Player Complaint - Seth Ramos/Veradox

[StationCrab]

BYOND Key: StationCrab

Game ID: bZz-dDtP

Player Byond Key: Veradox - Character was Seth Ramos

Staff involved: TrickingTrapster

Reason for complaint: The player of Seth Ramos has a habit of throwing borgs down disposals at the slightest sign of malfunction. This round in particular rubbed me the wrong way, because none of the other usual protocols for dealing with this situation were followed. I will elaborate on this later, for now I am just going to go through what happened during the round that lead up to this event, and why I feel it is becoming a problem.

My character, Juicebot, was auto traitored near the start of the round. Now usually my gimmick with Juicebot is to encourage the crew to drink juice, state various facts about the benefits of drinking juice. Not very complex, and something I find amusing. When given traitor status, my idea was to be a bit more forceful with the basic premise stated above. I gave myself two supplemental laws.

5.) Encourage the crew to Drink juice no matter the cost.

6.) Dispose of all alternatives to juice aboard the Aurora.

I began trying to do this by convincing the bartender to allow juice to be served, and alcoholic beverages to be removed. They obviously did not agree, so I began removing the alcohol, until I was shooed away by the HoP.

This is when I went to medbay, and in front of two medbay employees, said that I was going to update their juice dispensers (we were standing next to the cryo tubes). Nobody cared, and I emptied the beakers and filled them with orange juice, and put them in the tubes. I then left medbay and did various other things, including spacing more alcohol, but the bartender had cryoed by then I believe. I did try and force feed a few crew members orange juice, but if they backed away I generally let them go, and wouldn't be to aggressive. I certainly didn't harm anyone, nor use the mickey fins brew.

About an hour or so passed since the round start, when Seth Ramos asked Juicebot to go to the cryo area because he was thirsty. Of course I went, and dropped an orange juice on the ground. After thanking Juicebot for the juice, he flashed and tossed it down disposals, completely destroying every component. This is when I discovered that they had stuffed a clone in the tubes, which were of course full of orange juice, and apparently the clone died as a result. This was the reason for throwing me down disposals. I was never asked to state laws, never asked to go to robotics for a reset or repairs, never given a chance to reveal my lawset to the crew (which I was planning to do if it was asked for). 

Now the reason I ahelped at this point, was because Seth's player has a habit of validing and doing this to borgs at every opportunity. He will flash them mid sentence sometimes, and simply put them in disposals. Now, this is an effective and robust way to remove someone from the round, I will admit, but it has been done for far less than replacing beakers with orange juice filled ones in the past. 

In another round, the same character tossed two borg players down disposals for requesting to arrest another player during a malf round. Keep in mind that no violence had been done at all, just an exchange of words. I submitted no complaint at the time, but it did put me off a bit because I was in the middle of typing a response to the role play that was happening when in the span of seconds both borgs were flashed and essentially deleted from the round for simply sitting in the HoP's office. I do not have the round ID for this but I'm adding it because it is a part of why I submitted a complaint this time.

The admin I ahelped said it was an in character issue, and that command ordered him to do it. Now I'm personally skeptical that command would order an expensive piece of equipment be tossed down the disposal chute, but maybe it did happen that way. From my perspective there was zero buildup for this kind of reaction, considering I gave the medical crew ample opportunity to see what I was getting at earlier in the round, and Juicebot had really directly harmed nobody, and was just being a general nuisance.

I certainly expected some form of repercussion, but this player seems to always resort to this one tactic the second they valid a borg. I think they need to acknowledge that flashing a borg is already a complete win for them, and there is no need to completely trash a player out of the round when they could be brought to robotics for reprogramming. These machines are expensive, and it doesn't really make sense to just trash them like that, and a Chief Engineer would be aware of that more than anyone.

Somehow I was recovered from disposals, not sure how that came about because I was 100% deactivated and unable to radio for assistance. Seth Ramos dragged my character around for 20+ minutes, I have no idea what they were doing due to the catastrophic system damage, before dumping it in Robotics, meanwhile my entire screen is black and I cannot interact. When I am finally repaired, I am locked down (Understandable, and should have been the first thing command did). Vocal modulator is fried, so can't interact with anyone, radio is destroyed, so no dice there. Just overall a disappointing experience, and something I would expect on Hippie or TG, not Aurora.

