Azande Posted May 10, 2018 Posted May 10, 2018 My thoughts. I like cyborgification. I think it keeps our universe the right amount of grimdark to actually be interesting, otherwise NT and Tau Ceti are just any other system, and any other company. I think that the requirement for a Command vote is mostly half-assed. Simply, as Captain - you can ignore the requirement and order it done behind Command's back and Command nor Central Command will do much (I have experience with this), or the Head of Security will order it when there is no Captain and won't listen to the other Heads of Staff. I do not want to remove cyborgification, but I do not want to have it that these middle-level managers that are Heads of Staff and their Captain deciding on someone's life status - when outside of the station, they'd get a trial by jury to decide it. I think the process should be changed so that Command need to vote on it, and if they vote yes - the Captain can veto it so the person does not get borged, but they can not veto a 'no' vote, but after this - a fax must be sent to Central Command explaining the crime and reasoning before a cyborgification can be done. We HAVE seen that cyborgification is undoable in game, you can remove the brain, transplant it into a protohuman and clone it and the person will be alive again - so we could ALSO change the lore so that a person needs to spend X amount of time as a cyborg slave in the universe before they can be removed and recloned.
Chada1 Posted May 10, 2018 Posted May 10, 2018 We HAVE seen that cyborgification is undoable in game, you can remove the brain, transplant it into a protohuman and clone it and the person will be alive again - so we could ALSO change the lore so that a person needs to spend X amount of time as a cyborg slave in the universe before they can be removed and recloned. All of the rest of this I agree with, but this part is incorrect. You can't remove the brain from an MMI anymore, and lore has said removing the brain from an MMI destroys it. The only way to ensure cloning is possible is to get the person pre-scanned in cloning before undergoing Cyborgification.
Kaed Posted May 10, 2018 Author Posted May 10, 2018 We HAVE seen that cyborgification is undoable in game, you can remove the brain, transplant it into a protohuman and clone it and the person will be alive again - so we could ALSO change the lore so that a person needs to spend X amount of time as a cyborg slave in the universe before they can be removed and recloned. And even if it was possible, you're still lobotomized, so you'll basically be a baby pissing itself in an unfamiliar body. That's not recovery. I will admit it would be an interesting dynamic if you have to brain scan someone before you borg them, because then it's possible for someone to illegally bring them back. But it would be kind of hard mechanically, because the player is now in the cyborg. That being said, reserving compulsory cyborgification for Actual Murder charges still keeps the grimdark without making it so prevalent that it makes me question why it's treated so casually when murder is still illegal.
Azande Posted May 10, 2018 Posted May 10, 2018 That being said, reserving compulsory cyborgification for Actual Murder charges still keeps the grimdark without making it so prevalent that it makes me question why it's treated so casually when murder is still illegal. I agree with this, as long as terrorism is also considered cyborgable. Maybe mutiny too (mutiny itself is meant to be violent, usually).
Kaed Posted May 10, 2018 Author Posted May 10, 2018 That being said, reserving compulsory cyborgification for Actual Murder charges still keeps the grimdark without making it so prevalent that it makes me question why it's treated so casually when murder is still illegal. I agree with this, as long as terrorism is also considered cyborgable. Maybe mutiny too (mutiny itself is meant to be violent, usually). No... when I say 'actual murder' I mean 'murder', not 'I blew up a bomb' or 'I disagreed strongly with the command structure and tried to overthrow it', or 'I attacked someone and they ran away and command decided I was trying to murder them'.
Azande Posted May 10, 2018 Posted May 10, 2018 Then I disagree. Terrorism and mutiny are both serious and should also be punishable by cyborgification. Murder isn't much in a world of cloning.
Kaed Posted May 10, 2018 Author Posted May 10, 2018 Then I disagree. Terrorism and mutiny are both serious and should also be punishable by cyborgification. Murder isn't much in a world of cloning. *grits teeth* Then why is it still treated as a capital crime. Approach it from the other side if you want to argue that. "Murder doesn't matter much" means that it should be considered as something more akin to advanced assault. That is not the case. People treat murder exactly as they do now, there's just a way to salvage someone from their corpse, usually. In the social medium we are running, terrorism and mutiny are on an entirely different tier below murder, the bar for punishment in-server is just capped lower than the level of the crimes. You do not receive a life sentence for mutiny or terrorism, but we still sentence people to life as a cyborg. Cyborgification is supposed to be a serious punishment for the worst crimes. By applying it heavyheandedly to a wide array of crimes, some of which are significantly less bad, you trivialize it. And in our setting, murder is still the top crime, cloning notwithstanding.
Scheveningen Posted May 11, 2018 Posted May 11, 2018 Gee, I guess I better let this murderer go since he killed a lot of people but due to the presence of cloning technology the act can be erased entirely. If stations can be repaired after bombs go off, did terrorism really happen?
