Skull132

Following a trial period and review, application has been accepted.

Basically, either that, or give us time. We have a long discussion already completed, and we have perspectives from a number of people as a result of this. So, unless there's anything else to put in, yeah.

Right. That is roughly 4 posts deleted. Please don't clutter up this thread with useless banter. Doing so will inevitably get the thread locked, so as you choose. And please drop the silly requests of, "I'd like X banned from Y for reason Z." It's literally childish.

Right, here is the current course of action planned: We'll be going over what Security did and why, and assessing that. As it stands, the actions of the antagonists are being reviewed for possible spawn camping by some of the cultists. Beyond that, we also want to look at the related LOOC and OOC conduct, mainly because, depending on circumstance, jumping certain things into LOOC really shouldn't happen. And we'll be looking over the conduct and actions of Josh. That is roughly all we're planning for now. We'll see where this goes.

As noted, this thread is specifically for discussing the security-engineering shenanigans that took place in the round in question. The complaint for spawn camping, effectively, is something I'm looking into over private means (until someone raises a complaint over it), and if there are any further notes about the conduct of the round, I would appreciate them being sent to myself, or formatted in a new complaint.

Okay. I've been browsing over the logs, I talked to a few people, etcetera. Here's roughly what I determined, mostly based on logs: Bennit was spotted by a patrolling officer (Valery Compton), hacking into atmospherics: Shortly thereafter, the warden (Edmund Wade) pulls atmos up on camera and confirms it: Bennit gets arrested, gets processed, etcetera. There is a small set of public outcries, demands, whatever, by Bennit and Lauren (basically, they get testy with sec), to the point of threathening with a power outage. A power outage is orchestrated by Technokat. More discussion is had, and eventually, Engineering sets the power back up, as they promised, per these logs: Now, allow me to point out where this shit actually gets interesting. Note that this was said after what I already posted. What can we deduce from this? Well, point one, the arrest wasn't exactly motivated by "You're a cultist, grr!" Or if it was, there is no evidence of it. It was used to set an example, by taking down the entire engineering department. After that, sec makes their presence known around engineering, people start attacking one another, PoZe and Techno attack the borg that sec had accompany them, and it goes off from there. Now, why would sec do this? Quite simple: it's a means of getting back in control over a situation which, in their eyes, had escalated out of control. It was the security department choosing to try and slot engineering back into the playfield, whence they had perceived that engineering had left said playfield. Is it a dickmove? In the manner that it was conducted: in my opinion, yes. It does not really solve the issue of Engineering being pissed off at Security, and it only creates the precedence for further issues to arise, mostly in the form of Engineering starting to actively screw with Security. A better move would have been nixing out the people who you know are fully responsible (Techno and PoZe, for attacking the borg, and Techno for disabling everything forever, for a time), and make sure the rest understand the situation. Or at least made it clear that the brigging wasn't going to be permanent. Is it an unreasonable dickmove? Debatable. I would have personally seen this situation better resolved (temporary briggings, making an example of a small subset, as opposed to the entire department), but I can see the reasons for it.

The claim of camping arrivals is something I'm running down on my own. I have already talked to two cultists today, about the events in general, and will be talking to the rest as well. If I find anything, I'll post here, but otherwise, let's leave this complaint to focus on the Security-Engineering interaction.

Closing this thread as per request. Personally, this is silly. People interacted with your character, and they reacted to your character's actions, regardless of whether or not you were new. They reacted as if you were any old player. Also, the point of requesting an LOOC comment on the matter is counter-intuitive: if you failed to listen to a direct order by a person who is OOCly made out to be your commanding officer, then why should they expect you to listen to their LOOC comments? anyways, yeah, closing. If you're up for it, I can discuss this with you over BYOND or something.

Ban lifted. Please PM me if you're having issues signing in.

One potential point for contention and review: Being new has nothing to do with lacking the ability to communicate. If you seriously represent a new guy by, from what I'm seeing, nerfing your ability to actually comprehend and read, then you are basically saying that everyone new is pants-on-head dumb. Which, having been a new player to this game roughly twice, I can say is not the case. While observing, I have seen plenty of new people get along just fine by following directive and instruction, because they listen. Sure, they might not know how to do what, or what what is, but they know that "Stop it" means "stop it." Or that "Go here" means "go here". This experiment is flawed on one count: You are forcing yourself to behave as, you believe, a new guy behaves. Which may be completely erroneous and wrong. Were the scientific method to be used, this experiment would not pass, at all. A much more reliable example would be to just use a new ckey, a new/bald/whatever character, and act as you normally do.

