Complaint - Valkrae, nuke op

[Frances]

BYOND Key: FFrances

Player Byond Key: Valkrae

Reason for complaint: Cutting the round short, failing to create a satisfying roleplay situation for the crew

Approximate Date/Time: 16-APR-2015, approx. 1:30AM EST.

First of all, this complaint is a follow up to this: http://aurorastation.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2065

Two days ago, there was a nuke round where the nuke was detonated very shortly into the round (roughly 1h20 in). In my previous complaint, I mentioned that the AI, NTAI-X, called the emergency shuttle after discovering an active nuke, which caused the ops to detonate said nuke in retaliation.

I later found out this was not what happened.

What happened: Basically, the situation, as reported by Josh1133 (the nuke op that was talking on radio), was that two of the nuke ops died very early into the round due to terrible luck (one flew into space, one died to a mystery virus). The two remaining ops (I think?), Josh and Valkrae, set out to finish their villainous mission. They planted a bomb in the captain's quarters, which blew up the bridge, and everything after that gets a bit fuzzy.

Basically, what Josh told me was that he kept taunting the crew for a while after that, not sure what the full plan was. Meanwhile, Valkrae, taking the nuke disc, stealthily moved the nuke to the brig, and set it to detonate. Josh himself only learned of this plan as Valkrae's op yelled at him to leave the station because the nuke was going to blow.

Why I'm not okay with it: Based on that report (as well as what most of us were able to observe in-game), Valkrae essentially went for the nuke without informing anyone (including the other nuke op) of his plan. No one was given a chance to understand what was happening, and since the crew isn't allowed to meta, it's very easy to stealth-nuke the station, especially if there's no command staff on, without anyone realizing anything. This results in a round ending after an hour, with no one understanding what happened.

I suppose for now I'd like to hear Valkrae's reasoning for detonating the nuke, as it seems it wasn't done as retaliation for a shuttle being called, but simply because the ops could blow it up.

[Valkrae]

Oh boy, Let's get started explaining this utter catastrophe of a round.

First of all, Let's dicuss the entirety of the nuke team, shall we?

First off - Bread - Ended up stranding himself in space, looking for me using the pinpointer and nuke disc. Honestly tried to help. Can't blame at all.

Second - Shadow - Ended up leaving 30 minutes in, and dying to a disease while afk.

Third - Stein - Was AFK for a majority of the time, only returning to talk over the radio.

Fourth - Reaper - Myself. The only nuke op that made it onto the station, and actively was seen by the playerbase.

We started off, and things were good. I then attempt to start talking about a plan of action, of which no one payed any attention, save for Bread Shadow informed us that they had to leave, which we were all fine with. I then attempt to start talking about a plan of action, of which no one payed any attention, save for Bread. They ended up getting some strange disease, and then Stein sat in a chair, and as far as I'm aware went AFK for a bit. Bread and I decide that I'm going to teleport to the Bridge, and steal the Captains ID. A fairly risky, and attention grabbing move, yeah? Well, I do so, and emag my way into the bridge. I steal the ID, plant a bomb(which I severely underestimated the power of nuke transfer bombs.) and grab the hand tele. I walk out of the captains office, and by the fully populated medical bay. Not one player noticed, or made any sort of action that would let anyone know that they noticed me. Okay.

I teleport off, and hear the bomb go off. Immediately, the station is in utter panic. I really don't know what happens. But, I end up teleporting back the bridge because I forgot the nuke disc. I do so, and float my way over to the disc. Then, I walk through the hallways, encountering a few people. Again, they don't make any notice of us. I walk out an airlock, and around. I go up to the brig outer wall, in full view of cameras and all. Throughout this entire time, I've mainly been communicating with Bread, as Stein is alternating between AFK, and taunting on the radio, not really contributing to the team game. Bread was trapped on the T-Comms outpost. Somehow. He ended up cycling out and flying into space. But, I try to ask Stein when we should blow the bomb. No answer.