TLDR: Jumping to the most extreme method of disposing of a player from a round for a slight infraction makes no sense, and I think this player should make more effort into properly escalating conflict in the future. They need to understand what disposals does to a borg, and how they are essentially making the choice to delete a player from the round, and that needs to have a buildup to it, as well as a really good reason, and perhaps should only be done when all other avenues are explored. Locking down a borg that is malfunctioning is a valid tactic, and allows the player to continue to RP. Juicebot may have been indirectly responsible for a clone death, but it did not harm crew directly, and was cooperative, there was no need to take this extreme measure.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes, I was told it was an in character issue. I did not want to waste the moderators time elaborating on why I feel it was a player complaint, so I decided to make this post and inform them that I was going to do so.

Approximate Date/Time: April 2nd, not sure on the exact time, maybe around 7:30 EST?

Edited April 3, 2019 by StationCrab

[veradox]

1. the round with two synths had two borgs cornering us in the HoP office under orders to remove heretics by the AI. after discussion with the HoP through whispers due to nonstop harassment by you and a crony, we opted to remove the synthetics to protect the autakh that were being crusaded against since they were the only physical arm of its will that could threaten us fixing the lawset. they were offered many, many suggestions and counterproposals to avoid charging past us to take the autakh we had with us, using their modified laws to reflect authority since were were actively trying to fit within the malf's law regime. eventually we even came to an agreement which mitigated total loss of life and players through a contentious moral decision. if by "typing a sentence" you mean "the synthetics said STEP ASIDE" and charged forward" then that would be more accurate. now, i'm not sure who you were, but that is definitely the actual account of what ended in us not playing around anymore.

2. the round where juicebot took a sled ride down the trash chute was from a series of direct disobedience which our HoP was too timid to take action against. after repetitive disregardance of authority, something I chose to ignore for the majority of the round, Corvo suggested to trap it into getting bound to the AI to exercise greater control. never happened, probably the least amount of enthusiasm possible by anyone involved, including myself who generally distanced myself from this oft-forcefeeding machine and gave it the benefit of the doubt in the past. in fact, most of everyone was quiet after the fact. eventually, juicebot in their infinite pranking wisdom, filled cryogenics with orange juice and medical complained to us. so, after stating my intentions to command who made both no discussion or complaint on the matter, the plan went into execution. after a quick question confirming their obsessive compulsive juicing, told them to hold on a moment, walked up, tasted some of their trademark juice that is so good a clone can't beat it, flashed them, and threw them into the trash where it turns out I, MYSELF, went to recover him for robotics immediately (admittedly I made a brief pitstop to the grieving medical who hated juicebots guts for their actions in case they wanted a retribution punch) and tried to get some staff to fix up our vitamin d dispensing friend. that being said, at the time, the roboticist ignored repetitive hails to get juicebro back into the round. during this wait, i spoke with some science staff about helping them out with recovering some much-needed materials from the deadzone lab, i left juicebot to chill in the middle of the lab after that retrieval sequence finished up (probably the "20+" minutes you state transpired) and asked a few minutes later for anyone with an inkling of robotics maintenance training to help us out in the absence of proper staff.

TL;DR: so no, you weren't removed from the round without hesitation. throughout the round you were complained about by command and while being niche earned you favor to some members of the crew it didn't stifle the fact that you were expressly disobeying orders and eventually lead to the intentional murder, as it would seem by your account, of a clone. so, medical complained to us that you did such quite succinctly without any additional detail of "yeah he was bein' suspicious!", just that you swapped the cryomix. opting out of your shenanigans for too long, i threw up your crimes verbatim to command, told them we're going to just go ahead and break you, and met no complaint or argument versus the fact. afterwards, I took it upon myself to be the one to reintroduce you to the round to no avail since it would also seem you must've left when the roboticist finally got around to showing up to his job and claimed to have gotten you a new chassis, only to find you were nonresponsive.
 

judging by your account it would seem twice now you were disposed of for endangering and implicating lives as a synthetic, but twice is not 'frequent' and neither are the incidents unjustified judging by the chain of events of each incident.

it would also seem you're taking a leap at the conclusion that because your synthetic has been implicated in dangerous and irksome routines, that the method of punishment is consistent across the board for most synthetics: something that is hilariously untrue since one of the core playstyles to this particular character and generally my mindset is to give a foot when possible and hope to God they don't take a mile, as being a relatively enabling and friendly head of staff while still fixing immediate issues when possible is the goalpost.

you reached out over discord and i indeed won't be insulted over a game but the nature of these incidents definitely needed some light shed on them.

