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There needs to be information given about Erth:
-I reached out to him to explain the situation from a spectator's perspective and got no response at all. (A bit fishy)
I'm still trying to figure out why you think you deserved any sort of acknowledgement or reply regarding an out-of-the-blue PM, over an issue you were not directly involved in, and which should not have affected your ability to access our server. In fact, this whole "insiders" posting of yours has me baffled, as to why you continue trying to injecting yourself into a months-old, and settled, topic.
Then there needs to be information given about Atheu, Napther, piannoknight, and the others I cannot remember by name.
-I have had my differences with Atheu and Napther, this has nothing to do with past grievances.
-Everyone in the group that committed the acts causing the conspiracy did it of their own volition without Doughnut pressuring them to do so. He may have been okay with them doing it, but he did not contribute.
Your facts are incomplete, and it was abundantly clear that Nuclear Doughnut played a major role in the server griefing. Quite-frankly though, we all have better things to do, than privately ask/answer questions, so I've
posted a final followup to ND's original ban posting.
Original reluctance to share/explain details was simply rooted in a desire to move on: in the two months following the Doughbro bans, aside from their occasional alts, we've seen over 1,000 new players visit our server - not one has misbehaved so grossly to justify suspension nor ban. This fact alone should highlight where the problem is.
For those of you seeking longer-term solutions to abusive players, I suggest contributing to
Add APBL Scoring - support for global bans
Seeking to find and weed-out abusive players and admins? I'd love to hear suggestions/improvements upon
Add support for a permission changelog
Please see my signature for additional thoughts and suggestions on how to improve StarMade servers.
So let's take it from the top:
NuclearDoughnut was playing on the Starbits server for the purpose of pvp. He was banned by Erth for what seems to be an unsubstantiated offense. We have all read the Starbits forums with the appeal, I need not go into it (just go to the Starbits conspiracy thread for the links if you haven't). The only thing that could be deduced from the overall caginess of Starbits staff during this process and the very apparent chumminess between a player and Erth is that a favor was levied in the form of ND being banned. ND was none to happy about this and told the group he was playing with about the situation. The group was Atheu, Napther, piannoknight, and two others primarily which are unnecessary to name. This group took it upon themselves to get revenge for ND by trying to crash the Starbits server. They were not told by ND to do this. I know this information because I was interested in what was going on and wanted to be a fly on the wall so I normally sat in the TS channel they used. So I heard first hand their plans. The end plan was to rolling hard crash the server by means of simultaneous lag bomb detonations in key sectors of the server. Those sectors being: Spawn, a planet, and the last recorded sector admins logged out in. This would make the server irreparable from the inside as it would constantly lag the entire server and crash the admins that tried to log in, they would also not be able to come in on another admin enabled account as spawn would also be bombed. The group had neither the coordination nor the nerve to execute the plan correctly which led to the systematic banning as they were found out. However, I will confess that I gave them the know how to create a rolling hardcrash, partially because I wanted to see them fail, partially because I am a troll. I did not however, ever log onto the server to help directly. The members of this group knew that the chance of them being banned was high, and knew that what they were doing was wrong. All lag bombs set off and corresponding banned players were correctly identified as grief attempts by Erth.
I did not intervene because even though they were on my TS whilst executing the plan, Atheu, and Napther were both staff members and I was hoping they would realize that you don't do this to others.
Aside from your claim of an unsubstantiated ban, favoritism, cagy StarBits Admins, or ND's innocence, the rest of what you've posted here mostly aligns with my own observations, and certainly serves as validation as well, thanks for that.
A few points though:
- Doughnut's original 7-day suspension was being reviewed right at the time that he+bros decided to pull their stunts, which was quite-frankly really stupid timing on their part, as I was combing through server logs at the time, which drew my attention towards them almost immediately. We would have actually lost the most valued of log entries, had I not caught them just in time. Simply put: ND overreacted to a temporary misconduct suspension, at the worst possible time, and made things so much worse for himself and bros in the process.
- I see no value in showing favoritism, and anyone paying attention will see abundant evidence of that. On the other hand, when there's evidence of players being unfairly targeted and harmed by cheaters, it would be insane not to provide a safe-haven during recovery. Such a safe haven is not admin favoritism, it's basic human decency.
Given your supposed experience, I am shocked by your fundamentally flawed permacrash strategy. Any decent StarMade admin knows about the
/search, /sector_info, /despawn_sector, and /destroy_uid commands; it's brain-dead simple to use them from the server console; no logins required. If I were a member of your griefing team, I'd be seriously questioning your motives at this point, as it looks like you walked them right into a trap: no matter how carefully they executed such a strategy, it would have never resulted in a rolling hardcrash. In hindsight though, I am truly amused by your trolling of the trolls, well played.
So in summation:
ND is innocent and was wrongly banned due to favoritism from an admin.
ND did not have anything to do with the lag attack.
Nope, without a shadow of a doubt
Nuclear Doughnut played a major role in the griefing: while overreacting to a temporary misconduct suspension, he built, uploaded, and spawned the very entity which set in motion the first and only mass ban our server has ever seen. The facts are irrefutable on this point alone. The evidence is in
today's update to his ban thread.
Personally speaking, by throwing everyone else under the bus, in an attempt to help just one player save face...well, combined with the facts on
Nuclear Doughnut 's misconduct on our server, that amounts to 100% validation, something I didn't think I'd ever see. Thanks.
Erth technically has the authority to ban whoever he wants, however, in doing so, breaks his own rules.
Breaking server rules makes you a bad person, not the admins. Grow up.
The group that led the lag attack was rightly banned for their actions as they were intentionally trying to crash the server.
Erth should not be condemned for the group's bans.
Agreed and thank you.
What completely confuses me, is why StarBits is so threatening to the Doughbros. Rules were broken, toxic/abusive players were kicked to the curb, and we've moved on. I encourage you to find it within yourself to do the same.
5/7 for effort