The topic:
Ok so this discussion is brought up every so often on the discord about the idea of bribing command members for items. I was informed that it was bwoinkable if, for example, QM were to sell their digiboard because “Company bank details.” And this can apply to any other command item if we want to pretend or actually roleplay the value of money.
My issues with this:
I want to know why every QM has to care about that, it’s not even an unusual phenomenon irl. People sell such details all the time illegally and the idea of QM being corrupt is already a staple for ss14. The lobbying bundle itself is an expensive TC item, and the only people who can even use it is cargo. Selling the Digiboard to a thief is labelled as “incompetent” regardless of cargos actual production or ability to continue supplying items.
Rules like these further a huge RP related issue that I wish will get resolved one day. Command can’t be “bad” or do bad things even once, or they will be labelled “incompetent”(which is a rulebreak to wizden, therefore rolebannable), the lobbying bundle itself is a rare buy and I’ve only seen some people attempt to do it because they believe in the idea of actually roleplaying, but command literally can’t agree to the terms, which is enforced by arbitrary rules for some items honestly.
There’s a good reason CE wouldn’t sell their boots, it’s noslip + antigrav, who would give that up?
But would CE selling their bedsheet not also fall under these rules? They are irreplaceable, just not useful.
Possible solutions:
Remove the threat of being bwoinked because you decided to RP as a greedy command member. It should become an IC issue. Seeing CE walk up with normal magboots + 20k should cause questions and probably either demotion or intense interrogation. This means thieves/syndies, command, cap and sec all in this instance get an actual roleplay scenario that allows for a more interesting scenario than the same ones you see over and over. With the existence of storage implants, there’s little ways to break the shield already, this might help.
Make items like the digiboard more mechanically enforced and dangerous if sold or stolen. As it stands, the digiboard being stolen at worst, means you get mildly inconvenienced. Using the digiboard will expose you, unless you’re being extremely careful, which requires a lot of timing or breaking of comms. Somebody will notice money missing or items being bought eventually so it’s rarely ever beneficial to use the digiboard once it’s taken. Then to even retrieve the items, you need to steal the shuttle. The digiboard itself goes into somebody’s storage implant to never be seen again, it’s just not interesting.
Give it a pinpointer/allow us to pinpoint it. Give it some special access that only the digiboard could access (such as guns), just give it some more mechanical importance vs telling us we are forced to RP its importance while not being allowed to RP not caring about it. A lot of the time there’s no way to even locate stolen items anyhow, which is mechanically enforced but kinda bullshit because of storage implants. We should have better ways to fight against stealing, especially if we’re not even allowed to give these items away.
(Might add more, kinda impulse writing this to create a discussion for now)
I have to agree entirely. It’s been made quite clear that mind-shielding ONLY stops revs and has no ability to stop you from being a syndicate agent or thief.
Especially considering how much of SS14 is based on RP I find it quite outrageous that players would be boiwnked for doing just that… role-playing a certain style of character they take. Considering that the character style in no way is either self antaging or abandoning their role by allowing themselves to be bribed and it’s definitely not incompetent, it’s at worse corrupt and that’s not a rule break.
Like the OP said, whats the point of the lobbying bundle if when its used people end up getting banned anyway?
What if an antag bribes a non-antag to go and steal and item for them, are they going to be banned too?
At fear of self incriminating myself… I’ve done this before as command too, allowing myself to be bribed for items from roleplayers who I found to be playing well and making actual effort to RP it out, why? because there is no clear rule stopping me. Not only that, it strikes me as Meta to “know” someone is a syndicate agent or thief and is trying to bribe you for an objective… This is the first time I’ve heard of it being a bannable offence and after thoroughly looking through the rules the only ones I can find which could be applicable are:
Except it strikes me this is more of a catch-all rule for players who take a command/security role and then refuse to act reasonably within the confines of their duty.
Space law in particular makes NO mention of bribes being illegal or punishable, even if its common sense.
2{ Set an example if playing command or security}
Which again, seems to just be a catch all to ensure players who take these roles are not being totally incompetent and says/implies nothing about being a courrpt official.
I have done it too, a long time ago, probably before 200 hours (I’ve over 1k hours now for comparison) and it was the first time I’d ever been bribed and it was legit a cool RP opportunity to me. I only found out when I was around 600 hours or so into the game that it’s apparently against the rules to do it. Which I found absurd because, especially if you’re a QM (I mained QM for a while before), it just seemed like a thing a money grubbing QM would do. I’ve been told more than once in the discord that doing it however would make you “incompetent” which I do think is entirely unfair and I really dislike when the game decided to do this arbitrary rule boundaries stuff just because, I guess somebody dislikes it?? Because I don’t see how it destroys balance in any way - the antag could retrieve the item by other means.
I’ve legit no idea why it should be disallowed truthfully.
