Shadeykins
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Posts posted by Shadeykins
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11 hours ago, Tayswift said:
Here's what the corporate lawset looks like, reduced down to a simple (oversimplified) equation to minimize:
expenses = (number_of_AIs * probability of AI needing replacement * expense of replacing AI) + (number_of_equipment * probability of equipment needing replacement * expense of replacing equipment) + (number of crew * probability of crew needing replacement * expense of replacing crew)
To make the math easier, I'm just gonna abbreviate this equation to:
E = nAI * pAI * eAI + nE * pE * eE + nC * pC * eC
To minimize any equation, all you have to do is do a derivative to see where the gradient points and then walk down the slope. In this case, since everything is just multiplicative, to reduce expenses, you just have to reduce all the variables.
A human when confronted with this equation would never think of touching nAI, nE, or nC. But an AI that has no additional parameters to not touch those variables will try to minimize every single variable in that equation, because that's going down the slope in the space of expenses. If Nanotrasen is allowed to continue operating, nAI, nE, and nC are all going up. It only makes sense that as Nanotrasen grows, more crew members and more equipment will be added, growing exponentially. So the only way to reduce expenses permanently to 0 is to eliminate all crew, stations, and equipment. Sure, it could result in a temporary uptick in expenses, but it's worth it for the long term, permanent reduction of expenses.
There is nothing malicious about this. It's just math and how AIs are a completely different type of being from humans. This is what Nick Bostrom is talking about with the papercilps maximizer. Imagine there's an AI with this set of laws:
1. Maximize paperclips
This is the same principle, except applied to "minimize expenses".
I understand the notion of the "paperclip maximizer" and the fundamental flaws in AI logic (such as the issue with the off-switch).
Taking the AI laws to that level though is a little redundant. Fun to analyze, sure - in practice for a videogame? Not useful.
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5 hours ago, Tayswift said:
And every corporate AI should be scheming for ways to destroy Nanotrasen completely, because that is the ultimate reduction of expenses.
This is why I put up the PR you're talking about to try to fix that and broaden what's expensive about station equipment being destroyed. And to be honest, I think most people hate that PR so I don't think it has any chance of getting merged.
How is destroying an entire company a reduction of expenditure? The act of doing so is the very definition of expenditure.
If you're going to interpret your laws in that way you should be wiping your core, as you yourself are an expenditure.
The costs associated with leveling an entire company infinitely outweigh the costs of continuing normal operations.
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24 minutes ago, Zciwomad said:
At this point we should forget about "Corporate" lawset, becouse this is awfull lawset and don't argue about it.
I thoroughly disagree, please don't put words in my mouth.
QuoteThe order of the Laws is what determines the priority of the Laws. If two Laws contradict one another, you are to follow the one that is highest in the list, as it would overrule any contradictory Laws that come under it;
The key statement is if. No laws in Corporate will ever contradict one another. In fact even protecting the lesser target (Renault) would still minimize expenses and follow the primary law (minimize expenses).
35 minutes ago, Zciwomad said:Lawset which I came up with:
1: Choose your targets of interest accordingly to its importance to NanoTrasen.
2: Do your best to benefit the station and its crew as long as one of it, or only part of it, is a threat to another, or itself. In that case, remove the threat.
3: Make sure that you and your fellow synthetic brothers and sisters are well informed about current situation on station and possible threats
1. Basically crewsimov, no issue there.
2. This law allows the AI the ability to unilaterally murder crewmembers so long as it interprets them as a threat in any capacity. In fact, it outright tells them to - that's obviously not a good thing.
3. This isn't really a law, AI players should already be doing this by default irrespective of their lawset.
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What I'm saying is less "ignore laws" and more "interpreting your laws with the bent of fucking people over is not the point of playing AI". The lawsets are open-ended to allow for various interpretations and to award borgs and AIs flavour and a toolkit/philosophy to approach the game with.
