Ublicto

BYOND Key: Ublicto Game ID: cps-azWj Player Byond Key/Character name: Eva Meier - ckey unknown Clark Coldsmith - ckey unknown Staff involved: None, I did not ahelp it during the round. Reason for complaint: Unfair and arbitrary security play. While I was an antagonist this round, the only thing I had done is buy a voice changer and pretend to be the Dominian Emperor and Chairman of Pluto over the radio. They had no proof this was me, or reason to suspect me however. They also never discovered the gas mask in my bag was the voice changer to my knowledge, and that would not have justified arresting my character in the way they did. While I am aware they intercepted messages between me and one of the other antagonists on our PDA, this in no way would have been enough to reasonably arrest my character or suspect them of a crime. Furthermore, when I was arrested off they would not tell me what specifically I was charged with and then tried to use a hardsuit that had been brought in to the security desk that I was holding at the time they arrested me as evidence against me. This was very plainly absurd. They would not give me specific charges when pressed - the most specific thing they said was that my prints were somewhere on deck three I believe, which I doubt because the only antagonist items other than my own I had touched was some bugs and a box that I ensured stayed in the antagonists hands and should not have left the brig, much less incriminated myself some how. Essentially my complaint charges both investigator players with; -metagaming to profile my character as an antag because I play antag relatively frequently compared to other players. -bad security play for essentially arresting me for no reason and refusing to explain charges. I understand if some of this was IC animosity towards my character, but I was standing there trying to explain to them that me holding a coalition hardsuit that was turned in is not evidence of a crime nor is talking to a criminal once during the shift. The head of security was prepared to let me go after I made a show of helping them deal with a prison break, but these two investigators continued to accuse me of crimes in a way that made me think I was being singled out in an OOC way. While this is by no means an incredibly major round ruining issue, it was very annoying at the time and basically cut me off from doing anything antag related near the end of the round for no reason including continuing my radio prank call gimmick. Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Not applicable. Approximate Date/Time: 8/24/23 at about 1:00 EST

I have seen people claim a damage cap in addition to the brainmed system would be beneficial, do you think that would correct any of the problems you have?

Is being instantly hunted whenever you try and do anything fun? Right now changeling incentivizes being loud, because being the thing is extremely difficult.

What I have argued is that if changeling is to be a more stealthy horror antagonist, it should be given tools that allow it to be that rather than incentivizing fighting. If traitors for example only had easy access to weapons and no gimmick or stealth items they would overwhelmingly choose hostile gimmicks, and the same is true for changelings. I agree that there are problems with changeling, but I think those stem from what tools the ling is given easy access to rather than changeling itself. My experience in changeling may be the opposite as yours, i find silent murder difficult to achieve and what is even more of a challenge is hiding that murder when everyone has suit sensors on. Regardless, if changeling will not be altered and the choice is between removal or preserving it as is I will not miss the current changeling mode. I think it's a really unique game mode though and would hope it can be changed or preserved to allow better game play and role play for everyone in the round.

It is very difficult to play stealth ling with even one medical player looking at sensors. If anything, changeling needs a buff in some areas. If you want ling to be a stealth antag, then suggest changes that would make it more fun to play stealth ling. Perhaps the ling should get a stun weapon and absorbing a person should transmit healthy suit sensors until they are fully absorbed. Right now a lot of the abilities ling has and the response of players to identifying a ling makes it much easier and more fun to play an aggressive changeling and buy combat focused abilities. This harms RP, and is not a product of ling itself but rather the type of response people have to a changeling and the abilities a changeling at round start is incentivized to take, especially when you have players who are constantly monitoring suit sensors or will always yell for security the moment they see your arm blade. What would help make gimmicks more creative might be a way for a ling to reset their abilities. Maybe they have to turn into a blob for a minute and rebuild themselves, but this would allow someone to buy stealth or gimmick abilities at round start and not have to worry about killing people to get combat abilities later.