MO_oNyMan Posted May 11, 2018 Posted May 11, 2018 It's not about whether cyborgification is considered capital punishment or not (imprisonment is not considered capital punishment IRL that doesn't mean that private entities can kidnap and hold people on arbitrary charges) It's not about Biesel being grimdark or not (lore should still make sense even when going for dystopian future vibe) It's not about BIesel people being okay with borgification as a punishment (i doubt any of them would support punishment without trial) Currently all punishments NT can apply to people are based on their employment and affect their employment only. Fines (which is basically substraction of pay NT owes you for work), demotion (which is moving down the rank inside the company hierarchy), suspension (which is prohibiting to work for the company until further notice) and HuT (which is not wanting someone on private property and is holding a person due to them being unruly, awaiting for the nearest opportunity to hand them over to proper authorities). Every single one of those punishments is revertable. You can get a disciplinary hearing, file an IR, sue NT and get a fair trial from Biesel authorities. And then all of a sudden there's cyborgification. Irrevertable eternal slavery that is being applied WITHOUT a trial. You can't contest it in court or with an IR, you can do nothing after a bunch of guys that may or may not have even read your case files vote on whether you should be lobotomised. If private entities in biesel are allowed to arbitrarily borgify people without trial, does this mean anyone can just walk up to you on the street, kidnap and borgify you and wouldn't be prosecuted because it's not considered capital punishment? Who would sign the contract that says "you can be borgified if command members don't like you"? What stops NT from borgifying all its Biesel employees (which would be profitable since you don't have to pay them)? From an IC standpoint it makes very little sense. From an OOC standpoint it's a mean for permabrigged convicts to get back into the round To fix the problem there should either be any sort of official trial with Biesel representative (offsetting the IC side) or borgification should be removed as a mean of punishment but still be allowed as an option if the convict wants it. That could be presented as a loophole to avoid Biesel prosecution using voluntary borgification. It would obviously require a psych eval and a wavier
Synnono Posted June 22, 2018 Posted June 22, 2018 Sorry for letting this sit. I was interpreting this more as a server policy thread than a purely regulation policy thread. Right now, there seems to be a fair bit of disagreement with the thoughts laid out in the original suggestion. As things stand, the command vote on the punishment applies a minimum of consideration by whitelisted players as to how appropriate it is to implement case-by-case. I also agree with Sytic's view that this interaction does provide some worthwhile roleplay and conflict. Those things wouldn't be improved if we removed the punishment, they'd just be gone. While I prefer the idea of not applying it for things like attempted murder (as opposed to actual murder), right now I don't see an issue with leaving it to command discretion. If common sense does not prevail, the behavior of those command players can be reviewed. Adding my vote for dismissal.
Kaed Posted June 22, 2018 Author Posted June 22, 2018 It's incredibly frustrating that people continue to handwave illogical and inconsistently immoral regulations because 'they provide conflict' and hold up whitelisting as if it is a special shield that protects us from people being irresponsible idiots or assholes. This continued insistence that being whitelisted gives carte blanche for people to be trusted with all sorts of decisions is essentially turning a blind eye to potential abuse under the assumption that no one would actually do it and if they do it'll be handled on a case by case basis. It is just baffling to me to hear someone say they'd prefer that command staff didn't abuse this power but they'll trust that if we leave things the same there won't be any problems. The problems are already there. They happen. That is the entire reason I made this thread. And post-round stripping of whitelisting does 0 to help about you being cyborged for trumped up charges in the round it happens in. I also hear people in this thread sweep aside the moral and interstellar diplomatic consequences of being the only system in currently known space that treats cyborgification as not an execution with arguments ranging from 'it's just a game' to 'it makes this system speshul and unique'. You can't just have legalized atrocities exist in a vacuum. The only reason this law still exists as a blatant example of sophistry and is not being pressured by all their neighbors to fix it is that people are refusing to examine it because they think it 'provides some interesting roleplay'. Hell, unathi in particular have a reason to be vehemently opposed to being cyborged because many of them believe it destroys their soul, and it's about the most horrible thing you can do to them. There should be outrage from the Hegemony if they found out their migrated people are being cyborgified. But no one ever considers that, or the species or beliefs of the accused. I guess I can assume this is another example of 'the lore team can just eat shit' mentality that floats around here and there?
Faris Posted June 22, 2018 Posted June 22, 2018 This continued insistence that being whitelisted gives carte blanche for people to be trusted with all sorts of decisions is essentially turning a blind eye to potential abuse under the assumption that no one would actually do it and if they do it'll be handled on a case by case basis. There's no assumption no one will ever do it, there will be people that abuse certain things and they are dealt with. As a Unathi Deputy Lore Developer, you're also responsible of enforcing the standards of your assigned species. It is just baffling to me to hear someone say they'd prefer that command staff didn't abuse this power but they'll trust that if we leave things the same there won't be any problems. You cannot please everyone. There's nothing wrong with trusting people, the people that abuse tend to be the minority of those that do not. Yes, trust can only go so far, but this does not seem to be a thing that is too much to trust? I do not see how this is baffling. When you hand a person a custom item, you trust them not to abuse it. When you grant a person a request that requires administrative assistance, you trust that they do not abuse it. When you grant a person a whitelist, you trust they will not abuse it. Abusing the trust on the previous examples or others yields consequences. And post-round stripping of whitelisting does 0 to help about you being cyborged for trumped up charges in the round it happens in. Only half correct. They stop future incidents of this nature from the individual. Not to mention staff intervention on reported or noticed cases of extreme escalation. Hell, unathi in particular have a reason to be vehemently opposed to being cyborged because many of them believe it destroys their soul, and it's about the most horrible thing you can do to them. There should be outrage from the Hegemony if they found out their migrated people are being cyborgified. But no one ever considers that, or the species or beliefs of the accused. This strikes me as a whitelist quality control issue. If Unathi aren't playing appropriately as they should, it is within your assigned duties to handle them. Whether you're aware of this due to your activity or lack of on our own staff discord, you'd notice a marked increase in whitelist quality enforcement. I've personally made these pings by forwarding players and characters. Yes, I understand this is an example, but my answer would be similar to any whitelist species cited. I guess I can assume this is another example of 'the lore team can just eat shit' mentality that floats around here and there? I'm not sure why you assume this? Considering your debate has largely included members of the lore team as well. As it stands, with the responses here, the dismissal votes from both myself and Syn, I'm moving this to rejected policy. That being said, there may be some minor changes as we discuss this further, but there won't be any serious revisions or removal of punishment per what has been suggested by the poster. Locking and archiving.
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