Kaed

Counterpoint: There are a lot of cases where admins or mods have opinions that don't actually match up with any stated rules or rather some kind of unwritten rule they are following (i.e. 'don't clone criminals'), so rulings can be really inconsistent when there are vague guidelines.

I made this thread because something similar happened to me, and I DID ahelp, and was just told 'it's an ic issue, the officer and doctor had reason to think you committed a crime'. As long as something is clarified in some official capacity I can point to, I'd be happy.

The actual problem her is the process of declining cloning is entirely informal. It works like this in practice: Officer: Yeah I'm pretty sure they were breaking into the vault and didn't know there was a drop. Doctor: So DNC? Officer: Yeah, DNC. And that's it. The character is not cloned, there is no investigation. Hell, the officer in question could actually be an antagonist straight up lying, too. People are just not aware that there is any process for determining it other than 'that guy said so', because there are no clear guidelines and they just take what someone says at face value, even if they're utterly unqualified to make that decision. As a doctor, they SHOULD know when and when not they clone someone, but they don't. I can tell you if an doctor told a sec officer that the chemist had put acid in the cryo tubes and it was a terrorism charge which was HoT, and the officer had just therefore had just thrown this person into solitary without a headset without a single question, there would be ahelps for days. Security is expected to know when and how to do their job, but medical appears to be staffed at least partly by who just shrug and do what they're told without question even when it might be illegal, with the same results, someone is taken out of the round.

I've noticed that, despite supposedly it being medical and heads decisions to declare someone not to be cloned, pretty much any random officer who finds a dead maybe-criminal may just tell medical not to clone them without consulting anyone. Is there some standard policy that anyone who is suspected of having committed a crime deserves to be dead? By what metric is a corpse obligated to remain a corpse on the arbitrary decision of the person who found it or a nearby officer who makes the decision whether they were a criminal? Sure, I can see someone who was committing violent crimes, attacking and murdering people, and ended up dead, being declared DNC, but why are people who broke open the wrong wall and suffocated or fell down a hole in the vicinity of a secure area also being lumped into this category? I don't recall seeing any actual guidelines on when someone is to be denied cloning other than 'suicide'. Have I missed something, or is there some unofficial half-ooc policy that anyone who is a suspected antag can just eat shit if they happened to do a whoopsie and die when committing a non-violent crime?

Treating them as completely irreplaceable accomplishes the exact same thing given the arbitrary and meaningless value you give money in these situations. It's the struggle between having to meet both corporate guidelines on employee value and the greedy demands of a pirate that conflict spawns from in hostage situations.

I didn't know you could even say things in any other way other than the command the bar. It's strange to me that people would deal with a prompt pop up obscuring thier window

As an individual mostly overseeing these events - the AI in question who slowed you down so security had half a chance to get its act together - I have to say that you're both casting blame on each other when the greater issue was no one was willing to take responsibly for driving the round in a direction that encouraged conflict. The merc team did very little except take what they wanted and leave, and security basically capitulated immediately because they were given 0 reason to do otherwise other than vague humanitarian ideals. Apparently all the players who will give out 10k for a cargo tech were missing this round, because Gonzales (the only head at the time of the decision, though another came later) gave no shits about this stranger and neither did D'jar. What could have been done better here? Some of security or the crew at large other than a single unsupported detective caring about civil rights would have been a start. It's kind of funny to me that people recently have been claiming that NT would care about their public image in hostage situations but when it comes to sort of the reverse, where they have someone non-crew the antags want, people are awfully willing to give in immediately. By the same coin, the person who played the refugee is right - the mercenary team at large made no attempts to escalate the situation. They did nothing but take their hostage and run off to their ship, which then sat in the docks for 15 minutes with 0 communication before suddenly leaving. It's clear now that this happened because you all descended into bickering in aooc instead of taking any actions in the round. Bad attitude from him or not, the rest of you still did fuck all but accomplish a single task and leave. An idea being novel and interesting to a couple people in the merc team does not mean it will benefit the round as a whole. People generally like excitement and some kind of stakes, and none were provided from either side. You cannot simply place all blame on the loudest and most argumentative player in your merc team when all of you had the opportunity to do something else with the round, and chose not to.

