Reporting a Commander

[UnknownMurder]

Your Byond Key: UnknownMurder

Your Character Name: Alex Graves

Accused Byond Key(if known): Dunril2011

Character Name: Jonathan 'Smokes' Braddock

Approximate time and date of the incident (Central US Time for fastest results):
1:45 PM CST

What rule(s) were broken: Rule 0.2

Description of the incident: To begin with, it was starting off a normal round and such. The usual until the very point that CiC power (Bridge) goes down and Commander immediately points out that there was a sabotager on the vessel but there was no sabotager. The console power goes out, the lighting goes out. Commander tells us to get to work on a blank screen wherein the telecommunications power was disabled. SO Sophia Rifler manages to get the power on while MTs were looking for the issue and Chief Engineer was presumed to be SSD. Lighting and T-Comms are on although, we face another obstacle, the console power. The commander was reminded and had to be told several times to understand that the APC power is off, even pointing fingers were pointed out by Staff Officers. Engineer finally comes into CiC and fixes the power and left with many thanks by Staff Officers. Commander's behavior becomes more snarky and switches out Bridge Officers to different squad. As Commander leaves CiC to an area that we weren't told of, Sophia whispers with me that she is sorry that we had to deal with this particular type of Commander. After the Commander had died and gets to deadsay, he starts bragging how awesome he played his Commander and purposefully intended for this Commander to be incompetent and drag the entire marines down. The dead people were angry at the Commander.

From how I see the issue, I would see that this is not how a Commander would behave. This is not how Dunril2011 behaved his Commander as he mentioned in his whitelist application. http://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.p ... ck#p133973 He would use the Commander is not there to be a round winner excuse, but I don't see how that this excuse can apply to this behavior, an excuse to break the Rule 0.2.


Evidence (screenshots, logs, etc):





I apologize for a lack of concrete evidence, however I have managed to grab Braddock's confession, as the round started but I'm sure you can find concrete evidences in your investigation.


How you would punish the accused:
Simple jobban from Commander

[UnknownMurder]

UPDATE: In the next round, marines in briefing complains in LOOC about this commander.

[Dunril]

Okay, instead of speaking to me directly you decided to open a complaint? I was roleplaying my character in a incompetent manner, that's what I was doing and I told you that in LOOC. Purposefully is a heavy word, the Commander for that paticular round, the character wasn't a topnotch leader.

[UnknownMurder]

Okay, instead of speaking to me directly you decided to open a complaint?

I did. Your response was in the evidence.


This is not going to fly by.

[Dunril]

I did. Your response was in the evidence.


This is not going to fly by.

I don't understand what excatly I did wrong, I roleplayed a character and suddenly this is not acceptable to you? As for the whole power situation, that was my character being who he was, and as for it OOC, I did follow your instructions both you and the other S-O, I swiped my card and nothing happened, you guys just weren't paying attention, and I did announce it, then we had to call for an MT, it was a screwed round and throwing all the blame on me for power being fucked is just ridiculous.

[forwardslashN]

Okay, instead of speaking to me directly you decided to open a complaint? I was roleplaying my character in a incompetent manner, that's what I was doing and I told you that in LOOC. Purposefully is a heavy word, the Commander for that paticular round, the character wasn't a topnotch leader.

The CO whitelist is for you to play competent characters and help the marines. It was implemented to curb incompetent command and give marines a sense of confidence in their leadership. If you purposefully played an incompetent stooge to screw over the people under your command, I think you should be removed from the whitelist.

[Sargeantmuffinman]

You know, being the commander is giving a nice experience as well as commanding the marines to win.

That's what a commander does and everyone has their different ways of doing so. It doesn't have to be winning.

BUT THIS, paticular reason was why we wanted to have the whitelist. To AVOID these incidents of incompetence.

Would an actual officer with that high of a rank even do what you did, over a miniscule problem. To commit suicide over such a small problem.

Sure every now and again there will be incompetence, the military trains you to be competent not incompetent.

[UnknownMurder]

If you purposefully played an incompetent stooge to screw over the people under your command, I think you should be removed from the whitelist.

See evidence.

[Dunril]

I was roleplaying a character, it wasn't an intentional out of character thing, if people draw issue with it I can easily make Smokes always be ontop of his game.

[David Attenbruv]

What rule(s) were broken: Rule 0.2

That really incorperates a lot of things with nothing too specific.

