banning for ""random searching"" people with scrying orbs

[ATHATH]

please tell me that this isn't actual policy???

[Mothblocks]

Like, you're using a scrying orb to check for antagonist items, then acting on that?

If so, I'm not sure a policy is needed for how unlikely that is, but that is possibly one of the lamest things I've heard in a while.

[Armhulen]

i could go either way but i assure you checking inventories or not you will easily discover every antagonistic force on the station with a scrying orb because that's what it does

[cSeal]

Non-antagonists can do whatever they want to antagonists as per lone antagonists, but non-antagonists are not allowed to pre-emptively search for, hinder or otherwise seek conflict with antagonists without reasonable prior cause.

"I got gamer gear" isn't reasonable prior cause to pre-emptively search for antagonists, and literally checking everyone's bag to look for gamer gear is basically the definition of doing that

[cSeal]

i could go either way but i assure you checking inventories or not you will easily discover every antagonistic force on the station with a scrying orb because that's what it does

Easily? maybe, but not as easily if youre not searching their bag for the faintest whiff of antag gear. this especially fucks with stealthy antags whove managed to complete their objectives earlier on- suddenly the hos sees they have the hypo in their internals box or something and theyre fucked despite not doing anything that wouldve gotten them caught even by someone eyeing them like a hawk for the rest of the shift

[wesoda25]

Non-antagonists can do whatever they want to antagonists as per lone antagonists, but non-antagonists are not allowed to pre-emptively search for, hinder or otherwise seek conflict with antagonists without reasonable prior cause.

"I got gamer gear" isn't reasonable prior cause to pre-emptively search for antagonists, and literally checking everyone's bag to look for gamer gear is basically the definition of doing that

Makes sense to me.

[ATHATH]

Non-antagonists can do whatever they want to antagonists as per lone antagonists, but non-antagonists are not allowed to pre-emptively search for, hinder or otherwise seek conflict with antagonists without reasonable prior cause.

"I got gamer gear" isn't reasonable prior cause to pre-emptively search for antagonists, and literally checking everyone's bag to look for gamer gear is basically the definition of doing that

I was under the (possibly mistaken?) impression that the policy was there for things like strongarming people into showing you their inventory (and then bopping them if they refuse). With a scrying orb, you don't have to bother or inconvenience your targets at all.

[Armhulen]

i could go either way but i assure you checking inventories or not you will easily discover every antagonistic force on the station with a scrying orb because that's what it does

Easily? maybe, but not as easily if youre not searching their bag for the faintest whiff of antag gear. this especially fucks with stealthy antags whove managed to complete their objectivesearlier on- suddenly the hos sees they have the hypo in their internals box or something and theyre fucked despite not doing anything that wouldve gotten them caught even by someone eyeing them like a hawk for the rest of the shift

oh yeah no it fucks with the round. i'm just saying we're talking about a scrying orb. you're entering a screen where you can go find and follow any player, and you're entering a chat that is entirely free to talk about round events everyone is spectating

[Pandarsenic]

If sec somehow gets a bloody scrying orb you're probably fucked unless you take some real effective proactive approaches to dealing with it anyway.

[Jonathan Gupta]

real effective proactive approaches to dealing with it anyway.

Dog I usually hide my shit in a personal locker, I encourage every traitor/tider to have a spare set of tools a spare uplink a storage implant and to hide their shit back in the maint base.

[oranges]

you better *NOT* be pondering your orb baby

[NecromancerAnne]

Like, you're using a scrying orb to check for antagonist items, then acting on that?

If so, I'm not sure a policy is needed for how unlikely that is, but that is possibly one of the lamest things I've heard in a while.

Then remove it from the game or prevent non-wizards from benefiting from it. The item is literally just an admin verb for a player to use in-game, and it comes with all the powers that go with that. This hardly seems like a surprise that people would use it to its full capacity, including validhunting. They get handed out to people in wizard events, you can have several of these floating around if a wizard shows up, and I don't think any of this is even obviously logged either.

Non-antagonists can do whatever they want to antagonists as per lone antagonists, but non-antagonists are not allowed to pre-emptively search for, hinder or otherwise seek conflict with antagonists without reasonable prior cause.

