Character Complaint - Casey Mercer - Naelynn

[Mogelix]

BYOND Key: Mogelix 

Game ID: I don't remember the rounds. But, I'm sure there are some admins who remember it hopefully maybe possibly. Besides, alot of this is just about the character in general.

Player Byond Key/Character name: Naelynn

Staff involved: Prate or skull I think, possibly maybe, I might be mixing it up but this is kind of a difficult memory. Namely possibly Prate and Skull.

Reason for complaint: Poor antag roleplay and storytelling/direction, gank, ridiculous character and gameplay of that character.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes, both times about the gank, and the first time about the aimless antaggery. 'We will have a talk and possibly leave a note about antag direction.' 'It's justified because it's early in the round and you were calling for reinforcements.'

Approximate Date/Time: Not too long ago, not too recently.

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My 'traitor main' character is Casey Mercer, a VISITOR/ASSISSTANT with 1 useful loadout item [Webbings]

You play a traitor character?

So we're a HRP server, right? We encourage well-played, consistent characters because that's heavy roleplay. We love and encourage but strangely do not necessitate some character development. But we know that characters, especially traitors, are all hired and screened employees, or visitors who are allowed into this research station, right? So on the opposite end of the spectrum, we discourage characters that exist with not even the feintest reasoning to be hired, that lack any character development? We discourage characters that exist to maximise conflict, totally unreasonable lore and just general roleplay principle wise. We all frown upon the baldie who rolls traitor, rushes tool storage, gets a e-sword and a emag, and just goes pointlessly crazy on the station. They probably get ahelped, and dunk'd on OOCly, right? Because that's just not cool, your a noRP shitter trying to terrorize the station.

But let's get sidetracked, what's some of the most cool and interesting and almost definitive parts of the traitor roundtype? It puts ordinary people in a requirement to do something aggressive, cause conflict. Well, not necessarily, we see people just peace antag, not cause conflict, just some roleplay. I don't like that personally but I always think, well better then a antag that just goes around pointlessly killing people, right? The point of a antag, to quote the rules

"to DRIVE A STORY AND TO GENERATE INTERACTION"

Let's also keep in mind that Mercer is a employee, yes? A person NanoTrasen has hired and pays to do a job. Assistant of course is kind of vague but it should be understood that someone is a employee! Someone with a contract. NanoTrasen is a big company, they evidently hire alot of bald nitwit but those  bald nitwit get taken out usually for y'know, being a bald nitwit on a HRP server. So really, every character on the server that has been played and doesn't result in someone getting banned does their job. Even if they think being a assistant is being a assisting cause to ones suicide, they've gotta do something, right? Which is funny because the only work I've seen Mercer canonically do is test if the cryogenic pods work. Much less have I seen them say, canonically interact with another crewmember.

You wanna know why? Whenever Naelynn doesn't get traitor as this meme of a character, they cryo. How ridiculous is that? They know better to design entire characters around this idea... surely? They have some fine characters who I wont mention because they're not relevant to this complaint. But Mercer's not one of them. Mercer is a hired NT employee. Standards are evidently loose but surely NT wouldn't hire say, someone on a watchlist, a registered solarian merc, a oocly self-described 'very dangerous person' and 'someone with all the red flags'? I mean if they did, they'd have to be very important crew members, and not just obvious corporate epsionage incidents waiting to happen. No. This one's a assistant. Who, to bring up the last point, canonically does nothing but cryo at shift-start. Now, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get away with having a ex-solarian hitman character assistant who terrorizes the station on antag rounds and just fucks off and provides no-rp, and has never developed in a character as he has literally never had, done or said a canonical round, action or, even to my knowledge and experience, word.

But let's talk about my admittedly limited and biased experience with them, or should I say, my only possible experiences with them as a sec officer with antag disabled.

All of my rounds with her have gone basically this way.

 

Something happens/someone notices stuff is up in EVA. She has bumrushed EVA, hacking it, to steal securities voidsuits.

She loots the captains office with this voidsuit, taking the ID.

She wanders the station terrorizing it with no real motive, objective, gimmick, or story. One time, she had a note applied to her for doing so. But she still does it and no punitive action is taken.

This is based on three (or two, one might just be a strange wish wash fake memory in my head) rounds experience playing as a sec officer opposing her, in which everytime she did the same thing.

Round one:

I'm a sec officer. I'm patrolling, comms are out, and a officer looks distressed near EVA. It's nothing, I swing by to check EVA, that officer is busy investigating said nothing I don't remember, Spider, Jesse Armstrong might remember. But somehow, in that short time the officer turned his back, Mercer is hacking open sec EVA storage. I catch them in the act but unfortunately, comms are down. I get a solid, groundbreaking bit of RP. Casey Mercer says, "Uhhhhhh." They then draw a E-sword as I reach for a stationbounced, /meing it out, and gank me wordlessly as I try a little fear RP. I ahelp them and are told, 'It's early in the round, they really have to to keep momentum.' Which, sure, but that's really not a rule. I could argue, 'it's early in the round, even if I brigged them they could still recover momentum, or even more interesting, if they roleplayed with me, and even tried something like that, they might have had even less setback in momentum.' With this in mind:

No ganking. While antags will sometimes kill, it is expected for you to provide interesting roleplay to your targets first.
Only resort to killing if it makes sense or drives a story. However, in certain situations, murder can serve as a tool, if none other applicable.

So the round continues. Of course, Naelynn used this liberal judgement and allowance from the admins early on to drive a strong and engaging story that was fun for the entire crew! Just kidding, they rampaged motive and RPless EVA in the captains voidsuit, attacking security time to time. Of course, I ahelped this and after a long wait, the admins agree'd that they are rather aim, RP and storyless, and gave them a talk, which I was told resulted in a note. So I was kind of hopeful that this might be a turning point. Y'know, they'd improve. Unfortunately, they did not.

Round two: I'm a sec officer, non-antag. We hear someone's breaking into the caps office, from space. Quick, Robin, to the Bat-voidsuit! Unfortunately, when I get there, I find all of the sec voidsuits are gone and the hacking panel of the sec EVA area is open. Well that sucks, most of the officers just 'give up' there, but I don't. I just go and steal the Skrell voidsuit, and head to the armory for a laser rifle. Geared up, I rush to the bridge alone, with only the AI to guide me. I enter the captains office and are warned in PDA: "The suspect has turned into a grey backpack. The one infront of you. OOCly, I see em. They stick out like a sore thumb. But I decide to just ignore them, since they're a short backpack hidden behind the tall captains desk. I hop the captains desk and land ontop of the backpack! Just then they de-chameleon and... wordlessly gank me with a e-sword in the captains voidsuit. So both rounds I've spent with them I've been ganked by them. I hope you understand why I might sound a bit sour and snide in this complaint. Again, it's justified by a admin as being necessary and valid in that situation, and again they pointlessly crusade against the station in general, not so successfully because I pumped em full of lasers after the first strike from the e-sword. But... was it necessary? I mean, I give them the edge by /meing shit out, signposting, and just doing micro line of sight RP, and both times I'm wordlessly ganked. Dying is part of this game but it is not this game.

And they act like and have the psyche of a powergaming Play to win, tryhard.

"Heh, yeah, I only take a webbing, cause I'm just that kind of pro-gamer. I can gank all of security and play for objective as just a assistant on a watchlist, that's how little of a powergamer I am."

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Thing is that she does the code dives, compares stats, figures out the ways to robust entire teams and still walks in for the RP. - Cnaym

Well, I seem to have noticed the code diving effect because she sure has a formulaic way of antaggery. Raid EVA. Raid captains office, wear caps voidsuit for le epic stats, obtain valids with minimum RP.

Everyone seems to be praising her for her amazing antagonist RP on her whitelist but that is just simply not my experience.

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I mostly play off station antagonists, with the exception of traitor. - Naelynn

I disagree. You only play off-station antagonists. Because Mercer is so poorly roleplayed, if ever canonically, and such a terrible character concept (and execution) that serves as nothing but a MRP excuse to terrorize the station, that they go against the very fabric of traitor, the internal threat. Traitors are interesting because the traitors objective may clash with prior relationships and IC fabrics. Your character has neither of those. You play a ninja with a ID and no suit, and that's not a traitor. That's just someone who's bad at antagonistic RP. And, judging from this character alone, RP in general.

Not just last round as of this being posted did Casey Mercer randomly appear at basically round end with the captains ID, laser and voidsuit, just to flex on some sec officers who had a report that captains office was looted by a unknown at round-start. No other terrorizing, unless she was the brainlet behind deactivating every light on the station. Which is truly a amazing gimmick.

In a long and rambling conclusion. This entire manifestation of a 'traitor character' is ridiculous and not HRP, downright violating rules, and my experience with them does not paint a picture of a good antag RPer.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Mogelix

[Cnaym]

I was quoted and no @ for me? I feel abused...

Visitor does not have to be employee, visitors can be antags, I've seen that character stay even on extended rounds.

Do I think that her other characters are a lot better? Yes.

Does Naelyn RP with crew as antag? Yes

Does a lone security officer running into a dangerous place where someone stealing important equipment have to be ganked? Eeeehhh... No would be the correct answer, but seeing as nobody else helped and your character tried to be a hero... That's what can happen.

It happens a lot to me as antag, 9/10 deaths are due to me trying to RP and someone mistaking the typing indicator for a valid sign. I get it, it's annoying. Have you tried other ways to RP with Mercer? Because I have and it was a fun time. Same can be said about her Ninja who uh.... Delivered people to the medbay for a CMO antag to get them sweet organs. That round looked like a really shitty Ninja to security, too.

Best I can offer is advise on how to handle Mercer. RP over the radio if she has the captains stuff anyway, try to yell "Hello" when you enter a room with a possible antag and so on... From what I have seen it works with her.

Apart from all of that, yes, I agree 100% with you. In some points. Naelynns other characters are great, Mercer should also be great... Give her a job damnit.

Antag visitor is fine if it happens once in a while but security getting scared or annoyed whenever they hear that name should not be a thing.

[Naelynn]

6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

So we're a HRP server, right? We encourage well-played, consistent characters because that's heavy roleplay. We love and encourage but strangely do not necessitate some character development. But we know that characters, especially traitors, are all hired and screened employees, or visitors who are allowed into this research station, right? So on the opposite end of the spectrum, we discourage characters that exist with not even the feintest reasoning to be hired, that lack any character development? We discourage characters that exist to maximise conflict, totally unreasonable lore and just general roleplay principle wise. We all frown upon the baldie who rolls traitor, rushes tool storage, gets a e-sword and a emag, and just goes pointlessly crazy on the station. They probably get ahelped, and dunk'd on OOCly, right? Because that's just not cool, your a noRP shitter trying to terrorize the station

I can agree with almost everything you wrote here. Especially this part is interesting to me: "But we know that characters [...] are all hired and screened employees/visitors who are allowed into this research station, right?" I'd like to elaborate on this point, because there seems to be a misunderstanding here between our comprehension of the word 'Visitor'. As far as I understand it, pretty much anyone is allowed to just get on board of Aurora, as long as they are screened and evaluated beforehand to make sure they are not carrying any dangerous materials or weapons. Just like in real life you might be allowed to walk around the public areas of a military base if you fill a paperwork and get a pat down at the gate by some soldier/officer.

