Mixed Signals

[Mycroft Macarthur]

another lengthy post, my apologies if you find my grammar disagreeable, i do the best i am able given the state of my education but im already 26 so if i haven't fixed it by now, lets face it, it aint going to get fixed.




okay, so i've noticed some flip flopping regarding the attitudes and behaviors here and i feel a few things need to be clarified because i am getting some VERY VERY mixed signals.

the admins seem to want to promote very serious roleplay here in the server, half of what i've seen them say to myself or others as well as claims they have made all seem to stress this point, there is a point of showing we dont have alot of the "Silly" content goon does like space wizards, buttbots and so on.

yet i see alot of shit that cant help but shatter my immersion, half of which makes no sense whatsoever from an in character standpoint.

let me give you a few examples of what i mean.

so not long ago i was in what, at first seemed a typical round, one of the aliens immediately left to eat pizza so i and the queen could do ALL the work, of course he gets captured because he's just standing there (he was able to TELL us the marines found him so i guess he didnt completely leave but he goes quiet so we assumed they killed him, whatever) so we continue to fortify the ship, plant weeds, scout it out...

and nothing

after abit i checked engineering, sec, arrivals, cargo and the bridge, medbay and the bar, ALL the typical FOB locations only to realise the marines, after an entire hour of gameplay, had not done anything aboard the nostromo, they came aboard, captured drone 754 and left immediately.

needless to say me and the queen were PISSED, we ahelped to see if the marines had any intention of coming aboard at ALL, ancient said he would try to encourage them to leave but as it turned out, the ENTIRE time 754 had pretended to be their pet, complete with song and dance numbers like that singing frog from loony tunes and the marines had been playing with him for so long that they forgot there was an entire other alien infestation onboard, ancient did his very BEST to encourage the marines to leave the ship but in spite of being an admin he was powerless to convince them to leave the sulaco when not even a single one had been wounded, let alone killed by the alien forces, as far as the marines knew we were a completely peaceful, benevolent species that just wanted to hang around, wave at them and purr like gigantic chitinous cats.

eventually we DID see someone who looked like an MP, we caught him and rejoiced because we believed the marines were finally going to actually play the game.

as it turned out it was just a survivor in a greatcoat.

there had been a survivor aboard the ship the ENTIRE TIME and the marines never tried to rescue him or contact him even an hour into the game.

are you.....are you serious? i didnt see the briefing they had at the beginning but i can imagine the marines got the usual "distress signal from the nostromo, find the crew, discover what happened here, restore the ship to working order, etc" and they spend the entire round, playing with their new cat?

i feel as if i should not even have to explain the inherent issues here, but i will anyways.

first off, the alien completely broke character by pretending to be their friend, did this guy even WATCH the movies? even the shitty AvP films that had no real characters or plot? the aliens view humans as FOOD! if they arent trying to murder humans so they can EAT them then the aliens are trying to CAPTURE them so that they can impregnate them with facehuggers to create more aliens, these are the ONLY THINGS THEY DO! IT IS THEIR REASON FOR BEING! you are NOT THEIR PET

the marines likewise completely abandoned their objectives, it didnt even OCCURR to them to go look for survivors? see if there were more of these creatures or if they were all hostile? it gets worse from there, we decided we werent going to wait another four hours in the VAIN hope that the marines would actually come to the nostromo so we just decided to board their ship, the commander immediately metagamed us and opened fire when the established rp up to that point implied we would be friendly but we didnt give a shit, we ran deep into the ship, set up a nest in the bridge, hugged and nested the commander as well as everyone we found in the sleepers or SSD'd around the ship.

and still nothing.

i mean REALLY?! we took over the fucking BRIDGE, we captured your COMMANDING OFFICER and you STILL refused to stop playing with your new pet long enough to fight us? ancient was still powerless to force the marines to come attack us so we just kind of sat there for ten minutes until the marines just charged us and killed everyone.

i wouldnt mind so much if this was the ONLY occaision in which weird shit happened but it happens all the time, you ever notice how half the time one guy becomes sulaco medic and uses ALL the materials in the chem labs to make beer? the entire supply of chems to make beer and crystal meth?this is a military warship, every drop of beer you make represents medical supplies that DIDN't get made, necessary lifesaving materials the marines will undoubtedly need if they get wounded, how did you even GET this job? how is it that the MP's are ignoring this? i know we dont have to be super serious ALL the time but every time i see shit like this im reminded that we arent actually roleplaying, we're just dicking around and so i waste my time every time im in character myself.

