Staff Report - RobBrown4PM

[optimisticdude]

Staff Report

Your BYOND Key

optimisticdude

Date of Incident

January 15, 2020

Your Character Name?

Ridgewell (observing)

Their BYOND Key

RobBrown4PM

Approximate time and date of the incident

~12 AM

Which Staff Protocols (//showthrea...-and-Protocols) were broken

Preserving RP and Enjoyment of the Server

Description of the incident

Now, I will preface this report with some concessions.
1. I was late to observing the round, so part of my knowledge is fairly clouded.
2. To fill in, I talked to dchat and the people on Discord post-match regarding the round.

The marines allegedly arrived to Civ Res with the blast doors open (due to Survivors repairing Engineering, allowing for the Warden's Office to gain power and in turn, allow the blast door button to activate) at about 1243. Given this, it was implied that the Xenos gave the Marines their first major skirmish at the crashed ship, but failed nonetheless to delay the Marines' push to Civ Res.

At about 1250, two Ravengers were spawned, and according to another player, several xenos were given Ancient aging by Rob to compensate for the early push into Civ Res. Now this may be fairly opinionated, but I'm pretty sure Ravengers are meant to be either used for extremely non-standard events, or for a joke as end-of-round admin-investigation caused shenanigans; so it was fairly absurd to see two customly named, descriptive Ravengers get spawned to halt the "metarush" that was taking place. My disposition is that this was an excessive injection of xeno benefits due to the early push to Civ Res as a crutch; as other Civ Res pushes have often resulted in similar (though not as extreme) ramifications.

The Ravengers, along with the Ancient Xenos, were able to further delay what was going to be a fairly unremarkable Prison Station Marine Major to a hard-draw in the Almayer Siege that ensued.

This is problematic, atleast in my eyes, because the game was unnecessarily prolonged without any fair reason, and even if the "metarush" was a fair reason, the addition of 2 ravengers is, to say, fairly excessive in comparison to other means that admins/managers have used in the past. Furthermore, Ravengers were a major contributor to halting a naturally progressing game into a frustrating skirmish + siege game where in the end, nobody was satisfied (though I did see the 2nd Ravenger act toxic in dchat, and in Discord, fairly condescending to Marines in the game).

Did it contribute to any RP or event? No. Did it heavily influence the game? The ancients + ravengers, yes. Did the players enjoy this addition? I don't think so.

I don't think RobBrown was malicious, but his actions were wreckless, even he was not aware of the Ravengers' ability.

Evidence

Logs, both in-game and on Discord (primary cm-discussion and last-round-chat)

How you would punish the accused

A public apology from the accused and for this round to be set as a precedent for future "metarush interventions" for what could be deemed excessive.

[Destrok]

I was in this round as a Delta Smartgunner. The xenos had 0 defenses and weeds throughout the station, the only resistance we found was at the veeeery western end of crashed ship/parts of VIP, as in basically at CivRes. Xenos made 0 attempt to defend, and being at the hive at 12:43 isn't a fucking metarush, it's playing aggressively and it has 293502358239 counters.

Moreover, xenos did NOT need the ravengers to win - as evidenced by the draw that happened on the Almayer. These Ravengers were also breathing fire through WALLS, something which the admin says they didn't know could happen. Why are you spawning shit if you don't know what it does?

It feels more and more like the server is being used as the admins' playground as of late. I won't name any names, but spawning 50 abominations, sleeping marines on the frontline, and now THIS?

I'm hoping to see Ravenger go the way of Primordials and be removed so they can't be abused like this anymore. Please stop handholding xenos if they're not good. A low skilled team should ALWAYS lose to a better skilled one. Xenos made 0 attempts to defend until we were at their footstep, or to stall us at ALL. It doesn't help that Prison itself is a shit map that is insanely linear and heavily marine tilted.

tl;dr Xenos were shit, why the fuck are you spawning an event xeno to help them, oh look xenos got onto the ship anyways. Remove Ravengers and stop enforcing this fucking rule by these means, use indirect map intervention instead.