No. You're taking two statements with divergent purposes (There should be guidelines to ransom to create more conflict and people should be allowed to communicate with the crew as much as they want) and taking them out of context them to support your claim. Involving the crew at large IS the preferable option, but setting guidelines that encourage claiming important hostages rather than the first one you can grab is not going to cause people to stop communicating. While it should be up to people to play antagonist as they want, in theory, we should be encouraging actions that involve the whole round instead of just embracing a completely laissez-faire policy. Hostages tend to communicate with the crew unless their headset is taken away, and I frankly don't understand where you make the assertion that capturing a captain would involve the crew less than capturing a janitor, nor how your hypothetical situation has ANY BEARING ON THIS SUGGESTION, which is about simply hostage guidelines. A janitor is utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, while the captain is the head honcho of the station. Why should people care more about a janitor?

You're just reaching for straws right now. There is no guarantee that the captain would only communicate with security and command, they have every channel available to them, and a good captain would make sure to involve as many people as possible. Even if, for some reason, the hostage captain suddenly decided that they would refuse to talk to anyone except sec and command the moment they got captured, the ransomers sure as heck would broadcast that they have the captain on common, because it's the only channel they have, and they want everyone to know we have your leader. In the end, it's up to the players themselves how much they want to involve the crew at large. Harper could just as easily choose to remain in sullen silence while the pirates communicate exclusively with security via a stolen headset. The amount players exclude others from the events of the round is not a relevant part of this issue, because it's not something you can predict.

That's a nice ideal, but I sure as heck wouldn't pay $6,600 in one place to save some random person I barely know and employed to scrub floors from slavery/death, even if I had it, as an utterly preposterous amount of money for someone I don't know. And I'm not even a soulless company out for profit, which is what NT is supposed to be, according to all accounts. I myself would enjoy being the person to shut down attempts to pay such a huge sum out of hand. The problem is less about whether you'd like your character to die/be sold (because a lot of people are ridiculously attached to their characters and get upset when something bad happens to them, nothing new here) and more about the greater conflict of the round. There should be a higher difficulty curve for requests for large amounts of money. If you want a lot of money, put in the effort to break in and kidnap a head or even the captain. What is happening here is people are taking the path of least resistance, grabbing from cargo/mining or the bar or basically the first person that they manage to put their pirate hands on and expecting to get a fortune of out this random unimportant employee. And they do, because people playing either have no concept of value or refuse to acknowledge that they need to behave sensibly with corporate funds. This sort of behavior should not be rewarded by command weeping 'A life is worth any price! *single tear*' and paying out the entire station general account for this cargo technician immediately. The guidelines I want will discourage this low effort high reward gameplay style. Ransoms shouldn't be discouraged, but high value ransoms should be exclusive to command staff.

The entire point of this thread is to make guidelines that would tell you this information IC, how is this still confusing to you it is the purpose for which I made the thread. Also, whether the self destruct is secret or not waffles back and forth constantly based on whether people are familiar with it supposed to being secret or know it exists. The only place it's mentioned is on the wiki, and whether people go there regularly is up for debate.

We were picking a ballpark average, not 'the current amount in your account'. In the examples you gave, that's about 1200, which comes out to roughly 2000 anyway once you add 50%

