New(ish) escalation policy issues

[Fatal]

Okay, from a horrific round where I died a magnificent 4 times, I just want to clear some things up, as I don't feel it was handled appropriately, but, that's down a policy issue which I feel is too lenient on shitters

It's not a complaint against the admins involved, although Arianya is of course free to add to this as they were the one who handed my tickets

Okay, this is going to be quite long so I apologise in advance:

Start round as medic, go to medbay and get geared, notice both chemists acting fishy, and report it to the HOS, who comes and takes a look, but doesn't do a great deal about it

Later on, I notice someone stealing the chemistry fridge from the medbay side (on metastation there are 2 fridges) and attempt to stop them, throwing a SINGLE punch at them in the process, as they drag the fridge into the base they have made in the old bar

It was one of the chemists, and the other one was in there, who both immediately grab circular saw / baseball bat and attack, I disarm the bat and fight back, but ultimately am killed and spaced, at which point I ahelp the death, at which point the admin involved did some investigating, told me that they had "had a word but it was valid" or something along those lines

Now, I had put myself into the autocloner, so I clone pretty quickly, and upon revival report my murder to security

10 minutes or so later, both chemists are arrested, searched, and my body is recovered, and I have my gear back

Later on, one of the chemists, comes back to medbay, I notice him, attack with a scalpel once, at which points he empties his reagent syringe gun into me and kills me again, I did not ahelp this death

Revived again, got my stuff back, report it to security again, that chemist is not seen again for the rest of the round

Round goes on a bit longer, and I notice the other chemist has been released and is acting dodgy in chemistry again, so I grabbed one of the circular saws and land a single hit on him, at which point a borg flashes me, and the HOS arrests the chemist and takes him away, during this I did tell the HOS that the chemist murdered me in the first place and if not for the borg, I would have killed said chemist, as an encouragement to have the HOS NOT release him, but yes I did threaten lethal force on this second chemist

He gets released, yet again, and I report it again to security, but every time he continues to be released, so I get fed up and grab a baseball bat, the chemist then comes back to medbay, stun batons me, and drops an explosive mix on me which creates a hull breach and kills me, he also steals all my gear in the process of this death

I am revived yet again, at this point the round is nearly 2 hours long and the shuttle arrives, and we leave (and I am spaced by non-antagonist and die once more to be revived back in the medbay, but this is a seperate issue that was handed)

The SECOND chemist, was not a traitor, the FIRST one, was

Okay, now the context is there, 2 main questions I pose from this horrific round:

Is it okay to align yourself with a workplace traitor and aid them in killing and spacing someone who interferes with what you are doing? (my attempting to recover the stolen smartfridge)

Secondly, is threatening to kill someone who previously killed you, grounds for valid retaliation to be killed again by them?

Now, at the moment, I feel the escalation policy is poor, because it is encouraging people to kill others to solve their issues, now I know we are branded as "low/med RP" but a lot of the stuff I am seeing lately is excessive "valid baiting", I have been told before that rather than attacking someone, to report stuff to security, which I did in all cases here, until they proved that they were not dealing with the issue and I took matters into my own hand

Now, yes, I am guilty of going for valids as well, because someone did kill me, and I COULD have just let it be, so I understand why the final death could be seen as "valid" but ultimately the chemist in question hit me first with the stun baton and dropped the grenade on me, for threatening to kill him, but I did not actually hit him after threatening it, and I feel the policy fails in this

To sum it all up, I've been playing on the server for a long time, I have many, many connections, and I have ZERO notes or bans (that I know of), and I feel that the server playerbase is steadily getting worse, and I think the escalation policy has a lot to do with that

Yes I know this seems like a pseudo ban request, but the issue was handled ingame by the admins and I have put the scenario in there as context only, I simply want some clarification on the issue and hopefully some other players feel the same way about the state of the server and are willing to speak up about it

[onleavedontatme]

because it is encouraging people to kill others to solve their issues

But the reason you died is because

-You tried to stop a theft from chemistry with violence when you were MD

-You stabbed a guy with a scalpel because you didn't like how security had handled something

-You attacked a guy with a circular saw because you aren't happy he isn't in prison

-You got a bat to kill him again

You, four separate times, instigated violence and got met with violence and after each time you could have just gone on with your round but you kept going back to try to kill these guys.