what about how earlier that day some idiot covered the entire engineering fob in liquid fuel, i want you to imagine this for a minute, you are chilling somewhere doing your job when some guy WALKS UP TO YOU and he covers you in gasoline, just douses you in gasoline out of the fucking blue.

maybe, just MAYBE its because he wants to set you on fire?

but of course we were expected to ignore this and we CERTAINLY would not have been allowed to actually do anything about it, next thing you know, oh hey, that guy who doused the engine in liquid fuel SET EVERYONE ON FUCKING FIRE! because no SHIT he was going to set us on fire, the admins spent 30 minutes trying to heal the wounded, the aliens of course abused this and went to capture all the wounded, burning people or jumping them now that they had to abandon the fob (to be COMPLETELY fair, its not THEIR fault some asshole griefed us and they still have to behave in character, taking advantage of a weakness is something they would do, are they even AFFECTED by background heat? if not would they even be AWARE something happened?)

and then that same day when HiT murdered all the marines it occurred to me, wait a minute.....why do the marines ever put up with the presence of HiT? they are not an extension of the U.S. government like Army Rangers or Navy Seals, they are not contract mercenaries sent in as backup for the promise of pay or loot like the Expendables, they are not employees of an allied government such as the Russian Spetznaz, French Foreign Legion, British S.A.S. or German Kommando Spezialkräfte, they are not a secret organization hidden in the shadows to hide or protect mankind from alien threats such as the Men in Black or X-Com, they dont even represent a militia force or rednecks with guns that happened to pick up a radio transmission (hey, it could happen, we have ALOT of bored people with guns on earth even now, ill bet alot of them would be all too willing to back up soldiers in need if they could reliably do so and they were aware of it)

no, HiT are employees of weyland yutani

the sworn, mortal enemies of the colonial marine corps.

im not joking, in their EVERY appearance in the canon when they arent attempting to OUTRIGHT MURDER CIVILIANS (as seen in alien when ash attempted to murder the nostromo crew to protect the aliens, as well as in alien 3 when the company wanted the prisoners to isolate ripley and protect the aliens, and then outright murdered the acting warden at the end of the film by gunning him down), they are actively murdering marines THEMSELVES (as weyland yutani soldiers tried in the ORIGINAL colonial marines, not to mention when burke attempted to get ripley and newt hugged in the original aliens film where he intended to sabotage the marine chryopods afterwards), this would be identical to modern day marines calling for help from the air force, only for the taliban to show up, they wouldnt be "oh hey, thanks for saving us", they would be "oh hey, you guys blew up the world trade centers, attacked the pentagon and killed ALOT of U.S. civilians, and you are PROBABLY here to do the exact same thing to us......we should PROBABLY kill you now", i know that if HiT is called its because the marines NEED backup but their number one, primary goal is to support the interests of the company which means they are there to protect the ALIENS, i was told this is because the transmission is being intercepted from where its actually supposed to go but again, we KNOW these people are our enemies, why are we so suprised when they attempt to murder us afterwards? in fact any time they dont they are actively metagaming because they know if they do the aliens will win (and is therefor a violation of general rules 3 and 5), i mean, how does this company even still exist when they have actively declared open WAR on the united states government? these arent gangbangers, they are the single, most powerful government in all of recorded history! maybe the aliens universe is like shadowrun and megacorps run everything (which is supported by SOME material i've found on the subject) but this is a GOVERNMENT! they have nuclear weapons and they constantly make up reasons to assassinate people for SHITS AND GIGGLES!

but im not trying to bitch, if i AM bitching im really trying not to, i just want to know what exactly we're going for here because all the time i am getting asked to engage in behavior that is essentially bad roleplay or which doesn't make in character sense for.....reasons unknown, if someone was trying to murder you why would you not either defend yourself or at LEAST run away (im not talking about friendly fire, im talking about specific, attempted murder and sabotage with intent to do physical harm), why are MP's constantly not allowed to perform their jobs or expected to do nothing at all in the face of clear violations of, if not military law, common sense certainly, why are survivors punished for trying to survive? marines punished for wearing hardsuits in SPACE (i know there is a rule saying no hardsuits without authorization, but its SPACE! thats where you need hardsuits the MOST! i mean its not like we have a SOFT suit we could use like in the goonservers, if you are going to be in SPACE you kind of need to protect yourself because ITS SPACE! if we take them off we'll DIE, sure i agree it gives marines unfair advantages if we wear them all the time but aliens breach every other round, if there was a NON hard NON facehugger protecting version we could wear we would be HAPPY to just so we dont get bitched at! at least i would! friendly fire MIGHT kill me, the aliens MIGHT kill me, space WILL kill me)

