[Shaps]ATHATH-Held Sybil's lag-free-ness hostage and demanded a Santa and a formal apology as ransom

[ATHATH]

BYOND account: ATHATH
Character name: Bob Bobson (RD!Bob Bobson, to be specific, since I RP my Bob Bobsons differently depending on what command role they're in (HoP!Bob Bobson's a holiday-hating asshole, Captain!Bob Bobson usually has a wacky gimmick, and RD!Bob Bobson messes around with bugs and... "odd" mechanics)
Ban type: Server
Ban length: 31 days
Ban reason:

Spoiler:

Time ban was placed: At 08:52:27 on 2019-12-23
Server you were playing on when banned: Sybil
Round ID in which ban was placed: 126427
Your side of the story:

Spoiler:

*freeze frame* *record scratch*
Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation. Well, to answer that, we're gonna have to start back at the beginning...

A new round on Sybil's just started. I've rolled RD, despite having mime set to high in my job preferences. I start my usual roundstart RD routine (donning my reactive teleport armor, getting tools, making cablecuffs, etc.)... and then the announcement from CentCom that the roundtype is Announced Extended comes in. Hm. I open my present from the bar's Christmas tree and get a single-use sepia camera from it, which is a very nice/cool item, but not something you can really base a gimmick around. Oh, I know! I could make a second CentCom heist attempt!

"Second?", you may ask? Well, over a month ago (on November 22nd, according to the dates of the screenshots that I took of that round), I broke into CentCom (without admin assistance, I'll get to that part later) to find the felinid PoWs that my character believed were being kept there. The admins played along, I found the catgirl prisoners, one of the catgirl prisoners took my mech for a joyride, an ERT came and killed us all, said ERT then dumped my corpse on the station as a warning, I got cloned and escaped alive on the shuttle, and good times were had by all:

Spoiler:

Well, I can't just go there with the objective to rescue felinid PoWs again; they're a roundstart race for everyone now and the gimmick would be less funny if repeated. No, this time I'll be aiming for a bigger prize: the fun toys contents of the ERT arming room! I couldn't get into it in my first attempt because the posibrains that I brought wouldn't wake up (well, one of them did, but it turned out that that posibrain was borgbanned and I couldn't download a new posibrain personality to replace it) and because I was prioritizing saving the felinid PoWs, but this time, I'll bring (human) friends and use BORIS borgs so that I won't have to rely on willing ghosts (just a willing AI) to execute my plan!

And so, I set my plan into motion. I collect/build what I need, have the roboticists build a mech for me, and get full augged. Whenever people ask me why I needed the things I needed, I directly tell them that I'm planning to break into CentCom (sometimes in bigtext over departmental comms). The admins bully the roboticists and me by spawning cream pies in Robotics and then pieing us with them, but I receive no adminial responses other than that.

After completing all of my preparations, I have my two roboticists and a lizardperson scientist crawl into one locker and load that locker into my mech (along with other lockers that contain supplies). I then go to the Departures security checkpoint, order the AI to be ready to enter the BORIS shells that we'll make for it on the other side, and teleport to CentCom.

I unload the lockers from my mech, and my team is (naturally) shocked and awed by this "black magic". We say "hi" to an admin character who was testing in the Thunderdome when we teleported into the Thunderdome's northern viewing area as I assemble a BORIS borg for the AI... that it doesn't possess/enter. Well, shoot. To make matters worse, I forgot to bring a fire axe (like I did last time), so I'm going to hack to hack way more reinforced doors than I'd really like to. I then come up with an idea: I crawl over a table to CentCom's bar area and deconstruct some tables. As I'm doing this, an admin sends me a single pm, asking me how the hell I got to CentCom. I reply by telling them that the trick use has been reported on GitHub (which is true; I linked the issue report for it earlier in this story), but receive no further replies from them. I then make a baseball bat out of the wood from them and try to bat the empty BORIS borg shell into an airlock. Success! The airlock opens, and my team and I use this borg-batting technique to get closer to the center of CentCom. Some shutters block our way, so I start batting down a reinforced window so I can get to a bu-

My team and I suddenly get unceremoniously teleported back to the station. There's no CentCom announcement, no consolation prize, no admin pms (other than the single admin pm that I mentioned earlier), nothin'. Well, then. My team wants to make another mech and try again, but I tell them to not bother because the gods would just teleport us back to the station again if we went back. My team still wants revenge against the gods, though (and told me this directly, IIRC)... But what could hurt a god?

