Jolas - Appeal Date - 06.03.2026

[wispy olive]

SS14 account: Jolas

Character name: John Cook
Type of Note/Remark: Medium
Date of Note/Remark(cannot exceed 1 week old): [2026-03-05] 5266.

Reason for the note: "Warned for cheesing AI by offgridding and building tables. This falls under powergaming.

Your side of the story: There's no rule that says you can't fight AI fair and square. Even when you try to escape said AI into space it somehow gains gravity without any propellant so it makes it even less fair to fight on ground level. I don't think players should be punished for off-grid fightning AI if it's going to chase you down and break physics on demand. You already have to deal with true aim, lack of regard for their lives and god-tier juking. You don't see that with ghost role antags.

Why you think you should have the note reversed or edited: Off-grid is a far stretch to be warned for. If it wasn't intended i am be sure it would be coded-in to see and attack player when they're in their sightlines regardless on what surface they are. With tables i was pretty sure they actually destroy furniture like i've seen them do with grilles and walls sometimes.

Extra Notes: So i suppose salvaging would also be seen as powergaming? People killing carps, spiders and bears off-grid? But then why would it be so small and open-spaced to allow for picking off enemies on the wreck?

[boreal kayak]

Hey there, I'll be taking this appeal. Give me some time to go over everything and give you a reply.

[boreal kayak]

So, from what I'm seeing you aren't denying that you were trying to gain an advantage against the AI, it's quite clear from the logs that you were indeed building tables mid-fighting too. I imagine it's safe to say we're not questioning that this wasn't issued in error.

Now, you're right that this should be something that is resolved through code. We are working towards fixing these quirks in the AI, however there are many considerations to this such as: server resource cost, development time, difficulty of contributing to these systems, complex AI not being a requirement for upstream and limited behaviour expression with existing systems.

Some examples of trying to curb AI being wonky:

https://github.com/new-frontiers-14/frontier-station-14/pull/3468
https://github.com/new-frontiers-14/frontier-station-14/pull/4107 (this specifically covers the off-gridding)
https://github.com/new-frontiers-14/frontier-station-14/pull/4062
https://github.com/new-frontiers-14/frontier-station-14/pull/4063 (this prevents true-aim)

These are all PRs attempting to make AI behave and feel more realistic, but it takes time to iron out the kinks and get the NPCs to work as intended, with not many people contributing to AI behaviour.

As a result of this, we have to resort to warnings and rulings. It seems you disagree with the rule itself as well, so allow me to try and explain the logic behind how and why we enforce this:

We give some lee-way with offgridding if it happens during combat naturally, because it is understandably inevitable to happen a few times with the current implementation. Retreating to space or moving to your ship to heal and having a few NPCs follow you and get stuck is fine. Leading mobs en masse into space to remove their threat on the other hand is not a natural event during a fight and is likely done wilfully to exploit shortcomings of the current AI. Breaking the AI deliberately in any manner that removes all threat from an encounter is considered as abuse of game mechanics, for example building tables and shooting from safety, or crating mobs.

This is taken more seriously at combat centric locations like an unidentified vessel or vgroids. These are also shared with other players, and if someone is taking advantage of the AI it will inevitably give them an advantage over the other players trying to get a piece of these. Salvaging on the other hand is usually done as a learning or secondary activity, it's less combat focused and usually done in isolation so we tend to tolerate it. Once the code solutions are in effect, salvagers will experience the added danger, so might as well get used to fighting them head on, but it doesn't really affect anyone else if they abuse systems.

With all this said, I'll accept this appeal, as it was the first time you were warned and no rules state explicitly that this is prohibited, even if common sense dictates that fighting things in a way that removes all the threat might be cheesy, but it's not rare for players to use these to their advantage in other games and they might not see anything wrong with it. As you had no way of knowing beforehand, the note does seem excessive for a first warning and it will be removed. You should still consider this your warning to not do this in the future however. If you continue to abuse AI at combat focused locations, you should still expect to end up being bwoinked for it.

Hopefully this gave some clarity as to why this is the case. If you have any other questions, you are free to ask them, if you have nothing else to add, this appeal will be closed once you acknowledge the reply.

[wispy olive]

"If you continue to abuse AI at combat focused locations, you should still expect to end up being bwoinked for it." So vgroids are those too?

[boreal kayak]

Yes vgroids are included.