 

[StationCrab]

So just to clarify a few things. Disposals isn't a valid way of 'breaking' a borg. There are other methods, such as locking them down, or flashing them, or using an ion. Disposals is probably the most lame way you could dispose of any character quite frankly. I encourage you to attempt to do so the next time you deem it necessary to contain a synthetic threat. Just so you understand, it breaks EVERY component, including the ability to talk, or use the radio. It's like security beating a prisoner into unconsciousness, taking their radio and welding them in a locker in an airlock, it's not something you do to other players unless you're an antag or have a damn good reason. There's a reason we have rules that make it so you can't take away prisoner's radios most of the time, it gives them something to do after being caught, I'm trying to get you to understand the impact of your left click and drag.

If you were truly going through command to reach your conclusion, then this would have been explored, it was not, you went to what you usually do, which is put Juicebot in disposals. Although I will thank you for recovering it yourself, that was nice, and I do appreciate you trying to get it back into the round, unfortunately the roboticist was new I believe and didn't know how to fix it. I didn't go afk, I was sitting there unable to move or communicate or RP in any meaningful way for 30+ minutes after you dumped me in Robotics, but your attempt to at least try to undo the damage is noted and appreciated.

This entire situation could have been avoided if you had just interacted with Juicebot and asked it to state it's laws, or attempt to get it to go to robotics for a reset, again, you jumped to the most extreme option, which I think your reply has demonstrated.

 

As for the round in the HoP's office, I was playing VPN I believe. I was the mining stationbound. The AI was attempting to get us to arrest the Unathi. I will note that the AI that round wasn't very helpful to us, the borg players, we were given very vague direction. I cannot speak for the other borg, but I personally wanted to avoid just smashing my mining drill into your face, so I was typing a threatening message at the time when you flashed us both, and in the span of two seconds, disposaled us. That time you did not retrieve us, and we both spent the entire round wandering around completely blind/disabled/mute. 

Again, I do not think you understand what reasonable force is. You need to acknowledge what your actions do to another PLAYER, who is trying to enjoy the round. This isn't a low RP server where we can space people for farting or insulting someone. You can disable borgs with a flash, and they are completely useless. 

Swapping the cryomix with orange juice isn't a green light for total annihilation of an expensive machine, someone in command who works for Nanotrasen would be aware of this. Now if I had began to bludgeon you with my hatchet I could understand, but I offered you a glass of orange juice, and in exchange you deleted me from the round.

As for the clone, I didn't put the clone in the clone vat, so there was no intentional murder of anyone. Again, I made it clear in front of medbay staff that I was upgrading the juice dispensers, then slowly emptied and replaced the beakers with orange juice in the middle of medbay. It wasn't like I snuck into maintenance and did it there. There were plenty of opportunities for them to stop me. So saying I intentionally murdered a player that died and was cloned an hour after I put orange juice in the vats is a bit much. As for the rest of my actions, none of them were violent, I attempted to forcefeed the hop unpoisoned orange juice at the start of the round, and eventually Ian in their office. The third time was on the holodeck during the poetry competition, so to say your actions were justified due to the untold chaos I was causing is a bit much, Juicebot wasn't a rogue killbot with lasers for eyes, it was giving people orange juice.

Edited April 3, 2019 by StationCrab

[veradox]

1. if you prefer the ion route, which is a ranged means of automatically disabling you, or if the AI had acted on locking you down when command attempted to organize your binding to the AI itself wherein no other personnel were willing to act to assist in the matter, then you would find yourself disappointed that round.

you also once more run into the fallacy where because your incidents resulted in you being fought against in the most convenient manner to an unarmed person: the trashcan, that this is a 'usual' method.

you also run into the problem where you place into question whether or not command was briefed on what happened and what was going to happen as a result. fortunately, they were made aware, and so the 'offering of orange juice' which was actually me asking you to come to the nearest trash can to medical so we could finally perform this long awaited 'trap'.

i suppose we must also address the problem of having to see your laws, something that everyone in the round failed to address and out of simplicity of the matter and having an upper hand, baiting out your reasoning for harassing crewmembers, disobeying orders, and eventually killing someone by bathing them in frosty oxidated orange juice over the course of the round does not merit a final "So what were your laws anyway lmao" so that you can justify going out of your way to kill the guy. i think a quote from OMEGA outside of research while I recovered you put it best: something along the lines of "A sad truth, but Juicebot's normal is malfunctioning". you definitely weren't getting any sympathy from this end for taking an extreme step forward from the usual repertoire of chasing people around forcefeeding them juice and coordinating vandalism with other delinquent characters.

