Vile Beggar - Staff Report: Violation of Event Protocols - LTNTS
What’s your BYOND key:
Vile Beggar
Round ID:
21830
Your character name:
RLC
Their BYOND key:
LTNTS
What are you reporting?:
Violation of Event Protocols
Description of the incident:
A bog-standard CC round. Marines pushed into western reactors and were at the doorstep of the hive. Eventually, they lost momentum and ultimately collapsed and had to retreat. The first Queen rallied the xenos and advanced forward, eventually reaching the south of A-Block dorms. Right before this, a couple of xenos mentioned seeing PMCs, which was a bit odd but nothing serious. The Queen decided to push forward and was met with a hail of HEAP bullets from the PMCs, promptly dying. I was told that the PMCs obtained their HEAP from the ERT station vendors, with them being able to vend 5 magazines (per person or in total, I’m not sure). If that’s true, this seems just like a honest mistake to me and I got nothing against it.
Our second Queen matured super quickly due to admin intervention. Marines once again pushed into western reactors, reached the hive, faltered and retreated to dorms/FOB. As we skirmished about, I noticed from a automated QM report that there were about 37~ marines groundside, and 80+ shipside. One of the staff spawned in 30 free Foxtrot marines which included combat techs, medics and a specialist. They were also given 2 HE OBs. I am not exactly sure when they got spawned in, but it was DEFINITELY before the 3 hour mark. The huge reinforcement wave overwhelmed us and allowed them to retake the pylon we took earlier and establish a foothold for a nuke. They eventually gunned us down.
I would have no qualms about this if xenos were adequately informed and compensated in some way. We did not receive a single warning, nor any extra larvas AFAIK. I heard that this was done to break a ‘stalemate’, but I feel as this only robbed the xenos of the victory they had in their grasp. It feels very annoying to have your three hours of effort wasted to no fault of your own, even more so due to a staff member’s actions.
Hello! I witnessed the staff member during this round.
The staff member didn’t know about the HEAP rounds. When the queen died, i alerted them to the HEAP rounds. The PMC’s felt bad so retreated to FOB anyway after seeing the effects. We then deleted them the HEAP rounds. The queen was respawned, and was the only xeno killed.
Staff have the right to ‘stalemate’ break between 2 to 3 hour mark. I watched the staff member use a spinner program. We were a few CM’s away from a xeno stalebreak.
Just wanted to say I was the PMC that killed the Queen with HEAP and just wanted to add it was not intentionally given to us. We were spawned in for a small roleplay event with the CL and were then given permission to deploy and used the vendors which allowed us to dispense around 5 HEAP magazines. I deployed to FOB early and killed the queen during a screech, I immediately realized how broken it was and returned to FOB where I met with the other PMCs and threw away our HEAP rounds and an Administrator destroyed them. Only one HEAP magazine was used during the entire round, and I was the only one that used them in combat. I apologize if I’m not supposed to comment on here but since I was somewhat involved, I thought I would add my two cents.
As an observer witness I cannot not comment on this. CIC literally announced an evac in three minutes (you can find it in logs), that was “postponed” only after an admin spawned 30 foxtrot marines (22 of them were awaken, 8 were left as freed mobs and I assume taken later).
As a side note, staff right to break stalemates is extremely inconsistent. From what I’ve been told by another staff member the mark to allow admins to break stalemates is about 2:30. Foxtrot was spawned at about 2:40. I don’t know when HE shells were spawned. But it hardly was a stalemate, as groundside marine xeno ratio was about 2:1 (which favors xenos), xenos controled a pylon and marines were about to evac. So the game was going to its natural conclusion if it wasn’t for staff unwarranted intervention. (Also I don’t think that using a randomizer is an excuse at any capacity)
“Staff can attempt to break a stalemate if a round has continued for 2.5-3 hours AND marine/xeno combat has stalled, with neither side being able to make progress.”
