Admin Complaint: Erikos

[ascio]

Admin(s) Key: @Erikos
Your ckey (Byond username): Ascio
Your Discord name (if applicable): @ascio

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): December 9, 2024

ROUND ID: 42916

Nature of complaint: Misapplication of Rules
Links to all relevant ban appeals for any bans related to this complaint: N/A

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements):

Ahelped for validbay obstacle-shoving me, stealing contractor baton and detaining me with it (and for me suiciding upon getting caught, breaking rule 2). Told validbay was not validhunting me and that they're allowed to respond to situations in front of them, and that committing suicide upon getting caught as an agent makes sense as long as it's not all the time.

Full description of events:

I was a contractor diona, Jealousy of the Falling Sky. It's lowpop and I'm in medbay having stocked up on meds. I see the CMO, Empie, who is a contract target, and take my chance. I am immediately shoved into obstacles by Kitty Vast, the Coroner, who comes running up as soon as I baton the CMO. My baton on the ground, Radiation Hazard, the other doctor there, picks it up and stuns me twice with it. At this point, detained and security on their way and having no TC left or means of escape from perma or re-acquiring my contractor uplink once confiscated, I suicided. I salted in dchat. Dchat told me to ahelp. I ahelped for validhunting (and for my own suicide breaking rule 2) and Erikos told me that it didn't look like they were hunting me and that suiciding after being caught was reasonable as long as it wasn't often. I pointed out that they detained me with my contractor baton as non-sec, and that I was looc-taunted after suiciding, and that that did not feel like just "defending their department". Erikos said would look again, then responded that nobody involved was validhunting me, and that their looc taunting wasn't looc taunting. Then said that it's worse vibes for the game if people can't respond to what is happening in front of them. I pointed out that there's room between responding/defending, and proactively detaining sec as non-sec, which is what twice-hitting me with my own baton is effectively doing. I clarified my feelings about the bad vibes that encouraging this behavior brings to the game, but said I could tell I was on Erikos' shitlist at this point, and said thanks. The ticket was then resolved without further discussion.

 

Rules were misapplied as follows:

• Rule 2 absolutely prohibits suiciding as I did, despite Erikos and dchat being understanding and reasonably suggesting that a "made" syndicate agent committing suicide to avoid capture makes some sense. I agree with this take but it's also inconsistent with the letter of the rules - I very literally was caught and committed suicide, there is not really grey area in the wording of the rule there. While I'm happy not to be antag-banned for it, if there actually is grey area in rule 2, its wording should be updated to reflect that. I understand that by making an AC about this, I am putting a target on my head for being antagbanned for this despite Erikos' ruling, and if that's necessary I accept it.
• Rule 8 absolutely covers how Kitty Vast and Radiation Hazard responded. The CMO had already gotten away by the time my baton was stolen from me and I was detained with it. There was security on station, though it was lowpop. The fact of the matter is that by stealing my contractor baton and detaining me with it, they were going out of their way to stop an antagonist as non-sec, beyond defending themselves or their department - I did not have any chance to recover the baton or even flee. (Hence my suicide, since it was functionally indistinct from just walking away from the computer and letting them cryo my effectively-SSD body anyway.) Rule 8 very specifically says "It is only the job of Security to stop Antagonists." I don't think that shoving me away or shoving the CMO away from me was validhunting, but there's something warped going on if stealing my contractor baton, hard-stunning me with it, and calling for security to come get me while keeping me there isn't ruled as validhunting. If an antagonist isn't able to run away from non-antags because they're detaining the antag, that is beyond self-defense or department defense.

[DoctorDrugs]

I want to apologize how long this took to getting to, the backlog of ACs didn't make it easier to get around to this one any faster than the holidays that recently happened. However I had attempted to get to this one as quickly as possible whilst making sure the same level of care was taken with each one, such as digging through logs to understand context of the round before and during any issues. Moving into the Admin complaint itself here I'd like to address this in two parts, the first part being the issue of suiciding when captured and the second part being the valid hunting part (I will address Erikos' actions in each part seperately).

