Good job dipshit, you just enumerated all of the functions of an admin. I literally said that this is their job.
Why does the admin have to explain it? Why can't literally ANYONE ELSE help them out?
Chat moderation is 100% possible for a bot to manage. I also pointed out that chat moderation is reaching for straws, much like you're doing right now.
And again, you're half right. The admins job IS to keep the server stable. "Helping the players" often leads to more pain than good (google: favoritism)
I'm not even sure what you're arguing for at this point. My argument is that admins who are involved in actual faction vs faction "I'm going to shoot you" gameplay should not be admins. If an admin wants to lock themselves to creative mode they're more than welcome to. My point is that an admin who does more than that should not be an admin due to the obvious conflict of interest.
Let me tell you THE tale of MichaelSeph. MichaelSeph (Sephirothis from here on out) was an admin on the North American Starmade Server. Sephirothis' personal motto was that he would help players in need. He even formed a faction called "the galaxy rangers". Now, the issue here isn't that he helped players, the issue is that he used his admin powers to teleport to other faction's territory and bases (this was long before the universe rebuild, jump drives, and scanner tech) and spy on their ships. He also used his admin powers to spawn in ships for his faction members. He used his "helping" as a way to channel players into his faction.
Let's fast forward a month. There are now three major factions on NASS. GR, Arstotzka, and Red something or the other. Michaelseph gets caught 1) using his admin powers to create protected zones for his entire faction (a bubble of 3x3x3 sectors) 2) using his admin powers to spawn new players ships, albeit without the permission of the blueprint owners and 3) "accidentally" deleting Arstotzkan cruisers docked at shipyards. Naturally, Arstotzka declared war. Full disclosure here: I was an admin as well. However, my role on the server was usually related to troubleshooting problems, not player interaction.
We go to his base and find that we can't actually attack anything. Since the server rules were pretty clear about this (no extra homebase shenanigans) I unprotected the sectors. I gave GR 24 hours to actually build a real homebase and dock their stuff up to it, but they ignored me and Sephirothis re-protected the sectors. So we attacked. And we destroyed everything we could find. Of course, sephirothis wasn't amused by this and went crying to the server owner, who we later found out that he lied about what happened. I'm getting a little salty here, but here's the breakdown so far.
1) admin uses powers for "good"
2) definition of good for said admin is pretty fuckin subjective
3) havoc ensues
After this silliness my entire faction (40+ members) said "fuck this" and left NASS, never to return in true form. I came back about six months later to roll as a pirate faction. However, I had to operate under an alt since MS would just so happen to be near my base when I logged on, and "accidentally" teleported away whenever he lost the upper hand in combat.
It's probably worth noting that this entire time MS has also been a moderator on the old starmade forums. Ask any veteran and they will tell you about the countless misuses of power under MS (deletion of posts, shadowbanning of user accounts, etc.) but that's not necessarily important right now, if not heavily related.
This story goes on for another three paragraphs but if I really have to type that out the point has already gone over your head. My point here is that admins participating in general PvP/Faction gameplay have a conflict of interest by default. I hesitate to allow admins to "help" players since accusations of favoritism unfold. The story of MS should be a cautionary tale in the debate of admin powers and who exactly should be an admin. As
Pholopalus once said, MichaelSeph almost singlehandedly destroyed the Starmade community. Infact, he was one of the few moderators on the oldsite who was not asked to return for Starmadedock.
