Scheveningen

If you continue with this grudge-carrying nonsense, having already blocked me over discord and absolutely refused to talk to me to settle and clarify the issues you seem to have with me, then I'm going to your boss to lodge a staff conduct complaint. I am seriously pissed how you've absolutely refused to talk to me one on one prior to this complaint being made. You have made it your effort to demonize me in this complaint and you have likewise made no effort to be reasonable whatsoever, and no effort to respond in order to have a civil conversation. I have zero interest in this server politics crap that you're partaking in.

I have absolutely zero clue what you're talking about in relation to last night, especially considering you're not being specific and you haven't presented any screenshots to help me understand what you're referring to. I have zero recollection into getting into an argument with you in OOC. I literally had an administrator delete the warning from your account. I decided this, nobody else did. What more do you want, exactly? I did investigate your case. I thought you were in the wrong. Garnascus annoyed and pressured me enough (i say this only with love and tolerance, garn) and presented living server-side proof that apparently a captain can break any regulation he pleases in an emergency situation, and stretched out an argument long enough to the point where I decided to give up and relent, to the point where I up and decided to lift your warning altogether. Much as I protest that standard there's literally nothing I can do about it. But, are you insinuating you want me fired from staff or something? Based on what you're saying it kinda seems like you're holding a really nasty grudge, apparently? Did me telling you that you should communicate better as a head of staff strike a nerve? I apologize if that's the case but don't you feel that perhaps you're overreacting?

I meant mostly that people tend to be uncooperative with their heads of staff if they think their commanding officer is a total comdom. Which is... half reasonable, half not, since it turns into personally charged shitfits and etc. Pretty neutral for the most part but I don't necessarily oppose this application either. I'm too out of touch to give endorsements anymore.

At that point, Unknown, there's pretty much nothing you can do in those kinds of situations. You can't erase what people say from the record when it's publicly broadcasted like that, and the station was too busy being in a situation where half of the enlisted crew were dead, wounded in medical or completely occupied trying to deal with the issues of the station without any clear oversight or guidance to get the station back into working order. You would not have changed public perception regarding what the cyborg was talking about, but you would've made a much bigger difference had you initially communicated to get clear of the blast radius of the cyborg. I've decided to adjust the warning and wipe it from your visible warnings. After re-evaluating the evidence, perhaps I did go too far in administering a warning, but you should learn to communicate with your subordinates sooner or later, and make it a point to do so in almost every situation provided it doesn't get to the point where it becomes micro-managing. It is not really your fault the cyborg's intentions were to bait you into detonating them given there were no crew to amend the situation of fixing the cyborg so it isn't acting rampant and maiming crewmembers. Captains are permitted to lie about things in the best interest of NanoTrasen, provided it isn't a lie based on obvious criminal intent that could easily be called out. Captains are handpicked by NT to be charismatic and excelling in rousing the rabble to set goals and accomplish objectives. Besides, why would anyone believe a malfunctioning cyborg about "corporate secrets"? It's a synthetic. Synthetics can be programmed to lie. I'd trust someone who was loyalty implanted over the word of a robot, unless I did something that discredited my own honesty as a head of staff, to which there is no coming back from and people will never respect them again. It's your job to cover up for yourself and ensure the crew is working, and get morale up so it benefits work productivity. Understand that apathy and inaction often bring more negative consequences than it brings positive ones for purposefully avoiding getting involved in issues. Communication is critical to standard and nonstandard operation. It keeps people alive, working and focused for as long as there is someone to guide them. You are whitelisted because the community believes you can handle responsibility and set a good example as a leader for future candidates to learn from and apply for in the future. How you react to situations sets the standard for future individuals to abide by. This was insightful and I thank you for opening this complaint.