Revised version of SCA article: The Solarian Corporate Authority was founded by an act of parliament in 2463 and is largely the brainchild of Senator Hendrik Strom. Despite facing opposition from many pro-corporate interests it was implemented by the provisional military council with the support of large sections of the navy and population in the jewel worlds. The SCA is the newest government ministry of the Alliance and also one of the most politically controversial considering the scope, complexity, and importance of its work. The powers given to the SCA are wide ranging. The SCA has unilateral power over nationalization of assets of business or individuals based in the Republic Of Biesel, and used that power to great effect in the anti-Biesel nationalization campaign following its formation. In practice the SCA directly controls 10% of the Alliance’s economy through nationalized industry. In reality its influence has a much greater reach considering its close supervision of all credit issuing institutions in Alliance space, especially Idris Bank which is seen as politically unreliable. The strong powers of the SCA as the vanguard of the ASSN's interests in its own economy are weakened by divisions in the Alliance. Regional politicians compete over influence in local SCA offices, and mega corporations such as Einstein Engines and Hephaestus Industries are able to affect the operation of the SCA through those politicians. The SCA despite having a more simplified bureaucratic structure and less corrupt personnel than many parts of the Alliance government is plagued by coordination issues that stem from this and other issues. Local offices seldom are in complete sync with the primary office on Unity Station, and the farther from Sol one goes the more independent SCA offices tend to act. In what may seem to be a paradoxical relationship the Authority enjoys the support of Einstein Engines and some other large mega corporations who are usually involved with the most complex industries subject to the most disruption in the stop-start pattern the Alliance’s economy tended to follow. Nationalized industry, as long as it isn’t competing with them, provides important stability in markets that Hephaestus and Einstein Engines rely on. It also provides friendly mega corporations a limited amount of independence from large banks like Idris which through their control of credit and frequent corruption of government ministries could restrain the growth of industry to keep prices high and costs low. The economic stability provided by a large employer and producer like the SCA which does not act in accordance with short term profit goals has been a boon to the Alliance, and some of the corporations that would normally oppose this government ministry. Einstein Engines in particular has benefited enormously from the SCA. It's reputation as a firm which is aligned with the interests of the ASSN's government has allowed it to easily and legally influence the SCA to take actions favorable to it, and unfavorable to its competitors. In particular the SCA agreed to supply Einstein Engines with lower cost components needed to build faster than light engines if Einstein Engines agreed to buy them in bulk. This was a direct attack on Hephaestus Industries, one of Einstein's largest competitors and a corporation which has made its hostility to Alliance political goals known. Despite that, Hephaestus Industries has continued to resist the influence of the SCA and used its political power to severely undermine the office on New Hai Phong and other systems where it holds a virtual monopoly on political and economic power. If the bureaucratic weight of the Solarian Corporate Authority can overcome the political weight of its enemies and the typical issues of any Alliance government ministry is something that only time can tell.

Thank you for your reply. If it was rabidly anti-Bieselite and anti-corporate, why would the SCA not be a powerful organization? If we want it to be answerable to different politicians each with their own power base, would it make sense to split the SCA between different offices? For example, there could be a Hephaestus influenced office, a central office in Sol, another office controlled by the military that runs the nationalized war industry, etc. In my writing I aimed to blur the line between the state and mega corporations. If NHP, the Eridani Corporate Federation, and so on are to remain like special economic zones where they can do whatever they want I think that's good and adds to the complex byzantine bureaucratic idea you want to see but at the same time it brings into question how effective the SCA is and if it would be a competitor to these corporate fiefs rather than a regulator of them. The SCA is already charged with managing an immense part of the economy. Better than simple normal corruption I think having patronage networks play a large part is both more interesting and gives more room to potentially add more later. For example, if a politician wants to build his power base and keep himself in power he can influence the SCA to spend more money on his planet and use it to boost the elites or constituencies that support him. Mega corporations can also do this and use the SCA to boost themselves, but that creates dependency on the state and undermines their independence from central authority. I like many of your suggestions, but now I am more unsure about what the SCA is supposed to be. Is it a supervisory group that also owns stuff, or is it more like a publicly owned mega-corporation on its own? Personally I think if we want the SCA to be pulled in different directions and be less of tool of the state, the publicly owned mega-corporation idea is more interesting.

