/tg/Station 13

In round 99314 player Isy232/(Kryndald Geobbles) was forcibly changed into mob syndicate/saboteur with a staff of change. The player then proceeded to murder many members of the crew, kill the AI and welder bomb the shuttle along with another player who was forcibly changed into a syndicate medical borg (but visibly syndicate and traitor to begin with).
According to the two posts made here by MSO:

MrStonedOne wrote:involuntary transform only antag you if its a mob that is known for aggroing humans or otherwise being hostile to humans.
The thinking behind this was just that such mobs are generally going to get attacked on first sight before its known they are under the control of a player simply because thats the trained meta, so giving such mobs a fair chance at life was reasonable, and it allows the player to decide to just RP as that mob.

MrStonedOne wrote:A monkey can monkey, and do anything incharacter for a monkey. Randomly attacking human beans is not incharacter for a monkey.
A spider can spider, and do anything in character for a spider, randomly attacking humans is in character for a spider.

Unlike the syndicate medical borg the other player was turned into, the saboteur is in no way "a mob that's generally going to get attacked on first sight" because it has the exact appearance of a standard engiborg. However, "a saboteur can saboteur, and do anything in character for a saboteur, randomly attacking humans is in character for a saboteur".
Given these two statements that seemingly contradict each other in this specific situation, is it alright for someone who's forcibly changed into this mob to begin killing other players without provocation?

Logs:
https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/bas ... /game.html
https://tgstation13.org/parsed-logs/bas ... attack.txt

Please note this is not an attempt to get this player in trouble should the ruling be a "no", his name was only given for easy reference in the logs.

The part after the aggro answers this doesn’t it?

Saboteur Borgs would logically be, by default, hostile to the crew. The medical borg could have prob ahelped tho.

Cobby wrote:The part after the aggro answers this doesn’t it?

Saboteur Borgs would logically be, by default, hostile to the crew. The medical borg could have prob ahelped tho.

Somewhat, but there's a bit of a catch. While the saboteur is known to be hostile, it's not known to be a saboteur. It appears to me from the first quote that the reason polymorphs are allowed to act as an antag is due to the fact the crew will likely assume they're antag. Like the monkey however, the saboteur lacks the "assumed antag" portion. It's like a weird middle ground between these two statements.

forced = free antag
voluntary = not an antag

I'm not going to nit pick any rules about this, all I can say is, I was the AI in this round, and what appeared to be an engineering cyborg that used to be a crew member attacked my core and killed me

It took an admin to tell us in OOC that it was a syndicate cyborg because it looks and has the equipment of an engineering borg so it's pretty unlikely anyone would attack it for it being a syndieborg, and nobody attacked it after it killed me and I made sure everyone knew about it

Surely this kinda shit falls under rule #1, the guy used it as an excuse to go on a murder spree, sure it was shitty that he got changed into a borg, but we have enough chaos on these rounds without being taking any excuse to make people go sideways because they feel like it

Malkraz wrote:

Cobby wrote:The part after the aggro answers this doesn’t it?

Saboteur Borgs would logically be, by default, hostile to the crew. The medical borg could have prob ahelped tho.

Somewhat, but there's a bit of a catch. While the saboteur is known to be hostile, it's not known to be a saboteur. It appears to me from the first quote that the reason polymorphs are allowed to act as an antag is due to the fact the crew will likely assume they're antag. Like the monkey however, the saboteur lacks the "assumed antag" portion. It's like a weird middle ground between these two statements.

The quote says “a mob... known for being hostile to humans”. A saboteur borg is well accepted as such.

There is no stipulation of if the humans know you’re hostile within that, although the origins of the rule is derived from more visually-obvious examples like slimes and xenos.

If you play your role as your role (assuming you are involuntarily transformed), you should never have an issue imo.

remove saboteur from the list of polymorph options

Cobby wrote:
The quote says “a mob... known for being hostile to humans”. A saboteur borg is well accepted as such.

There is no stipulation of if the humans know you’re hostile

How is a saboteur borg accepted as a known hostile mob if no one knows it's hostile? That's not what known means

CrazyClown12 wrote:

Cobby wrote:
The quote says “a mob... known for being hostile to humans”. A saboteur borg is well accepted as such.