Went back and reviewed other comments because this particular one makes no sense: There is no clause that exists that permits the captain or head of security to break regulations in a crisis. I disagree. Communication is absolutely necessary in order to make good of a bad situation. Not communicating creates more issues than it solves, as displayed here. Heads of staff should know this. No more seconds than it takes to hover hand the cyborg console console in the bridge and wait for an excuse to detonate a loudmouth cyborg, I reckon. No more precious seconds than the captain took in ignoring a cyborg that actually wanted to be fixed, and was too locked down to even defend itself beyond spilling secrets over the radio because the captain was ignoring Bit. You do that, but do note you weren't the one to fix Charlie Reader, it was Cheshire who attempted to stabilize him but could not given their synthetic hands were malfunctioning.

I thought SHODAN already had a head whitelist, I guess not. Fair deal of the answers are satisfactory, in my opinion, although I have concerns as to whether Rifler the character would be a good head of security due to their tendency to defy command staff that might perceptibly have competency issues. Hopefully the OP will work on that, as I personally see it that someone who makes for a questionable subordinate isn't exactly cut out to be a good leader.

They generally act the same. Frag grenades can be placed in areas with greater precision and can do more damage given their status as an item, and thus do more damage in enclosed spaces, whereas a cyborg's blast radius is harder to control. This is effectively how frags are supposed to work. They expel shrapnel in all directions, the closer someone is to the grenade as it detonates, the more lethal it can be. Cyborg detonations are less deadly because you can never be on the same tile as the cyborg itself, unlike with frag grenades where you can kill someone instantly if they are standing on the grenade due to how shrapnel collision functions. If you are above, left, below or to the right of a grenade, you will only catch some of the shrapnel, and not all of the bits.

You and UM both have whitelists, right? What's the issue with communicating? What is stopping a captain from communicating to the general crew to "watch out, I am turning the cyborg leaking corporate secrets over comms into a firecracker"? If UM at the very least admits their failure to communicate was a mistake and they'll make more invested attempts to communicate better, I will remove the warning from their record.

It's cool, I'm just kidding. Do you think you could go a bit further with your Vaurca's backstory? It would reflect better in terms of how you understand the established lore and you believe a Vaurca ought to be roleplayed.

You pinged the wrong account. Not really, no. Take into consideration how long it takes to react to a cyborg you're intending to pull to robotics to be repaired. The moment anyone sees that, they're going to panic, but unlikely because it requires a few steps: 1.) It takes at least a second, at most even more to read and register that a cyborg is about to blow up. 2.) Depending on the individual, it takes one to two seconds to figure out how to stop pulling a soon-to-be-live grenade for a person. Either by clicking the pull icon on the HUD or by mousing over the cyborg and ctrl-clicking them, this still takes a second or more to do. 3.) Being able to run a decent distance without getting caught by a wave of shrapnel headed your way, within the very few seconds you have left. This is different from avoiding actual grenades with timers because the very design and look of a grenade is identifiable enough to react to and avoid. There are less steps involved in avoiding grenades being thrown your way. If a security officer threw a frag grenade at an antagonist with civilians nearby and the civilians got hurt, I'm fairly certain that officer would get spoken to by staff and told to be careful the next time they do it, and advised to give adequate warning the next time a similar situation presents itself.

Your long name keeps breaking the forum HTML formatting. How do you plead?

