/tg/Station 13

The creation of this thread was inspired(? I don't really know the correct term to use here) by this ban appeal (https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23287) and some responses that I've gotten from headmins over Discord.

Currently, if a non-antag virologist releases a virus that does nothing but make cosmetic changes (turns people black/white, gives them beards, makes them bald, etc.) and spread (and block other diseases with low transmission stats from infecting its hosts, I suppose), they can get banned for doing so. This, to me, is absurd. Non-antag botanists are allowed to turn 3/4 of the crew into golems (or another race; notably, androids are both black and hairless, which is what the hosts of the virus mentioned in that ban appeal became) (note that I am personally fine with this and would in fact become outraged if this were to become a bannable offense; this is merely presented here as an example of something that we do currently allow non-antags to do), yet non-antag virologists can be banned for altering the appearances of other crewmembers (and protecting them from miasma diseases)?

I propose that we should allow non-antag virologists to release appearance-altering (and maybe even slightly more negative viruses, like hallucination-inducing and voice-changing ones) viruses without being banned, but also make the act of releasing such a virus make you valid in the eyes of the crew (in other words, you can be lynched, tortured, killed, stripped of your rank, banished, etc. for releasing a baldness virus and aren't allowed to whine to an admin about it).

lynching the viro for this is a time-honored IC tradition that admins need to stay away from

Remember the ligger geneticist who would run around every round turning everyone else into liggers, something that actually has gameplay ramifications
is this a viro-exclusive rule or what

EDIT:
some precedent

Arianya wrote:While virologists are given some leniency to do things like blackening viruses, Rogue decided (and I agree) that a virus that caused 8,500 cough messages (I sampled some other rounds and the absolute highest I could find was in the 250 range) and was stunning people besides goes beyond that remit.

Releasing something stupid then not complaining when you get lynched is the way I always played viro. At my most common doing it, I was releasing one "make you black" virus for every 9 healing viruses (and keeping track). I still eventually got a warning for it.

I can't tell if they responded to the admin or just suicided and got the maximum assume bad intent ban length.

Those not helpful but kinda shitty viruses if you can't release them as a non antag have almost no use in the game since they are barely worth doing as an antag as they just get you valided and most of the stats are lame. Not all but most.

I read that thread and had so many fucking peanuts about that dumb as fuck ban.

So let's do it on this thread:

ARE YALL FUCKING SERIOUS?

How can it even be POSSIBLY debated that this is bannable? Why? For what possible fucking reason?

Oh noooo, viro released the world's mildest meme virus. Better fucking ban him. Virologists are only supposed to release a very small amount of healing viruses and never have fun ever. Want to make people grow beards? Better be a traitor fam.

Are we even seriously debating this? What's next? Ban chemists for making meth? Ban botanics for growing weed?

This is the stupidest ban I have seen to date and I hope to fuck it isn't upheld. It basically castrates virology.

hugbox admins making bad bans, as always
the viro being valid to the crew is all that's needed
laugh at him if he ahelps if you need to fulfill your adminpm quota

I'm gonna start slipping and shaving people bald every round until I hit an admin and make it bannable

You guys should probably keep this thread on policy issues instead of just using it as a peanut post gallery for a ban appeal. Releasing a virus that functions only to grief the crew is kind of shitty and could come under rule 1 if the virus was shitty enough. I have to agree with PK-Penguin though, the traditional response is for the crew to IC lynch the virologist.

PKPenguin321 wrote:lynching the viro for this is a time-honored IC tradition that admins need to stay away from

This, so long as its not done in excess. Then it becomes an issue.

Malkraz wrote:Remember the ligger geneticist who would run around every round turning everyone else into liggers, something that actually has gameplay ramifications
is this a viro-exclusive rule or what

EDIT:
some precedent

Arianya wrote:While virologists are given some leniency to do things like blackening viruses, Rogue decided (and I agree) that a virus that caused 8,500 cough messages (I sampled some other rounds and the absolute highest I could find was in the 250 range) and was stunning people besides goes beyond that remit.

actually we ban people if they mass change peoples races.

Dax Dupont wrote:

Malkraz wrote:Remember the ligger geneticist who would run around every round turning everyone else into liggers, something that actually has gameplay ramifications
is this a viro-exclusive rule or what

EDIT:
some precedent

Arianya wrote:While virologists are given some leniency to do things like blackening viruses, Rogue decided (and I agree) that a virus that caused 8,500 cough messages (I sampled some other rounds and the absolute highest I could find was in the 250 range) and was stunning people besides goes beyond that remit.

actually we ban people if they mass change peoples races.

some of us do on their own volition, like that one admin who really hates black people and bans for making more of them, but no we don't as a general rule

Uh what, which admin does that

me

The server defends the right of people calling me nigger but people get banned for actually changing skin-color

Seems like a weird double-standard

If you change a race into something that isn't directly harmful (like shadowling) it shouldn't be bannable either. It should make you lynchable of course though.

