/tg/Station 13

Byond account and character name: vcordie and kaff eine
Banning admin: dorsidwarf
Ban type (What are you banned from?): perma job ban from scientist and rd, and server
Ban reason and length: "Metagaming the shuttle locations has always, always been a bannable offence. Used telescience to determine where the nuke was by firing a GPS at all the possible syndie ship sites, then fired it to lavaland with telescience" 1440 minutes
Time ban was placed (including time zone): 4:20pm EST
Your side of the story: Telesci policy has always been a super grey area. The greyest of areas, actually. I've done this a dozen times before and only just now caught a ban from it, even when the ops i screwed over were admins themselves. This appeal is less to get unbanned and more so that we can finally goddamn clarify this shit. So lets break it down point by point with arguments for and against. once the policy on telesci is decided by the headmins, i'll know if i should nerf it or gut it once the freeze ends.
Obviously we have to mention rule 2. Rule 2 states that Characters are otherwise allowed to know everything about ingame mechanics or antagonists. The fact that the nukes op ship can only land in a few places due to limitations of the game is an ingame mechanic, and nuke ops are an antagonist. the argument is that how would telesci work if one could not metagame coordinates.

Nobody catches a ban for knowing the coordinates of the guns in the armory and teleporting them in. but knowing the coordinates of the nuke ops ship is considered out of line by dorsid and toeing the line by other admins. It's...strange. One argument is that in character, a scientist would know the coordinates of the armory because its on the station and the station has a consistent layout, but the ops ship isn't on the station so there's no way that the scientist could know without being told. On the other hand, how would the scientist also know how clock cult, blood cult, revs, malf ai operates. its a question of "where do we draw the line" and I've made this appeals so the headmins can finally draw that line and make it clear

the reason I did this is because despite searching the forums, despite asking kor, I couldn't find a clear answer of if what I was doing was breaking the rules or not, and if it was, exactly WHY it was breaking the rules. everyone seems to have a different idea on why.

now, there is this. :Station crew are currently not allowed to board or search for the syndicate shuttle during nuke op rounds, unless they specifically follow an operative or a pinpointer onto the shuttle. It is better to adminhelp first in this situation, so admins can confirm that you found it legitimately.

I've been told by kor that this rule is defunct. policy discussion on the forums favors this rule being removed, as it was from before the days the ops ship had turrets. however, if this rule is still accurate, then yes, teleporting gps's to search for the ops ship absolutely broke the rules. But I can't get a clear answer on this. I can't get a clear answer on any of this, and this is the problem

Why you think you should be unbanned: This is me asking for clarification. If I cannot teleport the nuke with telesci and cannot know where the nuke ops are, then tell me, headmins. Tell me, and I will not do it, and moreover will make it so that the nuke ops ship cannot be teleported to, or I will quietly remove telesci. If we cannot use metaknowledge to know coordinates, then what is the point of telesci. My only request is this: once you have made a decision one way or another, remove my perma job ban. Please. I will follow whatever ruling you decide. I'm simply searching for clarity. Thank you.

Pasting relevant logs:

<Qbopper> I think the issue is firing gpses at all possible locations for the ship - IC it's different from the armory as the station layout is fixed and likely common, whereas the syndie ship happening to be in specific spots every time is just because of the way the game works
<Qbopper> ops looting the armory first makes sense because they have a way to know where it is without going there
<Qbopper> a scientist would not know where the ship is without being told
<Qbopper> it's not the same
<vcordie> that's a fair point
<vcordie> but then how would a scientist know how cult mechanics work
<vcordie> or that people flashing each other means revs
<vcordie> and so on and so forth
<vcordie> the thing is: where the fuck is the line
<vcordie> because its different for every admin
<Qbopper> well like
<Qbopper> the way I see it, assuming IC you retain memories of each shift because cloning/etc.
<Qbopper> you would know how a cult works because you've been in it/fought one
<Qbopper> but you don't know where the cult is this round because of that
<Qbopper> same with ops
<Qbopper> you know how ops work
<Qbopper> you don't know where they're going to be
<Qbopper> using the possible locations of the shuttle is an entirely OOC concept
<Qbopper> IC it makes no sense, you know the shuttle is around, but you don't know the exact possible locations for it