[RobBrown4PM]

SNIP

Expected this

So first off there were two Ravengers spawned early on at round start. I found two player candidates and threw them in. They were both given names and fancy descriptions. 1 regular Ravager was accidentally renamed but not modified in any other way (I thought it was one of the two Ravengers. I decided to leave the name for fun). They weren't spawned in because of a meta rush(I didn't even think the Marines Metarushed tbh), they were spawned in from the getgo

Secondly, 1 of the Ravenger's died less than 30 minutes in to their existence, and after it died the Xeno's were pushed back to their hive. The one left was essentially a non-factor until after the vanguard broke on the hive. Afterwards, there were several incidents of major FF that set the Marines back. The most memorable one was where the Marines OB'ed their own tank and a number of Marines around it, which led to the full collapse of the front line.

Thirdly, I never upgraded any Xeno's. The log's will prove this.


I didn't know the Ravenger's could spit fire through certain walls. It was only after I talked with Forest on Discord that I found out they could. There was one time where I observed this occurring and subsequently warned the Ravenger not to do it again. The logs will prove this.

[Just L]

I was playing this round as one of the Delta medics, Orlando Blackburn.

Xenos definitely did not need all the bonuses and hand-holding they got this round. Spawning the ravengers caused MORE players to be knocked out of the round permanently due to Ravengers dealing enough damage to make people unrevivable. At least half of the marines I was working on that round had upwards of 200 brute or burn, sometimes both.

The reason for the xenos getting ravengers (and what seemed to be accelerated aging up to elder and ancient) is unclear, since there was no warning that this was an event, there was no compensation for the marines, and honestly it just felt like they were given a tremendous bonus 'just because'.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...58/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...56/unknown.png

Also what the fuck is this.

[Destrok]

Expected this

So first off there were two Ravengers spawned early on at round start. I found two player candidates and threw them in. They were both given names and fancy descriptions. 1 regular Ravager was accidentally renamed but not modified in any other way (I thought it was one of the two Ravengers. I decided to leave the name for fun).

Secondly, 1 of the Ravenger's died less than 30 minutes in to their existence, and after it died the Xeno's were pushed back to their hive. The one left was essentially a non-factor until after the vanguard broke on the hive. Afterwards, there were several incidents of major FF that set the Marines back. The most memorable one was where the Marines OB'ed their own tank and a number of Marines around it, which led to the full collapse of the front line.

Thirdly, I never upgraded any Xeno's. The log's will prove this.


I didn't know the Ravenger's could spit fire through certain walls. It was only after I talked with Forest on Discord that I found out they could. There was one time where I observed this occurring and subsequently warned the Ravenger not to do it again. The logs will prove this.

1. You spawn 2 Ravengers as a response to...? There was no metarush. Command tried their DAMN HARDEST to slow down the marines. Also, xenos didn't bother defending, so marines could advance unimpeded - what reason would there be, ICly, to sit on their asses for 30m while they wait for xenos to get to ancient? They have people getting the intel and all the survivors were accounted for. And why? Why Ravengers? Why an overpowered LRP event xeno?

2. It does not matter that it died. You had no idea it would die when you spawned it. It's the intent that matters. You spawned a devilishly overpowered xeno to artificially extend the round and help out the xeno side for no reason. It doesn't matter that it was a "non factor", you still spawned it.

3. I believe you.

4. Maybe you should have tested the strain out before spawning it??? Don't spawn broken xenos into the game???

[RobBrown4PM]

1. You spawn 2 Ravengers as a response to...? There was no metarush.

Admin's have the ability to run events. This was an event, that is why they were spawned. They were not spawned for a metarush that did not exist, they were spawned in at the very beginning of the round.

It does not matter that it died. You had no idea it would die when you spawned it. It's the intent that matters. You spawned a devilishly overpowered xeno to artificially extend the round

It's not extending the round if they existed in the first place. The fact that you were able to kill one so quickly, and then push the Xeno's back to their hive in such quick order should be testimony to the skill of the Marine force this round. Unfortunately lady luck and a few bad FF incidents had other plans. It is my opinion that they were not the game breaking force you seem to believe that they were.

4. Maybe you should have tested the strain out before spawning it??? Don't spawn broken xenos into the game???

I had zero prior knowledge that they were broken in that way. I haven't seen a Ravenger used in a very long time. I presumed that they not outright broken in any way, unfortunately that was not the case.

[Destrok]

Admin's have the ability to run events. This was an event, that is why they were spawned. They were not spawned for a metarush that did not exist, they were spawned in at the very beginning of the round.



It's not extending the round if they existed in the first place. The fact that you were able to kill one so quickly, and then push the Xeno's back to their hive in such quick order should be testimony to the skill of the Marine force this round. Unfortunately lady luck and a few bad FF incidents had other plans. It is my opinion that they were not the game breaking force you seem to believe that they were.



