Your SS14 Username: router
Banning Admin's Username: Miiish
Role Ban or Server Ban: Server
Round ID: #7191 (ish, it was the round before and when i was banned)
Reason for Ban: OOC toxicity, powergaming, intentional breaking of rules, bug abuse. Continued to make broken setups after being explicitly told not to, and continued to complain in LOOC afterwards.
What lead up to the ban:
I honestly can't believe I have to write this out.
So, let's start with the chronological order both IC and OOC.
Since I'm unaware of the round ID, I'll just note these games as "game 1" and "game 2".
--- Game 1 ---
I start my shift as Atmos. AME takes 5 minutes to start. Boring and unrelated. Singulo gets started. I start building the following TEG design:
(note: actually was slightly different, inverted filter facing left on the coldloop radiators, pipe half to flip flow and an array of stacked linear radiators instead of bend ones.)
And roughly 5 minutes later, Icepick explodes it. For the funny, or because he was genuinely tired of that setup, I have no idea. He also removed the TEGComponent from the TEG, making it effectively a 136 kW RTG (which was actually a far larger problem IC and in LOOC the same game, see later.), and gave my character the ability to be anchored (related? unrelated?). His LOOC complaints to me were that the radiators were stacked, but in reality, only one radiator is actually required to operate this TEG.
JoulesBerg also chimed in, saying something to the lines of "this looks like a bug". The rest are there for volume purposes (which were a problem in the original image, but not here), and because passive radiators are what, 0.1x as efficient? Might as well have some for the 3x3 comfort, because other atmos techs stack devices all the time, including for different pipenets. It's routine for runes at this point. I was not explicitly told to stop building these TEGs.
The TEG is "set up", and it stops consuming gases. Nothing would be out of the ordinary if the Science players that shift hadn't set up 5 hellfire freezers as well, and caused the grid to consume about 300 kW more than it did normally. The singulo can in theory provide that much power, but I was still suspicious about the power generation/load disparity. Their claims to me were that it's Engi's problem that there isn't enough power available, and not Science's misuse of hellfire freezers. Alas, in the end it turned out to be Box being a horribly wired station - there was a parasitic 500 kW load that didn't affect anything else.
IC issue aside, I offered to show them (being HoS, some of Science, the IAA) the TEG and see why exactly I couldn't do that. I showed the TEG to approximately 5 people, because admin abuse is funny and I wanted people to take a look at how "unplayable" Engineering had become. Bottom line is that the TEG still at least made some power.
This is why I was so active in LOOC in Game 1, because one, it's funny, and two, it was annoying enough to irk the perfectionist engineer inside of me wanting to poke fun. I didn't push the issue on Icepick in LOOC (please give me examples of the contrary, @Banning Admin, that aren't "please stop pretending to be an engi main" - I'd love to dispute those responsibly for this shift).
--- Game 2 ---
Atmos again, this time on Bagel. I decide to teach another atmos, Jerry, how to build the TEG design I'd built prior. Since I didn't think much of the LOOC (it wasn't official admin action, I wasn't silent ahelped for it), I decided to do it the exact way I had done previously. Some stacked radiators, some overlapping devices, the same zigzag loops as seen in my image.
I then end up dying at some point and see Icepick and Gtheglorious at the TEG. I shoot off some negative remarks in dead chat, since this isn't the first time I've seen Icepick talk about that TEG. (That was with Natalie, a few weeks prior.) This ends up causing a stir in the ahelp, and I agree to rebuild the TEG when I get revived (3:14 local time in the ahelp screenshot). I also ask for clarification 5 minutes later, because:
- At this point, I'm still confused as to what exactly in the TEG setup is considered bug abuse. Device stacking is mechanically common (among the somewhat large rune atmos playerbase), single-tile radiators are also common (the Gar, BZ sometimes, possibly other compact atmos involving the crystallizer and such).
- There are 2 admins orbiting the TEG, and the second admin is not JoulesBerg, who was present in the LOOC chat in Game 1. As such, I wanted more elaboration as to why the amount of admins overseeing this one incident was INCREASING.
Gtheglorious then proceeds to violate ahelp policy #5 by clarifying "all admin rulings are final" with rule 4:
Keep one admin maximum speaking to a player in an Ahelp unless you are explicitly handing it over to another, so the player does not feel dogpiled.