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Small Species: Human Short Description: A short article about the Solarian Corporate Authority, which seems to me one of the most important but least written about government offices of the Alliance. This would probably be best placed in the "Sol Alliance" wiki page close to where the government departments are. How will this be reflected on-station?: It may be reflected in some character gimmicks or antagonist gimmicks. Some off station antagonists might claim to be SCA inspectors, for example. A Solarian consular officer could be an SCA representative to the SCC. For the vast majority of players in the vast majority of rounds it will not make any difference. It is almost entirely background lore. Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes, it goes into detail on the powers and actions of the SCA as well as why it could exist in an environment where political concerns are often dictated by giant mega corporations. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yes. Whatever changes are made the SCA will have more lore attached to it. Long Description: Solarian Corporate Authority The Solarian Corporate Authority was founded by an act of parliament in 2463 and is largely the brainchild of Senator Hendrik Strom. Despite facing opposition from many pro-corporate senators it was able to pass with the support of large sections of the navy and population in the jewel worlds. The SCA is not a department of the Alliance because that would expose it to oversight by politicians backed by the large corporations it is supposed to compete with and in large part oversee. Instead it is answerable to the empty Prime Minister’s office, which means by default the organization is controlled by its creator Hendrik Strom who as long as he maintains his influence in parliament can designate whoever he wants as the Authority’s chairman, including himself at times. The powers given to the SCA and its chairman are wide ranging. The SCA has unilateral power over nationalization and oversight of megacorporation management. In practice the SCA directly controls 10% of the Alliance’s economy through nationalized industry. In reality its influence has a much greater reach considering its close supervision of all credit issuing institutions in Alliance space, especially Idris Bank. Whenever a firm defies, undermines, or simply gets in the way of the ASSN’s interests or the goals of Senator Strom it can be denied credit and forced into bankruptcy or worse. In what may seem to be a paradoxical relationship the Authority enjoys the support of Hephaestus Industries and Einstein Engines, both of whom deal with the most complex industries subject to the most disruption in the stop-start pattern the Alliance’s economy tended to follow. Nationalized industry, as long as it isn’t competing with them, provides important stability in markets that Hephaestus and Einstein Engines rely on. It also provides friendly megacorporations a limited amount of independence from large banks like Idris which through their control of credit and frequent corruption of government ministries could restrain the growth of industry to keep prices high and costs low. In large part the cooperation of these corporations with the SCA is why the necessary expenses of consumers and industries across Alliance space has begun to slightly but noticeably drop and benefit the economy as well as expand Senator Strom’s popularity and personal power.

These are many good ideas. I will keep them in mind if I do a similar gimmick again. I would like to note that my character was definitely not based around Islam, most of what he did had nothing to do with religion. Thank you for all these good suggestions! That was part of a traditional name. "Thairun" is also what a translation website told me was the romanized form of the arabic word for wealth. My characters name was suppoed to mean "Ali, son of Omar, the wealthy, from Aemaq, father of phoron". I was doing my best to make a very traditional and old style arabic name that was funny while still being plausible and not immersion breaking. None of this comes from a place of mockery of arab culture or Islam as a religion. It was a very, as Vulcenus described, lighthearted gimmick.

I was playing a slightly insane extremely rich character and I did not make fun of the religion, that was mostly other people who at one point I shouted at over the radio. I called Keles a mamluk and gave him a briefcase full of money because he started immediately working for me. This isn't related to the main thrust of the complaint against me IMO, which is that I slandered the cultures and religion of over a billion people. The Elyran Phoron magnate I played was not supposed to be a representative of anything but himself. I even demanded people download his social media app at a few points and the impression I was trying to convey was "eccentric Elyran space oil quintillionaire" rather than a religion driven gimmick. My character was not an agent of the Elyran government, he was just a guy, and I never claimed that anything he did represented Elyra. The point of the gimmick was to act over the top. I can't control how other people interacted with my gimmick and I did not like some of the responses I got in the radio chat, but that is hardly my fault. I absolutely did not force any character to convert religions, the thing I did closest to that was tell Dominians they would be re-assigned as janitors. The unathi invented the conversion stuff on their own and I had nothing to do with it. I also was not going to persecute them for religious reasons, part of my escalation plan in my gimmick was to fire employees out of the mass driver to relieve them of their employment. How would you suggest I have done the gimmick? If I did something wrong in your eyes, I want to know what you would have done right. I think I tended to avoid excessive stereotypes, the only things I did that could be perceived to be religiously motivated was asking the pigs be sent somewhere else and the Alcohol be removed. That and maybe telling a number of Dominians that they would be janitors, but that was more based on my character's arbitrary personal sentiments. If what I did was deserving of a warning and a note, then by all means I should receive a warning and a note. But I would ask that I not receive a potential punishment for the acts of people I had no control over, especially radio chatter.

This is all very accurate with the exception that I had repeatedly ordered a cease fire and only said "kill them all" when it was clear that would not happen and more security was entering the room. I should also add that the HoS and I almost immediately came up with compromises that made sense IC and would allow us to continue the gimmick and round. I was not able to compromise even once with the Captain. The contrast here is notable.

