Frances

This is so late into the year. But this is it. We have our best thread of 2014.

I'm going to cut in here. Being shoved into permabrig as a "be all end all" is bad. Even more so if it's your reaction to put people there as soon as you see a group "acting weird" during a rev round. However, this wasn't the case here. In light of recent posts from sec players of that round, it seems clear that sec was dealing with a highly dangerous and tense situation; people had tried to murder the captain, and were equipped with weapons. Given that (due to IC info from centcom creating the whole rev situation) it was obvious that the crew as a whole was on edge, it was fairly easy to jump to the conclusion that some sort of mutiny was likely to take place (members of your crew attempt to kill your captain? Yeah.) At this point, I wouldn't take any chances - letting people off would be nothing short of neglectful ("Yes, somebody tried to kill our captain 30 minutes ago, and you guys seem like you're trying to group up to conspire something, but yeaaaaaah, you're arrright.) And yes, putting people in perma and throwing away the key is bad - however, it also seems that the intent was to interrogate then release people. Then meteors hit and we all know what happened - that wasn't anybody's fault. Two points, I guess. 1. Breaking out of perma when you've got 6+ people isn't actually /that/ hard. It mostly boils down to who's robust or not, but the moment people walk into perma, you can fairly easily bumrush them and take their gear/IDs to break out of the brig. 2. I don't get why the place was gassed, and none of the sec players answered to that yet. Could we get an explanation?

Seems like we haven't had a new O-T discussion in a few days, so here. Which fictional character do you associate most with? Which anime waifu/superhero teenage boy is your spirit animal? Which TV or movie character do you completely understand? Which SS13 character have you found and thought "yep, that's totally me, I'm doing a self-insert right now"? Post here.

Unless I'm wrong, it would be fairly easy to implement an if check, and not heal any brute damage pass a certain threshold. (Now I'm just waiting for Scopes to come tell me I'm wrong :u )

Brute is the main issue. I haven't looked at other damage types much - if you already don't heal from toxins that'd be a great help because we wouldn't have to touch any toxin or reagent interactions.

Yes yes yes. This is brilliant. Great way to compromise right here, I agree 100%. Puts damper on people transferring to transfer, while still letting rounds where people are really bored end. (And no, I still don't believe in the excuse that antags need two hours of setup to do something. You can try, but if you haven't done anything after two hours and people start to lose interest, you don't really have a right to complain if the round gets transferred).

Would it be possible to slow down the natural healing factor by X amount? Maybe 3x or 4x? SS13 healing is videogame healing - it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but since we're using the game as a roleplay platform (and thus even our own gameplay is different), it is wayyyyy ridiculous. Some possible objections: -But we can't have firefights anymore without everyone getting fucked over royally? -Currently, in a firefight, you either get fucked or you don't. If you get shot enough to be put into crit, natural healing won't save you - you're already going to need a doctor. Yes, if you get shot once, and take 40-60 burn damage, you won't be able to heal from that as easily. But that's sort of the point - it's sorta ridiculous that you can shrug off a few laser shots, or a proper beating, because "oh I'm gonna heal anyway" and by the time you get to the doctor you have 0 damage left. -What if I accidentally hit myself in the head with a fist/fire extinguisher/my own butt/whatever? -Natural healing wouldn't go away completely, it'd just be much slower. Which means you would still heal from very tiny amounts of damage (it might take 5 minutes instead of 1, woo). Additionally, there's always bruise packs - which even your run of the mill civilian should know how to apply. -Wouldn't changing the rate of natural healing fuck with periodic applications of bruteloss/toxins/whatever? (i.e. +5 damage per turn) -Possibly. That might be the biggest challenge of this project, figuring out where exactly natural healing has interactions with other balance systems we don't want to touch, and finding a way to leave these systems untouched.

If this were the case, rev would not be voted in in the first place.

I used to build things in minecraft for fun. I wouldn't mind trying this out, if we want to host a server somewhere.

No, see, there was nothing wrong in the description you provided there because security's actions did not prevent players from playing out the round. Yes, being arrested over BS is frustrating, but I'm assuming none of these people were permabrigged - additionally, there was some clear abuse from sec other than just "we're gonna grab all of you guys and put you in perma", things that while shitty ICly, do not prevent players from actually roleplaying (beatings as a punishment, for example). So it's not the same situation. We shouldn't confuse things that are bad from an IC perspective from things that are bad from an OOC perspective.