While from what I am reading here, it seems to me that in your understanding Visitors are only allowed to be NanoTrasen employees / contractors that happen to be off duty. I'm fairly sure that it's more complex than this, and that's why I'd like you to elaborate on this point a little bit more. Because it's important and it seems to be a rather large part of the issue you have with Casey Mercer's character concept.

as seen here:

6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Let's also keep in mind that Mercer is a employee, yes? A person NanoTrasen has hired and pays to do a job. Assistant of course is kind of vague but it should be understood that someone is a employee! Someone with a contract.

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6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Which is funny because the only work I've seen Mercer canonically do is test if the cryogenic pods work. Much less have I seen them say, canonically interact with another crewmember.

So far there has been only one round where Mercer has been 100% cannon. In that round, the HoP send a station announcement that they are hiring for positions due to critical crew under staffing, and Mercer happened to catch the announcement while aboard Odin and eventually served as a temporary Sec. Officer. I'm not sure if it was extended round, but it doesn't matter because there was no antag interaction anyway with this character. However, I concede that having 1 canon round out like.. what.. 30? played on this character probably isn't the best thing possible.

The reason why Mercer is a cryo-on-round start character is for several reasons. They may not be good reasons, but they are reasons nonetheless.

- The initial gimmick of Mercer was 'Always Antag' character. This gimmick requires some ability to predict the future to not have to cryo on round start, but sadly I don't have that ability.
- When I was playing Aimee, I know that I had gotten in trouble for cryoing on round start with an important job [Roboticist] because it was taking up a round slot for people. ( Unrelated note: I did that because I don't like sharing the workplace. Right now Aimee is basically only played if there is no roboticist at all. )
- When Mercer was played a few times, I realized there was an issue that security wouldn't ever IC know that this person is dangerous and this didn't give them a fair chance.
- This I chose to adress by the records warning security of the fact that the character is a potential threat and should have an eye kept on them.
- I do agree that Mercer is often 'Gimmickless' and more oriented towards 'Chaos' antagging. The reason for this is the gameplay limitation -> The character at round start requires me to scavenge for supplies super fast and then try to track security without having access to their communications or location. I try to evaluate the risk of everything in my head as I go, which often leads me to not thinking through any proper gimmick to base the round around - and by the time I get to captain's office I'm usually playing reactively [take opportunities to do things] not proactively [Drive a narrative around your character].
- That doesn't mean the character doesn't try to change their approach. When I started, I used Esword-Emag-ForceGloves-AgentID traitor 'build' exclusively - while this is a very good build over all, it also doesn't have much power in driving the story.
- Over the course of time, Mercer has been played with voice changer, chameleon kit, without esword, without force gloves, without emag, with suicide implant, with hacked ai module and recently, with a mine and with sabotaging crew records. Each time trying to fit something a little different on the 'baseline formula'

I will weave this into the following points a bit more.
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6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

And they act like and have the psyche of a powergaming Play to win, tryhard.

"Heh, yeah, I only take a webbing, cause I'm just that kind of pro-gamer. I can gank all of security and play for objective as just a assistant on a watchlist, that's how little of a powergamer I am."

I'd like to address this piece of text out of order before we get to the rounds themselves.

If the concept of this character where you start with nothing comes off as .. uh.. douchey? arrogant? Then I'd like to apologize. That wasn't the intention. This line was taken from my command app, where I've specifically addressed the point that I will not play command characters as traitors. Yes, command traitors can be enjoyable and very dangerous, but I don't want that sort of rp from them.
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6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Well, I seem to have noticed the code diving effect because she sure has a formulaic way of antaggery. Raid EVA. Raid captains office, wear caps voidsuit for le epic stats, obtain valids with minimum RP.

Everyone seems to be praising her for her amazing antagonist RP on her whitelist but that is just simply not my experience.

The code diving was my attempt at understanding the game better, to learn and improve - something I always strive to do. Everyone makes mistake, no matter how much they try not to. That goes for me as well - and I think this is important to acknowledge.

As for the formulaic antaggery... you're not wrong. It is a formula -> Get tool belt -> count minutes, if security briefing/suit up is complete, wait until maintenance sweep is done. If not, steal sec void suit -> try to frame a shaft miner as breaking into captain office by changing your ID card to their name and job -> copy captain id access -> get both captain's guns and headset -> try to think of something interesting to do.
 

Here's where I would like to ask you something back... What have you learned from this formula? You know it just as well as I do at this point. Why not make it a point to go 'set up the void suits' like many other officers do, and if you notice them missing report it? Why not make it a part of your patrol? It would make sense for a dutiful officer to check on their limited EVA gear?

What does not having access to EVA gear mean: - Hull breaches become super dangerous. Okay, let's stay away from vented areas. - Explosives are a hard no-no, as is fighting near them due to reason above. Avoid combat around welder tanks too. - If the area only lost breathable air but not pressure, a gas mask + oxygen tank + armory armor vs the antag's weapons is way better than a void suit anyway.

Hell, the most basic thing would be: "Hey guys, did someone take the security void suits?" "No?" "We have a thief and they want to prevent us going EVA. Ai, watch high security locations with EVA access like the bridge." or the bridge... or maybe the bridge, because it's literally the only important location with easy EVA access without changing Z-levels or having access to airlocks. Hell, you could report it, have code raised to blue because you know something's up and man the camera console and watch the important areas. The part of the formula where I enter captain's office is the most vulnerable moment, because if someone activates bridge lock down, I'm stuck inside because I cannot destroy blast doors easily.

There is one more part that could be considered Formulaic - the way Mercer often raids the armory. Mercer will almost always only take weapons and sometimes grenades. Why? Because there simply is too much armor to fit into the lockers in a reasonable amount of time. So you're not losing your protection. As for the weapons... There are literally four departments in the game capable of fitting you with a large assortment of weapons, yet security will, as a rule, NEVER ask for help for some unknown reason.

All guns got stolen? Kay, scientists are literally breathing down our throat, ready to give us their amazing modular lasers if we ask them. Or maybe we could ask medical for syringe guns and a custom sleep mix that would be even more powerful than the HoS's tranq rifle. Or maybe we could go to engineering and have them build us some flamethrowers and borrow their suits and cycle them into atmos suits to be impervious to fire. Or maybe we could just order new guns from cargo.
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6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Standards are evidently loose but surely NT wouldn't hire say, someone on a watchlist, a registered solarian merc, a oocly self-described 'very dangerous person' and 'someone with all the red flags'? I mean if they did, they'd have to be very important crew members, and not just obvious corporate epsionage incidents waiting to happen.

Next point before I get to the rounds themselves: Surely NT wouldn't allow in someone on a watch list.
 

This specific point I'd like to address with an example. @kyres1 's assistant, Akyniy Idowu [or however you spell it]. This character in their records is ALSO on an official watch list, and is often promoted to roles like Bridge Assistant. And that's a character played by a synth lore developer. So, yes, NT would indeed hire character that are on an official watch list. The official watch list is supposed to be warning for ISD: "Hey, if something weird's going on, considering looking into this person".
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6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Round one:

I'm a sec officer. I'm patrolling, comms are out, and a officer looks distressed near EVA. It's nothing, I swing by to check EVA, that officer is busy investigating said nothing I don't remember, Spider, Jesse Armstrong might remember. But somehow, in that short time the officer turned his back, Mercer is hacking open sec EVA storage. I catch them in the act but unfortunately, comms are down. I get a solid, groundbreaking bit of RP. Casey Mercer says, "Uhhhhhh." They then draw a E-sword as I reach for a stationbounced, /meing it out, and gank me wordlessly as I try a little fear RP. I ahelp them and are told, 'It's early in the round, they really have to to keep momentum.' Which, sure, but that's really not a rule. I could argue, 'it's early in the round, even if I brigged them they could still recover momentum, or even more interesting, if they roleplayed with me, and even tried something like that, they might have had even less setback in momentum.' With this in mind:

No ganking. While antags will sometimes kill, it is expected for you to provide interesting roleplay to your targets first.
Only resort to killing if it makes sense or drives a story. However, in certain situations, murder can serve as a tool, if none other applicable.

So the round continues. Of course, Naelynn used this liberal judgement and allowance from the admins early on to drive a strong and engaging story that was fun for the entire crew! Just kidding, they rampaged motive and RPless EVA in the captains voidsuit, attacking security time to time. Of course, I ahelped this and after a long wait, the admins agree'd that they are rather aim, RP and storyless, and gave them a talk, which I was told resulted in a note. So I was kind of hopeful that this might be a turning point. Y'know, they'd improve. Unfortunately, they did not.

I actually remember this round, because it got to me. And literally the only thing I remember from it is this exact moment. I couldn't tell you anything else, but the general vibe I had from this stuck with me.

Because it was the round where I decided that security should only ever be talked with if they are not an immediate threat. I will try to talk with other departments first, but not security. I've played enough antagonists to where I now simply do not trust security personnel to not try to screw me over in some way.

After that moment I was thinking back to all the times I got interrupted while having a chat bubble, ran down by officers, or betrayed when trying to strike a deal as Nightingale (raider/merchant).

In that particular round, my state of mind on this was bad enough to where I think I would have killed you regardless of what you wrote, short of 'Wait, can you explain what you are doing here' or 'I surrender'.

Was this the best possible solution for the situation? Hard to say. Was it a good mindset the handle the situation? Hell no. 

The moment happened exactly as you described. Mercer busted in through the door, and headed for the void suits, when suddenly, there's an officer. I remember opening my uplink and looking for an esword while typing an uhh or umm or something like that. When I got the weapon, I started paying more attention again, and took a step towards you. And right here is where I believe I made a mistake. I should have told you to stand down and lit the sword. At that moment, if you pull a gun, I cut your head off. If you talk into radio, I can't know what you're saying and I'm not risking my hide to be killed by a squad of officers - I'm cutting your head off. If you pull a baton, I'm cutting your head off. That's how it should have been handled - .. but it wasn't. And that's the problem. I don't know if you actually talked into your radio or if it was just emoted, because in that round in particular I didn't really care. 

Sad reality of situations like these is this: Security is there to imprison/kill the antag. Being seen breaking into a high security location like security eva would have meant at minimum 10-15 minutes of brig time and confiscation of my traitor gear [I think I had an emag] + probably my tool belt and insulated gloves. Even now, when I've calmed down a little bit with the approach that 'security lives don't matter' I still would not let you live if you pulled out any form of weapon or talked into your radio. I couldn't care less what the communication was, because I can't hear it and have to assume it's call for reinforcements. I will actually be addressing very similar situation in round 3.
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6 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Round two: I'm a sec officer, non-antag. We hear someone's breaking into the caps office, from space. Quick, Robin, to the Bat-voidsuit! Unfortunately, when I get there, I find all of the sec voidsuits are gone and the hacking panel of the sec EVA area is open. Well that sucks, most of the officers just 'give up' there, but I don't. I just go and steal the Skrell voidsuit, and head to the armory for a laser rifle. Geared up, I rush to the bridge alone, with only the AI to guide me. I enter the captains office and are warned in PDA: "The suspect has turned into a grey backpack. The one infront of you. OOCly, I see em. They stick out like a sore thumb. But I decide to just ignore them, since they're a short backpack hidden behind the tall captains desk. I hop the captains desk and land ontop of the backpack! Just then they de-chameleon and... wordlessly gank me with a e-sword in the captains voidsuit. So both rounds I've spent with them I've been ganked by them. I hope you understand why I might sound a bit sour and snide in this complaint. Again, it's justified by a admin as being necessary and valid in that situation, and again they pointlessly crusade against the station in general, not so successfully because I pumped em full of lasers after the first strike from the e-sword. But... was it necessary? I mean, I give them the edge by /meing shit out, signposting, and just doing micro line of sight RP, and both times I'm wordlessly ganked. Dying is part of this game but it is not this game.

