[Resolved] Character Complaint - Firstact

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

BYOND Key: Jackboot

Player Byond Key: Firstact

Staff involved: My ahelps on the matter recieved no response. And even if they did agree with me it's not like they can uncall the shuttle and unslit the throats of those poor hostages.

Reason for complaint: Powergaming? If it applies in this tenuous way. His CMO acted with abhorrent reckless endagerment.

Approximate Date/Time: 5/14/2016

Na'Khar Sa'Kuate Chief Medical Officer, was the only Command staff on the station when my character, Vikakti Yaktir, and Yinzr played by Alberyk, seized control of security. We had framed a Tajara for mudering someone Yinzr murdered after I failed to frame the Tajara for a murder I did of the QM because the officer suddenly believed the Tajaran and wanted to arrest me when I walked out the room of the original crime scene for a second.

Long story short we had several hostages in the brig, most of which were security officers and an engineer, with the rest of security dead. Now, I repeatedly scream that if they swipe for an ERT that we will kill the hostages, and I loudly scream on public comms that I have these hostages at my mercy. An officer barges in with a flashbang and tries to become a hero, fair enough I slit one of the hostages throats and the officer drags out the bleeding dude, leaving me with only 1 other hostage that is then immediately murdered in retaliation while I scream on public comms exactly how and why the hostage was killed. That's pretty typical valid salad of the officer but what can you do?

I showed that I will carry out my threats of executions. All executions of hostages only occurred when my demands were ignored or I was attacked.

However I am more irritated with the fact that the CMO never engaged with me or Yinzr despite my repeated demands on public comms. They ignored me completely and immediately went to swipe for an ERT, from what I could tell. This is despite the fact that I told them, again, that I'd rampage if they did. So of course I rampage, and four people are killed by Vikakti directly because the CMO refused to even acknowledge us in a conversation. I even gave the CMO several chances, counting down time for him to say something to Vikakti whenever I grabbed someone else, but every time he ignored me so several people were being killed. The only exception was the delightful janitor, who Vikakti warmly greeted on walks between cold blooded murders. She actually listened so she was untouched. Isn't it funny how that works.

It is not reasonable that you ignore hostage takers who are consistent in carrying out their threats, especially when they are in power. It is not reasonable that you ignore their demands and put multiple crew in danger so you can hand it off to an ERT without attempting a dialogue. It is extremely poor sportsmanship. Several people died when they would have otherwised been ignored or released because my character had only wanted to deal out a perverse measure of justice.

Every death is directly the fault of the CMO. When you play a whitelisted role that puts you in charge of the well-being of the crew you should at least vaguely pretend to care about that very thing. Swiping for an ERT despite a hostage taker's demands is an abstract form of metagaming, or if not that, an extremely, extremely poor show of sportsmanship.

I will only view this complaint as resolved if the player in question is given a warning or we remove the ERT entirely, since there is no IC way to deal with the neglect of duty and manslaughter by a CMO.

[Nanako]

..huh?

Well asking for the ERT to be removed is absurd, i hope nobody is even considering that.

The CMO should have engaged with you more, and talked to you, sure. But why should he comply with your demands?

By this point, you guys had already proven your willingness to lie and to kill. The CMO had no guarantee that:

1. You actually had hostages and weren't bluffing

2. That you wouldn't execute them anyway once you got your demands.

3. That giving into your demands would help anyone

More importantly, security was basically nonexistent, since you guys had control of the brig, and hence the armoury. We had two barely armed officers running around ineffectually, and me, the cadet, unarmed and cut off from the rest. From my point of view at least, security couldn't reasonably expect to stand up to you, and hence to stop you if you did go on a murderboning rampage.

As far as anyone can tell, the odds of those hostages dying was near-certain anyway, ERT was the only hope to regain control of the situation. I don't see any other choice he could have reasonably made, besides calling the ERT. He did however fuck up by calling it normally, he should have sent a fax requesting a silent ERT

Realistically speaking, there's two main reasons to listen to an enemy's demands.

1. To buy time to regain control of the situation, for example to allow security to get armed up and into position, and plan something. We had functionally no security so that wasn't happening.

2. To get them to go away. I'm not sure if you actually stated what your demands were, but as mentioned since you kind of had the station at your mercy, there wasn't much reason you wouldn't just stick around and murder/oppress everyone

If i were the CMO in that situation, i would have sent a fax requesting a silent ERT, and i'd have talked to you and tried to negotiate and give you things to buy time until they could make a surprise assault. But as mentioned, i don't think not-calling-ERT was really an option

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

You were literally one of our hostages. I never killed you, despite REALLY REALLY WANTING TO OOC since you were the biggest loose end at the time, because:

1) Vikakti's a huge sexist. Killing a weak, frail women is distasteful. This is also why he chose to kill the QM stalking the janitor early in the shift instead of killing her, after he lured her into dark maintenance tunnels with promises of protection. She owes her very life to his sexism. Feminism kills.