Security cannot do that - and I always felt like admin (and player) response over killings has always been too much on the carebear side. Revs can kill people with justification. Sec can permabrig people with justification. Permabrigging everybody because "you saw them act suspicious" is not a fun way to conduct a rev round, and is something that should be ahelped.

The RP-Rev roundtype as a whole. Does it suck? I frankly don't know. It's resulted into some good rounds - however, if it fucks up too often, then it's something to be looked at. I've noticed two main issues with it. The first is that sometimes, revs won't do anything. The second is that sometimes, security will go super hard on the revs, and basically nip the revolution in the bud, ending the round. In order to birth a healthy ten-pound revolution, you don't want either of these things to happen. The problem of the revs not doing anything has partly been taken care of. The command messages (pay cuts, bar being locked down, etc) have given some spark to the conflict, and security's overall propensity to being dicks also helps. However, despite that, it still sometimes happens that the revs are dreadfully inactive, and end up doing, basically, nothing. At this point, the fault isn't only on revs. It's on the players as a whole. And here's the particularity of a rev round: when nuke ops or cultists all suck, you're kinda boned. When rev-heads suck, you can actually take the matters into your own hands, because you don't need to be a rev to act like one (if you know what you're doing). While most other antags exist because of some sort of out-of-round motivation (and we don't give everyone a rev job right away because some people will start shooting at random while yelling "viva la revolucion"), revs are pretty much regular Joes who got really pissed with middle management. And the cool thing is since we're a roleplay server, it totally makes sense for people to start revolting if they see terrible things happen (and not because they got a button prompt from someone who was a rev-head). So players need to realize they need to step up and start causing some trouble if nobody will. Because there's always a few proactive players on every round - but I sometimes don't see them act for the sole reason they're not antags. That's a bit silly. If nothing is happening and you think you can bring action to the round, hell, ahelp it. We'll be glad to let you. Second thing. The curse of dickish security. Again, as I explained in the post above, security can be rather fun while being assholes. I think a few people have forgotten that, and resorted to a "we must crush the revolution!" mindset rather than "we must foster the revolution by being terrible yet entertaining!" These people need to be talked to. Jobbanned from sec, if necessary (if they reeeeaaaally don't listen after being told to stop doing certain things). Will that help the quality of rev rounds? Probably a bit. Will it help them majorly? No. This isn't an isolated problem, and if we want to fix the general dynamic of rev rounds, we're going to have to do more than just single out people and talk to them. So, where do we go from here? Suggestions forum. I haven't played much on servers besides Aurora, and thus I'm (mostly) ignorant of other roundtypes. However, if "mutiny" seems promising (whatever that is), bring it up in a suggestion. If it makes more sense than rp-rev, we'll try it out. If the players actually enjoy it more, there should be no issue with replacing the gamemode. Note: There's some things I haven't addressed in these two posts, like your complaint that a lot of rp/events favors combat roles. It's a valid gripe, but there's a lot of stuff in this thread already, and I don't want to get lost by tackling on too many issues at once. Feel free to ask me about this, or create another thread about it.