"I got gamer gear" isn't reasonable prior cause to pre-emptively search for antagonists, and literally checking everyone's bag to look for gamer gear is basically the definition of doing that

Trying to hold a player accountable for using an item that comes packaged with an immense amount of functionality that was potentially randomly distributed to them by a random number generator comes across to me as abusing your position of authority to punish someone for something the game gave and then invited them to use. This is a code issue, and any admin looking to make new policy on this should simply weigh in on it being a policy problem to get that resolved by coders. I don't disagree that it isn't enabling very gross behaviour, but I also think that the problem is with the item being ban bait.

[Archie700]

[
Trying to hold a player accountable for using an item that comes packaged with an immense amount of functionality that was potentially randomly distributed to them by a random number generator comes across to me as abusing your position of authority to punish someone for something the game gave and then invited them to use. This is a code issue, and any admin looking to make new policy on this should simply weigh in on it being a policy problem to get that resolved by coders. I don't disagree that it isn't enabling very gross behaviour, but I also think that the problem is with the item being ban bait.

Basically this, don't make a snowflake headmin ruling just for one specific item and instead handle it through code.
If people are exploiting something, the correct thing to do is to REMOVE the method of exploiting.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

[
Trying to hold a player accountable for using an item that comes packaged with an immense amount of functionality that was potentially randomly distributed to them by a random number generator comes across to me as abusing your position of authority to punish someone for something the game gave and then invited them to use. This is a code issue, and any admin looking to make new policy on this should simply weigh in on it being a policy problem to get that resolved by coders. I don't disagree that it isn't enabling very gross behaviour, but I also think that the problem is with the item being ban bait.

Basically this, don't make a snowflake headmin ruling just for one specific item and instead handle it through code.
If people are exploiting something, the correct thing to do is to REMOVE the method of exploiting.

Personally I'm a believer in "Make it illegal to use exploits if the alternative is removing something from non-exploit use too"

[SkeletalElite]

i could go either way but i assure you checking inventories or not you will easily discover every antagonistic force on the station with a scrying orb because that's what it does

Easily? maybe, but not as easily if youre not searching their bag for the faintest whiff of antag gear. this especially fucks with stealthy antags whove managed to complete their objectivesearlier on- suddenly the hos sees they have the hypo in their internals box or something and theyre fucked despite not doing anything that wouldve gotten them caught even by someone eyeing them like a hawk for the rest of the shift

You will literally probably find the antag faster by using the scrying orb and saying "hey dchat any antags" than you will by just searching inventories. Plus its not like that antag had any chance of hiding anyways, since the moment they do anything antagonist regardless of how sneaky it is you will know.

The scrying orb is an item that gives you knowledge about the round laid out on a silver platter, if you consider looking at inventories with it "pre-emptive searching" the use of the item may as well be banned entirely (at which point you should just make it not usable non wizards), literally the only thing this item does is give you info, and making some of the info that gives you bannable and some of it not is just ban bait.

[wesoda25]

[
Trying to hold a player accountable for using an item that comes packaged with an immense amount of functionality that was potentially randomly distributed to them by a random number generator comes across to me as abusing your position of authority to punish someone for something the game gave and then invited them to use. This is a code issue, and any admin looking to make new policy on this should simply weigh in on it being a policy problem to get that resolved by coders. I don't disagree that it isn't enabling very gross behaviour, but I also think that the problem is with the item being ban bait.

Basically this, don't make a snowflake headmin ruling just for one specific item and instead handle it through code.
If people are exploiting something, the correct thing to do is to REMOVE the method of exploiting.

It wouldn’t be a snowflake ruling though. They pretty clearly said gamer gear does not suddenly enable you to random search, which is not allowed. Policy is intended to fill the holes that code either cannot or has yet to.

[WineAllWine]

The scrying orb fundamentally breaks the game. Trying to legislate around it is silly.

[BeeSting12]

The scrying orb fundamentally breaks the game. Trying to legislate around it is silly.

this. i don't think we need such a niche rule, codifying every niche situation in policy is ridiculous. if a player gets a scrying orb they should be able to do what they want with it just because it's so uncommon. i can think of maybe once in the thousands of rounds ive been in that ive had a scrying orb as a nonantag.

