Skull132

I think this might be more of a case of, maybe consider taking action against the user, as opposed to the weapon? Not everyone should have knowledge of how to make a giant ass crossbow. And even less people should have the willingness to charge into combat with it.

The ban will expire today, or so my panel shows me. So I think you can just wait it out.

Eh, I'm not too worried, FFrances. We'll find targets, rack'em, stack'em and schwak'em. The fresh admins are actually way too aggressive for my whining to bother them. Just that, we will miss a few, and it'd be nice to have the community members point'em out.

Appeal denied, ban stays in place.

Oh come on, I'm supposed to be the defeatist voice here. I still cling to the ideal that if people actually want to fix their shit, they can. And only they can. If they don't fix their shit, I expect to see their name pop up in a complaint at some point. After which, we kind of just deal with them in another fashion. But that all hinges of the folks wanting to change. Oh, and let me paint a pretty picture for all of us. These discussions are nice, they serve a purpose of elevating concerns and notes into public display. But the second half to that, of this equation, is folks managing themselves. You can talk all you want, but until you change, I don't know, you can't really expect everyone else to. Beyond that, I'm just going to keep doing my thing of shutting up, watching over and trying to talk to people who need it.

The issue is that there are folks here, folks branded as "veterans" and folks who can rally groups behind them. Oh, did I mention that they're also loud? Literally, they're the worst people to go after. And I've, personally, given up. I am willing to talk and offer insight on the subject, because I have it, but until people actually take an active role with this? I'm sorry. I'm too tired. And I imagine a large part of my team is as well. So, point us at a target, and we'll manage it. But we need all of you guys's support. Not only in reporting people who misbehaving (forum reports are thing) but in also keeping yourself in check. Oh, and if it's a staff member you want to post a complaint about, go right ahead. The community is still very much in control of what we do. More so than a lot of you seem to imagine (I can write a long explanation for this, should anyone actually wish to see it). I don't know. I may eventually just have enough and file a mountain full of player complaints.

Let's talk data, shall we? msg_scopes("[player.key] has an invalid job for this role.") This one very specific line sends a debug message to a few folks whenever they get removed from the list of cultists. I have seen roughly 2-3 round start failures this week. And none of them have actually had that message pop up. Ergo, the failure to start isn't this specific reason, or at least, has not been at those times. Although, it might also be the same thing just interrupting other rounds. Dunno, don't really care. I'm more curious about removing sec from protected roles, frankly. For reasons of balancing and so on.

Staff member in question and player concerned were able to manage the differences, as per the player's report. Should a similar complaint be posted about the staff member in question, this case will be reviewed. Locking and archiving.

The rules already speak out against your behaviour: Regardless, I maintain that my ban was valid. Your conduct here is further evidence of that (need I mention that my simple, "Hello," how I usually initiate every other admin-player conversation, resulted in you telling me to kindly go fuck myself?). Appeal is left open for other staff to review as they have the inclination to do so. Should nothing come of it, or this derail into some place awful, it'll be locked tomorrow.

Last round, you hacked into (tried to, regardless) Engineering as an assistant and non-antag. This round, you took hacking supplies, and proceeded to romp around the station until you found yourself infront of the HOP's office. At which point, you asked, in all caps, mind you, for "all access". You were denied. You then asked for, again in all caps, for "all of maintenance (access)". Denied. A Tajaran showed up. Whom you then started calling (in all caps) a furry. At that point I contacted you to get an idea for why exactly you figure such conduct to be acceptable on a heavy roleplay server. Needless to say, we didn't get that far. Your replies were rather unnecessarily aggressive, and frankly disrespectful. So I simply banned you based on the fact that your conduct is not becoming of a member within our community. Further more, you had 3 notes prior to this. The first of which cites lying to staff. The last one prior to this incident, made yesterday, cites a rude attitude towards members of staff. A quick assessment of the situation made it quite clear that you did not take your chat with Conspire yesterday seriously, and had little intentions of actually roleplaying as per our expectations. So, here we are.

Ban modified as per agreement reached. Locking and archiving.