And somehow you suffering consequences for trying to murder people repeatedly despite being given every chance to walk away is "encouraging you to kill others to solve your problems?" and they're "valid baiting" you when you hit them in the face with a saw?

If anything I'd hope this experience discourages you from leaping to violence to solve your problems, because now you know there is not going to be an OOC safety net when you resort to those methods as a random civilian vigilante.

[Arianya]

As noted, I was the admin who dealt with this escalation incident. For context, during the round one of the chemists was a traitor, and the other was not. I kept an eye on the non-antagonist chemist after this was reported, just in case they were self-antagging or the like, but didn't see anything that indicated that, which made this a normal escalation case.

In the first ticket, you chased after chemists moving their stuff, shoved one, and a fight ensued. You had opportunities to break off/de-escalate but didn't. You were knocked into crit by the non-antagonist chemist, and the antagonist chemist killed you. I did discuss things with the non-antagonist chemist and suggested he might have wanted to not crit you over a shove, but left it at that (no note applied) since it was more or less textbook escalation.

Any further incidents with the traitor chemist aren't really my concern, since he had killed you and so you were both on "lethal escalation levels" with each other.

You later go after the non-traitor chemist, attack him with a surgical saw, and threaten to murder him if you ever see him. I'll paraphrase here that you specifically said you weren't going to give up. At this point the non-antagonist chemist has no reason not to believe that you are out for his blood. It would be extremely unfair to him to ask him to ignore you until you go for the killing blow.

Even under old escalation rules you would have probably been told this was an IC issue, under the new escalation rules this is pretty cut and dry, you initiated every conflict in the above post and you were treated with lethal force for doing so.

[Fatal]

I did try and de-escalate from the initial fight, they chased me into medbay, killed me and spaced me, but that was probably not mentioned during our conversation in game so that's fair enough

However, thank you for the clarification

I understand that admining is hard so thank you for dealing with the tickets in that round which seemed pretty awful



However -You tried to stop a theft from chemistry with violence when you were MD

As far as I know, people stealing from your department (okay chemists were stealing their own chem fridge so it's somewhat an edge case) opens up the possibility of creative "fun", so I feel it's pretty unfair to throw that at me when it's always been pretty much standard that you are allowed to defend your own department

[Dax Dupont]

As far as I know, people stealing from your department (okay chemists were stealing their own chem fridge so it's somewhat an edge case) opens up the possibility of creative "fun", so I feel it's pretty unfair to throw that at me when it's always been pretty much standard that you are allowed to defend your own department

Straight from the rules page:

You may defend your workplace from trespassers who damage or steal property within that space with significantly greater force than elsewhere. If someone is severely disruptive and returns after ejected, this opens them up to "fun" of the creative workplace death variety.

Was this low pop? Otherwise you'd be the trespasser in this case since MDs don't roll with chem access.

Even if you do, this generally does not apply to people from your own department taking stuff from your own department.

[Arianya]

Also I don't normally make a habit of this but in this case it was pretty applicable so:

[Fatal]

I didn't realise it was the chemists until they attacked because they had taken their ID off, I also had gotten chemistry access from the HoP because both chemists had abandoned their positions, but no it was not low pop

Edit: That's actually quite funny, but you must surely understand my annoyance at the first instance that occured

Also I still think escalation policy is awful, and I am trying to make a valid point here, it just doesn't seem to be getting across, which I understand

[Arianya]

Edit: That's actually quite funny, but you must surely understand my annoyance at the first instance that occured

I can understand being frustrated, we've all had frustrating deaths where it can feel like we did nothing wrong, but rather then backing off and cooling off, you effectively kept yourself in a bad headspace for the whole round culminating in you being outraged at one of the chemists not being a traitor when the roundend report popped up, leading you to post this thread.