I then remember a fragment of forbidden lore that I had read a long time ago (back in September). I was going to save this for an Ajit Pai clown gimmick, but it's the only thing I know of that can hurt/inconvenience a god. I go to the library, open up the library visitor console's interface, and perform a single(!) unfiltered (no search terms) search, bringing up a list of every piece of literature that's been uploaded to the library's database. The raw, unfiltered power of overwhelming amounts of smut King Crimsons the server for a solid 5 seconds or so. The lagginess of the server then returned to its usual/normal level(s).

After confirming over general comms that this did indeed cause a lag spike for everyone (and not just me), I make an announcement (in all caps and bigtext) over comms (addressing the gods) that I have acquired the power to lag the station at will and that I/we have two demands (and that I would perform another unfiltered search if these demands were not met):
1. We want Christmas presents. Someone else in general comms suggests asking for a Santa instead, and I clarify that sending us a Santa will count.
2. We want a formal apology from the gods (for being buzzkills).

After waiting for a few minutes and receiving no responses from the gods (not even a bwoink or an announcement from CentCom) aside from a drop pod containing an egg and a drop pod containing the BORIS borg that we had left behind at CentCom (according to the AI, the AI wasn't able to connect to the shell while it was on CentCom's z-level for some reason (probably because we constructed the BORIS borg there?), I make good on my threat and make my second (and last) unfiltered search, lagging the server for another few seconds. After receiving no response from the admins/gods to that, I decide to stop playing with fire and head to the bridge to call the shuttle. As I am typing a snarky message for my shuttle call's announcement, I get banned for a month by Plapatin.

At some point in that hostage-taking sequence there, I accidentally said "admin" instead of "god" (ONCE). After being called out by someone for this, I then clarified (over general comms) that "admin" is a derogatory word/slur for "god" in an attempt to salvage the IC:OOC barrier, which I believe should have been a sufficient level of response (from me) for a minor mistake like that.

Oh, and here's what my full heist plan was, in case you were wondering what it was:

Spoiler:

1. Teleport to CentCom.
2. Deconstruct one of the camera consoles in CentCom (there are a few scattered around).
3. Approach the ERT arming room by having a BORIS borg open doors and stuff and by smashing shutters with a fire axe if needed.
4. Have one of the members of my team gently hit me in the chest until my reactive teleport armor activates.
5. If my reactive teleport armor didn't teleport me into the ERT arming room, repeat from step 3.
6. Construct a second BORIS borg (which is the borg that I'll be refering to as "the BORIS borg" for the rest of this plan) inside of the ERT arming room so that it can open up all of the lockers and serve as a camera for later.
7. Construct a camera console inside of the ERT arming room.
8. Have the BORIS borg gently hit me in the chest until my reactive teleport armor activates and teleports me out of the room.
9. Load everyone on the team who's not me or the BORIS borg inside of lockers and load those lockers into the mech.
10. Use another CentCom camera console (viewing from the perspective of the BORIS borg's camera) and the mech to teleport next to the BORIS borg that's inside of the ERT arming room.
11. Put the ERT gear and the BORIS borg into lockers and load them into the mech.
12. Use the camera console that I constructed inside of the ERT arming room and the mech to teleport back to the station with our loot.
13. ???
14. Get brutally murdered by a deathsquad. Profit by selling the excess ERT gear off to other crew members, then call the shuttle and go home.

Note that I could have cut a few of these steps out if I had trusted someone else to pilot/teleport with the mech, but I didn't want to risk being trapped in a room forever because someone on my team couldn't follow instructions. I was about to abandon this specific version of the plan because I had accidentally mislead myself to believe that normal camera consoles couldn't be deconstructed (because I tried and fail to decon the HoS's camera console), but I probably could have worked out with codediving during the mission why my deconstruction attempt failed (or just carried the stuff out of the ERT arming room by hand/backpack).

Since station-side AIs apparently can't possess BORIS shells that are constructed on CentCom until after they've been brought to the station, I now think that I would indeed need to use posibrains instead of (at least one of the) BORIS modules for this plan.

Why you think you should be unbanned: To be honest, I wasn't expecting the admins to "cave" to my demands there (I'm not stupid enough to think that I could seriously "threaten" them with a lag button when they have the power to just delete me and/or the button's console), but I wasn't expecting to be banned for a MONTH either. I was expecting to be gibbed, turned into a chicken, banned for an hour, or even just told to stop with a firmly-worded bwoink. The administrative response up to the point of my banning was playful (pieing us, sending us an egg, etc.), and the serious punishment that was given to me kind of blindsided me. If any admin had pm'd me and said something like "Hey man, we take intentionally lagging the server very seriously here, cut it out.", I'd have stopped my antics right there and then. I would also like the clarify that, to my (currnet) knowledge, I had never tried to intentionally lag a server before this incident.