Can we please not make it so the admins babysit the servers? If something can be, and is, solved IC just fucking let it be solved IC. This isn't paradise.

Per my own post cited as precedent in here, yes virologists have had leeway in the past to do meme viruses so long as they're non-harmful and not *excessively* griefy in some other way - the cited precedent is a good one, in that it dealt 0 actual damage but was so utterly annoying for all involved that it went beyond "hehe funny prank" and into "you're a fucking prat".

Note that mass race change can fall under this for various reasons - stripping people of human status is inherently harmful and while the crew may just lynch you don't be shocked if you get a bwoink if you're being excessively shit with your virus - ultimately you're a non-antagonist, and mass station grief is generally frowned upon.

In the case this policy thread is based off of, the "mass race change" was being turned into a bald black guy. I'm pretty sure the thread was more specifically for discussing pure cosmetic changes but it probably should've been waited on until the ban was resolved.

Arianya wrote:The cited precedent is a good one, in that it dealt 0 actual damage but was so utterly annoying for all involved that it went beyond "hehe funny prank" and into "you're a fucking prat".

Now that I've actually responded to that appeal, I would like to bring up the matter of the poisonous cures and how these viruses potentially can do damage to people now because of the cures they need. In the past, maybe. Now? No, modafinil overdose can kill you and anacea will leave you full of toxin damage which isn't going away until it has metabolized out so you can start using charcoal.

We have treated anything that you do having to be resolved causing damage or potentially killing someone as being solely your responsibility. It isn't the chemists fixing the virus. It's the fact you released the virus in the first place.

If your 'prank' virus can't be kept under the dangerous cure threshold (good luck they're all stat buffers), it might be time to stop making them because they are now going to cause harm to the crew to fix it. Neither can you argue 'just don't cure it'. Forced cosmetic changes that are dangerous to fix isn't the same as forced cosmetic changes that are just annoying to fix.

If anything this should prompt a new ruling or precedent that if you ARE going to release a virus like that, it has to have a virus that isn't dangerous. Resistance 9 or lower, since aranesp falls into this category and that appears at resistance 10.

Anyway this thread is really silly, I banned him for his historical behavior, not for releasing a cosmetic altering virus. I didn't come to the realization that 'hey these hurt people now' until later when I actually sat down and looked at the virus changes. Previous precedents weren't being ignored but it is probably time to have a re-evaluation at them as I have pointed out.

If this becomes a new admin ruling it should be reflected somewhere. The vast majority of players are going to assume that cosmetic meme viruses are kosher to release and only will have IC consequences.

I won't ban for it as long as you don't do it every round.

Really though this reads like a "viro sucks so much the only way to have fun after making the same healing disease for the 500th time is to grief the crew then fix your own mess before you get lynched"

So we won't ban greyshirts breaking into every possible door they can find, stealing anything they can get their hands on, and kill-baiting everyone in sight with disarm spam(read: negatively affecting the round as a non-antag), but we are going to ban virologists for changing people's skin tone?(read: doing fucking nothing to the round, antag or not)

Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? I don't even care if this specific example was tied to a guy with a bad history; this sets a very, very stupid precedent that could easily be followed.

NecromancerAnne wrote:

Arianya wrote:The cited precedent is a good one, in that it dealt 0 actual damage but was so utterly annoying for all involved that it went beyond "hehe funny prank" and into "you're a fucking prat".

Now that I've actually responded to that appeal, I would like to bring up the matter of the poisonous cures and how these viruses potentially can do damage to people now because of the cures they need. In the past, maybe. Now? No, modafinil overdose can kill you and anacea will leave you full of toxin damage which isn't going away until it has metabolized out so you can start using charcoal.

We have treated anything that you do having to be resolved causing damage or potentially killing someone as being solely your responsibility. It isn't the chemists fixing the virus. It's the fact you released the virus in the first place.

If your 'prank' virus can't be kept under the dangerous cure threshold (good luck they're all stat buffers), it might be time to stop making them because they are now going to cause harm to the crew to fix it. Neither can you argue 'just don't cure it'. Forced cosmetic changes that are dangerous to fix isn't the same as forced cosmetic changes that are just annoying to fix.