I'll split this into two parts - part 1 being directly responding to your post, and part 2 being counterpoints.

Part 1: Response
I appreciate that you acted out not seeing the grey backpack, and I thought that maybe I can stealth away secretly, alas, I changed my mind based on what I was seeing after considering my situation.
 - Before you came into the captain office you held the laser rifle in only one hand. After you entered my sight range, to made it a point to wield the rifle and clearly imply 'I am not here to talk' to me. Once again, my whole outlook that 'security lives don't really matter' when I'm an antag rears it's head here. 
 - I was equipped with [ I believe, this was a while back, might be wrong ] two ranged energy weapons and a esword without force gloves. Believe it or not, the Skrellian void suit offers better protection against bullets and WAY better against lasers than security void suit. It is however very vulnerable to melee, unlike security void suit which is basically only good vs melee.  If I let you pass by me and not attack with melee the second I can I will significantly lower my own odds of winning.
 - Because I was unfamiliar with how chameleon projector works [was my first round using it] I didn't know you have to scan an item to turn into that item, so I was a random bag in middle of the room.  Furthermore, I fumbled my first attack because as it turns out you have to first disable the chameleon and then attack if you wish to attack, you cannot attack directly from it to break it.
 - Unlike loyal personnel, antagonists get murdered by a single shrapnel/infection/internal bleeding. We do not have access to a medbay full of people willing to heal us. Every single wound will come back to bite us later on into the round, every single combat is lethal because out of first aid via trauma/burn kits and chems, there's basically nothing we can do to fix ourselves after a wound. I cannot count the amount of rounds where my character gets absolutely destroyed by a dumb infection from a stray laser shot or gets worn down and dies due to a single shrapnel in something silly like left hand. Shrapnel especially is stupendously dangerous - not only causing haloss damage on movement but actually triggering bleeding if you ignore it long enough. Because of this, antags first approach to a potential combat situation will almost always be 'Get rid of danger while putting yourself at as little risk as possible.'  And oh god don't get me started on if you're a hostile solo ipc - you cannot even repair yourself whatsoever. 
 - Sadly I cannot know if you're giving me a chance or if you genuinely didn't see me.    : (

Part 2: Counterpoint
 - You are a security officer, bound to follow and enforce corporate regulation. Every single training you  ever received teaches you that your teammates are your greatest asset. So.... you hero-charge in completely alone after violating regulations to steal a suit. [I'm relying on information from your own post here, I don't know if officers can normally take the skrellian suit.]
 - Mercer and Mutema have played multiple times before round 1 mentioned in this post, but I wasn't operating on 'Security lives don't matter' then.
 - Security officers come equipped with tear gas grenades. Your Ai told you that there's a perp in there. Why not throw it? 
 - Out Of Character, from my experience, there are two characters that you can borderline mind control whenever you play an antagonist. Lin Dislioth and Berko Mutema, without exception, will always take a direct line towards a hostile as soon as their location is known. This was later a cause for an adaptation from me that was seen in game 3 with the land mine. If Mercer is formulaic and predictable, so are you. 
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7 hours ago, Mogelix said:

Not just last round as of this being posted did Casey Mercer randomly appear at basically round end with the captains ID, laser and voidsuit, just to flex on some sec officers who had a report that captains office was looted by a unknown at round-start. No other terrorizing, unless she was the brainlet behind deactivating every light on the station. Which is truly a amazing gimmick.

This round happened just this morning [for me], so it is very fresh in my mind. - If an admin wants to check the round's logs, it's game ID b2q-buMC .

At round start I managed to collect my kit faster than I've ever done before so I decided to rush the void suits before security is even finished taking things from their lockers.  Knowing that officers like to patrol maintenance, I decided to adapt from previous rounds and instead of getting the usual, I opted for Agent card -> emag -> land mine opener. 

After entering security/eva/engineering maintenance, I placed a land mine [I did not obscure it with the welding tank to make sure people have a chance if they pay attention] and moved a secondary welding fuel tank next to it and was preparing to do the usual security void suit shenanigans when I saw a maintenance drone walking by. I emagged the drone, and seeing how it was still early into the round I didn't want it to do anything lethal, so I ordered it to destroy all lights and only kill if it feels threatened.

I proceeded with the void suit thefts, and as I was leaving towards security briefing room via maintenance  I heard a triple explosion and the maintenance vented. [Mine + 2 welder tanks]. I was honestly a little surprised that someone walked onto a non-hidden mine that had an additional welding tank parked next to it. Later I was informed in LOOC that placing mines this early into round is considered bad form and shouldn't be done. 

After that I proceeded to change my ID card to that of the only shaft miner on shift. This is important and will come up later. I proceeded to break into the captain's office and empty everyone's accounts and wipe the crew manifest. [Later I got asked by @TheSleepyCatmomto not do so again since it is inconvenient for people joining the game] 

Then I fumbled around for a while, trying to figure out what exactly to do. I navigated down to cargo via maint and looted the warehouse and after that up to engineering to check on if there are any more drones to emag [you can request them to move to some area, and usually they will obey the request.] along the way I got spotted by an engineer who reported the presence of a miner in unusual gear in engineering. 

----------

Here we will momentarily be taking a break from the recap of the round and skipping over to something I was only informed of after the game - retroactively - by @Seeli complaining on discord.

The miner being impersonated was assaulted by security and was harmbatoned long enough for the baton to run out of charge. I was informed that your character was present and only intervened after you accidentally got hit. As far as I was informed, the miner was not resisting and was wanting to cooperate to clear up the misunderstanding. 

Why is it okay for your character to condone abusing the crew and potentially inflict lethal amount of damage [harmbatoning long enough for it to run out of charge]? I actually don't really care if you were asking the officer to stop, the officer was clearly out of line, and you should have prevented the harm of [if nothing else] your willing prisoner. 

This is all second hand retelling, and it is possible I tagged the wrong person - if this is as such, I will edit this post and correct the tag.

----------

After this I have navigated over to armory and looted it to give myself a fighting edge in case combat does happen, as well as removing ions to protect my [now] two hacked maintenance drones. (one of which was pointedly ignoring me after I emagged it, but w/e)

As I was disposing of the armory gear, or soon after, I am not sure which, Ai Apex played by @Pratepresidenten  arrived on station. I immediately decided that the Ai should be subverted and proceeded to get back inside via engineering airlock near engine and drone control. Just as a matter of check to see if there is more drones and I see engineer screwing around with the drone control console. I pull out a gun, make sure to use show-held-item and ask them to step away from the computer. They do so, I hide the gun, and they immediately call for aid on public comms. This was a second [ and soon third ] kill of the round that could have been much, much more bloody on my part. 

Being obviously put in dangerous situation, where I don't know if there are security officers with lethal bullets in their .45's [I left all ammo inside armory] about to come sprinting in, I opted to kill the engineer instead of letting them follow me around and keep revealing my location on radio. [I'm sorry, if your first reaction to a clearly hostile AND ARMED person being in the same room as you is to provoke them, I'm going to assume you will continue going out of your way to screw me over. This too has happened too many times for me to remember]. As soon as I open fire, a second engineer in an engineering voidsuit opens the maintenance door. 

This engineer sees a person with a laser gun in captain's voidsuit shooting another engineer. How do they react? Run away and call for aid? Back off slowly? Maybe ask me to stop? ... Nah, get a welder, light it, and hit the antag. I managed to pick up syndie force gloves and a combat medkit from cargo warehouse, so I bought myself an esword with spare tc - and it came in handy here in the melee confrontation. Sadly, that upped my direct kill count to three this round.

Kill 1) Someone stepping on a non-hidden mine. Probably shouldn't have been this early [less than 5 minutes into round] but... I can't really control this.
Kill 2) I'm not sure if the engineer had to die, but from my experience if I spared them it would have made my situation a billion times worse.
Kill 3) Self defense, was being under attack. 

After this, I examined myself, patched up any wounds there were and navigated into engineering sublevel to eva-path towards command bunker and thus towards ai.

[Somewhere around this point in time I made an rp-stop in medical and handed a smoke nade to the actual miner whom I was impersonating. Or maybe it was earlier, I genuinely don't know when it was]

Apex caught me before I could enter the core. He was clearly not happy with me, and claimed that I cannot be the captain because I am not a captain on the crew manifest. I asked if he would recognize me as captain if I was on crew manifest and I received a positive answer, so I went ahead and modified the crew manifest to be as such.

Apex then let me into his core where I gave him a law that I thought would be funny with the amount of drones going around. - All beings that are not present on the crew manifest are to be adressed and treated as maintenance drones. All actual maintenance drones are to be treated as captains and must be assisted.

This law says nothing about harming the crew, and I hoped it would create interesting situations instead of something silly like 'I am the only crewmember, kill all non-crew' or whatever. 

After double checking that apex's laws are updated, I moved out of the ai core and towards command teleporter where I fumbled around for a while trying to figure out how exactly I want to get into telecomms to investigate why exactly radios arn't working. Apex meanwhile solved the issue, but at that point since I had set up the teleporter I figured I might as well take it and figure things out from telecomms entrance.

The 'small' chance for teleporters to backfire triggered, and I was phased into engineering sublevel and had my right foot shattered and external bleeding. I patched up what I could with the scavenged medical supplies, but until round end my foot was going to be slowing me down. I navigated towards robotics, considering cutting off my own right foot and replacing it with a prosthetic, because it honestly is way easier than trying to convince a doctor to fix my foot without having to be paranoid about them sedating me and handing me over to security.

I walked over into RnD because I wanted to check if there was a scientist there, and... honestly randomly did science for a bit while I ordered them to repair my hacked drone. While there I either was given or had on my own, don't remember, the brilliant idea to go to medical and use splints instead of cutting off my own foot. So I ask the drone to be my bodyguard and move to medical, only making small replies to the people while getting medical splints and applying them to the broken bone.

After leaving medical, I run into an IPC - Gladiator - Detective I think. He asked me to surrender and implied violence and that he is not letting me pass. I stood there, in a really vulnerable position in middle of a hallway trying to get the ipc to NOT do that and prioritize protecting his crew over killing the antag. [Because at this point Apex and his cyborgs were going full gestapo on enforcing that all "maintenance drones" are to repair the station or be terminated for not following their laws] After some time, the detective agreed and mercer exited the round by raiding the vault while walking by it, grabbing extra credits that were inside and a hazard rig, installing a jetpack and an energy carbine module into it, looking around for a bit, finding that there's a Necropolis Liason in his office, throwing the hazard rig to them and leaving the station via research shuttle before finally ghosting on the derelict because crew transfer was underway anyway, so it was round end. [And the ghosting was ahelped just to be double sure, however I don't remember who accepted the ticket]

Did I have a clear plan and/or gimmick what to do from roundstart? No. Absolutely not.
Did I go out to murderbone people? No.
Did I go out with the intention to just cause chaos? I think so, I think that's how it definitely was in retrospect.
Did I do nothing at all for the entire round? False, I highly disagree with this. I think I was very active as an antagonist, just without a clear narrative to follow.
 - This in itself is not necessarily a downside. Because Mercer's code of conduct essentially is 'get all the goodies', I tend to have a reason to stop by alot of the station's departments and try to involve more crew.
 - Departments visited this round: Security [Armory and EVA], Bridge [Captain office, Main bridge, research shuttle], Medical [General Treatment and sublevel], Cargo [Warehouse], Engineering [Drone control, engine room hallway], Science [RnD]

Oh yea, and I shot some holo carps chasing down people around in RnD.
______________________________

Phew that was a long post. Hopefully I managed to convey my thoughts across. If you have any questions or feedback, please post it here or contact me on discord at Naetatolynn#1337

[Mogelix]

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

I can agree with almost everything you wrote here. Especially this part is interesting to me: "But we know that characters [...] are all hired and screened employees/visitors who are allowed into this research station, right?" I'd like to elaborate on this point, because there seems to be a misunderstanding here between our comprehension of the word 'Visitor'. As far as I understand it, pretty much anyone is allowed to just get on board of Aurora, as long as they are screened and evaluated beforehand to make sure they are not carrying any dangerous materials or weapons. Just like in real life you might be allowed to walk around the public areas of a military base if you fill a paperwork and get a pat down at the gate by some soldier/officer.