Finally, a thread that's actually interesting. Anyway, two sides to the issue here. First is the behavior of sec in that particular round, and second is how the rules of rev are currently set. Correct? So I'm going to look at both of them separately. Firstly, the behavior of sec. There is a big core tenet, not only to heavy-RP, but to multiplayer games in general. Every player's action should attempt to generate enjoyment for others, and if not, at least not completely fuck over a single person or an ensemble. This was not respected here. I understand the objective of putting everyone in permabrig - mass arrests put non-revs in contact with revs, and give them a reason to join the revolution. Additionally, it forces everyone to group in an area, and come up with a battle plan, because they are actively being fucked over by sec and very unhappy. There's just one problem with that. There ain't shit you can do in perma. Yes, if you stuff a few people in it, their friends can bust them out. But if you perma everyone, it kinda sucks, because their chances of escaping are near zero. Everyone's gear they already assembled is hidden outside of perma, all sec officers will be watching perma because you've got 6+ people in it, and there's a gas system that will be used the moment a remotely intelligent officer sees the prisoners are revolting. No one's left to bust you out, and no one's left to cause trouble on the station, so sec only has to watch you guys and you can't do anything. Putting everyone in perma and throwing away the key ends the round. I'm not saying perma is bad - it can serve as a lovely source of RP during rev rounds. But you don't keep everyone in it. NanoTrasen can play space hitler in rev rounds if they want. ICly, they can do the meanest, most ridiculous shit, and impose the greatest suffering imaginable on fictional 2D spessmen. However, they still have responsibilities to create fun OOCly. Here's a list of fun things I've seen hitler-security do: -Public beatings -Public executions -Arresting people over minor charges and releasing them (the type you generally wouldn't care about) -Arresting a group of people and releasing them -Stripping troublemakers of their job access and sending them to do forced labor on the mining asteroid Yes, some of these things don't make sense from a "NanoTrasen is a corporate entity which operates by a precise charter of rules and regulations" point of view. But that's not what RP-rev is about - RP-rev is about a group of disgruntled employees literally overtaking the station like some 17th century mutiny on a ship. And the easiest way to do that (aside from a revolution paid by the syndicate or whatever, which gives non-revheads little incentive to act) is to turn all the heads into egomaniac, power-crazy assholes. Now, here's a list of non-fun things I've seen hitler-security do: -Putting everyone in perma then not doing anything -Arresting somebody for a long-ass time just because they're upset or acting weird (that's not even meta-ing at this point, you want these people out to get the round going unless they've literally killed somebody) -Loyalty implanting people It seems to me like all of that was done this round. Now, I don't know if sec had actual plans on what to do with the people in perma before glorious meteors hit, but it's not the first time I've seen sec do "blanket-arrests" during rp-rev and it turning out horribly. What sec should do is arrest those people, interrogate them, then release them if they don't have any evidence. Because from an OOC perspective, that makes sense. If sec sees you goof, they should give you some sort of punishment for it - if they don't, they don't really have any valid reason to keep you. And this interrogating has to be done quickly. Invoke the "space Geneva convention" or whatever for all I care, but if you keep innocent people in perma for too long, players start to get bored really quickly. So brig everyone, yes, but figure out who's actually done shit as fast as you can, and release these people (then put the others in normal cells, don't give em a life sentence until they've killed someone or you clearly can't control the station pop anymore). That way, you still look like a dick and make people ICly angry, but you don't prevent anyone from being able to roleplay. To conclude on that particular set of security behavior - a good player /should/ know when to give antags some leeway. This doesn't mean being a terrible shot on purpose and completely failing to arrest your common criminal - but when security is jumping to permabrigging everyone, and suggests mass-loyalty-implanting (do you want to kill a rev round? Because that's how you kill a rev round.), that's a fair bit of meta-ing. And the HoS of that round definitely needs to be talked to, because I do not know how they were planning to have their actions carry a positive outcome for the players. So yes, sec should do terrible things. They should also /not/ remove anybody any chances to revolt unless they've damn well proven ICly that they're going to revolt until they die. This post has gotten incredibly long, so I'll post the part about the second issue brought up in a separate one.

I'm siding with Brage - if you can't provide the round with something to do in two hours as an antag, you probably don't know what you're doing. Let's think about it - what does raising the limit to three hours do? Prevent people from transferring because they're bored? Because that's generally the reason why people call a crew transfer - because they want to do something else. I don't see why we'd want to prevent them from doing that, and force a majority of the server to wait an extra hour they don't want to wait, in the off-chance that somebody, somewhere, is planning something (that they haven't been able to execute yet in the first two hours of the round). How often do we get these rounds, versus boring rounds where everybody is ready to transfer at two hours? Because that's something to consider before enforcing a policy that unilaterally favors the former.

1. Global OOC mutes happen when the whole chat is being an idiot. Yes, sometimes OOC gets globally muted for a single person being dumb - I've been trying to tell mods to stop doing that, and mute the person instead. 2. I still can't agree that the punishment was excessive. You made a sassy comment, as a direct response to a staffmember asking the chat to moderate themselves. The next step from that isn't to ask one more time - it's a mute. I can also guarantee that we would have gladly unmuted in this situation, had the player apologized in adminhelp after a bit of time. 3. @Xander, show me this "bending of the rules" you see take place. Staff that agrees with each other is not an example of circlejerking in itself - it can also demonstrate good coherency. Looking at our staff complaints, I actually see only two that are addressed directly at a staffmember's moderating style: this one, and the one against PumpkingSlice (which was dropped, as the user admitted their own faults.) 4. The one thing that bothers me in this is Dea's tone in her PMs. It's a bit... off. I feel like I'd just be frank when giving someone a punishment, but this feels fake, like, fake cheerful. Maybe it's the phrasing.