Description of the incident: To begin with, it was starting off a normal round and such. The usual until the very point that CiC power (Bridge) goes down and Commander immediately points out that there was a sabotager on the vessel but there was no sabotager.

It isn't against the rules for someone to believe there's someone purposefully messing with the ship. If the CO genuinely had reason to believe someone was messing with the ship in a harmful manner with little to no evidence other than to presume what's occuring then that's just circumstancial.

The console power goes out, the lighting goes out. Commander tells us to get to work on a blank screen where in the telecommunications power was disabled. SO Sophia Rifler manages to get the power on while MTs were looking for the issue and Chief Engineer was presumed to be SSD. Lighting and T-Comms are on although, we face another obstacle, the console power.

I was there for that, I was a SO. This is true all the lighting was out and the terminals were inoperable though from what I saw, you decided to take it LOOC and argue with the CO and he simply retorted. Things that are IC should remain IC and OOC should remain OOC, you were trying to inform him of the situation that was occuring IC which isn't allowed in its self by informing him that the terminals weren't working at all which is taking IC into OOC albeit LOOC. Though he didn't instigate that argument.

The commander was reminded and had to be told several times to understand that the APC power is off, even pointing fingers were pointed out by Staff Officers. Engineer finally comes into CiC and fixes the power and left with many thanks by Staff Officers. Commander's behavior becomes more snarky and switches out Bridge Officers to different squad.

That's a IC thing, if a CO wishes to RP in a manner that's snarkey, snide or just generally a-hole'ish then that's their own decision to RP as such. Carson does it, sometimes Knight does it, I don't see why you're trying to crucify him for what other CO's do as well and generally get away with.

As Commander leaves CiC to an area that we weren't told of, Sophia whispers with me that she is sorry that we had to deal with this particular type of Commander. After the Commander had died and gets to deadsay, he starts bragging how awesome he played his Commander and purposefully intended for this Commander to be incompetent and drag the entire marines down. The dead people were angry at the Commander.

That really serves no informative purpose other than throwing a slight dig at the person RP'ing the character. It's not particularly relevant.

After the Commander had died and gets to deadsay, he starts bragging how awesome he played his Commander and purposefully intended for this Commander to be incompetent and drag the entire marines down. The dead people were angry at the Commander.

He wasn't really bragging so much as he was just jesting with the idea of it. Again I don't see why the OOC which would've been DChat is again being used for the purposes of his IC RP on his CO. If he had really sabotaged the round purposefully then continue to laugh and joke about a round loss then I could understand your point. However he's simply just saying that he RP'd a specific type of way, yes it does come off as one of those things where someone goes "I didn't lose I intentionally lost." Type of deals though that again doesn't really effect anything other irking a few people. Which he shouldn't of done but. If it were the basis of people irking others everyone would get banned at one stage.

From how I see the issue, I would see that this is not how a Commander would behave. This is not how Dunril2011 behaved his Commander as he mentioned in his whitelist application. http://cm-ss13.com/viewtopic.p ... ck#p133973 He would use the Commander is not there to be a round winner excuse, but I don't see how that this excuse can apply to this behavior, an excuse to break the Rule 0.2.

I would've thought he has the right to RP as he wishes though stay within the general consensus of what his character is and as the writer he's free to interpretate his character as he invisions it. Just as any of us do, sometimes I don't RP exactly how I'd expect my character to as a Squad Engi because sometimes you just want to switch it up. Nothing wrong with that.

Evidence (screenshots, logs, etc):

If anything he's taking the piss out of him self more so than attempting to irritate other people, infact people seemed salty about the fact that he was throwing shade at himself.

The also entails there was more to the conversation then that, which pretty much makes the evidence non-concrete due to the fact that there's more conversation then you've screenshotted and thus moderators and admins can't actually witness what occured or the conversation between you two because from what I understand of it. You took it LOOC first, not him. He kept it IC and moving on.

I apologize for a lack of concrete evidence, however I have managed to grab Braddock's confession, as the round started but I'm sure you can find concrete evidences in your investigation.

How you would punish the accused:
Simple jobban from Commander

Jobban because he:

• Switched up his RP for one round.
• Made a backhanded comment about him self and others decided to get salty about it.
• I'm not sure what rule you're specifically referencing to your 0.2 because that's the RP Guide and that encompasses a lot of things all together as oppose to just specifying which one you meant from all of those and trying to stamp him with a generalised breaking of all of 0.2 is wrong as he from what I witnessed didn't break hardly any of those guidelines.

