[Iain0] Moocow12 Banned because of an admin's fantasies

[MooCow12]

BYOND account: Moocow12

Ban/note type (Check what applies): Ban/Antag

Ban/note length: 1 week
Ban/note reason: Reason: As a round start cultist, decided to ASIMOV borg themselves, thereby putting themselves in conflict with their team antagonistic nature (where laws override antag status). As one of the 3 round start team leaders this is not an okay way to abandon your team. Player did not seem to see the issue with this, but was taken to bus for a quick strawpoll which was resoundly against this move.
This ban is temporary, it will be removed in 7 days. The round ID is 227439.

Time ban was placed: 4/18/24 (I still do not know if the forum standard is day/month/year or month/day/year
Server you were playing on when banned: Terry
Round ID in which ban was placed:227439

I go into a round and it makes me (coroner) cultist, as many of you know I am very put off when I get a role I do not know how to play as antagonist, I do not know how to contribute to my team and instead spend the first half of the round aimlessly doing little other than helping another cultist by showing them where to prospect for plasteel (i get them to spear into arrivals construction zone)

I do not feel as though as I am useful up until later when its safe to establish a cult base on the station...as many of you know when im a cultist I do one of TWO things

1. I spam pylons and use spirit realm on the station after the cult is loud, obviously im restricted from doing this in the early game very easily since cult isnt out yet and I need to do this on the station since thats where you are allowed to spirit realm.

2. I use circuits and other NONantag gear in order to further cult without outing the cult itself.....This wasnt going to happen im a coroner.



After waiting for cult to go loud and feeling useless spraypainting narsie in evac I open up option 3 since option 1 hasnt become available yet.. I want to try to get borged as a cultist to see if i can still spam pylons and do general base construction as an asimov borg since from my experience cultists tend to dish out very little harm compared to the crew and one of the things that cult suffers with most is needing pylons and their base/summon location getting very harmfully shitmos'd


I have openly talked about trying this once before on the discord server, this was a pre-meditated act that I genuinely believed would be net positive for my team, there are things in this game that harm both the cult and the crew and cult always wins on an even playing field due to all of the tools they have at their disposal.

So thats what I do i get borged at robotics and the sheet grabber that I obtained earlier to save the runed metal that I had spawned with + the runed metal that I had made, apparently i did not keep the ability to craft that into pylons but what i did keep was the ability for it to be used as my discretion and thats what I ended up doing towards the end of the round I told a cultist to use it to make pylons (it closes up bleeding wounds and slows down atmos changes and heals.

I was also correct in that i was more useful as an engie borg to cult than a coroner because the station was bombed and the cult was suffering from atmos.

What I did not predict was an admin breathing down my neck with how i should play the game and constantly berating me with their theoretical fantasies of how me being borged could go wrong "law 2 kill non human cult, law 1 stop narsie summon"


Notice that my note does not contain any consequences of my actions.

As an admin you do not get to predict potential drawbacks and repercussions. This is the same as if someone max capped an antagonist on the shuttle and somehow, miraculously, everyone on the shuttle was safe and no collateral damage was done and the admin bans you anyway because they think it could have happened differently and you gambled.

And then the note would be that I "maxcapped shuttle"



No, you do not get to administrate based on your own fantasies, the end result was the cult was getting wiped by shitmos and i was too busy being stunlocked by having to reply to your outbursts about what could go wrong with me changing to an engie borg which is legitimately what the cult just so happened to have needed this round otherwise I would have died useless and alone as a lizard and the runed metal would have been lost with me. I may have left my team but i was damn well not a net negative to it by leaving it and if I had more time I would have been able to do more to fix atmos and been a net positive.

But you do not get to pretend I harmed my team nor do you get to pretend I abandoned it, this decision was made with the goal of furthering my team from an angle that I would be much better at.


And even if I am to engage in your fantasies...borgs are dogshit at fighting cult to where the likely outcome would be i would be reconverted into an artificer which is 1000x better than being a fucking coroner lizard.

