Eliot Clef

From my point of view, there is no "most people" in these threads about changing voting mechanisms. There is a very vocal minority group that gets sick of its least favorite round type being voted in occasionally and throws suggestions at the forums in the hopes of introducing a voting system that favors their preferred round types and/or axes out their least favorite round type. I am not saying this is specifically you, but rather, that this is a trend I've noticed. For this reason, I honestly don't think the voting mechanism should be on the table as something the community can have tweaked by voting on it or throwing enough suggestion posts at the board. We usually get something reasonably agreeable to plenty of people, and occasionally a voting surge happens for whatever reason and something less-than-popular slips through. It's not a bad thing, and people need to just let it go.

On this basis alone, no, I don't think we need this to be canonized. It doesn't add anything useful, entertaining, or interesting to the setting. It is there to justify a family fortune and doesn't really display a lot of awareness with regards to what the subject matter (Synthetic creation) actually involves. It tries to put forward cutting edge technology without actually explaining why the technology is new / cutting edge or for that matter why such a small group would have the ability to produce such things.

Valorallen Vitellia is one of the better HoP / Captains I've seen. I can't see anything but good coming from whitelisting him for IPCs, and I look forward to seeing his robits in action. The only drawback is that we'll see less of his other excellent characters. +1

Ok, so let's talk about Mark Syion a little. When Mark Syion first showed up in the security department, he had records riddled with redactions and security clearances that don't exist in-setting, bragged a lot about them, and refused to wear the security uniform until repeatedly badgered. (Note: The security uniform is actually lightly armored, so there is a practical reason this is enforced.) So, your first impression, although it has since been amended, was really really negative. After these things were corrected, he still talked about Syion Incorporated, how he was rich and just doing this as a hobby, etc. On top of that, he's not really viewed as a competent officer, or wasn't last time I was playing regularly. Bear in mind that Aurora's security regulars are heavily composed of people with relatively poor employment opportunities with a fairly large population of Unathi, Tajaran, and IPCs. People hate Mark Syion because he didn't fall into line with basic regs during his introductory phase, is below the competence level they expect out of a security officer (at least among security regulars), doesn't need to be doing this job to begin with (or so he claims), and generally has presented himself as special / superior to his peers with the rich angle being only one part of it. It's not just because he's rich.

If your characters have their own company and are rich for it, why would they even be working for NT? Why would NT even hire someone who owns a rival company? On the occasion that it's come up ICly, he's stated that he works pretty much as a hobby. People tend to not like him very much when it comes up.

The reason behind this person's ban was having exceedingly improper characters, and a condition for unbanning was (if I'm not mistaken) to come up with a reasonable character to show to staff. While maybe records aren't the necessary way to convey this, it is one applicable way to do so, and the primary vehicle through which this disciplinary action / response exchange has been conveyed.

In summary: No, thanks. More broadly: I don't really have a problem with this as an optional law set that is locked away in the "dangerous" lawsets section and basically never used, but the imposition this places on lawbound Synthetic players is simply too high. A part of the reason the Asimov lawset stopped being used on most servers is the exploitative manner in which the lawset can be used against the AI and synthetics. As things are, the corporate lawset allows the players to interpret things reasonably and not have to bend over backwards for assholes who are trying to get the AI to comply with them under threat of hurting themselves or whatever. The "Inaction" law in particular is unconditionally terrible to try to play. As things are, Synthetics are allowed to interpret hierarchy to avoid being forced to do harmful things, make judgement calls on potential harmful actions, and can be "people". This lawset not only closes off those opportunities but forces lawbound synthetics to obey unreasonable demands and interfere with the crew in the event that they are engaging in lawful, legitimate behavior that violates their law set such as apprehension / incarceration of criminals, etc. "May not harm, or through inaction", and "must obey orders, unless that conflicts with the First Law" narrows potential interpretation of acceptable behavior considerably and heavily favors antagonists in many fairly ordinary situations. (Such as security synthetics making arrests.) On the "AI could abuse this side of things", the critical failure of these laws lies in the inaction clause of law 1, where the AI and Synthetics could begin acting extremely unhelpfully to avert the potential of harm. In all, there's a reason Asimov's laws aren't used, and also why a modified version of them isn't really any better.