-1 this, I don't think that the CO should of done it.
Overall though he shouldn't be jobbanned for switching his RP a little for one round and made a off-handed comment about him self in which others instigated the salt war with him of which I witnessed.

[NoahKirchner]

I am inclined to agree with Attenbruv. It seems like the situation was fucked anyways, with a lack of power and all. Some more context besides a few people complaining (which sheer number of people disliking of complaining about someone in any situation is really not a good reason to remove someone, unless they have merit OOC. I can say command is shit IC all I want but that's not grounds for removal, social justice causes a lodda problems) Sure he didn't handle the situation the best way possible, but it also does not appear that he made his intent to hinder the marines.

The only outlier is that dchat comment, which may very well have been in jest from what I can gather, and is really the deciding factor. It's not a good look at all, but it seems honestly rather minor.

[Joe4444]

...why would the USCM promote him to the rank of commander and give him a ship if he was incompetent? This would never happen, to reach that rank you'd probably need several reccomendations and probably some sort of test.

how would he pass both these requirements if he was incompetent?

[David Attenbruv]

...why would the USCM promote him to the rank of commander and give him a ship if he was incompetent? This would never happen, to reach that rank you'd probably need several reccomendations and probably some sort of test.

how would he pass both these requirements if he was incompetent?

Aliens2 the Acting CO of the skirmish to the Colony with Ripley and the Marines appears competent at first then becomes incompetent when the pressure is on. That's one instance of it, though there are many historical IRL references to incompetent commanders that reached the title due to climbing the ladder in times of war and that of showing talent as the position though when excersized in practically break under the stress or prolonged amounts of stress which normal Marines also do. No amount of excersizing mental or physical stops human nature and sometimes human nature isn't observable until the situation occurs and given that this is in a setting where unknown life forms take you away to make your chest burst apart like confetti at a wedding, I too would be a little bit stressed about the situation.

[NoahKirchner]

...why would the USCM promote him to the rank of commander and give him a ship if he was incompetent? This would never happen, to reach that rank you'd probably need several reccomendations and probably some sort of test.

how would he pass both these requirements if he was incompetent?

Political competence, talk (and buy in the aliens universe because corruption lol) your way up the ladder.

Regardless, he may be a good CO on paper, but under stress where all of your equipment is failing, while fighting nightmare demons, I would not expect the utmost competency.

[apophis775]

...why would the USCM promote him to the rank of commander and give him a ship if he was incompetent? This would never happen, to reach that rank you'd probably need several reccomendations and probably some sort of test.

how would he pass both these requirements if he was incompetent?

I had to LOL about this, mainly because of Unit commanders I've met in real life.


I'm going to leave this up a little bit longer to get more feedback.

This was very questionable, because the Whitelist was made specifically to stop this type of behavior. The question I guess is, should we allow people to play slightly more incompetent commanders intentionally? Because, there is a difference between being incompetent and RPing being incompetent.

Would we, remove a commander from whitelist for being incompetent? Probably not for a single round.

But, we probably wouldn't whitelist someone who was incompetent in the first place.

So like I said, I'll leave this open for now to get some more feedback before staff makes a final decision.

[Dunril]

I'll just say this, I realized that I've made a mistake and won't be doing that again.

[solidfury7]

On one hand, I don't think it should be removable for a certain roleplaying style, as long as it is not too damaging to the rounds in the long run and isn't every round.

On the other hand, the role is an incredibly important one which impacts the round, more so than anything else really,

It comes to the age old discussion, RP vs Mechanics.

[Kavlo]

I'll put in my two cents.

I do like Dunril OOC and IC and when it comes to incompetent commanders they're not uncommon, whether from them trying to RP being incompetent or them just being incompetent anyway hell one of the most well known "incompetent" commanders is Bill Carson (I like Bill don't get me wrong), but he is considered incompetent more because of his tactics which majority of the time end in a fuck-ton of marine deaths.

Overall I think this is something that should be more of a slap on the wrist sort of deal and he shouldn't be taken off of the whitelist for RPing a character since incompetent commanders do happen but in the game and in real life, an example for real life command incompetence would probably be Norman Dike from Band of Brothers (which might I add is a great story/show), it does happen so if someone wants to RP it I'm fine with it.