The problem with what you're suggesting here, as I've said several times (by the way, I didn't mention the self driving cars things, don't quote me on that) leaving it up to people to decide everything with no regulations at all is that you aren't giving any grounding for people NOT to capitulate immediately to any demand. What motive, exactly, does ANYONE have to not empty the station accounts to the first pirate that grabs a janitor? Even in that round you complimented me on, my arguments were forced and backed by little more than my OOC desire to be a dissenting opinion. It is precisely that reason that I was so easy to ignore entirely and work around. Let me give you some real life analogies of my own. I work in a customer service job for a company that people pay to enter a membership reward program. More importantly for this discussion, we have certain free gifts we can offer people for making a payment to join or renew the program. These gifts are not exactly luxurious, cheap bags and totes. Honestly, I doubt they cost more than like $0.50-$1 each when purchased wholesale in bulk, they are almost individually valueless to the company except in as much as they make the members feel good and want to buy a membership for the gift. Despite that, we have millions of members, and as such, we have clear and defined guidelines of when we can offer people a gift. Many people call in asking if they could get a free gift they heard about on TV for that payment they made a year and a half ago, and I can only give them one if they make a renewal payment. Everyone doesn't get one just because they want one, there has to be rules, otherwise pretty much anyone could ask for a gift at any time, and they'd tell their friends to do the same because of how easy it is, and it would start to be a tax on the company funds, because even cheap bags add up once it starts to be in the millions. The point on this meandering explanation is what actual motive do I have for refusing an unreasonable request without guidelines? Whether it be a cheap polyester tote or a ten grand ransom for a janitor in a video game, there is literally no reason to refuse if there are not guidelines saying otherwise, other than 'I'm an asshole'. And it's human nature to get mad and and eventually ignore the opinions of people who are being jerks for the sake of it. These guidelines are needed to give some teeth to corporate shills in the face of an overwhelmingly bleeding heart command staff population. You also can't claim that there is a greater picture and Nanotrasen is unphased by pirate demands because they are so rich while at the same time ignoring that if thousands of other pirates all start making demands once they hear how soft and humanitarian they are, it will start to actually hurt them to pay them all out. This is essentially the sort of thing a person ignorant of good business practice would claim because they only see a microcosm of how it works and just see a rich company apparently being greedy in a single incident. Frankly, I think the 1.5x bank account guideline (with some rounding) is a good enough policy. i.e. if you're asking more than like 2k for a civilian, you should be laughed out of the station until you can renegotiate a better offer.

There SHOULD be a corporate policy for ransoms and pirate related things, Evandorf. It's an remote research station that is vulnerable to it. I frankly don't care if you think it's 'policing roleplay', it makes zero sense that such things should be 100% up to the players involved in a corporate setting, because employees cannot regularly be trusted to make good decisions for the company in a void of regulations. There should be SOME kind of guidelines, even if they are there for people to disregard when it suits them. The people who claim the company funds matter more should have something other than 'I'm an asshole to be ignored' backing them. It also means choosing a life over your job security is more meaningful.

As Delta says, the value of the money is largely irrelevant beneath the greater issue that without some guidelines any hostage situation can become an utterly bland situation devoid of conflict or stakes, because the pirates/mercenaries ask for an outrageous sum for the hostage, and command just empties the meaningless numbers in their station accounts and throws them into their hands. Basically, there is a more important factor at work, and that's what makes a more interesting round for everyone. You can very well claim 'Nanotrasen would pay this sum due to it being logical, trivial and making them look good," but let me present you with two hypothetical scenarios. Situation A: A hydroponics tajara named Nawful is kidnapped by some mercenaries, who demand fifteen grand for their return, or they will skin the cat boy and leave their head on the holodeck. The command staff confers on this and determines that Nawful does not deserve to die simply for the sake of money, and empties the bank accounts, delivering the requested money to the mercenaries. At this point, Nawful is either given back, and the mercenaries fuck off or, if it's early in the round, continue to menace the station because what are they going to do for the next hour otherwise, or they betray command and run off with the money/maybe a new hostage, and stuff escalates to an ERT. In this scenario, the crew at large feels no involvement in the proceedings. They are passive observers who can do nothing but listen to the goings on via radio and maybe reassure Nawful things will be okay or to say mean things about the pirates. Situation B: The mercenaries capture a notable but unimportant janitor named... WIllow Barker... and threaten to sell her into slavery/the organ market if they are not given fifteen grand. This is well out of acceptable limits for a random, according to company guidelines and what come command members consider common sense, and they have a talk over the command channel in that regard, with the CMO Phyllis Essie claiming that they can't allow one of their own to be harvested for organs under any circumstances. Command is thrown into a deadlock as the argue about the value of life as opposed to corporate assets. The mercenaries hear all of this, and relay it to the station and make threats of torturing Willow Barker or something if their demands are not met. Willow Barker, being a loud janitor girl who speaks her mind, begins chewing out the command staff willing to let her be sold and harvested, and the crew inevitably splits into sides, decrying the greedy command members or trying to gather funds themselves to help. In this situation, there is much more general round involvement and investment, because a conflict has arisen that isn't even really about the hostage and random so much as the nature of the value of people to the company and coworkers. One of these advances the round conflict, while the other dissolves it, requiring some new plot point to come up and mostly leaves the onus of responsibility on the antagonists to do it. Option A exists and occurs mostly because of laziness and an inability to recognize imagined value for imagined currency, and we need to have less of A happening and more of B.