While from what I am reading here, it seems to me that in your understanding Visitors are only allowed to be NanoTrasen employees / contractors that happen to be off duty. I'm fairly sure that it's more complex than this, and that's why I'd like you to elaborate on this point a little bit more. Because it's important and it seems to be a rather large part of the issue you have with Casey Mercer's character concept.

9 hours ago, Cnaym said:

Visitor does not have to be employee, visitors can be antags, I've seen that character stay even on extended rounds.

I didn't really say that, I just don't remember if Mercer was a assistant or visitor so I kind of cover both grounds. But, I think it is obvious that: "People are screened and evaluated before they visit the Aurora." Right, they're evaluated if they're dangerous on station. That doesn't mean anyone can just waltz in as a visitor. If Osama Bin Laden rolled up to a US military base unarmed, you think they're gonna let him in? If the records say they are a 'all red flags solarian merc', and they are screened and evaluated, surely someone would say 'hey wait a minute, that's a potential terrorist who has no important reason to be onboard then to terrorize terroristically!' Also, sorry for not mentioning you Cyanm given that I literally don't know how.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

The reason why Mercer is a cryo-on-round start character is for several reasons.

I don't care about your reasons. Mercer is not a character. They're a blank slate for terroristic actions. They're MRP/LRP. The main driving force of traitor is, as I've said, previous IC conflicts and relations going to a boiling point. that doesn't happen here. Your character is a ninja without a suit and with a ID, they're not fit for a HRP enviroment.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

If the concept of this character where you start with nothing comes off as .. uh.. douchey? arrogant? Then I'd like to apologize. That wasn't the intention.

It doesn't matter if that's not the intention, you have through that quote, admitted and shown that you see traitor as a 'race to finish-line' of fucking things up, and are handicapping yourself to flex on sec.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

- When Mercer was played a few times, I realized there was an issue that security wouldn't ever IC know that this person is dangerous and this didn't give them a fair chance.
- This I chose to adress by the records warning security of the fact that the character is a potential threat and should have an eye kept on them.

That is a good point but in doing that you've basically made your character Osama Bin Laden, invalidating them overall as a character. Which just further shows the problems witha 'traitor character'.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

Next point before I get to the rounds themselves: Surely NT wouldn't allow in someone on a watch list.
 

This specific point I'd like to address with an example. @kyres1 's assistant, Akyniy Idowu [or however you spell it]. This character in their records is ALSO on an official watch list, and is often promoted to roles like Bridge Assistant. And that's a character played by a synth lore developer. So, yes, NT would indeed hire character that are on an official watch list. The official watch list is supposed to be warning for ISD: "Hey, if something weird's going on, considering looking into this person".

You know why people are fine with that? I really doubt the watchlist goes so far to say that Akinyi is a solarian merc with 'all the red flags'. And that character is actually a character. They're not entirely defined by their shady watchlistiness. They don't only play when they roll traitor. They're actually a character.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

I've played enough antagonists to where I now simply do not trust security personnel to not try to screw me over in some way.

 After that moment I was thinking back to all the times I got interrupted while having a chat bubble, ran down by officers, or betrayed when trying to strike a deal as Nightingale (raider/merchant).

 In that particular round, my state of mind on this was bad enough to where I think I would have killed you regardless of what you wrote, short of 'Wait, can you explain what you are doing here' or 'I surrender'.

Well, that's honest and I appreciate that. But you just don't gank anyone. And you certainly don't gank people for... doing standard procedure? Security can't just say 'oh, haha, don't worry, I don't care.' You're going to have to take the initiative in RPing with security. Especially with a solo-officer. You can't just put yourself in poor situations and expect security to just act like complete idiots in order to not get ganked. That's stupid.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

 - Before you came into the captain office you held the laser rifle in only one hand. After you entered my sight range, to made it a point to wield the rifle and clearly imply 'I am not here to talk' to me. Once again, my whole outlook that 'security lives don't really matter' when I'm an antag rears it's head here.

Same here, you can't act this risky and shady and antagonistic and then freak the fuck out when people act like something shady risky and antagonistic is happening. Security lives do matter, people are playing those sec officer, and would rather not die ten to twenty minutes into the round.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

If I let you pass by me and not attack with melee the second I can I will significantly lower my own odds of winning.

Again, it's obvious you just see traitor as a race to finish line 'winning' game mode. You severely misunderstand the rule, drive a narrative and story.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

- Sadly I cannot know if you're giving me a chance or if you genuinely didn't see me.    : (

How stupid do you think I am? Do you seriously expect me to not notice the out-of-place grey backpack sitting in a chokepoint? While typing on my PDA to someone, as if someone with say camera surveillance overwatching me?

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

Furthermore, I fumbled my first attack because as it turns out you have to first disable the chameleon and then attack if you wish to attack, you cannot attack directly from it to break it.

That just makes it worse. You were seriously trying to click me with your E-sword the second I hopped the desk.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

 - Unlike loyal personnel, antagonists get murdered by a single shrapnel/infection/internal bleeding. We do not have access to a medbay full of people willing to heal us. Every single wound will come back to bite us later on into the round, every single combat is lethal because out of first aid via trauma/burn kits and chems, there's basically nothing we can do to fix ourselves after a wound. I cannot count the amount of rounds where my character gets absolutely destroyed by a dumb infection from a stray laser shot or gets worn down and dies due to a single shrapnel in something silly like left hand. Shrapnel especially is stupendously dangerous - not only causing haloss damage on movement but actually triggering bleeding if you ignore it long enough. Because of this, antags first approach to a potential combat situation will almost always be 'Get rid of danger while putting yourself at as little risk as possible.'  And oh god don't get me started on if you're a hostile solo ipc - you cannot even repair yourself whatsoever. 

That's not necessarily so. Get some friends, actually RP a character then when you get traitor you might have someone willing to bend over backwards in order to heal you. Hell, medbay loves to heal terrorists, friend or not. 

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

 - You are a security officer, bound to follow and enforce corporate regulation. Every single training you  ever received teaches you that your teammates are your greatest asset. So.... you hero-charge in completely alone after violating regulations to steal a suit. [I'm relying on information from your own post here, I don't know if officers can normally take the skrellian suit.]

That's what my training tells me but my experience tells me a whole other story buddy. I didn't hero-charge in. My teammates were just too stupid to improvise and didn't respond to a ongoing situation cause 'oh well we don't have any normal sec eva suits'. And taking a skrell voidsuit isn't against regs. They're for everyone, and fit humans. That voidsuit in particular I'm pretty sure was in sec colours. I'm also not bound to follow nothing. I do what I want, weighing up the consequences, I'm not a stationbound.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

 - Mercer and Mutema have played multiple times before round 1 mentioned in this post, but I wasn't operating on 'Security lives don't matter' then

How about you never operate like that? That sure would make playing as sec against you slightly less toxic and ganky. It's clear when you have operated like that I didn't really have a problem with you.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

 - Out Of Character, from my experience, there are two characters that you can borderline mind control whenever you play an antagonist. Lin Dislioth and Berko Mutema, without exception, will always take a direct line towards a hostile as soon as their location is known. This was later a cause for an adaptation from me that was seen in game 3 with the land mine. If Mercer is formulaic and predictable, so are you. 

Sick roast but irrelevant.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

The moment happened exactly as you described. Mercer busted in through the door, and headed for the void suits, when suddenly, there's an officer. I remember opening my uplink and looking for an esword while typing an uhh or umm or something like that. When I got the weapon, I started paying more attention again, and took a step towards you. And right here is where I believe I made a mistake. I should have told you to stand down and lit the sword. At that moment, if you pull a gun, I cut your head off. If you talk into radio, I can't know what you're saying and I'm not risking my hide to be killed by a squad of officers - I'm cutting your head off. If you pull a baton, I'm cutting your head off. That's how it should have been handled - .. but it wasn't. And that's the problem. I don't know if you actually talked into your radio or if it was just emoted, because in that round in particular I didn't really care. 

Your actual first reaction to seeing a officer is to go for the E-sword. Please stop overplaying your thought process in this situation. You saw a officer, you went for the gank, you look like a wank. You took me out of the round because you were scared of a squad of officers "killing" you. You verily know that security does not operate like that, given that time to time, you play security. I was indeed going to actually call out the situation on my stationbounced but here's the thing. That's not enough to escalate to murder this early in the round. There's a consistent theme of me giving you breathing room and you just wordlessly ganking me.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

As for the formulaic antaggery... you're not wrong. It is a formula -> Get tool belt -> count minutes, if security briefing/suit up is complete, wait until maintenance sweep is done. If not, steal sec void suit -> try to frame a shaft miner as breaking into captain office by changing your ID card to their name and job -> copy captain id access -> get both captain's guns and headset -> try to think of something interesting to do.
 

Here's where I would like to ask you something back... What have you learned from this formula? You know it just as well as I do at this point. Why not make it a point to go 'set up the void suits' like many other officers do, and if you notice them missing report it? Why not make it a part of your patrol? It would make sense for a dutiful officer to check on their limited EVA gear?

What does not having access to EVA gear mean: - Hull breaches become super dangerous. Okay, let's stay away from vented areas. - Explosives are a hard no-no, as is fighting near them due to reason above. Avoid combat around welder tanks too. - If the area only lost breathable air but not pressure, a gas mask + oxygen tank + armory armor vs the antag's weapons is way better than a void suit anyway.

Hell, the most basic thing would be: "Hey guys, did someone take the security void suits?" "No?" "We have a thief and they want to prevent us going EVA. Ai, watch high security locations with EVA access like the bridge." or the bridge... or maybe the bridge, because it's literally the only important location with easy EVA access without changing Z-levels or having access to airlocks. Hell, you could report it, have code raised to blue because you know something's up and man the camera console and watch the important areas. The part of the formula where I enter captain's office is the most vulnerable moment, because if someone activates bridge lock down, I'm stuck inside because I cannot destroy blast doors easily.

There is one more part that could be considered Formulaic - the way Mercer often raids the armory. Mercer will almost always only take weapons and sometimes grenades. Why? Because there simply is too much armor to fit into the lockers in a reasonable amount of time. So you're not losing your protection. As for the weapons... There are literally four departments in the game capable of fitting you with a large assortment of weapons, yet security will, as a rule, NEVER ask for help for some unknown reason.
 

So you admit it, you do the same old thing as antag doing the same old tricks just to relive the ganking some folks.

Also... no. That point is so stupid, it's literally "What, your struggling to fight me as a antag? Just give me no breathing room and metagame my previous non-canon actions." And I've actually adapted. You took secs EVA gear, I took the skrell voidsuit. You gank me. And everytime sec voidsuits are stolen, security is instantly on it. Unless we're immediately distracted.

