SpringSkipper

You are viewing this as laws 'proc'ing other laws. I am viewing this as laws to inform (1 through 3) and a law to compel action based on that information (law 4). Laws 1 through 3 only specify 'expense', they don't specify more or less. You could assume that lower-numbered laws imply more expensive things and you could pretty reasonably justify that. If you operate that way then you've made an honest effort to comply with the laws and shouldn't be punished. But to me, and in my biased opinion also a very reasonable way to interpret the lawset, the spirit of the law pretty clearly seems to be "some lazy asshole wants to be rich and designed the lawset accordingly." The spirit of the lawset is to uncompromisingly make money for your corporate overlords, and the vagueness of 'expense' should be taken to assume some reasonable metric of value that would be useful to them. A soda from a vendor costs 5 credits or whatever. For everything else without a clear value in credits, you sort of need to guess. If you encounter some contrived situation which places your own safety opposed to the safety of something(s) clearly of greater combined value than you, you should be a penny-pinching minion of those corporate overlords to the very end and choose the lesser cost. Imagine a hypothetical custom law 15: oxygen is extremely expensive. How do you think that should affect this lawset?

That's not remotely job-ban worthy. Discussing the implications of AI laws is the point of this thread. If you get job-banned for acting in good faith and honestly attempting to compare costs (like the lawset is, in spirit, meant to do) then it was a bad admin. Though priority is assigned to lower-numbered laws, you follow all laws to the best of your ability. The first three laws control what the AI 'knows' to be true. The fourth controls what they must do with this knowledge. The fact that damage to you is expensive does not remove the fact that damage to your station is expensive. Both are expensive. Understanding that damage to you is expensive does not preclude understanding that damage to your station is expensive. Indeed, to 'minimize' something implies a need for mathematical calculation (or a best-effort attempt at rough approximation by the human player of the AI). You want to sum all expenses incurred by any given action, and choose the one with minimal expense.

Okay, so someone is trying to destroy you. Which law do you choose? Law 1? Degradation of your system integrity or functions sure will incur expenses. Now what? Why do you care about expenses? This information is utterly useless on its own. It becomes more obvious if you pretend law 4 doesn't exist. Because of the way specifically the corporate lawset is structured, the lawset is nearly meaningless without the fourth law. Yes, that incurs expenses. You are not required or in any way motivated to care about expenses. So if you stop that person destroying you, it's because you're following law 4 (not law 1). If you help engineers find a syndie bomb, it's because you're following law 4 (not law 2). If a syndie sets a bomb somewhere expensive and then cards you and threatens to destroy you if you reveal its location, you should reveal its location if the costs associated with the bomb going off are greater than the costs associated with losing you.

Corporate is the one lawset where, to my understanding, you don't actually need to prioritize laws at all. Laws 1 through 3 only tell you what constitutes expenses. Law 4 is your only mandate to act. From what I see, you're entirely free to decide that, say, degredation of your system integrity incurs less expense than allowing destruction to station assets.

Thermite is hilariously easy to make, yeah. The first time I actually tried to use it for a steal objective as a chemist it felt like I was cheating. Also in general I support making it harder to break into the AI chamber from space. There are already too many powergamey reasons to sit in space all round as an antag. The armory and AI sat being super easy to access from space just makes it worse.

I think karma costs should be dramatically reduced to remove most of the incentive to game the system instead, spending that karma is nice as an actual, conscious choice on the player's part to play a role. They actually say to them at some point "yeah, I'd like to play this role instead of XYZ". They're going to put more effort into it and care more about it as a result. That more than anything is what matters. That said, I also think clown and mime should be 5 KP jobs like barber is (or even just, like, 3KP). So I think my opinion here is fairly unpopular.

ERT gets very good weapons, only. The armor does also have good damage reduction I think for what that's worth. They also get flashbangs, which is nice against large-scale mob threats like cult. But aside from internals, hardsuit immunity to syringes (does... anyone actually antag primarily with syringe guns, aside from maybe virologists?) and a pair of magboots, ERT is no more immune to stuns/disarms/knockdowns/instagrabs/etc/etc/etc than anyone else, and they're fairly lacking in medkits/field healing (gotta trudge back to medbay now with that super slow speed. Or grab up medkits - yet another pretty good piece of gear that they don't get to start with). In the stun-and-drag centric gameplay of the server, immunity or resistance to these sorts of things is what would justify slowness. That's the sort of thing that actually constitutes 'good gear'. Anyone can tell you that having good gear is more than just having a really good gun. I'm not a new player, at all. I simply don't play a lot of sec or combat roles on this specific server. I made several other mistakes as first-time ERT that I'm entirely willing to chalk up to my own ineptitude, including misusing magboots (I thought they were equipped because I could toggle them in the top left, when in fact they were in my backpack) and stabbing someone in reactive teleport armor right as they were about to have it removed (definitely not a proud moment). But the slowdown was utterly and completely miserable. It magnifies any mistake in positioning, makes it easy to lose track of teammates and end up alone and vulnerable, makes pursuit a losing game, and generally just gives the antag the option of engaging with or ignoring you at their leisure. ERT should arrive ready to fight. If red potions are mandatory for ERT, and centcomm is sending them with the actual expectation they'll resolve the issue, why does ERT need to gear up after arrival?

I'm going to second that -something- needs to be done about ERT slowness. You're always going to have some first-time ERT, and the slowdown only exacerbates the issue. New ERT that don't know red potion meta or exactly where to go to control chokepoints/surround an antag in maints are going to squander their precious slow movement wandering around being lost, automatically separated from more experienced ERT that do either have redpotions or know exactly where they're going at all times. They become the lone loot pinatas that everyone likes to joke about ERT being. At least, that was my exact experience as a first-time ERT. While I don't play a lot of sec or ERT, it's hardly fair to say that I'm inexperienced at the game in general either. Speed is too important in ss13 combat, and too often the sorts of antags that require an ERT are the sorts of antags that know how to leverage a speed advantage and how to ignore armor by stunning/disarming people. It shouldn't be a better choice to take off your hardsuit than to wear it. Let alone rely on xenobio for a near-mandatory fix to the issue.