jackfractal

So last night I was escorting a security officer through science and I thought "Aha! I could use a guest pass for this!" but alas, my hopes were dashed, Science doesn't have a guest pass terminal. Neither does Cargo. They both probably should.

Oh god no. I've used that. It's such a disaster.

Unless you're offering to fly everyone to your house to play the tabletop one Carver...

Cards Against Humanity. Best plan.

No no, you don't understand. The clown was a princess. She was just also a clown. Clowns can be princesses too!

Wait, people use harm intent in hand-to-hand? I thought everyone just spammed disarm!

I suspect that Polly was created by someone who found the existing pets irritating, with the goal of creating a pet so irritating that she'd get them all removed. It is for this reason that I love her.

Ian not having clothes is a deep sadness to me.

We could colour the sticks, but colouring the lights would have to wait until we port the revised lighting engine from Bay/Paradise. If anyone ever decides to do that.

I doubt that they enslave child Diona. That seems unwise, considering that grown up Diona are enormous Dysons-plants that are the size of planets. Also, the modeled life-cycle of the Diona in game doesn't quite match up with the Lore version. Bipedal Diona in Lore are composed of many nymph's merged into one being. In-game, they are one nymph that gets bigger. Sooo... I dunno! I dunno what happens to the poor adamant golems either. They've got no lore whatsoever.

Lord Montgomery Marshmallow the Third

I own that game, but have not yet played it. If you're into bizarre nonsense in place of romance games, can I recommend "Hot Date", the game where you speed date Pugs? It is surreal and hilarious.

Space Station 13?

Hey critsybear! It's not dead! I've got most of it finished, though the ui for customizing yourself is going to be just dreadful for the first version. What do I mean? I mean that you can now have synthetic skin, fur, or scales for robotic limbs, or custom paint jobs. I have the ability to pick the type of brain, but it's still not spawning properly. All this was annoying to do because the icon construction code is really awkward. It's going to be slower than before because it requires more blend events but I think that will mostly affect things only at the very start of the round. I won't be able to know for sure until I can test with a full server. I think it will be ok. I still have to make the covering objects, so you can repaint yourself, and I have to hook the coverings to damage so they can get scuffed or ripped off. Smileydemon is helping me update the icons. The tv screen icons for ipc heads included the head in them for some reason? So he's stripping that out for me, and I need to make a greyscale copy of the human/Tajaran/unathi so that the colours match better. All told, I have another four hours or so of work left before I can reeeeally justify putting up a pull request. There's some fiddly junk with hairstyles and dismembered heads that might be irritating to make work properly. That will hopefully get finished sometime this weekend. Glad you're still interested.

Vox do not breathe oxygen! All antags should be replaced by vox.

Hi Xelnagahunter! I just wrote a treatment for AI's and IPC's that was accepted I think... twoooo weeks ago? It's not up on the wiki yet (is there a procedure for that? I'll do the formatting if that's an issue), but it is available here. As to your specific question. Yes! That is totally doable. There are several AI characters who also play them as IPC's/Androids and vice versa. Typically the IPC versions are played as 'shards', copies of the AI downloaded temporarily into a robot (Red Queen and Katana for example), but some (like Aedan's character IAM) are implied to have a single intelligence core that is physically moved between different bodies. Either way works.

I know I'm being petty here, but I feel as though the specifics of this are pretty important. Who gets to decide what is 'clear' or what is 'wrong'? If all it takes to override the Captain, or a DO, or anyone who theoretically holds authority over you is saying 'Well you're clearly wrong' and getting some people to agree with you, then you still don't have a functional chain of command. SS13 is a game of hidden information. Anyone you're talking too, especially if they're in a command position, may have access to entirely different information about what's going on then you do. You might think something is 'clearly wrong' but you could be very mistaken. At least to me, disobeying an Authority Figure should be a significant decision. You don't just do it if you think they're misguided, you don't do it if you think they're wrong, you do it only when NOT doing it would result in something that is absolutely unacceptable to you. I'm talking about the kind of thing where 'I would rather die then obey that order, sir.' is an appropriate response. Such as, if the Captain orders Security to execute unarmed civilians, or orders the Engineering team to release the singularity. Even then, it still makes more sense to simply refuse the order. You'll probably get in trouble, but way less trouble than you would if you mutinied. I'd argue that removing someone giving those kind of orders from command is still mutiny, by definition, but the actions of the mutineers may later be ratified by a higher authority. If you arrest the Captain without clearance from someone who outranks them, then you're basically gambling on the idea that the people who hired your boss will side with you over them when the official investigation happens. If they don't, you are incredibly screwed. Even if they do, you're probably still in a lot of trouble because all of your actions during that time will be under intense scrutiny. That's why, if the Captain was doing things that I disagreed with, I'd call their boss first before I tried to arrest them. A Duty Officer might write me a strongly worded memo for not following the proper chain of command, but I'm unlikely to blacklisted or shot for it.

