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# System prepended metadata

title: 'Persistent Prisoners: A Philosophy of IC Self-Moderation'

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# Persistent Prisoners: A Philosophy of IC Self-Moderation

As it stands, the security department exists for nothing except antag-hunting on most servers because such an expansive range of gameplay is considered "griefing" and handled out-of-character (OOC). In reality, admins are the real police of the station, banning players for "powergaming" and griefing and sabotage.

Players *should* be able to, for example, start mutinies against perceived injustice on the station -- and pay the price if they fail. Players *should* be able to treat suspicion modes (changeling, cult, traitor) like the Mafia style games that inspired them -- with suspicion. That involves killing people who may not end up deserving it, and that would normally run afoul OOC rules. Changeling modes should actually be like The Thing sometimes!

The Persistent Prisoner system is a radical re-thinking of policing and moderation in Space Station 13. It removes the slog of everday game action living and dying by the caprice of admins, and allows for IC events to regulate themselves. Shitters become *in-character* shitters and pay the price, in-character, over many rounds. It works best in a trusting community where only proven members may play the most important security roles. Please note that **this proposal does not intend to remove admins from the game or even make them no longer sovereign. It just adjusts their role to a supervisory one instead of a micromanagerial one.**

### Longer brig sentences

Brig sentences are too short on typical SS13 servers to work with Persistent Prisoners. In a system where in-character (IC) security takes most admin responsibilities, they need to be able to have meaningful enforcement mechanisms.

- Minor crimes carry a minimum of an 5-minute sentence.
- Medium crimes carry a minimum of an 15-minute sentence.
- Major crimes carry a minimum of an 30-minute sentence and may warrant permabrig (round-length).
- Capital crimes crimes all carry a permabrig sentence or the death penalty. If a capital crime is something that would warrant admin intervention on a normal ruleset (griefing), it can carry over into the next round(s). 

[This article](https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Space_Law#Minor_Crimes) servs as a good rule of thumb on what constitutes a crime in any of these categories. Breaking someone else out of perma is a capital crime. Repeat offenses can move a crime up to the next category. here will still, however, be game rules. Things like ERP and metafriending still = ban.

These tough brig sentences both disincentize acting like a shitter just for fun and to free up sec resources so sec doesn't spend five minutes chasing someone to give them a three minute sentence, only to repeat it later (unless an admin steps in). It also encourages RP such as appealing to the captain to commute a sentence or hold a trial.

But longer sentences within a round are not enough to stop griefers, of course. They'll grief again with each new round.

### How Persistent Prisoners works

The Persistent Prisoner system is a radical re-thinking of policing and moderation in Space Station 13. It removes the exhausting grind of everday game events living and dying by the dissection of admins, and allows for IC events to regulate themselves. Shitters become *in-character* shitters and pay the price, in-character, over many rounds as prisoners. It works best in a trusting community where only proven members may play the most important security roles.

The system works like this: a member of security can set an option on the prisoner computer that flags a prisoner as a persistent prisoner, and sets a value for how many penalty rounds (or *penalties*) that the prisoner player gets, along with a detailed explanation of crimes. The penalty is an OOC concept linked to an account: If the imprisoned player ends the round in the permabrig or in the prisoner section of the shuttle, the next X rounds they play they will spawn as a **prisoner** in the permabrig, where X is the number of penalties they've accumulated. A prisoner can accumulate up to five penalties per round. Execution can only result in one or two additional penalties. This will prevent summary executions -- which allow no opportunity for escape -- from being doled out more frequently than permabrig. All deaths while marked with a penalty counts as an execution, to prevent players from suicide bombing every round to avoid any penalty, and to create a realistic impulse for survival.

Security can undo penalty rounds applied on the same round if they realize they messed up, but cannot undo penalty rounds accumulated in other rounds -- it's OOC at that point, and it this prevents getting your friend to log in as a sec officer to let you off the hook. Only admins can do subtract from a previously accumulated penalty-round balance. As stated previously, only proven members members of the community may have the power to play roles that can apply penalty rounds. Newer players may assume the roles of "Security Rookie," who will only have the power to apply penalty rounds in extreme, lowpop situations where they are the only members of sec. After a certain number of hours played as a Rookie, a player can play a fully empowered Security Officer. This privilege can be revoked. 

Importantly, **players cannot accumulate penalty rounds while antagonists,** because the persistent prisoner system is meant to replace OOC penalties for griefing, and antags are expected to kill and sabotage as part of their role. Persistent prisoners can, however, roll for some antag roles with a greatly reduced probability. This serves the purpose of not allowing players to metagame rule-out an escaped prisoner as an antag, protecting the paranoid atmosphere. And how cool would it be if a bunch of prisoners were trapped in perma with a ling, crying for help?