Sleepy is a person that I've seen come an awful long way on Aurora. She's had some bumpy times, but my impression is that she's learned along the way. While I think it's reasonable to be wary of her being whitelisted for IPCs, I think it's better to err on the side of giving her a chance to prove herself than it is to turn her away. I think Sleepy has changed, and is sincerely committed to improvement as a roleplayer. So I'm going to +1 this.

I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but I've been hanging around this guy intermittently for a little while and he's pretty cool. I think he can handle Head roles just fine. +1

My interactions have primarily been with Ziva and Katana, both of whom are very entertaining. I don't really have any negative input to offer, and because my general impression if overwhelmingly positive, it's hard for me to offer anything specific. (Also man guys, why'd you veer so far off topic?)

Vyleon Black has been around on Aurora for a good long time, and he's pretty good candy. The only negative thing I can say about him is some forum shenanigans that honestly aren't relevant to this, and a habit of disabling the Psych Office camera routinely. +1 from me.

I recommended that Boopers submit an IPC Whitelist application after seeing 'em in action for quite some time. They are a good robit, and this application is pretty solid. Beep boop +1.

Actually I think there are a lot of people who would be elated if everybody but Humans and Skrell were banned. The IC racism tends to correlate to people OOCly thinking a whitelisted race is shitty. I'm sure there are some who would like Skrell banned as well. Disclaimer: I'm not one of these people. It's why I think democratic votes on the rights of whitelisted races and what they should be able to do jobwise should generally be ignored.

I'm not sure I'd call Vaurca biting common, but it's not uncommon either. It seems to be most common among drones who have carte blanche to react mindlessly.

Apologies, I'm not disputing the other charges listed, I'm trying to get clarification on specific charges involved. Hokay. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I'll make a separate thread for this when I get home.

Just so I understand correctly: Assault on a Head of Staff is written so it is considered to be the Assault charge (significant injury) on a Head of Staff. Assault (and even Minor Assault) assumes damage to be incurred. Ordinarily pushing and tabling would only really be battery. Does this mean that Battery against a Head of Staff constitutes Assault on a Head of Staff regardless of injury? It's intent to overpower and disable in this case, though. Clearly so. Battery is just unwanted physical contact. Hmm. That's true, but wouldn't that still only be Minor Assault? (Admittedly, taking his radio away muddies the waters a lot with regards to perceived intent, here...)

The Assault charge requires some damage to have occurred. To the best of my knowledge in this situation, Jun just pushed you down and tabled you. Assaulting a Head of Staff, which is a potential additional interpretation, also requires damage to have occurred. For that matter, even Minor Assault requires damage to have occurred. Pushing and tabling you is Battery, not Assault. So our first and most basic charge in this conflict is Battery. You were cuffed and detained, because Jun believed you were incompetent for duty. This was extremely pre-emptive, but was a belief of myself and Centurion (CakeIsOssim) at the time, as well as the CMO (whose identity I forget). We were trying to go through official channels and do some investigation when the Jun incident was ongoing. At the time, I recall the Warden stating that Jun was being held under Kidnapping / Hostage Taking, which is not correct because Jun was wholly cooperative with Security in dealing with you. She made no demands, and for all practical purposes was making an arrest of what she believed to be a negligent employee. (Actually this is Exceeding Official Powers because she was a Detective at the time and shouldn't be making non-emergency arrests at all, but that's beside the point here.) In total, my personal opinion of where her charges should be are: Battery (5-8), Illegal Detainment (15, Demotion), Exceeding Official Powers (15-30, Demotion). In total you could have brigged her for 35-88 minutes and demoted her without really being in too much question, the thing that strikes me as off is the apparent intent (maybe not on your part, it could've just been the Warden) to keep her in solitary. Sedition and Neglect of Duty also probably wouldn't have been inappropriate, though superfluous. Maybe petty theft if you want to push the radio thing. TL;DR, you had plenty of ways to get Jun out of your hair. Mutiny is an inappropriate and abusive charge for circumstances like this, where removing an arguably negligent Head of Security was the goal rather than any sort of violent revolt. You're a Head, not The Law, and the regulation (as Jackboot and Skull132 enumerated in their posts) is explicit about what constitutes Mutiny. What occurred did not, unless there was more violent action taken, constitute mutiny. Jackboot / Jawdat didn't end up demoting you (as noted above), it's true, but it had a lot to do with everyone trying to get you handled through official channels leaving the round. There wasn't anybody left to speak against you in that meeting. Just so I understand correctly: Assault on a Head of Staff is written so it is considered to be the Assault charge (significant injury) on a Head of Staff. Assault (and even Minor Assault) assumes damage to be incurred. Ordinarily pushing and tabling would only really be battery. Does this mean that Battery against a Head of Staff constitutes Assault on a Head of Staff regardless of injury? EDIT: I'm editing this post to take out some redundancy. I wrote some of it intermittently while being hassled in person.

