how much are people expected to be able to kill each other during the skub war station trait?

[dendydoom]

this came up in adminbus and we could not reach a unified point of view, so here we are...

during the skub war station trait, players pick a side or are randomly assigned. the trait heavily implies that people not on your side are your enemy. what are you allowed to do to your enemy and not get in trouble administratively?

just heckle them?

fight them?

kill them?

is this a code issue or an enforcement issue?

my take leaked directly from bus is

if you have a station trait that says "pick a side and then fuck up everyone on the other side" then we can't realistically ban people for doing what the game is telling them to do
it's skub war
i can see it being an enforcement issue wrt to "take them to medbay after beating them up"
but if people shouldn't be fighting over an objective designed to make them fight over it
then it should probably not be in the game

[Maxipat]

this came up in adminbus and we could not reach a unified point of view, so here we are...

during the skub war station trait, players pick a side or are randomly assigned. the trait heavily implies that people not on your side are your enemy. what are you allowed to do to your enemy and not get in trouble administratively?

just heckle them?

fight them?

kill them?

is this a code issue or an enforcement issue?

my take leaked directly from bus is

if you have a station trait that says "pick a side and then fuck up everyone on the other side" then we can't realistically ban people for doing what the game is telling them to do
it's skub war
i can see it being an enforcement issue wrt to "take them to medbay after beating them up"
but if people shouldn't be fighting over an objective designed to make them fight over it
then it should probably not be in the game

So if we're leaking bus, then my take from there:

i can see it as a reason to start a fight, if its a valid escalation? yeah. should you just jump to lethals and leave them somewhere rotting? no

[DATAxPUNGED]

The fact that this policy discussion even exists only exemplifies to me that the design of the station trait is perfect

[mrmelbert]

The trait doesn't even have policy.json support so you can't beam policy text into the brains of people who pick a side, anyways. Someone would need to fix that first.

I'm looking at the code and I don't see any implication that you should be fucking up people on the other side.
In fact, it seems like it tells you absolutely nothing (which I suppose is the point).
To me, this puts it on mime-clown tier of rivalries, which would forbid outright random killing (but admins generally give people a little bit of leeway for perpetuating the ancient feud)

(And you have to opt into it anyways. So I would assume people who opt into it understand what they're getting into.)

[Maxipat]

(And you have to opt into it anyways. So I would assume people who opt into it understand what they're getting into.)

Not exactly true, default is set to "random" and it resets every time the trait is rolled, so if you dont notice/set anything you have 2/3rd chance of getting put into a fight you didnt really opt-in for

[dendydoom]

this is useful information - ty.

the implication comes from the fact that this is a direct reference to a comic where people beat the shit out of each other just because they're on opposing sides of a meaningless dispute. the entire joke is that people fight for no reason:

Spoiler:

i suppose the closest parallel i can think of is if we had some kind of cowboys & indians trait where it asks you to choose one at roundstart. even if the game doesn't directly tell you "go and kill the other side," the implication is there through the context of what it's referencing.

the reason i say this is that it feels like a bit of a trap to have a reference to a meme about senselessly fighting, then punishing people for fighting senselessly. imo there should definitely at least be some obvious flavour text about the rules of engagement so there is a clear and easy standard for enforcement that the player can't plead ignorance to.

[conrad]

(And you have to opt into it anyways. So I would assume people who opt into it understand what they're getting into.)

Not exactly true, default is set to "random" and it resets every time the trait is rolled, so if you dont notice/set anything you have 2/3rd chance of getting put into a fight you didnt really opt-in for

It is opt-in in the sense that you can throw your skub/anti-skub box away and pretend it isn't a thing.

Btw my take is follow the comic. Beat into crit then walk away. Maybe steal their wallet.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

me voties no policyerino

[Justice12354]

No policy is inviting each admin to make their own individual ruling, from ic issue to ban. There will be no "hivemind effect" because we have extremely varying views over skub, from "It's a meme about sudden violence that relaxes escalation greatly" to "It's just a shirt and a sticker that don't change the rules". A player doing the same action could either get "Pretty cool haha" or "I'm banning you for 3 days" just because they got unlucky on the admin roulette. That's not fair administration and those scenarios are why we need someone (the Headmins) to set hard precedents. Going "Not policying this" might be a cool flex or whatever, but it sucks for adminbus and the players who actually want to know to what extent they can go.

For as long as it's not changed through code, it has to be ruled through policy.