We'll see. We have actually discussed a few types of scaling for certain job slots, sec being one of them. So yeah.

Let me be very blunt in what this job will enable, and why Delta is interested in it. It's a motherfuckering power fantasy for people who do just that. I read a reply that this will potentially deal with Heads of Staff rambo-ing. Yes, it will: because the very specific subset of heads of staff who want to rambo will be playing this job instead, to rambo. Of course, those folks can be banned from it and whitelists revoked. But. We can do some fun things with this role. If added, I would remove security officer slots on that count. I am also not too keen on giving them something like a mateba, or a SMG, but we'll see. I'll be talking to a few folks, and reading this discussion over the coming week, to see if this idea is worth implementing or not.

I think the entire point of an IPC is that they don't get infected. As in, that's the entire bonus for the species.

It should be back up. We crashed.

Hi, replying as a player for now. Consider: I have never seen Nursie actively pursue antagonists as a surgeon. The ones that she operates on are already captured by security, and already contained by security. She's just proactive in asking for them. Is it really a negative thing? You'd get permabrigged otherwise, because no other surgeon, that I've seen, actually cares to do surgery on vamps and lings.

Let me take you on a ride in my Delorian. We'll go back a year. It is now 2014, summer. YeahChris is the Head Admin, I'm the Head Developer, and we have cupcakes and stuff. At that point, Extended became overly prevalent on Aurora. Chris and I didn't really mind at first, we rolled with it, letting the community play out their decision as was fitting. But. After a good few months of this, we noticed something going sour. There was... Literally nothing going on on the server. It was all just, "Sit down and talk", rinse and repeat. And there was no conflict. We had nearly 24/7 extended, but it was extended without any meaningful RP involved. It turned into a highschool simulator for kids. It was boring, ridiculous, unexciting. At that point, Chris and I came to a conclusion: antagonists are necessary for the interaction between characters. Now, something else to consider, for the sake of added perspective, is the fact that we did not want people to rely on events to create that conflict and to foster that interaction. Our admins were not selected for that purpose. As such, we chose to rely on what the players themselves could do, with assistance when needed. But, back to the decision. We made our choice, and we started introducing antagonists into gameplay again. After 3 months of active work, this included the addition of antagonists into extended rounds, we finally crawled out of that pit, and went to where we are right now. The present situation, a mix of extended and antagonist rounds, has persisted ever since November 2014. That's the history lesson part of why the staff strive of have a mix of extended and antagonists. Let's look at another view point: storytelling. SS13 is all about storytelling. At least, on a HRP server. On other servers, maybe not so much, or in a different way. But, besides that. What does a story need to actually function? It needs a source of conflict. It needs an antagonist in some form, it needs antagonistic action to be the driving force. And no, an antagonistic force doesn't need to be a brutal serial murderer, but they need to be someone who creates conflict. Back when we flipped to near 24/7 extended, we lost the driving conflict from the server. There was none, and the roleplay suffered. Heavily. When you flip onto extended only, you'll start seeing puppetmaster stories (where one player controls everything, as he's the storyteller -- these stories rarely have resolution to them, an end), and a repeat of sobstories by insecure characters or something like that. It gets boring. Uninteresting. It did get there. Antagonists are the easiest way of adding conflict into a situation. As such, they are one of the most readily accessible tool to create an actually meaningful story. And even better, anyone (minus banned folk) can be one! So, the chance of playing out their story is offered to everyone, and not just people picked by admins (if we were to rely on admin events). But, that is not to say that Extended doesn't have a place. It does. Extended is neat for allowing people to recover. Basically, it's what should come after a climax (an antagonist round), so that the interaction had in that round doesn't lose meaning. You need both to have a functional story. So, again, a balance is required. And as it stands, Extended is still the most often logged round (according to database statistics). TL;DR: You need both modes of play to have a functional heavy roleplay environment.

Well, he's banned now. Considering that he didn't wish to reply nor otherwise maintain contact with us on his probation and a possible violation.