I don't have much experience with you raiding the armoury but I hate you tenfold for admitting you do it. Do you know how typically slow and unresponsive other departments are to security in these antag rounds? That's why we don't reach out to you to get weapons. When we try, it's always a slow fucking slog that might just end with 'ah sorry I can't I gotta do something else'. Not to mention we're often not co-ordinated or backed up by a HOS. I've literally been told to suck it up by gun-making departments when it comes to 'please the armory has been raided'. Also, you steal all of secs EVA suits then vent the armoury. Big brain time. And if I'm not incorrect, you wordlessly shot me after hanging around the vented armoury, to the point where a borg had to run infront of my downed body to absorb the lasers. Might be someone else but then again I think it was you actually.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

At round start I managed to collect my kit faster than I've ever done before so I decided to rush the void suits before security is even finished taking things from their lockers.  Knowing that officers like to patrol maintenance, I decided to adapt from previous rounds and instead of getting the usual, I opted for Agent card -> emag -> land mine opener. 

 After entering security/eva/engineering maintenance, I placed a land mine [I did not obscure it with the welding tank to make sure people have a chance if they pay attention] and moved a secondary welding fuel tank next to it and was preparing to do the usual security void suit shenanigans when I saw a maintenance drone walking by. I emagged the drone, and seeing how it was still early into the round I didn't want it to do anything lethal, so I ordered it to destroy all lights and only kill if it feels threatened.

 I proceeded with the void suit thefts, and as I was leaving towards security briefing room via maintenance  I heard a triple explosion and the maintenance vented. [Mine + 2 welder tanks]. I was honestly a little surprised that someone walked onto a non-hidden mine that had an additional welding tank parked next to it. Later I was informed in LOOC that placing mines this early into round is considered bad form and shouldn't be done. 

You keep doing it! You keep chaos antagging! What kind of story, motivation, and narrative is driven by making a maint drone act like a shitter and just making the experience unpleasant for everyone, or by dropping mines in maint early in the round? Just... why? Do you ever think that before you play another formulaic antag?

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

The miner being impersonated was assaulted by security and was harmbatoned long enough for the baton to run out of charge. I was informed that your character was present and only intervened after you accidentally got hit. As far as I was informed, the miner was not resisting and was wanting to cooperate to clear up the misunderstanding. 

 Why is it okay for your character to condone abusing the crew and potentially inflict lethal amount of damage [harmbatoning long enough for it to run out of charge]? I actually don't really care if you were asking the officer to stop, the officer was clearly out of line, and you should have prevented the harm of [if nothing else] your willing prisoner. 

This is all second hand retelling, and it is possible I tagged the wrong person - if this is as such, I will edit this post and correct the tag.

There's your explanation. I don't know. Rounds are confusing and at times things can make more sense when your really in the round.

As for the third round.

In that round, you looted the warehouse, you subverted a drone, you looted the armoury. you framed a miner, you blew up random unprovoked people with landmines, you subverted the AI, giving them vague laws and expecting them not to be misused, you almost prosthetically replaced your shattered foot, self surgery style, then raided the vault. You're doing too much, and too well, you are being a dick to the entire crew and station completely unprovoked at times. This isn't really unenjoyable or a good story, it's just chaotic and meaningless, MRP. Security, namely me, give you alot of breathing room and in exchange you shit on us repeatedly, then get angry when we start to give you less breathing room, in exchange playing even more aggressively and breathingroomless, just spiraling into MRP. And you're the aggressor and causer of this spiral, Mercer needs to go to break it.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

Kill 1) Someone stepping on a non-hidden mine. Probably shouldn't have been this early [less than 5 minutes into round] but... I can't really control this.
Kill 2) I'm not sure if the engineer had to die, but from my experience if I spared them it would have made my situation a billion times worse.

I can kinda understand kill two since you were clearly displaying your power but they persisted anyway, kill one, why? Why do you do this? What is your motive, your story?

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

So I ask the drone to be my bodyguard and move to medical, only making small replies to the people while getting medical splints and applying them to the broken bone.

I'm not gonna say I expect you to monologue, but the thing is, Mercer only makes small replies. They're completely situationally minded, they don't RP, they don't give motive, they don't give story, it's just all one big race to the finish line competitive round where you do the minimum RP possible. And don't describe you giving a smoke grenade to the miner you impersonated, or the random necro liason as RP. You can't just give stuff with no motivation, acting as a agent of chaos.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

Did I go out with the intention to just cause chaos? I think so, I think that's how it definitely was in retrospect.
Did I do nothing at all for the entire round? False, I highly disagree with this. I think I was very active as an antagonist, just without a clear narrative to follow.
 - This in itself is not necessarily a downside. Because Mercer's code of conduct essentially is 'get all the goodies', I tend to have a reason to stop by alot of the station's departments and try to involve more crew.
 

Getting all the goodies and just causing chaos isn't HRP, that's the problem. Being a active antagonist =/= being a good antagonist. You give no one breathing room and playing to win and stealing from a department does not equal RPing with them

I know come off like I want complete ordnung in my antag rounds but really I'm fine with high octane antag rounds. Aslong as they also have RP, and actual interaction beyond 'STEAL ALL THE THINGS, CAUSE CHAOS'.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

Oh yea, and I shot some holo carps chasing down people around in RnD.

Really? You think that dampens the blow of all the shit you did in that round?

[Garnascus]

I will take a look at this tonight.

[Bear]

The other posts were quite... developed so Ill keep mine short.

Being in several of these rounds I'm going to have to fundamentally disagree with this post. Yes, Naelynn rarely has a gimmick as mercer. But a creative and unique gimmick is not a requirement.  Just bc the rp isnt focused with sec doesnt mean it isnt happening. I.e. Mercer holding hostages for favors and cutting them lose before security js ever even called. Or their help in broken departments to keep the station going.

Mercer is an enabler. She slows security and helps other antags which in my experience has been invaluable in keeping rp going. She enables players just as much when they bother to try and interact.

Lastly. Naelynn may know the code. Trust me she doesnt power game. 9/10 times youll catch her in the cap's EVA. Literally half the time its simply a sec suit recycled and she runs around with antique laser despite knowing much.. much better weaponry. She doesnt murderbone. Having been sec droves of times as shes antagging, lethals fly when you play the hero agaisnt her. Risk of playing sec. Considering she is quite the powerful player, charging her alone is a bad idea. Utilize your team. If theyre being too dumb. Wait. Better to wait and live then charge and die.

That is my experience with the player. Not everyone's style of rp is meant to mesh with our own. I.e. I rarely enjoy peace gimmicks. A lot of people do. And that is okay!

[Garnascus]

So, alleged issues with naelyn.

1. They cryo a lot if they do not get antag

2. They repeat the same few things over and over with little goal in mind as antag.

3. They ganked you twice. 

I will of course just start with the first point. While i understand the intention of the character and the gimmick it has going for it i do not really think it is appropriate to literally always cryo if you do not get antag. It is entirely possible to have a criminal character or an evil alignened character within our rules but you probably should not broadcast that in your records even if its intended to give security a chance. These things will need to be reworked. I also do not want to create a culture here where we are ahelping literally anytime this character cyros from now on. Dont do it. The point is not how often or how little the character cryoes but that they act in good faith in not fishing for antag so obviously. 

The second point is a little difficult. I partly blame gimmick culture for this but its really not a problem if antags follow a generic formula. Perhaps you just want to steal a specific mcguffin and that mcguffin just happens to be the vault every round. Perhaps you just want that cool captains laser every round. All of this is fine to do no matter how many times you do it. All you have to do is sell us somehow, someway that you have some sort of goal or motivation in mind.If you want to "cause chaos" thats fine but give me a decent reason on why you want to cause chaos. The distinction here is very important and it changes how your character would play. Obviously i think it is healthier. 

Last but not least we arrive to the final point. I believe both situations in which naelynn killed you are totally and completely valid. There is never ever a time where i would expect an antagonist to accept being arrested or risk being captured or alerted to by the rest of security. You are a security guard. You are a direct threat to naelynn. In the first situation you caught her breaking into an area while she was carrying an esword and who knows what else. If you capture her she risks having her round ended. Thats it. She is allowed to kill you because of that. The reverse is also. You would have been completely justified in pulling out your own weapon the moment you saw her. The second situation is even more egregious. The AI told you that she had turned into a backpack and she was currently stealing from the captains office. These are charges enough to completely end her round. Straight to permabrig. You hopped over the desk with willful ignorance and she esworded you to death. Totally and completely valid for reasons already stated. 

The responsibility an antag has to not kill someone is proportional to the situation. For example i would find it odd if joe schmoe threw you down disposals after you told him not to smoke in medbay. I would not find it odd of joe schmoe pulls out his .357 revolver and blows your head off after you catch him breaking into the vault.  Also as a final note i do see a lot of documentation and notes regarding some of the ansillary issues related to naelynn's character you have provided. Overall it appears this complaint has some merit. Namely with points one and two. 

[Garnascus]

Also, lets try to be a little concise here. Do it for me cuz i have to read all of this and i have a 20 IQ snail brain. 

[Fortelian]

20 hours ago, Naelynn said:

After entering /eva/engineering maintenance, I placed a land mine [I did not obscure it with the welding tank to make sure people have a chance if they pay attention] and moved a secondary welding fuel tank next to it and was preparing to do the usual security void suit shenanigans when I saw a maintenance drone walking by. I emagged the drone, and seeing how it was still early into the round I didn't want it to do anything lethal, so I ordered it to destroy all lights and only kill if it feels threatened.

I just want to point out that destroying lights kills Diona. Not lethal to everyone, but Diona die without light.

[Mogelix]

Sorry for the lack of reply yesterday, but my brain was on airplane mode/snail brain

On 27/07/2019 at 17:01, Garnascus said:

It is entirely possible to have a criminal character or an evil alignened character within our rules but you probably should not broadcast that in your records even if its intended to give security a chance.

How did you reach this conclusion? I think the opposite. Put it in your records but keep it reasonable. If people can't indicate alignment via records, what are they meant to do?

What I'm trying to say is that you should not have a Solarian Merc 'all red flags' assistant character at all, indicated in records or not.

On 27/07/2019 at 14:40, Bear said:

lethals fly when you play the hero agaisnt her. Risk of playing sec. Considering she is quite the powerful player, charging her alone is a bad idea. Utilize your team. If theyre being too dumb. Wait. Better to wait and live then charge and die.

 

On 27/07/2019 at 17:01, Garnascus said:

These are charges enough to completely end her round. Straight to permabrig. You hopped over the desk with willful ignorance and she esworded you to death. Totally and completely valid for reasons already stated. 

The responsibility an antag has to not kill someone is proportional to the situation. For example i would find it odd if joe schmoe threw you down disposals after you told him not to smoke in medbay. I would not find it odd of joe schmoe pulls out his .357 revolver and blows your head off after you catch him breaking into the vault.  Also as a final note i do see a lot of documentation and notes regarding some of the ansillary issues related to naelynn's character you have provided. Overall it appears this complaint has some merit. Namely with points one and two. 