Rule 10 isn't just there because it's a nice thing to point to, it exists because you will die in seemingly unfair situations. You will lose despite your best intentions. No one has to get banned or be noted over the incident, it's just one of those things that happens in a paranoia driven atmos simulator.

[Fatal]

The reason I posted the thread is not just because of that one round, I appreciate you dealing with the issue ingame, however, over the past few weeks I've just felt that the server playerbase has gotten steadily worse, and that round basically tipped me over the edge regarding DOING something about it, and I hope you don't think that this thread was an attack against you Arianya because it wasn't

The issue I have, is that, we're all here to have fun, but a lot of the fun that people seem to get these days, is from ruining other people's fun, be that fucking up their workplace, escalating to murder, and so on, and I don't feel that is in the spirit of the game

Perhaps I'm just a minority trying to fight against something that other people don't see as an issue, and I get that people play the game in different ways, but, I'm just trying to keep the game fun for everyone, maybe this isn't the best way to go about it but I felt it was worth doing

[CPTANT]

Not really related to this case but to the actual policy:

I kinda dislike how defending yourself is equated to consenting to the violence, there are plenty of situations in which not defending yourself just gets you killed.

[Fatal]

Okay, so, because my original post was a wall of text and somewhat vague, I'l shorten down to what I have issues with:

If a player wrongs you(theft, attacks, etc), you may retaliate. If you choose to retaliate with violence, you in turn have opened yourself up to violence. If you choose this route, do not expect admins to help you out if you die, even if you were not the original instigator. If you are concerned about being "kill baited" then consider calling security, using non lethal means to subdue your opponent, fleeing, or otherwise working things out (talking them down, getting your stolen items replaced, etc)

How much violence is fair to be killed for? Any harm/damage? Using fists? Using a weapon? It's rather vague, and given that it IS a paranoia simulator, it's hard to expect everyone to just DISARM people as a first move when we have traitors and changelings and the such which most people are trying to not die to, and just calling security on everyone is usually not a viable option given the population of security

Perhaps as an improvement, this could be changed to "You are allowed to respond with reasonable equivalent retaliation or intent?" or something along those lines, meaning you can't pull out a weapon and hit someone into crit for it when they punch you once? Seems like it might be an improvement to me, as many real world self defence laws are of similar wording I believe

[oranges]

if you are going to throw people out of your department you better be more robust than the average greytider

start shit get hit

[iksyp]

any level of violence means you are open to any level of violence
if you don't want to risk death, don't initiate conflict

[Gigapuddi420]

How much violence is fair to be killed for? Any harm/damage? Using fists? Using a weapon? It's rather vague, and given that it IS a paranoia simulator, it's hard to expect everyone to just DISARM people as a first move when we have traitors and changelings and the such which most people are trying to not die to, and just calling security on everyone is usually not a viable option given the population of security.

Ideally I'd rather not have people following through on a fight all the way to murder over light damage or a bit of shoving, especially when it's pretty easy to accidentally hit someone. That aside, yeah, if you start a fight you better be prepared for the consequences.

Your initial fight I could be a little sympathetic to, I mean I don't get why you went that route but I at least dislike heavy handed escalation. It's irrelevant however because the whole thing involved a antagonist going for the kill and a work colleague following their partner. The guy who wasn't antagonist was talked to, which seemed fair and a step beyond what the admin had to do under current policy I think.

After that you wanted a fight and got what you deserved for it. The lesson to take from this is if you don't want to die in a fight, don't start a fight.

