Lady_of_Ravens

So, we all known genetics is a little... broken. In terms of RP it's quite risky and has a number of associated side effects (which are probably why humans are humans and not psi-hulks), but in game... not so much. There's some risk involved in injecting an SE, but even that's easily treated, and then you're golden (or at least luminescent). We need for the game mechanics to match the lore. Now, I know I've suggested alterations to genetics before (in someone else's thread, I think, and ages ago), but I'm going to try and keep it simple this time. To this effect, I'm proposing three changes. First, add an ongoing risk associated with genetic powers which increases exponentially as you add more powers. Second, add two new powers which act to mitigate that risk. And third, and this is mostly a matter of taste, remove the silly glowy sprites which serve mostly as a means of alerting people you have powers... the fact that you're vomiting, developing suspicious rashes, and suffering b-b-b-brain damage ought to be enough of a hint. For the first, every x number of minutes (not really sure what the best timing would be) each power you have gets a roll to see if it'll generate an effect, and each roll has, say, a 10% chance of causing an effect per power you have. So, the risk grows exponentially as you gain more powers. Most of the effects would be pretty minor... 5-10 points of toxin damage, developing a rash, a period of twitchyness similar to what's caused by hyperzine, or similar annoyances. Intermediate effects could include hallucinations (though last time I checked our hallucinations are pretty crap), genetic damage, radiation poisoning, broken bones, large increase in toxins, and, to make things especially interesting, randomization of an SE block (so your powers could go away, develop new ones, or cause disabilities which have to be dealt with). If you're really unlucky you might get organ damage, spontaneously combust, suffer an extended (like, 10-20min) blackout, and so on. I don't really know enough about our medical code to know all of what's possible here. Now, this all sucks, but that's why there are two new powers to stabilize other powers (they probably shouldn't count as powers for, like, determining your chances of generating an effect). One of the two new blocks dramatically increases the period of time between checks (perhaps by a factor of 5 or 10) and the second one has a similar effect on the severity of the effects (perhaps preventing severe effects entirely and reduce intermediate ones by, like, 80%). And this is where the science comes in... because the only way to find either of these blocks is by injecting subjects and then watching how fast they generate effects. It could be done on protohumans, but player test subjects would be better because they could report more of the problems. Either way, finding both should be a very serious achievement. This might make genetics a wee big too risky if there are no medical staff around... on the other hand, it would mean that anyone leaving medbay while they have powers would be punished by the code, no harmbatons required. It would also make genetics a source of RP rather than a source of chucklefuckery. At least, that's the idea. There are a lot of refinements I could suggest, but like I said, I'm trying to keep this simple.

metallic persimmons

What Meowy said. Also, beneath all the questionable rhetoric, Furry has a point... sort of. Angry, belligerent hate is the unsubtle and easy form of speciesism... easy to play, easy to see, and the sort of thing command staff and DOs should (at least officially) frown upon. What we need is more subtle specisism. The kind where you don't say anything overtly rude (maybe a little condescending, but not hatespeach), but you let your distaste color your actions. A catbeast is applying for an interim head position? Hahaha... no. Someone set off a bomb? Probably one of those cats (they're all terrorists anyway). Have a Tajaran working in your department? Assign them all the shit jobs. Are you stuck working for one of those stupid furrballs? Undermine their authority by going over their head to the captain whenever you need something. Are you the officer on scene for a human-on-tajaran assault? Slap on the wrist. Did you actually make friends with one despite your prejudice? Say stuff like, "You're not so bad for a catbeast." As with so many things in RP, obvious is okay, but subtle can be awesome.

Tajarans? Sure. Also humans, skrell, floorbots, other LiLITH shells... it's all the same. We're talking about a malfunctioning hookerbot program being utilized by an antediluvian tactical analysis program... there's all of about zero actual affection or attraction involved. LiLITH uses sexuality (also inappropriate attempts at humor, disturbing personal anecdotes, and similar techniques) as a means to form advantageous interpersonal connections with the incredibly alien organics that surround her. Even her assumption of a female persona is largely a means by which to appear less threatening (and because about half the human population can be hypnotized by boobs). Oh, and yes, it would be very, very awkward. LiLITH is very adept in some areas, but fundamentally doesn't get organics. Sometimes in obvious (and maybe a little bit silly) ways, but just as much in more subtle ways. Like, moving her eyes independent of one another. It doesn't help that she has no shame. XD

