Admin Complaint: Shockpoint

[Mach]

Admin(s) Key: Shockpoint
Your ckey: Machzero7
Your Discord name: N/A

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): 5-28 6am GMT (or somewhere close to that time.)

Nature of complaint: misapplication of rules

Brief description: Given a warning for rule 8 violation while saving a fellow miner.

Full description of events: While mining on a confirmed cultist round I stumbled across two miners just outside the outpost airlock, one of these miners was in critical condition, handcuffed, had his comms removed, and was being dragged by the other. I close the distance in my mech (and cancel out a drill attack on the offender which was a flubbed shift click) and try to initiate some form of conversation when the miner bolts, still dragging my critically injured coworker the whole way. I pursue them in a bid to save my injured companion, during which the offender stops multiple times and attempts to fight my mech even using magic at one point and thus confirming to my character this is a cultist and a very real threat. When I eliminate the cultist so I can have security to render aid to my coworker (who was only 3 tiles away from the offender who had held onto him until the very last moment.) I was messaged by Shockpoint and asked what I was doing, when I explained he accused me of ignoring the proper channels and going against the rules. The conversation ended with the picture below after some time spent explaining what happened. Rule 8 states the following: "It is only the job of Security to stop Antagonists. If you are not a member of Security, then hunting Antagonists is not something you should be doing. You may not drop your job, or go out of your way, to hunt Antagonists. You may, however, defend yourself or others from Antagonist attack if you happen to witness it". I was at my place of work doing my job and in no way shape or form had gone out of my way to find an engage an antag, I had merely been acting on behalf of my fellow miner's well being which is expressly permitted in the very writing of the rule itself. I did not and nor will I ever validhunt, and while I respect Shockpoint's response time and desire to enforce the rules I believe he is incorrect in his assessment of the situation and would like to have the warning on my account removed.

Edited May 28, 2019 by Mach

[Mach]

Just realized I posted it in resolved, off to a great start!

[necaladun]

Hi there, thanks for posting this.

Firstly, we won't remove the note of the warning - whether correctly or not, Shock did indeed warn you of it, so the note there is accurate that you were warned.

However, I'm more than happy to add an addendum to it about the situation itself to clarify it for the future.

In this case, it appears the main issue was causing the death of said cultist. Defending yourself, helping co-workers defend themselves, etc, against antags, is quite fine - but there's a degree to which it's acceptable, and often causing someones death is an indication things have gone too far. I don't believe your intention here was to go hunting for people to kill, but was part of you being in a situation that escalated.

Because I can't easily read logs right now and logs don't often give good context, I'll ask yourself and @Shockpoint to describe it and thus let me know how appropriate the force here was before I make any addendum to the note.

[Mach]

Well I was in a Ripley during the chase and had followed behind squeezing them with hydraulic clamps until they were slow enough to where I could use the drill. The only reason I felt the need to use the drill was the proximity of them to the injured miner I was trying to save (only three tiles as mentioned previously) and the fact I had to drop my KC and occupy both my hands to get the hivelord core to save the guy. Regardless of the tools used the end result would have been the same, I had to knock him into crit so he would drop the other miner and so I would have the security needed to render aid and with this happening on the asteroid no medical or security staff would have been able to arrive in time to save them. As for me, I don't think it would've been realistic to attempt to render aid to a cultist as IC I really have no reason to attempt such a thing.

[Shockpoint]

Sorry about no side from me. Between the new responsibilities and life, I've been a bit busy.

From my own point of view, even if one player is attempting to defend another from, in this case, a cultist, it's not acceptable to take that cultist out of the round. Not a word was said to Security, nor were they permitted to be brought back to life afterwards, which was a breach of Space Law under Murder (preventing the revival of a crew member facilitates to Murder instead of Manslaughter). Henceforth I had made the warning as this is very unfair to the cultist in question, as well as the cult in general, not to mention that normal players should not be taking such matters so far into their own hands as doing so leads to self-antagging/validhunting which is strictly against our rules. 

I don't believe I was in the wrong by placing the warning, nor do I feel that any harm is done here. This can honestly just be a simple mistake as a player that I don't believe will happen again whatsoever. @Mach has a brilliant lack of warnings for their time here, and while I do think it shouldn't impact them, it should still be there as it did happen. It doesn't mean it will be held against them forever, however, as, like I said, they have a brilliant lack of warnings for their time.

Mistakes happen and that's what I believe happened here.

[Mach]

Reading Shockpoint's reply I believe there are a fair few errors and thus found it pertinent to reply.

23 hours ago, Shockpoint said:

Not a word was said to Security, nor were they permitted to be brought back to life afterwards, which was a breach of Space Law under Murder (preventing the revival of a crew member facilitates to Murder instead of Manslaughter).

