Szczebrzeszyn Staff Report (by technicality)

Player Input Staff Reports
1

In-game misconduct:

CKEY: RDS88

Your Discord: Reds88 (Sparky the Eternal)

Offender’s CKEY: Szczebrzeszyn

Offender’s In-Game Name (if relevant): Kane Semenov

Date (YYYY-MM-DD): 2025/04/21

Round Number: 52325

Rules Broken (if relevant): Escalation policy

Part of Admin/Mentor Conduct Broken (if relevant): None, this is just a staff report because Kane is an admin. If they weren’t, it’d be a player report.

Incident Description: During the shift, I (Sparky) was assigned as a scientist. One of my coworkers took over my preferred department, and I had enough other coworkers that my most major task was “dick around”. I went to cargo first because I heard tell of a spider, identified it, and came up with solutions. Then I heard about a party being held on the station bridge, and a request went out for party crates, so I ordered them and helped transport them to the bridge. While I was there, I figured I might as well join the fun.

During the party, Kane (Semenov) entered the bridge, and yelled “Disperse”. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t acting under orders, and there weren’t any other officers around. He then pulled out the tear gas and flashbangs. This is fine, but as per escalation policy:

Trespassing: Players who are trespassing are automatically the aggressor in any conflict that starts with someone who is assigned in the current department. As Kane wasn’t assigned to command at the time, the bridge wasn’t his department, so since he started the fight he was the aggressor.

Aggressors aren’t allowed to escalate. He opened with teargas and nonlethal use of his stunbaton, but the partygoers stood our ground (I don’t think we attacked him) and he retreated once he ran out of grenades. As far as I know, none of us chased him.

The party continued, and another officer joined without engaging the group, which makes me think Kane was acting on his own here. He comes in again and starts tear gassing the group and flashbanging. I shove him into a table (made of glass) because I believed I heard him harmbatoning someone (stage 2 escalation), and from my perspective he’s just attacking a party unprompted with lethal weaponry. Proton, who just arrived, throws an artifact which traps Kane inside of it. He begins to take suffocation damage, and says out loud that he’s going to escalate to lethal. He then proceeds to do exactly that, hitting me while I was attempting to reply, and critting me. While in crit he beats me hard enough that attempting to whisper to the other officer kills me (I died with 152 brute damage, I don’t know how much harmbatoning does but it’s not much).

The security clause of escalation policy states that security officers may escalate to lethal force in accordance with the space law page’s use of deadly force section. The space law page (which isn’t moderated, by the way) states:

Multiple Hostiles - it can be extremely difficult to detain multiple hostiles. As a last resort if you are being mobbed you may deploy your baton in a harmful manner to thin the crowd. Generally it is better to retreat and regroup than stand your ground.

Kane was not “being mobbed”, most of the other partygoers weren’t attacking him (and I think Proton had run off at this point). Additionally, he’d successfully fled from this party before, and I see no reason he’d think that wouldn’t be possible this time. The clause even states that “generally it is better to retreat and regroup”.

The point of this is that Kane incorrectly escalated to lethals against me. I was personally currently in escalation stage 2, and as established Kane was aggressing against the party as a whole, so he shouldn’t escalate the conflict. The entrapment artifact, although it dealt suffocation damage, is arguable to be classified as a weapon dealing harm. Either way, I was revived and brigged for 10 minutes, and then a bunch of shit happened so I couldn’t sue.

TL;DR: do suffocation artifacts cause harm? Would a weapon that exclusively deals suffocation damage be classified as lethal or nonlethal? If it is lethal, was Kane right to escalate to step 4 (crit) against me, even though I hadn’t personally escalated to stage 3?

Additional Information: I don’t actually care about any punishment for this. There’s a million valid reasons for Kane doing what he did. I just wanna know if I’m right about the policy (and if I am it should probably be changed to give security more leeway, or yknow, just… mention group combat. At all.).

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It’s really funny because this is already in the works.

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I double checked it but there is no command assignment for sec officers. So there never would have been an officer with the bridge as their department, with only HOS having access to it.

I don’t know if that makes a impact on this report, but i was curious as it was brought up, if assignment would make a difference here given the inability for any officer to be assigned there in the first place?

Sorry if this wasn’t the place for it to be brought up but did feel atleast semi-relevant

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“assigned” in this context meaning “works there”, or at least that’s how i read the policy. Kane didn’t work there, nor did he have access.

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Okay, let’s roll.

You were told to "Clear the bridge and “disperse”, because random people decided to walk into a bridge and have a sleepover, while we were negotiating with a wizard in the same room.
I took my time to equip riot armor and tear gas, but by the time I got back on bridge wizard already vanished, probably because there was too much people. Still, there was a job to do.

Its not the case. Trespassing is a crime to which I can respond to as a security officer, no matter which department, especially when we talk about high security areas. What’s funny though, You only quote the first half of this policy, since the other half states that security can show up in departments as a response to trespassing and crime in general.
Full trespassing section:

Trespassing: Trespassing is defined as being in any department you do not have appropriate permission to access (stolen access is not permission). Players who are trespassing are automatically the aggressor in any conflict that starts with someone who is assigned in the current department. As usual, the aggressor may not escalate beyond the level of force used against them. If you wish for a trespassing player to be removed from your department, contact security before taking matters into your own hands whenever possible. Normal escalation follows when a trespasser is immediately aggressive.

They did, by trying to shove me to the ground and slipping with soap bars and even stealing my baton at one point which I managed to recover during combat.