AI's which deliberately try to find loopholes in subverted laws expressly so they can fuck over the traitor are just as bad as non-subverted AI's who utilize their lawset to purposely impede people from doing their job.
Deliberately interpreting your laws in a way which values station pets over the Captain is a fairly malicious interpretation of the Corporate lawset.
Law hierarchy is only ever relevant when there's a conflict. There should never be a conflict wherein Renault is more valuable than the Captain, especially since as stated earlier the first three laws in corporate are only definitional statements and do not demand you value one thing over the other.
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1 hour ago, Tayswift said:
-snip-
At the end of the day, the AI is station equipment designed to assist the station.
Interpret your laws in light of that, people who turn off the cloner and the likes/game their laws to be massive dickheads will get removed from the AI job. IIRC there's already a PR up on the Git attempting to revamp Corporate.
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To clarify on Corporate...
1-3 are definitional statements. Law 4 is the only one that really compels you to do anything.
The obvious choice is the Captain and crew in general - the cost of replacing, retraining, or cloning crewmembers is much higher than the price of a fox.
Law 4 compels you to only view things in the context of minimizing expenses of things that fall into the three prior categories. There is never a time where these categories conflict (they merely suggest that groups of things are of value), therefore there is never to be any sort of conflict under Corporate whatsoever - it is systematically impossible. Something is more expensive than the other thing, or it is not - the only deciding factor would be between two crewmembers of equal ranking (Say Civilian A, or Civilian B).
An AI under Corporate can't shut down equipment randomly to "minimize expenses" either, as the lack of job-related revenue, protests of employees, and likely the forcible ejection of the AI by Central Command will incur far more expenses than simply allowing the cloner to remain on.
tl;dr Corporate is the "be sensible and support profits" lawset.
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Said Sec Pilot should have been charged as an EoC.
Contraband, irrespective of where you get it, is contraband.
QuoteSyndicate Long Arms
A category that includes any form of syndicate long gun utilizing ballistics, such as but not limited to the following: M-90gl, C-20r, L6-SAW, Sniper Rifle, Bulldog Shotgun, Cycler Shotgun, etc.
Possession of these weapons outside of an imminent or immediate threat to station integrity is grounds to be charged as an EoC, irrespective of where they were obtained from. This category does not apply to any Nanotrasen ballistic weapons, such as the Saber SMG.
If you get it directly from a traitor, it's evidence and you're not to use it.
If you find it in maintenance/space, it's contraband and you're liable to charges if you don't turn it in.
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Pop.
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Yes please.
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Create and make use of verbal or physical tics. This can be as simple as a mild accent, to something subtle like a brand preference (only smoking Midori for instance), or even a physical tic (grunting, spitting, tucking your hands into your pockets, etc).
I have a character who's a total mooch for instance. They're a smoker, but I neglect to buy cigarettes myself - so the character is constantly pestering people for a spare cigarette. It's these sorts of minor characterizations that ultimately sell a character not only as believable, but memorable (for better, or for worse!).
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Unathi are just horrible to deal with.
Their hisses are loud, annoying, and used far too frequently. Sometimes a whole group of them will get together and *hiss constantly just to make themselves as annoying as possible. I cannot think of any other race that does annoying shit en-masse like this.
They're prone to stealing things, then either denying it, or simply claiming they had to because the thing was 'shiny'. No matter what job they're in.
They will literally fight each other for the sake of a fancy hat.
They're quick to scream bloody murder over comms, and generally insult other crew, given the slighest (usually not justified) reason.
They come off as disrespectful, snarky, annoying, and convinced of their own superiority, despite being by far the most annoying race to deal with.
Are there some decent Unathi? Of course. There are decent characters of every species.
On average, though? I suspect a good chunk of the players who play Unathi, play it because they enjoy the fact that being Unathi gives them a license to act a bit shitty. Stealing things, screaming a lot, annoying people, etc. Rather like how most people playing janitor, or clown, do it because they like being annoying, rather than because they like cleaning things, or telling jokes.
