/tg/Station 13

There's never been a concrete idea on selling explosives (bombs and grenades). While it's definitely wacky hijinks for antags, non-antags who sell them have gotten in trouble for it if the bombs explode and take out some people.

Should bomb selling for no reason be bannable?

bad things happening is part of the space man experience, as long as someone isnt overdoing their disruptive gimmick it should stay. note and warn someone if they do this multiple rounds in a row otherwise leave it be

I don't think selling contraband should depend on your antag status, so anyone should be able to do it, as long as it doesn't become repetitive.

I see some arguments around it requiring a valid motive to be done, but when will that reason come up if you can't use explosives unless it's a round-ending threat (explosive speedrun?)? If that's the case, just say it's bannable outright.

I don't blame a player for wanting to roleplay as some sort of contraband seller, and, guess what, explosives are a pretty cool contraband. Assuming the player's intent based on the gimmick alone is kind of negligent. I can see how it can be grief, but imo it's not inherently intentional grief. I believe a good way to spot cases of that would be using temporary notes (for example: up to 8 months, idk) if their gimmick goes wrong. If they repeat that and it goes wrong again, ban them. Just because something is noted, it doesn't mean the player is now a stupid piece of shit, it's just something being noted so that the Admin Team can work better as a whole to keep the game fun.

I am mainly talking for LRP, and opinions may derive when it comes to MRP players since the ruleset differences do end up changing the way the playerbase views certain aspects of the game, even if the rules don't cover that topic.

In fact, now I got hyped to make some explosives and sell them as contraband!

comedy prisoner's dilemma option

If an antag makes bombs available (sells them, leaves them lying around, pulls them into the shuttle on a locker that someone gets curious about and immediately opens and grabs the contents, etc) and a nonantag sets them off, it's fair game 'cause an antag caused it.
If a nonantag makes bombs available and an antag sets them off, again, it's fair game 'cause an antag caused it.
Obviously if both players are antags it's fair game.
If, on the other hand, both players are nonantags, they both reap the consequences of whatever happens - if you're a nonantag and you're selling bombs you'd better _hope_ the person you sell them to is an antag else you're on the hook for whatever they do with them. Likewise if you're buying bombs or picking them up off the ground then you'd better hope whoever made them is an antag (or else you better use them responsibly!)

Screemonster wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 10:17 pm comedy prisoner's dilemma option
<snip>

That disregards the intent behind the non-antag's actions and encourages non-antags to seek antags to grief along, so I'm not sure if it's ideal

What are we, a church? Lets get some nash-equalibrum based bans up in here!

here's the nuance i see here:

if someone makes bombs of their own volition and sells them of their own volition with 0 outside influence, they should have a good IC reason to be doing this, and if they don't, then they should have some hand in the consequences when one inevitably goes off and evaporates 9 people standing in evac doing nothing.

however, if someone convinces someone to make them a bomb, and they do, then i believe there should be a lot more lenience here. the main reason for this is that traitors, etc, should be able to socially engineer people into getting what they want, and i think it would be counterproductive to the culture we want to see if we were to punish people for giving bombs to people who asked for them, because it would just lead to everyone saying no to every request all the time out of fear of hearing the scary admin noise 20 minutes later when the captain's bathroom becomes a crater.

Justice12354 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 10:33 pm

Screemonster wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 10:17 pm comedy prisoner's dilemma option
<snip>

That disregards the intent behind the non-antag's actions and encourages non-antags to seek antags to grief along, so I'm not sure if it's ideal

I did say it was a comedy option
butyeah dendy summed it up pretty well, people shouldn't be scared that they're gonna get banned if they get social engineered into handing over a bomb to an antag who then proceeds to use it, nor should they be scared if the "cleaner grenades" handed to them by the chemist turn out to be gunpowder

dendydoom wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 11:13 pm here's the nuance i see here:

if someone makes bombs of their own volition and sells them of their own volition with 0 outside influence, they should have a good IC reason to be doing this, and if they don't, then they should have some hand in the consequences when one inevitably goes off and evaporates 9 people standing in evac doing nothing.

however, if someone convinces someone to make them a bomb, and they do, then i believe there should be a lot more lenience here. the main reason for this is that traitors, etc, should be able to socially engineer people into getting what they want, and i think it would be counterproductive to the culture we want to see if we were to punish people for giving bombs to people who asked for them, because it would just lead to everyone saying no to every request all the time out of fear of hearing the scary admin noise 20 minutes later when the captain's bathroom becomes a crater.

