CLF Hostile Survivors Alliance

General Policy Feedback
1

Very simple question concerning the new CLF survivor spawns and a recent roleplay intensive round. Are they OOCly allowed to ally with the Marines?

They start off with sentries, m56ds, a truck, gear, and all spawn together, justified by the fact they need to contend with two factions (Xenomorphs and Marines). A recent round had a “temporary ceasefire” (an alliance for all intents and purposes) until the Xenomorphs were dealt with.

Is this actually allowed from an OOC standpoint? Clarification is needed for future rounds.

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Heard about this from someone else in the round. Sounds like the CO broke marine law and the admin possibly did an oopsie misconduct by spawning a CLF ERT. Surely someone will investigate…

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my 2 cent is that this should only be allowed for events. and yes the CLF that round spawned with good deal of kit but didn’t seem to pushing the xenos that much with the USCM.

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Sup I was the CLF commander, Commander Nasoki Chen. I took the initiative to make the alliance with the USCM cause 6 dudes vs the USCM and bugs wasn’t gonna last long. The CLF have human brains and are gonna choose survival. Even if it means aligning with an enemy force.

All marines were onboard board besides a Lrp dude who opened fire and was a slept by admins (he shot a pvt as well). Survs enjoyed it even more cause we didn’t get forced into losing our rounds by doing a last stand that only 10-15 marines would even fight in.

I can’t speak on staff policy or the ooc rules, but it would be a step back if we restricted what survs could do RP wise and kinda of silly. 6 dudes with low tier gear aren’t gonna single handily cause xenos to loose

To the CO breaking ML, besides doing a weak alliance with an enemy force that reached out to him first, he did everything perfectly and encouraged fun and RP. The reason the WL exist

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From an IC standpoint, a group of survivors, somehow survived against relentless creatures, and are willing to assist the ERT (USCM in this case) in killing off the infestation. Now, this seems like a no-brainer, and every other XO (unless they’re a hardass on CLF) would call in a truce just to eradicate what can basically be classified as a parasite, spreading too quickly to be effectively wiped out, any help would be tolerated.

Now, I don’t know how the ML/SOP looks at this in detail, but from what I can tell, and what happened previously, prior to this CLF survivor change, some CLF survs still truced with marines.

It was, although, an unstable/neutral truce, seeing how it sparked a shootout on the FOB, resulting in a guy being slept and then BE’d soon after.

I witnessed it first hand with my falcon drone while tracking gear, and…to say the least, it was an entertaining sight.

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I think that the staff who ran the little end-of-round mini event thing where the CLF arrived on the Almayer went too overboard. Yes, bro, USCMC High Command would definitely allow a designated terrorist group to openly board one of their vessels, while armed as well…

The CO was creating fun roleplay, though. I didn’t interact with them much admittedly, but the Almayer is a ship that is crippled, along with it’s marine force. No ammo, no vehicles, yadda yadda I’ve said it a lot before. The CO seemed to choose accepting assistance from an able-bodied fighting force that was willing to assist them in taking down the aliens. Said force being outnumbered by at least 8:1 is also somewhat of an assurance of peace, at least until the Alien threat is dealt with.

All of this being through the point of view of a USCM officer, yes. It’s a very risky thing to do, but also has the chance of tipping the scale in the favor of your already underequipped and undermanned forces. Taking calculated risks is a lot different than being rash. So says our lord and savior George S. Patton.

(that being said, this probably still would NOT fly with command unless the CLF were swiftly dealt with post-op. in their eyes, they are known terrorists)

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Marines regularly use greenos, the very force killing their fellow marines except painted green, to fight prime hive (who are killing them) with the only assurance that they do not go rogue and kill all the marines is “nuh uh I said so [Researcher]”.

This is not that big of a stretch, it just puts to question survivor rules.

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8

Hard agree that this should be allowed with the caveat that if it’s the ERT surv insert that it be treated more like a greeno alliance ruleswise than the current rulings that once a CLF surrenders or is revived or allies with the USCM they can’t fight them anymore. There’s seemingly some v light roleplay chain of command with the insert troops so it feels more like the CLF faction being represented.