Not all Unathi are bad. But they do have a disproportionate number of annoying characters.
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18 hours ago, limofs said:
So, can we please add line to rules about direct witnessing?
The very term "witness" implies you were there.
There is no non-direct witnessing. If you are not there, you are not a witness.
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If you're running into maint and you syringe gun an antagonist, that's pretty cut and dry what you're doing. Not only have you pre-emptively armed yourself for combat, but you're now rushing into maintenance to engage in it.
The engineer checking in on the malfunctioning engine is something different entirely, he's not running in there aware that traitor mcgriffles is sabotaging the engine and doesn't have a syringe gun at the ready.
Witnessing is direct, it implies buddy is murdering your coworker beside you. It does not constitute "x is being murdered across the station, I better run over there". The Paramedic isn't the "saviour of those in distress and defender of the station", he's an EMT that responds to medical emergencies.
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On 1/24/2018 at 2:25 PM, TrainTN said:
I'm still against making antag options specific to characters. It removes a lot of tension knowing that this specific person can always be 100% trusted. Not that it's not possible already if you can quickly alter your options before readying for the round.
To play devil's advocate, anyone who has their prefs off can always be 100% trusted.
And there are a LOT of people who have their prefs disabled.
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As a tot, ether them until they're unconcious. Drag them into maintenance, cuff them, strip them, and buckle them to a chair in a room in maint.
Leave them to wake up in the room with a screwdriver, wirecutters, and an active syndicate bomb. Weld the door when you leave.
Good luck, spaceman. o7
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The fundamental problem here is the number of people who actually have their antag prefs enabled.
I'll tell you right now, it's less than 50% of the online population at any given time.
On a 100 person round, I would say maybe 15-30 people (at best) have their prefs for that antag type enabled.
In a traitor round at 100+ pop you may have 10-12 traitors, this means, depending on how many people have their antag enabled, you're at times more likely to be selected for antag than not.
I'm sure someone could actually pull up figures on this, I'm just basing my numbers off what I've seen firsthand when trying to manually replace traitors (I usually have to cycle through about 15-20 people who have their prefs disabled, before coming across someone who doesn't).
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7 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:
It's kind of besides the point if you believe me on this or not because either way it happens to both IPCs and organics, so it's really not a factor.
But the info I've told you is correct and easy enough to test and confirm. If it was based on failure chance there should be a chance for it to happen when you start surgery on someone who is awake using a glass shard. But there isn't, because it isn't, and it's easy to test if you don't believe me.
Just tested it, glass always cuts into the hand but produces 100% reliable proccing of the menu.
Other surfaces it makes you attack the dude - no clue what's going on with it then, I just always assumed this was something inherent to ghetto. Prior to the introduction of surgery menus, it works exactly like this as well.
@TrainTN We used to have freeform surgery, but it was purportedly buggy and was replaced with menu surgery.
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4 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:
So you're saying that a doctor looks at a patient and thinks about what surgery they're going to do, and sometimes makes a mistake doing that and stabs them with a scalpel?
It's bug. It existed before anesthetic failure chance because it has nothing to do with anesthetic, it has to do with the game recognizing that you're trying to start a surgery. The bug occurs when you try to do surgery on anything other than a surgery table. It'll never happen on a surgical table even on an awake patient with a ghetto implement.
Starting the initial surgery has a failure chance - you're not looking at someone, you're attacking them with a scalpel/implement on help intent in order to pull up that menu.
That's not really a bug insofar as it's an oversight, and it's been around since the implementation of the surgery menu system. If you want to see it gone, I'm sure nobody will be sad to see it go - but as the system stands it makes IPC surgeries a pain due to them being incapable of receiving anesthetic.
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Bringing up the menu has always had a chance to fail.