[iain0]

Don't really know what to tell you, you willingly converted yourself to follow a law set that overrules and is inherently against your antagonistic role (summoning nar'sie is human harm, as are a great many things cultists get up to). The conflict of interest here seems very apparent to me and the other admins I briefly discussed this with. Consequences are hard to predict since I don't know what your contribution would be, however, your action still undermines your team by placing you in conflict with it, and that much is not permitted at least. Obvious issues will be any conflict involving cultists as you must side with the humans, even if that means siding against the cultists. Many such issues like this are pretty easy to expect, and you had no idea how things were going to turn out when you made this choice either.

Team antagonists can do as they wish as per lone antagonists, but their actions should neither harm their teams efforts, nor intentionally harm it through inaction.

Your choices reduce your ability (as one of the 3 key round start cultists), place you in direct opposition to your former goals, and inaction would even be preferable to that.

I may have left my team but i was damn well not a net negative to it by leaving it

You don't get to leave a team antag of your own free will, so even in your own word I believe you conflict with rule 4's intentions.

Don't see any reason to change anything here all you've done is posit that you could be useful in indirect ways that any non cultist could without any real consideration of carrying cult. If you don't want to be a round start cultist, don't have it turned on.

On top of this as a 2300+ hour player I expect you to know better than to just undermine the team like this without consideration ; you're an experienced veteran, knowing that what you're doing /might/ be complicated should elicit you to adminhelp your idea before doing it, or ask to pass on the role if you dont want to play it. I can ghost you and replace you (possibly, honestly round start ghostings are very rough and really you should turn off cultist or deal with the consequences of leaving it enabled when you roll it, you don't get to opt out after that point).

But other than an alarming obsession with the word "fantasies" I'm not really picking up much from your appeal. If you're a useless cultist the adminhelp/antag choices are open to you. Turn it off. Until then, if you roll it, play it. Or adminhelp (and play it until you get a response).

[Vekter]

Time ban was placed: 4/18/24 (I still do not know if the forum standard is day/month/year or month/day/year

The servers are based in the US, it is month/day/year.

[MooCow12]

Don't really know what to tell you, you willingly converted yourself to follow a law set that overrules and is inherently against your antagonistic role (summoning nar'sie is human harm, as are a great many things cultists get up to). The conflict of interest here seems very apparent to me and the other admins I briefly discussed this with.

Asimov laws do not directly conflict with cult when

1. Cult literally fucks silicons in which id probably end up as an artificer (yay)

2. Asimov laws help everyone including cult and cult is often only stopped by things that silicons not only excel at fixing but also will pursue those tasks given their laws.

This round was a great example of that, the station was bombed and my cultists died to that atmos.

[iain0]

Not sure how (1) is advocating you borging yourself then ; you now seem to imply its pointless and you'll guaranteed become an artificer, so why not just stay as a cultist in the first place and not go through the hoops and deprive your team in the mean time (also cultist is more useful than artificer).

2) Also clearly directly opposes cult.

As for the round being a great example ; your (original) team lost, you becoming a borg certainly didn't turn it around so it's not really creating any conclusions.


Regardless, the big issue remains that ASIMOV clearly opposes cult and you must prevent the summon, conversions and combats.

Also I like YYYY-MM-DD as a date format, it's the only one that isn't typically ambiguous.

[iain0]

Apparently getting borged removed your cult status, which is a nice coding answer to "how to stop a borg outing the entire cult visually with funky laws" metagame I guess. I wasn't aware of this at the time however and I don't think you were so I didn't factor that in to anything.

There's been some discussion around my actions taken and my references to the 2300 hours so I'm gonna just clarify my take here.

Firstly hours are mostly a measure for leniency, rather than punishment, in my book ; that is 50 hour players might make very basic mistakes and need to be told to read the rules, 250 hour players should have basics like escalation but might, idk, crowbar an abandoned crate, 500+ should have most of this all experienced and past a thousand you can expect players know most but the subtler nuances.