No lies detected. IMO corruption should be something that results in you getting sacked by the captain/HoS unless it’s something inexcusable like letting a mass murderer walk free or something. In this case it’s just a roleplay situation in a roleplaying game, and it doesn’t ruin anyone’s fun, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be up to security to enforce.
here’s the problem most space station admins have with the acceptance of bribes/trades for contraband: it tends to encourage command players to cooperate with antagonists in their own self-interest. This presents a number of problems that generally make it suck for the regular crew.
You end up with a host of situations that become very annoying to deal with as both a player and an administrator. It boils down to:
Simply “trading the objective away” largely removes a lot of potential conflict and action from a round where you otherwise have to remove it by force. It tends to make rounds rather boring.
The players in authority who should have the interest of the station and crew at the top of their priorities, and not be disregarding that to make a quick buck. It sucks when your captain or boss is obviously being corrupt and you can’t really do anything about it. This boils to a player culture issue, but a lot of players have a hard time arresting or conflicting with someone when they “haven’t done anything yet” which usually just means they haven’t attacked someone or something they know about. It goes double when security is releasing criminals because they got to keep an esword or some other contraband item for personal use. It doesn’t benefit anyone else but the person making the trade and causes an active risk to everyone else, in addition to the security officer or head abandoning the duties of their role for a rather paltry reason.
Command staff doesn’t really have any incentive to actually keep most objective items unless they care about ensuring antagonists fail objectives (which they usually don’t, they just want to survive the round). Allowing this behavior tends to incentivize command staff to trade objectives or otherwise pardon traitors and allow them to roam free because they just need some otherwise unimportant item and then they won’t hurt anyone.
It is my opinion that it is generally better for the health of the game to push antagonists towards needing to use force or subterfuge to achieve objectives and not a backroom deal. I am not saying that a trade-off cannot be roleplayed well, it is just that most players will do in as a matter of self-interest rather than from a roleplay standpoint. If memory serves there was some sort of rule before the most recent re-write where it allowed command/security to engage in trades with antagonists so as long as it was done with the benefit of the station in mind.
The lobbying bundle got merged even while the old rules were in effect that nearly completely barred trading with antagonists under most circumstances. The mere fact the lobbying bundle exists shouldn’t shape the rules to change with it. Nobody says you absolutely have to use the lobbying bundle on a head of staff anyways.
Firstly, considering at max, you only have 3 thieves at any given time, it’s really not that big of a deal. There’s also a bunch more syndies for the violent conflict you mention. 1 person lobbying =/= suddenly greenshift.
Simply “trading the objective away” largely removes a lot of potential conflict and action from a round where you otherwise have to remove it by force. It tends to make rounds rather boring.
Thieves are the most likely ones to use this(sometimes a syndie will but it’s mad rare because e-sword cooler than RP) but it’s rare anyone ever does it and they purely do it with the intention to RP the interaction. Most players will meta the lobby bundle anyway and deny it. My first experience with the lobbying bundle was a lizard who introduced themselves as a “Business woman” and we had a private conversation about the trade in question. It was cool, not boring. What’s boring is getting RR’d every single round.
The players in authority who should have the interest of the station and crew at the top of their priorities, and not be disregarding that to make a quick buck. It sucks when your captain or boss is obviously being corrupt and you can’t really do anything about it. This boils to a player culture issue, but a lot of players have a hard time arresting or conflicting with someone when they “haven’t done anything yet” which usually just means they haven’t attacked someone or something they know about. It goes double when security is releasing criminals because they got to keep an esword or some other contraband item for personal use. It doesn’t benefit anyone else but the person making the trade and causes an active risk to everyone else, in addition to the security officer or head abandoning the duties of their role for a rather paltry reason.
The problem again with this is really dependant on the character. It’s forced RP to make every single command member need to believe they care that much about the station. They are doing a job, probably getting underpaid and getting shit on constantly. It’s again, not really all that interesting and the gameplay loop for CE and QM never changes. And the real reason the players can’t do shit about it is because the game has developed a situation where everyone knows command CAN NOT be antags/problemtic ever. So therefore there’s never a reason to punish them even if they are being shit (I play sec a lot, I’ve tried to arrest command more than once and failed even when they were breaking spacelaw)
Command staff doesn’t really have any incentive to actually keep most objective items unless they care about ensuring antagonists fail objectives (which they usually don’t, they just want to survive the round). Allowing this behavior tends to incentivize command staff to trade objectives or otherwise pardon traitors and allow them to roam free because they just need some otherwise unimportant item and then they won’t hurt anyone.
Because it’s literally metagaming to assume that the person bribing you is a traitor. I did mention that the items in question should be more mechanically impressive or important if they want command to care more.
And my thoughts right now, command is stale and boring. It has been since I started playing. My original QM gameplay was survive 1 round, gibbed the next. Because there’s nothing else encouraged based on the current ruleset. The only department that can actually “benefit” the station to that degree in regards to antags is security. They also control if command can have weapons most of the time.