The ban is actually a year old (note is from 14MAY2014). I will note, though, that the reason of "getting sick from another station" isn't really the best one. I'll run this by the admins, in the mean time I'd recommend getting somewhat of an understanding on how this station works (namely: going over the rules, as need be).

List all the shit that's missing, that's goofy, yadda. Limit discussion, bullet points and concise reports, please. Thank you.

I wanted to say something. But I deleted my reply. I'll get around to rephrasing it tomorrow or the day after. It was mostly concerning the second point, as that's the only thing I can actively control.

I don't mean to sound condescending. I do not mean to offend. But I feel like I need to say out something. The amount of offences Travis made ICly should have warranted self-moderating action. Most notably, he chucked a telecrystal at someone as a non-antagonist during the end of a round, and that someone died. We didn't hop onto it OOCly, at least I don't think we did. But the singular fact is that your character just committed murder. And from where I stood, you did nothing but shrug. Not even an effect on the character, not to mention a report on their records. Several cases of monkeybombing to the point of the gag getting old, as well. Same spiel. In the eyes of the administration, this is effectively running around as a character, and not allowing consequence into your game. If your intent is to have a respectable and successful telescientist, then that's in your hands to do. We have never stopped you from doing it, not outright, while I do admit that some steps taken were not conduct with the proper respects having been paid. From our perspective, you paid no mind to consequences of your character's actions, much to the point where it started irking another member of the community (non-staff). The other cases I will nod my head to and accept as being questionable, but I will stand behind this singular choice of clipping your wings in Telescience. And before contesting this specific action as favourtism, I will have you know that actions similar were taken against characters from a myriad of different players, over a period spanning more than a year back. This list of individuals also includes members of present staff, and ex-staff.

At which point, ask yourself whether there should be a body whose outright task is to protect command. Then I suggest you re-engage the issue. This would simply create more conflict, instead of actually solving the issue you're targeting. Adding more people with clearly conflicting interests serves to create just that -- conflict. It does not, properly, manage what you mentioned here. Instead it'll be a patchwork job and fall flat on its face as a result of that. Or rather, go up in flame and them fall flat on its face, circumstances considered.

This idea has been considered prior. Or rather, something very similar to this. The Detective, FT and IAA were to form a secondary department lacking a direct head of staff, responsible for separate query and so forth. It was never really implemented, I forget the reasons why. The thread in question is on our forums, and if I get bored enough, I may fetch it. There is one suggestion that I will flat out contest here: Blueshield. This is a role that I am fully against. There is a complete and utter lack of need for such a role. The Internal Security Department is already staffed enough to provide protection for the Command Staff as need be. I want the Command Staff to be as dependent on Sec to provide for them, as they are on Engineering to provide power, and on Medical to revive their sorry arses if they get blown up. Having an individual armed and given a task this specific would being to undermine such a dependency. Further, a single armed individual is capable of turning the tide of most given situations, you should know this. Adding a Blueshield would knock off the balance of power already in place. Also, to be considered is the role's accessibility, and literal cry to shoot stuff. If left unwhitelisted, the amount of folks we'd have to ban from it would be immensely stupid. If left whitelisted, we still risk running into encouraging a certain behaviour type that has already been demonstrated by a list of Captains and Heads of Security over the past year and a half. Meaning: even if whitelisted, we would still have to ban people from it. It is a task which makes the role exceed its redeeming value. Second point. And I don't mean to sound this abrasive. But I sense an immense issue with this. The Internal Security Department is already fit, capable and otherwise well seated to complete this task. In fact, this is their primary duty. Their other duties are to provide for a safe working environment, to protect crew and equipment. Any duplicity in assigned tasks, or at least, once it goes beyond nuances, will be cause for unnecessary conflict. If this gets implemented, there needs to be a very clear line on what issue is fit for them, and what is fit for Security. Otherwise we will have the IAAvSec cases repeat themselves, but this time, on a much wider scale. And as a personal side, also consider the sanctity of the Command channel. Adding more people to it, more people who lack an actual role in leadership, will ruin the reason for having it. The 6 additional voices will play havoc on the, sometimes already lacking, ability for communication that the Command Staff has. The less voices you have on Command net, the better.

Yes-yes-yes-yes. I missed those suits. I want them back. Yes, please and thank you.