Player Complaint on Silver

[Nightmare]

BYOND Key: Nightmare 00

Player Byond Key: Silver116

Reason for complaint: So here's my problem with Silver's Captain. Near the start of the round, his captain was throwing racial slurs at Nasir, who's my Tajaran. After the second calling him 'cat' Nasir responded by calling him a monkey. After this, the captain had Nasir arrested on insulting an officer (Which honestly is a shit law) and after some back and forth had Nasir placed in a holding cell for about an hour. After internal affairs contacted Central and we got a central rep on station, Silver was then brought into a meeting to where he was explained why he isn't allowed to use space law to insult crew members and then have them briged away when they speak back. After a bit of back and forth in looc, Silver replied with 'Whatever, im leaving anyway' and logged out. Now, if you're going to have someone brigged for an hour on some B.S. charges, you shouldn't leave when you're punished for it just because you're wrong. Being whitelisted isn't so you can get a powertrip off.

[duck]

Witnessed this. Literally, after the verdict was passed, just went, 'whatever, i've got to go anyway,' and then logged out for the rest of the round. I think it was actually a good bit longer than an hour though. Like between an hour and a half and two. Not for the celltime but for the whole ordeal.

Ya' forgot the part where he tried to justify it because 'you can't insult your superior officer back in the military,' though. He left shortly after it was explained he was on a civilian research station. So like. He tried to pull the 'I can insult you but if you insult me, I get to punish you' card. Which pretty much means-- yes!-- he's only here for the power trip.

Fairly atrocious head of staff. If any officer arrested someone for an hour on 'insulting an officer,' I assume that that someone would be secbanned at a minimum. And also banned. So, like. Motioning for all three. Flagrant abuse of authority, unwillingness to deal with consequences. Does not belong in positions of authority, head or otherwise.

[Frances]

Would like to add that I feel like Silver completely lacks direction or initiative as a head. While I think this could be attributed to being new, the fact remains that during a nuke round in which he played HoS, after the armory was raided and all weapons taken from it, I witnessed him going "whatever, patrol and try to look for the people who did this, we can't do anything anyway".

I get making bad calls relating specifically to being in charge. But not doing anything while being in charge is kinda bad. It's like having no HoS at all.

[EvilBrage]

While I'm a proponent of the racial tension that enables you to make a few more personal choices for your characters, I agree that an hour was entirely too long. However, abuse of power against another race in and of itself isn't something I would frown upon OOC, as long as it's very clear that it's prejudice against the character and not the player. An hour of brig time is mostly a punishment inflicted on the player, as it essentially removes them from the game for the entire length of the prison time. That said. There's a right and a wrong way to go about abusing a character of a race your character dislikes, and again, Silver chose the wrong way in addition to being cheeseballish about it at the end by logging out. If he had taken Nasir to a dark corner of the brig and dished out some nonlethal corporal punishment, I'd praise something like that. After all, each individual has made their choices about unathi, skrell, and tajarans that may put them in a negative light, and I don't think that we want to OOCly promote "racial equality" because that will essentially remove a potential conflict (and by extension, an avenue of RP) from the game.

Playing devil's advocate here for a moment, though, I can almost (emphasis on almost) understand why he would leave after Central Command gets involved; you're an administrator, and Central Command is essentially controlled by administrators. I've noticed you have a tendency to get rather irate when things don't go your way, Nightmare, and depending on how some of the LOOC talk went during that time, he may have been led to the conclusion that you were punishing him because he was interfering with your character.

I'm not making any accusations, but what I'd really like to do is hear from Silver to see why he did what he did, regardless of his (un)suitability for the whitelist.

[Silver116]

Firstly, I would like to point out that it wasn't my intention to have Nasir locked up for an hour. He was supposed to be in a cell for a maximum of five minutes, only to showcase that my captain character did not abide by disrespect. However, multiple things made this difficult. The entirety of cargo, and multiple others took it upon themselves to right this injustice and bother me and the HoS while I was only trying to get Nasir into a cell for maybe three minutes. I wasn't trying to go off on a powertrip, I was trying to demonstrate that my head was a rules lawyering asshole. The type of person who would, in fact not abide by someone arguing with him, even if they had a point.