If anything this should prompt a new ruling or precedent that if you ARE going to release a virus like that, it has to have a virus that isn't dangerous. Resistance 9 or lower, since aranesp falls into this category and that appears at resistance 10.

Anyway this thread is really silly, I banned him for his historical behavior, not for releasing a cosmetic altering virus. I didn't come to the realization that 'hey these hurt people now' until later when I actually sat down and looked at the virus changes. Previous precedents weren't being ignored but it is probably time to have a re-evaluation at them as I have pointed out.

are you an ex paradise admin?

NecromancerAnne wrote:

Arianya wrote:The cited precedent is a good one, in that it dealt 0 actual damage but was so utterly annoying for all involved that it went beyond "hehe funny prank" and into "you're a fucking prat".

Now that I've actually responded to that appeal, I would like to bring up the matter of the poisonous cures and how these viruses potentially can do damage to people now because of the cures they need. In the past, maybe. Now? No, modafinil overdose can kill you and anacea will leave you full of toxin damage which isn't going away until it has metabolized out so you can start using charcoal.

We have treated anything that you do having to be resolved causing damage or potentially killing someone as being solely your responsibility. It isn't the chemists fixing the virus. It's the fact you released the virus in the first place.

If your 'prank' virus can't be kept under the dangerous cure threshold (good luck they're all stat buffers), it might be time to stop making them because they are now going to cause harm to the crew to fix it. Neither can you argue 'just don't cure it'. Forced cosmetic changes that are dangerous to fix isn't the same as forced cosmetic changes that are just annoying to fix.

If anything this should prompt a new ruling or precedent that if you ARE going to release a virus like that, it has to have a virus that isn't dangerous. Resistance 9 or lower, since aranesp falls into this category and that appears at resistance 10.

Anyway this thread is really silly, I banned him for his historical behavior, not for releasing a cosmetic altering virus. I didn't come to the realization that 'hey these hurt people now' until later when I actually sat down and looked at the virus changes. Previous precedents weren't being ignored but it is probably time to have a re-evaluation at them as I have pointed out.

but modafanil isn't a harmful cure unless youre stupid. If you don't take too much its impossible to OD it.

Also because high resilience just decreases the per tick cure chance, it doesn't really matter with chems like anacea and modafanil because they both have low metabolism rates which mean you only need a small amount to cure it.

Edit: For example, 5 units of Anacea will only deal 23 toxin damage, but because of its low metabolism rate is guaranteed to cure the virus because of how many ticks it remains in the body for. And 5 units is still way more than you need.

"Player is banned because curing a disease whose effects won't even be reversed upon curing it might be harmful" is a real bad precedent.

Either we ban every instance of players greytiding or the equivalent or we ban non of it. Arbitrarily and selectively banning some behaviours (sometimes) and not banning others (sometimes!) is just awful from a player rules consistency.

Nobody's forcefeeding you these "harmful cures".

But whether or not the cure is "harmful" doesn't matter, as apparently, even releasing a cosmetic effect-only (baldness+disfigurement+voice change (WITHOUT the language-scrambling threshold being met)) virus with a cure of leporazine (as a non-antag) will get you bwoinked and noted (source: I just received such a note).

Unironically the best solution here is to check adminwho and understand the admins personality. If they can think up a reason to ban you there are multiple rules that allow them to do so with any justification.

It's really just a symptom of a bigger issue with our anti rule lawyer rules.

Shadowflame909 wrote:Unironically the best solution here is to check adminwho and understand the admins personality. If they can think up a reason to ban you there are multiple rules that allow them to do so with any justification.

It's really just a symptom of a bigger issue with our anti rule lawyer rules.

what's mine?

NecromancerAnne wrote:

Arianya wrote:The cited precedent is a good one, in that it dealt 0 actual damage but was so utterly annoying for all involved that it went beyond "hehe funny prank" and into "you're a fucking prat".

Now that I've actually responded to that appeal, I would like to bring up the matter of the poisonous cures and how these viruses potentially can do damage to people now because of the cures they need. In the past, maybe. Now? No, modafinil overdose can kill you and anacea will leave you full of toxin damage which isn't going away until it has metabolized out so you can start using charcoal.

We have treated anything that you do having to be resolved causing damage or potentially killing someone as being solely your responsibility. It isn't the chemists fixing the virus. It's the fact you released the virus in the first place.

This is misleading, at the appropriate doses, modafinil is not at all harmful and anacea wont cause more than like 5 toxin damage(It takes anacea 33 cycles: over a whole minute to cause 5 toxin damage, curing a disease won't take nearly as long.)