All in all, Roleplay good, rules can’t be too stringent or Roleplay dies here.

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9

One thing is for sure: They should be allowed to not shoot Marines when Xenos are present nearby and maybe even leave eachother at peace untill they meet again without xenos.

The rest is sketchy. Mechanics reward CLF with loot so them doing 180 and allying with marines breaks said intended mechanic.
They could be asked in the beginning if they want to ally with marines and RP CLF in peace, but that that should prevent additional gear spawns.

If it was admeme mistake/event, there shouldn’t be even much discussion about it.

Rules about hostile faction doesn’t state anything really about it so what is not illegal is legal.
An oversight due to time for sure as rules are older than recent hostile survs tweaks.

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In my personal, non management opinion, the current rules for hostile factions are that they are allowed to cease being hostile to the marines however doing so means they lose all hostile faction privileges. Furthermore, the way our server culture and rules is setup, the Marines are not required to honor the fact a hostile faction member has chosen to surrender their hostile faction status, and may decide to fire on them regardless, or otherwise detain them.

From a IC perspective, ask yourself this question. If a team of American Soldiers, and members of ISIS, teamed up to defeat an ancient evil that rose up from the ground, do you think that after the ancient evil is defeated, that the ISIS members would be welcomed onboard the USS Ronald Reagan?

It is one thing for enemies to put aside their differences in the moment, another post facto.

Personally, I would not be against the idea of the CLF choosing to assist the Marines for the mutual goal of their collective survival, but the CLF would rightly be interested in securing their own long-term survival AWAY from the Marines (which currently can’t be simulated due to the nature of the game, though I’d argue the CLF would just flee the battle area) and the fact that the CLF can not be certain the Marines will not just instantly turn their guns on the CLF when the Xenomorphs are no longer a threat.

There is a legitimate question of how balance the game is if the CLF regularly chose to ally with the Marines, but if this balance issues becomes significant then I think a code solution can be investigated.

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11

Marines are not allowed to work together with the CLF under normal circumstances, it would undermine the purpose of the faction. Allying with UPP is one thing, but the CLF and USCM are supposed to hostile against each other through the history of conflict. I don’t really want to see CLF platoons getting invited to the USS Almayer, compromising the safety of all staff on a faction that shouldn’t be trusted, to use their dropships on a regular basis when they should be able to land on the LZs themselves if necessary.

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12

From ooc rules standpoint you can not temporary ceasefire. Why? Because if you stop fighting meaning forefight your hostile status you can never be hostile ever again.

Which is something I’ve been trying to change by posting on policy feedback for a long time as a hostile faction should always remain hostile unless they themselves in IC chat say I surrender or something equivalent to that. Not when you get revived and in OOC you forcefully become a good boy terrorist. It doesn’t even fucking work that way in real life. Admins just don’t want to deal with this.

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if you think about it CLF are just Pokémon because I beat the shit out of them and then capture them and suddenly they’re friendly even if their Attitude is Moody!!

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I believe they would be allowed to have a “ceasefire” ONLY if the presence of a greater threat is known
“Allying”, however you interpret that is entirely out of the question.

This would be like USMC having ceasefires with the Taliban, which may be necessary for a greater threat, diplomacy, etc. but would NEVER ally with them.

but the second they step on ship, MPs NEED to arrest them, since their mere existence is a Sedition charge

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I feel rules should be simple and clean as possible for clean gameplay/round for everyone. Are you a hostile faction in 2d spezz game, be it.
If it is so hard, change it into forecon. I feel once you bend the rules it will only cause more issues and problems.

If I late join as marine and i see a CLF roaming and shoot the “friendly” CLF making him perma, would I then get noted/ahelp about it and be looked at as a griefer because i simply didn’t know he was friendly or asked first: “excuse me, are you friendly?”. Are marines who knew he was friendly allowed to shoot me since i don’t stop shooting the clf?
What happends if i shoot the friendly CLF during a hostile CLF ERT with a mistake?
And better yet, will the friendly CLF turn into a hostile if CLF ert arrive?

