are fugitives OR the hunters valid or what

[imsxz]

when you spawn in as either it says you aren't antag and to not grief fnr, i got killed as a police guy for ??? reasons and admin said it needed a policy thread so here is the policy thread.

when should u valid the fugitives
when should u valid the hunters
when should the fugitives murder
when should the hunters murder

[cedarbridge]

What happened to your shift key?

Also, what text prompts do each of these roles get?

[Atlanta-Ned]

Also, what text prompts do each of these roles get?

It would be helpful if we had a way to see flavortexts in one place.

[Shadowflame909]

The creators intent last I remembered, was to make it a neutral situation.

You could choose to help the fugitives or help the hunters. Or you could help neither and let them solve their own damn mess.

Not an Enemy Corporation, but not an Ally either. Just Spess Russians.

If either one is backed into a corner, like normal roles. They could choose to more loosely escalate. Like a lawless AI.

[cedarbridge]

Also, what text prompts do each of these roles get?

It would be helpful if we had a way to see flavortexts in one place.

Theoretically I could but that would mean diving through code while I'm supposed to be working.

[terranaut]

This is the first time I'm hearing of fugitives and hunters.

[Shadowflame909]

The mode was very broken and the coder had no discord so he couldn't be alerted to it

[Jimmius]

from the PR:

A team of fugitives with a toolbox will spawn in the maintenance with 10 minutes to prepare. After that time, a security team will be selected to land at the station and bring the fugitives back, dead or alive. They are not antagonists in that they can kill anything, but they are allowed to do antagonist things to prevent capture. And same for the security team: They cannot antagonize, but can kill/terrorize if the station is directly hiding the fugitives.

The reason I thought this needed a policy thread is because "half antags" don't really exist. The game treats them as objectiveless antags in that they're in the antag panel, and you can make people into fugitives with the traitor panel, but the flavour text says they can't just treat everyone as valid and murderbone like a traitor could.
The issue I ran into is that individual crew can just decide to fucking murder either side, without the hunters/fugitives being given the same freedom. Theoretically if some of the crew are attacking the hunters, the hunters are able to declare the crew uncooperative and start wantonly murdering everyone they see?
Basically I'm a coward and a fool who didn't want to have to make a decision.
In the end I decided the hunters were valid.

[cedarbridge]

from the PR:

A team of fugitives with a toolbox will spawn in the maintenance with 10 minutes to prepare. After that time, a security team will be selected to land at the station and bring the fugitives back, dead or alive. They are not antagonists in that they can kill anything, but they are allowed to do antagonist things to prevent capture. And same for the security team: They cannot antagonize, but can kill/terrorize if the station is directly hiding the fugitives.

The reason I thought this needed a policy thread is because "half antags" don't really exist. The game treats them as objectiveless antags in that they're in the antag panel, and you can make people into fugitives with the traitor panel, but the flavour text says they can't just treat everyone as valid and murderbone like a traitor could.
The issue I ran into is that individual crew can just decide to fucking murder either side, without the hunters/fugitives being given the same freedom. Theoretically if some of the crew are attacking the hunters, the hunters are able to declare the crew uncooperative and start wantonly murdering everyone they see?
Basically I'm a coward and a fool who didn't want to have to make a decision.
In the end I decided the hunters were valid.

Rule 4 strikes again.

[Jimmius]

Rule 4 strikes again.

does this mean "they're antags, so rule 4 is enough policy to cover this situation" or "rule 4 doesn't cover enough situations to be a meaningful rule and should be done away with"

[Shadowflame909]

I think half-antags should follow the same precedent as a lawless AI.

If enough people grind your gears, just plasmaflood bro.

[Cobby]

The way I envisioned it was you were to treat fugitives like a third party (free golems / seed vaulters) with the understanding that you can assist their capture or assist their escape. Likewise you can aid/hamper the hunters. Something short of normal escalation should apply for all parties with the understanding that they are objective bound and interfering can be justification for them to escalate. I wouldn't try to call them antags because we see antags as pretty binary here as "valid/not valid".

If this is going to be viewed as "what can I kill" without admins nipping that in the bud just revert the event please, the event falls apart if everyone is just seeing it as an opportunity to horizontal people.

[Jimmius]

This could probably be fixed with a centcom message when the fugitives/hunters arrive, telling the station they're supposed to be neutral. Currently all that happens is you get "Unidentified ship near the station" when the hunters arrive, which probably sets everyone off into validhunt mode, considering it's used for pirates and sounds pretty agressive.

[cedarbridge]

Rule 4 strikes again.

does this mean "they're antags, so rule 4 is enough policy to cover this situation" or "rule 4 doesn't cover enough situations to be a meaningful rule and should be done away with"

Honestly, I was shitposting. My feelings on Rule 4 are already pretty generally known. In this case, it's presenting a hindering situation for the design as opposed to how our policies are designed. As mentioned before, because of how Rule 4 operates, we don't really have "half" antags. You're either "do whatever you want" or you're not. The fugitive role was clearly designed not to be a ticket to random murder, but Rule 4 is binary.