Then where do we put Naelynn in situations like breaking into EVA and killing a completely passive sec officer. That situation could only end her round if she provoked that officer, and there are plenty of tator items for instant non lethal pacification. She had the edge and initiative in that situation and I was intentially playing slow, yet she still killed me, basically noRP, ridiculously early in the round. And with the caps office, I again gave them the initiative and played stupid and once again she just killed me. And the blames being shifted to me strangely enough, for not metagaming antagonists power. From a IC perspective, there was no way that wasn't the logical solution to that problem. And not responding would only make the situation potentially seven times more irritating (You running around with caps gear and ID). Waiting was accepting defeat and allowing the situation to spin out of control. By the point the AI told me about the backpack I was already practically a rooms away from you. How am I supposed to know you had a E-sword in your pocket? From my knowledge and perspective, the maximum firepower you could have had was the antique, and that's if you were lucky. I was just doing my job and responding to a potentially enabling situation. But despite this mindset, I still gave you wiggle room, which you used to wordlessly kill me. I wouldn't even be that mad if you killing me lead to some interesting plot. But you only seem to kill to empower yourself and line up the next kill. You claim you RP with alot of people throughout multiple departments but the situations you describe are really just perchance encounters that either resulted in you killing and obtaining valids or causing some more meaningless chaos. What RP did you give the random guy who trod on a landmine surrounded by welding tanks, near zero chance of survival? What RP do you actually give the station beyond, 'Hello, I am Casey Mercer, and I am here to steal your stuff.' *steals your stuff*. That's not RP. Interacting with a department and making your existence known to a department is not RP, especially when your just there to further your potential for winning. And they keep fucking over people who don't hold grudges and give them breathing room just so they can grow more powerful and aimlessly minimal RP a chaotic round.

I'm not opposed to chaos, it's just that we are a HRP server and even chaos must be measured by that fact. And I agree with most of what Garn has said. But I think it's reasonable to say that the chaos Mercer starts isn't HRP. You can't just have something in your records that allows you to do whatever you want motivationless. You need a motive more than 'grow more powerful becuz im evul!!111!11' Chaos should be developed, grown, escalated, and roleplayer, not just 'hmmm, today I will kill all of security.' 

On 27/07/2019 at 14:40, Bear said:

Just bc the rp isnt focused with sec doesnt mean it isnt happening. I.e. Mercer holding hostages for favors and cutting them lose before security js ever even called. Or their help in broken departments to keep the station going

The problem isn't that she doesnt exclusively RPs with sec. It's just that she only sees sec as a obstacle in my experience, and minimises RP with sec to when it would be convenient or not at all even when we are actively going out of our way to play dumb and help her get out. And the next point is like the silliest thing I've ever read. It's like the ninja that sets up the engine then subverts AI/does something oocly shitty eg gank. Why bother, that won't make your situation better, ICly or OOCly. "Yeah, I was a shitter, but I set up the engine!" And ive never experienced or watched Mercer do a complex antag RP situation. Even if they're well hidden from security, I usually find they're too busy hacking into the caps office and EVA to do anything interesting like that. (Yes I know I'm pulling from a limited pool of rounds but still.)

On 27/07/2019 at 17:01, Garnascus said:

I also do not want to create a culture here where we are ahelping literally anytime this character cyros from now on. Dont do it.

I never brought that up or suggested that but I too would want to avoid that.

On 27/07/2019 at 17:01, Garnascus said:

The point is not how often or how little the character cryoes but that they act in good faith in not fishing for antag so obviously. 

That's the thing. They incredibly obviously fish for antag to the point that they have no personality other then 'blank psychopathic slate for antaggery'. Even Butterfill had/has more character development then Mercer. That removes a entire dynamic from traitor on the fact that that traitor is a character with predetermined values, idea, and personality which may be shifted by antaggery'. But Mercer has more in common with a bad ninja char then a actual character. Which isn't good or appropriate for a HRP enviroment.

On 27/07/2019 at 17:01, Garnascus said:

You are a security guard. You are a direct threat to naelynn. In the first situation you caught her breaking into an area while she was carrying an esword and who knows what else. If you capture her she risks having her round ended. Thats it. She is allowed to kill you because of that. The reverse is also. You would have been completely justified in pulling out your own weapon the moment you saw her.

 

On 27/07/2019 at 07:27, Naelynn said:

Mercer busted in through the door, and headed for the void suits, when suddenly, there's an officer. I remember opening my uplink and looking for an esword while typing an uhh or umm or something like that.

Garn, she wasn't caught with a E-sword, she bought a E-sword, at that moment, just to gank me. Nothing here was round ending until she escalated to gank by buying a E-sword at that very moment. I think some people have even pressured security to stop treating tools like contraband so.

On 27/07/2019 at 07:27, Naelynn said:

Kill 1) Someone stepping on a non-hidden mine. Probably shouldn't have been this early [less than 5 minutes into round] but... I can't really control this.

You seem very careless and just not showing any regard for consequences. You lay a mine in a frequently travelled poorly lit choke point, maint, and are surprised it was stepped on. That person got no RP and just randomly died, which is 'not fun or fresh', taking someone out of the round with no reason or RP.

On 27/07/2019 at 14:40, Bear said:

Lastly. Naelynn may know the code. Trust me she doesnt power game.

I never said she did powergame, but she uses not powergaming and handicapping herself equipment and role wise to justify doing shitter things and generally bad roleplay, a excuse to lower her standard in antaggery'.

On 27/07/2019 at 14:40, Bear said:

Mercer is an enabler. She slows security and helps other antags which in my experience has been invaluable in keeping rp going. She enables players just as much when they bother to try and interact.

We could also justify the existence of 'randomly detonate welder tanks in maint' antags as distracted and enablers but we don't because a shitter is a shitter.

I'd like to encourage Garnascus to read through this and all my previous points from my previous points because I feel some context and points are being lost as this argument progresses, and some points have been misread/misunderstood

[Naelynn]

27 minutes ago, Mogelix said:

I feel some context and points are being lost as this argument progresses

...this is an argument? I thought it discussion on a problematic character, but... this is just me being pedantic, Everyone gets what you mean.

I'm not going to address most of the points above. Why? Two reasons:
 1) Garn has asked us to keep the posts reasonable in length. I have a habit of not doing that when addressing things.
 2) Most if not all things I believe were addressed in my previous post. 

Instead, I would like to do this:

@Mogelix - What would you like to see done about mercer to increase your enjoyment of playing with the character?
From what I've seen, the following changes should be implemented:
 

On 26/07/2019 at 16:22, Cnaym said:

Give her a job damnit.

 1) As both @Cnaym and @Garnascus said, Mercer needs to have a reason to be on station. I was thinking of several adjustments here. The character would be taking on jobs from https://forums.aurorastation.org/forum/36-syndicate-transmission-network/ . Futhermore, Mercer will primarily try to roll as Merchant, and secondarily as visitor. 

 2) If the character doesn't get antagonist for the round they join, they will try to 'investigate' to gain information about their current mark instead of cryoing. - This would lead to the character asking reasonably shady questions and looking to interact with people. For example, if Mercer accepts the currently posted Cerberus hit, she would be walking around asking what sort of person Copperfield is and etc.

 3) The records should be adjusted. I don't necessarily know how, as I want to keep the idea of a merc that isn't a hit squad going, but I'll try to figure something out.

If you have any more suggested changes, I'd like to hear them. Right now I'm staying away from the character to not cause more issues.

However, there are two points @Mogelix posted that I do want to address.

42 minutes ago, Mogelix said:

You lay a mine in a frequently travelled poorly lit choke point, maint, and are surprised it was stepped on.

 - Yes, I was surprised it was stepped on. It was in an area with no light, so every officer would have had their flashlight on. The mine wasn't hidden behind anything, it was just placed on the ground next to two welder tanks - another hint something's off. I genuinely didn't expect someone to step on it. I cannot control the actions of others. What was I supposed to do, block access to the mine from both sides with welder tanks to make it even more suspicious?

@Garnascus everything below is not relevant for you. I tried to keep it concise, feel free to read it - but it's just me explaining why Antags cannot care for lives of security on Aurora.

On 27/07/2019 at 03:23, Mogelix said:

You took me out of the round because you were scared of a squad of officers "killing" you.

 

On 27/07/2019 at 03:23, Mogelix said:

On 26/07/2019 at 23:27, Naelynn said:

 - Mercer and Mutema have played multiple times before round 1 mentioned in this post, but I wasn't operating on 'Security lives don't matter' then

How about you never operate like that? That sure would make playing as sec against you slightly less toxic and ganky

 - These two points are both tied into the whole 'Security Lives Don't Matter' ideology that is basically a pre-requisite to playing an extremely dangerous antagonist. After this post I was feeling guilty and tried not to kill people in two rounds I got antagonist characters in: Raider round with Nightingale [Vox raider] and a summoned skeleton minion of a [murderboning necromancer] wizard. ( I don't think the ID's matter, but these should be it - however I might be mistaken: b2s-b980 for Wizard round, b2r-cyZO or b2r-de4r for Raider round )

@Mogelix please read this: In Nightingale's round, the vox was first caught in robotics and hasn't harmed anyone until then. There was a civvie next to the vox as well as an officer that was being repaired by the roboticist. Security opened fire with lethal lasers less than five second after spotting the vox and could have harmed the crew. IN THE SAME ROUND LATER, after the vox escaped medical, it found and blue-grabbed a janitor in maint when it saw sec incoming. SECURITY GUNNED DOWN THE JANITOR (Hostage) WORDLESSLY TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT IT. (Yes it was ahelped) After this the vox was captured and dragged to interrogation. The detective was asking some questions, I was giving somewhat helpful-but-clearly-can-give-more answers. Then I asked him "Detective, Vox deal in deals. What will Vox get from this." Reply? "I will not punch your teeth out." .... Soooo, what the detective was telling me was - You're either going to be HuT or executed anyway, and if you work with me I'm not going to harm you now.... Why the actual fuck would I continue working with you then? Is it any surprise then that my reaction as Nightingale then was to rip off the cuffs and attempt to kill the detective and escape? (And get finally gunned dead by security)

Skeleton minion time: Tried to rp over stolen HoS comms, repeatedly say that it's not hostile and will not attack [outright said the phrase - "This one will not attack unless you attack first!" ]. What happens? TCFL Sees my flashlight somewhere EVA and shoot me off screen with gauss thumpers. It didn't matter that I had two guns when they couldn't see if I STILL HAVE THEM BECAUSE THEY SHOT ME FROM OFF SCREEN WITH A WEAPON THAT DOESN'T HAVE A SCOPE. 'Kill it, it's an antagonist.'

Reality of the situation is that if openly antagonistic try to rp or even talk around security, they get violently murdered by MOST of security. As little as even hinting about talking on the radio thus HAS to be enough for an antagonist to go ahead and outright maul your face off, because even if you yourself arn't one of the officers that do this, you're calling them in. And no, these two rounds are not an exception. This is par for the course for playing antagonists, and there's nothing to be done about it. What, am I supposed to ahelp security doing their job and stopping threat to station?  No. The only way you will get less 'ganking' antagonists is if security is reformed. Until that day comes, I will continue believing that security lives don't matter and murdering them as fast as possible at the slightest sight of danger to my well being before running off from the scene because reinforcements are -always- coming.

[Mogelix]

21 hours ago, Naelynn said:

1) As both @Cnaym and @Garnascus said, Mercer needs to have a reason to be on station. I was thinking of several adjustments here. The character would be taking on jobs from https://forums.aurorastation.org/forum/36-syndicate-transmission-network/ . Futhermore, Mercer will primarily try to roll as Merchant, and secondarily as visitor. 

Reading through all you've said in this latest post, its ridiculous how little you understand my problem with Mercer. It actually seems parodic of my arguments more then actually listening and developing, which is extremely frustrating.

