Expand the lowpop murderbone policy (LRP)

[TheLoLSwat]

The title is vague and general, but the only thing im really asking for is to raise the number from 20 or 25 or wherever it is to 35 or 40. Long uninterrupted murderbone sessions is what kills the pop before it can take off and it should be curbed until the pop gets high enough to where an actual crew is fielded to have a chance. Murderbone is the spirit of LRP and being able to do so shouldnt be messed with too much, but lowpop murderboning is detrimental and people should be nudged to either not do it until more people show up OR save it for when the shuttle gets called / the round has an end in sight anyway.

I also wish admins would be more responsive to things like murderbones by sending interns or low(est) level ERTs to check the situation out in order to keep rounds engaging, but that is beyond the scope of this thread.








no i am NOT manuelified

[Stabbystab]

I think that’s a good policy to help dfib sybil

[pbj567]

I think 40 pop would be good. IMO murderboning isn't a problem when the server has pop but when its lowpop it usually leads to the pop dying and that sucks.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

35 is probably good

[Heyitsohjay]

I can’t believe that I am agreeing with Lisa Green of all people but she’s right. Reviving Sybil would be a lot easier if players weren’t getting merk’d by John Heretic who faces no resistance because lowpop.

[Mimepride]

The only issue I have is with this: what constitutes murderbone? If it's killing 5 people at 35 pop that's not very gucci in terms of the LRP way of life. How much is too much at 25-35 pop? Because killing 5 people at 15 pop is way more of a big deal.

And at what point in a longer, lower pop round am I allowed to let more loose? Obviously a big brawl with high casualties is less of an issue when the shuttle has arrived/is on its way to centcomm--or if the round has dragged on past 90 minutes.

It's pretty obvious that a fullblown "nobody gets to have fun but me" antag roll where I kill as many people as humanly possible is hurting the population at like 25-35 pop though.

I am worried about the slippery slope issue though. I don't want us to end up like MRP where people are more worried about the bwoink than having fun killing. It's sad that its come to this, but you hate to see the pop die because someone gamed too hard.

[Timberpoes]

If you want to think of it in terms of how it's currently enforced, it usually just counts as too many off-objective kills. What counts as too many depends entirely on the current popcount. 2-3 kills tends to be bad when there are only 2-3 other players on the server, but it's fine at 30+ pop.

Manuel doesn't have this problem since that kind of antagonism is globally prohibited, so it can always transition from low to mid to high. So we can't pull any guidance from there.

Terry doesn't have this problem because there aren't actually any other servers EU LRP servers to play unless you want to go visit Putin's Playground. So they're trapped there regardless and usually enough pop will crash in to overcome/nullify any lowpop murderbone shennanigans by that momentum. So we can't pull any guidance from there either.

Sybil and Bagil are massively vulnerable to this problem because they have to deal with Rule 4 which protects this and lack the raw server population to overcome it regardless.

We recognise that players taking the piss with Rule 4 is actually really, REALLY bad for server health when a single antag can hold the server hostage for their own grippin' session. So I think you'll never really be given a hard definition either, because it's all an edge case exception to Rule 4. The best I can say is that I'd like enforcement to reflect that what we want to stop is where the "nobody gets to have fun but me" is preventing a server from growing out of the lowpop phase - not antagonism in general.

[warbluke]

I haven't looked to see if this is still a thing players can do, but for a while I recall everyone just voting to restart if someone took up boning. Of course you can't do that with an admin online, which I suppose means you'd have to ahelp.

[Vekter]

I haven't looked to see if this is still a thing players can do, but for a while I recall everyone just voting to restart if someone took up boning. Of course you can't do that with an admin online, which I suppose means you'd have to ahelp.

Yeah, this isn't a solution and isn't something you should be doing. You can adminhelp if you think someone's going overboard.

[warbluke]

Yeah, this isn't a solution and isn't something you should be doing.

What's your reasoning? If it's a 10 person shift and 7 have been murderboned why must we put up with it? And while we could ahelp on a staffless server I'd prefer not to wait for the singular awake admin on discord to respond in anywhere from half an hour to never.

[Vekter]

Yeah, this isn't a solution and isn't something you should be doing.

What's your reasoning? If it's a 10 person shift and 7 have been murderboned why must we put up with it? And while we could ahelp on a staffless server I'd prefer not to wait for the singular awake admin on discord to respond in anywhere from half an hour to never.

Because the solution isn't to shrug your shoulders and go next, it's to get one of us involved so we can address whoever's doing it. Stuff like this is probably why Sybil died; nobody could be bothered to tell us when John Nanotrasen depopulated the station.

E: To slowly try to veer things back on course, I agree with Lisa, though I think some people might need to understand that ahelping isn't always going to result in the person doing it being banned, since murderboning is a pretty specific thing and not just "me and my friend died".

[iansdoor]

Well, like Aaron and I said last time 5 months ago and that was shot down by headmin of that term.

I'll say that there isn't a Magically unspoken low pop number. I have always viewed low pop antag allowance as either the vibe of the round, or vibe of the evening. So placing a hard cap this number could just have folks waiting to pounce on the opportunity of ah ha, current pop is above blank, so ima just hellfoam the entirety of the crew with prox nades, cause antag rights to make a round interesting. This feels off and into the rules lawyer area.

