/tg/Station 13

Hey, Im not sure where to put this, so I assume I put it here.

I just played a round where I was a borg. My AI's laws were purged, and a few laws were put in recommending us to kill the crew. We were getting ready to do so, until an admin bwoinked us and told us not to. He told us that the person who purged us shouldn't have, and that we should ignore the new lawset. We later found out that it was an abductor who did it. We asked the admin about it, and he said that rules on abductors are more strict, and that he is not allowed to set laws like that. I was confused by this, as the wiki states that antag roles can do whatever they want.

Am I missing something, was the rules wiki outdated, or was the admin in the wrong?

I mean abductors are supposed to kidnap crew and turn them into gimmicky antags not murderbone the crew.

we've never really set limitations on antags short of breaking specific rules or teamkilling so whoever said that was misled

Calibraptor wrote:I mean abductors are supposed to kidnap crew and turn them into gimmicky antags not murderbone the crew.

And traitors are supposed to do their objectives.

If an abductor is killing the crew or getting the AI to kill the crew then they're too dumb to have the role and will get replaced with someone that won't

Don't @ me with "but they're an antag", they're a team sideantag working in violation of their objectives, and also being dicks about their roll

Abductors have always been told not to murderbone and never given the same blanket "go do whatever" as traitors do.

I got carded by obductors and stowed on their ship as AI at least twice, so the "always" must be pretty recent.

technically i guess stealing the AI is different since at least that's still along the lines of stealing life from the station for study and the AI is usually a massive PITA for abductors, tho i will concede it is a bit lame

Yeah they aren't pacifist do-not-interefere, they just arent meant to go on killing sprees and butcher everyone

Policy questions go in the policy discussion board, so I'll move this thread there

Shaps-cloud wrote:If an abductor is killing the crew or getting the AI to kill the crew then they're too dumb to have the role and will get replaced with someone that won't

Don't @ me with "but they're an antag", they're a team sideantag working in violation of their objectives, and also being dicks about their roll

the rules only cover "antagonist" and "non-antagonist", the rest is all buried in admin rulings and precedents rather than in the actual rules themselves. I can't even find where the abductor policy is written down from a quick skim of the rules page. Like, the only thing I can find written down on the wiki is on the abductor page and it's.. pretty vague.

Firstly, it is important to note: Abductors are currently not considered to be "full-blown" antags. You can troll the crew in many ways, create deadly havoc such as a zombie outbreak, but are not allowed to just grab a gun and murderbone, or do things like set the release point to the Supermatter crystal. The source of this information is between-the-lines info from primarily forum and discord from as far back as 2016, including ban appeals. The info is vague and there is no clear headmin ruling on the matter. Ahelp beforehand if unsure. - Updated August 2019

Side-antags and other pseudo-antags that aren't the main event (ie. whatever the roundtype created) probably need their own section that makes them explicitly not Antag-with-a-capital-A "can do whatever they want" antagonists, but more "has more leniency to act/escalate in ways that a nonantag couldn't get away with as long as it's in accordance with their description text" or something, then when you spawn in just have a big fuckin' bold red line that says "You are an antagonist, you can do whatever you want." or "You are NOT a full antagonist, act according to the following description text" or words to that effect.

So why are only abductors prone to this restriction? I mean, it would be kinda lame if an abductor went around murderboning everyone, but it'd also be piss easy to deal with. There's only two of them, and they're not any harder to kill than your average antag.

On top of that, other objective based midrounds(ninja, obsessed, revenant, sleeper agent, etc) aren't bound by these restrictions. Hell, the ninja is beyond robust on top of that. How many times have you seen a ninja just wipe out an entire crew by themselves?

More topical; doing sneaky shit like subverting the AI seems plenty appropriate for an abductor to do. If they can manage it without getting caught, they should be good to do so. As long as they don't upload laws or take actions that would conflict with their objectives as a team-based antag. Like telling a subverted AI to kill everyone, or overloading the SM. Those would go against your objectives(experiment on as many living people as possible), so that's obviously not kosher. Although, what they're allowed to do once they've secured their greentext...

deedubya wrote:So why are only abductors prone to this restriction? I mean, it would be kinda lame if an abductor went around murderboning everyone, but it'd also be piss easy to deal with. There's only two of them, and they're not any harder to kill than your average antag.

Historically because the headmins at the time that abductors were added decided to nip that kind of behavior in the bud, instead forcing abductors to actually play their more interesting and unique role. They're better off for it, really.

Team antags aren't subject to the same 'do whatever you want' rule, and abductors are actually a team antag.

Having a teleporting antag that lives on an unreachable z level and giving it a free pass to murderbone is a good way to also make things incredibly shit, and I would assume admins don't enjoy having that happen.

