MRP: What exactly constitutes sabotage?

[Vekter]

Here's another one of those theoreticals. I love that we're allowing antags to do sabotage on MRP now. It's brought back a lot of the old chaos that MRP was missing and I really appreciate us having that around more now. The issue is that I want us to kind of figure out where it stops being "sabotage" and starts being "indiscriminate destruction".

The exact situation that spawned this thread was a changeling on MRP accidentally bringing an Ash Drake onto the station. This is obviously fine - accidents happen, but another admin cited this would be fine under the sabotage rule, and I'm not certain that's the case given the scale of it. An Ash Drake is kind of okay; they can cause a lot of damage but, in the grand scheme of things, it's not that dangerous. Bubblegum or Legion, on the other hand...

I guess I'm curious as to where the community thinks the line should be drawn here. Are we cool with antags on MRP doing stuff like causing a singularity delam if they don't have an objective like "escape alone"? Can changelings bring the Colossus to the station as a treat? I don't think I feel strongly either way, but I think it might be valuable to consider if that line needs to exist and, if so, where it should be.

For reference, the current rule reads as:

Mass station sabotage that is likely to kill people is allowed so long as the antagonist does not take any direct and specific personal actions to maximise the bodycount beyond what the sabotage itself causes. Examples of mass station sabotage include plasma flooding, causing a supermatter delamination and spacing the station.

E: I'll clarify my own position in that I'm not saying we should or shouldn't have a line here, I'm saying that I can see the potential that someone decides Bubblegum should pay the crew a visit, like 20 people get gibbed, then people start complaining that this is excessive. I want to see what others think as to whether we care about this specific situation or not rules-wise.

[Timberpoes]

For mass station sabotage, final bodycount and round removal count is irrelevant.

All that matters is whether the player took direct and specific personal actions to maximise the bodycount beyond merely setting up and executing the initial mass sabotage scenario.

From examples given:

Plasma flood good. Killing people trying to fight the plasma flood bad, that's a direct and specific set of personal actions to maximise body count.
Delaminating good. Killing crew desperately trying to fix damage from the delam bad, that's a direct and specific set of personal actions to maximise the body count.
Spacing the station good. Killing crew desperately trying to fix damage from spacing the station bad, that's a direct and specific set of personal actions to maximise the body count.

Under my original intent for the mass station sabotage allowance, if the codebase doesn't mind megafauna on the station z-level then I consider setting up and executing the scenario to fall under mass station sabotage.

If the codebase does mind megafauna on the station z-level then doing it intentionally would probably be closer to a code exploit and antags under Rule 4 are at admin mercy when they take advantage of ("those sorts of") exploits or abuse ("those kind of") bugs.

If the codebase didn't care and it was causing a problem, we have Roleplay Rule 10 which empowers the collective admin team to prohibit certain strategies either on an individual or server-wide basis.

Roleplay Rule 10 is definitely the foil to antags being allowed to do mass station sabotage of any kind when niche strategies for antags become overly lame.

My general view is: MRP is the server where all the SS13 stories get to play out because of the more restrictive ruleset binding players to stricter standards. Those more tightly restricted rules should allow for more freedom than LRP, where the rules allow players to make more individual RP-unfriendly decisions without admins feeling empowered to step in OOCly and correct anti-fun stuff.

[vect0r]

Also blowing up the SM the sabotage is not having power, but an ash drake or whatever it’s a GIANT FUCKING MONSTER murdering crew left and right. That’s fucking epic and more interesting than any SM blowing up.

[spookuni]

TIMBERPOST

As other guy who wrote the original sabotage amendment proposal separately, then edited it again after Timber's full rewrite incorporated it and pushed the final version of the RP rules rewrite: Timber is correct.

[DrAmazing343]

I’m a personal fan of mass sabotage overall; I think murderbone rules are a bit of a tough spot for adminning and player alike (Would a murderbone on lowpop from retaliating reasonably against random crew trying to put down the antag be a murderbone on highpop when the antag clears an area and goes back to stealth?)

Mass sabotage, on the other hand, offers antags the abilities to create a big boomy event that they crave while also allowing crew to (mostly) have agency without having to have direct robusting ability to take down bad guy with sword.

In terms of stuff with megafauna specifically; I’m with Timber, as usual. So long as the codebase doesn’t put a block on megafauna on station that’d require exploits to get around, it’s pretty legit for an antag to bring the big bad guy on station. Though, we also do run into the same lowpop issue; It’d suck to get rolled because you don’t have enough bodies to deal with a problem that’d cause highpop to quake in its boots, but ultimately conquer most of the time.

Once again, it’d be hard to make a ruling on such a thing given we have player limits for buying tot items like scarp IC but setting an OOC precedent would feel lame because the antag would have to count out the amount of players in round and that’d suck ass.

At this moment, I don’t think there’s a reason to codify anything further onto mass sabotage, except to maybe grant a clause that if you specifically drag fauna into a crowded place (medbay?) it’d count as direct involvement.

[Sightld2]

Imo anything environmental damage is just sabotage. There's no mind behind a singularity, plasmaflood, or ash drake respectfully. They're just hazardous to exist around.

[CPTANT]

Plasma flood good. Killing people trying to fight the plasma flood bad, that's a direct and specific set of personal actions to maximise body count.

What about an actually proper plasma flood with air alarms set and sabotaged doors for maximum spread?

[Timberpoes]

Plasma flood good. Killing people trying to fight the plasma flood bad, that's a direct and specific set of personal actions to maximise body count.

What about an actually proper plasma flood with air alarms set and sabotaged doors for maximum spread?

All that matters is whether the player took direct and specific personal actions to maximise the bodycount beyond merely setting up and executing the initial mass sabotage scenario.

[Vekter]

Well, as in many things, I feel Timber is probably right here.

If that was the original intention of the change to the rules, I'm happy to leave it at that. Thank you for your insight, strange ocelot-shaped creature.