Dr. Lance - Whitelist Report: Hult’ahnok Ek-Thok, Spirit of the Whiteist
What’s your BYOND key?
Dr. Lance
Round ID:
30952
Your character name:
Tank Moore
Accused BYOND key:
kooarbiter
Accused character name:
Hult’ahnok Ek-Thok
What rule(s) were broken?:
Spirit of the Whiteist
Whitelist in question:
Predator
Description of the incident:
I was FORECON CO on Chance’s Claim when Hult’ahnok Ek-Thok chose to hunt one of my marines while we were actively trying to build our fortifications pre drop. Because of the predator downing and injuring the other survivors, our chances of fortifying before the xenos arrived became literally zero, as all the gunfire attracted the swarm. Survivors are classified as worthy prey in the honor code, however the circumstances of how Hult’ahnok Ek-Thok chose their prey are what I consider a significant breach in the Spirit of the Whitelist clause for a couple of reasons.
FORECON starting equipment is extremely ineffective against predators for a variety of factors. No armor, no armor piercing, no buckshot, and extremely limited munitions which are needed for fighting off the horde of xenos that are actively seeking us. Attacking extremely underequipped survivors is far different from attacking a group of PMC/UPP Insert survivors with proper guns, AP, buckshot, armor etc.
When it comes to hunting marines or xenos, killing one or two people has virtually zero effect on the rest of the marines. But when you hunt a survivor pre drop, this can potentially (For instance, this round) secure the deaths or capture of every other survivor.
To sum it up, Hult’ahnok Ek-Thok chose to hunt extremely ill-prepared survivors unprovoked before first drop, which would be okay if they didn’t have virtually no chance of retaliation due to both needing to build cades, and not having effective weapons and armor. This led to the entire roster of survivors getting wiped immediately after by xenos. ICly, it’s extremely unbefitting of a predator to go after near-helpless prey, and OOCly they know that survivors are already in dire situations to begin with. It looks as if they were actively going after people who couldn’t defend themselves on purpose.
hult here, I do not play survivor, so I do not know the amount of ammo and meds they have on spawn, but my general experience has been that survivors are some of the most capable fighters on the human side in any given round.
I decided to hunt the scout, as they had wandered a good distance away from your gathering spot, had a cloak to escape, and one of the best guns in the game IMO.
the scout decided to run as fast as he could back to base as soon as I revealed myself, which is understandable, but according to HC I am allowed to pursue fleeing prey even if they run to safety. Once he arrived to LZ2, I fought him and your group, focusing most of my attention on my main prey, and leaving once dealing him a omrtal wound, as I would have had to HPC you all to safely extract him. When xenos arrived and he bled out, I grabbed him, did not continue to attack any of you, took his neckerchief and left him.
To the best of my knowledge there has never been any rule shown to me that you can’t hunt survivors, including forecon, and I personally do not see what difference it makes whether you are killed by a scimitar or slashed to death by a lurker. This is a role you have to knowingly volunteer for, and choosing to take a survivor role means you accept the consequences.
If hunting forecon is against the spirit of the whitelist, I would request they be added to the unhuntable section of the honor code for the future.
You actively chose to go after barely armed targets pre drop who were trying to set up for a hive assault. The difference between a lurker doing it and a predator doing it is that a lurker has the obligation to try and kill or capture survivors, you as a predator have the active choice on who you decide to kill. Comparing this attack to a lurker is incredibly disingenuous, as a lurker can be reliably defeated with the limited resources we have. A predator cannot be reasonably fought, as we did not have proper resources. You choosing to do this before the drop didn’t only kill one survivor, you caused the deaths and captures of everyone else down there.
I’m not sure how the scout, with a specialist rifle and (presumably) at least a sidearm was barely armed, the scout rifle is incredibly capable. The comparison I was making to the lurker was to demonstrate that being scimitar’d to death and slashed to death have the same outcome, death via melee, if a lurker slashes you to death, you are also dead.
Predators also CAN be reasonably fought, as you collectively damaged me a fair amount and I was trying not to be hit. As for why I chose pre drop, there were no other targets available, as the hunting grounds didn’t release any humans, and all the xenos in the field at the time were drones, which are unhuntable. I’m sorry that the entire survivor team died, but the scout chose to flee from me to the LZ instead of trying to dodge me or stand his ground. You are encouraged to give chase when a prey flees and I would have pursued them anywhere they chose to go.
You could have simply waited 5 minutes for xenos to evolve, or 15 minutes for marines to land, but instead you actively chose to go after the survivors. Do not pretend like you were doing something you were obligated to do, because you were not.