While I don’t know the exact timing of the Foxtrot spawn, I beg to differ on the ‘stalled’ part. Considering the groundside numbers and current circumstances it was very much in the xenos’ favour. According to other players evac was about to occur relatively quickly as well:
ultimately it is up staff member in question to state their evidence for seeing a stalemate position. I am commenting additional context and what i saw. Hopefully they are able to see this soon and respond in full
Hello! I was the CO for this round and just thought I’d add in my two cents on the state of the round before the Foxtrot Platoon was spawned in.
We were at a point in the round where we were stalemated at FOB, marines could push out and Xenos could push us back but realistically no progress was being made. I had elected to call my XO to get their thoughts and opinions on an evacuation because I had come to the conclusion that this round was not going to go anywhere for a while, and knowing how people feel about extended FOB sieges I thought it best to try and bring the round to a close so more people could get back to playing.
Why do I say this? Because the game realistically wasn’t approaching a Xeno victory. With the way the round was going it likely would’ve gone on for upwards of 40-50 more minutes (if you take hijack into account), which is a lot of time for a lot of dead people to not be playing the game. Sure, it felt like a mildly disingenuous victory but it was realistically to get the round moving on so more people could play.
And, if it makes anyone feel any better, the spawned in HE OBs were not used.
As the XO of this round, I can confirm that I agreed on trying an evac, however some RP was done shipside regarding Calhoun and Director robertson for a deal to bring PMC’s groundside, however it was out of the staffs own decision to fund the 30 marines.
The PMC were not spawned with any HEAP magazines, they rather managed to get them from the equipment vendor on the Weyland-Yutani station. Apparently this is not supposed to be possible, regardless the HEAP magazines were deleted and the Queen that died was respawned, though there was already a Queen.
The new Queen was matured via admin intervention as the previous Queen was not supposed to die, at the very least not to HEAP and that was unfair for the Xenos.
Foxtrot Intervention
Contrary to your belief, staff reserve the right to intervene at the 2.5 hour mark if combat has stalled, and at the time was made there was little to no progress.
Of course Xenos are not going to get “compensated” for an intervention to end the round. The whole point is to end it not prolong it.
Informing Xenos of a surge of incoming marines is pointless and meta information that is not needed or required for them to know.
I’ve hopped into a VC with @smellyhippie and @Daman453 to do a wheel spin as Marines had around ~66 and Xenos had about ~23 alive - something omitted from this report for whatever reason.
At the time we’ve determined that Xenos were not close to winning whatsoever, rather while the wheel was being spun Calhoun announced to prepare for evacuation. Regardless, the marines kept on fighting and few if at all boarded the Alamo.
The fact that xenos were not close to victory is evident by how they got pushed back to half the map during the marine counter-attack before Foxtrot even got on the Alamo let alone set foot on the planet. After 30 minutes Foxtrot landed at the other LZ and reinforced the marine push before eventually decimating the remaining xeno force.
We try to give the clearly winning side the advantage during the 2.5 hour mark if a staff intervention where to take place. However, it was not evident which side would have won or had a clear advantage, which is why we spun a wheel to decide on which side were to get help. Marines had enough manpower to hold FOB for an extensive period of time and potentially turn the tide or get decimated and pushed back by the xenos.
Regardless, Xenos got pushed back to half the map before a single Foxtrot set foot in the Alamo/Planet. This just shows that things were not in favor of the xenos to begin with and while the order to prepare for evac may have made it look like the marines were going to lose in hindsight, that was not the case as stated by the CO himself.
After further review, this was a sanctioned tie-breaker that never even reached the planet by the time the round was effectively over. The HEAP mistake was quickly corrected and compensated for the mistake was given.
Since this is a tie-breaker that tied in with round RP and is still functional in keeping the primary game loop going (albeit in a more final direction) I don’t see what was wrong with this outcome.
After a couple of hours into a round, half the server is dead and/or ready to move on to the next round. Sometimes you come out on the winning end of that, sometimes you don’t.
