Scheveningen

I don't actually want this pursued on the part of kyres further, I would like this dropped. I will get over the situation, I acted pretty harshly opening with this complaint, and I am sorry for DMing you my frustrations like that and then locking you out of further discussion in DMs. I don't expect you have any interest talking to me, but if you want a more proper apology, I have you unblocked.

BYOND Key: Scheveningen Game ID: cpB-aC2i Player Byond Key/Character name: Kyres/Cupcake Staff involved: no staff were available at the time of this round, probably due to it being mildly late Reason for complaint: Antag play that incorporated very little attempts at roleplaying or sportsmanship - evidenced by the raider team killing a miner who was hospitalized in medbay due to a spectral eel, still don't know why that even happened. The stand-off in medbay was accentuated by the combat mech armed with a laser cannon shooting brazenly at security in lieu of making any meaningful demands or asking for any unorthodox interaction besides violence whatsoever. Myself and Karpati decided to intervene by flanking through deck 3 medbay, and we stopped the mech dead-to-rights. The shoot-out continued, and the raiders splintered apart and were gradually picked off until kyres' raider was left. An incident occurred in where after an encounter between my officer and kyres' raider ended in a draw and while I initially thought they were going to disengage due to us both being injured from it (within character behavior rules of not suicide rushing without decent reason or character development) because I did not back them into a corner, they were able to just leave, due to my own wounds needing tending by the EMT that I retreated towards, with Willey also backing me up. Kyres as their raider apparently popped a combat hypospray and dove back in to fight with a kneebreaker hammer, which decapped Donny Willey, who was my character's best friend. It was sheer luck that my officer was able to grab-pin them to stop them, but given that Ken's BFF just lost his head, Kyres' raider got their head beaten in and otherwise wrapped up the antag team's story then and there. Given the lack of meaningful roleplay attempts coming from the antagonist team coupled by some extreme implementation of antagonist equipment to gain absurd and game-breaking advantages for combat purposes, rather than using bought antagonist equipment to ensure a meaningful narrative is being told, I am accusing the offender - primarily Kyres, who I am certain was the senior in terms of server and roleplay experience of the people in this team, and their mechanical conduct MOST ESPECIALLY stood out of the rest of the heisters here - of powergaming and playing to win as the antagonist. This was an incredibly unpleasant round experience overall and I personally do not play this server as if it's a Call of Duty lobby filled with tryhards trying to min-max game mechanics and therefore make the receiving players who have to deal with them otherwise have an awful time. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation?: Yes, but by the time an admin came online to address the situation, the round changed over. Approximate Date/Time: 9/1-2/2023, 11PM-1AM EST Image evidence of any equipment bought: (note the insane amount of smoke grenades, that is kyres' row: this is because of a specific antag strategy where thermals gives you mob x-ray and lets you attack/shoot people through smoke and it doesn't obscure your vision of mobs in the smoke, which is extremely min-maxxy because sec without thermals can't fight back meaningfully inside smoke, you are either forced to suppress the smoke or get the hell out.)

I'll just add that I can otherwise verify the vacuum rushing did actually happen, though. The point of playing a character, to me, is to fear or avoid pain as much as possible. Deliberately going into a vented area without donning a voidsuit for guaranteed vacuum protection struck me as pretty suicidal and the only person that changed their mind was Kra'jun of those 3 that dove into the communal brig.

Canonicity doesn't concern me atm because everything goes normally during extended plus you don't have to honor deaths by stupid hivebot/greimorian shit. Hayashi Kuri is the one security character that has died the most to threats like these and I would never insist they have to honor a character death to something as genuinely infuriating, poorly timed and abruptly escalated as Giant-Ass Bug Random Event or Hivebots?! Invasion. The problem is standard gameflow. The Horizon should be relatively risk-free to let new players learn the controls and not get fucking owned royally by overtuned smart mobs that deal shitloads of damage and continue to attack you until you succumb to braindeath. 3rd parties have less resources and arguably should be the roles for more experienced players to group up together and do silly shit. Greimorians and hivebots spawning on their own and not as an antagonist game-mode centric prompt of the round is griefy and terrible.