21 hours ago, Naelynn said:

2) If the character doesn't get antagonist for the round they join, they will try to 'investigate' to gain information about their current mark instead of cryoing. - This would lead to the character asking reasonably shady questions and looking to interact with people. For example, if Mercer accepts the currently posted Cerberus hit, she would be walking around asking what sort of person Copperfield is and etc.

This is addressing point 1 and 2. I never asked for this. I never actually asked for you to slap on a job for assistant. I want you to stop playing a character who now apparently canonically knows about the syndicate and is a syndicate agent. I want you to stop having such ridiculous MRP characters as the 'Solarian Merc Syndicate Visitor'. In fact, consider the following server rules:

Criminal characters are allowed, if they are done in a believable fashion whilst non-antagonists.

And all the sub points below that.

Characters must be believable, and well-rounded.

Your character, in its proposed and current state, shows a disregard for these rules, being a Solarian merc visitor who knows and works for the syndicate.

Make your character follow the rules, have a reason to be here above 'im scouting out my next terror attack', which is neither reasonable or realistic/well rounded. Your solution is to follow the rules and stop playing a active terrorist.

21 hours ago, Naelynn said:

 3) The records should be adjusted. I don't necessarily know how, as I want to keep the idea of a merc that isn't a hit squad going, but I'll try to figure something out.

Your records reflect on your character, not the other way around.

21 hours ago, Naelynn said:

What was I supposed to do, block access to the mine from both sides with welder tanks to make it even more suspicious?

Don't place mines in public choke points that are naturally tedious and travelled inattentively, on code green with no real motive or reason. That's what you could have done, to not take out some random guy from the round. Don't surround it with welder tanks to guarantee the gank of this random person. If you just put a mine, maybe it wouldn't be so incredibly toxic.

I'm not gonna lie, it's incredibly disappointing how hard your using the old tactical sob stories in this, but I gotta say, reading it, I think it's easy to say that the MASK is OFF. Reading it, I can only really say, two wrongs don't make a right. Its funny as hell to read this. Seeing how you seem to lack any form of self awareness regarding interactions with security, and leave out critically helpful information in these situations?

Situation One: You take a hostage, security (The entirety of security or just one officer?) guns them down, you Ahelp (What happens next? Do you get no reply, did the admins somehow think this was justified? Maybe the round was getting long drawn out and less resembling a security situation then a fight for survival?) So, your captured and you are intentionally vague and non-competitive with security. You try to strike a deal with security as a cuffed prisoner and get threatened with violence. So..? That's not bad RP. Your stupid if you think anyone will negotiate with you if you have that little power. Anyway, you escape, kill the detective, then get gunned down. Of course you got gunned down, you killed the detective, and were being dangerous as fuck. Nothing was bad or invalid here other then sec killing a hostage, and you won't even tell us how and if it was handled by staff.

Situation two: During a murderboning lich round, you joined as a skalertun and declared your neutrality and pacifism. You then went EVA and encountered the TCFL, who gunned you down because, hint hint, there's a murderboning lich around. I'm sorry you didn't get your Undertale Papyrus ERP but you were in a hectic round, playing as a literal unhuman abomination that the TCFL mostly thought off as hostile and non-human, you were even armed with two weapons, EVA. I don't think there's one person in a murderbony round like that facing possible contact with a ICly disgusting creature that wouldn't have lit you up, buddy. The funniest thing is, you don't even know if that was security. Those could be random medical players who were ganked by the murderbone wizard, then joined as TCFL for revenge.

if these are the strongest examples you can think off to justify your disgusting self-admitted attitude regarding security, you need to rethink your entire antaggery. I have experienced lots of shittery from antags yet I still try my hardest to have boundaries and give them space to interact, roleplay, develop, and not totally shut them down. And yet you throw me and all of sec into the gank on sight bin because of some non existant strawman that you don't seem to be willing to speak about beyond one extreme case, and some vague reforms for this said non-existant issue, besides some outliers that literally broke existing server rules and are begging for a player complaint.

21 hours ago, Naelynn said:

As little as even hinting about talking on the radio thus HAS to be enough for an antagonist to go ahead and outright maul your face off, because even if you yourself arn't one of the officers that do this, you're calling them in. And no, these two rounds are not an exception. This is par for the course for playing antagonists, and there's nothing to be done about it. What, am I supposed to ahelp security doing their job and stopping threat to station?  No. The only way you will get less 'ganking' antagonists is if security is reformed. Until that day comes, I will continue believing that security lives don't matter and murdering them as fast as possible at the slightest sight of danger to my well being before running off from the scene because reinforcements are -always- coming

Seriously, get a load of this, read it, if this was the only thing I had ever read of yours, Nae, I'd think you were delusional and childish. You have admitted to validhunting, ganking, and murderboning security as some weird martyr rebel against a security strawman. You realise you have plenty of non-lethal, RP enabling alternatives to 'oh shit I was caught, time to open uplink and buy gank tools'. And you are the one that escalated this to round ending levels, you bought the E-sword and hacked my face off, when I was giving you the edge. You know why I do that? Because I wanna RP with you, I want to see what you can pull off, I want to let you develop your round while also not just ignoring my job as a officer. As for all this 'ending my round nonsense'.It is a bannable offense for us to metagame you and put you in for super strong charges, you have chosen to put yourself at handicap via your records, it is a bannable offense for us to harmbaton you to death or critical. You escalated this to round ending proportions, and it's rude and insulting to the other officers in that round to insinuate that they would do that. It and alot of what else you have said shows a lack of faith in the rules, the staff and the rest of the playerbase, and is overall arrogant, rude, falseful and disgusting.

Honestly, with a attitude like this, I'd encourage Garn to read those segments, because the attitudes you've stated "Security Lives Don't Matter", with that reasoning, and self admitted ganky rounds lead for the sake of validhunting are borderline confessions given this player complaint. I mean literally, this is a confession, a accidental admission of guilt, no tongue of cheek, just giving me material and evidence by your own quotes. I'd encourage that all previous points and ideas stated are reread for the sake of clarity, context, and plain out making sure nothing is missed, for both me and Nae, because alot of what Nae has said is self destructive. It's clear to me that you need to change your character ALOT and change your attitude to antaggery and security. I'm sorry for jumping the gun to demanding punitive action but I don't want to play antag rounds with you or your character and this is severely souring my opinion on you.

I only intended to discuss Mercer but it's clear your entire attitude regarding antaggery needs to change, and seeing all of this, I urge the admins to reflect on all these points, and consider action on them. Even with all this text, I do not feel like I have written and voiced enough. I apologize that this is so long-winded and unconcise but this is, 'alot to unpack.'

Edited July 30, 2019 by Mogelix

[Naelynn]

@Garnascus
I'd like to ask you to pass judgement. 

I don't think me and @Mogelix will be able to talk the situation out due to fundamental difference in our thinking - Mogelix appears to think around emotions and reading intentions, while my posts are structured around trying to provide reasoning and evidence where possible.

Seen here: 

1 hour ago, Mogelix said:

. You try to strike a deal with security as a cuffed prisoner and get threatened with violence. So..? That's not bad RP. Your stupid if you think anyone will negotiate with you if you have that little power. Anyway, you escape, kill the detective, then get gunned down. Of course you got gunned down, you killed the detective, and were being dangerous as fuck. Nothing was bad or invalid here other then sec killing a hostage, and you won't even tell us how and if it was handled by staff.

 

23 hours ago, Naelynn said:

What, am I supposed to ahelp security doing their job and stopping threat to station? 

My post explained that the detective rp's was valid, as such I didn't lodge any form of formal complaint about it. My post is a little bit salty after - and that's fine. However, why am I being ascribed stupidity for assuming that security wants to get some information out of the vox during interrogation? 

There's a lot more I would want to say, but an argument can be had over private dm and doesn't have to be overseen by an admin.

Thank you for your work.

[Mogelix]

1 hour ago, Naelynn said:

Mogelix appears to think around emotions and reading intentions, while my posts are structured around trying to provide reasoning and evidence where possible.

Seen here: 

3 hours ago, Mogelix said:

. You try to strike a deal with security as a cuffed prisoner and get threatened with violence. So..? That's not bad RP. Your stupid if you think anyone will negotiate with you if you have that little power. Anyway, you escape, kill the detective, then get gunned down. Of course you got gunned down, you killed the detective, and were being dangerous as fuck. Nothing was bad or invalid here other then sec killing a hostage, and you won't even tell us how and if it was handled by staff.

 

On 29/07/2019 at 16:14, Naelynn said:

What, am I supposed to ahelp security doing their job and stopping threat to station? 

 My post explained that the detective rp's was valid, as such I didn't lodge any form of formal complaint about it. My post is a little bit salty after - and that's fine. However, why am I being ascribed stupidity for assuming that security wants to get some information out of the vox during interrogation? 
 

1 hour ago, Naelynn said:

My post explained that the detective rp's was valid,

Why are you complaining or even including it at all then, if you had no problem with it? Because I'm going to assume you're turning it into a counterpoint problem. Okay. Cool. There was no issue here, I'm glad we agree that its a IC issue, I just thought you were insinuating that security had to negotiate with you as a captured and cuffed vox raider. I think I'd also agree with you, that shooting through hostages as sec is a dick move, and I'd agree with you, if you wanted to make a staff complaint about it. However, you have completely focused on this one thing. You still haven't given me any information regarding the actual problem other then this little distracting non-problem. What happened to the ahelp regarding sec shooting the hostage? How many officers was it, just one, the whole department, just one guy of the group that was chasing you? What was the overall context, how desperate was the situation? Me complaining about you bringing up that detective RP I think can really chalked up as me misunderstanding the point of something that really wasn't relevant to this complaint, and I agree I was a little bit dramatic in that post, but I wouldn't like it all to be handwaved off as completely unreasonable.

Also, sorry for the overall spike in hostility in that last post, Nae.

I'd like to apologize to Garn for making him read all this and hurting his snail brain, but I'm really paranoid and nervous that parts of this may go misunderstood/misread/looked over/forgotten, so I'm sorry for repeating this like a brainlet but I'd really like for this not to be judged as the 'last word' match, but as a round-up of all the points made, everything took into account.

Pre-emptive sorry!

[Naelynn]

17 minutes ago, Mogelix said:

I just thought you were insinuating that security had to negotiate with you as a captured and cuffed vox raider.

Nah, what I was expecting was something along the lines of 'If you cooperate with us and tell us the information we want, I'm going to make sure you will not be harmed and be legally processed. Once your charges have been served you will be free to go' - or anything along those lines. Not a promise of Less violence in the future. But yeah - in my eyes it was purely an ic thing and I mentioned it to elaborate on why dealing with security as an antag is extremely difficult and dangerous.

I even said this: 

On 29/07/2019 at 08:14, Naelynn said:

even if you yourself arn't one of the officers that do this, you're calling them in

Them in this situation being officers who are more than willing to go crazy at drop of a hat. 

The total kill count of Nightingale in that round has been zero by the way, even the janitor has survived. The detective got a few pecks into the face and was damaged [ipc] but nothing that couldn't be repaired in few minutes in robotics.

@Garnascus more more-or-less irrelevant stuff below this line.

23 minutes ago, Mogelix said:

You still haven't given me any information regarding the actual problem other then this little distracting non-problem. What happened to the ahelp regarding sec shooting the hostage? How many officers was it, just one, the whole department, just one guy of the group that was chasing you? What was the overall context, how desperate was the situation?