I did have an opinion myself, but you're head dev so I can cite you if this comes up again. And I do know that consensus is often desired in hierarchies. You don't usually get to stay in charge if you can't convince your subordinates of the correctness of your actions. I was talking about specific instances where there is no consensus between an Authority Figure's opinion and those of their subordinates. In those cases, you're saying that Nanotransen's Space Law is on the side of the Authority Figure?

Thank you for the clarification Skull. I don’t have any problem with your explanation. It aligns perfectly with how I thoughts things were supposed to work. That being said, I think it may require an additional clarification. Specifically in regards to the perspective expressed by these quotes: In these quotes we see a perspective where the ‘objective truth’ of a situation is given primary importance. It doesn’t matter, according to this perspective, if the Authority Figure believes themselves to be acting within their authority. What matters is if the actions of the Authority Figure makes decisions that contradict the ‘objective truth’. I put scare quotes around this because there is, of course, no objective truth. There are instead different interpretations of the same situation. What ‘objective truth’ stands for in this scenario is the collective consensus of a group of people. We’re usually talking about the collective consensus of the Security Department. I think we need to clarify that the Captain’s judgement is more important and holds the weight of law while the collective consensus of others does not. If the Captain says that a person is to be freed because they were unlawfully detained, it doesn’t matter if you think that they weren’t. It doesn’t matter if your buddy thinks that they weren’t. It doesn’t matter if the Detective or the Head of Security thinks they weren’t. It doesn’t even matter if the person in jail thinks that they weren’t. Even if, later, after they have been provided with additional evidence, the Captain themself changes their mind, they were still acting correctly, in the moment, based on the evidence they had at the time . The Captain is in charge, which means their opinion is the one that matters, and they are not obligated to explain themselves or to agree with group consensus. If they had to do that, that would be democracy, not a quasi-military hierarchy. Now, I’m of the opinion that a Captain who doesn’t listen to their security department on security matters is an idiot, just like a Captain who doesn’t listen to their CMO during a viral outbreak is an idiot. Both of them should be reprimanded by their superiors and probably shouldn’t be in command in the first place. That being said, there are times when the Captain needs to be able to give an order and have that order be obeyed, even if the people they’re giving the order too think it goes against the ‘objective truth’ of the situation. So, to boil this down, Skull, can you clarify whose opinion is given legal authority in situations where there are conflicting perspectives. Is it the Captain or is it the consensus of the other people involved?

So just to clarify. In cases of security matters, if the Captain and the Head of Security disagree about a situation then the Head of Security is legally allowed to go through with their interpretation of the situation over the Captains objections? That means that the Head of Security is in charge of the station. It sounds silly maybe, but the thing they disagree about may be any of the Captains actions, and the Head of Security has the ability to incarcerate people and remove their ability to act. For example: Captain: "We are going to do this thing because of the following reasons." Head of Security: "I disagree with those reasons and I don't want to do that thing. You are under arrest." If the Captain's authority doesn't legally trump the Head of Security's authority then, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds, this is what will happen. We saw it happen in the complaint that started this whole conversation. In addition, if the Captain doesn't have the authority to override Security in situations where they are breaking regulations without third party support, that further emphasizes their impotence and subservience to the Security department. If they can't issue corrections to their subordinates without someone else granting the authority to do so, then those subordinates aren't, by definition, subordinate. If you had, say, the CMO disagreeing with the legality of an arrest, then requiring IAA/DO/Centcom backing to overrule security makes sense. The CMO doesn't have the authority to overrule them, but the Captain should be able to do it on their own authority if we want to continue to say that the Captain has authority. It's fine if that's not what you want, but if that's the case we should clearly spell out that the entity in charge of the station isn't the Captain, it's the Security Department.

