repurposing security

[babayetu83]

since you're more likely to find a guy down in virology than in security


split it into purely departmental security and patrolmen. the patrolmen would patrol the station, specifically the parts of the station that do not fall under the purview of a department. medbay would receive the research security, repurposing the delousing chamber that precedes research proper into a checkpoint as research can contain hazardous materials. the service quarter of the station would receive two patrolmen, who could cover that entire corner of the station. engineering, qm, electronics, and mining would receive two patrolmen , and qm and mining would receive a checkpoint as historically large amounts of crime and murder happen there. finally there would be a duo of space patrolmen who get pods designed to patrol for enemy crafts and disable and or destroy them. 

so to sum it all up, brig would be gone, each dept would have dept. security so they'd have on on-scene at all times. everywhere else on the station has patrolmen who would serve the role of what security do now (run around and do laps around the station hoping you find someone comitting a crime.) minus the whole running and doing laps since they'd be assigned to their own parts of the station. i believe this would make security more popular since your job is where the action is rather than having to sit with your thumb up your ass waiting for someone to crime. space patrolmen are there to protect against nerds who get a souped up pod and the station is powerless to stop it/ first line of defense against the syndicakes

[Firebarrage]

This would make things incredibly complicated and I dont think it would solve the problem at all. Be the change you want to see. If you want more security officers then start playing as security!

[Ines]

Puzzling

[Noah Buttes]

I'm not sure what implementing this would actually achieve besides mass confusion.

[Ed Venture]

This would just make things worse.

[warcrimes]

This is a map design, not a gameplay idea

[Lady Birb]

If you want department-specific security, I could revive my old off-duty security idea.

[babayetu83]

This would make things incredibly complicated and I dont think it would solve the problem at all. Be the change you want to see. If you want more security officers then start playing as security!

personally i think the issue with security is that their gameplay flow is unlike any of the other jobs. reactive vs every other job which is proactive. i don't think it's the perfect solution, but i think distributing security to where the action will be will cut down on the proactivity issue. instead of waiting forever for something to happen, you'll have a front-row seat. i was pretty loopy when i wrote all that out but now i see more potential for both dept security and having people patrol the hall. 

so imagine you're in the medbay, some guy starts being a crimer but unfortunately he manages to get away. but just luckily a patrolman happens to be outside allowing you to set up a pincer attack.

[Frank_Stein]

Sec has pretty decent access to most areas of the station.  Usually they're cut off when it comes to more specialized rooms like genetics or chemistry.

Really, most of the issues this is trying to solve can already be accomplished with a fully staffed Sec Team that communicates and cooperates.

[Sord213]

This could all be done already except without attempting to force people to stay in one area. If you have a full sec team and you're a HoS you could attempt to assign secoffs to areas. Will they stay there? lol no, but you can try

If you want to see more people playing security, play security. I personally am not going to play HoS/Security if I know I'm going to be the only sec player, but if I know there's usually going to be an officer or two I'll hop on and help. Forcing the already sparse security to stay in a single area is a step backwards in getting more people to play sec.

[Ed Venture]

Forcing a officer to sit in one place to wait for things to happen sounds more boring than being able to wonder around waiting for things to happen.

[kyle2143]

I think that this is a step in the wrong direction if you want to make security more popular. You did touch on what I think is one of the biggest issues that make security so unpopular/hard to play. That it's all reactionary.

Even on goon2, playing security effectively requires RP if you want to have fun. Because if you just toe the line and "do your job" of protecting the station from antags it gets stale. People don't like having their antag rolls thwarted quickly, and security doesn't like getting murdered by antags silently. You have to create your own narrative to make the round fun, which is hard to do consistently.

But back to sec being reactionary in nature. Other than doctoring, it's the most reactionary job, and doctoring at least is more clear in the proper way to handle interactions. Or at least most clearly fun for everyone.

I think that there are two reasonable ways from a game design perspective to make security a more coveted role to play.
Give security officers some more interesting gameplay mechanics/tools that are not available to other jobs. Part of what turns people off of playing sec is that they think it's restrictive and limiting, having to play by the rules strictly for risk of ban. That's not exactly the case, so long as you're not assisting antags for no reason or permastunning or brigging people silently for no reason. That's where rp comes in, you can beat up someone you don't think is an antag if they annoy you or commit minor crimes, but you can't JUST beat them up. You have to engage them in conversation and stuff.
The other option is to give security officers something tangible to do while not responding to crimes, because patrolling can get tedious. Maybe let them do a bit of computer research or give them clear ways to "upgrade" the brig in some way in preparation.

[Skunkrocker]

Hmmmm... QM and Genetics and the like have goals... why not give the Sec team similar goals? For example, "Give out 10 Tickets" or "Ensure 50% of the Crew survives the shift" or "Explore 30% of the station before the end of the round." That gives people things to do.

[warcrimes]

"Ensure no fun is had"

[Skunkrocker]

So I just tried out Sec last round because I haven't played it in a long time and while several people were disagreeing with me on the server I found playing sec to not be fun at all and I feel like the reason people don't play is because Sec is fucking worthless.

Before anyone gets all up in arms, hear me out. The amount of things you can do and not be considered an antagonist and yet is something Security should be popping you for is staggering. The wiki has an incomplete list of fifteen crimes that half of them can be done by accident and three of them are antag only.

In said sec game I loaded in late into a round and discovered that the north half of Cog1 was pretty much swiss cheese and I needed to get somewhere with some oxygen fast. I ran to Sec, and after getting loaded up for the job, had to run to EVA to get oxygen. When I get there, another character puts a gun to my head and threatens me. Now, the player was just joking around (the gun was empty) and had I been more experienced I probably could have figured that out. But, being that I didn't know that nor had any clues of it (AND this guy was wearing a red spacesuit, but apparently not the Syndicate one), I figured this was just someone being a REALLY nice traitor. Hey, it could happen! However, I already had my baton in my hand when he did it, so I smacked him with it, handcuffed him, and proceeded to head to the Sec office to have a talk with the person. Because there was a clown following me and being creepy, which... yeah... we know what would have happened there if he caught up so I wanted to make sure the doors closed behind me when I entered Sec. I accidentally misclicked and that's all this player needed to get away from me, get the handcuffs removed, and proceed to do some rather nasty damage to me... but then got me to a doctor and healed me so they could explain the situation that they were just kidding around; the additional violence was in order to get me to stop trying to arrest them. They weren't an antag. Laws broken: 4, and two are considered major ones!

Keep in mind: had this person been an antag I was fucked. Tasers just don't do enough, handcuffs can be gotten out of way too easily, riot shotguns are HOP access only, etc. All the things that keep Security from being total fascist dickhead overlords ruining everyone's fun. So either you can't do your job and you're looked down upon with the same scorn as the clown, who has more dignity for being able to fart in your face whenever he wants by pushing you down and stealing your baton, or you're OP ruining the game and bringing everyone down, man.

Now, people said I should just use the ticket system. Honestly, my feelings on the ticket system previously were just that tickets are for goofing around with. LOL have a ticket for being a clown. LOL have a ticket for annoying me. LOL have a ticket for not ordering a crate of bees from QM. LOL have a ticket because I'm drunk. LOL have a ticket because you farted in my face. I still have that feeling today, so correct me if I'm wrong on that or what tickets even do. Floorpills said "well it shames them" but... then if that's the case, why would I use that for infractions within the game that aren't a big deal?

At the end of it no one wants to play Sec because why play Sec when you can do something actually fun? Even the people who said they have fun playing sec, like, there is something they would rather do. It's why they're not playing Sec.

My suggestion? Just get rid of the department.