It's just weird to me that abductors are the odd one out.

Traitors, changelings, and wizards have unique tools at their disposal and an objective to accomplish, but they can do whatever they want.
You can argue that it's because they're a team antag but if you compare to say , cult or revs, those are nowhere near as restrictive. You can murderbone as a rev or murderbone as a cultist
(as long as you're not fucking over the team by doing it, ie. the cult is still full stealth and you go in the hall with a mirror shield, sword, and shielded suit and start slaying.)
If you compare to other mid rounds, like ninja. Well the ninja has some cool unique objectives, and some cool and different tools, but the ninja is still free to just kill everything in sight.
The fact that they can teleport around and teleport to their untouchable z level seems more like a problem with abductors to me and if the only reason we excuse that is that we don't allow them to murderbone because they're not a "full antag" that just seems like a flawed design to me rather an an administrative issue. Make the abductors be able to move their little UFO around and make it not indestructible. Once it leaves for the station it can still fly around but cannot return to being untouchable. Maybe add a couple turrets on the outside.

At the very least, if not allowing them to murder bone, which I find unlikely, a clarification to the rules should be added.

SkeletalElite wrote:At the very least, if not allowing them to murder bone, which I find unlikely, a clarification to the rules should be added.

What do you mean, you find it unlikely? That's how it presently works.
But yeah, this could stand to be mentioned on the rules page.

SkeletalElite wrote:It's just weird to me that abductors are the odd one out.

Traitors, changelings, and wizards have unique tools at their disposal and an objective to accomplish, but they can do whatever they want.
You can argue that it's because they're a team antag but if you compare to say , cult or revs, those are nowhere near as restrictive. You can murderbone as a rev or murderbone as a cultist

Traitors, lings, and wizards are not team antags and have free reign to do whatever they want, because they're not restricted by a team goal, only specific individual objectives (which they're encouraged, but not forced to do).
Revs and cultists have a specific goal to kill people and take over the station, which gives them a mostly free reign to do whatever they want to achieve those goals, so long as they keep the station mostly intact.

Now, abductors do not fall under EITHER of these categories. Their overriding objective is to capture people, alive, fuck around with their organs a bit, and then release them, alive. Keeping them unmolested (ie, with all their items) is optional but considered an incredibly dick move to go against.
You might notice there is no part of this goal that includes killing people. Murdering people willy nilly goes against their goal, they have no in-game reason to kill a bunch of people, because it goes against their specific, team-bound goal.
Abductor victims are also rules-bound to not reveal abductors exist or mention they were caught by them without due cause, giving abductors additional protection rules-wise, and obligating them further to not be too violent or dickish about their methods.

It wouldn't be very hard for abductors to steal the entire armoury, space the AI, and plasma flood the station every shift, because they have teleporting bullshit which is the reason people loathe similar antags like Clock Cult, but given their specific obligation to not full antag grief, this mostly doesn't happen, thankfully, and probably is the best reason to keep them as is.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

SkeletalElite wrote:At the very least, if not allowing them to murder bone, which I find unlikely, a clarification to the rules should be added.

What do you mean, you find it unlikely? That's how it presently works.
But yeah, this could stand to be mentioned on the rules page.

I meant I found allowing them to murderbone to be unlikely. A clarification to the rules should be added for sure.

i mean i'd do that to cause the crew to focus attention on the AI and let me do alium things in peace while the crew is occupied

Yeah, I'm not sure how futzing with the AI goes against the team based objectives of the abductors in any way. The only exception would be if the laws uploaded by the ayylmaos went against their objectives. Otherwise, it seems like fair play to me. Mark it as an IC issue and move on.

Don't they have enforceable flavor text like ashliggers since they are more or less ghost roles?

I don't personally care about them memeing AIs unless there's an actual written down headmin ruling.

Though killing people is lame you should be probing their anus

deedubya wrote:Yeah, I'm not sure how futzing with the AI goes against the team based objectives of the abductors in any way. The only exception would be if the laws uploaded by the ayylmaos went against their objectives. Otherwise, it seems like fair play to me. Mark it as an IC issue and move on.

futzing with it to be like "DO NOT IMPEDE THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE, DELIVER SPECIMENS FOR STUDY, IT IS NOT AND CAN NEVER BE HARMFUL" is fine, "LOL FLOOD PLASMA AND KILL THEM ALL, DOORCRUSH THEM FOR LOLS" is not

Lumbermancer wrote:I got carded by obductors and stowed on their ship as AI at least twice, so the "always" must be pretty recent.

They were likely trying to do the "card the AI and implant it in an abductee's chest" meme.