Alien rounds are not canon and thus not indicative of what NanoTrasen would actually do during a canon round. Personnel and assets are all expensive to replace, and thus very few of the aforementioned can be considered "acceptable collateral". I do not believe in acceptable collateral, it is a euphemism to dehumanize non-combatants being killed or injured during a violent situation, and when used inherently removes culpability and responsibility in leadership. It is a sad excuse to allow people to get killed on the watch of a commanding officer. The round was non-canon due to extreme antagonist involvement and thus nobody could make a report ICly about the captain blowing up a borg near a civilian without warning anyone. If someone is typing in response to someone either in person or over the radio, they don't have five seconds to walk away, because not everyone is going to be looking at their screen when typing, they're going to be looking at their keyboard. The warning would've not been placed if UM gave more of a shit besides an apathetic response in PMs, or admitted it was a mistake. I would not have escalated were it not for the immediate attitude of his that refused to take culpability. When I talk about standards as a head of staff, I go by this entire thread of Skull's that he drafted in November two and a half years ago: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=603 All of these virtues still apply for heads of staff. Not abiding by them makes you a bad head of staff, not a good one for adhering to your own code. When you apply for a head of staff whitelist, you agree to abide by not only our server rules but also to abide by regulations, directives, and the nuances of properly leading. A leader that is not even present is not a leader at all. You are not leading by good example when you allow collateral damage to happen. Without warning, no it is not. It is gank to immediately take the borg out of the round to do so and complete negligence as a head of staff to respect crew safety. Anyone who is remotely competent with explosives will cry "Get clear!" before detonating them. As a borg is a hot grenade when set to detonate, it operates on the same principle. Someone nearly got killed because of this. Victim blaming without adequate prior warning. I never resort to blaming a victim unless they were warned by multiple mediums prior to watch out, which was not done by the captain. The captain did not inform the crew of his intent when undertaking such an action that could easily cause brutal maiming or death to anyone in the near vicinity. Someone playing a whitelisted role and failing to do the most simple acts such as warning people when they're detonating a cyborg is absolute negligence to do their job to an acceptable standard. If the lack of a warning before detonating the cyborg by UM was a mistake, this should've been communicated to me, the warning wouldn't have been issued. The warning was issued because they did not take any responsibility for this action or at least tell me they'll improve from the mistake and do it better next time. The warning was issued because there wasn't a cogent line of reasoning being given right then and there when I was asking them.

Otherwise, get over it. We're not going to control what discussions are being undertaken in #general. If you don't like it when people are posting about silly stuff, and you cannot get over the fact some people want to just have fun and chill, then leave the discord or mute the channels that offend your sensibilities. Our discord server may be a "no bullshit" zone, but that literally just means anything other than intentionally stirring drama is fine. The only time we're going to step in is when people are; 1.) Being intentionally provocative or trolling. 2.) Metagaming over discord. 3.) Posting explicit or NSFW content ANYWHERE on the main server discord. 4.) Personally harassing other individuals over discord. These are listed in the second announcement just below the first pin in #announcements, for reference.

Not sure how easy it would be, but having the camera glow with a yellow light and a soft mechanical clicking sound where the AIeye is closest to a security camera would be a pretty cool feature. Malfs can get an upgrade that allows them to circumvent this, I suppose.

It stands to reason that when people witness bad roleplay or a rule infraction that said people should report it via adminhelps or complaints. As of now, I have not seen the whole of the playerbase creating such problems when playing synthetics that it requires we overhaul existing policies and to tell people to roleplay something radically different from what the server rules and the four main laws tells an AI to follow. Validhunting is a term that is well-defined as being an extremely aggressive roleplay style that causes certain characters, when mandated by the will of their players, to seek out and put an end to the ability of the antagonist to be able to roleplay at almost any cost, generally with a priority overruling that of more sensible goals a character would have, such as surviving, having moral values, having other existing priorities that don't end up in the violent murdering of an antagonist, et cetera. Validhunting is an OOC issue, above all, as it is OOC attitude that seeps into IC and negatively affects most or all players involved. It is a subcategory of powergaming and any suspect cases should be reported along with additional evidence supporting it. I emphasize the last point because lately we've had issues with people reporting things without showing actual proof, thus contaminating any semblance of a proper justice process.

It could easily just be a resprited hat with snowflake code that blocks worn radio headsets from working. Paul Bird tends to carry around a station bounce radio anyway.

I honestly think other suggestions should go in another thread that isn't this one. They would probably have more effect than policy change requests.

