APD Changelog/updates discussion

[Pseudonym 282]

Quote

APD Handbook Update (12/6/2025)

xsmitherz

Chapter III - Civilian Interaction

• Dealing with New Players in custody
  • Firearms may only be seized if the suspect has one or more LEO Manslaughter charges or a bounty exceeding $300,000.
  • Box Trucks and smaller owned by new players are exempt from APD searches. Limit 1 vehicle per new player in a situation.
    • Exception: If a new player has one or more LEO Manslaughter charges, normal searching rules will apply.
  • Vehicles owned by new players may not be seized. Limit 1 vehicle per new player in a situation.
    • Exception: If a new player has one or more LEO Manslaughter charges, normal seizing rules will apply.
  • Example: Timmy owns 3 full box trucks at Weed Processor, 2 trucks may be searched/seized.

@ xsmitherz  plz read this i put a medium amount of work into it

Ok so, let me go over some axioms real quick:

1. APD officers regularly do use/abuse their powers to spite others / "because i can"
2. APD officers have the discretion to be more lenient than what the handbook allows them to do
3. Players are off put by the abuse of APD power, and this perpetuates the positive feedback loop in the olympus cycle of abuse (E.g: someone screwed you over once, so now you screw everyone else over)

So, this rule ideally would never have to be added, and it is the kind of thing that if we change the culture of the APD enough to be generally more lenient, and have nicer, better officers who don't just want to robo search robo seize everything, we wouldn't need this. They would ideally be willing to self correct and use the appropriate, proportionate amount of response, even if they are allowed to use more. So they would just already be as lenient as these handbook changes are forcing them to be, because they care about players, not just because they are trying not to get punished.

But, this is not an ideal world. For the moment, we might need to force APD officers to chill out with how strict they are to civilians, until they are able to chill out themselves, and figure out when it's ACTUALLY appropriate to seize someones shit.

We should be cautious that as we are forcing APD officers to be more chill by making the handbook stricter on them, that we are also encouraging them to WANT to be more chill, not just that they are being forced to. If you squeeze their ability to do stuff on one end, it might burst out at another end, like some different part of the handbook, where they will start being extra mean to civs. You need to make it so they don't want to be extra mean to civs to begin with, or it will be a never ending battle of trying to solve handbook loopholes/exploits and continuously making it more and more strict on the APD

Technicalities:
- "Box Trucks and smaller" what does "smaller" mean? This would probably be better phrased as "Vehicles with the same or lower base storage than the box truck". If we look at the wiki, the van weighs 5,000 kg, so I'd argue that's pretty obviously "larger" than the 2,509 kg of the box truck, but I'd imagine this rule is trying to make it so vans don't also get searched. Also, what about a mohawk? it's the same virtual storage as a boxtruck, but it's a lot more expensive/powerful. Is it supposed to be similarly protected?
- "Vehicles owned by new players may not be seized [...] Exception: If a new player has one or more LEO Manslaughter" So if a new player starts ifrit dropping on cops and tazing them, their frit can't be seized? Strict adherence to this rule could easily cause APD officers to build even worse blood with civilians, causing them to try to abuse their powers in any other ways they can.
- "Firearms may only be seized if the suspect has one or more LEO Manslaughter charges or a bounty exceeding $300,000." Think about how unfair that could feel to another new player, who only has a p07, gets rekt by a full rebel kit, and when the police arrest that guy he gets to keep all his gear cuz he's new and didn't kill a cop. ALSO SECOND SCENARIO: someone tazing cops is using a firearm that isn't a LEO manslaughter charge

TL;DR: It sucks that this has to be a handbook change to begin with, we need to change the culture of the APD so that we don't need more handbook changes like this in the future, but it might be a required change for right now. Just ensure that this doesn't foster further hatred between the APD and Civs or else this could cause unintended side effects.

[xsmitherz 1825]

I appreciate your concerns and analysis of the changes. You brought up a great point with illegal vehicles so I made that change. 

 

Changing culture is not something that can happen over night, but I am working to shift a lot of things in the APD right now and only time will tell how effective those changes are.

[Treebeard 220]

5 minutes ago, Pseudonym said:

 

TL;DR: It sucks that this has to be a handbook change to begin with, we need to change the culture of the APD so that we don't need more handbook changes like this in the future, but it might be a required change for right now. Just ensure that this doesn't foster further hatred between the APD and Civs or else this could cause unintended side effects.

