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[Dame Death]

Right got into quite a heated argument earlier, and to be honest I want to have it where I have time to read the replies and think about what I type. (not to mention spell check)

Ok here is the full c+p of a mission
Mission briefing
Very recently, we spotted a huge transport fleet carrying thousands upon thousands of Amarrians towards our borders. We let them enter, pretending as always that we had not noticed. This time however, we reinforced all of the likely exit points with additional patrols. As a result they have not yet been able to leave. They are sitting largely defenseless as they wait for an opportunity to pass back out into Empire borders. Do what must be done.

This mission expires at 2012.04.03 14:33

Shades of Grey Objectives
The following objectives must be completed to finish the mission:

Objective
Take out the Industrials that take care of re-supplying the Colony and if you have time inflict as much damages as possible on the civilian structures in the area.         Location   0.4 Iesa (Low Sec Warning!)   

 
This site contains special ship restrictions.

(The route generated by current autopilot settings contains low security systems!)

Rewards
The following rewards will be yours if you complete this mission:
    1,870,000 ISK   
   33778 Loyalty Points.   

 

Bonus Rewards
Bonus no longer available. The bonus time interval has passed.
    2,590,000 ISK   

 

Shades of grey
Despite the frequent death of civilians in a war, it is nonetheless exceptionally rare for large-scale casualties to happen without even a shred of reason. Engineers, mechanics, scientists, these and other professions – when used directly to aid combatant forces – can be said to have justifiably draw the wrath of their enemies. There just enough shades of grey to allow it.

No empire, however, is foolish enough to outright murder citizens without any involvement in a conflict. Or as some might argue, they are not so foolish as to get caught in the act. The rise of the capsuleer has spawned a dark new age where culpability is little more than an elusive dream.


This clearly states its a civi colony, and so peoples claims that they never hit civis are false if they do this mission.

This is the reason Dame does not ever do this mission or in fact any mission.
I have used and have seen used the argument that a Missioner kills more crew then your average pvper icly so surly this is the same boat.

So what I want your thoughts on is... If you do Shades of grey and hit civi targets do you do it icly? (If no ill start 3 boxing tlf missions again)

I will answer each post as I have time to think and spell check a answer, if its needed.


EDIT Spell checked

[Kiki Truzhari]

I'd argue, as I attempted to before, that if we counted up all the times that missions like this have been done by all pilots since FW started, we'd be well on our way to depopulating the cluster. I see it like this: there are like, 10 at most, FW missions, and it seems very very strange to do the exact same mission over and over again. So I assume that mission was done once, at one time, by a single capsuleer, which in fact, seems to be the attitude CCP takes on it.

I can no more consider the content of Shades of Grey to be IC then I can the content of Damsel in Distress, which seems quite improbably after the second or third time running it in one day.

My corp considers missions thusly: when you're doing missions, you do them ICly, but specifically what you're doing in them is very purposely left undisclosed, because to do otherwise shatters the suspension of disbelief around missions in general.

Also, Dame, there's this thing called spellcheck.

[Dame Death]

I know there is, I gave up on FF's and used open office instead.

And Kiki, I see where your coming from, but the basics will stay the same, in fact I think jokes have been made about the Damsel icly many a time. And as I said I know the kill count of missions gets used ICly so surely this should to?

EDIT; Also theres enough missions, that you dont have to do shades if you dont want to, at least most of the time.

[Graelyn]

I'm in 0.0, and while ratting, killed 60 Battleships.

Did the Serpentis actually lose 60 battleships to my Abaddon? No. That's enough losses to send a hit team to bomb my clone lab.

Combined with everyone else out there, it's also enough to wipe out that Entire faction within a day.

I did, however, go on patrol. I hunted Serps. I even found a couple and we had a fight. CONCORD paid me a huge check for my help.

Handwaving a few mechanics so that the game is playable simply has to be done. It's a hole in the fabric of any MMO, and is dealt with the same way every MMO has.

[Dame Death]

I'm in 0.0, and while ratting, killed 60 Battleships.

Did the Serpentis actually lose 60 battleships to my Abaddon? No. That's enough losses to send a hit team to bomb my clone lab.

Combined with everyone else out there, it's also enough to wipe out that Entire faction within a day.

I did, however, go on patrol. I hunted Serps. I even found a couple and we had a fight. CONCORD paid me a huge check for my help.

Handwaving a few mechanics so that the game is playable simply has to be done. It's a hole in the fabric of any MMO, and is dealt with the same way every MMO has.

But you still killed some serps, so everyone who has done shades of grey, has hit at least one civi coloney?


Also you rat in a bs? *Considers resubbing Dame*

[Chell Charon]

Here's a thing. Graelyn likely has the most reasonable idea. Numbers are not right, but he did do stuff to Serp ships. I would guess if pressed we could get an admission of a confrontation with a battleship class ship?

That is different from saying 'we never kill civilians because mission and numbers.' Which I think is a bit more iffy and takes a whole lot more of OOC handwawing.

Ofcourse there is little besides Eve stalking to actually prove someone has shot at civilian craft. Outside personal admissions.

[Aldrith Shutaq]

I do wish CCP would change ratting and missions in a way that they weren't so ridiculously unrealistic. Why not make the numbers we have to kill fewer, while keeping the difficulty and rewards the same? Seems an easy cosmetic fix, just cut down the number of rats by 7/8ths and make them uber.

