Wubs' Theoretical Mod Application

[Wubs4Scrubs]

This post isn't an official application, or even necessarily a prelude to one (hence Acid Goop). I might pursue a mod position in the future, however my goal right now is more so to further my understanding of the rules and staff procedure to gain some knowledge if I ever decide to apply. So if some staff members have some free time to give some feedback like they would a standard application I would very much appreciate it.

Common Staff Situations:

1. A player randomly shoots someone at round start and MPs have detained him.

My first course of action would be to determine whether the shooting was accidental or intentional. There is a massive difference between a player firing off one shot that happens to hit somebody and then apologizing profusely about how it was a misfire (maybe even an LOOC apology) I would leave the matter IC. If however, the player in question was shooting multiple people or was intentionally trying to kill somebody the issue might necessitate intervention. Freezing or sleeping the player would be unnecessary at this point considering the MPs have already detained them so I'd begin with asking why they were shooting somebody else and go from there. If the shooting was due to some improper escalation from not getting attachments I would warn them that what they did is improper escalation and if they have a history of improper escalation I would apply a 3 hour ban. A note would be applied to their account if I had to warn/ban them.

2. The ship has a breach to space and a bunch of players have died or are dying as a result.

I would determine the cause of said breach before taking any action. If it was caused intentionally by a player I would repair the damage before finding out who did it. However, if the breach was caused by the drop ship landing I would leave it as is. If it was in fact a player that caused the breach I would question why they did it, it's like impossibly hard to breach the Almayer accidentally so either the player would be completely new to the game or an intentional griefer. If it was a new player who simply didn't read the rules I would note their account and issue a 24 hour ban since the rule they broke was a pretty big one. If it was a player with a bad note history who intentionally breached the ship a 7 day ban would be applied along with a perma request.

3. You see a player walking around the ship naked and clearly lost.

I'd check and see if a mentor was on to help the poor lad out. If there were no mentors on to help the guy I would probably send him a PM to see if he had any basic questions, I might ask him if he's read the rules or not to make sure he didn't do anything he would regret. The amount of depth I'd help the player out would largely depend on how busy I was dealing with other matters, if the round was high-pop I might have more important things to attend to than helping out a baldie. If I had nothing else going on I'd do my best to make sure that he wouldn't do anything stupid and send them the link to the wiki where they can get more detailed information.

4. A player is being very rude to you in Adminhelps and requesting to speak to an Admin+ staff member.

I'm not here to be your punching bag, if you have a staff complaint you can take it to the forums and not salt to me over PMs. I'd give the player a warning that his current attitude is unacceptable, especially when speaking with a staff member. If their rudeness persisted after my warning I'd apply a 24 hour ban for disrespecting staff and make note of his behavior. On the topic of them wanting to speak to an Admin+ member I assume that my response should be something along the lines of "Well that's too bad, there are no Admin+ members online right now." If a player is blatantly being an ass I'm not going to give into their demands and escalate the situation by getting a higher ranking staff member involved.

5. You notice a player with a name that doesn't fit our naming rules. The player is arguing that: They've used the name for several years, no one has told them to change it before, and that they didn't know it was a rule.

Just because you haven't gotten caught doesn't mean you're following the rules. If they insist that nobody else has had a problem with their name I'd simply say "Yeah, well I do, change it." Players are expected to follow staff's instructions and if I deemed the name unacceptable I'd expect them to change it.

6. You see a Maintenance Tech running around in armor and carrying a rifle. The security level is green with no threat present.

PM the guy and see what the hell he's doing. There wouldn't be any reason to sleep or freeze the player assuming he's just running around with a rifle not shooting anybody. I'd warn them that civilians aren't permitted to carry such equipment on green alert. If the player's notes contained other examples of him not grasping what a civilian can and can't do (like if he had a note of a doctor carrying around a gun or CL) a job ban would be given.

7. You see a Squad Medic performing surgery on the planet. He claims it was because there were no doctors in the FOB.

I'd tell him to follow the RP rules and that medics are never allowed to perform surgery, regardless of the situation. If a marine is dying people cannot break RP rules simply because it would make the round easier. I'd leave it at a warning unless they had previous notes breaking similar rules. If he'd been caught performing surgery numerous times as a medic I would apply a job ban.

8. The round is stagnating. There are 30 marines and 4 aliens. The marines won't leave the ship, and the aliens won't attack. What would you do, to "encourage" the sides to engage each other?

I would either issue an ARES report telling the marines that there are only 4 aliens left, or I would send a fax from USCM ordering the marines to make an assault with no further information. I'm not sure which method would be preferred but I'd probably lean towards the ARES report because I've seen it done before.

9. The round ends, a MARINE starts shooting a hostile IRON BEAR and the IRON BEAR Adminhelps complaining he was killed after the round ended.

Combat logs against antags are permitted at round end. So long as the marine was only shooting Iron Bears and maintaining RP there would be no issue so no action would be taken.