The Scout rifle is very good for ambushing xenomorphs. It is incredibly subpar for fighting predators, due to the slow fire rate, lack of burst fire, and high wield slowdown effectively making you a free target if you try to stand your ground. Assuming he had the standard A19 rounds, each bullet would do 20 damage to you, meaning he would have to perfectly hit you 14 times at an absolute maximum of 1.6 bullets per second, while barely being able to move due to the slowdown, while you are a full speed predator.
Once again, your lurker example is incredibly disingenuous. You can kill a lurker before they cause significant damage to yourself or your allies because they have no armor and low health. You are a predator, you have 275 health, insane bullet armor, a 1/3rd damage reduction, and we have no proper means of AP to effectively fight you. If a lurker chooses to run after a survivor in a group and did their absolute best to kill them, they would be gunned down almost immediately by anyone competent. If a predator does the same thing, there is nothing that can be done in a reasonable time to stop it from happening. You were damaged a “fair amount” after 5 people were shooting you for 20 seconds with bullets that basically bounce off of your armor. That is the furthest thing from a justification that we had any chance of beating you.
You have ZERO obligation to go kill the survivor; you actively CHOSE to go out of your way to do it. Even when he retreated towards the rest of the group, you actively made the choice to go and attack him amidst everybody. Just because there are no other targets available does not make you immune to criticism for your choices. Everything that happened in this round is technically allowed by the Honor Code, but it’s the accumulation of both the choices you made and the circumstances of which you did them, and finally the result of it all which led me to reporting you, because in my eyes this behavior is abhorrent for the whitelist and should not be tolerated.
Hey, I was the FORECON Scout in this round and also the person that was hunted at first and kicked things off.
I was the person organizing and proactively gathering most of the materials for our hold as I seemed to be the only person who knew where everything was and how to get it. I grab my gear, and because I got lucky and spawned with an M39, I also grabbed the turrets from Tornado before going to the hold. After gathering my fellow survivors at the northeast corner of LZ2, dropping off the turrets, I tell everyone that I am leaving to get us some flares (which is also where you get plasteel from), which is just little bit past the halfway point between LZ1 and 2 on the south side of the map.
On my way back with the flares and plasteel is when I hear you following me with your voicelines. I chose to keep running BACK to the LZ because I am carrying materials that I am hoping will increase my team’s odds at survival. Again: I was the person gathering all of our materials to even have a chance at surviving, and because I am just one person (with the misfortune of spawning as the Scout) there was a good amount of gear I didn’t secure that I otherwise could have.
I wandered away because I thought I was the only person who knew where the map loot was. The M4RAC might have been useful if my eyes weren’t immediately fried by organ damage from my fractured head. FORECON get no helmets and you were aiming head. There are a limited few helmets scattered around the map. The only way to get a helmet is to either go to the Brig (where 1 can be found in the hall and a couple in the Armory), go to mid (the Gren helmet), go to the far west side of the map near Typhoon (Scout helmet), or get lucky and spawn with one. None of which anyone did.
I’ve played a lot of Scout as spec. The cloak is not a get out of jail free card as you are still very visible. The best way to not be seen is to 2 screens away binocular’ing.
We did that much damage at the cost of surrendering any chance at surviving afterwards.
FORECON Scout spawns with 3 standard A19 mags. 1 in the gun, 2 in backpack.
I could have waited for T2s or marines, I chose not to as I wanted to be engaged with the round instead of waiting on the ship.
I’m not an expert in weapon and armor statistics, I just have my surface level knowledge as a casual player, if you say that the scout rifle is not capable of taking on a predator then I have nothing to countermand this, but I don’t believe you should have to be especially knowledgable about how much ammo survs spawn with and weapon TTks to play this role.
I defend my choice to hunt that forecon survivor, I don’t believe what I did was wrong, in the writing or spirit of the whitelist. Again if I am wrong and forecon survivors are not meant to be hunted, they have been in the game for a fair few years now, and it seems like something that should have been written down in the honor code.
In response to Awkward, I was not aware of any of the particular details of what each survivor was doing, and I am not knowledgable about what the usual strategies are for forecon on this map. As for targeting the head, I have been told that this is a better alternative to targeting limbs, and I forgot forecon don’t spawn with helmets as I don’t regularly play survivor, but had I remembered I would have targeted your torso. I don’t begrudge you at all for running as survivors are stronger in a group, but i wanted to finish what I started. Lastly, I do not have knowledge of however much ammo each survivor preset starts with, but if they genuinely don’t have enough ammo to survive that seems like something that should be amended balance wise.