So as a 2300 hour player I expect you to have a pretty firm grasp of our rules, and thus these two key issues right from the start should be things you're aware of
1) that you're 1 of 3 round start cultists, literally 33% or 50% of the team depending how you care to do the maths, and that team roles come with responsibility ; you don't get to "leave the team" at any time, but as a round start team antag the whole thing rests on your (collectively) shoulders, opting out is clearly not an option here.
2) that you're aware that asimov rules will take precedence, illustrated by your arguments that you can contribute under those laws by e.g. repairing atmospherics and so on ; but these laws are inherently in conflict with your objectives and that seems like it should also be an obvious problem with your experience.

As such thats two warning lights that should prompt you to at least ahelp to get sign off on what is a dubious idea ; admittedly i'd have said "what? no" probably, maybe with some explanation about the laws just in case, but you just went ahead, didn't take my pre-debraining bwoink as a hint that maybe this /was/ a bad idea and let everything go through anyway, there were multiple warning signs that this might not be a good idea (above) and multiple opportunities and options you could have taken to avoid or mitigate or get approval for this idea, and you just pressed on through regardless. Ultimately you don't seem to see issue with this action in general, and I guess thats the crux of the ticket, "can you be an asimov cultist" (answer no: borging removes your status, but if that hypothetically weren't the case, since thats the knowledge under which this was placed, would it even then be possible or just obviously conflicted), and I'm not sure I'll be able to convince you otherwise.

[MooCow12]

As a 2300 hour player doesnt mean anything.


At the end of the day nobody here knew what happens when a cultist gets borged which never happened yet apparently, I wanted to see if i could make pylons as an engie borg I had reason to believe I could since you have the sheet holder as an engie borg and pylons are crafted in hand, and asimov borgs have every reason to want to build them, so far admins that have been telling me its wrong have argued theoretical implications of being changed from a cultist to an asimov borg and nothing that actually occurred during this round because this event NEVER HAPPENS, I took a step into the unknown to try to help my team from an unlikely angle but an angle im comfortable with.



I think its harsh to be this adamant against someone who is touching new ground , where fact and fiction are yet to be solidified and instead its just what "likely will" and not "what has happened before"



Infact you even threatened to delete me from the round because of your theoretical implications that I would help my team too much or do things that I shouldnt be doing as an asimov borg or my existence as that borg was AN ABOMINATION


When the goal from the start was to behave normally as an asimov borg because normal asimov borgs are just as advantageous to cult as they are to regular crew if not more.


"oh noo youre gonna get law 2'd to kill nonhuman cultists" okay ban every person that turns into an asimov borg to begin with since they will likely harm non antag nonhumans.


The act of getting borged as round start non antag crew should be banned then because you can end up getting law 2'd to hurt nonhumans.


We opened this can of beans lets see how deep the can goes.

[MooCow12]

I just realized this was a ban appeal and not a policy thread i actually want to be permabanned from rev and cult so i dont have to play coroner again. Im fine with round start suiciding to avoid that role as other antagonists.


But i do stand by the fact that swapping to an asimov engie borg was beneficial for my team.

[iain0]

Darn it, I wrote up a whole reply while you posted that haha

Regardless of what happens here I'm gonna remove abductor from the role bans ; I left nukie out of the team antag bans because I felt you were unlikely to roll this and then want to "opt out" of the team, this logic also applies to abductor and that leaves revs/bb/cult as situations where you're more likely to be a reluctant participant.

I was also prepared to discuss reducing it from a week to 3 days, having reflected on it this hits harder than e.g. a week traitor ban where you might miss 1 roll because of such a ban (role bans are kinda weak relative to server bans), but being banned from conversion antags will also (try to) ghost you when you get converted, which makes this ban more impactful on your rounds than I intended.

That said, just to be entirely sure and maybe to give you chance to have reconsidered:

1) You're withdrawing this appeal?

2) You want to be rev and cult perma banned? - be fully aware of the ghosting of you if you get converted, so this has wider implications than just 'wont round start these roles' (which you can disable yourself in your antag prefs anyway)? Note this also wont stop you rolling coroner - I can role ban you from that job too if you wish but i can't guarantee the code wont force you into that role in a tight spot (NecromancerAnne has touched on how the game will 'fall back' on other options in order to meet its obligations, with its primary intent being ensuring everyone gets fair antag chances and then forcing the game to fit the results).

