More Specialty Security Jobs

[Ed Venture]

The thing about specialty jobs is that if no situation comes up that fits your specialty, you're just sitting around bored - and if you gave up regular job privileges for that specialty, then your round just plain sucks. Who needs a "hunter-killer" sec member when there isn't a rampage traitor on the loose? What happens to the warden if no one gets brigged that round? Moreover, those are specialties that aren't needed in the first place - a two-minute brig sentence for farting in the HoS's face isn't so critical that it needs a special job operating all sorts of specialty defense systems from his own control room in order to prevent escapes which never happen anyway. And giving someone the explicit job of "hunting down and killing traitors" just encourages shit behavior. What happens if normal sec gets to the rampage traitor before the hunter-killer does? Is he going to shrug his shoulders and go back to being an inferior version of a sec officer, or is he going to pull the handcuffed and stripped prisoner out of the brig and execute them because his job gives him the excuse he needs? I don't understand how you can look at the detective (who never does his job, does jack shit with all the special flavor stuff he gets, and is notorious for gunning people down at the slightest excuse) and think to yourself "we need MORE jobs like that one".

This was my main issue I had since the start of the thread that I so horribly tried to convey.

[Sundance]

The thing about specialty jobs is that if no situation comes up that fits your specialty, you're just sitting around bored - and if you gave up regular job privileges for that specialty, then your round just plain sucks. Who needs a "hunter-killer" sec member when there isn't a rampage traitor on the loose? What happens to the warden if no one gets brigged that round? Moreover, those are specialties that aren't needed in the first place - a two-minute brig sentence for farting in the HoS's face isn't so critical that it needs a special job operating all sorts of specialty defense systems from his own control room in order to prevent escapes which never happen anyway. And giving someone the explicit job of "hunting down and killing traitors" just encourages shit behavior. What happens if normal sec gets to the rampage traitor before the hunter-killer does? Is he going to shrug his shoulders and go back to being an inferior version of a sec officer, or is he going to pull the handcuffed and stripped prisoner out of the brig and execute them because his job gives him the excuse he needs? I don't understand how you can look at the detective (who never does his job, does jack shit with all the special flavor stuff he gets, and is notorious for gunning people down at the slightest excuse) and think to yourself "we need MORE jobs like that one".

Firstly, "hunter-killer" are your words. I was thinking more along the lines of a goofy guy with a cork hat, leather jacket and Australian accent. He's just a more specialized detective, used for subduing pesky targets, not killing them. He has no lethal weaponry to begin with.

Secondly, Detective job is awesome. Yes we need more jobs like that one. And the detective that actually does his job is a great asset to security. "Not doing his job" you could say that about literally any job so that point is moot.

Thirdly, this isn't taking anything away from security. These guys are more along the lines of "We are standard security, we do general security shit but in more specific fields we have beneficial assets"
Like take the Navy Officer. He's just standard security, he has access to security weapons, brig, same security access, etc. He just has pod parts that when certain situation arises, like syndicates or a rogue pod, he has a nifty pod to take them on.

In other news, one way of implimenting this is at job selection just make these jobs randomly spawn from a pool, so you could have 3 special security rolls to pick from a day. And make it red so you know it's a security job like <Medical Officer>

[atamusvaleo]

...perhaps the warden should have a device that pings all the fire alarms in security so they close? Similar to a lockdown, but someone with a crowbar could bust out...

You beat me to the punch but only halfway. As sec, I try to use the flash so I'm not blindly firing down the hallways and hitting innocent people but half the time you go to make an arrest and people (majority of the time they're not even antagonists... grrrr!) start sprinting around and dodging down hallways and through doors, making the flash null. Alternatively you'll be dragging someone in cuffs and get bumped and, OOPS, that's another ten minutes you have to waste chasing this person down for them to berate you over wasting their time over some small crime (entire delay and 20 minutes you've now been cuffed could have been a simple reprimand or a 2 minute brig sentence). Anyway, what was I getting at? Oh, yeah!