I ain't asking for toothless rule 4, but antags bumrushing armory minute 1 or the moment they realize there is no one there, sucks as crew to deal with. Likewise, sucks as admin to deal with as well, as the coverage isn't always there and watching/understanding how the round got to that point.

When I think murderbone that is killing someone on a ooc whim out of their own enjoyment, rather than the RP aspect to do said task, gain specific access for whatever their goal was. This doesn't mean to take out the only security officer/target on board immediately, but let the round cook a bit before utterly popping off. I have witnessed plenty of roundstart folks just RRing their targets and what irks me is that a dead person had the misfortune of RNG selecting them. I also view picking on a long grudge or doing a meta tactic of just picking on weak player statics the same way. My specific sybil Example is folks that bully the shit out of Pikey. He may wash what folks do under the bridge, but that was a common round as I watched as the admin.

There is also the great lack of calling shuttle when the antag is going the blatant murder spree of more than half the crew with whatever method they wanted. I mean from the antag themself as they are more than likely to have access to the computer. This could be lack of courtesy, unfortunate timing of being distracted or ever-growing list of reasons. But folks being dead for 15 minutes+ in where ever feels like a round removal, even if there is "staff in medical." Unsure, how to balance that to preserve the round.

In the past, sybil rounds would and could go to 4+ hours on high pop deathmatchy, but the current is iffy and lacks bodies to be a game play loop and not sure what to say more.


The last time two sybil admins spoke about this situation.
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=36234

[Timberpoes]

Lowpop murderbone was originally a problem with a dying Event Hall which led to the first ruling on the topic allowing admins to tackle it.
This was reaffirmed with a lowpop Bagil not that long after.

And it is being reaffirmed here again with a lowpop Sybil, but I'm going to explain the goal that the ruling/policy seeks to achieve.

The ideal goal is that players join on lowpop and stay long enough that more people join and stay. Boom, now it's midpop and more people join and stay. Boom, now it's highpop and peak SS13. We also recognise that popcount generates popcount, as players avoid dead servers in favour of ones filled with people they can play SS13 with. This continues until the player finds a place that gets consistent pop counts and they can trust that if they join at lowpop, they won't be alone and the server will grow as all the other people whom play that server come online.

And to be clear, by murderbone we don't just mean normal antag stuff like nukies or cult or revs trying to push through their win condition. That's the purpose of those game modes. We're more talking about the solo antag or blood brother pairing who decide today is the day they're going to kill everyone and everything on the station just because Rule 4 says they can, and because the pop count is so weak it'll be like killing Bambi's mum over and over again with no resistance.

We want to avoid a situation where a server cannot transition from low pop to mid pop to high pop because it loses its inertia, or loses its player trust that hanging around will be better than going to another server entirely.

And thus in times like now where Sybil is weaker and players need to respect our goal to keep antag interactions competitive to the pop levels, we continue to welcome admins to warn or note lowpop murderbone with greater discretion where appropriate. Repeated notes may (read:now should) result in bans.

Timberpoes: Wrote
DrAmazing: +1, no additional thoughts. I like the groundwork of referencing the 2020/2021 threads and saying we continue to welcome admins to action it. It reaffirms the idea that it was sort of Always This way for a lotta the mins and that they should be comfortable in doing so
John Q. Burgerman: I trust you to put across the admins can have more freedom to override rule 4 on Sybil or dying servers

[Vekter]

I know Timber already posted a ruling but I'm going to abuse the fact that the thread hasn't been locked to remind folks that we need you to report when people do things like this, even if no admins are currently on the server. I'll make an effort to personally sit on lowpop Sybil more often, but players also need to make an effort to tell us when things like this happen because we very well might not notice it otherwise.

[TheLoLSwat]

I know Timber already posted a ruling but I'm going to abuse the fact that the thread hasn't been locked to remind folks that we need you to report when people do things like this, even if no admins are currently on the server. I'll make an effort to personally sit on lowpop Sybil more often, but players also need to make an effort to tell us when things like this happen because we very well might not notice it otherwise.

i think the reason its not ahelped is because the people that do it consistently wait until there are just enough people to where its not considered "lowpop murderbone", and when youre told once that its an IC issue you just accept it

[Timberpoes]

As the final word: Open a complaint if you ahelp and get a ruling where an admin rules actual lowpop murderbone as an IC issue. Sometimes the player is just doing one or two objectives, or there's something else at play. But it's usually a 5 minute job for headmins to investigate whether we think it is the kind of play that kills lowpop servers.

Or DM any current headmin to ask us to look into it in private if you so wish.

Fully healthy servers have way, WAY more room to allow this than growing or even worse shrinking servers. We expect enforcement to reflect the goal of making sure the server can actually grow to the pop count where murderboners versus the crew is a competitive experience and not babystomping. Accordingly, it basically means we want to see stronger enforcement of anti-lowpop-murderbone on Sybil until its pop levels can sustain that playstyle without haemorrhaging players.