The first part is true, although this was necessary as had I stopped he would've gotten away and killed my coworker, I was on the asteroid and as such calling security would've resulted in a significant wait that would've ended with a dead miner. As for the second part, totally incorrect. I never kept anyone from retrieving the body and cloning or attempting a revival, in fact I never even moved the cultist from the tile that they had died on. In terms of your quotation of space law that's an entirely IC issue and not really relevant to the topic in my opinion (and I would've been cleared of the charges under the self defense stipulation anyway) which focuses on OOC rules and interpretations. 

23 hours ago, Shockpoint said:

Henceforth I had made the warning as this is very unfair to the cultist in question, as well as the cult in general, not to mention that normal players should not be taking such matters so far into their own hands as doing so leads to self-antagging/validhunting which is strictly against our rules. 

I disagree with this first statement entirely, the cultist met their fate through their own actions entirely. This was not a one sides situation but as Neca pointed out an escalation. The cultist had the chance to get away but had turned around and decided to engage my armored Ripley with cult magic and melee, all I did was simply respond with attacks of my own which happened to be much more effective, had he not chosen to do that or simply dropped the miner and fled none of this would've happened as my goal was just to save my coworker, full stop. Currently rule 8 has no stipulation regarding appropriate force when countering an antag in its text which I feel is very relevant to the topic at hand seeing as how the cultist's death is the point of contention. The only reason the cultist was killed and removed from the round was so I could bring another player back into by healing them from crit with my hivelord core, a pretty fair trade all things considered methinks.

23 hours ago, Shockpoint said:

This can honestly just be a simple mistake as a player that I don't believe will happen again whatsoever.

When the situation was unfolding the exchange shown in the attached image was a big reason I made this complaint; it felt to me as if you were insinuating that I had willingly and knowingly broken the rules, however I still don't believe I have violated any of the rules applicable and in writing to this server. I have already explained my actions and laid out a clear and concise table of events and my reasoning behind them which I believe should exonerate me entirely. As for this being a mistake if, with the advantage of hindsight and knowing how all this would play out, I was given a chance to do this all over again I would make the same choice. I am not a validhunter, nor will I ever be, and I have done nothing wrong.

[Shockpoint]

16 hours ago, Mach said:

As for the second part, totally incorrect. I never kept anyone from retrieving the body and cloning or attempting a revival, in fact I never even moved the cultist from the tile that they had died on.

That effectively means they never got to play the rest of their round, which was the cause of the report of the issue. Hence my looking into it and coming to the conclusion that resulted in this AC.

16 hours ago, Mach said:

I disagree with this first statement entirely, the cultist met their fate through their own actions entirely. This was not a one sides situation but as Neca pointed out an escalation. The cultist had the chance to get away but had turned around and decided to engage my armored Ripley with cult magic and melee, all I did was simply respond with attacks of my own which happened to be much more effective, had he not chosen to do that or simply dropped the miner and fled none of this would've happened as my goal was just to save my coworker, full stop.

The cultist never should have had to deal with an armoured Ripley to start with, really. It effectively is the same issue as greytide following antags in maint. They never should have to deal with that.

16 hours ago, Mach said:

When the situation was unfolding the exchange shown in the attached image was a big reason I made this complaint; it felt to me as if you were insinuating that I had willingly and knowingly broken the rules, however I still don't believe I have violated any of the rules applicable and in writing to this server. I have already explained my actions and laid out a clear and concise table of events and my reasoning behind them which I believe should exonerate me entirely. As for this being a mistake if, with the advantage of hindsight and knowing how all this would play out, I was given a chance to do this all over again I would make the same choice. I am not a validhunter, nor will I ever be, and I have done nothing wrong.

That is why I said it was a mistake, rather than an intentional thing. If the way I've said it has come across incorrectly, then I apologize for that, and hope you see that was not my intention. However, if that was intentional of you, that's rather unfortunate as that's really not okay to do to someone else as non-security.

In any case, this will be handled when a headmin has time to review it.

[necaladun]

@Shockpoint please update the note to make sure its reflected that there was no intent to validhunt and was a situation that organically occurred instead of someone setting out to hunt antags.

@Mach please let me know when you get a chance if you consider this fair - i like such notes so we can see patterns of people who keep "accidentally" running into situations like this, but in your case i think it will show withim a few months that such a situation was isolated.

[Shockpoint]

Updated.

[Mach]

On 6/22/2019 at 5:34 PM, necaladun said:

@Mach please let me know when you get a chance if you consider this fair - i like such notes so we can see patterns of people who keep "accidentally" running into situations like this, but in your case i think it will show withim a few months that such a situation was isolated.

Yeah, this is completely fair and really all that I had wanted out of this situation. Thank you for your tact in dealing with this and also for allowing me to state my case.

[necaladun]

No worries. Cheers for not telling the admins to kill themselves etc etc. Marking as resolved!