Spawncamping and identifying the spawnee

[Lopz12]

As you may all know, the act of killing, kidnapping, converting and generally just victimizing someone who has just left the arrivals shuttle is against the server's rules. This is a perfectly reasonable rule with nothing but the players' best interests in mind, however, a problem quickly emerges on the part of the antagonist who attempts to follow this rule. How do you know who has recently arrived?

Yesterday, there was an incident where me and a couple of other cultists had set up a base in the vacant bathrooms that were to the east of arrivals. We were snatching people from all over the place and dragging them into the room to convert them, and the crew were becoming increasingly aware of our presence as there had been multiple witnesses. It was then that we observed a security officer who was directly passing by the door to our base and so I, thinking that he obviously must have come to investigate the rumours, quickly stun handed him and dragged him inside for the conversion. You've probably guessed by now that the player had, in fact, recently arrived, a fact which I was soon after informed of by an admin. The problem here is that we, the antagonists, had no way of knowing that this specific bypasser had newly spawned, unlike all the other victims.

This specific issue becomes especially bad on maps like nebula station, where the arrivals shuttle is directly in the middle of a busy intersection that has many players in it at all times, and it becomes impossible for an antagonist to know who is and isn't a new arrival without directly witnessing them leaving the shuttle.

I don't really have a solution to this. I did think of making it so the arrival shuttles are placed somewhere extremely boring no non-new player would have any business being in, but it would probably be extremely difficult and messy to individually edit every map to be like that.

[RedBaronFlyer]

It's a fair issue to bring up. I think the only real solution is to try and avoid setting up by arrivals. Of course you can run into the issue where the starter of the cult or the cult base builder set up there and you have to just go with that. There was a round a few days back on Deltastation that had a similar issue where cult set up in the arrival bathroom to the north of the station. If you get off of the arrival shuttle on the shuttle's starboard side you have to pass by that bathroom unless you randomly run into maints, which most people tend to not do from my observations.

Unless something like TF2 player outlines or something of that sort gets added and put on recently spawned players for like, a minute after arrival, then there's no way to guess unless you literally just saw them get off the shuttle.

[Justice12354]

Well, if you're doing a base near arrivals, you already kind of fumbled because it's your responsibility to avoid spawn-camping other players, so you're making your own life harder, but that's not rulebreaking on its own.

Regarding the specific scenario you gave us, since you didn't set your base literally in front of the arrivals shuttle airlocks, the dude walking into it has a massive dent in their skull and asked to be yoinked, which is honestly not your fault.

One thing is yoinking a dude from the middle of the hallway right after arriving, and another is the dude walking into your bathroom base and getting owned.

I'd also like to remind that there is an arrival announcement, which you can, if in good faith, take a peek at (if comms are up) to make sure you aren't killing someone who just arrived.

Furthermore, if said SecOff got RR'd over it (which is fair, in your case imo), it is reasonable for the Admin to accomodate the scenario for the Seccie and give them a second chance of returning to the round as some sort of role (I wouldn't give them SecOff again bc that was a massive skill issue), but that's more on How to DM 101 and less How to Rule 101.

[Vekter]

It's generally good practice to just stay away from arrivals as an antag wholesale.

[MooCow12]

More of a mapping issue but it might become a policy issue here on this map or some other map with a valuable spawn but I dont like where spawn is on wawastation particularly because its very close to alot of things, upper medbay (which people like to throw bombs from), the catwalk south of bar (which people like to throw bombs from) , hydroponics (which an antagonistic botanist might spam angry tomatos from) and its directly next to the best backdoor to the armory on any map ever that doesnt even require eva gear to reach.

Its also the main place to cross over from the maintenance tunnel connected to the previously mentioned bar overpass to the upper bridge and brig maintenance area.

This is a surprisingly high traffic area for people who know how to get around wawa without using the main hallways with a lot of things that can go wrong around it, the only thing that's really going for it is that its an upper z level shuttle dock so it will be very hard to depressurize.