I do not believe command itself is in a great state, nor are they all equal(HOS, cap and cmo possibly are the most interesting), they never have anything fun RP conflict wise to do because of the current rules. Not every conflict should have to be a violent one.
One person lobbying is one less person causing relatively larger interactions.
we had a private conversation about a trade that was cool
Alright, sounds riveting for everyone else not involved.
Its not forced RP to expect command members to not act exclusively out of self interest, it is setting up basic ground rules for what is good for the game and what is not. Its your belief that the jobs are “underpaid and getting shit on constantly”, and your belief that apparently most people have a reason to defect to a bundle of money. I rather prefer the way it is now where Command/security is expected to have some degree of integrity which gives them some anchor with the general crew when things start unraveling. When you have traitor heads or heads cooperating with traitors, the entire thing turns into a free for all. Can’t trust anyone, everyone devolves into murderhobo. You get more people playing heads acting out of their own interest and protection (often choosing the roles simply for gear and material benefits rather than the desire to actually lead their department), frequently degrading the quality of heads of staff. It’s not something your average player should be trusted with.
Yes, items should be more mechanically important beyond being a mcguffin someone is after. That helps make the item less attractive to just trade away for random contraband. Command being stale and boring is probably not an issue that’s going to magically do a 180 when you can accept a bribe. And I am not advocating every confict be a bloody massacre, but intrigue and failed sabotage or theft leads to more interesting situations then a head of staff trading something away.
I rather prefer the way it is now where Command/security is expected to have some degree of integrity which gives them some anchor with the general crew when things start unraveling.
Yes, you want people to play command how you expect them to play, and disregard any characterisation they would otherwise have. I’ve met command members who take their job super seriously and command members that don’t care. It’s way more interesting to allow both.
You get more people playing heads acting out of their own interest and protection (often choosing the roles simply for gear and material benefits rather than the desire to actually lead their department), frequently degrading the quality of heads of staff. It’s not something your average player should be trusted with.
Yeah, for a few reasons. First is the human condition. Most people act out of self interest in general. You’re playing the game to have fun and your definition of fun is different from others.
Second reason is that they get RR’d and don’t get to play the game because they decided to RP.
Thirdly, you equally can’t control the rest of the crew because they are their own characters also. This just feels like a way to try and make command players think they are the main characters in a game that has none.
but intrigue and failed sabotage or theft leads to more interesting situations then a head of staff trading something away.
This leads to more fun for security, not for anyone else because everyone else suffers for it.
Considering I’ve seen command as antags and the round was successful and legit fun. I’d say it’d worked if it was rare so command can have 1 thing to look forward to on a rare occasion.
I’ve personally seen the lobbying bundle as more of a tool for say the lawyer or someone else to get someone out of trouble with sec, like reducing their sentence from perma to 15 minutes with a backdoor deal or something.
It should also benefit more from the fact you’re not necessarily dealing with contraband directly but something more abstract like a sentence, potentially(?) avoiding the issues of bartering for objective items for example.
Imma be honest, Command already is incredibly faillible, its just the way they are fallible is… literally failing at their jobs or not commutating with each other, and that sucks.
HOWEVER, the idea of the lobby bundle is in my opinion a GREAT idea. Bribery and corruption in an RP game about intrigue and sabotage is good idea in general within reason, and i would say that not being able to take a bribe not due to loyalty or duty to the job but instead due to OOC rules is dumb, if command feels as though that item they got is worth less then a fat stack of cash, they can reject the offer.
IF NOT, then it can become an IC issue that adds the rest of command and sec in a way that is not overtly violent.
but then comes the issue of LRP and Syndies using the bundle to avoid conflict all together, but command can at any time… just… RP it out and say no?
Qm gets bribed so it can go 2 ways
Qm accepts it and trades in the digiboard for fat stacks after some negotiation
OR
the Qm decided that the money is not worth the info stored in that digiboard. or maybe they arnt that money hungry
and at this point its the QM that has agency in this deal, the syndie is ADDING rp to the round, by deciding to take this course of action.
most rounds dont have syndies go loud regardless, they just kill 1 person and the RP stops there… if any was added
Works maybe on an MRP or HRP server. Not in an LRP server as people will often just abandon their duty for personal gain. If anything a change to this rule would likely only stand as a possible MRP amendment, but that muddies the waters of player expectations across both servers.
I’ve seen it work fine on LRP because it’s still RP. Like I had said, I’ve experienced it and it was a legit good time. Any other time after being informed this RP is “rule breaking” I’ve had to break character to give a shit about items/things that my character realistically wouldn’t care about since it’s forced on us. It’s just anti-RP to make something like that a non-IC issue.
You experienced it once and it worked out. You haven’t experienced it when it goes badly nor do you experience the OOC/administrative issues it causes. Go to an MRP server.