Yeah it does suck but this is more of a basic guideline for how to act with discretion. Everyone can start on the same page with showing leniency to new players and over time it will become more natural and become a part of the culture. We are really trying to move away from as you put it "I can do this so I will" kind of mentality. Also you had a good point about the illegal vehicles so @ xsmitherz  changed it.

[Gwate 60]

It's so funny looking at the real world parallel of how cops have so much discretion to not be huge fucking cunts but choose to anyway because they are backed by unquestioned power making most police interactions insufferable moments of power tripping galore. I'm so happy APD had to make a rule to not be huge fucking cunts to new players LMAOOOOO. Kill all APD pigs. Too much ego for being online cops.  I hope AP goes on another cop robbing spree again

[Pseudonym 282]

23 minutes ago, Gwate said:

It's so funny looking at the real world parallel of how cops have so much discretion to not be huge fucking cunts but choose to anyway because they are backed by unquestioned power making most police interactions insufferable moments of power tripping galore. I'm so happy APD had to make a rule to not be huge fucking cunts to new players LMAOOOOO. Kill all APD pigs. Too much ego for being online cops.  I hope AP goes on another cop robbing spree again

I think that will encourage the olympus cycle of abuse, personally. Like if you rob cops and try to hold them for 14 minutes and 59 seconds or whatever, then that will be a force making the APD more hateful of civs, while xsmitherz seems to be trying to make them more liking of civs

1 hour ago, Treebeard said:

Yeah it does suck but this is more of a basic guideline for how to act with discretion. Everyone can start on the same page with showing leniency to new players and over time it will become more natural and become a part of the culture. We are really trying to move away from as you put it "I can do this so I will" kind of mentality. Also you had a good point about the illegal vehicles so @ xsmitherz  changed it.

I think another thing that higher ups could do is just start applying more soft pressure to the lower enlisted. Stuff like rhetorically (as in rhetoric) asking a corp "why did you seize that guys frit?", as just a genuine question. If they say something like "cuz it's illegal?" you can ask something like "so? did he do anything extra malicious? you don't just have to seize it because you can".

I remember one of my favorite interactions as APD was with @ Jakey The Snakey  when he was at weed pro, I was raiding it, negotiated to just talk it out with him, then said i'll leave him alone for now if he surrenders 20% of the weed he gathered, and that I'll try to fight him if I see him near drug dealer. I could have just killed him, or died and then kept coming back, but instead it turned into a fun RP experience.

So I think just asking questions for the purpose of rhetoric to other APD officers to see why they chose a harsher punishment, would be good. And it might softly move them to being more lenient/having fun with civs.

[Gwate 60]

On 12/6/2025 at 4:09 PM, Pseudonym said:

I remember one of my favorite interactions as APD was with @ Jakey The Snakey  when he was at weed pro, I was raiding it, negotiated to just talk it out with him, then said i'll leave him alone for now if he surrenders 20% of the weed he gathered, and that I'll try to fight him if I see him near drug dealer. I could have just killed him, or died and then kept coming back, but instead it turned into a fun RP experience.

So I think just asking questions for the purpose of rhetoric to other APD officers to see why they chose a harsher punishment, would be good. And it might softly move them to being more lenient/having fun with civs.

Thats why I fuck with you. That's goated behaviour. You gave an option to roleplay. That's kind of how the issue with roleplaying with cops has been recently. Cops code 3 you and you stop driving, 9/10 they'll still book you just because they can. I've had good experience with APD players before. I remember cops pulling up to frogs and instead of taking all our shit, just told us to pay our bounty and go.

APD can be such a fun role. Play a corrupt cop of some kind, give options to players to roleplay with you in situations like raids. Be nicer when people surrender themselves instead of robo coping. It's good to see APD is moving in a more positive direction. Xsmithers is great for that. It's almost like congratulating a politician for doing his taxes. Its not even bare minimum, roleplaying on cops and not being complete assholes should have been a requirement. 

Except Aegis. I support locking them up. ROBO COP THEM TO HELL

[The Sovereign 109]

On 12/6/2025 at 3:00 PM, xsmitherz said:

I appreciate your concerns and analysis of the changes. You brought up a great point with illegal vehicles so I made that change. 

 

Changing culture is not something that can happen over night, but I am working to shift a lot of things in the APD right now and only time will tell how effective those changes are.

Has this conversation with some apd last night in ts.  Sure the rule changes need some work and tweaking but the spirit is in the right place.