[Archie700]

Trying to hold a player accountable for using an item that comes packaged with an immense amount of functionality that was potentially randomly distributed to them by a random number generator comes across to me as abusing your position of authority to punish someone for something the game gave and then invited them to use. This is a code issue, and any admin looking to make new policy on this should simply weigh in on it being a policy problem to get that resolved by coders. I don't disagree that it isn't enabling very gross behaviour, but I also think that the problem is with the item being ban bait.

Basically this, don't make a snowflake headmin ruling just for one specific item and instead handle it through code.
If people are exploiting something, the correct thing to do is to REMOVE the method of exploiting.

It wouldn’t be a snowflake ruling though. They pretty clearly said gamer gear does not suddenly enable you to random search, which is not allowed. Policy is intended to fill the holes that code either cannot or has yet to.

You can literally just ask people on dchat "SO WHO'S THE ANTAG" and someone will answer.
You might as well just ban the person for using the scrying orb since the only good use for nonantags is validhunting and finding people who died.

[cSeal]

You can literally just ask people on dchat "SO WHO'S THE ANTAG" and someone will answer.
You might as well just ban the person for using the scrying orb since the only good use for nonantags is validhunting and finding people who died.

If an antag item cant be used without breaking the rules and making the round lamer... Maybe dont use it as a non antag? this is a pretty simple idea to get, considering when people loot minibombs off of traitors they generally dont throw them around the station

[Denton]

local man is physically unable to stop powergaming for 10 seconds

[sinfulbliss]

The problem with this policy is that the scrying orb is literally an item whose function is to random search. Are we saying the crew can’t use it, period? Only sec can’t use it? You can use it, but can’t act on the knowledge you learn from it?

All of these options are very strange and counterintuitive, and a player can’t be expected to know from the rules that a scrying orb of all things will get them banned for a “random search.”

Would also like to piggyback on the, “this is way too uncommon to matter,” I’ve played lots of sec and never had a scrying orb before.

[Jonathan Gupta]

I’ve played lots of sec and never had a scrying orb before.

doubling down on this I have over 200 hundred hours and never had a scrying orb.

[datorangebottle]

100% way too uncommon to be actionable. if security gets their hands on a scrying orb they should be allowed to use it without getting banned.

[Archie700]

You can literally just ask people on dchat "SO WHO'S THE ANTAG" and someone will answer.
You might as well just ban the person for using the scrying orb since the only good use for nonantags is validhunting and finding people who died.

If an antag item cant be used without breaking the rules and making the round lamer... Maybe dont use it as a non antag? this is a pretty simple idea to get, considering when people loot minibombs off of traitors they generally dont throw them around the station

Scrying orbs don't explode and kill people on use.
If the scrying orb's only use for the crew is to powergame about antag knowledge and body finding while using it IC then maybe the scrying orb itself needs to be fully reworked in general instead of an headmin ruling that people won't know about because it's tucked in the wiki and it being a rare occurrence to get to begin with.

[NecromancerAnne]

You can literally just ask people on dchat "SO WHO'S THE ANTAG" and someone will answer.
You might as well just ban the person for using the scrying orb since the only good use for nonantags is validhunting and finding people who died.

If an antag item cant be used without breaking the rules and making the round lamer... Maybe dont use it as a non antag? this is a pretty simple idea to get, considering when people loot minibombs off of traitors they generally dont throw them around the station

It works passively. The only way for it to not work is to throw it away.

Edit: To clarify, even the randomly distributed scrying orbs grant anyone holding the orb the ability to listen to ghostchat without astral projecting. This is alongside it's xray vision passive. So metainformation is just something that comes with the item.

[confused rock]

The problem with the scrying orb is the dynamic gamemode. wizard wasn't designed for there to be other antags, it was designed for the round to end by the time sec was looting a scrying orb.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Yeah there are a lot of bad faith "Sounds like you're the problem shitsec" answers in this discussion.

Simple fact is, any item that literally lets you ask deadchat (Who have no ic restrictions) "Who are the bad guys this shift" / passively hear them talking about who's bad, is just inherently round disruptive and punishing people for using it is ridiculous, unless sec went to some truly extreme pre-emptive means to somehow acquire this incredibly rare and powerful item.

[NamelessFairy]

Searching people randomly is against the rules as a non-antagonist, searching people via scrying orb is searching people. As with regular searches if you have a valid reason to search someone then you can search them using a scrying orb.

Headmin Votes:
NamelessFairy: Yes
Dragomagol: Yes
RaveRadbury: Yes