If you're going to cite Rule 2 you should probably also cite the Rule 2 precedents, specifically:

5. Station crew are currently not allowed to board or search for the syndicate shuttle during nuke op rounds, unless they specifically follow an operative or a pinpointer onto the shuttle. It is better to adminhelp first in this situation, so admins can confirm that you found it legitimately.

ETA: Rules from https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules

bandit wrote:If you're going to cite Rule 2 you should probably also cite the Rule 2 precedents, specifically:

5. Station crew are currently not allowed to board or search for the syndicate shuttle during nuke op rounds, unless they specifically follow an operative or a pinpointer onto the shuttle. It is better to adminhelp first in this situation, so admins can confirm that you found it legitimately.

ETA: Rules from https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules

They did, read the full post.
The rules around the nuke op shuttle are so muddy and there's so many variations that this ban is effectively based on nothing but one person's interpretation of metagaming.
That isn't to say "fuck admins this ban is bullshit.", so keep that in mind.
What needs to happen now:
1)Lift these bans.
2)Consult adminbus.
3)Come up with a paragraph about how you are allowed to interact with the loot ship.
4)Put that in the wiki, put it in an admin notice.
5)Enforce it strictly after a week.

I've had this conversation with you before as a fellow telesci guy and I have a hard time justifying reaching into the syndicate shuttle with it. When you're just punting out a GPS at meta locations waiting for one to phone home as "Syndicate Infiltrator" that goes beyond "I was robust and figured it out" and slides into "I knew it was going to be there because it functionally has to be.

It also circumvents the protections added to the syndicate shuttle to prevent people from going there in person. We added turrets to keep people from just jumping into space with a mining hardsuit and pickaxing the ops to death. We set up the precedent that Bgobandit references to cover that while crew on station may arrive on the shuttle by using information gathered in the round "I followed an op", we don't want players just buzzing around in space looking for antags or looking for the shuttle. In the case of your telesci stunts with the nuke, you didn't follow any op to any place. You actively went fishing for the op shuttle with gps. We boink people for jumping into space with a suit and personally hunting down the ship on their own (usually to throw maxcaps at it, for some reason its always the science department.) Similarly, we don't want telesci to just be the "guess where the nuke is and press a button to deny greentext" thing. Its fun for essentially nobody and relies on no real in-game information besides "Radio said there's ops." I could potentially see more of a case for this if we had a more robust system for moving the ship than fixed positions that the ship must park at with fixed coordinates for the landing locations, but since there's functionally no way for the OPs to deal with this meta threat apart from dropping the Steel Rain pod on top of your telesci console or hiding the nuke outside of their fortress combat barge I can't see a carveout made for this sort of thing.

It's not so much a question of "is it against the rules or not" but rather "what the fuck even are the rules on this thing". Once someone clarifies that to me, I will absolutely follow them. 100%. It's just no one's ever decided one way or another. The appeal is also to get the perma job ban removed once it has been clarified because like I said and you all see, the policy around this is...murky, but once it's been cleared up I will absolutely follow it.

bandit wrote:If you're going to cite Rule 2 you should probably also cite the Rule 2 precedents, specifically:

5. Station crew are currently not allowed to board or search for the syndicate shuttle during nuke op rounds, unless they specifically follow an operative or a pinpointer onto the shuttle. It is better to adminhelp first in this situation, so admins can confirm that you found it legitimately.

ETA: Rules from https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules

I'd say using GPS to look for the shuttle is still searching for the shuttle, even if it isn't physical

I'd also say that kor said that rule is no longer valid, and that's the opinion among most admins, as far as i know. It's been said that the rule is defunct and unneccesary.