Also, it's almost Christmas time, and that should count for something, right? Not only because of the usual reasons, but also because rounds are being spiced up this week by Christmas presents and the Winter Ball is coming up.
References of good conduct: Since this ban was placed last night at around 3 or 4 AM (my time) last night, I have not had the opportunity to play on other servers since it was placed.

Merry Christmas, and please, for the love of God, patch this library visitor console lag production thing before someone maliciously exploits it to try to bring a server down/make a server nigh-unplayable.

[Analbifida]

During this round multiple people were orbiting me and telling me to press buttons since it was an extended round and nothing was happening, so I spawned a couple of pies and threw them at random people around the station. I forget who it was, but someone told me to launch the AI shell at you after I sent you all back but it sent an egg that must have been in the drop pod bay.

I fail to see how these two things happening gives you a green light to abuse known bugs.

[ATHATH]

During this round multiple people were orbiting me and telling me to press buttons since it was an extended round and nothing was happening, so I spawned a couple of pies and threw them at random people around the station. I forget who it was, but someone told me to launch the AI shell at you after I sent you all back but it sent an egg that must have been in the drop pod bay.

I fail to see how these two things happening gives you a green light to abuse known bugs.

I interpreted those two incidents as the admins making it clear that they were watching me and that they knew what I was doing. Since none of you bwoinked me (apart from that one admin pm that asked how I got to CentCom) in the ample amount of time between me making it clear what I was doing and me actually doing those things, I assumed that you didn't disapprove of those things and went ahead with my plans. I know that that sounds like I'm saying, "well, the admins never SAID I couldn't plasmaflood half of the station as a non-antag!", but I misinterpretted your random acts of admining as a sign that you were watching and didn't disapprove of my planned actions, since I made it very clear what I was doing. My reasoning was that you couldn't possibly NOT have seen me talking in big text over comms about this stuff, so if you didn't bwoink me about it, you must be okay with me doing the stuff that I was talking about.

By the way, is this ban specifically for the "lag spiking" part, or is it also for the "breaking into CentCom" part? If it's just the former, I can stop referring to stuff in such vague terms.

During this round multiple people were orbiting me and telling me to press buttons since it was an extended round and nothing was happening

And I gave deadchat something to watch, no?

[TheMidnghtRose]

During this round multiple people were orbiting me and telling me to press buttons since it was an extended round and nothing was happening, so I spawned a couple of pies and threw them at random people around the station. I forget who it was, but someone told me to launch the AI shell at you after I sent you all back but it sent an egg that must have been in the drop pod bay.

Not super important, but as the AI that round I was unable to drop into the shell as it was off z-level before I could drop into it, making me unable to use it. As the RD had told me I wasnt going to get a second shell, I prayed to have it shot at the RD so I could have it back.

I was also the admin that ran the POW catgirl event that he is referencing when he broke into Central Command, I thought it was funny and I was pretty sure he put in a bug report about the exploit to Central, I even had the ERT team take all the corpses back to the station that time.

[Shaps-cloud]

I'll drop one week off of it, down to 3 weeks, in holiday spirit. Holding the server hostage and knowingly degrading the playing experience of everyone else connected is not cute or funny, and will not be tolerated

[ATHATH]

I'll drop one week off of it, down to 3 weeks, in holiday spirit. Holding the server hostage and knowingly degrading the playing experience of everyone else connected is not cute or funny, and will not be tolerated

How many people were online at the time that this incident occured? Is intentionally lagging however many people that were on Sybil at the time for a mere 10-15 seconds (across both of the firings of the lag device) as severe of a crime as killing 21 people as a non-antag (which would cop a 21 day ban, if I'm interpreting precedent/our rules correctly)?

The week long reduction of my ban length is, of course, appreciated, but not being able to play on /tg/station for the remaining weeks of my winter break (when I have a lot of free time) before the next semester of college starts (after which I won't have nearly as much free time) stings quite a bit. Perhaps I'll give Hippiestation a shot again.

[Hulkamania]

The number of people online at the time of your incident has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of the punishment. The "standard" for non-antag murdering is indeed 24 hours per kill, but that is highly subjective and behooved to the administrator, the notes of the individual in question, their motivation (were they somewhat justified but took it too far? Were they blatantly rule breaking? Have they done this a lot?) and any other factors the admin deems important.

If someone killed 21 people as a non-antagonist I can assure you they'd get a lot more than a 21 day ban. In short, no you are not interpreting precedent correctly.

Causing massive amounts of lag is not only an IC violation but an OOC one too and personally I think you got off extremely light given the circumstances. I'm pretty sure Hippiestation would give you the same treatment if you did something similar there.