There is actually precedent for getting banned for releasing a helpful virus(high resistance protects you from bad viruses) even if the cure(modafinil) is completely harmless when administered at cure doses.

We like to remind players that it is okay to die, but apparently getting your sprite slightly altered is completely unacceptable and should get "offending" party banned?

This is over-moderation plain and simple, especially since there is an easily available IC remedy.

SkeletalElite wrote: Edit: For example, 5 units of Anacea will only deal 23 toxin damage, but because of its low metabolism rate is guaranteed to cure the virus because of how many ticks it remains in the body for. And 5 units is still way more than you need.

5 units of anacea will actually only deal ‭9.825‬ toxin damage as the last 3 units will get purged by the liver.

3.5u anacea will remain in the body for like 18 cycles and only cause 2.8 toxin damage, and even that is probably excessive in most cases.

for what it's worth, we don't have revitiligo anymore, and part of the reason I replaced it was because of situations like this; it essentially existed as ban bait, and instead of banning everyone for taking it why not just remove the bait

bandit wrote:for what it's worth, we don't have revitiligo anymore, and part of the reason I replaced it was because of situations like this; it essentially existed as ban bait, and instead of banning everyone for taking it why not just remove the bait

extremely powerful goof vibes in this post ty bandit

bandit wrote:for what it's worth, we don't have revitiligo anymore, and part of the reason I replaced it was because of situations like this; it essentially existed as ban bait, and instead of banning everyone for taking it why not just remove the bait

The new virus symptoms are even more annoying and bannable.

How is changing colours because of colourful reagent in your system somehow worse than the overtired mess that was black/bald virus? Since people are scoffing crayons for camo index right now it's probably actually immensely beneficial. And not rooted in edgy humor to boot.

Seems like much like a lot of things "in excess = bad".

NecromancerAnne wrote:How is changing colours because of colourful reagent in your system somehow worse than the overtired mess that was black/bald virus? Since people are scoffing crayons for camo index right now it's probably actually immensely beneficial. And not rooted in edgy humor to boot.

Being black doesn't give you eye cancer like the mob tint overlay and making people appear as unknown is way more griefy than making people white.

And a feature being rooted in humour and occasionally creating humorous moments is not a downside, despite what certain admins seem to think.

edgy humor = bad is probably the most banbot sentiment existing in tg currently

Kryson wrote: Being black doesn't give you eye cancer like the mob tint overlay and making people appear as unknown is way more griefy than making people white.

And a feature being rooted in humour and occasionally creating humorous moments is not a downside, despite what certain admins seem to think.

It was more common for someone to make a disease to turn everyone black. There were rare moments when someone would actually turn everyone albino though, but viruses that turn people white were less common than black viruses.

Also that final statement depends on the type of humor. Some people can laugh at anything. Some people can only laugh at jokes that aren't edgy. A few people can only laugh at jokes so fucking boring that they aren't even jokes. We all know that most of the humor from the virus symptom was either saying a word or saying OH GOD OH FUCK IM BLACK.

Ayy Lemoh wrote:

Kryson wrote: Being black doesn't give you eye cancer like the mob tint overlay and making people appear as unknown is way more griefy than making people white.

And a feature being rooted in humour and occasionally creating humorous moments is not a downside, despite what certain admins seem to think.

It was more common for someone to make a disease to turn everyone black. There were rare moments when someone would actually turn everyone albino though, but viruses that turn people white were less common than black viruses.

Also that final statement depends on the type of humor. Some people can laugh at anything. Some people can only laugh at jokes that aren't edgy. A few people can only laugh at jokes so fucking boring that they aren't even jokes. We all know that most of the humor from the virus symptom was either saying a word or saying OH GOD OH FUCK IM BLACK.

You could RP it in a few different ways:

Going full minstrel show and yelling" bix nood mufugga", this can of course become very tired because it is very low effort.

You could RP it as a more serious "black like me" scenario.

Or somewhere in between, it call this the soul man.

I enjoyed running to the kitchen after being turned white and demanding a slice of bread with lots of mayo on it and threatening the chef with a negative space-yelp review if he didn't comply.

Polyvitiligo doesn't produce any funny or interesting moments at all, it just makes your sprite an eyesore.

Are/should the non-antag virus restrictions (be) relaxed for mimes and/or clowns who somehow get their hands on some virology equipment?

ATHATH wrote:Are/should the non-antag virus restrictions (be) relaxed for mimes and/or clowns who somehow get their hands on some virology equipment?

I don't think a mime/clown gets their hands on that equipment often enough for it to be problematic. If you're making shitty viruses for no reason other than them being shitty every round there's a problem. Every once in a while is okay.