are we going for super serious or are we going for ultra silly? dont get me wrong, if silly is what we want i can DO that, i am SO ready to do that, i have roleplayed as the wal-mart smiley face in superhero MMO's protesting to bring back slavery and end labor unions, fighting my arch nemes'es the Bestbuy Battalion, the Costco Avenger and my chief nemesis the American Civil Liberties Union, i have had openly gay sith lords wield pink spoon shaped lightsabers and wear orange zoot suits in star wars, i have played a humanoid shaped gelatinous cube in D&D and he was EXCELLENT. are we going for super serious? i can TOTALLY do that, my backstory for most D&D shit averages anywhere from 3 to 200 thousand words, the hardest role i have ever done was a serial killer struggling with his addiction for murder (the hardest role i've ever done in a story and i still feel like i did a shitty job), i can do INSANE amounts of research into a roleplay (did you know that blaster bolts in star wars have an average round velocity of 34.7 meters per second? which is fucking nothing compared to the 120 of a black powder musket or the 880 of an m4 carbine, not hard to see how jedi could block that shit huh? and this HAS come up in before in rp outside of SS13) but we CANNOT do both at the exact same time, i feel like a damn pinball machine because we go back and forth between two spots faster then we would in a bullet hell game.

maybe i just needed to rant because it had been a really weird day, i dunno, i feel very confused and tired.

[Ghostdex]

I believe i just read a book, a very good book that just told me big scary aliums with razor claws and now cute kittens not suprised that the marines messed up with the rp like always.

[OliverCarswell]

Alright, I'll break down your post, rather giving answers than quote and answer, because if I do that, this will get a long post.


First off, I want to thank you for adressing this, because all we can do is learn from this to prevent it in the future. I personally have been on hiatus for several days, but I've been watching the forums like a hawk. I'll definitely take these things in consideration, and into my active routine on the server. So, this will be watched in my timezone once I get fully back. I'm kinda juggling several things at this point right now, so I'll have to see when I return.



As for Drone 754, it is in fact allowed to appear "friendly", however, only as deception and with the explicit permission of the Queen. If she had not given that permission, and 754 instead acted on own initiative, I am led to believe that 754 is not in the slightest familiar with how the Hivemind work. All Xeno's are hiveminded, and thus "one" being, that listen to their queen.

So this is not only disobeying the Queen, it is also break of character, which will end in a ban (I'll flag this with apop for the logs, and UM for the ban)


Continuing onto the Marines,
In addendum to what I've said about 754, the drone wasn't entirely at fault. It happens, though it's not meant to happen, that an entire Corps is watching a black cat in imprisonment. That's what the Researchers are for, and as lovely as it seems, it's not a petting zoo, and I will punish those who do it.

So at this point, both the Marines and the drone are heavily at fault. The Marines for breaking off from their objective, because it's the Commander's job to encourage, if not force the Marines to go back to the objective at hand; the Nostromo.

Moving onto the second Marine complaint; the inactivity during a crisis.
I'm not sure what happened, so I'm guessing at this point.
The Commander got nested, and unless he screamed on comms for help, we can't really blame the Marines. Now IF he was screaming on comms for help, and we can find out through the logs, once more, they are heavily at fault. HOWEVER, to punish this is extremely hard, because it's a group of people of who knows how big. However, it's not my place to judge on that.


Moving onto the HiT.
The Heavy Infantry Team is CC's last resort before nuking the place. Heavy Infantry is actually that, Heavy. They pack heavy weaponry tasked to destroy what's causing the damage. HOWEVER, CC and said company's laws are sketchy, and thus CC can order complete extermination of any personnel involved, regardless of rank, if it is needed for it to remain hush hush.
Apop has flagged this with us, however, we've oftenly decided against wiping out the crew, mainly seeing it is a rather dick move to suddenly assault the Marines. That said, this end game does give the Marines something to do, rather than sit on their fat asses, leaving HiT to do everything.

Edit:
Addendum to what I've said. According to Allan, Apop has said that HiT can since recent be ordered by the people who requested them. Verification needed, though.