As for my reactions in Looc, they were completely ridiculous and overblown. I was having a rough day, and I began to play SS13 to relax. My intention was to build up some discourse and make a more interesting round. Instead, I was constantly harassed by people who were complaining about decisions that I didn't even know I had made. To me, it seemed like suddenly out of nowhere a staff controlled character had come to punish me for even attempting to do something negative to a staff's character. I understand that that wasn't what was going, but to me it felt unfair. I also wasn't aware that you were in there for that long, and I personally apologize.

I remember there was a thread on the prior forums that was talking about needing more racism in the game, and I figured that I could make a character to do that. I was honestly, only trying to make the round more fun for all the people involved, and I'm sorry that it ended up so terrible. I completely understand if you feel like getting rid of my whitelist is a proper course of action.

To Frances' complaint, that round the armoury had been breached, and I was lead to believe that there was nothing inside there anymore. I told the security officers to patrol maintenance, because it seemed to be the best course of action if there was a possible armed intruder. I got weapons for the security officers, but there wasn't actually much that could be done without causing more damages or loss of life. I was doing what I felt was the smartest action in that scenario.

[Blue]

I believe this is just another case of recently accepted whitelist head is tossed in a situation they aren't prepared for and make the best option they can think of but things fall out of place and it makes them look bad. Silver, like the other recently-appointed heads we've been hearing about just need a little bit more time...

[Frances]

I don't like replying to posts by dissecting them into small points (unless somebody else does it first), but I feel like it's the best way to address a few things I wanted to point out with your reply. So here goes.

 

Firstly, I would like to point out that it wasn't my intention to have Nasir locked up for an hour. He was supposed to be in a cell for a maximum of five minutes, only to showcase that my captain character did not abide by disrespect. However, multiple things made this difficult. The entirety of cargo, and multiple others took it upon themselves to right this injustice and bother me and the HoS while I was only trying to get Nasir into a cell for maybe three minutes. I wasn't trying to go off on a powertrip, I was trying to demonstrate that my head was a rules lawyering asshole. The type of person who would, in fact not abide by someone arguing with him, even if they had a point.

First, you must remember that by brigging someone, you actually have a responsibility towards them to give them a fair brig time (OOCly), and not leave them RP-starved for too long. There might be some complications, but you should never leave people in a cell for over an hour because "you had to go deal with stuff". I believe that puts you at fault here, since you were the one responsible for the brigging. I also don't understand how people "bothering" you prevents you from addressing a prisoner you have brigged for over an hour, especially when you're the captain, and can simply order them off. (To release the prisoner they wanted you to release, furthermore.)

 

As for my reactions in Looc, they were completely ridiculous and overblown. I was having a rough day, and I began to play SS13 to relax. My intention was to build up some discourse and make a more interesting round. Instead, I was constantly harassed by people who were complaining about decisions that I didn't even know I had made.

Being in a bad mood does not make you any less accountable for your actions. If you were having a bad day, then it was your responsibility to avoid playing the most difficult and stressful position on the station for your very first time as a head ever, and then getting upset when you were called out for having done certain things wrong.

 

To me, it seemed like suddenly out of nowhere a staff controlled character had come to punish me for even attempting to do something negative to a staff's character. I understand that that wasn't what was going, but to me it felt unfair. I also wasn't aware that you were in there for that long, and I personally apologize.

These are the sort of frustrations which should be communicated immediately, and not kept bottled in, as they do not foster anything but hostility and further miscommunication. I rarely see people call to staff accountability, but I can assure you that it's something we take very seriously, and that admins will actually use restraint when dealing with situations in which they are personally involved so players don't feel like they are abusing their powers. Additionally, keep in mind that there are multiple members of staff online at any given time, and that our actions are discussed and validated as a group - so there's always a neutral opinion involved. I believe in this case, the attempt was to deal with this incident as we would have if any other player were involved. The only true difference I can think of is that we see these events more often when they happen to staff, because, we're staff. So we try to deal with everything we can catch, but we're not omniscient, and people don't always report incidents to us, whereas we can catch all the ones we witness ourselves.