This looks great overall, though I'm not fond of some of the appearances of the single airlocks. The double airlocks rock, though - it makes more sense than the previous double airlock design. It's like those irritating push-poles in a Destiny raid that launches you into a giant pit! I would dare to say that non-secure airlocks should all open/close one-way rather than expanding the door out two ways, this seems more airlock-y to me and seems visually satisfying to watch.

Well, here's the thing: Hivebots in themselves do not roleplay with you. They shoot you, or blow up next to you, or set you on fire, landing you in medbay and giving you the decent risk of actually just round removing and killing you, because their damage ranges from trickling/bleeding you out, to massive damage over time to being set on fire, to outright facetanking the equivalent of a frag grenade. The only things in a round that truly roleplay are the player-characters. There is this sentiment that though hivebots do not add roleplay, they "generate" roleplay by giving the in-round characters some stressors to deal with, as well as injury or risk of death, and thus would cause some emotional strife within the crew. To me, that is kind of questionable. Who here plays regularly that does not go, "Oh for fuck's sake" when hivebots pop and everyone must be torn away either from their immediate duties or from roleplay scenes they are enacting with others in order to RUSH DOWN KILL KILL KILL the hivebot beacon and its little buddies or else they multiply to a level that would otherwise become impossible to deal with if they did not do so. With regards to greimorians, hivebots, the blob, the only players that are actually stimulated by these events are those who are AFK lobby sitting or otherwise not actively engaged with the characters or events in the round already. Personally, I think all the major events are pretty bad. The major event triggers are claimed to be things that give people stuff to do, but even some aspects of my IRL jobs were more engaging than being required to hook up an emitter to kill the blob or the hivebot beacon for the 5th time in a day. People want stuff to do, but is dealing with hivebots or deadly greimorian warriors that can instafrac and poison you anything that people LIKE actually doing? My subjective standard for killing PVE mobs is that should be a sort of gameloop you should opt into (hey, expeditions!), rather than being subjected onto the entire ship because lole, chaos!!! I am not really trying to disparage people who seem to like dealing with hivebots, though, but I think it is bad that hivebots regularly infest the Horizon and it not being its own game mode, personally. While I think the way of dealing with the forced PVE situation should be a lot harsher than the title of this thread or the PR aims to be, the PR author offered a compromise to both parties, and this is the compromise. The compromise should be taken now so as to not embitter a bunch of players to a not-changing lose-lose situation.

This is the opposite of what the captain wiki page says you should do, and I am not saying you should do it. But the captain's most immediately pertinent mechanical, non-management duties involve knowing how the shooting mechanics work, as well as how flying the Horizon works - primarily the bridge staff's work. You must be able to do those when the bridge staff are at half-manning. In one particular round in which the Flak/Longbow and Leviathan were used to shoot down the hijacked Intrepid, there was only a BC and the Captain. I don't think a captain should be anywhere close to being blind if they have to substitute in for a bridge crewman to shoot the ship guns, or navigate the ship in an emergency. The captain should also be ambulatory enough to only require a cane for walking at worst. Helena Artigas is basically the ideal for a currently disabled character that is also captain-rank, I think they're completely fine the way they are presently, and most people should meet around that standard. I do not think being half blind or being bound to a wheelchair should be a viable character concept for any of command, though. My argument isn't for ableism, it's primarily a reasonability and in-character safety concern. The XO is similar to the captain as a mini-captain except without all the all-encompassing management authority. They have to be able to do the job of the BCs if the wage earners are not present. The RD and OM are the only other heads of staff that have strictly management roles and no real requirements for physical work. The OM is a bit debatable, such as if no hangar technicians exist to load the ship guns - it would be bad if they were physically not able to. In my experience with middle management, if your subordinates call out or aren't present at work, higher-level management expects you to do those duties to keep business functioning. The captain is the executive in this situation, and thus it is their job to find replacements and source even from off-duties if it is an emergency duty situation, in preference over doing the job themselves. However, pilots are specialized and thus nearly impossible to replace for the sake of piloting the cruiser. So if the captain has no other choice, they have to be physically able enough to do that, as needed.