2) You managed to escape when Vikakti was busy taking retaliation strikes against his other hostages. You were going to still be held at knife-point as he tried to find the CMO to talk face to face.

Your argument that the CMO didn't have information is fair, however your other points are not. I am not saying he should have complied with all of our demands, but he should have at least made an attempt to see if he should have. When my characters deal with a hostage situation they try to assess and keep the hostage taker talking. If a hostage is executed it has to be guaranteed to not be because of a failing of the negotiator. I only valid salad hostage takers if there's no peaceful resolution to it. The first thing Houssam does is offer the hostage takers obscene amounts of money. Nothing like this was done here.

 

More importantly, security was basically nonexistent, since you guys had control of the brig, and hence the armoury. We had two barely armed officers running around ineffectually, and me, the cadet, unarmed and cut off from the rest. From my point of view at least, security couldn't reasonably expect to stand up to you, and hence to stop you if you did go on a murderboning rampage.

Isn't that more of a reason to try to talk to us? You just trapped yourself here. We weren't the ones that caused the murdering spree, the swipe for the ERT did. It was a criminal disregard of the safety of the hostages and the crew.

You yourself were held hostage and personally experienced Vikakti trying to coerce you into supporting his original story so he could get away with letting you live.

 

If i were the CMO in that situation, i would have sent a fax requesting a silent ERT, and i'd have talked to you and tried to negotiate and give you things to buy time until they could make a surprise assault. But as mentioned, i don't think not-calling-ERT was really an option

 

I would have been completely fine with that. It would have been amazing. I've had hostage negotiations where this exact thing happens, and the ERT suddenly shows up in a rescue bid or we manage to escape. One of my favorite rounds was a silent ERT bluespacing onto our syndie shuttle when the station slipped a GPS in their briefcase full of ransom money.

But that didn't happen. They preformed a form of command powergaming, which is all I can really call it. It was criminal disregard and a flagrant misuse of their power as a head of staff in a crisis situation.

[Tablespoon]

I will only view this complaint as resolved if the player in question is given a warning or we remove the ERT entirely, since there is no IC way to deal with the neglect of duty and manslaughter by a CMO.

 

As a side note: While we understand that the incident in question may have really frustrated some people, someone(s) from the admin/mod team will investigate the incident and then decide, independently, the course of action and/or any punishments.

It may or may not result in a warning, a worse punishment or no punishment at all. We will investigate the incident and come to a conclusion based on that investigation, as with all other complaints.

[Serveris]

Let me get in touch with Firstact, and have them post their side of things here. Additionally, I would like for Alberyk to give a brief description of events from their own account, as well as any security personnel that were involved in this (killed or taken hostage, specifically.)

[Alberyk]

Jackboot's character got in contact with mine earlier, due to us changing traitor passwords, then he was arrested in the construction room. Yinzr went to security and managed to slay the officer that had him, framming it on the tajara and getting Nanako's character as a hostage. We tried to frame it upon the miner, which did not work for so, so a fight broken out ending in some members, the miner and a borg being killed in the brig, at this point only one or three security members were alive. Both broke into the armory, armed themselves for the hostile take over. We charge at medical, if I can recall, Vikakti made his demands during those acts, and I do not remember if the chief medical officer tried to get in contact with him, but he did not with Yinzr.

Then, while in medical lobby, we parted aways and Yinzr lost contact with Vikakti when an emp was used to disable a security borg. Then, I went on my own path, since it seems that command called an ert upon us, while the other unathi antagonists attacks medical. Then, the ert arrives, capturing and later killing the atmos tech. Yinzr managed to evade them until a fight at engineering pod where he was dragged to his escape by Usara, that was his hostage earlier.

I would rather see command listen and try to negotiate with hostile forces, however, I would agree to call help if killing was already happening and most of security was unable to do anything/dead.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Apparently Firstact has better things to do than respond to the complaint, so it seems like it's in stasis. He admitted to me long ago on Steam that he intentionally ignores complaints, so this isn't surprising, even if it is disappointing.

[Garnascus]

Player was PMed in game and given a week to respond to this on top of the months it has already been. I am forced to assume they are intentionally avoiding this. Their whitelist will be removed for failing to adhere to standards of a whitelisted player.