 

I remember there was a thread on the prior forums that was talking about needing more racism in the game, and I figured that I could make a character to do that. I was honestly, only trying to make the round more fun for all the people involved, and I'm sorry that it ended up so terrible.

That's one point I can agree with. Lots of people have a kneejerk reaction to "omg racism bad" (not saying that's what happened here), and while I still think that heads should avoid blatant abuses of power (because it becomes hard to draw the line between a bad head and one that's abusive in fun ways), racism really wasn't the issue here. It was the general neglect towards the issue, leaving the player in the brig for a needlessly long amount of time, and basically ragequitting on roleplay.

 

To Frances' complaint, that round the armoury had been breached, and I was lead to believe that there was nothing inside there anymore. I told the security officers to patrol maintenance, because it seemed to be the best course of action if there was a possible armed intruder. I got weapons for the security officers, but there wasn't actually much that could be done without causing more damages or loss of life. I was doing what I felt was the smartest action in that scenario.

Finally, to address that. Your armory has been breached, and there's now an unknown number of hostiles with the ability to take down reinforced walls from space running around with all of your station's lethal weaponry. Give me a scenario in which the best course of action is to send off your security force in one-man patrols, and tell them to "look for the guys who took the weapons", basically proceeding exactly as they were before. (Oh, and not bothering to check inside the armory.) Because that seems like extremely poor leadership, if not neglect.

Also,

I believe this is just another case of recently accepted whitelist head is tossed in a situation they aren't prepared for and make the best option they can think of but things fall out of place and it makes them look bad. Silver, like the other recently-appointed heads we've been hearing about just need a little bit more time...

I have to disagree with this one. I believe Silver was in full control of all the deciding factors in these situations (his mood vs decision to play, his ability to take or leave a player in the brig, his decisions and the resources put at his disposition as a captain and HoS), and while a lack of experience might be to blame here, I do not think that anything was really "out of his hands".

[Silver116]

I would firstly like to apologize if my previous post came across as defensive. It wasn't my intention. I admit that I very much messed up regarding the brigging of Nasir. I handed him over to security, and as the BS12 wiki advised me to, I let security handle him. They had a HoS, and so I assumed it would be easy enough for him to be handled. However, after fifteen minutes of him waiting, I should have stepped in and had him released, or at the least relocated to a brig to serve his time.

As to how people bothering me prevents me from addressing a prisoner, if the people in question are going out of their way to make it harder for security and I to do our job, with one person even attacking us, and none of them following orders, is that enough justification? I don't want to say that it wasn't my fault, because it very much was, but it was a bit more than just me putting Nasir in a cell and walking away because I enjoy ruining other people's fun. It was a mistake to play captain on my first whitelisted shift, while I was dealing with outside forces affecting my mood. It will not happen again, regardless of whether or not I keep my whitelist.

I should also clarify that I didn't just get fed up and leave. I actually did have to go. I should have handled it with more grace than I did, but I did have to go. The next time I have to leave as a head in the middle of an action, I'll ahelp, and also not be a dick.

As to this,

Finally, to address that. Your armory has been breached, and there's now an unknown number of hostiles with the ability to take down reinforced walls from space running around with all of your station's lethal weaponry. Give me a scenario in which the best course of action is to send off your security force in one-man patrols, and tell them to "look for the guys who took the weapons", basically proceeding exactly as they were before. (Oh, and not bothering to check inside the armory.) Because that seems like extremely poor leadership, if not neglect.

I simply disagree.

From my perspective, I had a limited security team of a borg and an officer, and from what the AI told me, I was fairly sure that the armory was completely empty. I knew that the captain and I had called for an ERT, and my plan was to just keep my security team patrolling, searching for the hostile intruder(because as far as I knew, there was only one), and to call out their position if they found anything strange until the ERT arrived, at which point I would change my orders depending on what the ERT thought was best. After the situation of the intruder was resolved, then I would have the armory repaired, but I didn't want to have to babysit engineers when there were possible intruders about.