Rule 4 delenda est

[Cobby]

This could probably be fixed with a centcom message when the fugitives/hunters arrive, telling the station they're supposed to be neutral. Currently all that happens is you get "Unidentified ship near the station" when the hunters arrive, which probably sets everyone off into validhunt mode, considering it's used for pirates and sounds pretty agressive.

I don't think they're SUPPOSE to be neutral, it's just that picking a side shouldn't equal automatic "I get to kill the other team".

[Yakumo_Chen]

Rule 4 strikes again.

does this mean "they're antags, so rule 4 is enough policy to cover this situation" or "rule 4 doesn't cover enough situations to be a meaningful rule and should be done away with"

Honestly, I was shitposting. My feelings on Rule 4 are already pretty generally known. In this case, it's presenting a hindering situation for the design as opposed to how our policies are designed. As mentioned before, because of how Rule 4 operates, we don't really have "half" antags. You're either "do whatever you want" or you're not. The fugitive role was clearly designed not to be a ticket to random murder, but Rule 4 is binary.

Rule 4 delenda est

We have plenty of examples of situations rule 4 doesn't cover though, like ash lizards (who do not get objectives or "antagonist status" through an actual traitor panel), and other lavaland roles like golems / seed vault that can choose to war the station if antagonized enough. Abductors are also denied full antagonist status and are not allowed to murderbone. Otherwise you would see them subverting the AI and plasma flooding every other round. Swarmers are also literally codebound to prevent them from wanton murder.

[imsxz]

these guys arent antags tho. neither are. the only "antag" status they get is that theyre expected to fulfill their objective and shouldnt kill people that you wouldn't expect anyone else to in the same case.

here's the thing though. fights between fugitives and bounty hunters tend to get bloody and loud. the hunters get guns and when they start shooting in a hall it can be very scary to the average spaceman, as they are vulnerable to loud noises and sudden movements. this may cause a spaceman stampede in which they attempt to trample the source of spook and the whole conflict can become very lethal quite quickly.

Likewise the fugitives might tide sec gear or get guns from wherever otherwise themselves. Is it emergent gameplay to kill either the hunters or fugitives in a case like this? I'd think so, but it would be unfair because that essentially gives the crew free reign to pick and choose when they get to kill the offenders but the offenders dont have antag status and arent allowed to kill crew without a pretty good reason (and we all know how hard it is to agree on when it's a good time to start shooting to save yourself)

im thinking it might be a bit too tough too tough to decide on a reasonable point where you can expect one of the factions to be entirely hostile while also not feeling too unfair for either side. i.e. On either side it might feel really bullshit to be shot on sight just because either you or them is a fugitive/bounty hunter on the principle that someone from your own side provoked the others, it could happen to the poor assistant walking past the gunfight thinking that the bounty hunters wont valid them because theyre nonantag, it could also happen to the pacifist bounty hunter looking for the fugitives only to be shot up by an assistant with an improv shotgun or something.

that is why i think the "pseudo antag" sort of thing they seem to be going for is kinda weird it just seems like a huge headache for all involved itd probably be better to just do a code solution honestly. That's out of the scope of this thread tho because this is a policy thread.

[WarbossLincoln]

It seems like IC there would always be a reason for sec to arm up against both groups. It's a dangerous situation to have foreign elements break onto your station even if their goal isn't to kill everyone. If it's fine for security to arrest people with guns who shouldn't normally have them why wouldn't sec break out the armory and organize against the hunters and the fugitives? You're talking about an armed task force who forced their way onto the station. There's no way that's inherently a neutral third party conflict.

A better way would be like some people suggested, to give a centcomm announcement and give them some credibility. Have an official centcomm sanction of their mission, but only their mission. Something along the lines of "we have authorized bounty hunter team _______ to apprehend a group of criminals on your station. They have licenses to be armed and apprehend their targets but not to interfere with station business or law enforcement. Interference from the crew may be met with lethal force."

That would give the crew knowledge of what's going on, and that they shouldn't interfere. It gives the bounty hunters the right to defend themselves. It gives Sec an IC reason to intervene if the bounty hunters exceed their authority.

Bounty hunters should be checked by admins sending an ERT to kill/arrest them if they go rogue. Centcomm will rescind their contracts if they violate them and announce to the crew that they should be killed/arrested and that a team is on its way to assist.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Stacks the odds against the fugitives by giving an IC reason to cooperate with one side over another. I was a fugitive one round and disguised myself as a braindead QM, bought guns and eventually one of my buddies killed a spacepol, disguised as him, and killed the HoS in a false flag to get security to murder the other space pol. It was pretty great.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I dont really see the need for either side to be auto valid. They'll inevitably do shit as they fight which will cause people to pile in on them via escalation anyway

[Screemonster]

maybe all of these constant "is x new thing an antag /valid or not" arguments would go away if you finally defined "thing that isn't a full antag and therefore not subject to `can do whatever they want` or `can have whatever you want done to them` but has a relaxed escalation policy that amounts to THIS..." as a rule somewhere

[Kryson]

I've seen sec massacre the entire spacepol team during a wizard round, i, as a syndicate medical borg had to defib and nanite them up and try to deescalate the situation. I think it started as some minor shootout with the detective and HoS giving orders to wipe them all out.

Fugtive is a very fun in my limited experience, but the rules might need to be clarified.