I would suggest that all Sec get a device or (preferably) a program on their PDA's to lock down whatever room they're in. I was going to suggest bolting the doors but fireworks are a better solution. It still gives someone a chance to get away, but with a delay and prevents civilians from just stumbling in a door and letting them out.

I would hope that something changes for dragging someone in cuffs as well. Like you cuff them to yourself or something. Just think of all those cheesey movies where the perp gets the cuffs slapped on thear wrist and the cop puts it on his/her wrist to. "Gotcha now, bucko!"

[KikiMofo]

Hey don't you make fun of the detective. They've had a hard life and is just in a slump. They just need to get back on the wagon and hunt some crimers down.

[ZeWaka]

-harebrained ideas-

I really like all of these. The idea that it would either randomize them each round or every day is also a good idea.
Security definetly needs variation, because at this point it mostly goes: Taser -> Baton/Flash -> Handcuffs.
If they have gadgets to play with, maybe there can be more uniqueness in the department, as not every security officer is the same.

[Roomba]

I don't mind the idea of the warden. When you get right down to it he basically has the powers of the AI, but more limited, and that's never really been a role that's faced excessive scrutiny. It's nice to have an officer that can do something about the armory being broken into that isn't 'run into the guy now armed with all the shotguns'.

Less keen on the other roles like the Hall Monitor and making the Vice Officer standard roles, though. Arresting people for 'everyday' offences on a regular basis rarely works out. The terrible officers will use the role to justify anything they do and the terrible players will use it as an excuse to be terrible to security, while the traitors get away with everything because half the crew is rioting in sec. Could work on Destiny, not so sure I'd like to see often on the other map.

[Frank_Stein]

I don't mind the idea of the warden. When you get right down to it he basically has the powers of the AI, but more limited, and that's never really been a role that's faced excessive scrutiny. It's nice to have an officer that can do something about the armory being broken into that isn't 'run into the guy now armed with all the shotguns'.

Less keen on the other roles like the Hall Monitor and making the Vice Officer standard roles, though. Arresting people for 'everyday' offences on a regular basis rarely works out. The terrible officers will use the role to justify anything they do and the terrible players will use it as an excuse to be terrible to security, while the traitors get away with everything because half the crew is rioting in sec. Could work on Destiny, not so sure I'd like to see often on the other map.

The way I see it, Hall Monitor is more about annoying people into doing their job and pretending you're more important than you are. I'd almost say they shouldn't even get access to all of Sec, just the front lobby.

Vice officer should never really be anything other than standard Sec with a fancy suit. You arrest people and look good while doing it.

[Sundance]

I was thinking a bit more about this, one of the ways you could go about this is make these essentially side jobs for security officers, seperating their ranks with badges, meaning that these speciality job are more of an optional flavor rather than set role.

So take for example you spawn as a sec officer.
You have standard sec access, standard security officer ID, but you also spawn with a "hall monitor" badge and special items (including clothing) including non restricted pda with the manifest.
The badge has "room-saving" properties, you can slot it in the PDA or you can slot your ID in the badge. Or you can slot your id in the badge then slot it into the pda if your not paranoid about getting pda bombed. Eg: Observing someone with a Id in a hall monitor badge would show up as
Hall Monitor Badge (Security officer)
The badge has a special verb "Flash badge" verb, clicking on it automatically emotes
"Bob Marley flashes his esteemed Investigator badge"
"Jim Morrison flashes his tarnished Hunter badge"
"Ian Dury flashes his almost illegible Hall Monitor badge"

So essentially, this gives officers cool nifty ranks/clothing/tools that they spawn with and optionally chose to use if they feel like it.

[Marquesas]

To be perfectly fair - and without having read four pages of replies - I believe this has come up before and was shot down with a good reason. It is not actually productive to introduce specialized roles into the regular jobs for the non-RP server. If someone would like to do a security centered gimmick where officers have roles and civilians may take up the mantle of a hall officer, be our guest, but otherwise most people would snap to the nearest general equivalent (ie. would play any of these roles as a normal officer). This especially applies to the warden - since we don't enforce people to do their jobs with the exception of officers, regulars would hate being locked to a single area for the entire round (see also: head of personnel), and the other specialty roles would lose their value.

