I’m newer to the server and I don’t really get involved with MPs that much because I try to avoid getting in situations that could get me b& (whoops), so maybe I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about
But I’ve been looking at all the Battlefield Execution player reports and man, 90% of these weren’t even on the fuckin battlefield.
I feel like at least 70% of these Battlefield Executions wouldn’t have happened if MPs were more gung-ho in riot-breaking/arrests. Not to call MPs pussies, because it’s not their fault, but most of these B.E.s feel like “MPs could’ve handled it and no one would’ve been round removed, but they didn’t, so the CO stepped in with a Mateba”
Is it because of all the scrutiny MPs are under, whereas COs are (almost) untouchable when it comes to B.E. decisions? Like the way I see it, most people would prefer a 20 minute brig sentence over being round removed.
I think if someone ahelps an MP, the first action a responding admin should take is bwoink the CO and ask - “Hey, if the MPs didnt step in, would you have B.E.'d this guy?” — and if the answer is yes, ahelps ends there, MP is in the clear, tell the brigged guy he got lucky
Let me know if I’m just stupid I won’t take offense
Source: I reported a staff manager for a inproper BE and it got approved, and councillors have had successful reports against them in the past.
I Do think the wording around BE needs to be tightened to be a last resort. If theres a whole MP department there, they should be used first. COs even have a discretionary arrest power for this reason.
Dont BE on a ship full of MP unless you are actively being shot at. Order a discretionary arrest or have them brigged normally. If you discretionary arrest make sure you actually go to brig and resolve it after and apply normal charges, and don’t leave them to rot.
From a RP perspective, a commanding officer would have a easier time explaining why he ordered a disruptive marine brigged to a flag officer than explaining why he blew their brains out, using a power presumably granted for emergencies.
Giving MP less scrutiny is somewhat dangerous because you already get frankly toxic people in MP. CO’s get powers like BE and discretionary arrest because you have to pass a screening that stops toxic people getting the role.
The reason for so much scrutiny on MPs is due to people in the past having played MP and using it to ruin others rounds, that’s why malicious compliance exists, to stop MP’s from doing that, if you go look on old forums i bet at least 50% of player reports are due to MP’s doing this stuff.
Currently you don’t really see many MP’s doing that, if you look at player reports now there’s a lot less MP related stuff, you got to go to about last year for a large amount of MP reports.
It would be more accurate to say it reduces the amount of toxic people getting the role. And I’m not directing this at anyone in this community. Screenings just are not perfect - many IRL situations have proven this.
And mak, I don’t think you’re stupid. That being said, everyone in every role is up for scrutiny, no one is immune from player reports. I don’t think it really makes sense for a staff member to base a ruling on “what’s the opinion of a CO in the round” - it all has to go back to logs and evidence and equating those to various server policies and then the highest ranking staff member (or highest ranking whitelist person) looks at it decides what they think is/isn’t reasonable to have done. IMO a more interesting conversation would be regarding potential changes to Marine Law / Standard Operating Procedure / other server policies that affect these situations.
Yeah, it’s just the amount of B.E.s I’ve seen where MPs are literally watching it feels goofy man. And in a lot of these cases the guy 100% deserved it, he acted up around a CO, you should know the risk ---- but if MPs are present and it’s not on the battlefield I don’t think a BE should ever be allowed.
But that’s contingent on MPs actually solving problems instead of letting them get far enough the CO steps in
It’s an hard line to balance you boys are pretty much right, I withdraw my original post
This is a fair point. I’ve played MP a lot and sometimes I will hesitate to step in on a situation for various reasons, one of the reasons is because people can frequently get OOCly mad whenever an MP does anything, and that is frequently a not-enjoyable interaction. A situation comes to mind where the person I arrested was very toxic and at one point they told me to go cryo. I wasn’t enjoying the interaction, so I took them up on it and cryo’d. I observed them in ghost form for a couple minutes, and guess what - they said something like “OF COURSE that fucker cryo’d” - like bitch, you told me to
Some players seem to assume that MPs just love to brig people and take any excuse to do it. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t think that’s true for a vast majority of cases.
That was actually pretty much what my report got accepted for: I was BE in cic, with CMP in the room. The MP was rather well staffed and the council agreed BE’s shouldn’t be used when the MP are a option.
fuck I miss old CM’s police brutality state, and the frequent MP assaults and brig break ins, when there were mortal enemies between MPs with MTs, and MPs with marines, and MPs with CL, and MPs with other MPs!
Why do we even get flashbangs if we can’t use them? I mean req line is right there
TBF sometimes MPs are just bald. One of my few BEs was in the CIC while the MPs were watching because I had asked them to remove the CC from the CIC and their response was “he’s allowed to be here” (which is true but I’m also allowed to rescind that and kick anyone out from specific areas.)
Said CC started tossing a grenade around and asking us how to detonate it while the MPs just Kanye stared and refused to remove him despite him chucking around ordnance.
Sometimes the MPs just really don’t want to do their jobs, which I vibe with, I’m a lazy MP too.
COs are hardly untouchable for BEs, you can look through Whitelist Reports and see two fairly recent examples where a BE was in some way, shape, or form not up to standards. Roughly 1/3 of all CO apps are forced to address BEs to prove that they understand the purpose they are meant to serve and the guidelines surrounding their proper use in game. I might be biased, but I do feel like the tool is in a good place where COs have enough freedom to exercise it in a meaningful way while not being able to abuse it for stupid reasons.