Essentially, crippling the AI by rendering them blind and dumb. Essentially, forcing people to roleplay AI a certain way. Essentially, removing any sense of initiative and only permitting the AI to react under explicit circumstances in which they must be told to do their job before doing it. Basically this entire paragraph is what you'd see from an antagonist that just got caught and locked down by an AI and then arrested by security because the antagonist completely ignored the power of a station role that can see mapwide into every area that has a camera and can interface with most machinery in order to put organics at a disadvantage. Nah. None of these are good solutions against validhunting, do you know what is? An active administration that bases most of its disciplinary actions from reports from the playerbase. Which we have, and goes sorely underused. The AI is meant to be strong when left unchecked. It's largely one of the first antagonist objective targets on LRP servers, primarily to card it, secondary concern is that a good AI brings incredible pressure on the map. Although they can be counterplayed fairly easy, with the right equipment.

Spoke with two witnesses today. As it turns out, the full extent of the person's injuries were thusly: Shattered left foot Shattered right foot Chest cavity filled with an egregious amount of shrapnel. A mistake I made was in assuming the individual had a missing left hand as a result of the cyborg detonation. Apparently, the missing hand was a result of character set-up, and not because the detonation + ensuing shrapnel blew off the hand of the victim. However, the victim was still stuck in crit for a fair few of minutes before being stabilized by Cheshire. Unfortunately for both of them, Cheshire was not able to do surgery on the individual given their own robotic hands were damaged enough to the point of dropping tools midway into surgery proceedings. Cheshire did what they could in stabilizing but was not able to heal Charlie to be able to walk. In addition, testimony from the victim plus the player of Bit supports the fact that Bit was locked down indefinitely the first time it happened, as there was no "second time." If an order was given out by the captain to lift the lockdown (for whatever reason), it was never heard nor acknowledged. Anyone viewing a cyborg console, also, would note which cyborgs are locked down and others that are not. So, frankly, I've no idea why it was necessary at all to detonate a cyborg grenade in the midst of a hallway.

The guy did lose his hand. I jumped to him directly to see the damage wrought to him when he made an adminhelp complaining about the captain detonating the cyborg without warning. I highly doubt anyone expected the captain to detonate the cyborg, in spite of Bit asking to be detonated. If someone asks to be killed and they're in cuffs, you don't shoot them. Bit was locked down. It was of absolutely zero threat to anyone and it was absolutely unnecessary to detonate it. It was overkill if anything else, overkill with serious consequences in relation to someone losing a hand and getting filled with shrapnel.

Willful collateral as command staff is never acceptable.

I honestly don't care if it was "valid" to detonate the cyborg. I don't care what the cyborg did to be detonated. Whether or not the cyborg deserved it is absolutely not the point. Someone was close enough to the cyborg to have their hand blasted off into gore and be filled with nasty shrapnel. The person dragging the cyborg around was intending to try and fix the malfunctioning cyborg so that they remain an asset to the station. They almost did not live. When I informed UnknownMurder of this fact, he did not care the slightest bit. He remained adamant that it was the fault of the victim who was near the cyborg, and not himself who was perfectly able to use a headset to give people fair warning that a cyborg was about to go off like a grenade. According to adminlogs, though, UM had little intention of doing that since he hit the detonate button three times impatiently. If UM recognized the consequence of his actions and expressed even a smidge of remorse about it, the warning issuance would not have been necessary. But I'm curious about something else. How the hell was Bit not dealt with earlier? Fourteen people got hurt because of him? What took the captain of the station so long in identifying the situation, and how was security not able to deal with this?

finally a reason to kill this awful thread

General procedure is that player-requested permanent bans from the past are lifted immediately, regardless if other staff members or players take issue with them returning to the community. Banning staff member is also, no longer among us, so I'll take this. Lifting under the above conditions. If anyone protests to this, send a forumPM or a discord DM my way, but it's not going to change much.

I'll lift this ban. Make sure you recognize when an administrator/moderator is PMing you, sometimes people don't respond on purpose and we end up having to ban people. You should be able to play right away.