I was Verkenner Hoeven this round and witnessed HOS Tokash and Officer Baral and Kra'jun just willfully walk into a breached communal brig without a spacesuit and engage in a vacuum firefight. With regards to the actual brig being split open from outside using EVA, I saw the shutters were blinking yellow, indicating that anyone stepping inside would be taking damage from not having a mask on, to which two of the three personnel that was directly getting involved in the firefight had any internals PPE prepped. Baral died to a combination of not masking up as well as being shot to death. I'm fairly certain Kra'jun wised up and stepped out for a mask at least - actually being smart enough to even bother extracting the prisoner who could've gotten hurt much worse due to the breach, thus they did not achieve Total Zhan Death themselves, which was pretty impressive to me given the 50/50 track record of Tajara characters who either die instantly and hilariously or those who are rugged, lucky survivalists. This entire round had almost absent or otherwise low quality communication with regards to the head of security - which is extremely bad to read from someone who has been playing for more than sufficient enough amount of time to play the role. Their shot calls were, on the OOC side of things, more than simply questionable, but generally in opposition to any meaningful interaction with raiders that were far more talkative and relatively cooperative than average. If the raiders had simply rolled up and shot us, then Tokash's methodology would have been sound to me, but his mode of operation seems to me to fairly obviously instigate rather than de-escalate, as is the purpose of security to do the latter: to control a situation rather than pursue unnecessary risks. My only impressions of Tokash this round was that they were not particularly interested in handling the situation in a more nuanced or interesting manner than simply just aiming to shut the raiders down and suppress them as a threat or entity entirely - he was completely unmoved by any other perspective that was not his own regarding how to handle the situation leading up to the shootout, which my character warned would happen and would be worst-case scenario. This was not really an exceptional "Tokash as HOS" round either, this is sort of an ongoing pattern, to me, where most rounds with Tokash running the show in security end the same way. I've seen this particular HOS walk into situations with much forethought, they get severely injured, and then stick around in the area for longer than they should, which risks permanent brain injury or death - which is not something the HOS should be doing. I think the conduct and style of Tokash needs to change a lot going forward - and I think there also needs to be more thought of risk, injury and death, especially for a character that is in the security profession. And, honestly, if the HOS is interested in forcing engagement with the antagonist in terms of creating interesting dialogue - coordinate with the officers to get flanks and encircle the group, hand out the door maglocks and sandbag the cut-off points. The options exist, they are just not being used.

I think captains cannot get away with disability as they are liable to be expected to physically shore up any weaknesses in direct bridge staff duties depending on the current limitations of bridge cr*w.

How do you open the crew armory or an operations weapon container without someone with armory access? Hivebots require at least an engineer with an available engineer with an emitter to destroy the highly lethal beacon (which, if you are unlucky, will cause the infinite fire bug depending on how the server is feeling), and armory equipment in the form of laser rifles or shotguns to mop up the other hivebots. I see no reason why hivebots should not get the trigger exception like other debilitating random events do.

this would be funny as fuck

BYOND Key: Scheveningen (scheveningen on discord) Total Ban Length: Indefinite Banning staff member's Key: Arrow768 Reason of Ban: argumentum ad hominem isn't wanted here, and you were warned about this before. Reason for Appeal: I've taken a fair bit of time since the last disaster thread I got myself into while immensely angry and frustrated to discover and acknowledge exactly where I went wrong, as well as how many times I went wrong, with regards to my online conduct on the forums here, as well as some very specific delusions that I had to figure out weren't actually real. It was as of a month ago that I also discovered some more personal things about myself that became very consciously revealing to me, especially with regards to a combination of uncontrolled and heavily unmedicated behavior, as I would prefer to call it. I don't want to go into specific PII much further, but suffice it to say that I am now very remorseful and aware of my overall conduct, not only feeling for the prior situation that triggered the application of the forum ban. It is difficult for me to ask for forgiveness when a thought hangs in my mind that I may just as well not deserve it, and I accept that I just may not get it from every person I ask for it from, for I have had a lot of chances that some people have never gotten. Be that as it may, this is my first permanent forum ban, and I have done a lot of work on my mental and behavioral backend that I feel very confident that a situation that would merit a forum point is simply not something I'm motivated into getting myself into. I feel I have matured for reasons I will once again not get into and I am fully done with hurting the comfort and safety of shared online spaces, in addition to dying on stupid hills. I am fully aware of the consequences of what will arise if I do not abide by my words here.

