Tempban, not appealing but it's not warranted

[Lurkey]

Here's the ban message
You have been banned by simianc.
Reason: When confronting a Wizard, smoked 300 units of Strychnine which managed to hit several crewmembers. Later, smoked a lethal chem cocktail at the Space Diner and managed to hit another crewmember, albeit not intentionally. You've already recieved warnings regarding suicide bombing antagonists and killing innocent crew in the process. Take some time off

I don't mind the ban, not that I feel it's warranted by any stretch but I've been playing less and less here lately anyway, it's the principle. I think this was one of maybe 5 rounds I'd played in the last week or so, can't be sure, it's certainly the first time I'd done any weaponized chemistry as a non-antag in any form in quite some time. This seems like a major over-reaction. I'd talked to a few longtime players to get their opinions before posting this, thinking maybe I wasn't seeing this from the right perspective, decided to say my peace here and forget about it.

Something like 35-40 minutes into a wizard rampage, after this wizard had evaded sec all round with forcewalls and teleports, I found him stuck between his own forcewall and the bolted inner airlock to pathology on manta. The hallway was wide open, I'd made it perfectly clear all round I intended to kill this wizard and I'd made it perfectly clear how I intended to do it, so I see the perfect chance and set off my mix. In the past I'd been told to reserve mixes for use on antags for situations where damage to the station and crew were minimal, that's what I did. Right after I do this, somebody comes around the corner, sees the smoke, and proceeds to walk into it. It happens, I went back after being cloned and checked to be sure the guy was cloned, he wasn't and so I cloned him myself. Apparently somebody else somehow got caught in it, never even saw that happen, it must have been well after the fact and whoever it was wasn't there when I came back and so I didn't even know this until I got the first ahelp message.

So after all of that, I hang around chem and tweak a mix I'd been meaning to try. The shuttle is arriving about the time it's ready so I decide to test the mix at the diner, where people traditionally test mixes that are too large to safely test in the test chamber, and find it empty as you'd expect with the escape shuttle docking. So I set it off and somebody comes running out of one of the back rooms immediately and gets caught in it. Normally I'd check the bathroom and kitchen storage area, but this close to round-end I'd just assumed nobody would be there. I apologized in deadchat after the guy that got caught in it died, he complimented the mix, no hard feelings, can't imagine how that's relevant to the previous accident but it was mentioned in the ban message, so there it is.

I can't wrap my head around how this is banworthy at all. I likely wouldn't have been back on in the next few days either way, I just get the impression this was an overreaction related to some previous interaction with simian. Can't imagine what it is, I don't recall ever talking to simian much at all but I'd hope if there's some bad blood there for whatever reason simian would send me a message and we could clear that up.

[Flourish]

I can say that your ban was absolutely warranted. You have a long history of doing dangerous things as a nonantag and catching innocent bystanders in the crossfire. Many of those incidents have led to people's deaths. You've been talked to about this behavior and asked to not do these sort of things. Because you continue to do the sort of things you've been asked to not do, you've been banned for half a week.

I appreciate your clarification and lengthy explanation of the events leading up to you smoking your chemmixes, but that doesn't excuse your behavior. There are many alternative methods you could've used to take down that wizard. Essentially, you're responsible for the consequences of your actions.

Finally, there's no "bad blood" between you and SimianC. They were just doing what was appropriate, which in this case, was a short ban. Your impression is mistaken.

[SimianC]

What Flourish said is correct. I have no issue with you and any "bad blood" between us would be resolved privately out of game. I consider us friendly and I like seeing you around the station, but you have a history of this sort of thing and it needed to be addressed for the reasons stated above.

[SageAcrin]

I happened to be crashed out taking a nap during this(ahhh, chronic fatigue). So I missed the whole lovely smoke going down. But fortunately there's logs.

First, I look it over and I find that you did indeed smoke not just 300 units of strychnine but do so in a dark lower maintenance. With a wizard that's kinda like throwing a bear trap in the way of everyone due to the way smoke lingers-a fact every chemist knows and stays way out of. You're a good enough chemist to know that. As I'll prove very fast in a second. You can't just say you're "not psychic", wizards yell out spells, people scramble looking for 'em.

Secondly, I'm like "well do the notes back this up like said". And holy *shit* you QGP'd a shambler and gibbed three people on a *shuttle* a month ago? I don't need another note, this stuff tends to run borderline and only get caught/ahelped part of the time. For every one note there's three incidents. I don't penalize more for that, I'm just aware of it. And this also shows you are a *very* good chemist.

