Over the course of the last year, myself, Guthris, Osirus, Gorn, and several other former Shattered Skies admins have been lambasted for supposed abuse of power and favoritism. I bet everyone that jumped on the hate bandwagon is feeling a bit ashamed as of late. (I'll refrain from indirect character attacks for the rest of the post.)
The purpose of this is several messages to everyone who plays StarMade on multiplayer servers:
1) Trusting anyone on the forums simply because they presented information first is a bad idea.
2) Not reading all sides of an argument because of some sort of perceived personal gain is simply shooting yourself in the foot.
3) Assuming because someone retorts with snide comments in response to an inflammatory post that they are wrong is a bad idea as some information is delivered through angry words.
4) And finally: Server administrators and owners are people too and shouldn't be distrusted simply based on the fact that they are staff. People cry wolf, its life, use your brain.
I will also not address the attacks on myself and others made by a certain former member of the SS staff as there is no way to substantiate either side of the argument because it was mostly conducted verbally therefore it would only cause a flame war.
Odium and its offspring (which I will call OO here) have been in the cross-hairs of admins on servers for a long time now, mostly because when they joined another server and started causing a ruckus the admins of the new server would ask the other servers what to look out for. Most staff members were tipped off to the devious play styles of OO, however, there was always a hint of disbelief because OO was good at covering their tracks. That disbelief has been dispelled now using evidence and not just the intuition of server admins. It is nice to finally know that all of my, and others peoples' hunches have been correct. OO did have a few situations where players messed up and got caught, but they only learned from those mistakes and improved their plausible deniability strategy as they went. Note that we were not going out of our way to get them banned, or rather, most of use weren't. The fact that there were admins going out of their way to find things to ban them for is a discussion for another thread.
In summation, there was not an active witch hunt as some would like you to believe, or at least, not as bad.
On a personal note from me and Guthris, we both very much enjoyed the presence of OO on SS as it added spice to the normal incredibly boring and monotonous admin surveying. I hated to see them driven off, partially because of their own cheating, partially because of some witch hunting. I am a proponent of using exploits when they are not entirely game breaking, I don't have to specify as it is obvious what is game breaking. <(Guthris too)
The point is, admins knew what they were doing, we pretty much always have, I did not enjoy the rain of hatred on the forums
, yet I still enjoyed their presence (them fighting was fun to watch). Though presence does not mean company, as some of their voices are so monotonous (I got to use that word twice now) one is hard pressed to not fall asleep when listening to them. You know who you are
The previous server owners do not have any part in this message, I did it of my own volition. The server owners for those who don't know were Dalmont, Raiben, Saber and Zyrenica. Whilst they did have to deal with this, they have chosen to remain silent on the matters as it is beneath them. (But I am just an internet troll who enjoys knowing things he probably shouldn't and being in control [JK about that last part, or am I? >
] so I can post whatever I want.)
++++++++++++++++++++HERE'S WHERE THE EXTRA STUFF COMES IN+++++++++++++++++++++
I have some sensitive information about the Starbits conspiracy that will shed new levels of light on such a cloudy situation as is Starbits and NuclearDoughnut.
Let's just say, both sides have some truths, and both sides have some lies.
I will give out this information in a post edit if enough interest is shown for it
TELL ALL FROM AN INSIDER PERSPECTIVE
There needs to be a little information given about Doughnut to start:
-He was a server owner and probably is right now so he understands the importance of rules.
-He has been helpful to anyone who asks advice of running a server.
-He has no reason to break rules on any server as there is somewhat of an interserver comradeship between server owners and admins (at least the ones that are actually decent) and by doing something to break rules, you also break trust.
-He told me his tale in private with no one else around, and as such would have no reason to lie.
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)
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.
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.
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.
Erth technically has the authority to ban whoever he wants, however, in doing so, breaks his own rules.
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.