[Frances]

From my perspective, I had a limited security team of a borg and an officer, and from what the AI told me, I was fairly sure that the armory was completely empty. I knew that the captain and I had called for an ERT, and my plan was to just keep my security team patrolling, searching for the hostile intruder(because as far as I knew, there was only one), and to call out their position if they found anything strange until the ERT arrived, at which point I would change my orders depending on what the ERT thought was best. After the situation of the intruder was resolved, then I would have the armory repaired, but I didn't want to have to babysit engineers when there were possible intruders about.

But, I don't get it. There's an unknown intruder that stole all of your station's weapons (and the CC faxes we got said multiple intruders, as well as the fact that one person taking all of the guns seems pretty unlikely) and 1. You don't even bother to look into the armory, taking the AI's word that it's empty, so there's nothing to do there, and 2. You divide your security force into single-man patrols armed with tazers, against unknown, possibly aggressive intruders whose very purpose so far was to take the station's weapons. (Are you expecting your solitary sec officers to win?)

Besides that, the rest of that post is a bit better. I don't understand how the entirely of sec could overlook Nasir and leave him in the brig for an hour and a half (HoS included), but yeah, as a head your job is to make sure incidents like that don't happen if your department is shit (and as captain, if your HoS is shit). You really need to start taking responsibility if you want to play as a head - I haven't seen it happen in-game, and even here, it's happened way too late. How can you expect to actually be a responsible leader if we have to coax an apology out of you OOCly when you make a mistake?

[Blue]

In regards to the whole armory/nuke round thing, I feel that Silver did nothing wrong. Assuming the armory was breached, you can't just physically walk in and check. And the ops usually destroy the cameras too. But if an AI says that it's empty, then it's empty. Don't see anything wrong with using information that had been given to him by a reliable source (AIs don't lie).

The armory was breached. The only weapons sec is gonna be able to use is a tazer and a baton, France. Like he said in his post, he was limited to an officer (That's one.) and a borg (That's one and a half, borgs don't count as full.). It wasn't anything near a full force. Single man patrols were the *only* viable option. They had no clue who did this, why they did this, how many there are, what they're capable of, and where they are. There's literally nothing you can do but patrol and look for anything. He called for ERT too. That was about as much as he could do.

Honestly, it would be more of the HoS's fault than the captain's (Hell, even the officers should be at fault; This is such a basic procedure...release the criminals when their time is up...) I really don't feel like we should scrutinize Silver on that.

[Silver116]

Uh, a clarification. I ordered weapons from cargo soon after the armory was raided and equipped my officers with that.

[Blue]

Uh, a clarification. I ordered weapons from cargo soon after the armory was raided and equipped my officers with that.

 

That's also something good.

[Frances]

There were a few officers (at least two, HoS, Captain). I never saw the laser rifles of the weapon crate distributed, only redundant tasers and stun batons - I believe it would have been fairly easy to get an engineer to at least repair the armory (for once the weapons are recovered, I don't see why you would want to leave it like that), and not everything in it was taken, only weapon lockers.

Again, I don't see in what kind of universe it makes sense to send individual officers against an unknown force armed with lethal weaponry. You check station cameras, and regroup your officers if you don't have many. Captain, HoS (both with their pistol), with two officers with rifles and a sec borg makes a much more efficient detachment than (lol you guys just go patrol as normal). (Though things granted, idk what the captain was even doing at this point.)

Does anyone agree with me?

[Blue]

France...there isn't much anyone can do in the situation. Sure, you can go repair the armory of you want but so what? A good syndicate would have tossed the weapons to kingdom come. The things inside minus the lockers, (riot armor, stun batons, maybe some vests assuming they didn't take that too) wouldn't really be much help. He *could* have given them to the officers, but they would have to wait on it. It all comes down to "Is it worth giving my officers this extra equipment when they already have a lesser tier set of it on them while there's an active threat?" Calling an engineer to the site where lethal weapons have been stolen is a risky move at least. Who's to say whatever caused that breach isn't still there, lingering in the area, and would hurt/kill/capture that engineer?