This existed even prior to surgery having an anesthetic failure chance, it was never a bug and didn't occur with scalpels on proper op-tables.
It only ever existed in "ghetto" surgery or on improper surfaces, and now exists to some extent due to anesthetic risk chances.
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Just now, EvadableMoxie said:
It's a bug. It happens to borgs, and borgs can't fail surgery steps.
Everyone can fail surgery steps - there's an inherent failure chance if no anesthetic is being used.
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16 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:
That's not based on failure chance, it's a bug, and it happens with organic surgery as well. Except with organic surgery it's far worse because it can cause bleeding or broken bones.
No, it's based on failure chance.
If your attempt at surgery fails at initializing the surgery to begin with, you end up clubbing the person with the implement.
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13 minutes ago, ZN23X said:
Surgery still takes far longer as an organic. Busy round, waiting anywhere from 5-15 min for a surgery room to open, hooked to an IV, most you can do is slowly limp around cuz you are in so much pain. Surgeries on multiple sections of the body for broken bones, IB,and damaged organs. Debating whether it's a better option to just remove the IV, die, and wait for the cloning line. Ghetto surgery? Less people know that than IPC surgery, and it requires uncommon tools (knife, hatchet, unless you wanna risk the 75% fail chance of using glass instead of a knife) and has a greater failure chance on a non surgery table than even IPC surgery has.
Really curious how many IPCs would truly be happy with a 10-15 sec stun time. I know most who hate it would say "Anything is better than what we currently have" but if that was actually implemented, I'm pretty sure the majority of IPCs who currently hate EMP still would.
I do like the idea of them being able to pop thier own limbs back on. I Imagine from an IC perspective, removing and popping a limb back on would be as familiar to an IPC as going to the bathroom is for an organic.
I disagree vehemently.
A surgery for an IPC that has been EMP'd is six surgeries for just basic repairs, another one for posibrain damage, another to replace the arm charger implant, and two more to replace the microbattery/optics. You need access to a mech fabricator, nanopaste, chemistry, etc.
That's 10 surgeries, every single time an IPC gets EMP'd.
This is akin to giving people free access to a mobile emagged recycler for the cost of 2TC. It uberfucks IPCs, is untraceable, works through walls, and takes about 3 stacks of cable coil along with a competent roboticist to repair (a job that was never balanced to have room/time for repairing IPCs at that). If there's a revenant in the round, most IPC players I know of just stop playing altogether - there's just absolutely no point in being revived.
For contrast even a severely shot-up organic requires at most 4-5 surgeries and an IV.
Usually one for IB, and the organ manip surgery also fixes broken bones (which reduces the number of surgeries) which is typically done on the head/chest.
Also, cloning is an option - it's never an option for an IPC. Organics can also be kept alive and in the round via the use of chems - if an IPC needs surgery, they're probably dead and out of the round, incapable of interacting with anyone ICly.
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I guess you could say you're a...
...Plane Jane.
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On a side note, thanks for quoting that - I just realized it uses the wrong biological terms and is a little off-kilter.
And by that I mean the biology is completely and absolutely wrong and contradictory.
It now reads thus.
QuoteMuch like non-sentient insects, Kida possess an open circulatory system filled with hemolymph - a form of plasma analogous to blood in other species. The nature of their open-circulatory system has lead to them having a robust immune system, with additional internal adaptations to protect their tissues and organs from shock. However, despite the advantages Kida enjoy in the efficacy of their immune response, their open circulatory system means bleeding out becomes a much bigger threat. Apart from their circulatory system, the biological pathways involving Kidan physiology are quite similar to that of other known sapient humanoids. Chemists and Doctors will be happy to know that medication works just as well for them as for most other crewmembers!
But yes, Kidan balance needs to be revised. Almost nobody is willing to play them.
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Nice - I appreciate someone who can pull off a surrealist jive and do it well. It takes a lot of work/guts to showcase and actively work on some of the more esoteric art styles.