Then I look at the after-round where you... basically blow off all the people you killed with strychnine, and then brew a massive amount of deathchems and, when no antagonist shows up/you start getting APMed, smoke them on yourself at the Owlery around the time of the ban. A massive insane hellbrew, as good as any incendiary I've ever made-and I'm proud of those-but also including some good poisons, and fucking hootagen and initro. Why this is passing through your hands as a non-antagonist casually is baffling and kinda shows a "well I just brew 'em waiting for something to blast 'em with 'cause it's my fun".

Like, that's not "a mix I've been meaning to try", any poisoner will tell you that's overkill for overkill's sake designed to overwhelm any healing measures-and will, and really doesn't need to be tested in a mesh for you to know that because alone without a healer you just drop dead five seconds in, you'd need to be a changeling or have healing support to properly "test" that. If this is the kind of stuff you're brewing, you're really just making TTVs if not worse to chase antags with-and that's no good.

Yeah that shows kinda bad faith intent to just keep killing crew members with massive overkill blasts to "save the station"-and with chems you're enjoying too(strychnine, hootagen; not necessarily the best choices at all. But I can see the fun factor for sure. As an antag.). Put it all together... I'd have 3.5'd you too and I like you.

On the rest, all I can say is that I feel like there's a view that things used to be different on these kinds of bans. Honestly that's only a matter of manpower. People never could run around blasting the station with hellchem bombs that wrecked a bunch of innocents if they were caught, it was just a matter of how much they played and how consistent they did it, if they were ahelped directly during the round or only caught after round, and if an admin was actively on to go "huh what was that who did that".

It's mostly changed in the sense of a better timezone coverage net that is stopping people that should have been caught doing this stuff before. vOv

Edit: Detail with the QGP: Apparently it wasn't on the shuttle; It was in mining's maint subcorridors. It's sort of a mixed bag if this is better or worse... a shambler there is something easy to flee from until it downs from lack of points and the details I've gotten are that it was in fact already down on life as a shambler even, so it's not even a situation where the chaos of the shuttle justifies it. On the other hand I will say one could argue a ling is always one of the most dangerous foes. Call it equally questionable in my books.

[Drago156]

I generally don't comment on these things, but being one of the other three people directly affected by that chemsmoke of Strychnine, I'd figure I'd voice out what it was like from an outside perspective. Before I do so, I'd like to inform those unfamiliar that I have been on goon for close to 3 1/2 years now and have experienced my fair share of chaos, poor events, and deaths and grief.

The way things went down was that I rounded the corner having guessed the wizard was there, and surely enough he was, I did not however notice any smoke, but did notice your mask and helmet missing along with the wizard's hat, so I figured you had just used an acid smoke and let it be since the wizard surrendered, it took a few minutes and some talking with the wizard later before the strychnine started to hit him, so I scanned him to see 270~ units of Strychnine, then I started getting hit by it... by the time we hit dead chat, quite a number of people were pretty curious and shocked that you did this.

Now to explain the frustration... YOU WEREN'T JUST ANY RANDOM ROLE, YOU WERE AN NTSO!!! The expectation of that role is that you won't be shit and focus more on bringing in antags and properly dispensing justice than outright killing antags, or if it came down to killing them, it would be through the use of guns and stuff. The other thing is that you WAY overdid it with the Strychnine, 50 units would've been enough to kill, but you used 6x as much, on top of the acid to incapacitate the wizard's magical abilities. As a person who has done plenty of chemnerdery, you completely intended to kill anything nearby with no care. The final thing of my frustration is the fact you refuse to take responsibility for your actions or consider to apologize and instead deflected the blame onto others stating that "they shouldn't have been there" or "that's their prerogative."

Ultimately what you did was some of the shittiest behaviour I've seen in my time, and I'm honestly disturbed that you would do this as both a mentor and an HoS whitelisted role.

[Lurkey]

You all seem to care about this an awful lot more than I do. That being the case, I'm not going to put a lot of time into clarifying things here. I said it was your prerogative to be upset about it after being cloned, drago, to sacch when he (having not been there) immediately did what he always does any chance he gets and jumped on me. I can respect people having issues with other people, I can't respect passive-aggressive behavior like I see out of sacch constantly. That's the context you left out, I didn't say that to you. The "shouldn't have been there" was referencing the guy at the diner seeing as the shuttle was nearly to cent at that point and it's unusual that somebody would be hanging around the back room of the diner then.
I typically avoid antags for this reason, more often than not I don't even bother with confirmed antags that I see right in front of me outside of blob or nuke rounds for this reason. A wizard that'd spent the previous 30-40 minutes blasting me with spells is an exception, that's why I decided to actually handle it, people get mad when chemists use what they have available in dealing with antags and this ban is exactly what I'd come to expect on goon here lately.
I'm disappointed to see that flourish sees it that way, I'd been leaning toward moving to another server for quite some time and being banned for the same sort of mistakes anybody who plays is bound to make from time to time just feels insulting after how long and (until recently) how often I'd played. It is what it is.

