Recently there has been discussion about the newly revised escalation rules. Specifically the Rageguy-Thoman ban brought to light some issues with it which are worth looking over again. Indeed Hulk said,
(viewtopic.php?f=33&t=31034)Hulkamania wrote:[...]The policy was always meant to undergo some testing and changing as time goes on, and was never meant to be the ultimate final version.
The issue that was raised is whether or not it's fair to truly consider a conflict over just because one party was brought to medbay after being incapacitated/killed.
The recent appeal brought this to light because technically Rageguy was correct in his initial ban. Once Thomas was healed (after being delimbed, killed, and stuck as a ghost for 20 min), he wasn't allowed to immediately then round-remove the captain. But it also wasn't really fair to require him to hold no grudges about the fact he was killed and delimbed, so his ban was removed. Clearly there is a discrepancy then between escalation rules and the commonsense understanding of escalation.
Hulk said "the flow of power is NEVER in favor of the instigator," so even if Thomas escalated a new conflict after being revived, he wouldn't be allowed to severely maim or harm the captain unless the captain decided to defend himself lethally: it's up to the defender to decide the level of violence the conflict should increase to, and the captain would be the defender in this new conflict. But in this case it was deemed that Thomas was justified - at least in killing the captain on sight (perhaps round-removal here would still be too far).
I think the commonsense understanding is this: If you are the instigator in a conflict and are killed, it makes sense that once revived you are not allowed to immediately try to kill the defender (e.g., if you steal insuls from engineering and are killed, you cannot then immediately kill the engineers after being revived). But, and as was the case in this ban appeal: if you're the defender and are killed by the instigator, you should be allowed to remember this and set the terms of escalation of the new conflict. Here you would be justified trying to kill someone for killing you previously.
This would protect players who just want to do their jobs and avoid fights, while also preventing the situation of someone who was killed and tormented not having any IC recourse after being revived because the conflict ended (except to ahelp). Players should not be forced to choose between ahelping or doing nothing as in Thomas's case - they should be allowed to retaliate IC and resolve their conflict ICly - even if they were killed and it officially "ended" - so long as they were the defender beforehand.