[Dame Death]

Right a little context.

This started when someone brought up Civi casualty’s and how they never hit civi targets.

Ja being Ja so heartless pointed out it was necessary, she got a bit of stick so brought up shades of grey.

I then got yelled at blocked and told to go kill myself in ooc because id used missions IC.

What I'm trying to work out is was I wrong or is the other person just bending rules to fit their RP?

Because Rping a butter wont melt person while killing civis for isk doesn't fly in my book.

And in my view the agent briefings are IC at least, so the basics would be “Go deny a civi colony of supply’s.”

There is nothing making them take that mission, but it clearly states its civi targets hell even the name does.

And doing that mission is proof at least what Ja'li was using.

[Desiderya]

Game mechanics need to be handwaved to have them make sense as Graelyn has described it. Other MMOs are even worse about the unique nature of quests. If there's a quest in a region that needs you to kill Urblaz the orc chieftain in his camp, then odds are everyone who levelled through there has actually killed that orc chieftain named Urblaz at least once. So if you're trying to stay IC you have to bend the universe a bit. Oh sure, you've been in [Whateverland] too, hunting some orc war party. They're a real bother there.

In this particular case I'd take the essence of that mission and use that for IC purposes. So the mission is named 'shades of grey', and therefore any interpretation of what has happened in that site is morally questionable. Feel free to fill in your own justifications for doing so. It's a civilian transport that was smuggling war materials in may be one. Supposed terrorists another.

[lallara zhuul]

Anyone running that mission, even once, has slaughtered innocent civilians.

This is not the age old argument about scope, it is about morality.

Morality of an individual.

To a jaded Minmatar Freedom Fighter that lives on the dark side of Terrorism they would not be civilians, they would be monsters, just because they are Amarrian.

To a happy go lucky miner chipping in on the war effort on the Minmatar side such action would be completely and utterly abhorrent, they would turn down the mission for moral reasons and perhaps consider leaving the service of a military force that slaughters innocents.

It is an individual choice, but EVE is a game of your character history, it is about the choices that you as a player make that define the character.
If you choose, as a player, to kill innocents with the character, the character has killed them and there is no denying it.

Unfortunately there is no rules for RPing in EVE.

Only way you can show that you disapprove is by letting people know that someone has a playstyle that you do not agree with and ostracize him/her and try to get other players to do the same until that player changes his/her playstyle or leaves the game.

Getting blocked by that individual will just make things easier for you.

[Kiki Truzhari]

I don't think I ever said that Dame should go kill himself.

Now, as for the killing of civilians, we get into the fact that a lot of RPers seem to struggle with, which is that my character is by no means under any obligation to tell the truth, especially in the summit. Kiki lies. She lies quite a bit in fact.

However, calling her out by pointing out to a specific instance where 'you ran this mission specifically so you must have killed civilians' seems just sorta shitty to me. Yes, kiki may have done things that resulted in enemy civilians getting killed, but there should not be a way to quite so blatantly point out to everyone that she has. Like I said, there are only like 10 FW missions in a rotation. You do the same mission a lot of times, and using the mission flavour text to ICly call someone out on it just seems like poor form.

[Desiderya]

I do wish CCP would change ratting and missions in a way that they weren't so ridiculously unrealistic. Why not make the numbers we have to kill fewer, while keeping the difficulty and rewards the same? Seems an easy cosmetic fix, just cut down the number of rats by 7/8ths and make them uber.

I think on the ship balancing panel it was said that the overall goal with NPCs is to remove their number, make them harder and make them require fits that are not so entirely unsuitable for pvp. So in the long term, we might see something like that.

[Louella Dougans]

if Player A, does that mission, then, since it's a FW mission, a beacon will appear in system.

Player B can warp to that beacon, and observe things.

And if in that mission, Player A, is observably firing upon civilian ships and/or structures, and Player B sees this, then the situation is clear.

Player A was firing on civilians, and That is That.

doesn't matter if there's only a handful of missions in the mission pool, or if the scale of missions is a bit derpy, with hordes of puny ships vs the SUPERCAPSULEHERO.

normal missions can be handwaved a lot more than FW ones, simply because of the whole public beacon thing.

[Matariki Rain]

Soloing L4s in a PvP-fit Drake is a bit slow, but you do it while doing or waiting for other things.

Most people lie about or gloss over some things. Some delude themselves in order to get through unpleasant realities, and the EVE world has plenty of unpleasant realities.

If you really don't want to have shot civilians, you turn down missions which would require you to shoot civilians. It's not unusual for roleplayers-who-mission to have some missions they won't do because those missions don't fit the character.

But calling someone out for something they've actually and provably done seems totally okay to me. (Not necessarily something Mata would do, but that's about the character, and about public vs behind-the-scenes approaches to things.)

[Morwen Lagann]

What Lou said, but:

That mission brief implies the colony itself is in Republic-controlled space. Not Amarr space, where the mission to shoot the industrials is taking place. That doesn't exactly make it a civilian colony. It's an invading entity, encroaching on someone else's territory. Nuking it from orbit would be perfectly legit in a state of war.

And there's no reason to set up a colony in your enemy's space during wartime outside of military applications. Which means that the idea that the people living there are civilians is questionable at best. And that anyone providing them supplies is aiding a military operation, which means they are not innocent, uninvolved civilians, assuming they can reasonably considered civilians in the first place.