Not really - a mute carries the point across quite accurately. As for its duration, LetzShake could have easily apologized and asked for an unmute after a while. As for a warning, Dea had already given one to the OOC chat in general, to cease discussing a certain topic - LetzShake replied with sass, and at this point a second warning would've likely not served much use (like come on, a mod just said people should stop talking about a thing, the first thing you should reply with is probably not a sassy comment). As for insults, having to pass on a case to another mod every time they come up is a silly waste of time. Moderators are selected for their ability to control their temper and work well under stress - if they start getting frustrated because of a user's actions, they should be able to recognize it themselves, and pass off the case to another member of staff on their own judgement. I'm assuming you mean mute and not ban? Anyway, the same thing I just told Valkrae applies here too. Dea had already made a request of the chat, the request was immediately opposed/criticized with a sassy comment. I understand perfectly muting the player rather than making a second request, especially when your first request was met with hostility.

I'm pretty much in full agreement with Brage. However, players should be mindful of their conduct, especially if their repeated shenanigans result in more annoyance than actually interesting situations. Because there is one boss their characters have to answer to. Us. We're more lenient than an actual employer, because we do want to let people experiment and push the limits if they think they can do something interesting with them. And the main judging criteria we're observing isn't how realistic this is compared to real-life behavior, but how much fun it is for other players to let this go on. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes a gross disregard of workplace rules, when maintained consistently, is more annoying and immersion-breaking than it is conductive to interesting roleplay. And that is when we will ask you to stop.

This is a tough call for anyone to make. However, after reading everyone's posts and getting a good understanding of the situation, I believe Seven's behavior falls under self-antagging more than anything else, and as such, a jobban or whitelist strip would simply be putting a bandaid on a much bigger issue. Jobbans are for problematic behavior displayed regarding a specific job; powergaming with science equipment, constantly hulking as a geneticist, doing a terrible job in security, etc. And head strips are for people who cannot behave themselves in a way that is becoming of a head. This is neither of that, this is just... stupid. No character should attempt to "ghetto-arrest" another because they're mad at them (you're in a controlled and regulated workplace, what do you think is going to happen?), or make a move for your direct superior's service weapon, again because you're pissed (bad, bad, bad.) As for the reason why this happens, I believe you mentioned some sort of combination of IC/OOC emotions affecting judgement. In the end, that's for you to figure out. Meanwhile, I'm tempted to file this under self-antagging. And because it's really not the first time, and as hive pointed out, we have had discussions about this before, it will carry some sort of consequence. I'll simply wait for another staffmember to validate/weight in on my opinion before pronouncing myself. As for Tina/Tainavaa, I'd like to issue a reminder that while leniency is not bad in itself, and you certainly don't have to play every head role as a ruthless rules-lawyer, excessive coddling of your staff, to the point of shirking your duties (or your department's) is not a good thing. A change of attitude would be welcome at this point - Tina needs to know she needs to keep a better control over her staff if she expects to remain at the top of the science department.

You have CMD. You've just been cloned, and don't really understand any of what's happened, but the station is in chaos. You turn to the first person you see, your long-love/fiancee, who says she needs your help. Now, come to me with actual examples of ridiculous things the HoS did, and I'll take this more seriously, but in the great lines, this is perfectly believable. The crew had the opportunity to coordinate to mount a counter-offensive, or formulate vast strategic plans. If they decide to run at the borgs single-file to bash at them with a steel pipe, that's the players' fault. They were given a fighting chance, and simply didn't capitalize on it. Maybe that should've been ahelped, especially if people tried to play hero and failed horribly. Though that's on the borgs, not Swat. The HoS is a figure of authority, and having them under antag control, without a loyalty implant, can at the least induce confusion. This seems valid to me. You rush a borg like an idiot, you get killed like an idiot. We're more harshly critical of "take over the station" antags than other antags because their roleplay ends up dictating the round a lot more (thus being a good antag is then paramount), but I fail to see the fault in the situation presented here at being with anyone other than the players who decided to bumrush borgs which had a clear advantage over them. Quasi-nuke rounds on autotraitor are quite rare, and so I don't think you're really in a position to say that if we let them happen every autotraitor round will turn into nuke. If anything, these rounds generally end up being better than nuke rounds, because there's a greater effort both from antags who actually have to formulate a plan to execute (and have less equipment to work with), and from the crew that has to react to dynamic and unusual strategies. And if antags play terribly and end up trying to kill everyone in the lamest way possible, that's when we'll jobban them. Prove to me how this was the case here and I might be able to provide a response. Lastly, I feel like this exemplifies a good part of your rationale, and it worries me greatly. Combat should not be "berated" simply for existing, or having been picked over chair-rp or stealth antagging. What you want to berate are actions that are detrimental to RP. Combat, in itself, is not - it simply serves as a situation, a canvas, among others, where users are free to build their own roleplay from.