Persistent prisoners spawn in the permabrig. The prisoner's gameplay is allowed to try to break out or be broken out by someone else, but mechanics will be tweaked so that most penalty rounds involve hanging out and peacefully serving the sentence. Once his sentence of X rounds in perma is served, he spawns as a normal player with a clean slate. This is also true if the prisoner escapes on the shuttle when the round ends. There is a random chance that in the permabrig there may spawn, in locations like under bedsheets or in the toilet or even in prisoner pockets, useful items for escape. This includes a gas mask and air tank, a welder, a wrench, a screwdriver, etc. The random existence and location of these items prevent sec from powergaming and going in to remove them at roundstart. Prisoners can have objectives that function like "good behavior" and award "1 additional penalty round served" credits. This could be like farming a certain number of hydroponic plants for use by various department, or mining enough ore if in the labor camp. Attempting to break out of prison adds penalties.

To mix things up there's also a small (somewhere below 20%) chance that the persistent prisoner spawns as a **fugitive**, a semi-antag role that is not exempt from further penalties like full antagonists but may have special objectives. The fugitive spawns at the arrivals shuttle or somewhere in maintenance, with nothing but an orange jumpsuit and a mechanical toolbox: no backpack, no ID. His job is to survive and avoid capture for the duration of the round and escape on the shuttle. If he does so, one penalty is deducted from his balance. But, if a fugitive ends the round dead or in custody, he's hit with an automatic +1 penalty. The fugitive may have no objectives, or may randomly start with special objectives such as "make sure permabrig prisoners X and Y escape the station alive and free," or any behavior that the community would want to promote. The completion of a fugitive's objective rewards a further -1 penalty rounds. Rolling fugitive is a rare treat, but because it's for shitters it isn't necessarily an unmitigated good to roll. It captures the intensity of being a real fugitive because of the high risk and high reward.

Prisoner and fugitives may kill and destroy to survive and escape. This may add to their total penalty rounds if they are caught, charged with the penalty round(s), and secured in perma at round-end again. Things like prison-break tools and fugitive status will, however, be rare. They exist to occasionally give the prisoners varied gameplay and reasons to stay interested, so it isn't just "log in, AFK, repeat for X rounds." But for the most part being a prisoner will be much more boring than playing as a free member of the crew. It's punishment, after all.


**Sec officers who abuse their power and falsely give other players penalty rounds will be banned by admins.** Importantly, admins are always able to review penalty round balances and modify them without anyone necessarily ahelping -- admins will see a readout of who has how many and for what reason(s). Thus, the logic of the admin is flipped: the persistent prisoner system will shift the role of security away from antag hunters and into policemen, and the role of admins away from IC policemen and into that of detached ensurers of balance who oversee sec. Ultimately, it will reduce the need for active admins, and will create self-regulating gameplay. That's because they will only need to be reactive to one department instead of actively managing the entire crew.

This system will be tweaked as it is experimented with, and may require a more robust security features on the station -- more patrolling [securitrons](https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Beepsky#Securitron) at roundstart, for example. It will also likely require a more robust detective investigation system, such as security cameras that take a snapshot every few seconds. The "IC metaround" principle of enforcement could even be extended to allow sec to view something centcomm records of cameras from the previous round. These strong measures are justified IC by being implemented by an authoritarian megacorporation paranoid about the safety of its assets and human resources.