I had zero prior knowledge that they were broken in that way. I haven't seen a Ravenger used in a very long time. I presumed that they not outright broken in any way, unfortunately that was not the case.

1. So you decided, out of the blue, to run an impromptu onesided event, and heavily favour one side, giving 0 warning, explanation or benefits to the other? Just "haha today i feel like giving the xenos 2 overpowered broken castes"? No RP, no lore, no explanation, no nothing? No announcements, ICly or OOCly? If so, this is quite possibly THE worst event I have EVER witnessed and you should take this as an example of what never to ever do again. At least advertise in OOC: "There is an ongoing event where I am giving xenos 2 Ravengers for 0 reason. Marines will not be compensated" so that I can avoid the round.

2. I was under the impression they were spawned as a metarush deterrent. That is, at least, a shitty excuse, but being spawned as an EVENT is horrifying.

3. Test the quirky event xenos before setting them loose on the world? It would literally take a couple minutes for yourself to walk into the thunderdome you guys have and spawn yourself one of these, test it out for a little and you would've figured this out. You could also have asked on the admin discord *prior* to executing this "event" if there were any notable bugs with the xeno.

[RobBrown4PM]

I was playing this round as one of the Delta medics, Orlando Blackburn.

Xenos definitely did not need all the bonuses and hand-holding they got this round. Spawning the ravengers caused MORE players to be knocked out of the round permanently due to Ravengers dealing enough damage to make people unrevivable. At least half of the marines I was working on that round had upwards of 200 brute or burn, sometimes both.

The reason for the xenos getting ravengers (and what seemed to be accelerated aging up to elder and ancient) is unclear, since there was no warning that this was an event, there was no compensation for the marines, and honestly it just felt like they were given a tremendous bonus 'just because'.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...58/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...56/unknown.png

Also what the fuck is this.

Vidus and Wadjet were the two names of the Ravengers. The second picture you show is the name of the 1 Ravager that I accidently changed. I originally named it Dhumavati but it automatically reverted to Mature Ravager xxxxx when the player upgraded.

[Rekrul]

I never thought I'd have to respond to one of these but yet here I am.

I happened to be observing during the prison round because I wanted to observe the survivors/preds when after a minute or so every single xeno larva was ghosted. After a while staff handled the problem by telling everyone to ahelp about it and the larva were sent back to the lobby. I didn't pay much attention about it but was PM'd a little while later, and I think everyone in dchat was also asked too, if we wanted to help with something which I was happy to. I forgot the exact wording but it was just kinda like a mystery event type ert spawn from the sound of it. Had no idea what it was and simply replied with "sure" and was told told to hang on a minute.

I was then spawned in as the fire breathing rav, later name changed to something I forgot. Had essentially a normal Incinerator unit with unlimited fuel, same attack cool down, 5 square range and lit all xenos on fire/damaged just has much as any fire would. (The other Rav must of discovered it could go through certain walls cause I never saw that or knew) It only had two abilities, 'Rest' - which didn't work and just sent you a message "go kill" so you couldn't heal yourself that way.. 'Fire' which just activated the Incinerator unit like a normal spit attack. It was also young and had no strains/couldn't upgrade/evolve.

Managed to burn some marines then died along with a whole host of other xenos in a silent CAS strike after about 30 minutes or whatever.

Both Rav were spawned in at the same time before 12:10/12:15 by the latest from what I remember, Marines were no were close to launching the drop ship down. It was the major factor in why the xenos had no weeds/hive anywhere really as far as I could tell. I thought the rav spawn in was due to the larva being screwed over?

I'm completely unaware of any other xeno being upgraded or added in at anytime other then the very start of the round.. etc..

Hope my perspective helps out in someway.

[Akabinxstar]

I was shipside for most of the primary deployment, but I died a few minutes after deploying. I saw there was a ravenger, and just like everyone else, assumed it was because there was a meta rush or something, when there wasn't. Since you just said that it was for an event and not a response to the metarush, Who was the event supposed to be enjoyable for? I mean I'm sure those two ravengers had fun, but what about every marine who had to fight them? Was their enjoyment considered? They probably didn't know it was even a thing until they died from it. And you kept using the two excuse of "One died" and "Marines were their own worst enemy" like that makes it okay to just spawn over powered mobs into the game, like did Jerkface's abom event not teach anyone about that?