While I don't think anyone would say that the Captain in question should have gone into that situation with as little information as they appear to have done, I think you may have an inaccurate perspective on how the role of the Captain is intended to work. They are quite a bit more then the station administrator. As the very first sentence of the Aurora wiki description puts it is: So the player in question did join as the Captain because they wanted to be involved in Security. And Medical. And Science. And Engineering. And Cargo. And everything else. Because they're the boss. Who outranks the Chief of Engineering when it comes to decisions about the station? The Captain. Who is still in charge of medical policy, even in a medical emergency? The Captain. Who is the highest ranked member of security? The Captain. To quote the wiki again (and this is pulled from Bay too, where they can have Greytide Captains): While you may not like it when Captain's interfere with what you're doing, they are allowed to do it, because they are in charge. Or at least, they're supposed to be.

It was only within the bounds of the law according to the Security consensus opinion. An opinion that I personally share, but is not some kind of axiomatic fact, obvious to all. The Captain's opinion at the time was that it was not a legal detainment. Now that opinion was formed with incomplete or inaccurate information, but it was his opinion (unless we want to get into bad faith arguments which I'd rather not). The Captain's opinion is the one that matters if he's in charge. Unless it doesn't. Unless we're saying that the consensus opinion of a particular department, about a specific issue, has legal authority over the Captain. If that's the case, fine, but the Captain, in a situation where that is the law, is not in charge. They're a puppet of a shifting consensus. It would mean that the Captain would not have the authority to, for example, oppose the CMO injecting liquefied donk pockets into people exposed to a virus, provided that their department supported them. Nor would the Captain have the legal authority to disallow dangerous modifications to the station provided that the Engineering team was fully committed to them, or to prevent Science from bringing potentially lethal artifacts onto the station from xenoachaeology if enough of the Science team thought it was a good idea. Either the Captain has the authority to decide what happens regardless of the protests, however justified, of a person or a department, or they don't. I think they should, if only because I think it's more interesting. With the benefits of hindsight, and accounting for the fact that the Captain entered the situation with the opinions that they appear to have held, I believe that the right way to handle the example situation was this: The Captain comes in and frees the prisoner, believing them to be unlawfully detained. Security isn't happy, but the prisoner is freed from their cell and released from security custody by order of the Captain. The Head of Security gets the Captains attention, probably in one of their offices, and makes a formal protest. The Head of Security supplies evidence of the rightfulness of their case. Based on the new evidence, the Captains opinion changes to match that of the Security Consensus. The Captain rescinds the release order based on new evidence. The prisoner is arrested again and serves the rest of their time. The Captain and the Head of Security apologize for the miscommunication and agree to try to work on their communication skills in the future. Then they fight to the death The important bit is the fifth point. How do you get to do what you want when you have a boss? You convince your boss that your opinion is the correct one. You don't stage a coup. Which is what they did. The Captain's opinion disagreed with that of the Security Department so they removed him from power. It doesn't matter if their opinion was 'correct'. It doesn't matter if the letter of the law was followed to a t. What matters is that he disagreed with them, and he had power over them, so rather than changing his mind or obeying the chain of command, they staged a coup and removed him from power. It doesn't matter that he was wrong. If they were legally justified in doing what they did, the Captain never had any power in the first place.

@Eliot. You're all approaching this from the perspective that the consensus interpretation of the situation by security was the objectively correct one. While I'm not really interested in debating the relative correctness of either interpretation of the situation, because it was a confusing mess, I am debating the idea that, legally speaking, security's consensus opinion matters at all in the presence of a higher authority. It shouldn't. The person whose opinion on the situation matters is that of the higher authority. In this case, the Captain's. You're right, the rules forbid the Captain from pardoning a crime, but from the perspective of the Captain that's not what they were doing. They were releasing someone who had been unjustly detained. Security disagreed, but that's irrelevant because, again, the person whose opinion matters in this situation, is not a Security Officer. It's the Captain. It does if they're your boss. If we're equals looking at an issue and I think you're approach is wrong, and you think my approach is wrong, then those are simply two perspectives on a particular issue. This changes if we're part of an organization. If we're looking at the same issue and have the same opinions but you're in charge, our organization will go with with your perspective on the issue because what you say goes. If you're the Captain and you say that someone was incorrectly incarcerated, and I'm a Security Officer and I think I did my job correctly, the prisoner is going to get released because you're the one in charge. I don't particularly like hierarchies like that, but that's how they work. If I decide that I'm going to violently oppose your actions because I disagree with your perspective, I'm committing mutiny. If the Captain cannot overrule Security's interpretation of a situation without violating the law, then they are not, by definition, in charge. They are a puppet, or a figurehead, and the Security department are the ones who really have the authority.