As final note, I want to compliment Ancient for trying to do things, regardless of his rank.

Ancient is just a trial moderator right now (AFAIK), which means he has limited powers, and us moderators (myself included) have more powers to solve this, so I'll make work of it to return as fast as possible.

While this is by no means an official post on behalf of the CM team, I felt I just wanted to pitch in on the situation, because it sounded an entire round was ruined by a single person, which is remarkable that both sides have stupidity in them.

I'm sorry this happened, and I'll flag it with UM, Apop and Octagon, to see if we can take action against the Drone, because he is the source here, for as far as I can see.

I hope this really hasn't affected your drive to play.

Regards,
Ollie

[UnknownMurder]

...Would be nice if YOU would have putted it on the Player Report section during the time they broke the rules... Or would be nice if I was notified...
I'll see what I can do.

[Casper]

Okay so I think there's a problem with a specific round here, and a problem with the game as a whole. In terms of the specific round, it sounds like you just had an alien who got unintentionally captured, and then proceeded to be more interesting than the aliens waiting on the ship. I understand the frustration with this character goofing around, but I think it's actually kind of cool to see a) an alien captured b) the alien then try to interact with his captors rather than go SSD or escape at earliest possible opportunity. If they were really being that goofy, they probably deserve a talking to and maybe a temp ban, but I think the problem here is mostly with the marines and command.
A lot of times Command (the Command and LO) will give a shitty briefing, and no or inconclusive orders. The marines will set up a base, maybe encounter some aliens, invariably return to the Sulaco and start fortifying. Aliens won't have captured enough hosts to make an assault on the Sulaco feasible, the Marines won't have enough faith to make an assault, and will (as you say) demand a HiT even when they far outnumber the aliens. The Command team, not wanting to be assholes, will try to request support from CC, only to get laughed at. They're then in the awkward position of issuing orders for an assault. OOC, most Commanders and LOs are less experienced than the Marines, some of whom have played 100s of rounds. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - IRL as well as in literature, marines are often hardened warriors, while officers are often incompetent. But it does kinda screw up both the RP but more importantly the game mechanics when Officers can issue orders and marines won't follow them. If there are even any MPs, there aren't enough to make brigging squaddies, let alone squad leaders, for insubordination feasible. I've never played as Queen, but I imagine it's even more difficult to get aliens to follow orders. That being said, if an alien misbehaves and they get killed or captured, it's much less likely to screw up the round dynamic (the case in point is an example, but it's pretty rare).

I know that the Dev team has been working hard on putting together new maps and code to rebalance the game, so thanks for that. And I guess it's best to just wait and see what happens with the new version and new maps. But I'm a little worried about the removal of certain things, which may or may not be rumors. IMO removing cloning will make marines even less likely to take risks, removing logistics will make it even harder to motivate troops to actually do anything.

As far as HiT goes, I think they work best when they're almost a third faction that is actively hostile to the Aliens, but at best condescending to the marines. I'd take away the ability for Command to call them altogether, and instead have them called automatically (or by admin) if the round drags on (2 hours +) or if human population falls below a certain ratio. There could also be a 'call Riot Squad' function, which would call MPs only in the event of a near-mutiny/out of control griefing. This would definitely require admin endorsement, but I think would be a good way of dealing with IC disputes on the human side. As far as the alien side goes, I think the queen should have the ability to hurt each of her aliens at distance (kind of like the robot control computer) if they're misbehaving - if it's not turned off, it eventually kills them. It could be an implant, rather than an element of the mob code, giving researchers an incentive to operate on captured aliens to keep them alive...

[Mycroft Macarthur]

well, understandably i was REALLY pissed at the time and i may even have felt there were issues that needed addressing but for the most part i think i just needed to take a break, go do something else for abit, relaxe and calm down and then come back later, im not USUALLY such an angry person i dont think but sometimes we all just need to go do something else for awhile, think and relaxe before getting back to what we were doing before, im pretty sure there is a specific term for it but at this moment it just isn't coming to mind.