I acknowledge I messed up after having better assessed this information. I apologize for all I have said, specifically to both Read and Peppermint. I agree with the whitelist strip, and have nothing left to add.

For clarification, when I said, "I did not want to deal with it either", it is directly within the context of, "I do not want to play as the head of security when I play as captain", because I very clearly did not say, "I did not want to deal with the guy so I just went out of my way to round end him." Is there any reason why you both seem to think I am lying when I clarified this? Is there any reason why you are both led to believe that I actually meant to round end this character from the get-go? Because, it is being used as evidence for why my whitelist was stripped by the team, so I am curious as to why this is still being pushed despite my clarification in this thread to the contrary. For the most part, the lot of you are largely intent on barraging me with, "this is bad command play" but not providing any example of how it should've been handled. How do you handle an antag that is flying around at lightspeed with hyperzine and high-strength caffeine you can only get from hacking the drinks vending machine when the entire manifest is understaffed and there's a single SHELL investigator, who initially instigated by throwing a flashbang at said antagonist, immediately spooking said antagonist to flee, and the only reason I was even there in the first place was because I was trying to arrive to the scene to talk to the person first and ideally get them to submit their contraband (i.e., the guns that were reported by multiple witnesses.) That shell was absolutely not catching up to said antag that is way too fast for them. Why am I faulted for even remotely getting involved? You have not once treated me with a minimum standard of dignity. Your responses to me just in this reply reek of sarcasm and a tone that has a disinterest in reading anything I have to say as anything more than this profile of me as some bad player. I do not know what the problem is, because I do not really know you nor do I have any remote memory of any recent interactions with you on account of being fully intent on avoiding any interaction with you due to what happened during the last staff complaint. I had no interest or desire to interact with you, period. I am forced to, in this case, because you are in a position of influence and utilized that influence to strip my whitelist under circumstances I am disputing. You have insisted there were other options to resolve this situation, the ones that were cited were dismissed because 1. there is staff enforcement precedent against non-security getting involved in security matters (I surely have a note for that, so presumably that applies to someone else too), and 2. that the crew armory was not expected to be needed for the issue, nor did I have any intention to compel anyone to be armed at the crew armory because it was not expected to be needed. I have not seen written a more compelling resolution to that case that were actually viable options. If you were to ask any player currently, if someone on the crew is reported with a gun (or more), they would modify their character behavior to take the situation very seriously, because being armed with a lethal weapon (such as what a gardener should not reasonably, under normal circumstances, have) is a serious situation. Prior to my arrival to operations, it would be expected that we, (as you highlighted in your own observer logs) as in myself and the investigator, would both arrive to handle the situation and try to speak to the gardener in question. Instead, the investigator typed 2 lines of dialogue, and the flashbang went out as the preferred form of escalation. And I thought I had heard there was a gunshot line up with the flashbang detonating before I arrived, in addition to the fact of my hearing from a witness that they believed a gunshot went off in operations around the time of the flashbang. I will not dispute anymore that there was no gunshot. I agree to that, because the logs show such. It did not change that was what was reported, and I thought I heard it, but it was likely a result of hearing the flashbang at a distance. Again, I do not understand why my whitelist was stripped given that I had incomplete or incorrect facts or information given to me in IC due to the fact that I was lagging behind in being present for the scene to even try to talk to that antagonist in the first place to prevent that response to the chase from even occurring - in addition to the fact that the investigator escalated the situation far too early with the flashbang - something I was not in line of sight for until the gardener blew past everyone and then myself. Do I wish that round went differently? Yes, of course I do! The idea that I directly went out of my way to do wrong against another player is a complete misattribution of my own intent, and the thought that it cannot be any other reason why that interaction went so poorly is itself proof of assuming bad faith of me without evidence, which itself is uncharitable and bad faith.

That is not really feasible. Real life is more important than in-game.

