Abductors Dos and Don'ts

[Chadley]

Opening this for clarification after a round where an abductor team went off fighting malf borgs.


What can and can't the abductors fight? Should they even end up fighting in the first place unless they just to hold out long enough for extraction?

Can abductors round remove conversion antags that pose a risk to them? (including malf-borgs and their MMIs)

Where is the line in the sand for what a 'soft antag' can do?

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Assuming you mean Sybil shift 204691, I agree with their decision to fight the malf AI and borgs. They had an objective to accomplish (which they failed) to experiment on 6 humans. You can't experiment on 6 humans if they all die to the malf AI who went delta and blew them all up.

The much bigger issue I took was with them stunning a guy in arrivals moment after he got off the arrivals shuttle. They were arrivals camping shitters.

[BeeSting12]

It depends on their reasoning. Their role shouldn't be used as an excuse to murderbone, but it's well within their objectives to prevent a malf AI from exploding all of their potential test subject, or prevent an eldritch god from converting their test subjects to constructs. As antags they're exempt from rule 1 to that extent, but as team antags they're required to follow the objective.

[MooCow12]

I only had an issue with it when it turned to taking brains out of mmis and hiding the brain away to prevent the player who used to be a borg from ever getting put back into a body or into a borg shell or circuit thingy ever again.

It felt closer to a personal round removal of someone who had became non antag and lost all connections with the conversion antag in question (malf ai)



So another do or dont is, can abductors round remove someone who is no longer affiliated with a directly opposing antag but has potential to be either reconverted or not?

[SkeletalElite]

Abductors are limited in the scope of what they are permitted to do as antags under rule 4, but I think the other part of rule 4, you can do whatever you want to antags, applies in full.

[Googles_Hands]

Unless their experimentation is under threat of being halted, they should not involve themselves with the crew. They can influence them via certain organs or the command gland for a certain agenda. But they shouldn't step into direct conflict. Their OP gear should limit them to self defence.

[Misdoubtful]

Abductors, obsessed, families, and fugitives shouldn't be killing indiscriminately on LRP servers. When the wiki is editable again, we will be formalizing the informal ruling on the abductor wiki page:

Abductors are currently not considered to be "full-blown" antags. You can mess with the crew in many ways and create havoc, but are not allowed to just grab your baton and murderbone, or do things like sabotage the Supermatter crystal.

NamelessFairy: Yes
RaveRadbury: Yes
Dragomagol: Yes

search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... &start=100

Firstly, it is important to note: Abductors are not considered to be "full-blown" antags. You can troll the crew in many ways, create deadly havoc such as a zombie outbreak, but are not allowed to just grab your baton and murderbone, or do things like set the release point to the Supermatter crystal. Dont brainwash other people to do murderboning for you either. Ahelp beforehand if unsure. - Updated December 2022

The best way to avoid any complications is to simply warp in, abduct a crewmember, experiment on them, and place them back as quickly as possible as if nothing ever happened. This is your main goal, after all.

Basically if your intention starts looking like you are just there to fight, instead of cause trouble and ensure that you can continue experimenting, you might want to be reconsidering your stance on things.

If what they are doing isn't furthering their main goal of experimentation and I can in no way see where something would be justified as something that could in some possible way be furthering that goal, I'll club them to death with a box of biscuits.

[Timberpoes]

Here's a little subset of times Abductors have been noted/banned for their play to spice up discussion:

Killed a player they abducted (as abductors), claimed the other player was SSD and thus they didn't get their points, however other players logs fail to show any actions with a [DC] ckey which would normally indicate disconnection ; regardless this does not authorise you to break the rules of your antag, in future ahelp if you have an issue.

As abductor, returned a player into an airless room where scrubbers were on siphon, believe this to be a mistake but have asked the player to give a cursory inspection of return areas for similar issues in future.

Banned from the server for 3 days - Traded tot to abductor (which I granted due to lower pop and less round impact), proceeded to give murderbone and singulo-destroy-station objectives to the abductees, for "new year cheer". You should have cleared this with me first, and you know better.

Banned from the server for 1440 minutes - (MRP) As an abductor agent, beat a cuffed patient into critical when they were unable to buckle them. Under other circumstances where the patient was able to fight back, this would've been fine. However, beating them into critical when you had all the time to explore other options is a no-go. Normally, this would be a note - however, you were extremely argumentive in ahelps and your note/ban history is abysmal. Please take a day break to calm down.

As Abductor, critted a crewmember in abductor ship out of frustration that AI was hunting them, then released them back to station, where they suffocated to death. Avoid injuring the crew as abductor without a good cause.

[Note placed 2022-06-10 - This was an LRP note by Mothblocks as a headmin during the Moth/Melb/Poes term]

Killed someone as an abductor unprovoked to take their ID. Abductors are side antagonists and should avoid jumping to lethal combat without escalation.

During Round 180186, as an Abductor Scientist, mass mind controlled the escape shuttle crew to mass murder each other. Was not aware that Abductors were not covered under Rule 4/full antagonists. Informed Abductors are not full antags and to not do it again.

This represents basically all incidents in the past year of people noted or banned for abductor play that I can find. The R180186 note was 2022-03-19 and all other notes are more recent than that.

[datorangebottle]

Here's a little subset of times Abductors have been noted/banned for their play to spice up discussion:

This represents basically all incidents in the past year of people noted or banned for abductor play that I can find.

It looks like the playerbase struggles in general with the idea of abductors not being able to just grief. Then again, seven notes/bans in a year isn't so bad given when compared to other issues.
Beating the shit out of people for emotionally related reasons shouldn't be a thing that's allowed. Whatever violence the abductors inflict, should be justified by their mission, but should also not exceed it. As an example for that last point: killing a potential test subject to take their ID is counter to the mission when you have tools that can almost instantly break open doors.

[Misdoubtful]

We have a consensus that abductors purpose is not to hot drop in and start fighting without incredibly good cause and reason. Something must directly threaten them and their ability to escape back to their ship. That cause and reason must also involve further their objectives of abduction and experimentation directly.

For example, doing things like aiming to kill a malf ai, nuclear operatives, or doing anything that would majorly change the game state would be out of bounds for abductors.

In short abductors are as much observers as they are insertors of chaos and confusion.

To further clarify please see an example of the in game text that shows for those just becoming abductors:

Abductor agent:

You are the Abductor Agent.
With the help of your teammate, kidnap and experiment on station crew members!
Use your stealth technology and equipment to incapacitate humans for your scientist to retrieve.
Your current objectives:
Objective #1: Experiment on 6 humans.

Abductor Sci:
You are the Abductor Scientist.
With the help of your teammate, kidnap and experiment on station crew members!
Use your experimental console and surgical equipment to monitor your agent and experiment upon abducted humans.
Your current objectives:
Objective #1: Experiment on 6 humans.

Solo:
You are the Abductor Solo.
With the help of your teammate, kidnap and experiment on station crew members!
Use your experimental console and surgical equipment to monitor your agent and experiment upon abducted humans.
Your current objectives:
Objective #1: Experiment on 6 humans