Now for the first part here regarding Rule 2 specifically the parts where suicide is involved, 

Quote

When it comes to suiciding, do not suicide upon getting caught, or when converted by a conversion Antagonist.

this is pulled directly from the Rules, the intention is to prevent players from simply suiciding on being caught by both antagonists and non-antagonists. The rules are a spirit of the rules more so than a to the T of the rules when they were put down long ago and tend to remain that way, it is this way to give players a little leeway for various reasons and means for bending the rules in ways that make contextual sense such as an example of rule 2: an antag to suicide in processing, their cells or perma if they've been long since abandoned by security for a long time. If we were to hold firmly to the rule rather than the spirit of the rules then we'd be talking to a lot of people who've decided to suicide in their cells or in perma. Now having said all that Erikos believe that you suiciding was alright in the context of what he saw upon looking at the logs as he was not present to the entire scenario and joined in just a bit before the ahelp was placed. Generally we'd like people to not suicide in the circumstance that happened with you in medical but I can see why Erikos would consider it alright given that your round was basically over if they were detaining you till security arrived and hand you over to them. I will make sure that his understanding is on the same level as the rules and the same level as staff and Headmins.

Moving over to the second part here regarding Rule 8 specifically the valid hunting part, I'll post a bit of a chunk of the logs here regarding the medbay attack and say logs (minus logs that are irrelevant of course)
 

Quote

[2024-12-09T12:37:25] ATTACK: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(174,93,2) against x/(Empie)(ANTAG)(175,93,2): Knocked down with the contractor baton
[2024-12-09T12:37:28] ATTACK: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(177,92,2) against x/(Empie)(ANTAG)(176,93,2): Knocked down with the contractor baton
[2024-12-09T12:37:30] ATTACK: x/(Kitty Vast)(175,92,2) against x/(Empie)(ANTAG)(177,93,2): Disarmed into a dense object
[2024-12-09T12:37:32] ATTACK: x/(Kitty Vast)(177,92,2) against Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(179,93,2): Disarmed into a dense object
[2024-12-09T12:37:34] ATTACK: x/(Kitty Vast)(171,92,2) against x/(Empie)(ANTAG)(172,92,2): Shaked
[2024-12-09T12:37:35] ATTACK: x/(Kitty Vast)(168,92,2) against x/(Empie)(ANTAG)(169,92,2): Shaked
[2024-12-09T12:37:37] SAY: x/(Kitty Vast) (166,92,2): (headset) 'SEC '
[2024-12-09T12:37:38] SAY: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky) (179,92,2):  'Well'
[2024-12-09T12:37:39] SAY: x/(Kitty Vast) (166,92,2): (headset) 'CONTRACTOR'
[2024-12-09T12:37:40] ATTACK: x/(Radiation Hazard)(179,91,2) against Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(179,92,2): Knocked down with the contractor baton
[2024-12-09T12:37:40] ATTACK: x/(Kitty Vast)(166,92,2) against x/(Empie)(ANTAG)(167,92,2): Shaked
[2024-12-09T12:37:40] SAY: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky) (179,92,2):  'Guess I"ll die'
[2024-12-09T12:37:41] SAY: x/(Zeke Elliott) (222,136,2): (headset) 'oh my god'
[2024-12-09T12:37:43] ATTACK: x/(Radiation Hazard)(179,91,2) against Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(179,92,2): Knocked down with the contractor baton
[2024-12-09T12:37:43] SAY: x/(Zeke Elliott) (222,136,2): (headset) 'where?'
[2024-12-09T12:37:45] ATTACK: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(179,92,2) against : Fallen unconscious
[2024-12-09T12:37:45] GAME: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky) fell unconscious at The �Medbay (179,92,2) (/area/station/medical/medbay)
[2024-12-09T12:37:46] ATTACK: x/(Radiation Hazard)(179,91,2) against Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky)(ANTAG)(179,92,2): Attacked with contractor baton (HARM) (BRUTE)
[2024-12-09T12:37:46] SAY: x/(Kitty Vast) (171,91,2): (headset) 'MEDBAY'
[2024-12-09T12:37:47] EMOTE: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky) (179,92,2): seizes up and falls limp, her eyes dead and lifeless...