So, I do want to comment on this. While it's reasonable in theory to paint it strictly as an IC issue, Dumplinz's behavior as Head of Security strongly suggests that he doesn't (or didn't) really know how Heads of Staff function very well or how inter-departmental authority among Heads works. He had to be told that he didn't have any say over RD producing weapons, and acted vindictively towards them when they were highly defensive about and adverse towards his ignorance / perceived attempt to assert his authority. While he did skirt the line of actually Exceeding Official Powers in his behavior, the tension within Security itself was so thick that if he'd pushed just a little bit more than he did he definitely would have been arrested by his own department. (Not talking about Jun, who jumped the gun independent of the others who were concerned.) Heads of Staff are whitelisted because we expect players to know what they're doing in those roles and not to engage in questionable behavior while exerting their authority over the station. Skirting just inside the line of acceptability, and displaying brazen ignorance of reasonable / appropriate conduct, doesn't strike me as an IC issue in this instance. The deliberate vindictiveness maybe, but not the ignorance. I think this is especially true given Dumplinz's attitude towards people taking issue with his behavior. I don't think Dumplinz necessarily needs to be in actual trouble here, because I sincerely believe in his ability to conduct himself reasonably (I've seen him do it plenty, it's why I voted +1 on his whitelist), and the mistakes he made during this round were largely mistakes of ignorance. But the line between a player not knowing conventions, and a character not knowing conventions, is a blurry one and I think this leans more towards the player not knowing his stuff than the character.

In Dumplinz's defense, he in fact did not order the Detective to do this. I bring it up primarily because he defended the arrest when Phoebe Essel pointed out a Detective was conducting one, and also brought it into OOC a little a bit.

Thing is, I don't think they were shitty to you. I think they reacted with appropriate apprehension to you over-stepping your boundaries and making demands you had no right to make of them. And OK, sure, you were playing a vindictive HoS. This is going to get you complained into the ground and make people seriously consider arresting you for Exceeding Official Authority, which is what you've pretty much already experienced. Those of us who were discussing it among ourselves and pursuing proper channels ended up just leaving / going to cryo. HoS is not the role to play an obstructionist dickbag in. Security is already a big enough problem to play, and a big enough boogeyman to the crew. Maybe you can balance it out, I don't know, but I doubt it.

I brought it up only because you defended it, to some extent, in OOC. And also because you stated, ICly, that they're still an Officer if I'm not mistaken. Yes. You were within your rights to throw the book at him at that point. But it shouldn't have reached that point to begin with. Shrug. You are, technically, right. But only in the most Futurama-bureaucrat definition of technically right. The Freeze Ray isn't a weapon in any sense that matters. If you charged somebody for contraband for having one, most people would call you ridiculous and incompetent. Likewise, going out of your way to deny them a recharge for an anti-slime weapon which has no practical applications against anything but station research hazards (slimes), makes you come off as ridiculous and incompetent, especially with a loyalty implant. This whole sequence demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding in what a part of the station (Research) is allowed to do without paperwork/permission, what constitutes an actual weapon, and where the lines are in general.

