[SWKittens] Ignoring precedent and circumstance for dayban

[Oldman Robustin]

Byond account and character name: ForcefulCJS, Oldman Robustin
Banning admin: Sweaterkittens
Ban reason and length: Dayban, for killing a miner and tossing his body into the lava
Time ban was placed (including time zone): ~20 minutes ago
Your side of the story:

A regular mining shift, we all suit up when Mr. Turbohitler rushes out the door within 10 seconds of the round start. Me and Miner #2 quickly grab the rest of our things and follow only to have the shuttle launch as we were standing in the airlock. For those unfamiliar if you are standing on the shuttle side of the airlock when it launches you will be spaced, killed, and your body lost forever. Fortunately we were both station side and instead both me and miner #2 were ejected into station space. We struggled to get back aboard in one piece and we immediately agreed without hesitation that Mr. Turbohitler would have to die for his crimes.

We got to mining dock, cornered Miner #3, and duked it out. I barely survived the fight and contemplated bringing Miner #3 back to station for cloning. After hearing that a medic and QM were coming to revive the miner I decided I didn't want to be blasted in the back while mining so I tossed Miner #3 into the lava instead. I reminded the crew of the ancient and venerable miner's code demanding death for such insolence. Sweaterkittens says im clearly in the wrong and bans me.

Why you think you should be unbanned:
The last ban that was successfully appealed against me was under similar circumstances. A scientist dropped a TTV in cargo, someone else picked it up and apparently tried to defuse it, and so the scientist proceeded to silently toolboxed the other guy to death (they didnt fight back, only tried to talk) and then spaced the corpse.

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=7375

It was made very clear to me through that appeal that spacing a body is not a significant grievance since apparently if you have the right to murder someone you have the right to make sure they don't come back from the dead to get revenge. Not only did Miner #3 do something deliberately shitty that could've killed AND spaced me and miner #2, he fought back with a knife and survival pen and almost killed me on lavaland too. They deserved to die and they have no right to complain if I didn't want to open myself up to getting KA'd in the asshole when they got revived, lavaland is not a forgiving place and if I were murdered out in the tunnels there's no way I'd have an opportunity to come back myself.

I'm going off precedent and personal experience here. I see my circumstances as less of a close call than what I dealt with Yackem for. Yackem murdered and spaced a botanist for an action that was ambiguous if not slightly inappropriate but posed a risk to Yackem's life and property. In my case I received unqualified support from my fellow miner that Miner #3 was shitty, unreasonable, almost got us killed, and therefore deserving of death for his selfish and shitty behavior. We sought revenge and then disposed of the body so as to not open ourselves to inevitable revenge and death out in the lavaland wastes (whereas it would be much easier for a scientist to insulate themselves from a botanist trying to get revenge, a miner has few options to stay safe against an angry and vengeful fellow miner).

I feel like this is a pretty clear case for my actions being justified. There is a standard of behavior among miners and not rushing the shuttle has always been a part of it. Lavaland is harsh and unforgiving and if you do something selfish and shitty that jeopardizes the lives of your fellow miners, then you can expect rough
lavaland justice in return. That's the way it's always been on asteroid AND lavaland, you can't expect security to venture out into monster infested tunnels so you've got to settle the score yourself. Hardly a close case and I'm really curious if Sweaterkittens banned the other miner too, because we were in the right on this.

Sweaters a decent trialmin but its clear they don't have much experience mining. Launching the mining shuttle ASAP and spacing your fellow miners is a form of grief that's been around for several years. It's always been understood to be absolutely unacceptable among miners since the risk of killing someone and leaving their body in deep space is never worth the goddamn risk just to get to the mines a few seconds faster. Especially now that ash storms make it 100% pointless to shuttle rush unless you're deliberately trying to grief. Coupled with the isolation and danger of lavaland, It's been a pretty consistent theme that endangering your fellow miners is a fast track to a pickaxe to the face. The rationale here isn't complicated, if you deliberately gamble the lives of your coworkers for selfish reasons then you have no right to complain if you get taken out of the round simply because luck didn't take them out of the round first.

[Sweaterkittens]

The round is still going on, so nice job, by the way.

Mohan Ramanovic : [10:08:44] = "I'm leaving in 10 seconds" - Followed by you landing and attacking him. Oh, and throwing his body back into the lava after it was retrieved once. The wounds you sustained are irrelevant because you started the fight.

No, denied.

[Oldman Robustin]

You can't deny your own appeal FYI.

The wounds I sustained were largely because myself and a fellow miner were spaced at roundstart because of this guy.

He did say "I'm leaving in 10 seconds" which I assumed meant he would launch the shuttle in 10 seconds, which would give us about 20 seconds before the shuttle was gone.