[MooCow12]

I just treat it as group escalation, ie golems and silicons tend to escalate with the crew not as individuals but as entire groups. One golem bad = literally everyone is killing all of the golems and the golems are doing vice versa, the same often happens with silicons whenever they get laws that dont prevent them from killing and instead leaning towards more of a neutral entity and if 1 borg does something bad or one crewmember starts escalating against the silicons it turns into war.

Skubbies and anti skubbies should be able to escalate against actions done to others who are on their own team against whatever group did that form of escalation (so skubby A seeing an anti skubby beat up and loot skubby B, this results in skubby A shouting on radio what happened now skubby C D and E are going to go escalate against anti skubbies.)



Basically group escalation is relaxed or very fast scaling escalation that can ramp up because of the scale of players interacting with eachother but at the very least there is a neutral state and people are less likely to just be randomly killed.

[Isratosh]

if you opt in to the gang war and then send me an adminhelp when you get blasted im just going to laugh at you

[Justice12354]

if you opt in to the gang war and then send me an adminhelp when you get blasted im just going to laugh at you

The skub is so awfully under-described and poorly structured that you can't even tell that it's a gang war (because it's not; it only becomes one the moment a group of ppl assume that it negates nearly all escalation)

[Longestarmlonglaw]

I like to fight the other side/refuse to service them.
If im neutral, i give out guns/mechs to both sides and sit in an armchair as they kill one another

[DrAmazing343]

Firing off the hip, I’ve always thought of this one as a greatly relaxed escalation sort of roleplay thing. We definitely should allow people to turf war it up with crew conflict on Skub rounds, but as put on the table before, I don’t want round removals or bystanders who left it on random without thinking to get caught in the crossfire.

Our escalation rules already cover things decently in this respect, and acting as a ladder rather than a hop skip and a jump means bystanders who are confused can walk away and we can own someone for trying to kill a non-participant.

[conrad]

if you opt in to the gang war and then send me an adminhelp when you get blasted im just going to laugh at you

Based af based baseball based take

[Vekter]

This trait sucks

[RedBaronFlyer]

I like it even as someone who always picks skub neutrality. Sometimes I want to see anti skub protestors get mowed down by pro skub antags or have pro skub crew get refused service at the bar or something like that.

[Vekter]

I like it even as someone who always picks skub neutrality. Sometimes I want to see anti skub protestors get mowed down by pro skub antags or have pro skub crew get refused service at the bar or something like that.

The problem is that, while this sounds really cool, I've never seen that actually happen in a round. All that ever happens is people use it as an excuse to Family Guy Chicken Fight each other in the halls because "LUL XD SKUB SO RANDOM".

[ju45he]

IMO anything short of RR and killing people wordlessly should be allowed in skub wars.

[DrAmazing343]

It is a lot of pure violence, but personally I’ve found lots of success and enjoyment playing Skub-Neutral and interviewing skub lovers and haters and documenting them like nature wildlife. I remember particularly a round as a CC inspector where I took 900 pictures to document it to CC and it was great fun

[iain0]

My take was always that it's nothing special. No different from the modern day internet wars of pro or anti pineapple on pizza. Or from my youth the pop group battles, which band is better. People have opinions, they take them too seriously, and you can probably have a mutual escalation from there. But it's sure not run around and bury the other team on sight, why would it be that, none of my analogies (typically) play out like that. Nothing implies it deconstrains you from the normal rules. At best its a place to start, something to insult people over, shove them, see if they engage, and if not, move on. Sometimes the antags use it as their thing, which probably complicates player interpretation of the event but is overall kinda fine too. Even in my real life analogies there's probably someone somewhere who would take it too far, and they're just the antagonist.

That said, it always seemed a bit like a bait-trait in that even before i saw the rounds play out it was obvious some people would take it too far, either through lack of RP perspective or just because it sounds like an excuse to.

Is less of an issue generally nowadays I think, I guess metas/precedent just take a while to settle in, and thats not unusual of new additions.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

Has to be opt in, don't just kill some guy not saying or doing anything back to your responses or actions

[Timberpoes]

It's just a station trait. It doesn't need policy. I don't want to write policy for it. Nobody is going to read any policy anyway and it'll just cause annoying notes and bans and appeals.

To me, nothing is different to normal IC conflict. If players want to mutually engage in some Skub tribalism with eachother I'm fine with it, but they should do so under all the existing rules. It's a reason to start an IC conflict. Relying on escalation against opposite-Skub-scum is fine. Players mutually being up for a brawl over it is fine akin to rage cage rules. But it doesn't enable players to act as antags.