier to accept the revolver going away if it was also coming alongside a general detective re-work (with some shiny new tools or refactoring to whatever direction people think they should go) than taking away parts of their current toolkit. it's clear at least that there's some debate about what detectives -are- at their core here. 

While I agree that it wouldn't do any harm to make the armory more of a consideration, I don't think the way you do that is by changing one of the detective's toolkit. I'm not sure that's the lynchpin of armory operations or temptation. I do think that's a good discussion in its own right though. The armory for me is both narratively interesting in an RP round (it generally indicates an escalation in potential drama) and a non-verbal indication of escalation (security telling me, Evil Guye, they're now on high alert so respond in kind) and there are times that takes longer than I'd expect to happen given how I've behaved.

[Carton]

I don't believe detective needs any big changes to it's lethality, although minor balance changes such as ammunition changes/damage adjustments might be warranted. I think we'd be much better served reworking the forensics system to be more in-depth, and more difficult (but preferably not impossible, because lowpop) for security to do without a detective. I think giving the detective more opportunity to detect has been something that has been a long time coming.

Additionally, I don't believe making nuclear level PRs in order to push discussion forward is productive, as it tends to just result in emotional arguing and every other response being the same refutation of that PR. It also feels like an underhanded tactic to get people to accept ideas they normally wouldn't, as an alternative to the nuclear option.

[Snoid]

locking the gun in armory is a pretty boring idea and id prefer if that wasnt the case. det should have the gun on start, the lethals are the problem. granted ive seen some dets say they like shooting lethals to get some blood on the ground so that they can track it, so my revised idea is as follows:

gun itself: same as before, det starts with it
lethal rounds: det starts with 2 lethal bullets, more lethals can be obtained from dets office in a drawer (or something) that requires both armory to be authed and a physical key the det starts with. armory auth req can be emagged away but the physical key is still required. gameplaywise this means det lethaling everyone to death is still possible but if a det is spamming lethals without auth then its immediately obvious theyre antag. also adds the emag requirement meaning if det gets mindhacked, unless emag is provided to them, they arent getting lethals. in addition to adding a bit of build variety where you can play antag det as either stealthy undercover subterfuge by sacrificing firepower for more tc, or buy emag and go loud.
stun rounds: this is up to whoevers making the PR but id recommend choosing either having less stuns freely available or nerfing them slightly. dont do both at the same time cause thatll probably be excessive

[JORJ949]

Additionally, I don't believe making nuclear level PRs in order to push discussion forward is productive, as it tends to just result in emotional arguing and every other response being the same refutation of that PR. It also feels like an underhanded tactic to get people to accept ideas they normally wouldn't, as an alternative to the nuclear option.

I didn't consider this and its a good point, I just thought the forum thread was underused and wanted to point people to it, after sleeping on it a bunch since the initial thread was made I've come to think the detective is fine and that I should probably take a step away from balance for a bit.

[Asterion0]

Something not really mentioned is that while yes detective is part of sec, it's not treated with the same level of trust as secoffs, and it shouldn't be. While mechanically speaking they can outperform a secoff in catching or killing an antag, they also have to deal with the fact they don't get the same trust Security does by crew. When a detective shoots someone without explanation, it's not uncommon for people to think the detective is the one in the wrong, and potentially even act it, giving the antag they're chasing an opportunity to run.
The tradeoff for detective having a fairly decent gun isn't that they don't have sec gear, but rather that the second they seem 'off', they're under question of being an antag themselves, and face extra scrutiny where secoffs wouldn't. Similarly, antag detectives don't get the same level of slack a botanist or geneticist might get doing minor crimes, since they have the issue that they are still technically part of Security, and face extra scrutiny for what might not be as big of an issue to other roles.
Of note is that I also don't play detective very much (if at all), and this is just based off of how I've seen detectives been treated/how I tend to treat them, so feel free to mention if this is drastically different from how other people tend to treat/see detectives act.

[Lefinch]

Additionally, I don't believe making nuclear level PRs in order to push discussion forward is productive, as it tends to just result in emotional arguing and every other response being the same refutation of that PR. It also feels like an underhanded tactic to get people to accept ideas they normally wouldn't, as an alternative to the nuclear option.

I didn't consider this and its a good point, I just thought the forum thread was underused and wanted to point people to it, after sleeping on it a bunch since the initial thread was made I've come to think the detective is fine and that I should probably take a step away from balance for a bit.

To advocate, while I agree with Carton's point I interpreted the intent here as earnest myself. It's a good point to raise though. I will admit as an unrelated aside I have a partial bias in that it can be frustrating to see so many discord discussions wither and die on the vine around ideas because people are so reticent about engaging with the forums, but it's unrelated because we can't use PRs to drive people to discuss things for obvious reasons, just not personally sure what might help this side issue.