Halrighty, did some testing. First, let me just rifle off some numbers and pictures of numbers. The following images are what I'm going to use as a basis for my argument. So, what are the conclusions? The time to kill a feasible target with the laser rifle is roughly 20 seconds of sustained and accurate fire from a single weapon, counting 15 hits. The time to kill a feasible target with the revolver is roughly 3 seconds of sustained and accurate fire from a single weapon, counting 3 hits. And that's fine, in my opinion. The lasers have always been a highly utilitarian weapon system, with the capacity to provide another tactical approach to a situation (see: shooting past glass, instead of going through it and then to the target, thus wasting shots). They are not meant to out perform the ballistic weaponry in a toe-to-toe engagement. However, they do have the grounds for that to happen as well: their fire rate is rather fast, when compared to the revolver. My average fire rate with the laser rifle was 1.(3) shots per second on the first test, and 0.75 shots per second on the second test. With the revolver, it was a consistent 1 round per second. As such, the things that tip the scales into the favour of the revolver are the tactical situation present, and its ability to decap someone on the first hit. If someone is able to engineer a situation where their weapon out performs that of Security's, then that's fine. That's how it should be: effort should be rewarded. And if Security is unable to adjust their approach to fit the situation, then they should expect casualties. Should the weapon be used for ramboing and powergaming, then please report the individual for ganking. As simple as that. And finally, regarding the decaps. As noted, this seems to be the other thing tipping the scales in favour of the revolver. And it is basically a mechanical oddity. In my mind, it shouldn't exactly result in your head flying away. It'll hurt like a bitch, yes, but leave your head attached. It should also be noted that a single revolver hit does not place you into critical condition. I was able to walk around and conduct actions otherwise for roughly 2-3 minutes before paincrit actually got to me. This is more than enough time to do whatever, if you take a single stray round. Which seems fair. (hard numbers: was able to walk 100+ squares, I actually counted, with a .357 bullet lodged in the skull and the bones moving around in there, before passing out). Also tested, if you're fast enough, you have a potential of stunning or killing, should you have a weapon powerful enough, the shooter. So, unless you get decapped, you are by no means removed from the round after a single hit. End proposal: leave the damage as is, review the means by which it takes off the head. At that point, you remove the chance of it literally ripping the head off of a target, allowing them to escape if the situation permits it. If the situation doesn't permit it and they die, then they most likely got shot twice or more, and as such, the situation was engineered to favour the opposing side. Which is valid.

The unfortunate fact is that there are other servers where you can do as you tried doing here. A time and place for anything, aye? Regardless, appeal denied based on player's responses.

ADMIN: PM: Doobiedoo23/(Johnny Smithinson)->Jennalele/(A Rose Amidst Gunpowder): i saw the officer attacking james with a baton, and the baton was off. and yes, i have read the rules Well, you told Jennalele something else. Further more, my exchange with you has a few nice gems in it as well. Namely, after I asked you what you were doing, you replied with this: ADMIN: PM: Doobiedoo23/(Johnny Smithinson)->Skull132/(Kimberly Dawkins): HAVING A LAUGH And then there's also this, after I asked whether or not you were aware of the warning issued yesterday (for the exact same thing, mind you): ADMIN: PM: Doobiedoo23/(Johnny Smithinson)->Skull132/(Kimberly Dawkins): yep ADMIN: PM: Skull132/(Kimberly Dawkins)->Doobiedoo23/(Johnny Smithinson): And you still didn't learn? ADMIN: PM: Doobiedoo23/(Johnny Smithinson)->Skull132/(Kimberly Dawkins): Nope I am not seeing any good reason to offer you an unban: you ignored the rules knowing full well that they exist. So, yeah, I'm inclined to let the ban stay in place. If no one is capable of offering an alternate viewpoint on this issue, then I'll finalize the appeal tomorrow.

March 16th, yesterday, you were warned for exactly the same thing: As such, you had already received one official notice directing you to the rules, how come you didn't read them up until this point?

Side-tangent, I advise you to look at very carefully what you take as truth about the Teamspeak. If you actually want to know what goes on, then please, the link is here, join and poke around. On target: I'll provide proper review once my head is in a better place, tomorrow. But. Conduct of a staff member is actually a very valid reason, provided that the conduct in question is perceivable through a medium associated with the game and the server. Simplification: if it concerns the Aurora, and you're a staff member, your conduct is up for public debate and evaluation. What you do on facebook, though, I couldn't care less about. This happens to be a very clear case of the former. So, the complaint is valid and stands.

Personal opinion, and not staff's say (on these forums, that goes to Doomberg or Jenna until needed otherwise), is you should probably try and keep yourself in check, Lord Fowl. In blunt terms, anyways. ICly, yeah, do whatever with this issue until you start breaking the self-antagging rule. Having a character with abrasive behaviour who tends to blow things out of proportion is fine and good, up until that point noted earlier. OOCly? No. No matter how you put it. No matter how you explain it, think about it, etcetera, if you keep springing conflicts out of non-issues and keep harping on people for the sake of harping on people, you will find yourself lacking backup here. Because, frankly, no one enjoys playing 2D spessmans when they have someone raving on about their grammatical mistakes past the point of reason. No one enjoys playing 2D spessmans when someone kicks up dirt and makes a storm out of it. They just want to play 2D spessmans without the associated OOC bullshit, and if you keep doing that, why should they come back?