Note: The following post is going to cite a recent round that was had yesterday that, coincidentally, was held during a very similar time-frame/time of day as the in-round incident that provoked Peppermint to strip my whitelist. The round that will be cited for the purpose of this complaint will have several character names involved, but by no means am I attempting to call them out for any particular rule-breaking behavior. On the contrary, their actions are going to be highlighted because their decision-making is incredibly standard (believable, non-rulebreaking) behavior. During round cm5-cigQ, it was a standard lowpop round, it is apparently traitor. I latejoined as my surgeon, and pharmacist Lakshmi Vemulakonda tells me that Mando Forslund (i.e., the exact same antagonist character as the day before in the other lowpop traitor round) has made the rounds, stealing a captain's outfit, changing their identification to all-access and for all intents and purposes attempting to be the captain. Hasim Al-Min, unfortunately for Mando, is already present for this lowpop round as the Horizon's actual captain, with real authority.. In addition, the only security present was Scarlett Weyfield, a security investigator. Note: Not an officer, not a head of security, not even a warden. Because of Mando Forslund creating an issue where they, in a drunken stupor, shot Joseph Coldsmith and fractured his skull as a result, Lakshmi was present in the moment to attempt to disarm this gun, and would attempt and succeed in pulling Coldsmith out of the frying pan within the span of a minute thereafter, so to speak. So, to recap, the pharmacist did their job by not immediately choosing to go on a manhunt, and prioritizing the health of their colleague. At this point the criminal behavior was much more blatant than simply breaking into the captain's office and LARPing in the ship captain's fit. The captain (see figure A) decides to open the armory and designates themselves (as is their right as captain, because they can do this to fill in for a department that badly needs the immediate leadership - this is directly stated on the captain's wiki page as a thing they can do - even as it says you're not expected to do the actual work, it's unreasonable to force-conscript people who clearly have no knowledge of handling security situations, either) the step-in for a non-existent head of security in order to be able to lead the effort - as well as provide additional support for the investigator, which should sound incredibly familiar. Both the captain and the investigator are equipped for a code blue situation, in the usual security combat armor and firearms - because Mando Forslund was reported as armed and had already been reported doing criminal behavior. It is by this point I join the round as my surgeon. A few minutes after, give or take between 2-4, the XO also arrives to the situation (see figure B for the end of round manifest, but I will clarify who latejoined at what point in a second). However, the most they are really equipped with is an armor vest and their own personal disruptor. Anyway, from my perspective, I had to fix Coldsmith's fracture and pull out his shrapnel. Fairly straight forward. Meanwhile at the bar, the captain, the investigator, and the XO have all positioned to corner the antagonist of the round. The XO is mostly only present as they have recently arrived, to simply monitor the situation and see how it would resolve. Shots were eventually fired, the XO was caught by a bullet and received a fracture, while the captain and investigator were pretty much unharmed due to their equipped armor, having both been able to take Mando down as a team. On the other hand, Mando Forslund sustains systemic injuries, arterial bleeding, which were complex and spread around enough that it took my surgeon roughly 15-20 minutes in total to handle them after the pharmacist assisted my surgeon in stabilizing them, and this took precedent before I was able to treat the XO's injuries, as they were far more stable than Forslund. By the time I was able to discharge Forslund and the post-op on the XO was also complete (read as, this was arond an additional 20-30 minutes after the antagonist was pacified), a head of security latejoins and finally arrives. (See figure C). Another few minutes after this, Officer Cooper also arrives to the shift (see figure D). I suppose I don't really need to go in excruciating detail about how the logic of dealing with an active antagonist during a low population round is not the same as dealing with an antagonist when you have a wealth of personnel to be able to delegate tasks to, in addition to being able to sit in a more secure area and aid them with security camera support or access to a specific department, for example. I would fairly assume that it is still the responsibility of acting command staff to aid security in what is essentially a security situation so that the criminal can be caught and the threat to other people passes. Even if it is low-pop. That being said, figure E is also shown in the below spoiler to show the antagonists' purchased equipment, as well as the round's duration. (Don't worry about the budget inconsistency, that's bugginess inherent to the uplink implant, that's been a known issue for some years now but doesn't really break anything.) I think I'd be hard pressed to say that any behavior in that round, from the antagonist or otherwise, was especially problematic in a rule-breaking sense. To the actual point, several correlations can be drawn from command's decision making in that round and the command decision-making that was involved in my captain round, on account of having few options due to no personnel. I think it would be extremely unreasonable to expect a perfect resolution to an issue when active command staff have to improvise the situation due to a bare minimum of active characters in the round. The power of the captain's ability to delegate and command dramatically drops when there is not enough professionals to delegate an issue for another person to solve. So, should I still be blamed, when it is patently obvious I had few choices in the matter due to the nature of a lowpop round simply not having the people you need, and the fact that I play a character that views it antithetical to principle of correct leadership to force-conscript other people to shoot down and suppress a dangerous and unpredictable criminal when their job skills have absolutely nothing to do with that? I also have to bring up figure F, in which the OOC statement by the handling admin was seen later in the day in another round stating, "my last round was in November". I'm sure the immediate defense is going to be, "I was exaggerating/making light of the topic", but I think that needs to be taken into serious consideration, as this better explains my impression of Peppermint's tone and particularly counter-intuitive justification for their admin decision. I also think it's really unlikely to be a joke, given "I haven't played since November (i.e., 5 months)" is a very specific timeframe to be citing if it were just a joke. How fair is it, exactly, for an administrator who has apparently not played a round on Aurora for so long - to be determining what is a whitelist issue when they don't seem to have an actual hand on the pulse for what the game state is like currently? Logs can only tell you so much - it should be self-evident they don't tell the whole picture, and it is up to a human being to more reasonably extrapolate 'why' from any given issue - neither the Aurora main discord or the Relay is evident of what actually goes on as raw and succinctly as playing a round or more on Aurora does. So, did Peppermint just log on to observe, poke holes in my command play for a round situation that was very clearly not ideal, and then immediately justify this was a whitelist issue to have an excuse to permanently strip my ability to play those command roles? Or is there something about that previous round that is not being said that would be a very strong case for the admin that issued out that punishment for a situation that was mostly just a pretty forgettable round? Image evidence spoiler:

