General Notice: The State of Rule 4.3

[Spectre]

First and foremost, this is not an official statement at all. This is a notice by a concerned player of the authenticity of the GMs, and their interpretation of rules with generally (if unofficially) recognized guidelines. Ignore it if you don't care, or read it if you do. I'm posting this because I feel genuinely concerned about the level of integrity and bias within the realm of the GMs, and I feel the rest of the community should be aware of what I've gone through in the past few weeks following the sanction of two of my personal ships.


If you are a member of =CR=, IRMM~, or generally fly around the Tau systems regularly, then you'll be aware of the Outcast siege of Borneo Orbital that took place behind Borneo itself. No one in CR expected the PoB to last, yet decided to try and give the Outcasts sieging it a bit of resistance to delay the inevitable. Pointless, but it provided interaction and activity.
On one of these days (the 6th of November to be exact), I joined a few of my fellow faction members in trying to take out a group of two Ransuers, a Hasta, and a Scimitar. While we didn't do much, and lost all but two people, the counterattack organized about twenty minutes later saw the defeat of all three enemy caps to the loss of no one. The counterattack saw the station live for a few more hours, and most who took part on the =CR= side were pleased with defeating the wave.

While we may have won the day in the end, two players ended up sanctioned from the encounter: A faction member who wasn't aware of how shared ships worked (and who was later informed and accepted his sanction), and myself. We openly accepted that the first sanction would happen. While I wasn't aware until after the sanctioned dropped who did it, he accepted it, we accepted it, and was thankful that the GMs decided to go after his personal ships instead of punishing the faction.
My sanction, however, brought out a level of internal questioning that ultimately, after numerous attempts to inform the GMs of my innocence, failed to provide enough 'evidence' to overturn the sanction, which in the end had itself no truly solid backing evidence.

I was flying a snub at the time of the first fight, and along with another faction member managed to make it out of the fight and into the Makassar, where the Outcasts didn't pursue. My other faction member docked on Sulawesi and logged off, leaving me alone in the system with the Outcasts. Now, this is where I pause for a moment to note Rule 4.3's bit of ambiguity regarding how long it takes for someone to be considered 'out of the fight'. I generally tend to consider it as at least two minutes. To others it could be shorter, to others longer. It's up to personal interpretation, but from a former Moderator's perspective I've heard that the accepted limit is about two minutes for determining sanction responses. We'll return to that later, as it gets rather interesting.
After a few minutes away from the fight, and after being rendered the last CR in Tau-44, I opted to fly back and check on the PoB, as well as to dock and log off. I knew it was risky, yes, and I knew that they would be able to see my docking message, but considering how long I had been away from combat, I believed I was within my rights to dock without being rendered PvPdead. I did as such, and logged off.

Returning a few minutes later, myself, the same faction member, and two indies logged to take on the same Outcast players. We won decisively, and gave the station a few more hours of life.


As I expected, the timestamp of my docking was logged. What I hadn't expected was a sanction of both of my ships, with the warship having its weapons removed. All of this in the name of 'combat docking and logging while PvPdead'. What tickled the sanction was the lack of a screenshot, something of which I believed was needed, and was later told that it was pretty much required for sanctions like these. The lack of a screenshot meant that the sanction was upheld only on the DSAce logs, which added a level of questionableness to the entire sanction.

[06.12.2019 23:21:55] Death: =CR=Peltast-2 was put out of action by [XTF]-Raoul.Duke (Gun).
[06.12.2019 23:26:42] Death: =CR=Hoplite-2 was put out of action by IRMM~MNS-Littorio (Gun).
[06.12.2019 23:26:53] Death: =CR=Hoplite-1 was put out of action by MNS-Alcazar (Gun).
[06.12.2019 23:32:34] Death: =CR=Spartan-6 was put out of action by IRMM~MNS-Littorio (Gun).
[06.12.2019 23:33:59] 2019-12-06 22:34:00 SMT Traffic control alert: =CR=Peltast-6 has requested to dock
[06.12.2019 23:38:54] 2019-12-06 22:38:55 SMT Traffic control alert: =CR=J.T.Simmons has requested to dock
[06.12.2019 23:39:56] If you are killed in a PvP fight, you are not allowed to re-engage the player or group of players that you were fighting any of your characters for 1 hour. Self-destruction during such fights also counts as a PvP death.
[06.12.2019 23:39:56] Characters of a player who was killed in a PvP fight must not return into the same system for 1 hour. Check the server rules on the forums for the exceptions to this.
[06.12.2019 23:54:13] Death: IRMM~MNS-Littorio was put out of action by =CR=FV-Pallas|167 (Gun).
[06.12.2019 23:55:06] Death: MNS-Alcazar was put out of action by CR-Phlegethon (Gun).
[06.12.2019 23:55:54] Death: IRMM~MNS-Pequeno was put out of action by =CR=FV-Pallas|167 (Gun).

https://imgur.com/a/wZjjBpM

These are the logs I was provided regarding the sanction. A look through the screenshots fails to provide one of my ship docking, something essential to preventing the evidence from being misconstrued. The lack of a screenshot wasn't even the first turn of the dilemma.
While I was in the field, I took a screenshot to link as evidence of my ship disengaging from the fight. Add in the DSAce logs I provided in my sanction thread, which I'll also copy/paste here, and you'll note that the siege group began their siege on the station a little over a minute before I took my screenshot. Beginning a siege requires that the ship be in range to shoot it, logically. taking my screenshot into consideration, as well as these logs here-

[06.12.2019 22:36:19] CONSOLE: Base Borneo Orbital is under attack by IRMM~MNS-Littorio!
[06.12.2019 22:37:38] /time
[06.12.2019 22:37:38] 2019-12-06 22:37:39 SMT
[06.12.2019 22:38:54] 2019-12-06 22:38:55 SMT Traffic control alert: =CR=J.T.Simmons has requested to dock

- and it becomes hard to believe that I could still be engaged despite the distance to both the station as well as my supposed 'enemies'. Docking on Minato may have been risky, yes, but noting that nothing was said between the sieging beginning and my docking message makes it clear that I never re-entered combat with the enemy.

The final nail in the coffin, and what finally made me want to make this, came from the PMs I received concerning trying to get it overturned:



tl;dr

A screenshot taken out of scanner range, with no combative dialogue made between either side for over two minutes, is considered still in combat with opposing players. A DSAce docking message is sufficient evidence to sanction people with, regardless of screenshots provided. If this sounds indefensible it's because it is. By this logic, any docking message can be considered combat docking regardless of range, opposition, or the player docking.
The server may be going downhill, but I feel the community should know how the GMs interpret the rules they're supposed to uphold.

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope it's more fun than what I had to go through with this.

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#BringBackTheCommonwealth

=CR=------*L|------TFP)
--.-----.-
A plurality is not a majority, and a majority is not everybody.

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