And i wouldnt be surprised if someone gets in trouble over this or some other map that puts it in an even more valuable location.

[iamgoofball]

It's generally good practice to just stay away from arrivals as an antag wholesale.

Well, if you're doing a base near arrivals, you already kind of fumbled because it's your responsibility to avoid spawn-camping other players, so you're making your own life harder, but that's not rulebreaking on its own.

Yes, but as brought up in the OP, Nebula is an outlier since it places it's arrivals shuttle directly in the middle of the core artery of the station. It'd be like if the arrivals shuttle was at the intersection on Box between command, medical, and the bar.

[Vekter]

It's generally good practice to just stay away from arrivals as an antag wholesale.

Well, if you're doing a base near arrivals, you already kind of fumbled because it's your responsibility to avoid spawn-camping other players, so you're making your own life harder, but that's not rulebreaking on its own.

Yes, but as brought up in the OP, Nebula is an outlier since it places it's arrivals shuttle directly in the middle of the core artery of the station. It'd be like if the arrivals shuttle was at the intersection on Box between command, medical, and the bar.

Yeah, that makes it a little more complicated. I think it's kind of a vibes thing then, as long as you're not actively hunting down people as they come off the shuttle you should be fine, but I would advise most antags to try and keep an eye on chat at just avoid folks who are coming onto the station.

[BrianBackslide]

Even Meta and Icebox have similar issues with prime cult base spots near the arrivals dock. Arguably that's banbaity map design. Nobody is going to go after you if you are specifically on the arrivals shuttle, isn't it on you if you carelessly wade into danger? Especially as a secoff, they can radio in while on the shuttle to see what's going on.

Watching comms is unreliable at best. It may be down or you may be dealing with other important matters, or it could simply get obscured by other radio chatter.

If it's good practice to just stay away from arrivals, how far away counts as "away"? I'd personally go by the arrivals lounge as a good marker, on standard maps. Nebula probably wouldn't need more than maybe some railings as you can see exactly what's going on from the shuttle. If shit's going down, stay on the shuttle. Wawa would probably need a rework to be in a lower traffic area.

[Diasyl]

I think a code solution would be the most concrete for this issue.

Make new arrivals have some kind of a special examine text ("He/She/They look recently arrived"), or effect if you want to be spare (blue outline)

[Vekter]

I think this is generally going to be a vibes-based thing. If you ace someone who walked off the shuttle like three minutes ago and don't have a reasonable manner to determine if they just got here, that's one thing. If you're actively sitting next to the shuttle and waiting for people to walk off it to kill, that's another.

[bingusdingus]

It really is one of those things that's a litmus test of who is playing with only their self interest in mind. Even in modern multiplayer games, where there are spawns, you still find that if given the opportunity, there will always be people that will abuse being able to stand outside someone's safe area and get them before they can retaliate, because its an easy way to win, and someone probably did it to them at some point. The people that are really doing it in bad faith are probably the ones that abuse it repeatedly. I don't know if there would be a reasonable coded IC solution that people won't just circumvent, cause false positives, or cause some wack-ass edge cases programming wise or ruling wise that would really be able to discern the difference other than keeping track of repeat offenders.

I would say maybe have a timer on people that just arrive and if someone attacks them, or does antag actions at them within that timer, flags that person and leaves a log of the interaction for review. I don't actually know if that would be implementable, I'm no coder. I like the idea of a message to warn potential attackers, but it reminds me of Monke's opt-in antag system that makes playing antag really annoying because you have to constantly check if someone can be killed or not.

I think it IS a problem, its prevalent in almost every multiplayer PVP game. Instead of a system where it will be cat and mouse between the system and the people that want to spawn camp anyways, I think there should be a non intrusive way of preventing it with rule enforcement, that can separate the people taking advantage of spawn and people making an honest mistake.