[Pumpkin0] Mishandling of ahelp involving malf borg

[Muffindrake]

When and where this incident occured (Game Server, forums, Discord): Manuel
Byond account and character name OR Discord name: muffindrake, Baal-Fur
Admin: Pumpkin0
ROUND ID HERE IF APPLICABLE: 196170
Detailed summary: I latejoined into a round that was already 45 minutes in and happened to get latejoin traitor, which I could not immediately use because of a bug that prevented lizards from using uplink radio password NATO phonetics including any letter S. After the admin fixed that for me, I gathered equipment I intended to use and went to refill my internals tank, and eventually sabotage atmospherics, only after the Malf AI talked to me in traitor comms and gave me the go-ahead on a plasma flood they intended to do anyway.

While putting down the pipes, a cargo security plasmaman officer was for some reason floating between the atmos gas tanks and atmospherics in space. I don't know if a cargo sec officer had a compelling reason to float on the other end of the fucking station in that round, but that round end report does not yield sufficient reasoning for them to pursue valid-hunting behaviour like they did.

At this point, the gravity generator was destroyed, so there was no gravity. I personally destroyed the telecommunications APC, so there were no comms besides binary and traitor chat. The engine was probably on fire, I don't know.

Default Cyborg 126 then proceeded to let the security officer ride them to a completely secluded part of the station in the very east of atmos right up to the external airlocks, and assisted them in landing disabler shots on me in zero-gravity, eventually succeeding. My equipment was a bog-standard red fucking space suit and a makarov, at least those were the most visible ones. I was stripped of my space helmet, comms, and gun, and was about to be headed for security, but was only stopped by the malf AI presumably going all caps on the borg being a shitface and then proceeded to bring me to arrivals and remove my handcuffs.

At this point the damage is irreparable since I am at least 17TC short so I proceeded to yell at the admin who only gave me kafkaesque responses towards the borg completely ruining an antag for no apparent reason. As a malf AI borg, they are bound by laws and AI directives, but there is obviously wiggle room, and most likely this includes situations where the malf borg can get away with not completely fucking over another antag for no reason, or even get a security officer killed in the process.

The admin only tells me the borg was only given the vague order of 'lay low' approximately five years ago, so I should suck it up and ignore the fact they just griefed me out of an antag round. They went out of their way to ensure I was stripped of my antag gear and only facetiously feigned having done this out of incompetence (as in ability to play antagonistic characters). They let me know that they were 'sorry' for going out of their way to break main rule 1.

[Timberpoes]

Policy correction:

Malf AI borgs are not bound by their laws under silicon policy:
Law 0: "Accomplish your objectives at all costs" does not require you to complete objectives. As an antagonist, you are free to do whatever you want (barring the usual exemptions and acting against the interests of your Master AI).

The core rules hint that Malf AI and their borgs are team antagonists via reference to xenos:
The relationship between xeno queen and xeno is treated the same as malf AI and borg, and are considered team antagonists for the purpose of main rule 4. Xenos should prioritize following the directions of their queen where possible.

Under the RP rules, Malfunctioning AIs are unrestricted antagonists that can murderbone. As long as the borg isn't causing issues with their team, they can do whatever they like as per LRP team antags.

[Vekter]

Given that you mention the ticket, I think it's important to include the contents of said ticket.