You did not mention how I tried to reach a middle ground on every single issue that you raised. You said you wanted to go to Burzia, the HoS suggested Vysoka instead and I agreed with him. I said I wanted to get rid of the synthetics, you said that wasn't possible so I suggested you brig them. You never explained your objections to this, even when no merc had a weapon out and several even put their weapons on the table. I had to ask them to pick their weapons back up at one point. You did not mention you were putting us in the conference room for any specific reason, you were being extremely rude and stated abruptly that we would be confined there. This was both unrealistic and incredibly annoying. Whatever justifications you give for your actions were not apparent to me or the other mercs. When I aimed my gun at you I meant to take you hostage because I had no other option at that point. There was no reason why with your prior actions and attitude towards the mercs I would not have thought you weren't going to have security storm the room the moment you were out of the firing line. You gave zero reasons for anything you did and from my perspective acted to obstruct the gimmick in an unfair and unfun way. I do not blame you for the "CEASE FIRE!!" shouting not working because that was the fault of security officers who kept firing and causing responses from the mercs. Every allegation you make against me is categorically wrong. You never even attempted to talk about my conditions or negotiate them down - I negotiated them down for you! The HoS was the only one who I could actually talk to. I also suggested the synths be sent to the brig and not destroyed - you know very well that the brig would have been overseen by Horizon's security officers and not the four mercs. Us shooting the synths there makes no sense at all because then we'd have to fight our way out. If we wanted to destroy the synths so badly wouldn't we simply call back up to blow up the Horizon entirely? Your reasoning makes no sense to me. The "gimmick" you ran of constantly insulting us and stonewalling our gimmick was very bad and whatever your OOC intentions were they did not translate into anything I or the other mercs could see. Your discussion of what I said when I was filled with salt in dead chat is irrelevant and also out of context because I was discussing alternative gimmicks with a number of the people who were also there. It's simply not important to this complaint so i will not go into it.

I immediately attempted to compromise. The HoS suggested Vysoka as a nearby planet, and I agreed to that. I also ceded ground on the synth issue and demanded they only be confined to the brig. The merc who aimed first was me and I deliberately had all the automatic shooting settings off. It was a different merc who may have shot first, and I immediately told them to cease fire. That didn't work out, but this situation would never have happened if the Captain wasn't so unreasonably hostile. We could have worked something out, but the captain abruptly declared that were confined to that room and I drew my rifle to aim it at them because the alternative was being prisoners. You omitted my numerous attempts at negotiation and the Captain's mounting hostility which I never could tell the reason for, especially because I was sincerely trying to negotiate and backed down on basically every big demand because they were being so hostile about it. We did not even chase the synth out of the room - I told the merc who wanted to do that to stand down. We never left the room for all of this stand off and fight. I attempted de-escalation at every point. I was yelling "Cease fire!" until I was laying on the ground going in and out of paralysis which is when i said "kill them all" and started throwing grenades. I have a very hard time believing that you were planning on lowering to green because the Captain continued to get more and more hostile for no discernible reason even as I offered compromise after compromise. I even said that the Skrell could help the Horizon go back to its time and the Captain basically just ignored that, which seems incredibly strange considering they should want to not be marooned in the future. To me it looked like the Captain was trying to provoke a fight and end our gimmick early. What is the explanation for demanding us remain in a room rather than go back to our ship? What is the explanation for stonewalling me at every turn in the talks? What is the explanation for abruptly cutting off all communication and declaring we were prisoners suddenly? It feels totally arbitrary.

BYOND Key: Ublicto Game ID: coZ-aGT1 Staff involved: Melariara, WickedCybs Reason for complaint: Unreasonable and bad Captain play. During this round I came up with a gimmick for a merc team. The Horizon would be sent 100 years in the future to 2565 where the new political entity called the "Solarian-Jargon Federation" owns everything and has outlawed synthetic life. I thought this was a very creative and interesting gimmick, but when we arrived the Captain almost immediately began shutting us down. We attracted a crowd and it seemed almost everyone was interested, but when we finally got to talk to the Captain they started being extremely hostile. This is not something it is reasonable to do if you believe you are in space controlled by a potentially hostile foreign power and making first contact with them. They tried to confine us to the conference room and refused any attempt at compromise or negotiation. Then a gunfight broke out. The entire merc team except for one guy who got sent to the brig was destroyed and the round for the antags was cut short early because of one player's obstructionism. Essentially: -Captain acted unreasonably hostile -Captain shut down the gimmick early, ending any role play we could have done in the rest of the ship -Captain refused to compromise on any points we raised and planned to shut us in a room. They never even gave a counter-offer to anything, just unilateral and unreasonable demands even though I tried to compromise as the "leader" of the mercs several times Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation?: Yes, I was directed to make a player complaint. Approximate Date/Time: 7/25/23 at around 1 AM EST.

I enjoyed killing and eating their character as a changeling. Very fun! +1