I can't agree on getting borged being beneficial (nor really see that in this round), but ultimately we don't have to agree on this, I will however ask you not to do this again (this has no impact on active admins freedoms ofc, any online admin can rule 0 their heart out if it seems like a fun idea, but I wouldn't expect this to generally be the case) (and if any policy does result that would also override this)


Please confirm how you'd like to proceed from here.

[MooCow12]

Permaban from northstar and birdshot maps, along with permaban from cult & rev & abductor because the gameplay loop for abductor is to just watch a bar fill up.

Im just gonna stop enabling round start joining and instead join 0.1 seconds into rounds it would avoid the wrong job issue entirely.


I also find wizard rounds mind numbingly boring and would like to be permabanned from wizard in the off chance an admin decides to turn everyone into one so i can go do something else.

And sentient disease because its ghost role bait.


Ive been considering a cult / rev ban for awhile anyway

(but thats because of other reasons like getting converted and then put in a position by the people that converted me where I just die which isnt fun)

I still think you should be able to assist cult in other ways but the point doesnt really matter when playing as the antag isnt fun to begin with when you actually use cult abilities, its not fun to play as a 2000 hour player and just fuck over half the server with abilities that you get for free and i thought it would be better to play from a perspective that gave other players more agency but clearly this isnt the type of game that isnt meant for that.

[iain0]

Okay, I'll probably work through this tomorrow and give you another day to think on it.

In my longer post (that I abandoned) I did go over a lot of details but also the ban and the intentions there ; in this round you spend 15-20 minutes doing little but trying to get borged and even if you think it might be possible to do so productively (which we now know isn't going to work out since it deantags you, but lets say you didn't know the details on how it would play out) this isn't the best way to go about it with your teams interests first, and you should know that matters by this point in your play time, enough so you should be really asking before just going ahead with such things.

Had you, for example, waited until cult gathered enough mass, gotten converted to borg by a cultist with cult serving laws, it'd probably just end up in a note, if I'd even noticed, i.e. you'd made it suitably low key and put the cults needs ahead of your experiment, then tried it when things were more stable (and yes, probably wasn't going to be how this round worked out but who knows) then this would have been an evident "best effort" approach to trying this out. But thats not how the round played out.

Unless I hear otherwise I'll close this out with the following actions:
1) Accepting the withdrawl of the appeal
2) Reduction of the ban to 3 days, and removal of abductors from the ban (see previous post for reasoning behind this)
3) Voluntary permaban from cult, revs, abductors, wizard and sentient disease which any admin may lift upon appeal

We don't have map bans so nothing I can do there but there's no "forced into" playing a map so you can moderate your own round joins there.



I will also say, since it came up here and in peanut, the way the round start logic works is just a piece of openly reviewable and modifiable code. I doubt it will be 'trivial' to modify it since it rolls antags first and jobs later but it may be possible to code an option to return to lobby rather than random job when job is unavailable AND antag. The majority of the work probably goes into reallocating that antag afterwards, but its not something code can't solve (I have a little helper lua script I use when reallocating ahelp surrendered antags which does a chunk of that work).

(I pondered 'force you into your job choice as antag' but thats actually kinda meh and could be played into to improve your odds of taking a job preferentially ; everything in this system is so independently random to avoid metagaming and pushing preferential outcomes)

[MooCow12]

Ya i dont think im gonna change my decision i realized i was in a similar situation a week ago but reversed funnily enough and the end result was someone else decided to make what i planned on being a week or so permanent so this is fitting now that i know what its like on the other side.

[iain0]

Alright, all done as discussed with the exception of the removal of abductors from the ban I placed, which having been reduced to 3 days has now lapsed anyway so it doesn't functionally matter.

Thanks

Closing this out as a withdrawn appeal.

[iain0]

(Edit : I cleared up the abductor ban stuff, it's now marked unbanned with the note removing the reference and the specific ban detail for that ban updated to include I chose to revoke it entirely)