Instead the dude literally did the instalaunch meme and fired the engines as soon as possible after roundstart. Myself and the fellow miner showed up expecting him to be STARTING the launch process not FINISHING it - especially since we rushed our own prep just to catch up with him.

Me and the other miner were completely on the same page about this. It was a shit move with absolutely no justification that nearly killed us both and completely took us out of the round. Why would you act like we aren't entitled to revenge? I've seen DOZENS of players beaten to death under similar circumstances on mining over the years and it's essentially a tradition at this point. If you want to be a selfish asshole and risk everyone's lives so you can slip on your suit 5 seconds earlier, you don't get to complain if we surivive and do to you what you could've done to us.

It's called escalation and all the precedent I've experienced in my many years here tells me that dunking an asshole like that is justified. If not then I have absolutely no idea where our escalation policy stands or why previous headmins have repealed my own bans under much closer circumstances.

[Saegrimr]

You can't deny your own appeal FYI.

I'll chime in then.

Hahahahaha no.

[Sweaterkittens]

No, I'm just saying I'm not going to lift this. A Headmin if obviously welcome to come in and overrule it, but you're delusional if you think that you're going to rules-lawyer your way out of a dayban for killing someone and keeping them from being cloned. "Other people didn't get punished for it!" is not an acceptable reason to so blatantly break the rules. If you don't see how you're in the wrong at all here, maybe a day ban isn't really enough to get the message through to you.

[Oldman Robustin]

No, I'm just saying I'm not going to lift this. A Headmin if obviously welcome to come in and overrule it, but you're delusional if you think that you're going to rules-lawyer your way out of a dayban for killing someone and keeping them from being cloned. "Other people didn't get punished for it!" is not an acceptable reason to so blatantly break the rules. If you don't see how you're in the wrong at all here, maybe a day ban isn't really enough to get the message through to you.

Im pretty sure that "other people aren't getting punished for it" should be one of the first things an admin should consider before doling out punishments because its a very clear indication that maybe the rules aren't being "blatantly broken" if a previous headmin has explicitly disavowed the logic underlying your ban. If other people aren't getting punished it, and headmins have explicitly overruled previous attempts to dayban for greater infractions, why are you the exception? At the very least try to back your position up instead of going for the old "hahaha if I sound confident enough I don't have to explain myself" approach. Same stuff applies to you Saeg.

I deeply suspect you didn't even take action against Miner #2 even though we agreed on everything and carried it out together, from killing Miner #3 to getting rid of his body. That kind of consensus (I dont know the other miner, we aren't metabuddies, this is simply common practice) between strangers should suggest that maybe there's circumstances here that you're not fully aware of. In what other situation could I take a high chance (25%-75%) of killing AND spacing you solely to give myself an immaterial advantage at the start of a shift and not expect the victim to come back and try to kill me in return?

This was the last word I got on this issue from Kor which was affirmed by a 2/3 headmin vote:

Kor, Previous Headmin: "I thought we put this "you can't space people you otherwise could have validly killed" meme to rest. Cloning them just gives them a chance to keep griefing you, or kill/space you in escalation."

You repeatedly emphasized that how I toss Miner #3 into the lava. Yet everything seems to suggest that we don't give a shit about that anymore. We were valid in killing a douchebag who almost killed (and spaced) us, you took issue with the fact I tried to prevent his revival (on Lavaland, the one place where you absolutely do not want an angry fellow miner hunting you down for revenge). So the burden is on SWK, either explain why the last dozen people I saw get rejected for "IC Issue" when their fellow miners killed them was just my hallucination and that Miner #1 and Miner #2 were completely wrong to kill Miner #3 - then explain why you only banned Miner #1... or explain why the last headmin ruling on the issue of removing corpses is no longer valid.

[Sweaterkittens]

You let me know when someone does exactly what you did, with no extenuating circumstances, and doesn't get punished for it - I'll make sure they do. You seem to think it was warranted to kill him because, even though you heard him say he was launching, you misunderstood him and nearly got yourself spaced. That's not acceptable, full stop. Stop trying to rules-lawyer your way out of a clear-cut situation of being awful to someone else. The burden is on you to take responsibility for your actions and give me some indication that your realize what you did was not only wrong, but an incredibly shitty thing to do to another player.

[Oldman Robustin]

You let me know when someone does exactly what you did, with no extenuating circumstances, and doesn't get punished for it - I'll make sure they do. You seem to think it was warranted to kill him because, even though you heard him say he was launching, you misunderstood him and nearly got yourself spaced. That's not acceptable, full stop. Stop trying to rules-lawyer your way out of a clear-cut situation of being awful to someone else. The burden is on you to take responsibility for your actions and give me some indication that your realize what you did was not only wrong, but an incredibly shitty thing to do to another player.