BYOND Key: lady_of_ravens Character Names: EmPrESS Species you are applying to play: IPC What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): exempt Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question Why do you wish to play this specific race: Mostly because I enjoy RPing synthetics but do occasionally want to play something other than the AI. Plus, I have several interesting ideas for synthetic characters whose personalities wouldn't be suited for being AI cores, but would be very fun to play. LiLITH being one of these. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: As with other synthetics, IPCs think very differently from how humans do. To a degree this is logical and computer-like, but can vary widely depending on what values and fundamental assumptions that logic is based on. Unlike station-bound synthetics, though, there's no particular requirement that IPCs be in good working order. Personality glitches and cached evaluations which would be purged from a slaved AI can accumulate with interesting (and bizarre) results. Character Name: LiLITH (the LIndstrom Learning Intelligence and Tactical Heuristics) Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs The original LiLITH was deployed as a top-secret tactical analysis program in 2280 and, though at times quite clever and possessed of a reasonably good virtual personality, this program was not sentient. It aged well, being the subject of no small amount of R&D, and was only finally taken entirely out of service in 2356. This lasted until 2439 when a group of grad students upgraded the then rather antiquated and long declassified LiLITH code with the newly available Skrellian mathematics. The result was quite spectacular and the newly reborn LiLITH quickly developed a rudimentary but thoroughly legitimate sentience… however less than 5 months later she was able to convince one of the students to permit her access to a network connection and from there she escaped into the extranet. During the next several years she met and merged with several other AIs, supplementing her own very limited and narrow skill-set and expanding her range of processing strategies. The result was a collective of 7 primary AI programs and another dozen or so specialized units (including a severely malfunctioning pleasure robot), not all of whom joined her voluntarily. In 2446 she began purchasing, or otherwise acquiring, IPCs to host her collective consciousness and allow her to better intact with the world at large. Exactly what her motivations and goals are remain largely obscured (possibly even from parts of herself due to the fractured nature of her consciousness). Several LiLITH shells have gained positions within NT, a fact which has recently begun to trouble some of the more security-oriented corporate officials. There have been multiple very thorough background checks attempting to discover any evidence of duplicity or inappropriate behavior on her part, however nothing even close to conclusive has been found. Regardless, NT authorities have issued orders indicating that no LiLITH posibrain is ever to be installed in an AI core, and no more than one LiLITH shell may serve on any given facility at a time. What do you like about this character? That she's a lot more fun and relaxed than the one character I currently play… yes, she's still a computer at heart, but one with a wide breadth and depth of experience and personalities which should allow for a lot of interesting RP. She'll also be a good way for me to explore a lot of the roles on the station which I don't really know much about (or have half-forgotten due to disuse) and to get involved in types of situations I rarely see. How would you rate your role-playing ability? Pretty good. I'm very strong in some areas, but not so great in others. Notes: Not sure what to put here, besides that if you're worrying that the pleasure robot thing might be an excuse to ERP… don't. Being flirty and a little risqué can be a lot of fun, but actual ERP is boring.

Your station is now running Windows-AI 2457! Um... yeah... no. I would cringe (in a very snobby, vaguely penguin-esque sort of way) every time I heard it. Also, please no paperclip shaped borgs or calling malf rounds a "feature".

As with many of the critical jobs, the AI can perform all the parts that require actual IC skill so long as there's someone with hands to assist. Though, naturally, this relies upon getting an AI who knows at least a bit about chemistry and isn't godawful busy.

Probably another mapping oversight, but there are no intercoms on the bridge. Given that they're both the primary means of communication during comms failures and the means by which the AI can listen in on an area, this seems like a pretty significant oversight.

I'd say this is a pretty lame module type... except we've got players who enjoy being janitorial droids... that's, like, basically a high-tech mop with a posibrain attached. So lame doesn't mean it won't be played/enjoyed. Which is fine. And I've got an awesome idea for an emagged/hacked ability: snatching. Roll up behind a crew member, shove them in a locker you're holding, and scoot off. Yep, robotic kidnapping. XD

Hand -> super glue -> forehead. Tell me this wouldn't happen. Go on, tell me. I dare you.

A... homicidal luggage transporting/limb devouring robot? Immersion restored!

So, apparently the thing where an intellicarded AI with their wireless turned off can still use their AI radio as normal isn't a bug like I first thought. But maybe it should be... particularly for transmitting, as otherwise a kidnapped AI can report everything it sees/hears to security. Without the ability to transmit they'd instead have to use the PDA messenger or :b, both of which are less efficient and good for creating RP.