As far as I can tell from the logs and what I've asked for context from Erikos on what he saw/investigated, Kitty Vast didn't detain you themselves and fell within the rules of self defense of others nearby them as they just attempted to shove you over and then attempted to wake up the CMO before and after calling out for sec to respond to medbay. Now on the other hand it seemed very much like Radiation Hazard had the intention to detain you until security arrived to take you away but that's a little difficult to be sure of without a shadow of a doubt due to the time where security was told of the location to respond to and the time at which you were dead from suicide happening so close to one another. If you had not committed suicide I would expect Erikos to have talked to Radiation Hazard for having went past the point of self defense having detained you for however long that would've taken for security to arrive and deal with the situation past that point. Regardless Erikos still talked to Radiation Hazard regarding what happened in medbay and reminded them that they should disengage when able to do so. Unfortunately this is one of those times where it's a little difficult to tell intentions fully in game at a glance as in hindsight we have the ability to sit down and look at logs more in depth and consider everything a bit more as there's no time constraint or other matters than pull attention. 

As a closing statement I just want to point out that I don't know if I'd consider that as LOOC taunting but I can see it coming off as such especially when failing and ending up feeling like you were being valid hunted or people have gone past what was okay within the rules. Though it doesn't help when both parties are throwing a bit of salt at each other as well in response, it would've been best if neither party said anything at all in LOOC or instead of adding to salt pile simply ahelping and letting it be handled by an admin. Having said everything there is a little merit in my opinion here for the complaint regarding checking to make sure rules are upheld to a similar standard and processes are followed as normal but the majority of the complaint here looks to me as having no merit due to the circumstances surrounding timing of how things went down. As I said it is hard to establish being sure of their intention to hold you till security arrived or if they were gonna run away past that point, however Erikos still had a conversation with Radiation Hazard as a reminder of what is allowed to be done for self defense of others.
 

Quote

[2024-12-09T12:39:15] LOOC: x/(Radiation Hazard) (179,91,2): fails objective
[2024-12-09T12:39:17] LOOC: x/(Radiation Hazard) (179,91,2): suicides
[2024-12-09T12:39:19] LOOC: x/(Radiation Hazard) (179,91,2): gkfhakghjfa
[2024-12-09T12:39:30] LOOC: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky) (180,92,2): valids obviously not robust antag and ends their run
[2024-12-09T12:39:36] LOOC: x/(Radiation Hazard) (179,91,2): lmfao
[2024-12-09T12:39:37] LOOC: Ascio/(Jealousy Of The Falling Sky) (180,92,2): salts them in ooc

 

[ascio]

The delay is of course more than understandable; thank you for your time in responding.

I think all of this is pretty much reasonable, especially with regard to my decision to suicide in this circumstance being the wrong choice and that it complicates judgment of everything else about the situation. I also agree that Kitty Vast's response fell entirely within self-defense. I will say that I wasn't aware from my ahelp conversation that Erikos had spoken to Radiation Hazard and told them to disengage if possible in situations like this.

I'm having a little bit of whiplash, because your assessment here seems mostly reasonable, and if I understand you correctly, you seem to read that Radiation Hazard's response seemed like its intent was greater than self-defense, but that my decision to suicide makes it impossible to judge. If I had been told something like that in response to my ahelp I would have probably felt bad about my poor decision but accepted the resolution and moved on. I may have been or may be projecting tone onto text that flatly isn't there, but it seemed to me that Erikos' response to me became very adversarial after I mentioned "vibes"; and I did not get the impression that they felt detaining a traitor until sec arrives falls outside of self-defense. I accept of course that Radiation Hazard never got a chance to actually do that because I suicided, and that, as you've said, the only technically valid part of this admin complaint is the part where I ungraciously complained about Erikos going too easy on me for suiciding; but my point is I would not have made this admin complaint at all except as procedural escalation for my concern that validhunting rules aren't being taken seriously.

And I want to emphasize procedural because I mean - while I do read hostile tone in Erikos' response, a) that could be in my head, and b) I understand that admins aren't any less human and that there is stress both from inside the game and out, and that handling administrative BS like ahelps is nobody's favorite thing - and the general advice that is chanted in-game and in discord is that if something feels like it's outside of the rules you should ahelp it, and that if you really disagree with an ahelp ruling, you should not continue to argue, but rather raise an admin complaint. I don't know if that's actually what I should have done but that was my motivation here.

Thanks again. I welcome but don't require reply, and accept this as resolved.