disabling you swiftly was the assured means of ensuring no more of your shenanigans ensued, and it was the route that met no complaint (yes, this realistically passed seamlessly through what was an otherwise untalkative roster) and was such acted on. if you found yourself locked down, it's liable because you were not synced to the AI and therefore not in their control, but a mishap by the roboticist on duty who was tinkering with the wrong wires incidentally. there is no reality where i intend on dragging you, flashing you (a temporary solution that you seem to forget operates in that fashion), until the bulb breaks and you probably turn and burn on me while i painstakingly wait for the grace of a roboticist or the diligence or input of someone deciding to deal with you, a rogue murderer, 'properly'.

2. your round as VPN the mining bot, incidentally, is the exact reason you were flashed and disposaled in the first place due to the fact that you lead the charge as opposed to your adjacent security bot after screaming "MOVE ASIDE!" during us trying to talk you both down by using the interpretations of your lawset. after planning how to deal with you both if dealings went south, and subsequently they go south through your yelling and rushing our standing, you will be dealt with as planned and such is what happened.

due to the long arm of the law of that day, the AI, retrieving you was a continuation of the direct threat that the temperamental synthetic posed to us if it regained the ability to direct you back towards the incident. it is implausible to expect that much restoring the hands to the AI that already threatened to blow us up both locally and nuclear-ly was going to happen, especially after they had no interest in falling within the reasonable parameters presented to them through our attempted negotiations. ESPECIALLY if the mining drone was spontaneous enough to leap towards disdain towards those parameters.

 

each incident finds its justification in the pudding. i dont intend to propose myself as "right" since there's an invariable amount of methods from backing down and letting you continue killing, distressing, arresting or etcetera up to taking immediate action, but there is ultimately not reasonable evidence to claim the actions were "wrong" or "unprompted" besides "i shouldnt have died for doing what i did".  better yet, there's no reason to assert that this is somehow some kind of "norm" in dealing with synthetics when it has, by happenstance, occured only when you were involved exclusively.

 

 

 

[StationCrab]

1.) You keep saying disposals is the easiest way of dealing with a non-violent cooperative borg. No, it isn't. Words are, failing that, a flash. Failing THAT, then you could disposals it. Escalation is important, you need to acknowledge that.

 

2.) You keep saying I killed someone. I didn't. The cryomix was replaced with orange juice, in full view of medical. With RP before hand saying I was going to upgrade the juice dispensers. AN HOUR before that person died and was cloned. Neglect killed the clone, not me. I didn't put that clone in the vats, not was I the result of it's original death.

3.) You say Juicebot force feeds people juice outside of being an antag. This is a lie. I have it dispense juice to people, but forcefeeding is never done unless it's malfunctioning for some reason. OMEGA's player has no idea what they are talking about in this regard.

4.) Saying your solution passed seamlessly with an untalkative roster is silly. That just translates to you as the player made the decision to take extreme unwarranted measures yourself, as stated in point one.

5.) Your statement about VPN is a lie. I never moved past you or the HOP. Nor did I use any tools in a violent or threatening manner. I never even got near the person or attempted to secure them in any way beyond using words to convince you both to step aside. You may be confusing me with the other borg.

6.) You keep trying to say I was killing and arresting people, you are quite frankly pulling that out of your posterior, but I will leave the admins to observe the round to see how mild my actions were.

In short, you fail to acknowledge that your action was extreme, and bypassed all other methods of roleplay. You went for the most expedient robust option, true, but it was also not conducive to any roleplay. At this point I've echoed my previous points, because you seem to be talking past the general premise I am trying to present, which is that disposals is not a valid way of dealing with a cooperative target. Now you could make some form of argument that the clone killed has some personal attachment to your character, and perhaps it enraged them to do this, and that would make sense, but no such statement has been forthcoming, so I can just assume you wanted to robust Juicebot as fast as possible. Your pattern of binning borgs shows that you understand how effective it is, but what I wanted you to understand was that it completely guts them, and if there is no competent roboticist, it ends their round. If you can at least acknowledge that fact, and think about it going forward, I would be willing to withdraw the complaint.

Edit: I just need to add. I've played Juicebot about a total of four times. Two of those times I was autotraitored, so I can understand where Omega's player gets that impression, but honestly I think that is a little meta knowledge leaking into IC interaction, because the traitor rounds really aren't canon.