I havn't given out any information about that because I don't believe it was relevant to Casey Mercer/Naelynn Character/Player complaint. All I remember from the Ahelp is that the person who shot the prisoner [I think thrice?] got talked to. I genuinely don't remember much about it. The only reason I even brought it up in the first place was in a semi-unrelated part of the post that informed the admin that it's not relevant to this forum post - and it was merely to explain why you get so many antagonists who go on to 'gank' security. As far as I can tell, there are three -general- types of antagonists they end up in based on how the situation plays out: 

Peace/Stealth Antagonists: These will never break regulations, almost always try to help the station to hunt down other antags and generally play as standard employee with access to non-standard tools. Outside the first one-two rounds with each particular gimmick of this variant, there is very little to be interesting about them unless they are supported by a 'Hostile' type antagonist [Another type, listed below] There is a subtype of antags that belongs here because of how similarly they end up for the round overall - Stealth. For these antagonists, you just never saw them effect the round in any way whatssoever, be it because they didn't notice they are an antag, or because they went about their business in such a sneaky way that no one ever found out.

On-The-Run Antagonist: These are antags that are plain annoying for everyone. Usually these antagonists think they are roleplaying, but then they do something to make station/security hate them and then there's 90 minutes of chasing a spacial wizard/ninja/REALLY sneeky traitor/etc while they taunt each other over comms and all security does is constantly run around the station in a circle while everyone gets annoyed. 

Hostile Antagonists: These antags ignore regulations altogether and do whatever they want. If they are missmanaged, they will often just be causing chaos for no real reason, if they are done correctly they are an open and very real threat to the station that the crew can rally against. Sadly, due to security essentially being 'Antagonist Interaction Department', these types of antags very often get into combat with security.

And if you don't fall into one of these categories, you've been killed. And if you do, you're probably dead anyway. Hell, I had a peace vox raider round where I literally was under security supervision, didn't steal or harm anyone the entire round and STILL got attacked and then hunted down by securit at about 1 hour 40 mins in. That's simply how the situation is and genuinely unless the entirety of security department is somehow forced to change, or there is an extremely talented HoS holding everyone in line [Khaled] I cannot in good conscience antag without being cruel to security. Why? I don't like playing peace/stealth, and On-The-Run is annoying for both me and everyone on station.

... but all of that is more or less philosophy on how the game plays out and has very little to do with this character/player complaint.

If you want to continue this talk so we can meet some middle ground maybe, hit me up on discord @Mogelix over at Naetatolynn#1337 .

I'm only going to reply here with stuff that is directly relevant to this character/player complaint from now on.

[Mogelix]

41 minutes ago, Naelynn said:

Nah, what I was expecting was something along the lines of 'If you cooperate with us and tell us the information we want, I'm going to make sure you will not be harmed and be legally processed. Once your charges have been served you will be free to go' - or anything along those lines. Not a promise of Less violence in the future. But yeah - in my eyes it was purely an ic thing and I mentioned it to elaborate on why dealing with security as an antag is extremely difficult and dangerous.

Sweet. But this was a dangerous round. You took hostages and that detective made the decision that negotiating with you while you were in such a powerless position was pointless and he might have more luck trying to get you to fearRPing and cough it up, badcop style. It's IC. You made the dangerous round there and security decided they weren't going to negotiate and trust a literal species of backstabbing swashbuckling scumbags, so really, this situation was only as dangerous as you made it. It's the exact thing security is there to do. And there's no way you can change security to not react to a situation like this, when they have the upper hand. Your story is also constantly changing. Apparently you attempted to kill this detective, and as the hyper robust superman you are, I of course expected them to be near dead once you were done with them, but now apparently you only landed a few pecks.

41 minutes ago, Naelynn said:

I even said this: 

On 29/07/2019 at 16:14, Naelynn said:

even if you yourself arn't one of the officers that do this, you're calling them in

 Them in this situation being officers who are more than willing to go crazy at drop of a hat. 

Oh okay, so basically what your saying is the other officers in this round where mongoloid braindead stunbaton charging assholes who would've beat you to a pulp and ended your round. Spider (Jesse Armstrong), the guy who plays Derrick Mens, they are those terrible big mean strawmen officers, aren't they? I'll make sure to inform them of your opinion. Get over it. We've moved past Nick Volvolaad. And you are full in your power to Ahelp bad officers when they do bad things. It's clear that you have overblown the great terribleness of Sec wordlessly 'gunning down' the janitor when now apparently they survived.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

As far as I can tell, there are three -general- types of antagonists they end up in based on how the situation plays out: 

Peace/Stealth Antagonists: These will never break regulations, almost always try to help the station to hunt down other antags and generally play as standard employee with access to non-standard tools. Outside the first one-two rounds with each particular gimmick of this variant, there is very little to be interesting about them unless they are supported by a 'Hostile' type antagonist [Another type, listed below] There is a subtype of antags that belongs here because of how similarly they end up for the round overall - Stealth. For these antagonists, you just never saw them effect the round in any way whatssoever, be it because they didn't notice they are an antag, or because they went about their business in such a sneaky way that no one ever found out.

On-The-Run Antagonist: These are antags that are plain annoying for everyone. Usually these antagonists think they are roleplaying, but then they do something to make station/security hate them and then there's 90 minutes of chasing a spacial wizard/ninja/REALLY sneeky traitor/etc while they taunt each other over comms and all security does is constantly run around the station in a circle while everyone gets annoyed. 

Hostile Antagonists: These antags ignore regulations altogether and do whatever they want. If they are missmanaged, they will often just be causing chaos for no real reason, if they are done correctly they are an open and very real threat to the station that the crew can rally against. Sadly, due to security essentially being 'Antagonist Interaction Department', these types of antags very often get into combat with security.

3 hours ago, Naelynn said:

And if you don't fall into one of these categories, you've been killed. And if you do, you're probably dead anyway.

This is literal playerbase psuedoscience. I have managed to play as a ambiguous antagonists, to the point of pointing revolvers at security and being able to smoothly recover. Some times I've failed because it's hard for security to be 'just fine' with a armed unknown roaming the halls. Maybe I can give you a story of my own. Some round, a little while ago, I played as a Ninja with a kind of cliche gimmick. Time traveller from World War 2. This man was from a British Intelligence Division during the battle of britain assigned to highly experimental R&D, this time he was timetravelling forward in time to investigate future technologies to beat the bloody huns. I came with multiple inventions + a revolver and dequipped the Ninja tele-suit, which I used to imply that this wasn't the departments first rodeo. I wandered the station, asked about where I am, just time traveller things. I encountered security, explained my predicament, and they quite loudly exclaimed that I must be crazy. With some good RP I managed to put them on the fence. One, who was still not convinced, suggested just shooting me. When I heard this, I pulled my revolver in a dorky and inneffective tommy officer manner and pointed it at the nearest officer, "I beg your pardon?!". In that moment, with your bogeyman sec, I could've been totally crashed down upon. But sec requested I put it down and calm down. At this point I had fully convinced them I was a timetraveller, given my strange mannerisms and actions, and went around RPing with the entire crew, anyone intellectual or armed enough to provide me prototype recovered future equipment and asking for information about the future plans and plots of the germans until I had to go IRL and went SSD, giving my ninja suit away. Despite my ambivalent actions, the round did not go pear-shaped. This might just be one round  and a outlier but I have yet to see you bring valid examples of security not acting this way, that were not handled and assessed by staff. And you bet your ass if security escalated, I was not gonna just give in, my pompous british man was going to kill every damn hun sympathiser if he had to. I was able to pull off antaggery that is ambivalent, does not fall in your absurd three plots and very easily could have escalated. 

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

And if you don't fall into one of these categories, you've been killed. And if you do, you're probably dead anyway. Hell, I had a peace vox raider round where I literally was under security supervision, didn't steal or harm anyone the entire round and STILL got attacked and then hunted down by securit at about 1 hour 40 mins in.

 I preferred the other stories you told because they are completely believable without game IDs, and aren't vague and just 'I was peaceful' then fast forwarding one hour and fourty minutes and 'oh god, i'm in jail'. There's plenty of reasons, your general behaviour, peaceful though it was, may have aroused suspicion. That and the fact you are armed, and were from a species of unknown alien swashbuckling backstabbing scumbags may have provoked security in drawing the line. If Osama Bin Laden and the taliban showed up at a military base (I know we're not a military base, but still) armed, asked for a nice little tour, then went on said tour, do you think nobody would say, 'alright, get em boys its Osama Bin Laden, he's probably sizing this place up for a raid.' Because this is that. You may be peaceful, but you are a vox raider, and on the suspicion chart, it is IC knowledge and common opinion, you are untrustworthy scum.

2 hours ago, Naelynn said:

Sadly, due to security essentially being 'Antagonist Interaction Department', these types of antags very often get into combat with security.

I am sorry security, but you have reached your maximum daily capacity of 'dealing with armed persons boarding on the station'. Please ignore the armed antagonist parading around the station and instead, hunker down and cry. Of course security interacts with antags, they are equipped, trained and meant to do so. That's not at all a bad thing. Would you prefer antagonists be able to rush the entire station before cargo and science can shit out guns and organize a militia? If they play hostile, they naturally expect a hostile response. The people best equipped to deal with that, by design, in the early game, are security. Nothings wrong with that. You seem to do fine at 'interacting/looting' departments other then security.

4 hours ago, Naelynn said:

or there is an extremely talented HoS holding everyone in line [Khaled] I cannot in good conscience antag without being cruel to security. Why? I don't like playing peace/stealth, and On-The-Run is annoying for both me and everyone on station.

You have been so rude to pretty much everyone that plays security, and now insinuating that all other HOS's then the precious Khaled are incompetent and cant control their teams. You seem to have something really OOCly out for sec players to talk about them like this. If I was a alien visiting earth, the way you frame the majority of the security playerbase, completely tongue out of cheek, would make me think they were some invading barbaric kingdom, mongol horde.

Basically, this post has brought nothing new. I still stand that your attitude regarding security and antaggery should is ridiculous, unhealthy, and disgusting for someone who 'mains antagonist' on a character. I don't think action isn't taken on ideas and attitudes but I don't feel like playing in a server with people that seriously has this mindset, and show such great voiced disdain and rudeness for people who play a certain department from a OOC standpoint that they are fine with taking a attitude of maximum murder upon them because of this strawman in your head.

[Mogelix]

I'm just going to stop replying and wait for Garn to finish this. I wrote way too much and overextended it far too much, and I dont want to have another bloated argument. Feel free to post some more but I've tuned out at this point.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Mogelix

[Garnascus]

So im just going to re-iterate what i said in my previous post. 

1. You need to re-work your records. You cannot have such a clear criminal history or you would not be hired. If you want to have it as part of your back story you essentially need to lie and hide it somehow. 

2. You need to keep an actual goal in mind as an antagonist. Chaos for its own sake is lame and uninteresting. We can do better. 

3. Fishing for antag is kinda discouraged. I encourage you to make some use of your time even if you arent an antag. 

Everything else is as sand in the desert. I am all yet i am void. 

[Naelynn]

46 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

So im just going to re-iterate what i said in my previous post. 

1. You need to re-work your records. You cannot have such a clear criminal history or you would not be hired. If you want to have it as part of your back story you essentially need to lie and hide it somehow. 

2. You need to keep an actual goal in mind as an antagonist. Chaos for its own sake is lame and uninteresting. We can do better. 

3. Fishing for antag is kinda discouraged. I encourage you to make some use of your time even if you arent an antag. 

Everything else is as sand in the desert. I am all yet i am void. 

Aight. Will do - the character is put on hold until the changes take place.

[Naelynn]

@Garnascus

Can the thread be closed and archived? It's been more than a month since last post and it's been resolved.