The love plot with reviving the HoS seems a bit silly. /But/ if I'm understanding everything right, Fortune didn't actually do anything out of love herself - she used the HoS' affection for her to trick him into doing her bidding. And that story is consistent with everything Swat has said. Yes, it's risky - but antags don't need to be the most balanced individuals, and I think it was a gambit that could be both interesting, and conductive to good roleplay (playing with trickery, deception and such). I do not think rounds with a lot of action are necessarily a bad thing. Again, a lot of blame is being placed on Swat simply because the round ended with a lot of people dying - besides one borg getting overly excited and ganking someone (not Swat's fault), most of the people died because they were stupid in trying to fight the antagonists. I do not want to muzzle people in their playstyles. I don't think we need to be a server where we say "no, don't fight, because fighting is for nox and goon and always turns out badly and with no RP". That is a gross misrepresentation of the quality of our rounds as a whole - and "action" rounds do foster roleplay as well. Things will always fuck up one time or another - just don't get hung up on those times, accept that they're part of a natural and very difficult to control ecosystem. (Run the same nations round twice, one will be great and the other a complete disaster for no discernable reason; this still won't convince me to stop running nations rounds.)

Alright, here's the issue I have. You claim that context is important here. You generally wouldn't infect somebody with a virus under normal circumstances, but because they had taken your pAI who had just saved your life, and basically acted like a dick to you while nuke ops were around, you decided it was okay to infect them with a (controlled) virus to get it back. If we strip away nonessential details from this, we get to a core fact: you gave someone a virus because you were mad at them. Not because the situation urgently called for it, or because it was a case of life or death - the person just acted like a dick and reset your pAI. This thus makes your reaction childish, and frankly ridiculous - it is absolutely disproportionate to infect someone with a virus just because they had taken an item from you, an item you could have easily gotten security to return within ten minutes. If anything, the fact that this was done during a situation of crisis, completely disregarding the safety of the rest of the crew by introducing a potential biohazard in the evacuation area, only makes things worse. And the stress of the situation also did not serve as a justification - I understand losing your nerve while in a panic, but injecting someone with a virus, while formulating the plan to cure them once you blackmail them in carrying out your will, is a fairly premeditated action, and thus not something that can be attributed to panic alone. Even then, there could be some sort of semi-insane, semi-neurotic doctor in real life who just snaps and starts injecting people with viruses until they do their bidding (see how fucked up that sounds?). But the fact remains this is not something we want on here. Abuse of science and medical equipment in incredibly childish ways (using said equipment on people or refusing to treat them over incredibly petty disputes) makes the whole station look like kindergarteners, and is a huge problem for everyone right now, as too many people on here treat this game like an internet chatroom for their characters, and not their workplace. So we ask that people not act like that.

I have to agree with everyone else here - criticism is welcome, when expressed properly. The way you phrased your last message was disrespectful, and Dea was perfectly in the right to give you an OOC mute for it.

I have a few questions for Seven - your post might've shed some light on the situation but I'd prefer for us to be absolutely clear. -What was your intent in using the secHUD to change Bellard's arrest status? -Why was the door in R&D tampered with? -What exactly were you hoping to achieve by flashcuffing Bellard, and what made you decide to try to fight the captain, your direct superior, to the point of attempting to take their weapon? (I might be more interested in the IC train of thought here, and what led to it happening.) If you feel you're too tired to provide a proper answer to any of those questions, feel free to come back to them after you've had some rest.

Archiving - if this is still a problem that needs to be discussed (we are open to discussing it), feel free to submit another unban appeal, using the proper format along with the explanation you provided us here.

Right - this thread has been up for a reasonable amount of time, and at this point I feel like it's safe to assume anybody that had issues with Xander's recent behavior in head roles should have posted. Since I haven't noticed anything bad myself (no news is good news, in this case), I am now granting an unban.