Point one: I am thoroughly against using someone else's work to this degree on a feature that's suppose to make us look unique. Yes, we're open source, but it seems like a dick move. So just on the grounds of morality, I would rather not. Also, I fail to understand the point of this thread. Do you want to suggest that we take an alteration of course on where we're headed with the new map, an outline which is quite thoroughly discussed in this thread? Or do you just want to show off your work? Because, as it stands, we cannot have both, and hopping from a worked out, discussed, planned objective (the current planetary outpost idea, with a space elevator) to a completely unplanned one (this one) seems like there was major effort wasted. And may also shove us back further, because we already have bits and pieces prepared for our design, ideas on how to incorporate what into where, and so on. So, Sue, what exactly are you trying to do with this thread? Because it seems rather pointless. Beyond showing off your overlay work.

You still focus on that singular complaint. Allow me to quote Rechkalov on what you should be focusing on, and what why tried to make you focus on in your last appeal:

Take these for what you will. Some random facts and feelings more about management of an SS13 community, as opposed to just gameplay.

Eh, there are roughly three kinds of folks that you could be referring to, all of whom have poked their heads up in the past two weeks. First are the group of people who get fired up and passionate about things. I sometimes fall into that category. At that point, it isn't so much as you're trying to be hostile, but rather, you're just trying to make yourself heard, and are getting frustrated whenever people don't understand their point, or dismiss it. Those folks, you just pay no mind and let them cool off for a day. They're usually rather decent people after that. Second are folks who see something wrong and rebut it for the sake of rebutting it. Most notably, they butt heads with the first noted group and just don't let them calm down. Instead of focusing on the issue that is brought up, and continuing the discussion at the core of it, they tend to go after the means with which a point is being carried across, and harp on that. Which, contrary to their belief of "I'm helping the discussion stay on track," actually works to derail it more and create conflict. Those folks, instead of putting out a stout self-moderatory order of, "Hey, you, get back on topic," should instead lead the way and post something on target. Third group of folks. The ones I actually see as the most disruptive. Are folks who don't contribute anything beyond exacerbated beliefs and screaming (or what I interpret as such). We have all three represented, and that's really just how people are. If you see someone as getting too much in someone's face, click the "!" mark on their post, and report it for a moderator/admin of the board to review. As simple as that, really, as we cannot and do not read all of the posts.

There needs to be some downside to cloning. CMD serves that purpose. CMD is a broad stroke label for any and all adverse mental developments that come as a result of you being killed, and being potentially informed of that fact. No human has ever had to deal with it, ergo, you lack the mental capacity to deal with it right off the cuff. I'm okay with the completely forced memory loss and some stupidities that come along with it being removed, however. It still needs to exist as a guidelines for character development, and for what Jamini said. Also, keep in mind the premise of the game, Blue. The stupid accent rate of Aurora is not the full story, which is why certain things are retconned to negate the grungy, hardboiled, cynical and cold characters that everyone would turn into after a week here. As for memory loss. I do have one note. If you get your head blown off, severely damaged, and cloned. Then you should have memory loss. Because they don't have exact data to reconstruct the brain out of, ergo, some bits would be missing. Forcing it? To the point where you cannot ID antags, please. Because it's stupid. Even with CMD, we've had instances of, "Oh, he shot me. Sec, arrest him," take place, and they just make me cringe, as it's rather awful and cheesy. A means of realistically explaining that is the brain's capacity to completely and utterly block out traumatic experiences (what could be more traumatic than death, huh?). You'd remember who you are, probably most of the shift. And then have some form of blank spot. How you want to roll with that repressed memory, that's up to you (a positive example being, if you know OOCly which character offed you, growing an unexplained fear of that character, or perhaps attachment towards them). But please, don't give out antags by completely sidestepping the matter. As for mechanical downsides. Err, no. Yadda dev time, yadda. Not really interested in that argument. CMD is a rather interesting concept, regardless of how we outlined and interpret it. Forcing mechanics of any complexity, beyond the damages already sustained, would make that freedom unnecessary, and cause good roleplay to be neglect for mechanical moves to remove and mend mechanical issues. Which is already a small issue with the medical system (see the: get wounded -> scan wounded -> operate -> shove back out cycle). So no, I'd rather leave this open for different approaches and RP. And for cloned characters. I actually have a character who was told he's cloned. And again. And about a few hundred times after that. I played it out as him developing a rather hostile and cynical viewpoint of the world, issues with memory, and attached fun things.

Application denied, as of 13MAR2015. Not only are the skills that you are trying to present terribly lacking and sub par, but a rather simple search on the count of your history has revealed a terribly entitled attitude, awful tact and a personality I do not wish to have on my team, nor have any accountability for. If you have questions, comments or concerns regarding this decision, then please, contact me via PM.

Closing, as per request.

Question for consideration. A grand lot of the times, we lack a therapist/psychologist. Ergo, for the majority of the time, that article of SOP could not be adhered to, due to a lack of critical personnel. This would negate cloning as an effective tool of placing people back into the game. Thoughts on the matter?