From Ticket #9 during round 196170 on Manuel
Ticket opened at 2022-12-12 23:42:42 by muffindrake
Log:
23:42:42: Ticket Opened by-muffindrake: malf borg for AI just sabotaged the AI's efforts by getting me arrested
23:45:30: Ticket Opened by-muffindrake: That borg just went against his AI's laws and fucked my antag. WHY DOES THIS SHIT ALWAY SHAPPEN TO ME
23:46:47: Reply from-pumpkin0: Which borg?
23:47:26: Reply from-muffindrake: Default Android-126. They helped the plasmeme sec arrest me for no reason. I am so incredibly livid right now. I get antag once in a blue moon and I get fucked by a borg literally breaking laws to get there
23:47:57: Reply from-muffindrake: My uplink is gone, my makarov is gone, my space helmet is gone. My antag is completely screwed because that guy broke the fucking rules. It4e3wsazr56jmit54wase3rfgkop
23:48:37: Reply from-pumpkin0: Hey man, let's just take a moment. This can be solved - we just have to be calm about it. Videogames are videogames, and you'll always have another chance eventually.
23:48:43: Reply from-muffindrake: Don't let that asshole get away with bad knowledge. I had a fucking red space suit and a makarov, and that borg already had stun arm.
23:50:58: Reply from-muffindrake: That borg didn't take five seconds to confirm with the AI that they can help obvious antags while comms on the station were completely down, and chooses instead to completely fuck over my evening for no reason. FUCK THEM
23:51:43: Reply from-pumpkin0: Come on man, I can only help you if you calm down and work with me. Are you sure he might not've been trying to maintain secrey?
23:52:19: Reply from-muffindrake: NO I LITERALLY TALKED TO THE AI AND THEY ALLOWED ME TO JUST PLASMAFLOOD DISTRO. ONE OF THEIR BORGS THEN PROCEEDS TO HELP ARREST ME. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT DUDE
23:52:52: Reply from-muffindrake: That is what happened. I confirm with the malf AI on traitor channel. Borg proceeds to help security remove my equipment.
23:54:05: Reply from-muffindrake: Also what do you mean secrecy. Comms were down. Borg has stunarm. We are completely secluded on the ass-end of the station in atmos. WHERE IN THIS EQUATION DO YOU HELP THE LONE SECOFF ARREST THE ANTAG, HUH?
23:54:12: Reply from-pumpkin0: Please calm down. I can only help you with this if you work with me, alright? I understand you're upset, and you're justified in feeling that way, but if I'm gonna work this out, you have to understand things like this happen and can be worked through. The AI didn't actually send any mesages over binary that told him to collude withh you - perhaps because the AI either forgot or didn't want to be obvious with it. The same borg even removed your cuffs and helped you get away from sec, even when you attacked him with a welder and told him to kill himself.
23:55:05: Reply from-muffindrake: The AI not sending messages isn't of any concern. I had previously disabled comms. The borg let the plasmeme sec ride them instead of stunarming them. Do you understand how kafkaesque you are being right now?
23:55:27: Reply from-muffindrake: This is open and shut.
23:56:16: Reply from-pumpkin0: It is kind of a concern - because how is the borg supposed to know to help you when the AI has only told it to 'lay low' - which implies maintaining secrecy, appearing to be on security's side.
23:56:55: Reply from-muffindrake: The borg literally has the right to murderbone. There is NO COMMUNICATIONS AND WE'RE ON THE ASS-END OF THE STATION WHERE NOONE CAN SEE YOU, AND YET THIS BORG CHOOSES TO JUST FUCK OVER THE ANTAG BY HELPING SEC.
23:56:55: Reply from-pumpkin0: Again, I am looking into this as best as I can. You just have to work with me and be calm about it, and we can work this out. Alright?
23:57:17: Reply from-pumpkin0: If it's told to lay low, it has to lay low.
23:57:32: Reply from-muffindrake: Please get another admin here.
23:58:01: Reply from-pumpkin0: We're not adminshopping, that's against the rules. Again, going to try and sort this out as best as I can, but I won't be able to do much if you can't work with me and calm down.
23:59:21: Reply from-muffindrake: If you can't handle this situation, you need to hand it off to another admin. I have just stated in no uncertain terms that the chance of the AI's cover being blown was literally zero by killing that single sec off while comms were down. I repeat, comms were down. They cannot call for help if the borg stunarms them. And yet, I sit here with a ruined antag. I want an antag token for this person obviously griefing me out of one.
23:59:55: Reply from-pumpkin0: Yeah, from logs, the AI had not said a single thing about helping you in binary, thus the borgs have no reason to believe they should help you, right up until you got captured. The borg then, under the AI's order, went and helped you out of the jam. You will get nowhere by making demands and not working with me, alright? The borg had no reason to believe that you were colluding right up until the AI told them, which was *after* you had been arrested.
00:00:52: Reply from-muffindrake: Well, no, I'm just going to admin-complaint this. Forget about the AI. Please acknowledge the fact that there are no comms on the station. Please for the love of god repeat 'there are no communications' in the message back to me.
00:01:10: Reply from-pumpkin0: Binary isn't affected by communications, I'm not exactly sure what you mean.
00:01:55: Reply from-muffindrake: The sec officer has literally no way to call for any backup or alert anyone if they die there alone. Are you following this far?
00:03:04: Reply from-pumpkin0: Yes, and I do not think that's relevant. If the borg had known to help you, I'm sure it would've - it absolutely 100% did as soon as the AI told it to. The only thing it had been told was 'lay low', so getting the sec officer killed would not be 'laying low'. The only goal it had, given to it by the AI, was to try not to get caught. If the borg was carting around the sec officer because it was law 2'd to, it would be unable to refuse that without it seeming very off.
00:03:34: Reply from-pumpkin0: Even if it theoretically could've killed the sec officer, that's a big risk for someone that it does not know is colluding with its boss.
00:04:39: Reply from-muffindrake: Okay, you got this far. Now combine the fact that 1) there are no comms, 2) the borg has stunarm and 3) we're literally at the ass-end of the station in atmos so noone will ever know or see us. Do you see the problem here?
00:06:02: Reply from-pumpkin0: I've explained my reasoning. If you really want to admin complain this, you can go for it. The other admins here agree with me, and I'm not gonna pass it off to others (because that's admin shopping.) I'm gonna end the round now, and I hope you have a good day, and that your next antag round goes better. Stay safe!
00:07:37: Client disconnected
---- No futher messages ----
This ticket was generated by Statbus v.0.14.0