He continues taunting, and then tells me that if they don't answer the riddle, to blow the bomb.

What happens on the end of the crew is, from what I can remember, everything but answering the riddle. From insulting the ops themselves, to screaming at each other. I blow a hole in the brig for two reasons, One RP reason and One OOC reason. The RP reason was to create a hole in which to bring the nuke into. The OOC reason was to attract people to the brig to confront me. My plan was to give up if outgunned, and disarm the nuke myself, as I had the codes in the memories. The AI barely even registered that there was an explosion, and from my perspective didn't tell anyone about the nuclear device we had installed onto their ship. I deliberately took my time setting up the nuke in hopes that someone would at least come, and see me planting it.

No such luck on that account.

Then the shuttle was called, right after I had given up on arming the nuke. I decided it was pretty good timing, and just kind of left it there. I was deaf by this point, for.. some reason, and I just started shouting over the comms to go.

It turned out that Bread and I were the two active ones left, as Stein was just sitting in his chair. Again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all; It was a shit round in general, and no parties are really innocent in it. Yes, I could've created more RP if I had plainly said I was going to detonate the nuke in the brig.

All in all p2.0: We all fucked up this round.

[Guest]

I don't think detonating the nuke during shuttle transfer is an actual issue. It only ends the round earlier for people who already want it to end. Assuming no one actually objected to it being called and round ending. If that is the case, Valk did everyone a favor.

[Baka]

Let's take some things into consideration, as I observed the round in it's entity.

Conflict during transfer and shuttle is allowed to continue as long as it draws to a close. Seeing as a threat was made that there was a bomb and it was set up, and to your other complaint about the AI's reasoning of calling the shuttle, it was ongoing conflict.

Could a bit more roleplay been involved in the situation? Yes. As I will always tell Nuke Ops, communication is key if a plan does not follow through. But it's also very, very difficult to have communication between AFK players, Dead players, and Lost players, and the amount of ahelps from the team of "Oh, I don't really feel like playing it" or "I'll be AFK, I really can't stay", doesn't do good. If I had the power to put in replacement ghosts, I would, but it was only a few people on and I did not have that power.

In short, the team was messed up, but that's because there was really no teamwork due to a lack of a, well, team.

[Frances]

So wait, you say you left the nuke unarmed, at the same time the shuttle was called? Why did it detonate, in this case?

Anyway, I can provide a perspective from the side of security this round.

There were two active officers, and I, the warden. The bridge blowing up separated the brig from the rest of the station, so we spent a while getting hardsuits from EVA, so we could leave. After that, we went to cargo to order additional hardsuits (and shotguns because the officer with me wanted one for some reason), and tried to get them to our last officer who was protecting medbay.

This was about 1h in. At this point, you broke into the brig, which the AI informed us of. Figuring you were just raiding the armory (which woulda made sense ICly), and being under-equipped and not even having a full team, I did not want to investigate the brig, although shotgun officer rushed towards it alone, forcing me to follow him. We managed to save all of the armory's contents, and started to leave the brig.

Everything happened really quickly after that. In under a minute, the AI informed us there was a nuke, called the emergency shuttle, then the nuke blew up. We went from not knowing what the ops wanted or were planning to do (except ask us a silly riddle) to the station being destroyed and the round ending.

Was the station sorta dumb for brushing off the nuke ops over the comms? Sorta. Were you justified in detonating the nuke? Not really, imo. Lack of communication or coordination made it difficult to organize, but the nuke's presence should really have been revealed a long time before it was blown up. This would've prevented the crew from being as dismissive, and if you can't get your teammates to speak for you over comms, you can always speak for yourself.

Something else I don't understand - both you and Josh were mods. If you saw he was unresponsive to you most of the time, but still speaking on comms, wouldn't it be preferable to try to contact him on Msay, or via admin PMs?

[Baka]

Josh was AFK. I don't think he could had seen the pokes.

[josh1133]

Hi there!

Few things I like to add.