Nah, I hope we can have as clean rules as possible for newbies and players so we can have a clean cm round, this will not be it

16

I honestly think this is people making mountains out of molehills.

Not account for the slight increase on LV.

Average of how often the server as a whole will see hostile survivors

Assumptions:

  • 15 rounds per day
  • 3 are always 0% chance,(CC) so 12 eligible rounds/day
  • 10% chance per eligible round = 0.8 expected spawns per 10 rounds
  • Does not account for LVs slight increase spawn (due to not being listed)
Hours Played Rounds Expected Spawns
16 hours 10 0.8 spawns
32 hours 20 1.6 spawns
64 hours 40 3.2 spawns
160 hours 100 8.0 spawns
320 hours 200 16.0 spawns

That’s just for the server as a whole. Certain populations will get it slightly more or slightly less due to map voting.

Now, in those 320 hours/200 rounds, how many times out of the 16 average, do you think the CLF team will survive the Xenomorphs? (Some maps, ironically LV are usually s confirmed death sentence due to fog mechanics/map design)

16 rounds, let’s be super generous and say they’re wiped only half the time. That’s 8 rounds, out of 200.

So situations that most players will only rarely encounter, shouldn’t be crushed and made in to a rigid set of rules because there’s the potential for it to be abused.

Remember how organic mutinies used to be, then one day, the rather strict restrictions came, and it made it so difficult to do it, and you’d have to jump through multiple artificial steps, which in essence killed off mutinies for around 2 years barring the odd round.(Thankfully the very new mutiny system aids with fixing this)

Trust the player base.

Sure, people will messup, but those amongst you will remember events and situations from your years and nearly always, they’re always player led situations (which are rule 0’d or encouraged by staff, rather than railroaded events)

That’s my take anyway.

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17

This has been a trend in general over the years; everything player led has been removed / stomped on heavily by administration because one guy ruined it for the rest of the playerbase and instead of just banning him and being done with it, what he could do also got a rule made against it.

Mutinies still suck even with the current mutiny system due to how many rules and how much time you need to go through just to start one so by the time you start one, the xenos hijack and your mutiny is over.

Same will happen with alliances if they make rules for or against it. There’s too much risk for players trying to start these alliances interpreting rules in a negative favor to them and causing a note or even a ban to show up in their record for them to try unless an admin personally allows it, but ahelping everything all the time in order to not get banned sucks ass.

The bureaucracy of admin helping, waiting for approval as admins discuss, having to ahelp other people to make sure the alliance is okay, etc. would break the natural flow of things and also give people time to interfere. The same happens in mutinies; some of them stop because marines have to wait upwards of 15 minutes for an admin to approve it, which gives time for command to see you all standing in a circle, talking about mutiny, and bring flashbangs and cuffs or even start shooting if the CO is awake and chooses to start BEing.

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18

I am a DM for my local D&D game and I always run my games with waring factions that can be manipulated to do things

My Players were facing down a Warlord who was leading a demonic army, my party was moving with a force of Island guard from a battle when they came across a group of scavengers who managed to hold off the horde in a village, the army force was hostile to the scavengers as they had stolen gear off their dead friends (as scavengers in a apocalypse warzone would do) however both sides had the singular goal of stopping the horde, as they had no other real option, being that they were on a island with a fast moving horde, stopping it was their only chance for a real escape or getting reinforcement, so they had to work togther, once they stopped the Horde they noticed the scavengers had retreated and stolen a boat before the battle had fully ended, along with all the gear they stole to spite being offered metals and honor for their service, as they were in the end enemies of the guard, so they made a escape while the Island guard cleaned up the remaining forces, once the threat is gone, it will not be long before the “allies” would turn on each other

same deal applies to this situation

If you Have the choice of Dying to Horrifying alien Nightmare bugs or Working with the people you view as oppressive dictators, you would always choose to side with your enemy, atleast until the Guaranteed death is dealt with, and then either Turn on or Run from them before the end, unless they have mercy and let you leave

but on this game more then likely some dumbass will ignore command, see you, think “they not marine, marine good, they bad, kill not marine” and start shooting at you regardless