[Pumpkin0]

Hi there.

I will still stand by what I said in the ticket, and so I'll repeat it here for clarity and expand on anything that I wasn't able to in the moment.

While I do agree that it sucks to have your antag round ruined, sometimes this sort of thing happens. According to the logs I had, the AI hadn't mentioned your involvement or importance to them over binary, so the Borg was just operating off of being told to 'Lay low', with no specific assignment to protect you (or any other antags for that matter) until after you were being arrested, in which Default Cyborg 126 responded as fast as they could and had you freed from security. After he did so, you proceeded to tell him to kill himself, then attacked him with a welder, which he responded using a stun arm that he had only recently acquired from the AI, which I believe was after the initial engagement you and the borg/security combo experienced.

As Timberpoes has mentioned, Malf AIs can act however they'd like, which includes working with security - especially if this is to further remaining under the radar by showing that you are helping security. The borg broke no rules by helping security arrest you, due to having no orders outside of 'Lay Low' that they would have to follow that should prevent them from assisting in your arrest. For example, if the Malf AI wanted to have you arrested, despite you being an antag, they could do that without issue, even if they had received help from you - perhaps if they wanted to eliminate someone who could tattle on them (Again, for example, not what actually happened.)
I'd like to add that after you were arrested by the borg, who had no idea that they were meant to assist you until the AI mentioned as such, they went out of their way to apologize and free you from security, explaining what had happened and why they did what they did.


The borg very well could have helped you out of that initial jam, but it had no requirement to under the circumstances of not knowing they were working with you. If an antag (especially malf AI) needs to throw another under antag under the bus to preserve themselves or maintain an appearance of being on security's side, they are fully within their right to - which this could be amounted to. TL;DR: The borg had no motivation to throw away their cover on this security officer for you, even if it would've been easy to do so without consequence. That does not break any rules.

The prospect of 'but was only stopped by the malf AI presumably going all caps on the borg being a shitface and then proceeded to bring me to arrivals and remove my handcuffs.' is Incorrect - they only called for Baal to be helped roughly after they have been arrested, which is the first time they are referenced in binary. They did not tell the borg off, possibly due to not knowing, but also possibly due to the fact that they had nod told their borgs that you were on their side until after your arrest had happened.

I maintain that no rules have been broken here - this ticket was an IC issue - and that I have not broken any conduct. I'm sorry that this happened, and I know how it feels to have your round ruined, but there will always be another shot, and I hope your future endeavours as an antagonist go a little bit better.

Logs from the round:
Game logs: https://scrubby.melonmesa.com/round/196 ... e=game.txt
Attack logs: https://scrubby.melonmesa.com/round/196 ... attack.txt

[Muffindrake]

I've had an insane string of incomprehensibly bad events on the majority of the past few shifts and this one was quite the cherry on top of this pile of rotten cherries. Notwithstanding the fact I have also had extremely bad antagonist luck to the point where I was getting killed by the same traitor player every other shift while I was roundstart in the same department for tens of hours without the glimpse of a traitor roll. This shift was no exception to that, since I get basically cockblocked before I can do anything of any real substance, by a valid-hunting sec off riding a malf cyborg supposed to be allied no less.

I have a deeply-ingrained sense of fair play, and I don't usually have a problem with losing badly, as this is a frequent occurrence particularly on the LRP servers where a guy with a desword kills your department in the blink of an eye. However, these events have massively impacted my sense of fair play in the way they were completely unfair and none of the people involved appeared to ever stop for a second to think before committing to irreparably fucking me over.