**Specific points:**

- Persistent prisoners can only be station-bound stealth antagonists. No wizard, no nuke ops, no xenomorph.
- Fugitives can also be proper antagonists, but it's *extremely* unlikely to roll both.
- Fugitives can accummulate additional penalties beyond the penalty of being caught if they commit additional capital crimes.
- Fugitive-antagonists still get penalties added or deducted based on the normal fugitive criteria, but can't get further roles -- a traitorling will still be incentivized to use its powers to escape. 
- However, fugitive-antagonists cannot accumulate additional penalties for new crimes committed. Antags are allowed to be antags.
- Players with above fifteen penalty rounds are marked IC to sec as "extremely dangerous" and spawn in solitary confinement (or, very unlikely considering their penalty county, they could roll fugitive)
- As mentioned, persistent prisoners have greatly reduced changes of rolling antag. This likelyhood is *further* reduced as penalty count increases, until it becomes zero at penalty count 18. This number is because the 1 in 200 possibility of a solitary-confinement prisoner being antag is extremely cool.
- The likelihood of rolling fugitive drops when above five penalty rounds. At 20 it becomes zero.
- A player's total outstanding penalty rounds may never exceed twenty.
- Security can add penalty rounds to already-dead players. This means they can discover a culprit who blew himself up. It's treated like an execution: capped at two.
- A penalty round is only considered served if the player is alive and connected for one-third or more of the total round time. The "alive" clause encourages plausible RP around self-preservation.
- If you die in perma from environmental by a non-sec character, NPCs, or environmental factors, that does not count as an execution for penalty accumulation purposes.
- Spacing oneself from perma spaced counts as ending the round in perma for penalty accumulation purposes. Code can just check for death after broken perma windows.
- Killing prisoners as sec is against the OOC rules and an admin will step in. This prevents sec abuse of above (not wanting to deal with prisoners)
- Dying anywhere outside of perma with a penalty flag counts as an execution. This prevents players from killing themselves with a bomb every round to avoid penalties.
- The sec officer who applied a penalty in a previous round can appeal to an admin to reduce it, if the officer feels that that he was unreasonably harsh.
- Antags can't accumulate penalties, but to sec the application of penalties looks the same during the round.
- Even if a security officer is an antag, applying unfair penalties is not allowed.
- Security officers can commit crimes, and their colleagues are expected to arrest them and charge them like they would with any other crewman.
- Sec officers getting arrested by their colleagues should have penalties at least twice as severe. 
- A regular crew member breaking out a prisoner is a capital crime.
- The crew is allowed to hunt down and capture escaped prisoners and fugitives. This helps compensate for the increased responsibility sec has in this game mode. Crew killing escaped prisoners is a crime, but an IC issue that may be justified upon investigation.
- Killing fellow prisoners is a major crime.
- Freeing players who were imprisoned by accident becomes a main admin duty. It should be a quick logs check, followed by a single button that wipes the penalties applied last round and . This is easy and low-touch.


**Server rules that will still result in OOC bans:**

- Griefing by sec or the captain (as the ultimate commander of sec), especially if it results in penalty rounds. This includes killing prisoners in ways that get around the execution flag.
- Metafriending/metacomms, because that can't be regulated by IC gameplay. 
- Silicons disobeying laws. Perhaps this could be enforced in a similarly persistent way by Science, though.
- Racism and bigotry.
- OOC in IC, IC in OOC.
- Trying to reset your penalties by making a new account is ban evasion and will result in a permaban.

**Features that might be cool:**
- Some persistent (next-round only) features that other departments can get late-game synergize well with Persistent Prisoners: late-game Science researching something that makes it so in the next round, the permabrig has Plasma-reinforced windows. This gives small incentives for research to do things that aren't wiped away upon the round ending, making their jobs more meaningful.
- Penalty rounds could automatically fall off without being played through. Perhaps a rate of 1 penalty removed per 48 hours or so.


## Relying on admin action sucks

The game should work with no admins online. If the game relies on admins being vigilant at all times, there's a design flaw.

Admins on any server will be lazy, that's just how people are. They will ban people for general chaos and confusion because it's just too difficult to parse. When players get into sufficiently complex and chaotic situations that might otherwise be *fun*, there's a looming possibility of an unwarranted ban being applied. This creates a chilling effect on getting into and complex situations. A painstaking appeal on the forums that picks apart logs might bring you justice. Even if it does, that's a fucking pain in the ass. And that's assuming the server staff is *really good*.

Most SS13 servers, on the other hand, are staff treehouses where bans are handed out with emotion and caprice by grown men wearing Burger King crowns and bath-towels as capes. Finding an admin that actually admits to making a mistake is like finding a politician that admits to having lied. There is not much in the way of accountability.

Appeals are typically exhausting and humiliating experiences where you have grovel before of an oligarchy of arbitrary and resentful dweebs. No fun game should involve the majority of its players having to, at one point or another, register to a forum, submit paperwork in the *proper format*, and prostrate themselves in front of the Virgin High Council for a chance at returning to a community they enjoy being a part of. That's fucking wack and it's the most embarrassing institution of SS13. If it's a necessary evil, it should only occur in the rarest and most extreme of circumstances.

It's hard to imagine anything but two states of affairs when anyone can freely join a server and cause mayhem: Admin micromanagement, or every round being a deathmatch. But this dilemma only exists when the game mechanically hinges on the eternal vigilances of admins, because there are no mechanics for persistent IC consequences.


## Commentary

I'll try to predict and address some problems with this system.

### Some bans are warranted for persistent griefing each round that never reaches the level of Capital Crime, and Persistent Prisoner doesn't solve this

This is probably the biggest issue with this system. A player breaking into sec and stealing a gun every round is annoying and shouldn't be possible, and those only count as "major" crimes that are handled in-round. There are three responses to this:
- The most annoying sub-capital crimes will be in the major category, and these carry a *minimum* sentence of 30 minutes. That's enough to make most people think twice about having their round ruined.
- the Persistent Prisoner system is designed for communities with some degree of cohesion and trust. Do not implement it in a place like Paradise Station.
- In exceptional circumstances, an admin can ask a perennial shitter to shape up or face OOC consequences, such the admin personally applying penalties or even a ban.
- More crimes can be moved into the Capital category if necessary, with small (1-round) penalties. Possessing explosives, assault with a deadly weapon, and sabotage all come to mind. The linked Space Law page is just a template.

