That’s exactly what isn’t wanted, they arent a binary, they are an inbetween as the name suggests (that’s the aim atleast). However it’s not like you can’t do evil or good stuff, this is literally only escalation.
I believe its been said before you can also use ‘tells’ such as if a character always talks third person and they start talking normally. or If you have certain interactions that happen every round between you and them that is another tell.
Honestly RK can also attack Antags and be a force for good if they so choose. jumping to the conclusion that RK exist, RK must be antag is anti-RP.
antags are allowed to attack other antags
The big question mark to me is Free Agents. As many have pointed out, this basically forbids the Rat King from starting fights, which is a bit weird. Then again, it only explicitly says they can’t escalate to level 2 or 3 if they are the aggressor. Does attacking someone with your 100 rat minions count as non-lethal combat since they don’t have weapons?
The other weird interaction would be for Survivors. Survivors all get a lethal weapon when they become free agents, and are told to amass more firepower. Firepower which is in the pockets of the rest of the crew around them. Under these rules, even if a survivor has a reason to attack another (They want that person’s better gun), and knows that person is lethally armed, they have to start a fist fight first? And then take out their own gun if the person fights back? It’s a weird thing to put in the rules, after all, I kinda thought the point of the event spell was to cause infighting and division among the station.
By these rules, Free Agents acting in their own self interest could be seen as a rulebreak.
Does Sec making an arrest count as being the aggressor or the defender? If aggressor, I see some problems with current wording and I will do my best to outline them following.
Where wording implies Sec is the Aggressor in an arrest:
Where wording implies Sec is the Defender, emphasis mine:
Now depending on how you interpret these clarifications, you might end up in a scenario (that you frequently see the beginning of already I might add) where things escalate too far but seemingly might be allowed given strict following. Labeling them with letter notation here for reference.
A
B
C
Imagine the following scenario. You are a Tider. You commit the minor crime of stealing something from someone and get away. Security is informed and make efforts to confront you about this crime. You don’t want to have your stolen item taken away, so you resist the arrest. The following happens in order:
- Security skips to Stage 2 with their baton or disabler due to rule A.
- Through some means Security drops their non-lethals and you pick up their baton or disabler.
- You attack Security with their own baton/disabler to slow them down in order to escape. You skipped to Stage 2 as well when Security brandished their non-lethal due to rule B.
- Security, now exhausted of their non-lethal option now resorts to using lethals due to rule A again.
- Through some means Security drops their lethals. You pick up their lethals.
- Security seemingly still intends on attacking you despite the fact they have been disarmed of all weapons. You attack them with their lethals due to rule C. You ensure they are given medical attention.
- Other members of Security attempt to apprehend you. Due to rules B and C again, you can freely attack them with lethals.
Congratulations you have achieved pseudo-DAGD with Security constantly persuing you with lethals. Obviously this is going to be seen as self-antagonism, but I wanted to highlight how you could naturally arrive at this scenario through simply following the rules listed here.
I havn’t given my feedback so far, but I feel that the current system was at least easier to follow.. this has alot edge case and is very follow these steps. Im guessing this is to address some problem that happens outside of salamander where i’ve generally seen things work as intended.
In my humble security opinion, anyone being arrested should be considered the aggressor in conflict since they are already from IC perspective guilty (or at least reasonably accused) of a crime. Trespass already makes them an aggressor, arrest should too.
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This rewrite seems extremely confusing and complicated for something that doesn’t seem like a large issue. If you could present your reasoning for this rewrite somewhere so i can understand your thought process that would be appreciated.
As it stands personally with me i feel like the standard rules do a fine enough job perhaps with some minor changes, but this full rewrite is convoluted and hard to understand in its current form.
It seems very messy with a lot of amendments and edge cases you need to think about, when escalation rules should be something you can naturally follow along with as a normal person would in real life.
TLDR: rewrite seems unintuitive and confusing with lots of amendments to certain aspects. Also having a place to read your thoughts and reasoning behind it would be nice to include somewhere.
Previously, escalation was “use common sense”. It didn’t work.
Now, escalation is 14 paragraphs of stuff that should be common sense, and it still doesn’t work, but it takes forever to actually read through.
These changes were literally taken from Beestation 13 and then reworked to fit in Wizards Den 14 with our current terminology.
We might not actually adopt the changes if it turns out to be more confusing, but nobody’s really said anything about how it’s more confusing if our other rules cover the gaps.
This is the unfortunate problem with the rule being “Use common sense.” While most people can abide by it and are normal functioning people, it isn’t hard for bad actors and rules lawyers to create… this. A long list of rules that is either too complex to follow with potential unintended gotchas, or extra fodder for rules lawyers to have a field day with.
In any case it does still leave some things a bit vague. Someone mentioned toolboxes in reference to less than lethal weapons in escalation. Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that the less than lethal tool in particular should be something the character should be expected to have? Eg engineer carrying a toolbox is normal, less so for a passenger or a reporter. Logic being that you use what’s on hand for defense, rather than carrying a toolbox just for the weapon potential of it.