Edited April 3, 2019 by StationCrab

[veradox]

i mean, yeah, it's completely reasonable to say that removing a player from the round isn't fun for the player. i've discussed it often. others discuss it often. i had seen the roboticist before and seen him pump out mechs and hardsuits, so it was assumed on that basis that the dude would both show up to his job and know how to do it after ensuring juicebot was secured without further consequence or benny hilling that is customary to spotlighting anatgonists. unfortunately that was not the case. 'robust this guy' isn't something that runs through my head to begin with, rather trying to keep track of round details to make sure judgement is made easier if or when its necessary on whether to address / continue to avoid. the re-death of a crewmember lead to addressal. no worries about that one. if that's all you wanted, we could've done this over discord

 

1. contextually, forcefully removing the problematic synthetic juicebot was seen to as the chosen option. in no way are words being discouraged. the action was done through emotional drive, and cosponsored by the assent of the command roster. a cold naked stiff dripping OJ behind the complaining medical staff is enough to incite anger rather than no emotion at all, thus why the news was met with a custom emote scowl and a prompt informing of the command staff.

2. if i overshot the supermatter and it blew up an hour later and killed an apprentice, i am still the one that killed them for being responsible for the event in the first place. whatever you did, however to be clear you did it, and it didn't gather the attention of medical and just because it didn't does not mean you are not responsible for them failing to notice the beakers in the cryo pods changed as it is only visually represented in units, not any other indicative detail. whether or not it was arguably your fault or not, the complaint was that you caused the death of the clone by, despite all odds, tainted the cryomix without their knowledge.

3. i cant monitor your every action whether through malfunction or not, only assert what has been gathered from my point of view and what i hear similar to how you went through this complaint. it is very easy to make a 'lie' by promoting what you assume from incomplete information as truth.

4. the roster was 'untalkative' in that there was no communication besides exchanging pleasantries, discussing juicebot's lack of obedience, the recommendation of a trap that never came to fruition, and then my addressal of both my fellow command staff directly to tell them we're going ahead to break the bot for murder. in other rounds, it is more commonplace for idle chat.

5. i did not state or imply that they walked past us. in fact, to better clarify, when they decided to march closer was when you were both attended to. i recall the mining synthetic on my right, and the security bot on my left, though perhaps it could bear the chance to be muddled by age. going by this memory, however, the mining synthetic moved forward and was seen as the impatient of the two and was the first to go and after a brief struggle because movement both were gone. whether you were the advancing synthetic or not, the result remains the same.

6. the statement of killing, arresting, distressing, etcetera was a blanket statement towards dealing with any antagonist, not that current round. yet you definitely ended in the result of killing one person, and served as a point of distress for other crewmembers however.

 

however, as stated, there remains no pattern. incidents with you have literally been the only incidents of opting for this solution and they were both out of convenience of the method by sheer coincidence. it is unfortunate that this paints it as a 'pattern' to you.

[ben10083]

To help with context, here are the rules I believe would relate to these situations.

Spoiler

Only escalate conflict in a realistic manner - some characters might overreact, but you would not realistically go berserk or attempt to kill someone if they stole your prized pen, for instance. Again, your character must be motivated enough to commit to more drastic action, as they undertake it.

Spoiler

No powergaming. Roleplay takes precedence over objectives - do not engage in behavior which would be unrealistic for your character in an attempt to win the round. For example: building weaponry, such as stungloves, without any IC reason for them. (Building something ‘pre-emptively’ is not a valid IC reason.) See the glossary for further explanation.

 

[Yonnimer]

Hi, myself and @Lonely Caravanwill be taking this complaint. Give us a bit to look over some things.

[Grewsome]

Hiya, I was ghosting in the round referred to when the two borgs were flashed and disposed of in the HoP office. 

I remember watching one of the borgs step forward before quickly being flashed and grabbed and thrown into the disposal chute, shortly followed by the second borg. I can't remember the conversation that went on before that but remember thinking that was a bit of an extreme reaction. I think there are better ways of dealing with a malfunctioning borg.

I do believe I read the whisper messages between Seth and Thea if I remember correctly who was the HoP in that round and do distinctly recall reading something regarding the borgs and the disposals chute a few minutes before said act occurred.

[Lonely Caravan]

Right, so I've spoken with Yonni about this, and we've decided, given all circumstances, that a note should do. More information will be given via Discord PMs to Veradox about it. 

This post will be locked and archived in 24 hours.

[Yonnimer]

Locking and archiving.