In essence it all comes down to this: Pubbie Joe connects and looks at the available late-join jobs. Pubbie Joe likes playing security, but that is not available, so he picks Hall Monitor. Pubbie Joe then proceeds to play Hall Monitor as if they were an actual proper officer. On the non-RP server, he is allowed to do this and would not be punished for playing his role improperly. Hall Monitor essentially becomes another word for powergaming security officer within 1 month and someone posts a suggestion thread about reducing the amount of special security roles because it's not fun to play against 8 security officers.

One might argue Vice Officer is in there. Indeed, but it is for nostalgic purposes. There was a good reason it was removed originally.

One might argue Detective is in there. The detective almost never does his assigned job, forensics is and has always been sort of a joke, and when he is not actually passing out from being drunk at his desk or in the bar, he is played as if he was security proper. Let's face it, the only reason he's kept around is *monologue and the fact that someone does a pretty good noir impression once every 6 months.

Besides this all, I don't think it's productive to introduce any kind of hierarchy into the publicly available security roles. It is already bad enough when a new player plays captain and decides he is the all-powerful ruler of security, now imagine that except with two other powertripping people taking the higher hierarchy roles and no HoS being present. It's chaotic and not in a good way.

For the RP server, granulating roles within all jobs would be a good idea but destiny cannot really support a high amount of players and therefore a large granularity of roles.

[Sundance]

I was going to rebut but those are actually some solid points.

Counter-suggestion:
How about stocking security with even more outfits and tools/gizmos so that general security who spawn in can essentially play dress up and naturally assume a role? (don't deny it, alot of security dress to look cool)
It wouldn't be too hard, security is already quite stockpiled as it is.

You could introduce my Badges idea so that security can essentially self title themselves, any job position they like. So a regular Security officer could just pick up a badge, title themselves as Warden and get some appropriate warden gear. Or they can title themselves Big Scary Bastard and attach a plunger to their head.

Again, the badge is only superficial, you attach it to your pda or ID. It'll show up as "Sundance Feely is wearing the ID Security Officer (Medical officer)"

[salix_catus]

Just a "surveillance room" to security, where officers can use "surveillance computers" which are just security camera computers with a "track ... [crewmemer name]" function. Makes a lot of logical and aesthetic sense to hqve such a room in sec. Give people the opportunity to stay within the sec department.

[Frank_Stein]

Just a "surveillance room" to security, where officers can use "surveillance computers" which are just security camera computers with a "track ... [crewmemer name]" function. Makes a lot of logical and aesthetic sense to hqve such a room in sec. Give people the opportunity to stay within the sec department.

If anything from this thread, this.

[Ed Venture]

Just a "surveillance room" to security, where officers can use "surveillance computers" which are just security camera computers with a "track ... [crewmemer name]" function. Makes a lot of logical and aesthetic sense to hqve such a room in sec. Give people the opportunity to stay within the sec department.

If anything from this thread, this.

Agreed. The control room or whatever you want to cool it is an amazing idea

[Ed Venture]

Just a "surveillance room" to security, where officers can use "surveillance computers" which are just security camera computers with a "track ... [crewmemer name]" function. Makes a lot of logical and aesthetic sense to hqve such a room in sec. Give people the opportunity to stay within the sec department.

If anything from this thread, this.

Agreed. The control room or whatever you want to CALL it is an amazing idea

[DyssalC]

To be perfectly fair - and without having read four pages of replies - I believe this has come up before and was shot down with a good reason. It is not actually productive to introduce specialized roles into the regular jobs for the non-RP server. If someone would like to do a security centered gimmick where officers have roles and civilians may take up the mantle of a hall officer, be our guest, but otherwise most people would snap to the nearest general equivalent (ie. would play any of these roles as a normal officer). This especially applies to the warden - since we don't enforce people to do their jobs with the exception of officers, regulars would hate being locked to a single area for the entire round (see also: head of personnel), and the other specialty roles would lose their value.