I’m still just confused at how this will help with the current issues at hand. It just results in admin workload no matter what you do so i don’t know if clarifying these rules makes any tangible difference.
Well, we could just delete it entirety at this point i guess?
It`s takes player enforcement to work. Aka players holding other players to standard.
I would say change it from a strictly admin enforced server rules to guidelines\recommendations and add it to Security 101 in game book + Help\guide tab.
Revert rules back to common sense, while keeping this as a recommendation to behavior in in-game Sec guide
Putting dealing with escalation violation in hands of Command and Lawyer to resolve IC
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On one hand I do believe in more IC resolutions. On the other… the term shitsec exists for a reason. I don’t wanna be the one arguing for ten minutes to a secoff why I an engineer had to make a tider’s face concave when he tried to toolbox me for insuls…
Especially becomes messy if it’s anything but a one on one incident.
I suppose between the two, IC resolution is still the better choice. If someone gets it too wrong (metafriend or something) well… Thats why ahelp is there.
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Rules are already enforced in a case to case basis. There is always some leeway for “rule of cool” as far as i have seen.
I feel that the current escalation rules are fine. We just need answers to the most common questions, like “what is considered a lethal weapon?”. Or just provide more common scenarios instead of trying to make a “system” that can cover every scenario, which is never going to be scalable nor sufficient for every situation.
It can be reduced to:
-
Categorize weapons as:
- Harmless: punches or blunt damage that does not exceed punch damage.
- Dangerous: anything that deals higher damage or causes bleeding (yes, lizards should be careful when engaging in fisticuffs, they should be aware of their strength for the sake of their fellow crew).
- Lethal: any gun regardless of caliber that deals more than 3 damage (for those thinking of foam darts) or weapon that deals more than a bat’s damage total
-
Escalation would be as follows:
- A single strike of a harmless category can be considered an invitation for combat and you may match it if you want. If the initiator continues attacking without seeing if you will fight back (clearly attempting to cause serious or lethal harm) you may escalate to a “Dangerous” weapon.
- A strike from a dangerous weapon allows the use of lethal weapons until the attacker retreats, but the victim is expected to match it when sensible (don’t gun down a running suspect because he whacked you twice with a tool box, or pull out a shotgun on someone that stabbed you with a kitchen knife if you have a disabler)
- The use of a lethal weapon allows for a KoS during that encounter. (KILL not PERMA)
-
For antags:
-
Antag damage is categorized as the following. If a situation calls for a higher tier of damage, then the lower tiers are included in the permission by default:
- Disruptive: always allowed if it aids the objective in some way
- Cutting wires or toggling APCs of some department that may oppose your goals (medical healing your enemies, cargo making guns to stop you, etc)
- Bolting doors.
- Stealing
- Drugging someone non-lethaly
- Lying or otherwise misleading someone into self-antagging (arresting the wrong person, marking someone as DNR, etc).
- Hostile: anything with the intent to kill or crit someone, directly or indirectly. Only against crew that are actively hostile to you or currently visibly aiding those attacking you. Crew that is standing near you without clear intents are also valid targets (crew should be either fighting or fleeing).
- Extreme: station wide damage, including destroying department infrastructure to the point of rendering it ineffective (spacing, destroying hard to replace machines, etc), killing multiple member of the crew that you where not instructed to kill AND that are actively avoiding conflict with you (NOT aiding those opposing you at this very moment and/or running away from you), or something as simple as a singuloose.
- Disruptive: always allowed if it aids the objective in some way
-
As a result of the categorization rule, if you are a nukie, your objective is of Extreme category, meaning all hostile actions are automatically allowed.
-
As a thief, your objective is of disruptive category. So you may never escalate to lethal (even if you could).
-
If there are objectives that should NOT follow these rules, it should be noted in said objective. So if the thief should not, for example, steal the nuke disk, it should say in his objective to not steal high contraband that is not useful to his goals.
-
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These rules are made both with RP and clearness in mind.
Even if bleeding is not that big of a deal due to how it works in game (you cannot randomly cut an arthery, for example), it would be considered an attempt to kill irl. But it is still not lethal because it would create a big imbalance between guns and a sharp pen.
A single strike of a dangerous weapon allows lethals because you would not whack someone with a machete unless you where trying to kill them.
Antag damage is categorized in function of how much it affects the round. Killing or even round removing someone who was a direct threat to their goals (a random maints explorer that found them doing something sussy) is just one player. Making medbay unusable means people cannot get healed for any complex damage type and all of medical can no longer do their job.
While the extreme category allowing anything lethal may flare up the issue of nukies hunting down random crew and departments instead of following their pinpointer, this is more of an issue with antags ignoring their goals and not related to escalation.
Q. Do I misunderstand you regarding lizard claws? That their base melee starts out at a higher tier than someone punching?
If I read it right that sounds a lot like the lizard is almost required to take a punch or two before they do anything or they overescalate.
I think a good start would be allowing the RK to sic the army on non-players, things like space carp and dragons, maybe even inanimate objects like crystals and walls. Just give them more options to be a force for good.
This works for me.