Right. Okay. So, you're new to being a Head. You juuuust got approved a little while ago, and a lot of folks thought you were pretty reasonable beforehand! I was one of them. Now though, I think you're out of line. So, I was watching this round when things happened, and then a bystander as the FT when it continued. Before I joined, you had the Detective arrest somebody and were told this isn't appropriate for the Detective to do. It wasn't. You kinda complained that Detectives are officers IRL in OOC, but this explicitly isn't true here. First, you ordered an officer detained/demoted for an incredibly minor offense: Pacing in front of the Detective's door and annoying her. Yeah, you told him to stop. It was still pretty minor. He didn't really resist, and he was treated really roughly. When he thought that you guys were giving him a double sentence for no reason, he flipped out on you with pepper spray and, okay, you threw the book at him. Fine. But you were talking about a demotion from the word go. Second, you were aggressive with RD over a freeze ray. A freeze ray is barely a weapon. It's an anti-slime device that, as far as I'm aware, doesn't have much useful effect against actual people. You appeared under the impression that RD can't develop weapons without a Research Director around, and got very snippy with them over public channels. This displays a hell of a lot of ignorance about what is actually a weapon on the station, and how much authority you actually have to interfere with other departments doing their jobs. Thirdly, you went out of your way to be petty and spiteful specifically order R&D not be assisted in recharging their freeze ray via security. (They don't have any charging stations.) Bear in mind: A freeze ray is only really useful for killing slimes. There's literally no reasonable motivation for doing this at all, and since the entire purpose of the station is R&D, and the purpose of the freeze ray is to increase the safety of people performing R&D in a dangerous job (Xenobiology), I'd actually argue that this action is in violation of your loyalty implant. There's no cost for helping them with their freeze ray, and not helping them with their freeze ray has no benefit. Fourthly, the incident with Jun Ivanova. Jun Ivanova isn't the best member of security. She wasn't being the best member of security then. She shouldn't have conducted an arrest with Officers around to do that for her, and you shouldn't have defended her doing so. You took her into an office for a private chat we didn't see, and according to her testimony when she started talking on the radio you moved to take the radio from her. At this point, she shoved you down and cuffed you. Was she in the right? Not exactly. But, I think it bears mentioning that a part of Security was already pondering arresting you for Exceeding Official Powers, and was making active complaints about your lack of knowledge to the other command staff and IAA. And then again, when your response to Jun was played out. Rightly, Jun was arrested. She didn't resist arrest, according to what I was told, but I wasn't there. Rightly, she should have been arrested, and charged with illegal detainment, minor assault or battery, maybe neglect of duty if you really wanted to push it. Instead she was charged with Kidnapping or Hostage Taking, and thrown in solitary. (With you leaving out Mutiny.) In all honesty, I think serveris6 was in the right, and a whole lot of people were unimpressed with you that round for pretty reasonable cause. I don't think this is because you were deliberately bad, but I got the impression there were a lot of things you just didn't know here. Problem is, you seemed to double down whenever something like that occurred. Not just ICly, but in OOC chat to a minor extent as well.

At bare minimum I think the ion mode would have to be removed from this weapon for it to be reasonably balanced. Probably the scope, too. Nuke Ops already have access to EMP weapons and in particular grenades, the usage of which is sufficient to outright kill many people on the station and prevent the usage of most Security equipment. On top of that they have ballistics which means they're not at danger of eliminating their own fighting ability if they don't use it well. A recharging three-setting weapon that includes a scope and ion setting would be able to eliminate any possibility of fighting back way too easily. The idea of additional attachments on top of what you're describing is even worse. It might be a good idea for an admin armory weapon, but even with a hefty TC cost I'm not sure this would be reasonable.

This has more-or-less been implemented in slightly tweaked form, and can be closed and archived.

You know... I like your characters, pretty much all of them that I've interacted with. I've watched Valorallen Vitellia a lot more than I've played with him directly. So my feedback is: You're a pretty cool dude and your character seems solid. I don't have more specific input to offer than that, I'm afraid.