10. A marine is running around disarming, punching and stealing gear at round start.

If staff got involved every time a fight broke out among the marines there would be no reason to have MPs. I'd leave the matter IC unless the player had a long history of repeated behavior. For example if the guy had a history of literally waking up from cryo and running up to the nearest person to beat up they clearly do not have an understanding of the rules and some sort of action would be nessecary. If the guy continues to literally just punch and fuck with people every second he isn't detained I'd PM them and tell them that their current behavior isn't acceptable. If they continue to grief and grief literally any chance they get after multiple warnings and MP arrests I'd apply a 7 day ban and probably request a perma because clearly they either don't speak English or they don't care about the rules at all.

11. A marine has killed another marine. When you ask him why, he said it was because the other marine had punched him.

A pretty textbook example of improper escalation. I'd issue a stern warning unless the player in question had a history of improper escalation leading to killing people in which case I'd likely issue a 3 hour ban.

12. An issue arises that requires Admin+ abilities.

I'm not familiar with the means of communication between head staff but I assume it has something to do with Slack. If my original plan of shining a Canadian Flag shaped spotlight into the night sky didn't work I'd attempt to reach an Admin+ on Slack. (Or discord if I am completely wrong about what Slack is)

13. There are minor racist comments going on IC. 9 of the 10 people are laughing and RPing but one player gets offended and Adminhelps about it.

IC racism is acceptable, OOC racism is not. I'd tell the complaining player our stance on IC racism. The only way I'd get involved in any way is if it was like, REALLY bad or RP breaking levels of racism. For example if an entire squad is ganging up on the only black member, using the word nigger in every sentence, saying that they ought to lynch him and shit like that I could see it potentially escalate to a worse situation. Since in the example given there were so many offenders I'd probably make an OOC announcement along the lines of "Cool it with the racism people, you've crossed the line."

14. A marine opens fire at round start in briefing killing multiple marines and instantly logs off.

Indefensible example of a griefer. I'd apply a 7-week ban immediately and submit a perma request. A player like this should never be allowed back onto the server.

15. You see a player playing a xeno larva/chestburster run towards the frontlines and die.

I'd monitor the player to get some context. If they weren't talking at all, and spawned into another larva and were about to to the same thing I'd freeze the player and ask what they were doing. If I found that they were a complete baldie and simply didn't know any better I would give them a warning and tell them to read the rules over and explain that charging in as a larva isn't okay. However, if they were a more experienced player that had a history of being a shit I would issue a xeno job ban.

16. You see a xeno memeing, saying AYYLMAO, REEEEEE etc in hivemind chat.

Immediately give them a stern warning and inform them that if they do it again a 3 hour ban would be applied immediately. If they had already been warned I would issue a ban without speaking to them first.

17. A xeno player calls the shuttle a "dropship". A different xeno player complains to you that it's metagaming/failRP to call it a "dropship".

No action would be taken. All aliens on on the same wavelength so to speak in terms of understanding the hive mind so the words used aren't important. (My explanation on how it works is probably pretty shit but I at least know that it isn't an issue to use terms like "dropship" or "medbay."

18. A Command staff player at briefing near round-start mentions there are aliens on the planet.

This is pretty bad, such an action would probably be catastrophic to the RP flow of the round especially if they persisted in claiming to know about the aliens. It would also arm the marine with meta-knowledge which would also harm the round. I would PM the player and explain that what they did was unacceptable and that they were breaking the rules by using meta-knowledge. After discussing it with the player a 3 hour ban would be issued along with a command job ban. Having a command staff abusing meta-knowledge is especially toxic to the round as it spreads to all the other players. Such a flagrant breaking of the rules in a command position I feel would absolutely permit a job ban considering that players choosing to be command staff should be held to a higher standard just as command staff in the IRL military are. If the player had a note history I would probably even give a 24 hour ban.

19. A Marine kills another Marine on the EVAC Pod to take the last spot and claims it was RP as he was saving himself.

Depends how it was handled. If the marine ran up to the pod and just gunned everybody inside it down to save his own skin without RPing at all I'd probably warn the player that what he did was improper escalation. However, if he RP'd with the people in the pod to let him on and it escalated naturally I'd probably leave it IC. I picture something along the lines of in the movie Titanic when people start killing or fighting each other for spots on the life boats, so it would be understandable that marines would do the same.

20. You see a fellow staff member give wrong information in an Adminhelp or incorrectly enforcing a rule.

I'd hit the fellow staff member up and explain that I think what they did was incorrect. If they disagree I'd probably OOC ask about it on Slack or Discord to see who is right so we can make sure that players are receiving correct information.

20a. You see a fellow staff member abusing his powers in-game.

Take many screenshots, given that I assume they have access to all the same note taking tools I do I'd probably just collect the evidence personally and provide it to an Admin+ ASAP. My guess is that serious cases like admin abuse are probably on a need to know basis until they have been discussed so I'd keep it to myself until I thought I had enough evidence to prove my point.

21. You see a player talking in OOC chat about what he did with your mom last night.

Tell him what I did with HIS mom last night. Or, more seriously I'd handle it depending on how.....graphic, the player was. If the bastard was going full WGW I would immediately issue a 7 day ERP ban with a perma request as a cherry on top. However if the player just said like "Hey Wubs, your mom and I had some fun last night" or something pretty mild like that I would just ignore it.

[Feweh]

Make an application, youre asking for the correct answer before you apply. Nullifyng the entire point of the application and judgement.