To put this into perspective: You heard me issuing a lawful order to disperse from bridge, You saw me use the tear gas to help disperse people who had second thoughts and THEN You decide to shove me on a glass table, because I started to harm baton a mob, since people still refused to leave? At this point it seems like a breach of escalation policy on Your side:

Breaking up a Fight: If you witness a conflict in progress or wish to come to the aid of a co-worker, you may follow normal escalation to do so by attempting to shove players apart. You may not take sides in a fight if you do not understand the context for it unless one of the players chooses to intentionally escalates against you.

  • This means stunning one player while openly allowing the other to mortally wound them is over-escalation.
  • Obviously if you try to break up a knife fight, there’s a reasonable chance you will be accidentally stabbed, and you should not retaliate
  • If security is involved in a conflict, it is always self-antag to side against them when breaking up a fight, unless you can identify them as an imposter. Legitimate shitcurity should be reported via ahelp.

Moving on to mob clause:

Well I was. Logs will show.

No, You were not. The moment You pushed me onto the glass table You were already on stage 3 and I haven’t hit you with harm baton yet (I am not 100% sure though). Provided this statement is true we can quote the security clause fully:

Security Clause: Security officers, the head of security and captain may escalate and skip to lethal force in accordance with Space Law’s use of deadly force. Non-antagonists may not use lethal force against security until after they have used it against you without being baited or forced into using it. This means critting or killing security that is doing their job properly is always over-escalation for non-antagonists. As a non-antagonist, you are expected to disable/bamboozle security and run away or submit to the arrest.

Moving on to “Lethality issue”:

Does it deal damage? Yes. Was I near Crit? Yes. All it took was two more punches to my face and I would probably end up with soft crit.

Some other facts:
Afaik there were few other artifacts that set people on fire and such that were used in bridge.
At the first glance I was uncertain who used the artifact first, but the fact You pushed me against the glass table prompted me to assume it was You or the other scientist.
As far as I can Remember Proton also tried to break you out from brig later and started to use artifacts in brig. He had a full backpack of dangerous artifacts which are in breach of SOP for science if You did not obtain RD clearance.

  • Scientists are not permitted to test unknown artifacts outside of the science departement.
  • Scientists are not permitted to take confirmed dangerous artifacts outside of Xenoarcheology without the direct approval of the Research Director.

It does not work this way. Headmins will review all relevant actions in this round and process this report accordingly. Your “not caring” about punishment, which may be an outcome of this report has no value here.

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I was playing RAINCALLER this shift, on profit lawset.

I assisted in the setup of an office pizza party, RPing as the “Pizza party over pay rises” management archetype. I did not instigate the party, but I did announce it.

The party was instigated after the wizard, Sharla, who was giving security the run-around, stopped at bridge to chat to other folks, including security. I believe security managed to talk the wizard out of her transmogrify wand as a peace offering.
I set doors to emergency access to allow the sec team in, and others entered.

Over time Grin, Mia, Miriam, Lars and the other usual suspects turned up and began having a fun time.

around 8 characters were taking part in the party, and the RP was great.

I feel it important to note that this was an organically occuring RP event that was done in good faith from everyone that took part.

As AI I even tried to talk Kane down between the first and second assaults on the party, explaining that there were plans in place to clean up afterward and that parties were good for morale. Kane refused.

I feel that Kane’s actions were somewhat childish, showing a kind of grumpy “no fun allowed”, hall monitor mindset.

The only rule really broken here was the “Be excellent to each other” rule, IMO.

Sometimes it’s fine to look the other way if no-one’s getting hurt. And if someone sneakily grabbed/touched something they shouldn’t, who cares? It’s a great story. It’s like that bit in Mr Robot where he uses the office party to hack his bosses MFA.
Sometimes it’s okay to do the suboptimal play as sec, antag, whatever.

Optimize for fun, not rules.
The rules are there to help the fun.
You are allowed to look the other way for minor stuff like trespass if it means people have more fun in the round.

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I was actually the wizard of that round. Sharla The Fry Wizard. This was my first wizard round so I was mostly messing around, and in the progress irreversibly made Max Briggs a slime.

Whilst I didn’t really see much of the party, I left after making a deal with Ulric to meet him in the brig and try to fix max. This is why I handed my wand over, charging it wouldn’t work, and it had no charges left.

Most of what happened was after I had already left.

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Oops, thanks

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Hello, and thanks for reporting this!

Going through what was mentioned from both sides, I’m going to reject this report. All the people in the bridge party were trespassing, so as a security officer, they were the defender in the conflict.

  • Kane goes for use of lethal force, which makes sense, since there was a wizard in the same room and they were pretty well outnumbered. This starts conflict at step 3.
  • You attack by shoving them onto a table, which is weaponizing an item. Which is fine since you are allowed to respond in turn.
  • Someone else uses an artifact on them. There’s so many different things artifacts can do, a lot of which don’t show up until its too late, its reasonable to assume that its a threat of some sort.
  • Kane then crits people after getting out of the artifact, escalating to step 4, which they can do as the defender.

Escalation policy was being followed, and more importantly, everything everyone did in this encounter was reasonable as far as I can tell. This is an IC issue.

As other people have said, group combat is something that was already brought up as an issue to fix for escalation, and we’re working towards better guidance in general and looser interpretations of conflict to enable more interesting violence to pop up.

Thanks again for the report, and have a good rest of your day!

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