im not sure i would blame any one specific person for the whole thing and i dont know if people should be punished if they WERE engaging in roleplay, it WAS at what, for this server (that i am aware at least) would be considered a very late hour so if the marines had been understaffed i would have understood (aliens were certainly, none of the monkeys we facehugged turned into anything), im just miffed that we basically got shafted, if nothing else they should at LEAST have come for the survivor, i know i go on about how sometimes survivor rp can become kinda shit when you get turned into another generic marine but him having someone to talk to would have been very nice, did they even try to talk to him when they boarded? the station is FULL of intercoms all over, even if they (survivors) didnt start with a radio headset (they DO, now at least) they could just say a few things to see if anyone was there, any survivor could make their way to a nearby intercom and say a word or a few letters if only to say, "hey, someone is alive down here, come pick us up!", at least me and the queen could talk to each OTHER and shoot the shit, we were at least able to busy ourselves by building up the hive (given the circumstances we'd actually managed to build quite abit) but for him that wouldnt have been so, its not like he can communicate with the sulaco by using the fax machine in the internal affairs office (well, you can but the chances of being picked for that job are hardly amazing and you cant just break into the caps office and rewrite your ID for full access)

that said, the queen had told drone 754 MULTIPLE times he was to escape and he was allowed to kill if necessary, escape was a priority, after that he went quiet for a VERY long time while me and the queen discussed matters relating to the hive and wondering where the marines are, he had been quiet for so long we had to assume he had been dead for ages, it would have been nicer if he had put in any effort whatsoever into the game but i guess on some level i may have been more rude to him then he deserved.

i just really hate moments where its like "why am i even logged in if this is what we're dealing with?" ancient had even said me and the queen could basically log out and if we had and the round ended then and there, well that would have been the marines own fault and maybe they would have learned something, i can deal with SHITTY roleplay, even the best roleplayers you cant expect every day to be some big greek epic, i can deal with losing because frankly, our victories would be meaningless if we didnt lose one here and there and really intense defeats can be WAY more fun then an easy win, but if there isnt any to be had or anything to actually do we may as well play other games, i mean for me the greatest strength of SS13 is it is a very "Reactionary" game, by which i mean there is ALWAYS something going on, some new problem or crisis to deal with, most of the roleplay and content comes from us having to deal with these new, sudden issues, CM has a much smaller variety of content and activity compared to a regular server, but in regular SS13 it feels like SOME people have REALLY exciting shit to do, SOME of the time, if you ARE the traitor or the people fighting the traitor or you just happen to run into them, you get to have fun, everyone else if a fire doesn't break out or a blob outbreak or some shit like that, well you better hope your job is exciting or you may as well log out, by comparison here in the CM server, every round is the same, aliens and marines are fighting in the same ways in the same places, but EVERYONE has SOMETHING to do (save maybe for the MP's, poor bastards, i never see them with anything to do) and when it gets busy, you have ALOT to get done so at least you wont go bored and you wont be waiting to see if you can finally have fun to do this round like you would be in other servers.

the moment there is no one to fight though and we're basically a fraction of the content of a regular server, we're so tied into combat and fighting that once its gone, well you may as well go home, theres nothing WRONG with having a conflict heavy setup but things need to be kept pretty consistent, if there had been some way to suddenly launch hostile NPC's at us (goon had VARIETIES of hostile NPC's in DROVES, some of which were pretty damn scary) then at least that would have been something to deal with, as it is we're dependent on the rest of the playerbase.

regarding HiT, im not sure to what extent this really bothers me but at bare minimum you have to admit this is really weird, the weyland yutani security forces are better armed, equipped and trained then an actual military? we're being helped by our enemies? this is WEIRD, im just glad HiT can bail us out when things get REALLY bad but you cant think about it too hard, its like a loose string you find in your pants, you cant pull on it because next thing you know your pair of jeans have become a thong because you pulled all the threads out.

save for minor issues MOST of my experiences here in CM have been good (i have no experience with new eden so i cannot comment one way or another whether i would like it there or not), its just every now and then you get this ONE round that you just.....gotta think about, you cant let it go for awhile until you are thoroughly distracted from it.

[OliverCarswell]

Well, as I said in my prior post, these things will be considered and spread around in the staff team to take special care into. As far as the drone goes, we'll see what we can dig up for an eventual punishment.

[apophis775]

I'll need a time+date to pull logs.

Also, HIT can be given specific orders by admins/mods if they want.

Typically, I balance it so that if the Marines are losing badly, the HIT have orders to rescue the marines.

If the marines aren't losing, or the fend off the attack before HIT deploys, (like yesterday, when the Marines ended up beating the aliens back, and outnumbeirng them 17 to 2) the HIT might be told, to eliminate all witnesses, to bring the game back to balance.