This with the added caveat that if you're doing something funny you're more likely to get away with it. This thread stemmed from a conversation in adminbus about bombs and I think I'd be a lot more willing to let this kind of thing go if 1) the bombs were relatively small (not maxcaps) and 2) the person selling them sometimes sold a dud or two.

Now that we have public mining on most maps, any crew member can reasonably say "I need a maxcap for mining". This is a legitimate reason to use a maxcap, as it clears large areas of rock for easy collecting.

There is no reasonable way for another player to verify such claim on a map with public-accessible mining. Everyone has access to it, and there's almost always a need for some type of mat.

So, either "I need it for mining" becomes the magic OOC phrase to aquire a bomb without admins taking action against the seller, or the rule is you cannot give away bombs for any reason due to the threat of them being an antag.

It should depend on the size of the bomb.
Personal-sized explosives that might break a singular wall or crit 1 guy are fine, maxcaps are not.

the bigger the bombs you're selling the more likely you are to get owned.

Policing this is impossible:
will just lead to people selling bomb COMPONENTS (tanks, (triggers are everywhere), TTV)
selling canisters and and other atmos machinery
or just selling the ability for the other dude to come into Toxins and then telling them exactly what buttons to press and where to click in order to assemble the maxcap


This is an IC issue. Sec should bust down anyone selling bombs for reckless endangerment of life and property. And if a non-antag makes bombs, and another non-antag sets them off FNR, only the one who sets off the bomb should be punished. Since were it not for the other guy opening the valve, the bomb would never have exploded

itsswagga wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 2:02 pm Policing this is impossible:
will just lead to people selling bomb COMPONENTS (tanks, (triggers are everywhere), TTV)
selling canisters and and other atmos machinery
or just selling the ability for the other dude to come into Toxins and then telling them exactly what buttons to press and where to click in order to assemble the maxcap


This is an IC issue. Sec should bust down anyone selling bombs for reckless endangerment of life and property. And if a non-antag makes bombs, and another non-antag sets them off FNR, only the one who sets off the bomb should be punished. Since were it not for the other guy opening the valve, the bomb would never have exploded

Not true, it's been policed before, never resulted in parts being sold, because without the gas work it's all kinda pointless and you could trivially just tide the parts. Looting ordnance is no more challenging than B+E tiding insuls or medkits, if people wanted these things, they would obtain them. But they don't.

As for IC issue, might be nice, but again demonstrably doesn't happen. Partly sec doesn't want to deal with probable non antag situation thats 50/50 just going to explode, uncounterably, and round remove them. And we have recent "should sec be expected to handle things IC?" policy threads where many a sec pushed back firmly on not wanting sec to have to deal with things IC, so they're gonna be dealt with OOC. The fun old juxtaposition of people saying "We want more things handled IC but we don't want anyone to be responsible for handling things IC". Be the change you want to see, play sec and actually police anything other than exclusively antags. And ahelp when inevitably a mob of shitters turn on you (for the sake of other sec players if not yourself).



Also whats the role play spin on "Scientist at local military ordnance lab that's moments ago gone on heightened BLUE ALERT because of possible terrorist activity decides to set up a knock off DVD + spare ordnance shop in the broom cupboard", bearing in mind you're not an antagonist. And how do you then go claim you couldn't have anticipated the results.

If you make a bomb and give it to someone else and are clear with how destructive it is I don't think the responsibility should fall on you for that bombs casualties within reason, you can face reprecussions IC, but OOC it's fine. It's not the same as leaving around signal designators that will blow something up or just leaving a bomb where it can be easily accessed in a crowded place like the shuttle where you clearly just want to kill a bunch of people and use someone else inevitably triggering it as an excuse for it not being your fault.

What I propose:
Ask yourself if the person I'm giving the bomb blows this up right now without moving will the shuttle be called or will a large number of people die.
If the answer is yes the shuttle will be called or a large number of people will die you probably shouldn't be giving someone a bomb.

If in order to make that happen, the person would have to purposefully go through the effort of taking that bomb to a location where that would happen, the responsibility should no longer be on the creator of the bomb.

It doesn't matter if you know the person you're giving a bomb is an antagonist because you're allowed to assist them with sufficient IC reasoning, and acquiring money is good enough reason IMO

I swear we've settled this before. I am like 99% positive we've had a ruling that handing out bombs makes you responsible for the outcome but I can't find it now.

update to rule 1 squares this one off. you can collect your rule 0 pass for the round from your local friendly admin and continue fearlessly.

Do not facilitate player deaths for poor IC reasoning. Distributing bombs or other similarly destructive items can leave you responsible for how they are used if not cleared with an admin first. Each unjustified kill is normally met with a 24-hour ban.