BEs are realistically only ever used for one of three reasons:
Someone is deliberately hindering the CO in their duties. This could be assaulting the CO, stealing the megaphone and spouting nonsense, calling for mutiny, sexual harassment, and other things in that vein.
Someone is an active threat to the marines. This can be an active shooter or someone that’s committed a capital crime like sedition or murder (which would warrant execution through proper means as well).
Someone is being LRP. This is largely up to a CO’s discretion and sees a large amount of scrutiny when it’s done for this reason - but it could include emoting sniffing feet or using a megaphone to declare that X, Y, or Z person likes to eat shit.
COs are encouraged and expected to use MPs to resolve these issues before resorting to a BE and are required to give one or more warnings to a person they might BE in all situations but one where there is an immediate threat to life and limb. If someone reports a BE or we see a BE ourselves that could’ve been resolved by MPs, we’ll talk to the CO about it and make sure they understand the expectation that MPs be the first resort.
BEs are not a tool that is meant to be used willy nilly. They are meant to be used in unique situations where other methods of resolving a problem would not be effective, feasible, or reasonable. Although this, in some ways, effectively turns the CO into the RP Police - this is part of the reason why a CO applicant might be an excellent commander but still get denied on the grounds of poor roleplay ability.
The reason why MPs see so much scrutiny is because they’re essentially an in-character way of resolving rulebreaks. Someone got murdered? Well they’re being arrested by MPs instead of bwoinked by an Admin. Someone broke into req and start looting magazines from Cargo Technicians? Well they’re being arrested for trespassing and theft instead of bwoinked by an Admin. Without that scrutiny and regulation we’d see a lot more stupid shit coming out of brig than we already do, but more scrutiny might make the role unplayable so we’re kinda fucked when people come in and maliciously follow the law.
But really (and I can’t say this enough) if you think a CO isn’t upholding the standards of the whitelist and using their tools wrong/maliciously you should report it. We take every report seriously and look into it regardless of how we feel about the person being reported.
A huge part of the problem I’ve seen with MP’s in the past is how much the players picking it have tried to act like the ones actually in charge: Bossing the CO/XO/SO/IO’s around, making their own decisions on what should be done in contravention to the CO’s orders, and treating the CMP as the actual commanding officer in charge of the operation rather than the CO and XO - all while appealing to “marine law” and admin intervention to force CO’s et al to obey them (get brigged) or else get banned.
(which in its own way is basically saying the MP’s are in fact also above the admins - who are the janitors cleaning up the mess the MP’s directed them/manipulated them to)
Personally, I don’t think MP’s should be there to imminently question BE’s or what the CO is doing, but to enforce the CO’s authority. They should be, in essence, the CO’s goons until an higher authority directs otherwise.
Seen it too much, not just here but on other servers (especially other servers) with security players, that there are people who revel in the drama more than actually playing the game; so I’m at the point that I don’t think any restriction on MP’s is too much of a restriction.
Right now the balance seems ok, but walking it back at all gets a hard no from me.
Alright right off the bat I should say the following: Most BEs against marines are done for one of two reasons:
Unnacceptable emotes or behaviour that disrespect command staff so much that should it go unpunished it would be a continuous distraction for marines.
From time to time marines just are in the mood of fucking around and there is that one guy that just continuously strays farther and farther from the limit, slowly tempting others into behaving like animals just for shits and giggles.
BEs are an unethical but incredibly effective tool for both situations for different reasons. In the first case… Well, it’s hard to disrespect your CO when the last guy that disrespected them HARD got a new vent hole in their skull, stop fucking around, follow orders, win.
And the second one is the more nuanced. Everyone joins the round hoping to see the usual HvX gameplay loop, but that goes to the shitter if a big riot or a mutiny happens because it tends to cripple marines so hard that it actually dooms them to loose in record time. So the idea is preventing that from the get-go. So the CO has two choices:
Letting the MPs handle it as a riot, which on it’s own can end up in two different ways:
** The MPs lose.
** It escalates into a shootout that later on escalates even further into a full-on mutiny.
You give the noisiest marine the Mateba treatment and you will see how everyone will magically settle the fuck down. Not gonna lie in practice it looks like that time in which your teacher got mad and it repeatedly slammed the eraser against the board making a ton of noise, making everyone just stare in silence.
Now if you are curious about why MPs would lose then I’ll just make it brief by telling you that MPs don’t get good enough gear, infrastructure, numbers and skilled officers in order to handle big riots.
And on another topic, if we talk about scrutiny and accountability, then in all honesty… as a silver medal MP that’s near the gold medal I can tell you that MPs should get the stick more often, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they don’t get it, it’s just that even still, it’s not enough.
And while the COs don’t tend to get the stick that often, they receive PRs at an absurd rate and each and every single one of those reports is taken seriously.
Well said. I think the problem a lot of people have is the LRP factor. Newer players probably have a different idea of what LRP is. Does not excuse the behavior but I could see where contention would arise.
MPs need as much scrutiny as you can give them. This of course does not mean be an asshole and go out saying all MPs are bad cause one guy ruined your round.
But scrutinizing and generally holding all MPs to a high standard of RP is essential to an RP environment given it is one of the few roles that can pretty much get away with round-ending someone without admin-intervention.
I am proud to say that in my time playing CMP, I have encountered ALOT more good MP mains than bad actors. Of course there always will be bad actors, as there are in any role in general (looking at you MT tiders).
In conclusion, If there is a bad actor in a team of MPs, ahelp or PR them instead of coping on the Discord for fucks sake
