"Pretty harsh." is a huge understatement; bayjerk admins will permaban you for not performing a greek tragedy before killing your target.
That's mostly because Baystation is less about making your goals be (they don't even have goals anymore) but rather about making good roleplay. An example:
Once, as a scientist, my goal (back when goals were a thing) was to kill a shaft miner. Easy job. Go to research outpost, find miner, wait until he's distracted by diamonds or whatever, parapen him (in retrospect, a lame thing to do), steal all evidence, remove internals, chuck into space.
I thought I was totally safe, except I wasn't. About half an hour later, security shows up at my door. After a bit of interrogation, I find out that the miner's body floated to the station and got picked up and revived, after which he testified.
The station was in a bit of a clusterforget, so I was given a temporary-permanent-brig stay. After a while, the warden comes to check on me and ask me some more questions. As we were talking, another operative rips out the supermatter core, plops it in the middle of the station, and blows it up, leaving everything half-vented and powerless. The warden's stuck in permabrig with me, and there's a dangerous criminal on the loose. I help her topple one of the metal tables so we can take cover behind it in case of danger.
After a while, I share her my life story. She realises that my guilt isn't as high as presumed, and we become friends.
Finally, a crew of two mechs, an Odyssey and a Ripley, breaks the door in and takes both of us through what was left of the station to the emergency shuttle. The last thing I heard as the shuttle arrived at Central Command was the warden saying that she'll help me get a reduced time.
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