Feedback to Cryotube Chemicals - Is it a bug? I don´t think so.

[Ferigad]

ferigad - Player Report: none, Unknown

What’s your BYOND key?

ferigad

Round ID:

21503

Your character name:

Lifa Varsdottier

Accused BYOND key:

none

Accused character name:

none

What rule(s) were broken?:

Unknown

Description of the incident:

I played an Researcher in the round together with another player. As it happens from time to time, we found the “Legendary - Regulating” attribute in the current round and used it to create a Combat Stim, so far, so good.

The Combat Stim was not used again this round as the marines had already won the ground war, but I wanted to buff 1-2 more marines with a small Stim cocktail using the Cryotube.

As I was about to buff a marine, I was informed by admin notification from “Segrain” that what I was doing was a bannable action with the Cryotube.

I inquired exactly what he meant, and figuratively I was told that if I knew what using the Combat Stim does to a soldier, I would know why it was a bannable offense.

Unfortunately, at this point I STILL couldn’t understand why it would be a bannable offense. We discussed it briefly and he explained to me that the behavior of the Cryotube is due to a bug - according to the statement, the Cryotube should not multiply or duplicate the medicine/drug used in the target body.

However, I could not find any information that this is a bug in the cryotube. In fact, this seems to me to be a normal behavior of a cryotube when I compare it with other SS13 servers.

I would therefore like to know: Is the use of the legendary attribute “Regulation” in combination with the cryotube a bannable offense or forbidden or is it “Working as Intended”? There seems to be a big general split of opinion on this. In the last 3 months, this type of use for Combat Stim has been done consistently in every round (that I have been involved in, be it as a scientist, doctor or marine, to my knowledge) where A: the attribute was found and B: the attribute was also made into a combat drug.

If this is indeed an exploit, I would only wish: Write something like this in the announcements, point it out somehow, include it in the rules or something similar. I find it incomprehensible that a player should know that the Cryotube is not supposed to work like this. Considering how the rest of the machines work in SS13 and also in CM, such as Unlimited Medical Drugs, Unlimited Blood, Unlimited Drink Refills, I see the argument “The drug magically multiplies in the Cryotube and therefore you should realize that it is a bug/exploit” as incomprehensible. Thank you very much!

I hope that no one involved feels offended or hurt in any way, this was not the intention of this report. It is only meant to give food for thought to communicate such things, if they are true, better for the player community on a broad scale, which saves you the work of constantly pointing it out to players and getting pinged with frustration.

Evidence:

None taken.

[Pablo_Excavator]

I believe what your looking for is policy feedback not a player report…

[Segrain]

Whom, exactly, are you reporting here? If me for the interaction we had, you would have specified so even if filing this as a player report instead of staff report by some misclick. If other researchers for doing what you did, you are explicitly stating that you do not consider it a bannable offence.

For the sake of the record - lest anybody reading this would suggest to resubmit this as a proper staff report - no action had be taken by me against the author during the conversation in question, nor against anybody else in a similar scenario. I can think of at least one other case of me telling somebody to not do that recently, and perhaps more cases that I cannot immediately recall. In my humble capacity as a developer, it is my firm opinion that the interaction mentioned here is as completely unintended as it is completely nonsensical, and I inform players so when it is relevant to do so, but I would hardly call its abuse being as widespread as the report alleges. But of course, I cannot know everything that happens in every single round.

Nonetheless, any further discussion of that question belongs in development channels, not in player reports.

[Ferigad]

Well sorry @Segrain - This was not the intention. I asked in the CM-Channel and was told: Bring it up with a moderator. I asked how and I was told, report it. So I made a Forum Account, checked the Forums, took a look into player report and staff report and thought from skimming over it that staff report would be a transparency channel for STAFF REPORTING Players and player report vice versa.

I moved it now to Policy feedback, since that seems to be more adequate.

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Correct, no action has been taken against me other than to point out that it is a bannable offense and a direct warning to stop this bevahiour, because it is NOT intended to work this way (aka a Bug).

But as you stated, it´s your opinion. I also see that this cryotube situation was never reported as a bug from anyone. No GitHub mentioning, no open, solved or otherwise tagged Bug, at least not with keywords like cryo, cryotube, chem duplication, duplication.

Don´t get me wrong. You write it´s your opinion. So I assume you don´t like it that way. Still, no one ever reported it as a bug. And it seems, using the Cryotubes with Cryoxadone is okay. So the picture I get is: It is because it´s a combat stim with no OD and not because there is a magical duplication going on.

As I understand it right now, this is neither a bug nor an exploit. It is a feature that is not liked and should simply be changed with an update.

Telling people that this is a bannable offense is, in my opinion, just plain wrong. (At least at this time, since nothing indicates that this is not a feature working as intended.)

Addendum:
Also Lauren from Discord asked me to add this:

[Primalis]

Multiplying the chemical that goes into the occupant of the cryotube has been the intended feature for at least a decade. It’s the whole point of the tube, otherwise you’d have to refill the cryomix after every second patient.

Not sure why Segrain said this is a bannable offence, honestly. I’ve also never heard of it not being allowed for stims.

[ihatethisengine]

Yeah, it was an intended feature. On bay. But no one could predict you’d be able to dupe godstims in the cryotube, which is a clear exploit of an oversight.