---

Also I can't believe setting off a mix at the owlery is being brought up here. Where ARE people allowed to test mixes too large for the chamber? Just come right out and slap a "no testing mixes as a non-antag" rule on if that's somehow an issue, too. It's reaching like that that led me to take the ban personally, honestly.

[SageAcrin]

Most of that isn't relevant to what I said(I initially said I'm not gonna read it 'cause I skimmed the paragraph, then came back and read it 'cause it's more fair.), so I won't respond to it-not my wheelhouse I think.

I'm just pointing out that the round after you made a hell death mix that killed a bunch of people, you made a hell death mix. While getting admin PMed yet. That's what the Owlery stuff is about.

It's not personal to point out that someone who builds TTVs every round happens to blow up people with TTVs as collateral when fighting antags. It's pattern recognition.

[Gerhazo]

I wasn't involved with the round and looked into the logs of the aforementioned.

Wizards draw a lot of attention to themselves whatnot with being extraordinarily annoying and alerting to their presence with the spell chants, which very often results in a goofy chase involving several people chasing after the wizard.
Setting off a dangerous smoke mix in the line between this lynch mob and the wizard is a recipe for a lot of collateral damage in that regard.

re: "I'd made it perfectly clear all round I intended to kill this wizard and I'd made it perfectly clear how I intended to do it". : I was able to confirm discussing the strychnine production, but it all appears to have been in regular close proximity chat with what appears to have been Noddy and maybe a few other people, with none of that information being public knowledge via a radio or announcement, not that it'd fully justify such measures. I could have overlooked something and maybe I'm wrong, but if not, that seems to be my impression, at least from the speech logs.

I assume the decision to set it off was influenced by the events occurring in maintenance, which is generally a low-traffic area that's unlikely to have passerby coming through, but considering the nature of wizard, as proven by there indeed being people rushing in, the cramped and relative lower-visibility area just further served in making the situation and the chem mix dangerous.

The factual result at the end of this being several people afflicted by a potent poison in a released chem-mix against an antag, having occurred after being warned in the recent history for also murdering multiple people when chembombing another antag, where any disciplinary action in that situation was omitted for just a warning to avoid doing this kind of thing.
On this same line of thought: using area of effect weapons against a singular target where collateral damage is possible is (in my opinion) a conscious decision and not a "mistake anybody who plays is bound to make from time to time", which I and most players I've interacted with have not or don't make. Chemsmokes aren't a conventional weapon and preparing them takes both time and effort and being aware that a person is making something that will turn a decent area into death. Most people responsibly resort to regular single-target weaponry, throwing glasses with chemicals instead of smoking/foaming them or other similar methods the effect and targets of which are fully known and predicted, with any mistakes committed with them being only possible due to the person's own error, rather than opening other crewmembers to endangering themselves, which is the main issue with (chem)bombing strategies against antags.

[Flaborized]

Using chemicals to kill antags and killing anybody who happens to be near isn't allowed as per the rules, nor is suicide bombing antags if you take out other innocent people. You've been warned about this sort of thing before with the QGP, and you failed to learn from the experience and did it again. A short ban like this is reasonable with your notes, if warnings aren't enough to keep you from breaking the rules then bans need to be put in place.

The whole point of hellchems and other dangerous methods to attack antags that are very effective is that you, as a nonantag, generally cannot use them to kill antags as the collateral damage is not acceptable. It doesn't matter if you tell people you're going to do it beforehand, if you kill a random person who didn't want to be killed with it, you'll get in trouble. This is what balances them. If you want to kill antags with chems, you have to do it some other, more difficult way.

"...people get mad when chemists use what they have available in dealing with antags and this ban is exactly what I'd come to expect on goon here lately"

It's not about people getting mad or Goon changing to hate chemists using what they have against antags or anything, killing nonantags as a nonantag with chemicals is against the rules and has been against the rules since I started playing this game. It doesn't matter if you're killing a wizard or a ling with it or how much you warn them in chat, if you kill random people with chems, you'll get talked to for breaking the rules. The same applies to everyone and has applied to everyone for a long while.