In this universe, France. There really aren't much options. I sound like a broken record saying that, but there isn't really much extra that can be done. Two officers, a borg, a HoS and a cap. That's what we got to work with? Ordering the officers and borg to go around the station scanning for trouble isn't that bad of an idea, given the amount of resources they had. The pistols the heads are given are strictly intended for self-defense, not something to attack with (Kinda like the detective's pistol)

The thing with rifles. They only have one setting; Kill. As security, you don't want to kill. Who is this force, even? Is it just a band of pirates? A group of misfit teenagers with some good equipment? Rebellious crew trying to protest something? Whoever it is, killing them rather than capturing is a pretty bad move. Yes, they have lethal weapons. But security has weapons that are designed to incapacitate and capture foes with ease. Five(ish) shots with a laser to the head and you're on the floor dying, versus two shots to anywhere with the taser and you're on the floor, with just holodamage. Laser rifles could *possibly* be worn on the back in place of a backpack, but again, a taser and a baton is really what you need (Unless you can shoot for a carbine).

It's standard operating procedure to have officers go through maintenance and such to look for a threat like that. Yes, it's what they do usually. That's because it's SoP. Again, if they don't know where the ops are, there's not much they can do. Other than search for hostiles, they're basically sheep for the slaughter.

As for cameras, cameras are only really effective when you have a general idea of where the bad guys are. If you have no clue, like they did, then cameras aren't much help. All you can do is scroll through the long long long list of cams and hope that there's going to be an operative standing in front of a camera and that he's gonna stand there long enough for you to randomly select that camera. It's not gonna happen.

In short, there are many points in where Silver could improve in this scenario. His captainship may not have been the best, but damn, it sure sounds like average or above average at least. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Frances]

Repairing the armory could've waited, but securing the area is something that should've been done at some point.

Anyway, I still disagree. I think sending your security force in small patrols against an unknown number of well-equipped assailants is a very bad decision in any scenario. Patrolling in pairs would've at least been slightly less risky, but when the security force is this small, I think the best course of action would be to regroup everyone in a safe location (the bridge) where they can respond to calls quickly. If anything, send the borgs to patrol maintenance, because they're more expandable than people, and a single person coming onto a group of experienced hostiles in maintenance is probably going to end up getting killed. (Well, IC. Nuke ops are supposed to create more interesting RP scenarios than that, but that would be everybody's assumption in-game.)

Declare code red, set a forward base from the bridge, maintain contact with every department, and send occasional patrols to check on departments. Keep an eye on hallway cameras, have the borg patrol maint or hallways. That's about all I can think of.

I understand all of that isn't easy to come up with under stress, especially when doing it for the first time. I'm mostly putting it out here for future reference. I'm personally not for having Silver's whitelist removed, but I think the attitude you present when dealing with these first few issues (having fucked up) matters for more than the nature of the issues themselves. As long as he shows maturity when handling problems brought up by others, as well as a true willingness to improve, that's excellent by me.

[Skull132]

On the count of tactics employed: dividing up a disarmed security force when presented with an unrestrained hostile force that potentially outnumbers (HoS should know that military operations like that are never carried out by one man armies, and should assume multiple assailants, at least 2-4) them is a horrible tactical decision. You've lost the initiative, and you have no realistic means to regain it until you get access to weaponry. Whether or not you wish to secure the armoury is up to you, but you do not send out single-man patrols in this situation. That allows the unrestrained enemy to skirmish and kill them (I've executed such a tactic on SS13 myself, it's relatively brutal, even against a fully linked sec force).

Actions should be to create a defensive centre that you can hold and play the reactive game until you, either, regain access to weaponry or assistance arrives. At that point you start looking into regaining the lost initiative. But as a very bottom line: never, never-ever dispatch troops out in single-man teams. The most basic division of any modern military force is a group of two soldiers, and it's like that for a reason.

 

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As for the complaint. The thing I am not displeased with is the fact that the dispatch of the CC Rep was initiated by the admin being attacked ingame. While I trust the staff member responsible for playing the role to have been impartial, it is an issue with transparency.

Silver, take one thing away from this complaint: as a captain, you have more power than you believe. "I was being bombarded with issues" should not be an excuse, because as a captain, or frankly an head of staff, you have the authority to shut up just about anyone with an order issued. Managing, and ultimately controlling, the flow of communication is a very vital skill to learn as any leader. And I do hope that you learn it, and that we do not see another complaint against you.

Locking and closing. No actions will be taken right now, but this will be taken into consideration should another complaint with valid grounds be filed.