### Rolling a prisoner doesn't make sense for my metanamed character/non-metanamed character

You griefed, and now your roleplay must adjust.

Your character isn't meta-linked to last round -- you're a new prisoner who was tran    sferred to the station prison for (insert RP justification). Each round is a new life, just like in the SS13 we've always known. You're just serving an in-game penalty instead of being banned.

### You're just trading one admin management requirement for another

True. But the nature of the management is very different.

- Sec jobs with the ability to apply penalties will be unlocked like heads of staff on many codebases, meaning they are more trustworthy than the average greyshirt that stumbles in from the hub and therefore require less management.
- Most of the heavy-lifting is done IC. Admins only have to deal with the percentage of that heavy-lifting that goes wrong.
- Sec can be robusted by determined criminals. Admins are omnipotent.
- Admins now only have one department they really have to watch, as opposed to several.
- Admins don't have to intervene immediately for the sake of the round -- that's the IC job (or IC failure) of sec. They can calmly react and dole out remedies later.


### Players will want to be prisoners because there's fun stuff involved.

This can be addressed by simply tweaking the various probabilities mentioned: % chance of rolling a fugitive, % chance of rolling antag as prisoner, % chance of a useful tool spawning.

The robustness of automatic security features can be beefed up to make prison breaks exceptional and mostly suicidal.

It should be noted that I spent most of this document describing the *exciting* aspects of life in prison, because exciting stuff is fun to talk about. But mostly perma will be perma.

I also don't think we should take the vindictive view that all disruptive forms of gameplay must be met with harsh punishment. A deterrent can also act as an interesting and unique, if undesirable, form of gameplay.

If your server really requires authoritarian gradeschool measures to function, it probably doesn't have the right culture for Persistent Prisoners.

### What about powergaming restrictions? Powergaming ruins RP

Powergaming almost always falls under another crime such as major trespass, theft, or possessing a deadly weapon, and can be handled IC as such.

### Animosity towards sec will be enormous

This is solved by server culture and admins. Sec are IC mini-admins, and not everyone gets the privilege of playing them.

### Security can't easily check for certain types of sabotage. Sec could easily meta-imprison the wrong person

This can be solved by stronger detective mechanisms, like the security cameras taking snapshots with accompanying chat-and-action logs, and by having more detectives per round. Another easy solution is to have dangerous mechanisms like the supermatter computer automatically record IC logs accessible by engineering and sec computers. But covering one's tracks in sophisticated ways -- including framing -- should be allowed. But framing victims will be rare because of the difficulty required, and the rare occurrence of an accidental false meta-imprisonment could be fixed be an admin. Simply checking the logs to see who committed what crime is a very low-touch admin duty. Having a "re-roll imprisoned player fresh and without penalties" should be a one-click power they have.

### There will be "prison mains" who only want to play as prisoners

This should be a legitimate form of gameplay, but prison security measures should be tuned strictly enough so that prisoners rarely get the opportunity to grief.

### Being "trustworthy" doesn't mean you're fit to essentially moderate the game, especially when you're an involved party in the conflict

Enforcing IC space law is not game moderation. This proposal intends to separate IC space law from OOC server rules.

### What if all of security becomes incapacitated or no one is "trustworthy" enough? does the admin have to step in then, or is the station just left to its demise?

Security becoming incapacitated is an IC issue. This should be a possible outcome for certain types of gameplay and certain events unfolding. Anarchy sometimes happens in the game of Space Station 13.

If no "trustworthy" players are on, then rookies can perhaps hand out minor prison sentences as a skeleton-crew contingency. This can be tested and tweaked.

### Doesn't this turn the game into "log in, afk for 2 hours, and leave just so you can play again" simulator? 

this require much more effort than simply waiting for an OOC ban to expire. The game code will check for idling -- it already does this on most servers. Consider that they will have to do this for many rounds
this is indeed a tedious punishment
far more onerous than forgetting about ss13 for a week and then coming back
this system is intended to encourage being active rather than idling to get out of prison fastest

### Won't security need to closely watch prisoners for the whole round? That sounds boring

Code and map layout can be tweaked as needed to make prisons sufficiently secure (but still possible ot overcome)

### What stops a prisoner from being a shitter once they're in the brig

Penalties can still be accumulated by prisoners for doing crimes (attacking other prisoners, breakout attempts). Offenders can also be put into solitary confinement, as mentioned previously.