In current support of this. I once held the opposite view the last time this made the rounds, but I believe anywhere between a 180-day to a 360-day cut-off period would be appropriate to implement. Preserving the quality of rounds is much more important than having a sheer quantity of a whitelisted pool of people.

He displayed the gun and announced it to some bystanders long before I arrived to the situation (the flashbanging in ops). The investigator also observed the person trying to sell that gun, unsuccessfully, to the merchant. He also made a point of telling people he had a rifle, too, to my understanding. This "rifle" ended up being a harpoon gun, but this was the information I was given.

Proof?

Hyperzine is not the only thing that creates such boosts, and it also does not create jitters, not even if you overdose yourself. This is, however, an innate effect of caffeine intake, and an innate effect of taking 13 Loko/Getmore Energy as it is called now. What DOES create jitteriness is any caffeine effect, such as the most powerful currently attainable caffeine effect that can be acquired by anyone on the station, which is Thirteen Loko/Getmore Energy. It is hacked through the vending machines in the contraband section. Caffeine, unlike hyperzine, is not defined like the CE_SPEEDBOOST flag is, and is not given a reasonable cap at all - You can stack different types of caffeine into one drink, for instance, and you're given more speed as a result. It is also explicitly defined as having violent jitteriness as a side effect as long as it is processing in a mob's system. Unlike hyperzine, it is removed from one's system much quicker than hyperzine, which is why initially in that gunfight in hydroponics he was able to take several hits, dash out, and as he was caught in the hallway foyer near the bar, he suddenly slowed down to a crawl, because the energy drink entirely fell off. So no, he did not just take hyperzine, if he took it. Everyone saw him twitching.

By the way, had the flashbang not immediately gone off and the guy running at 5x time dilation past the majority of people in the hallway not happened, roleplay would have actually occurred. Arguably, Eleanor would have to be blamed for escalating the situation before I arrived to speak to the gardener and attempt to convince them to stand down and hand over the weapons.