I would say that none of these roles actually require any sort of moderation to not be played as normal security. This would be handled by the fact that they would be restricted in the same way Detective is by not giving them access to standard sec equipment. That said it's not really an issue even if they did play like normal sec as a specialty role, they'd just be worse at it. And even if the Captain/HoP gives them access to the equipment or an officer passes them gear or whatever that's pretty much the same situation as the Detective requesting standard gear when they don't have access, rude and annoying, and generally frowned upon by the player-base to the point where it'd be taboo enough that it'd deter most from doing so, with the occasional incident, similarly to how it is with Detectives.
The Warden also wouldn't have to be moderated, as they'd have two things keeping them in sec: Their ability to operate as a considerably powerful force via the Control Room, and the fact that their ID is valuable enough to have them mugged for it.

In essence it all comes down to this: Pubbie Joe connects and looks at the available late-join jobs. Pubbie Joe likes playing security, but that is not available, so he picks Hall Monitor. Pubbie Joe then proceeds to play Hall Monitor as if they were an actual proper officer. On the non-RP server, he is allowed to do this and would not be punished for playing his role improperly. Hall Monitor essentially becomes another word for powergaming security officer within 1 month and someone posts a suggestion thread about reducing the amount of special security roles because it's not fun to play against 8 security officers.

I see the idea of "somebody seeing Sec is empty and taking the specialty job to play normal sec" as a bit of a moot point. Consider how frequently that sec fills up, then think of the fact that some people will instead of taking standard sec will take a specialty role to actually play the specialty role. That seems like an incredibly unlikely scenario that, not to mention that if Sec WAS full all the standard equipment would be missing probably and the lesser sec roles like Hall Monitor wouldn't really be able to get any higher-grade sec gear and still wouldn't have brig access. They could TRY to play it like normal sec, but they really wouldn't be able to achieve much.

More realistically, somebody will pick a specialty role at round start with the intention of asking somebody for sec equipment or rushing the sec locker room to steal equipment from somebody opening a locker. I foresee that ending the same way as if a Detective did the same thing, a thorough yelling at and possible conflict between the two, resulting quite possibly in hilarity.

Also, I find people complaining about there being too many sec officers better than people complaining about there not being enough sec officers, because it's fairly easy to make a popular job less popular, but it's difficult to make an unpopular job more popular, which is the point of this idea. I've observed sec being empty/full of brain dead people quite frequently, and I've talked to others who have seen the same thing, and when I played fairly regularly I also recall experiencing the exact same thing constantly, while traitors went on quiet rampages for 60 minutes until they eventually called the shuttle because they were the only one left.

One might argue Detective is in there. The detective almost never does his assigned job, forensics is and has always been sort of a joke, and when he is not actually passing out from being drunk at his desk or in the bar, he is played as if he was security proper. Let's face it, the only reason he's kept around is *monologue and the fact that someone does a pretty good noir impression once every 6 months.

One might also argue forensics is definitely not a joke. I've seen/done a lot of good Detective work with the Forensics scanner, and it's fun to track people down with it. Also, the difference between the specialty roles (besides Hall Monitor) and the Detective that you bring up here is that the Detective isn't actually sec according to so many things that have been said, and Detective's that play as sec are frequently complained about because of this, so much so that it actually deters most people from doing this.

Besides this all, I don't think it's productive to introduce any kind of hierarchy into the publicly available security roles. It is already bad enough when a new player plays captain and decides he is the all-powerful ruler of security, now imagine that except with two other powertripping people taking the higher hierarchy roles and no HoS being present. It's chaotic and not in a good way.

I would assume the Hierarchy idea comes from the Warden. That's fair I suppose. The simple fix is of course to not give the Warden riot access and take away his equipment access. It'd be reasonably clear then that the Warden isn't meant to be a leader position but instead a support position, and it'd get the idea across that they aren't meant to be an out-and-about officer, but they'd still be well armed with a riot shotgun and a single reload, more than capable of defending himself in the event of an attack on security.