Qbopper wrote:

bandit wrote:If you're going to cite Rule 2 you should probably also cite the Rule 2 precedents, specifically:

5. Station crew are currently not allowed to board or search for the syndicate shuttle during nuke op rounds, unless they specifically follow an operative or a pinpointer onto the shuttle. It is better to adminhelp first in this situation, so admins can confirm that you found it legitimately.

ETA: Rules from https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Rules

I'd say using GPS to look for the shuttle is still searching for the shuttle, even if it isn't physical

Correct; even if you're not physically moving to the locations the shuttle can be, you're still searching them.

The only time you can do anything to the shuttle is if, as the rule says, you follow a pinpointer or an operative to the shuttle.
Admittedly this is kind of crude and could be done a lot better with a code solution, but, you know.

I was actually an op on this round and I can confirm it totally fucked the round over, we were on the ship, with the nuke disk ready to go but had no choice but to go and die on the station because the nuke had been stolen.

Edit: Im not mad we lost, Im mad that we lost in a way that the only prevention we could've used was to beeline it for science division and murder everyone who looked like they knew telescience. Also they were talking shit over the syndicate radio about taking our nuke

Isn't "you have to follow an op" needlessly strict? If they entered from southwest solars shouldn't it be reasonable to search around there?

Permanent anything bans for issues where policy is as consistent as a magic 8-ball never makes sense.

Slap on the wrist with a short ban, make it clear what they shouldn't do, and it accomplishes the same thing as a massive ban without all the hurt feelings and inevitable wasted time from discussing EXACTLY whats fair in these extreme edge case when after this it will probably never happen again (RIP telesci).

But yea, nukop ship policy is kind of a joke.

I applied this ban because not only did Vcordie admit to using their own personal knowledge of the co-ords that the infiltrator lands at, but it's always, always, with no exceptions that I can recall, been forbidden to just jetpack your way to the 8 places the shuttle could be and gank the nuke. Because it's bullshit, unavoidable, and no fun for the nukies or anyone but the noncombatants sitting in their speed-rushed telesci lab.

If this rule has been overturned recently, I was not made aware of this fact and acted accordingly. I see no difference between hitting the "recieve" button on all 8 co-ords that the nuke can be as soon as someone says "Nuke ops" and flying with a jetpack and a TTV.


The server ban was a dayban because "cut that shit out, you know better", and the departmental permaban was because timed jobbans are a joke.

except I don't "know better" because I've done this lots of times before and nuke op ship policy and telesci policy (is it metagaming, is it not?) is a joke, like robustin said.

vcordie wrote:except I don't "know better" because I've done this lots of times before and nuke op ship policy and telesci policy (is it metagaming, is it not?) is a joke, like robustin said.

It's 100% without a doubt metagaming, I don't think thats the question here. I think whats up in the air is that other types of metagaming is allowed and others arent.

This has nothing to do with telesci and everything to do with the "don't meta the ops shuttle" policy.

I recommend that the server ban stays. Jobban can probably be lifted.

Lazengann wrote:Isn't "you have to follow an op" needlessly strict? If they entered from southwest solars shouldn't it be reasonable to search around there?

Please clarify

The actions of a few ruin it for everyone else so we cannot trust players to not meta the syndie ship locations. The vulnerability of the ship (and the round's progression) to bombs and well-prepared players is also a factor.

It isn't needlessly strict.

This ban request is a case of 'you should know better'. You're a long term player, you know about the rule we have for nuke ship locations. It's been a long held precedent that you can't search for the ship even when you know there are ops. Saying you didn't know better and that you were a victim of unclear policy is deceiving at worst or makes you look like an idiot who's just joined /tg/ at best. Don't exploit an edge case that explicitly isn't covered in the rules when the rules very much try to prevent that sort of behaviour.

I know that this is resolved, but after a brief headmin vote the science bans were lifted with only the server ban staying on record.