There is no stipulation of if the humans know you’re hostile

How is a saboteur borg accepted as a known hostile mob if no one knows it's hostile? That's not what known means

Known as in the mob's understood alignment, not known as in someone is aware of its presence.

You know a xeno is bad even though you cannot see a xeno, but we don't ban xenos who act hostile when they're in stealth. The same applies to saboteur borgs. Even if you can't see them (or you can and simply can't tell it's alignment), they can still act hostile because saboteurs are KNOWN, by default, to be aligned to the syndicate.

if a wiz bolts you and u turn into a human subtype, u are antag and pretty hard to tell from crew prospective

Tlaltecuhtli wrote:forced = free antag
voluntary = not an antag

literally this

You're an antag if you get transformed without consent, be it a butterfly, free drone, cyborg, or an ash drake

Thread over apc destroyed mission accomplished

I think that's a misunderstanding of the policy else human subtypes would also be antag.

The antag stipulation only applies to, as mentioned above, things that you know to be bad before they're present (xenos, syndicate borgs, slimes). Drones/Borgs still have to follow their laws (in the drone's case they are basically purged).

Karp wrote:

Tlaltecuhtli wrote:forced = free antag
voluntary = not an antag

literally this

You're an antag if you get transformed without consent, be it a butterfly, free drone, cyborg, or an ash drake

Thread over apc destroyed mission accomplished

If that's the current policy the wiki shouldn't be linking to MSO's posts stating otherwise.

Drones/borgs are completley purged and free gobby

The current policy as ive known it for a few years was that all animal transformations had free game to do as they please though something may have changed now

Malkraz wrote:

MrStonedOne wrote:involuntary transform only antag you if its a mob that is known for aggroing humans or otherwise being hostile to humans.

You purposefully cut off the first half of the sentence. The full quote starts with the clause, "The way its was explained to me when I was a trialmin was that..."

Karp wrote:

Tlaltecuhtli wrote:forced = free antag
voluntary = not an antag

literally this

You're an antag if you get transformed without consent, be it a butterfly, free drone, cyborg, or an ash drake

Thread over apc destroyed mission accomplished

obscolene wrote: You purposefully cut off the first half of the sentence. The full quote starts with the clause, "The way its was explained to me when I was a trialmin was that..."

It's not really relevant when that specific post is what's being linked as an authoritative statement. I'm not sure what you think it adds that I'd be changing by "purposefully cutting it off." The posts clearly state something different than "force-changed anything is antag" and that isn't changed by MSO saying somebody else told him that. Is there another post that says something different than what MSO says, that he's using as a reference to say a different thing?

cobby you dumb cow their point is that the syndengi borg was disguised to look like a normal engiborg and by proxy wouldnt be KOS usually by the crew since it looks like an engiborg. im not helping their argument because disguised syndie engiborg is just using its kit to aid itself in antagonizing (which is what it would still do without the camo)

imsxz wrote:cobby you dumb cow their point is that the syndengi borg was disguised to look like a normal engiborg and by proxy wouldnt be KOS usually by the crew since it looks like an engiborg. im not helping their argument because disguised syndie engiborg is just using its kit to aid itself in antagonizing (which is what it would still do without the camo)

Yes I know their point, and I disagree. I think the ruling "if your robot is a baddie then you can be a baddie UNLESS you're a secret baddie robot then you have to be nice sorry " is dumb and I won't ban people for acting as a baddie.

For the record I wasn't saying "X or Y should be the ruling", this was more for my own curiosity on what looked like a grey area.

This one is a bit messy, but we decided that staff of changed saboteur borgs are indeed allowed to act as an antag/in a hostile manner (assuming it was an involuntary change).

This is to keep the Staff of Change rules as straightforward and consistent as possible in that you are allowed to act as the thing you've been turned into.

Saboteur borgs are indeed "known to be hostile" by the crew. Even if they are currently disguised. Similar to how a traitor is known to be hostile dispite just looking like a normal person.

However, we do agree that this particular edge case is a bit strange within the reasonings for the staff of change rules, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to remove them from the possible options just to keep things clean. That is, however, a code change.