1) I didn't want to be a Nuke op, made it very clear I had no intention, but I went along with it anyway

2) Valk, I was paying attention to your plan, in fact just because I was sitting there does not mean I was AFK

3) I went along, I admit by this point it was about 1 am so I was mostly out of it. Bread vanished somewhere and I don't remember much, I remember being sucked out into space and I remember taunting because there was no way I was going to make a good choice if I confronted someone

4) I may have worded this badly Frances, as I said I remember Valk saying "Im going to plant the nuke now", and I did respond Valk, I said "Alright" three times and repeated myself. That I remember, I also remember screaming at Bread because he was gone somewhere.

5) Again, I was sitting the chair because I was exhausted, did not mean I was AFK.

6) Did not help the team game because I had no intention of really staying up, as I had a test the next day but when I was picked as OP decided I wouldn't just afk. SO I stuck around in case things got really bad I could head out, but otherwise I rather just stay in the shuttle and hope the round didn't last 4 hours.

TLDR: I told Valk ok when he mentioned setting up the nuke three times, apparently he didn't hear me but I still gave my alright too it. I thought we were going to hold the station hostage, should of asked.

[SgtSammac]

Hi there!

Few things I like to add.

1) I didn't want to be a Nuke op, made it very clear I had no intention, but I went along with it anyway

6) Did not help the team game because I had no intention of really staying up, as I had a test the next day but when I was picked as OP decided I wouldn't just afk. SO I stuck around in case things got really bad I could head out, but otherwise I rather just stay in the shuttle and hope the round didn't last 4 hours.

TLDR: I told Valk ok when he mentioned setting up the nuke three times, apparently he didn't hear me but I still gave my alright too it. I thought we were going to hold the station hostage, should of asked.

 

You could have just admin PM'd and let them place someone else as an Operative?

Don't try and put the game before yourself or force yourself to do things you don't want to do. Otherwise things like this happen or we completely burn ourselves out. :s

[Valkrae]

So, Frances, is there anything else you require?

[Frances]

So, Frances, is there anything else you require?

I was hoping for more people to butt in. I was also always under the impression that staff had the final say over complaints, not users, so I'm sort of waiting for an admin to post too.

Anyway, I actually just remembered I did ask one question about something I'm still confused on.

 

[...] you say you left the nuke unarmed, at the same time the shuttle was called? Why did it detonate, in this case?

Something else I don't understand - both you and Josh were mods. If you saw he was unresponsive to you most of the time, but still speaking on comms, wouldn't it be preferable to try to contact him on Msay, or via admin PMs?

Also,

Was the station sorta dumb for brushing off the nuke ops over the comms? Sorta. Were you justified in detonating the nuke? Not really, imo. Lack of communication or coordination made it difficult to organize, but the nuke's presence should really have been revealed a long time before it was blown up. This would've prevented the crew from being as dismissive, and if you can't get your teammates to speak for you over comms, you can always speak for yourself.

This is my general stance on the situation as I can see it rn. Could someone confirm or dismiss it?

[EvilBrage]

I didn't participate in this round and I've only gathered these observations from reading the posts here, mind, but it seems like Valk armed the nuke and was hoping someone would come to force him to disarm it - his plan was to give up in the likely event that he was confronted about the issue, but no such thing happened.

This appears to have taken place before the crew transfer.

After the transfer was called, Valk elected to simply leave the station and the armed nuke - it wouldn't be terribly in-character for him to arm a nuke, wait around, and then disarm it just because the crew was leaving. Having a team to back him up would have vastly increased his options in dealing with the Aurora, but he was gimped from the start and it only got worse from there; again, I wasn't there, but I don't see much he could have done differently.

Shit rounds happen.

[Frances]

After the transfer was called, Valk elected to simply leave the station and the armed nuke - it wouldn't be terribly in-character for him to arm a nuke, wait around, and then disarm it just because the crew was leaving. Having a team to back him up would have vastly increased his options in dealing with the Aurora, but he was gimped from the start and it only got worse from there; again, I wasn't there, but I don't see much he could have done differently.