I then asked if an admin complaint had to be submitted in Discord itself, since I was unaware at the time if G was fully taking over, or not. I was also not given a ruling (no Game 1 ahelp).
If a transfer did happen to G, it was not communicated publicly. But I highly doubt that was the case, as Miiish had taken over the ahelp by 3:24, and I was later banned appeal-only after asking for the root cause of why I was banned. I did not get my root reason from Icepick or Joules.
Why you should be unbanned:
Let's refute the ban reasons one by one:
- OOC toxicity
Towards other players, say, in Science? No. They were acting logically, even including their ahelps. None ever reached me by proxy.
Towards the admins reviewing me? Let's say yes, then the only admin that I could have conceivably said anything toward is Icepick. And since almost all communication between myself and Icepick in the Discord and OOC was passive aggressive banter to begin with, I deny that there was any active toxicity.
- Powergaming
What??? What could I be possibly powergaming for if I had been:
- Building this TEG for weeks on end with no admin action,
- Not even wiring it up to PTL or another high power draw machine array, the only POSSIBLE reason for that to be considered such,
- Completely unable to use the TEG for any other way to get an in-game advantage, the definition of powergaming? Much less over someone else?
This particular ban reason is absolutely bogus.
- Intentional rule breaking
This is a modifier, so it should be treated as follows:
Indefinite ban. Includes any rule breaking where the player intentionally breaks a rule knowing they are breaking a rule, knowing they will get banned, or claims to not care if they get banned. Any reasonably clear rule violation can be presumed to be intentional if the player was told to read the rules in the last 12 hours.
- I have never claimed to not care I'd be banned, and I didn't even know I'd be banned over this. I had at most expected a note, because the banning policy also states:
Avoid making any punishments before you're positive you've fully reviewed applicable logs / have the necessary information required to make a judgment. (emph) A punishment, such as a warning or ban, is a last resort.
- ...and I had been incident-free for pretty much the last thirty game hours, save for an NRP outburst that'd caused a 3-day ban.
So what went wrong? LOOC is not supposed to be the official channel through which I should get the message "don't do this ever again". I didn't even get that message verbatim, I just got "radiator stacking is going to be patched, we have a PR later for it so don't do that...", and I even explained later that the radiators are superfluous in the Game 1 LOOC exchange.
On top of this, I was still unaware what exactly the problem was, hence my ahelp message at 3:19 during Game 2. I never got an answer post mortem and I still don't know even now what part of the TEG was bad.
- Bug abuse
Should every Atmos player building subframe runes or stacked devices should be banned? This ban implies that yes, this is enough of a precedent. All of Atmos is a walking exploit, and the patchwork to make it less exploity is murky at best. Consider this:
- This TEG can be built under the existing Goob (and even Wizden if you ignore pipe rupture) framework.
- Radiators, even in Wizden code, are the only device capable of being stacked over any other device. It has been this way for over a year since the thermomachine rework, and it has been used this way for years.
- An entire group of atmos players that I hadn't even met in most of the capacity has been GREENLIT to do this as an exploit exception. And it's not even codified into the rules proper! So is it really bug abuse if it's widespread? Why me of all people to cast that net on? I'm not even the most active rune Atmos player here!
So, I believe this is also an invalid ban reason, since I have precedent that this is not in fact considered bug abuse.
However, this is all postceded by Miiish saying that this is the latest in a long string of offenses. I don't even remember any besides me using arbitrary TP for atmos and crateboosting to make a round interesting months ago, so are the recidives enough to actually warrant a permanent ban?
- Bug abuse/metagaming: No, a priori (no permanent game bans in the offense table).
- OOC toxicity: First ban, even if valid. No.
- Intentional rule breaking: Not a recidive, but still no (p. 3).
This is concerning, because once again, a ban is usually last resort. Since I wasn't ahelped the round prior for it, nor did I make maxcaps again for the thirtieth time, I have reasonable evidence that the admin team's handling of this was naturally escalatory. Which isn't a good look when both Game 1 and Game 2, as well as the countless other games this TEG was built, were ultimately unaffected besides blowing minds that something mechanically better than the Gar or a 3x1 internal TEG existed.
I'd be content if that ban was just deleted in its entirety, or if I was even given the bare minimum of explaining where I went wrong followed by a tempban. Sadly, it must be an appeal.
