I ahelped a doctor round 26738 (I know who but no need to bring up the doctor directly) about welding vents in medical. He welded vents on a late term burst patient in the surgery room. There were no prior bursts. This used to be against the rules. It used to be after first burst you can weld vents, essentially giving xenos one freebie guaranteed escape route. I got this as a reply:
Admin PM from-Steelpoint: Its not metagaming to presume a larva could get loose in the area of the ship where infected personnel are brought to
This means as soon as medical knows they are fighting XX-121 they can freely weld all vents where infected people may be brought to. Empasis on this was my ahelp on almayer not having any bursts ahead of time.
Sorry didnt save the screenshot. I only log important snipits in notepad since if admins thought I was lying they could check the logs then ban me for lying on serious matters.
Screenshotting a PM from an admin implying it applies to all admins is not very responsible, admins are not a hivemind and the opinion of one admin on one situation may not be the same as every other admin.
I mean, can we get a clarification then? As far as I am aware, since hidden rules are gone, you can do whatever you want, as long as itâs not against the written rules.
Probably this and other examples should just be added to the examples section in metagaming rules. For example, we should also add that you still cannot block off the cockpit door with objects as a DP.
When I was confronted with this issue. I took into context the following.
The marines were aware of xenomorphs being present
Everyone knows that xenomorphs implant larva into humans
The area is the medical centre onboard a star ship where infected humans are brought
Its presumed knowledge that these larva are very agile and can squeeze into tight spaces.
All of this led me to make the decision that welding the vents inside the surgical rooms in this instance was not a case of metagaming.
Now, you could make an argument around it being a unfair situation to put a larva player in as their escape options become virtually non-existent, or you could argue that if a larva bursts shipside that there should be more punishment for the marines (tho the perma death of the marine is the punishment), or some other argument.
But from a rules perspective I felt, at the time, this was not a rule break.
As with many things, if this is an actual issue, Iâd argue for a mechanical solution, not a administrative one. What if sealing off the vents inside the surgical rooms had some penalty effect for the surgeons?
It just seems like busywork. Frankly the only way larva get away as it is is because engineers arenât on hand / too lazy to weld the vents and there are no marines with guns to secure the operating room.
if you can play as an almost unkillable burrower if you DO escape and meta comms, loaders and surgery tools, itâs not that bad if i wanna weld a couple vents lol
It is a non issue because no doctor after 1st drop every round goes and grabs a welder, pops an IA pill, and welds all 8 vents. Just like how doctorâs delight was a non issue until as researcher I made 4000U of it before 1st drop for 2 weeks. Hell, I have never seen anyone weld the vents before a burst in 4 years of playing: or I have and ahelped those too and didnt get a denied response.
As Steelpoint pointed out, RP wise it makes sense, but any action must also be within the set rules, and not be mechanically OP. Like xenos dragging dead bodies: RP wise they are food, and marines seem to want dead bodies so xenos should want to deny them, but mechanically would put most marines on one life only.
As Steelpoint mentioned, ideally all non-RP rules (like smoking in medbay) should be handled via code. If the vent was unweldable marines could break the nearby pipes, and also allows way more than that one freebie. That would be pretty obvious though that you shouldnât go around it. If the change instead gave a penalty to surgens the meta would be one operating room for casual larva, other 3 for general or mass larva.
Best I can think of is: stick with the unweldable vents in all of medbay. Then 10 seconds after a xeno is detected in any surgical room, ARES announces it and automatically shuts the vents.
How is this a useful replacement whatsoever? All you achieve is making it fundamentally impossible to secure the OR, allowing a larva to escape with reasonable reliability and then have some pathetic consolation prize of sealing the vents 10 seconds after the burst. What does that achieve when the larva has already left long ago?
I think the surgery rooms vents should be unweldable. It does take some skill as a larva to be able to hide under the table and use one of the vents. It will actually encourage SOP (if there is one) where an MP will be present in the surgery room just in case of a burst.
Willzadl currently thatâs what has been in place. The larva left or barely failed, marines seal the vents, no further larva can escape shipside. ONE larva was allowed the chance to wreck havoc shipside. My suggestion is keeping the current state of the game. What you are mentioning is the start of the post: just seal all vents at 1st drop and ban shipside larva from ever being a problem. If I knew I could seal the vents as a doc I would do it every single time. I didnt avoid sealing the vents because âdoctors are lazyâ.
thereâs no point mechanically enforcing 1 larva to always be allowed to escape via that method, itâs extremely arbitrary and shouldnât be codified
Doctors can very easily stab a larva with their weapons before they can get into a vent. Welding the vents just makes it a million times easier.
Shipside bursts are rare as they are (from my experience). Why bother to enforce something that would rid the server of an opportunity like that? If shipside medical is not competent enough to handle what is basically their bread and butter then thatâs on them.
the only real difference is that if they are unweldable youâll have to wrench up the pipes near it instead of weld the vent. Idk, a solution is more difficult then it seems here