What I don't understand in the excuse of "didn't have a choice" was that the general public wasn't informed that the nuke existed until about 2 minutes before it blew up. Could this not have been carried out in a more elegant way?

I mean, if your plan is to never talk, and simply set up the nuke in the hope that the crew will come to robust you under the sole assumption that you're a nuke op, it seems like there'd be a lot of potential for things to go wrong.

[Valkrae]

Just an FYI. When I had planted the bomb to breach the brig, I was deafened by something.

And why are antags expected to sit down and essentially map out their coordinates to the crew? While yes, we are expected to create RP, there has to be a line drawn.

[Frances]

And why are antags expected to sit down and essentially map out their coordinates to the crew? While yes, we are expected to create RP, there has to be a line drawn.

You don't need to telegraph all of your actions.

But wordlessly planting the nuke in a vented location when the station is under complete disarray and there's another op distracting us by playing a completely different game, you don't think that's sort of, poor planning, OOC-wise?

My gripe is specifically because the nuke was blown up. There would be no issue if you had wanted to do anything else, rob the station, kidnap half of the science team, destroy an entire wing, whatever else. Stealthing those things is fine, because even if you succeed flawlessly and without giving anyone a chance to fight back, there is still RP to be done. But stealth-planting the nuke and blowing it up is imo significantly crappier, because it just, ends the round early without giving anyone the chance to accomplish anything satisfying.

I'm fairly certain your intent wasn't even to be stealthy, as you stated you expected people to come confront you. But the problem I find is that you did very little to ensure this confrontation would happen - there was another operative talking about a completely separate bomb threat and basically menacing us if we didn't comply with them, which didn't exactly made people want to rambo, and since no mention of the nuke whatsoever was given, we didn't really come to the conclusion that an op would bomb the station... to plant a bigger bomb. It was very unlikely that anyone would come to the brig, or discover the nuke in time.

[PoZe]

I want to add something about that is not about complaint. Why you should replace nuke ops if someone failed/died, sure if it was some accident like lags or miss click I can understand. Bug man that is real trouble, deal with it. Because as skull said he is trying to make game more interesting by adding troubles to everyone and it's fair. Once I had to deal all thing alone, everyone in my nuke squad get off(someone afk, someone was mental unstable he locked himself at the shuttle, someone died.) I have decided to surrender because it was the only possible way to make it real without being powergame Rambo.

[Frances]

Not to be pushy, but it's been a week since I posted, and have gotten no reply from Valk :L

Edit: nevermind that, two weeks.

[Valkrae]

Because, to be frank, I've got nothing more to contribute to this complaint. As I don't see the point in it.

[Frances]

Because, to be frank, I've got nothing more to contribute to this complaint. As I don't see the point in it.

 

But wordlessly planting the nuke in a vented location when the station is under complete disarray and there's another op distracting us by playing a completely different game, you don't think that's sort of, poor planning, OOC-wise?

Answer that, at least?

Also, aside from the discussion with Valkrae, I'm basically waiting for another member of staff to weigh-in. Do believe Valkrae's actions were justified, or could he have done better? (I'm not looking for a punishment, just to see if I was right or not to make this complaint, and if this is the kind of behavior Valkrae should make a point to avoid in the future or not.)

Edit: I'm actually confused now. Valkrae's previous post clearly states he gave up on arming the nuke (which I failed to ask more about, for some reason). Why did the nuke blow, exactly?

[Baka]

As I had explained, there was a lack of the team at the time since the other ops either died, was busy, or disconnected on a dead hour round. There could have been more roleplay, but there really wasn't much someone could do on their own. I blame it more on the fact there was not much of a team.

In the future, and this is for general to anyone, if you know the round type was nuclear, and you also know you're not going to stick around for it to fully play it, please tick it off before readying up.

Due to the lack of response for a month now, I will be locking and archiving this as inactive. It hit a deadlock. If you have question, comments, or concerns about this case, please PM me.