These suggestions about making the economy relevant mechanically are outside of the scope of this suggestion. What I'm looking for is a policy that forces us to pretend like money means something, specifically that that money belonging to Nanotrasen mean something to them. The suggestions for economic reworks should be put in another thread.

Well, okay. It's a little weird to be suggesting an entirely differently worth than someone is already started on one. I guess there's no rules against it though?

Are these suggestions for my rework? Or... a request for a completely rework that someone else presumably is going to do in your mind? I'm confused.

It's not that negotiation should be discouraged, it's that I feel like Nanotrasen would have set some kind of (not very high) limit on how much they will let you pay for a ransom depending on the hostage(s) taken. The negotiations should involve difficulty on the part of the station as they try to follow corporate policies and still figure out a way to pay off the greedy pirates (perhaps by pooling crewmember money or selling stuff to the round's merchant) instead of them just dipping unrestrained fingers into the station accounts or bounty funds and immediately resolving the problem.

That doesn't mean you spend the approximate entire annual earnings of a low level employee to buy them back. Rich corporations don't generally throw their money away to every pirate who comes along and grabs a random citizen, or they'd hemorrhage funds and become a viable target for every other pirate. Precedents get set if you start giving in just because technically you can afford to pay whatever is asked, and it ends badly. The aurora may have taken millions to build, but I'm pretty sure that a chef or cargo tech is not worth 10k+. They can always get a new one for much cheaper. I feel I should remind you this is the same setting where it was deemed 'not murder' to lobotomize and cut out someone's brain to put in a robot to use as a slave.

Money is largely meaningless in this game except for interactions with antagonists, and because of that, there is a tendency for command staff to just reach for the station accounts the moment weapons are needed or an absolutely preposterous amount of money is demanded for ransoms, like 20k for two captive cargo technicians in a recent round. There are zero consequences for heads using those funds to immediately dispel any tension, and generally the people who try and insist otherwise are ignored under waves of humanitarian ideals like 'they're people, it's worth any price!' I can tell you that there is no for-profit company (i.e. Nanotrasen) that would let you throw huge amounts of money Nanotrasen's company money away for a couple of barely qualified low level employees. Maybe if they were heads of staff, or something, but this is ridiculous. I'd like it if we had some actual policies on hostage negotiations and station funds, so it isn't left up to the gentle, soft-hearted HoP's and CMO's to blast Nanotrasen's money out of their ass with zero oversight. There are often policies that governments have for terrorist negotiations, and Nanotrasen is practically a corporate government in itself. I mean, the heads might still do it anyway, but they should be doing it with the understanding their jobs are on the line for carelessly using company funds.

Don't make me jihad you all.

I am not a Christian and little about their traditions, but thank you for your forthright answer instead of deliberately being difficult for your own amusement.

Aren't dismissals usually opposed to provide some kind of reasoning beyond 'no'? Is there a date scheduled when holiday mode decorations get taken down that I don't know about? Is it secretly server policy to leave the Christmas lights up till March? Does it somehow fall under the one month no revert clause? If there's a pressing reason why they are staying up, I'd like to know with a little more reasoning than 'bah humbug to you' or 'unexplained no'

You can't call me scrooge after christmas nerd, it's over, let's move on.