I'm guessing that people will split on this issue based on whether they believe that the Captain is allowed to overrule their subordinates interpretation of a given situation without exceeding their authority. I think they should, and if that's allowed then we have to look at the situation like this: From the perspective of the Captain (whose perspective is the one that matters, as they are in charge) it was not a pardon, it was correcting an error. Who gets to decide if it was an error or a pardon? The Captain does.

I think 'The Captain acting as if he is above the law' refers to the Captain committing crimes. Like, killing people and saying 'You can't arrest me! I'm the Captain!' That's not what happened in the example situation. The Captain released someone that most of security didn't think should be released. From the Captain's perspective, it appears as though they believed they were correcting an error that security made in brigging that person. They have the authority to do that. If security makes a mistake, the Captain can overrule them, just like if Engineering or Medical makes a mistake they can overrule them. If the CMO is providing inaccurate treatment and that is harming patients, then you can dang well believe the Captain can order the CMO to correct their treatment. What if they ordered Engineers sealing a breach to stop what they're doing and rescue the people trapped in breached areas? Would you arrest them for doing either of those things? No, of course not, because that would be silly. It's the same situation regarding an illegally incarcerated prisoner. It's possible that the Captain, in this case, was in error, and that the judgement call they made was incorrect or made with incomplete information. Even if that were so, the correct thing for security to do is still not to arrest the Captain. There are clear alternatives. The Duty Officers and Internal Affairs exist to handle precisely this sort of situation. If the situation gets truly untenable then the Security Officers who feel particularly strongly about it could resign in protest. If the Captain is a threat to the station themselves then they are exceeding official powers by telling security to ignore their egregious lawbreaking. They are not overstepping themselves by disagreeing with security's interpretation of a situation. A security officer might see a borderline unstable person disrupting medical and making dangerous threats, while another person might see a stressed and mentally ill person who is not getting the treatment they need. If that other person is almost anyone else on the station then the Officer in question can tell them to go stuff it and proceed with their interpretation. However, if that other person is the Captain, then they get to decide what happens. The security officer can try to persuade the Captain of the rightness of their interpretation, and if they fail then they can appeal the decision through the appropriate channels, but they don't get to force the issue without breaking the law. That's how hierarchies work. Nobody is expected to be happy about it, but in strict hierarchies like the one on the station, the guy above you is the one who's interpretation of the situation is correct, and the Captain is above Security. They are not a site manager to be swept aside the second that any situation occurs outside of the normal running of the station, they are the leader. The situation in the complaint was complicated by what appears to be a lot of miscommunication on both sides, but what security did was mutiny. Case closed. That's only if it were a pardon. A pardon is 'you did the crime, but you are forgiven the punishment'. In the situation in the complaint, that wasn't what was happening. The Captain was attempting to reverse what they appear to have considered an inaccurate, invalid, or non-existent charge. To take the situation to the logical extreme. If someone brigs another person for say... 45 minutes for no reason at all, is it an illegal pardon if the Captain releases them? Do you arrest the Captain for doing that? No, of course not, because the actions of the security officer were clearly wrong and against procedure. Same thing here. The Captain appears to have perceived a wrongdoing, a breach in proper procedure, on the part of security and attempted to correct it. They shouldn't have done that based on the logs (they missed several attempts to explain why the prisoner was there, so I'm guessing the player was distracted), but that was what they appear to have believed while they were releasing the prisoner. In that case, no spitting in the face of Corporate Regulations was done, and the actions of security in attempting to arrest the Captain were illegal. It should also be pointed out that the quoted paragraph from the wiki is a direct Baystation transplant. Bay doesn't whitelist their Captains, so they get a lot more griefers in that role than Aurora does. That paragraph is there to prevent greytiding Captains from running amok, which is, I'm guessing, why it's worded so strongly.