The ban wasn't very long, and you should know better at this point and be familiar with the rules. I don't think this complaint is justified at all.

[popecrunch]

Full disclosure: I have a well-known habit of taking a very dim view of players who dual-class in chemistry and terrorism.  Also full disclosure: This is because that is absolutely what i used to do before I was adminned, so I know very well the mindset behind it, and the perspective gained from adminning shows me what it's like from the outside.

I think of hellchems / bombs / diseases etc as being consistent with the Hilarity Clause that used to be in the rules: If you get away with it and nothing goes wrong, then it's fine.  If something goes wrong, you're in trouble.  (everything's fine with hellchems etc: only the intended target was harmed, it was OK for you to attack the intended target, any collateral damage to the station or other players is within acceptable limits; everything's fine with the hilarity clause: the admins thought it was funny enough to allow / going wrong with hellchems: what you did; going wrong with hilarity clause: the admins didn't think it was funny).  You are free to mix up whatever you like (modulo chemicals where the act of creating them causes trouble in itself, like stuff that explodes into existence or creates a fireball as part of its systhesis), but what you DO with them is where things get fuzzy.  I understand intimately that there's a shitload of stuff in chemistry that's really exciting and cool and you can't wait to fog it and watch it melt people or whatever, and that's fine.  in fact, that's the intended purpose - to give a chemist who rolled antag that round something interesting to do that shows off the particular things that job has access to.

Consider what your pattern of behavior looks like to any given admin.  You have a history of doing horrible shit to other players, sometimes with chemistry, sometimes with other means like the portapuke incident.  You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between 'this is a fine time to fog my mixture that melts people' and 'this is not a good time to fog my mixture that melts people'.  You also seem to really enjoy mixing things up that, if fogged, would melt people.  We have a vested interest in not driving players away.  One of the things that drives people away is getting melted because they wandered into a maintenance hallway.

So, okay, we've gotta figure out how to get you to stop murdering people.  Clearly we've tried talking to you about it, we've tried yelling at you about it, last month you were told after the QGP incident that if you didn't stop doing it, we'd escalate to short bans.

You're looking at this from a perspective of 'how can they ban me for fogging poison, that seems like a heavy punishment because I haven't fogged poison before' and we're looking at this from a perspective of 'we have tried and tried to get you to stop screwing over other players and well would you look at that, they're screwing over other players again'.

So let's flip the script: Put yourself in our shoes.  Say you were an admin.  You see a player who's got a history of screwing over other players, sometimes with pranks that get out of hand, sometimes with attempts to take out antagonists that 'accidentally' get out of hand, sometimes with 'oh i didn't realize it would end that poorly', whatever, there's always an excuse.  The mechanics of the mischief they get into shows that they deeply understand various roles in the game and how game systems interact, so clearly they're paying attention to things and it's not a case of 'the game, though it acted internally consistently, reacted to their input in a way they did not expect' - they really just have a habit of at best being a clumsy but well-intentioned person that melts people an awful lot, or at worst aching for the thinnest excuse to haul out their 'mixture that melts people' recipe.  Previous attempts to get them to stop melting people have not stopped, at most, they've moved on to different methods of slaughter when their previous methods got them yelled at.  How would you handle that person?

[SageAcrin]

Pope is saying all the things I'm trying to say better than I could.

The only thing I want to add is that this is what I mean by "pattern of behavior" and by pointing out the overkill and types of chemicals you use. An experienced chemist doesn't need to test hootagen and initro on top of an incendiary/poison deathmix unless they have a medic standing on hand that is very good to heal the people hit.

The test is "yep that guy's really, really dead, yup, also things are on fire and melted". It's actually a bit boring.... unless you hit an inordinately durable target... like a wizard(who can instantly stop burning) or a changeling(who regenerates) or a werewolf(regenerates), at which point it gets interesting.

But then that mix gibs and slaughters anyone else caught in it into "huh yep they're dead". See why I frown?

Like Pope, I have a history of chemmy stuff. I wouldn't call myself a terrorist but my few notes involve things like trying to use tiny doses of cyanide as a prank chem and learning the hard way it's an RNG chem, and taking the floorpill rule far too far. A snot pushing the limits, mea culpa, and I understand the fun of watching things burst into flames. I, too, get it.

We can't all burn down the station, though. There's not enough station. That's what antag rounds are for.