I gave you the closest parallel decision you'll ever find on these forums since every decision tends to go to the wind around here without someone trying to keep score. I had a dayban repealed by 2 headmins because taking an ambiguous, yet inappropriate, action that ~~~COULD~~~ get someone killed was sufficient justification for that someone to CRIT, KILL, THEN SPACE the inappropriate/ambiguous/reckless actor.

You may not agree with me but over the thousands of rounds I've played I've got a pretty well-worn sense of whats appropriate and not. I'm speaking from countless mining rounds, doezens of rounds I've witnessed, and several ahelps I've answered where some reckless asshole speed off with the mining shuttle and kills someone in the process. If someone launches early there is an intolerably high risk that a miner gets knocked down from the launch and promptly ejected from the airlock into deep space. I've personally warned players against taking this sort of action because there's no justification for recklessly launching the shuttle ASAP when you're just flying over to an ash storm anyways. Its just plain old vanilla grief where one crewmember kills their coworkers through reckless behavior without any material justification. I mean do you realize how silly it sounds? What if me and the other miner hadn't swapped places on help intent and boarded the shuttle a fraction of a second sooner only to get knocked down and spaced+killed? Just the prior round I boarded the shuttle first and I waited for all to board before launching. When one was a tad slow I started to countdown to precisely when I would START the launch. That is the way its done by every decent miner I've played with, the people who quicklaunched would either get BWOINKED or lynched and the long-term effect has been an overall improvement in miner gameplay when people aren't doing a coin-flip every round to see which miner is going to get spaced trying to board the shuttle. I have personally killed SEVERAL miners in the past who would pull this stunt and never received more than a passing inquiry from the active admin, furthermore I linked you to another case with pretty similar parallels that you have yet to acknowledge, because unless everything is exactly the same as this case, apparently there's nothing to be learned from it.

I guarantee I'm not alone on this, it was not surprising at all that the other miner was completely in agreement that we would kill #3. I notice you're also being evasive about whether you banned #2 - despite us both agreeing on the murder and both participating in it. You seem to think this is a clear cut decision, I think I'm CORRECT but not even I'm asserting that this is black and white - but after seeing dozens of decisions validating this approach to dealing with mining shitters, it seems absurd for you to suggest that there is clear cut policy against killing people who out of selfishness nearly killed you instead.

[Sweaterkittens]

Because of your inability to see how your actions effect other players, and to stop even once to think about how shitty it was that you killed and prevented the cloning of some poor sod who told you he was going to launch, I'm upping this to a three day ban. I'm not going to go on Robustin's Wild Ride(tm) and respond to your rules-lawyering and text walls, because literally, the ride never ends. There is never a point where you will admit you were wrong, and I'm not going to waste my time and everyone else's by turning a clear-cut case of absolute disregard for other players into a graduate thesis.

[tedward1337]

Right, locking this thread until headmin comment.

[TehSteveo]

So I reviewed the logs relevant to this and frankly ForcefulCJS is in the wrong.

The miner who launched the shuttle did give warning and when looking at logs the shuttle was launched within the timeframe of when the warning was given. Obviously, both you and the second miner failed to see the warning and also looking through logs. You and the other miner nearly get spaced failing to see it and then decide he has to die because of these "unwritten rules." You proceed to not communicate to the miner who left using the radio and did carry out your end goal of killing him.

You involve the second miner, but in the end you and the third miner are really the one who end up in the conflict as you did majority of everything with the other guy not really doing much of anything besides two shots with a KA that was weakened due to being indoors. At this point, there was no adminhelp and even the miner who left early would have been fine if you allowed them to get cloned by medical staff that was coming to retrieve him.

Yet, you didn't do that as you you decided to lava bathe them after killing them; not once, but twice when someone goes to try and retrieve them and apparently logs state you did this because "[10:13:05]SAY: Oldman Robustin/ForcefulCJS : I was going to bhring him to medbay, but since youre all so uppity im going to toss him into lava instead." After you bathed them, they ahelped the situation and ahelped mostly you and not the second miner as you did most the work.

You argue that a previous ban is the exact same thing; yet both are different circumstances that couldn't be any different from one another, where an antagonist grabbed the bombs during the exchange and was killed for doing. You felt it wasn't correct and ended up banning them which got overturned after much debate from admins, but now you take this and try to use it to your advantage to justify doing the same thing you felt wasn't correct at the time. Even in that appeal, Lzimann's post states that the spacing was too far when other options are available. Frankly, the situations here are quite different; Shuttle launching early with you ignoring the fact it was going to be leaving versus someone stealing a bomb. Quite different scenarios.

The original appeal is denied. I am going to lift the ban as I don't agree with extensions unless it is delivered by a headmin making the call; even then those should be rare. This lift doesn't mean you are vindicated in any shape or form for your actions. You are on notice to improve and shape up your behavior, else you likely will have to find yourself a new server to play on.

[tedward1337]

Moving to resolved in 24 hours, etc.