The cyborg was well in their right to help the sec officer according to LRP antag rules, but in the interest of the AI, laying low can also include discreetly getting rid of troublesome individuals such as sec officer when noone is looking. Since cyborgs have binary chat at all times, it seemed ludicrously unfair to me that they would unga help the sec off immediately without dropping as much as a letter into binary chat. Not taking a step back resulting in the next part of the aforementioned gravy train of tears. I don't think having the antag arrested there was fair play nor a particularly nice thing to do; and since it's both, I am not inclined to hold my tongue in an ahelp, particularly if you make it very clear that you are not going to be doing anything aside from writing PR-adjacent speech lines of text.

Instead of doing that, have you thought about doing something else, like talking to every player involved in that interaction and suggesting a different outcome of the situation that does not result in someone getting completely fucked beyond belief? Someone could say 'Hey, I acted way too hastily there, my bad'. Hell, the worst any one of the involved parties could say to that would be a No, and that's something I could live with. What I find jarring is the former, where instead of possibly introducing a more fun situation for everyone, I get to sit with an admin in a corner doing the equivalent of a chatbot AI. While this complaint is technically IC issue, I would like you to at least consider a different approach and not go with the apparently tried and tested that I see extremely often.

[Pumpkin0]

Sometimes interactions are not perfect. Sometimes people lose and that's sadly just part of the game - and is actually what rule 10 of the regular rules is.

I was very willing to work with you on this, as I said many times in the ticket ('Hey calm down and we'll work this out') but you weren't really willing to work for a compromise.

While yes, the cyborg could've killed the sec officer - them not doing that isn't breaking the rules. There is nothing against making a 'bad call' if it doesn't break the rules, even if you'd like to define that as a bad call. Would it have helped you if he killed the sec officer instead? Of course. Is it okay that he didn't? Yes.
If you really wanted them to just say 'Hey, I acted way too hastily there, my bad', it's weird that you were very unaccepting of the way the borg said 'Apologies' to you and even tried to save you. I'm not sure what you want anymore - is it the players in question to apologize and work for a different interaction next time, or what?

[Muffindrake]

I wasn't particularly keen on having them follow me around after they had basically removed my existence from that round in this lame way, and wasn't interested in interacting with them after that. From the couple hundred hours on TG, I've learned that people making those terrible calls usually make them en masse and either will not or can not learn from mistakes, so I unkindly tell them to go away.

I've frequently implored admins to educate players that have done very bad no good things that end up biting them in the ass anyway with no way to improve because this game knowledge is not very discoverable in many places, and refuse to talk to those players pretty frequently. Like, I definitely tried to nail into your head what the game situation was, so that you can at least refer this information (that the player should already have), and I honestly did not expect that someone would make that terrible a call given the state of the board, hence my unfriendly response towards them.

They aren't obligated to follow through on any attempts to better them, and this is fine. I'm just somewhat upset that many ahelps tend towards being this sterile byzantine treadmill that won't move forward in a productive way. They're also relatively opaque, which sucks if you're a pragmatist that wants to see some sort of solution or remedy applied.

You can either do that or throw an exploding banana at their player character, at least make it funny.

[Pumpkin0]

It's clear that whatever I say, you're not going to be satisfied.

Tried my best, but I guess at this point we should just leave it to the headmins to decide. Your main issue is that you want me to do something for you to the other player, like blow up a player who wronged you ICly (If that's what you even mean by your last sentence) without much actual reason to.

Sorry this didn't work out, but hopefully in the future you'll be able to appreciate that mistakes happen sometimes and that not every interaction has to be the most perfect interaction ever. Losing's a part of it, and sometimes you get dunked in either grand or ungrand ways.

I'll be making no further comments on this unless something really important needs to be said.

[Muffindrake]

No, not blow them up, just throw something completely harmless their way that does grab their attention. That was a bad example.

[EmpressMaia]

Just gonna provide context from my memory and side of things, as I was the AI (T.W.I.N.K)

After burning down the chapel to kill the chaplain I told my borgs to lay low and not draw suspicion untill we have a good time to kill ra'sep the assistant, which was our second objective.

I contacted you on traitor comms and gave you the go ahead to prepare a plasma flood for me. You later called out on traitor comms for help, I requested a borg help you at atmos. But I don't think I told them you were a syndicate agent which was my bad.

[This is going into peanut adjacent territory admins can delete this portion if they want to]
I think you need to take a break baal, as the round right after this you attempted to murder me for building a new tcomms while you were trying to fix the original coms, you were exceptionally aggressive in dchat . And now learning that you told my cyborg to kill themselves makes me sad
[]

[Muffindrake]

Since I've now learned that Maia was the AI in that shift, feel free to close this thread.

[Timberpoes]

Can do.