[Grazyn]

This also shows how autocloning is a horrible feature which is ruining the game in all kinds of way. Escalation rules will never work as long as the guy you rightfully killed is going to come back for round 2, 3, 4 and so on until someone is banned or the round ends

[Shaps-cloud]

Reporting someone for killing you after you autoclone is metagamey as shit, and I was under the impression that it was against the rules to remember stuff between getting scanned and your death

Killing and spacing for a single punch is pretty far over the line and would probably count as bad faith with regards to overreacting violence

I don't see why chemists moving their own fridge would count as stealing

[SpaceInaba]

I was always told you remember what happened to you after you were cloned but idk

[Armhulen]

I was always told you remember what happened to you after you were cloned but idk

This is correct, you remember everything until you're unconscious

[Grazyn]

Reporting someone for killing you after you autoclone is metagamey as shit, and I was under the impression that it was against the rules to remember stuff between getting scanned and your death

It would be cool Altered Carbon-style but I don't think it ever was a thing, as well as being almost impossible to enforce (is scanning even logged?). You just remember stuff up until your death crit.

Killing and spacing for a single punch is pretty far over the line and would probably count as bad faith with regards to overreacting violence

It definitely is but then again, the incident shows that people will always come back for round 2 until you're dead or they're banned (or you are) so spacing is inevitable if you want to go on playing the round and someone is messing with you. Also spacing is ultimately useless because autocloning exists so they come back regardless

I don't see why chemists moving their own fridge would count as stealing

Yeah they were fully allowed to move their fridge, he even said that there are 2 fridges anyway, so someone getting in your face with harm intent for something this minor will always look like the guy wants to start trouble and for those kind of people spacing is usually the only solution

[cedarbridge]

Reporting someone for killing you after you autoclone is metagamey as shit, and I was under the impression that it was against the rules to remember stuff between getting scanned and your death

Unless something changed when I wasn't looking, the only no-zone is between death and cloning. So you can't take anything you hear in deadchat, but there's no way to enforce a dead zone of memory between the second you were scanned for cloning and when you died.

[BeeSting12]

so i think we learned from this thread that escalation policy works as intended.

[imblyings]

"You are allowed to respond with reasonable equivalent retaliation or intent?"

Then we'd be going full circle back to the rules before the most recent change by Kor, that were aimed at dealing with a different set of problems.

There's going to be very little chance every situation and consequence can be covered by any rule.

[Cobby]

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO KNOW EVERYTHING YOU SEE WHILE NOT DEAD (GHOSTING FROM A DEAD BODY = DEAD)

INCLUDES UNCONSCIOUS, THATS WHY WE HAVE THE BLIND

[Fatal]

"You are allowed to respond with reasonable equivalent retaliation or intent?"

Then we'd be going full circle back to the rules before the most recent change by Kor, that were aimed at dealing with a different set of problems.

There's going to be very little chance every situation and consequence can be covered by any rule.

Well I understand that there is no chance of the rules covering everything, and I would prefer less rules are more admin discretion

However

What I'm getting from this:

There's no point trying to escalate a fight anymore, if throwing a single attack opens you up to full retaliation, you may as well start with an intent to crit / kill, as long as you heal / clone the guy after

But, if going back to the old ways bring back a different set of problems then yes, I see why a change is bad

[Rustledjimm]

Why not just not resort to violence?

Can I close this thread yet.

[CitrusGender]

This is a particular incident that received the correct ruling in line with precedent.

I don't see the reason to let this thread continue. Escalation policy is essentially enforced inconsistently and will be different depending on the admin. The only changes that we make as headmins are to listen to the specific cases and to use precedent to determine our rulings for those specific cases. We may also make precedent as well.

Until someone attempts to write up a good enough policy, these threads won't be very useful.


Edit:

Perhaps as an improvement, this could be changed to "You are allowed to respond with reasonable equivalent retaliation or intent?" or something along those lines, meaning you can't pull out a weapon and hit someone into crit for it when they punch you once? Seems like it might be an improvement to me, as many real world self defence laws are of similar wording I believe

I should add this though, this has been a problem for awhile.