My Take summarized:
to RP right look at it from your characters perspective, you are being assaulted by nightmare Bugs who use your friends to birth more of them, your alone and as far as you know no one is coming to help, so when people show up, friend or Foe, Your Odds are better with the people who will take you prisoner then the Aliens who want to use you as a Unwilling parent, and if you work with them getting away will be easier since your not their biggest priority

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19

The issue with justifying a situation like this is that it will justify situations like this in the future. It’s a really bad precedent. What’s the point of hostile survivors if you always have an excuse to become friends? There will be big scary bugs every round, does it mean you always can go befriend marines? Hostile survs are meant to be a third force you cannot ally yourself with neither as xenos nor as marines. So from my point of view this should either be outright forbidden, or there must be a significant downside to it. Otherwise it will just be the most optimal solution every round. What can be a downside of allying CLF? Well, just a few examples: high command cutting funds, provost sent to investigate command, a big amount of paperwork you need to do to justify an action like this, etc etc.

The only excuse to this situation is “it’s roleplay duh”. But is it really? I don’t think either side considered the long-terms of such a decision. Because well, round is a microcosm, when it ends, there is no consequences after. The commander will not have to answer for his actions to the high command, to the press, to their subordinates who in lore just got beaten pretty bad by CLF, to the relatives of people killed as a result of the actions of CLF, etc. The CLF won’t be punished by their “comrades” for aligning themselves with imperialists, no one will try to use this as a pretext to take over the cell, and so on. If we are talking about roleplay, all these things should have been really considered. But were they? CLF were even allowed to enter FOB, for example, were there a need for this, or they did this just because they could? With all these things considered, it’s not as easy to justify such a situation with the word “roleplay”. I am not going to outright call this “powergaming”, I feel like people just wanted to test the boundaries. But simply saying “roleplay” is also just short-sighted.

Also, we are playing “expected contact”. Also, afaik in lore xenos are not the only “bugs” USCM has to fight. I feel like if it was allowed to make cease-fires to fight another inhumane threat, it would be somehow mentioned in SOP. And finally, you can and could always be outright jobbanned if you align with marines while playing as a hostile ERT member. Even though the exactly same logic of “big bad bugs are aboard, we need to survive together!” can be applied to hijack easily. For some reason, roleplay argument doesn’t fly there.

Bottom line, just saying “great job roleplaying this out” is a bad outcome of such a situation, because it creates a precedent and empowers people to do this again and again with no downsides. It should be either outright just forbidden, or there must be really bad trade-offs, so allying CLF wouldn’t always be the optimal solution.

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Personally I don’t see an issue with it. It’s a big risk for either side to be extend the olive branch.

If the marines send a squad out to touch base and they could be captured/killed and their coms taken meaning the CLF are going to have a real nice heads up when the marines send in reinforcements, hell an SLs encryption key gives the command channel which is super handy.

The CLF on the other hand need every person they can get. Assuming they survive the xenos with no losses that’s 8 guys to work with assuming highpop. So unless an alliance is started over shortwave radios which sounds like a great way to walk into an ambush it’s a big risk for either side. I think that’s where the beauty of this third party faction comes in.

You don’t know who rolled surv that round, could be folks looking to RP an alliance sure but it’s just as likely to be folks rolling hostile surv to play HvH. So long as it doesn’t become a meta which I guess is possible but I think we worry about that bridge when/if we get there. Maybe there’s room to expand on the CLF nightmare like reinforcement for holding coms that could affect this dynamic but that’s a whole different can of worms.

End of the day it as always comes down to the folks playing the round. Maybe one round the alliance crumbles half way in and CLF sabotage the marines at a critical point or maybe one round they put their differences and it leads to some interesting RP on the planet and the Almayer. That’s half the fun, who knows what shitshow will happen and when.

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