[David Attenbruv]

Overall I think this is something that should be more of a slap on the wrist sort of deal and he shouldn't be taken off of the whitelist for RPing a character since incompetent commanders do happen but in the game and in real life, an example for real life command incompetence would probably be Norman Dike from Band of Brothers (which might I add is a great story/show), it does happen so if someone wants to RP it I'm fine with it.

I +1 this.

[Cirukcaller]

I don't really understand- I was witness to this argument on the deadchat fee, and I'm seeing it here now like its some sort of feud from OOC in-game to the forums. This entire thing just seems to me like this guy - OP - had a fallout with Dunril's character in-game and failure to get at him through such means meant he took the fight outside of the game itself, to the forums.

If this is supposed to be a server where you expect in-character from people who play high ranking staff, like Commander, you've got to admit that for him to specifically portray a lazy and less-than-prepared Commander who fails at his duty solely for the sake of RP, and despite the upsetness it'd gather, is a step above most Commanders.

The majority of commanders are self-inserts who'll powergame as fast as they can to lead their marines to victory, and that's the kind of commander marines would praise. This Commander chose to play a character with more weaknesses than strengths, and so the playerbase decided to put him to the stake? You made applications too to test the ability of players to portray a character just as you did to avoid "this type of behavior," but it seems more-so hypocritical that you'd expect a man to be IC when he's being jabbed at the back for all of said IC deeds outside of character, respectively on the forums.

I've seen this guy play - a couple of times - and he's been a good Commander when I assume he's not tired of being a good Commander. Sometimes people like to play different angles of a persona not to bore themselves, when they're roleplaying, but this concept escapes most of the people who don't actually roleplay, and so they take it as an immediate affront when he makes the choice not to be on his top game, as if "ruining their game," its not some sort of griefing; its putting the marines in a situation where their CO is genuinely unfit to lead them, and threads that fine line where mutiny would occur. You don't have to shit your pants OOCly, completely fine if you do so in-game.

[Daftspy]

I like how; because he doesn't cater to your sense of winning a roleplaying game, you report him because your K/d was fucked up by a guy roleplaying a character. Stop trying to win the game every round and play for the roleplay and experience. This is the kind of thing that sucks the fun out of ss13 and makes it devolve into a game of nerfs and balances to a game that's supposed to be imbalanced and immersive. Learn to have fun and stop trying so hard my friend. I honestly can't see any problem with a guy roleplaying a commander in a an incompetent manner other than it hurting your sense of pride to "lose" this roleplaying game.


Its a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the commanders that are trying way too hard in a game with no reward for win or loss. Even the argument of him getting promoted to the rank of commander while being incompetent holds no water at all in the real world where officers in nearly every military on earth are often promoted because of nepotism and knowing the right people.

[Mister Jeether]

In IC, Jonathan is a fine CO, RPing a incompetent Commander is completely different of BEING one.

[NoahKirchner]

I'd like to make a clear distinction between roleplaying incompetency and griefing. Not throwing any accusations, I don't know the full story, but specifically being incompetent for the sole purpose of making someone's round worse or making someone angry is a dick move. I can't say, however, whether or not he was doing this, just defining terms and what-not.

[Karmac]

I'm in support of leaving it as a warning and keeping a closer eye on Dunril in case of future events like this happening again, only because multiple witnesses have managed to make it impossible for me to decide whether he was being a shitter or not.

[Nightcaper]

So like I said, I'll leave this open for now to get some more feedback before staff makes a final decision.

I'm going to assume this is a go-ahead to post in here even if not a witness. If that is not the case, feel free to delete the post I am now going to make:


The man roleplayed something that doesn't help push the metagame of CM, a commander that falls incompetent when the pressure is on. OP and others got mad because he decided to roleplay -- which is what the server is about -- for one round, in doing so the round ended up being lost to the marines. The journey is the destination I feel, and the roleplay is what had been keeping me coming back to CM, seeing people dying all around me, making IC friendships for a round... it's not like you get anything from winning a round except a little personal satisfaction. A balance between mechanics and roleplay is necessary, and for this, I don't see a need to remove his whitelist. OP seems salty about losing the round and just wanted to win, not really roleplay. At most, a warning... but I really don't see what he did as "wrong", unless a pattern develops.