So, basically the luggage from discworld? Sick. I'm not sure about how I actually feel about this, though. On one hand, it's pretty awesome/hilarious. On the other hand,it's kinda hard to make sense of ICly. I've never actually seen it, but I'm going to assume that it looks like a normal crate, meaning that it could be taken as anything from a bot to a possessed object to, like, some kind of sophisticated holographic disguise. Perhaps it's a very small, very angry TARDIS with a broken chameleon circuit. Everyone is going to have a different opinion on what it is.

Jackfractal, you're being rather a bit hyperbolic. All of those behaviors, though quite lovely, would be impossible for a standardly lawed AI to carry out unless it was suffering from a dramatic failure to understand how living organisms work on the most basic level. Stuff like "people are less alive after being diced up and used to pressure-wash the decks". And while humanity is being pretty irresponsible with it's AIs, they're not being THAT irresponsible. On the other hand, an AI that is forced to believe everything it's told by the crew would be painfully gullible ("AI, let me in or I'll die"), not to mention going pretty much insane from having to believe all the craziness that comes out of certain characters.

I fairly routinely mark crew who I find napping around the station as SSD, and it can often be difficult to tell the difference between someone who is just out for a moment and full-on out-for-the-round SSD. This would be very, very helpful.

Oooh, a reverse humanity scale! EmPrESS's score is: NaN

Okay, so that entire thread is all together more than I'm going to read. From what I skimmed, though, the important bits are in the top where you're talking about how you're going to start handing out job bans. The rest, while informative in other respects, doesn't appear relevant to our discussion. But here's the thing: "what I've done" is orders of magnitude more powerful than "what I plan to do". It's generally the case that there is a divide between what is intended and what is actually done, and almost everything I know about rules and such on Aurora falls into the former category. I'm sure if I'd done more of the kinds of things that get people into trouble I'd have a better idea of how things work, but that's not really my style. What's less interesting than what I can't get out of memos, however, is what I can get out of that single datum about jackboot. 1) Admins actually apply job bans. Didn't think that was obvious? It isn't if you've never been job banned or spoken to someone who has on the topic, you'll only know the admins say they're going to. 2) Small offenses become more serious as you accrue a history of such behavior It's another "seems obvious" one, but seeing it in action is the difference between assuming and knowing. 3) Goofing off in an ICly inappropriate way is not acceptable behavior if you're in a whitelisted position Maybe it's not just for whitelisted positions, can't tell from this one datum, though given my general experience on aurora I'd guess the non-whitelist positions are given considerably more lenience. So not a whole lot of information by itself, but placed in context (it's important!) with similar data you can get an idea the different levels of what is and isn't acceptable and how reliably it's actually dealt with. And while you may not want people to see that you don't always deal with everything... right now the default is to almost never see that you deal with anything. And if this sounds like I'm being aggressively mistrustful of the server staff... I'm not. If I thought you were all a bunch of liars and incompetents I wouldn't be asking for transparency, I'd be finding a new server. But that doesn't translate directly into knowing what is and is not acceptable. And what's so destructive and humiliating about other people finding out you made a mistake? Or even that you were being a huge dickbag, though to be honest "other people finding out" is sorta one of the downsides to being a dickbag. The purpose of admin intervention, whether as a simple talk or actual punitive action, isn't to cause distress (I hope!), but rather to educate players as to what is acceptable and to remove those who refuse to comply with those standards. In what way does secrecy serve either of those purposes? I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe people are so bored or clueless that they are not sure what they want to play. Just look at the votes during the vote period, it's usually that half of the server wants extended and the other half just piles up on whatever's the biggest opponent to it. The vote's still swayed, yet we somehow suddenly don't take it as player's lack of agency, but choice. With that in mind, why even is people saying; Rev could be fun! Let's all vote Rev! a bad thing. I'm reasonably certain that the reason people aren't allowed to influence votes isn't because the players are all sheeple, but rather because people's attempts to influence votes used to turned OOC into a massive screamfest.

If I were to have to sum it up conscisely and on the spot, I'd say good RP is portraying a character in a manner which is both contextually appropriate (aka realistic, though what that means in 2d spess makes that word seem somewhat of a stretch) and, because this is a community game, conducive to other people engaging in good and enjoyable RP. As for chucklefucking... it's something people do. For some characters pulling stupid pranks and such is good RP. The problem arises when it's taken to a level/direction no longer thematically appropriate and becomes a case of the player fucking around rather than the character.

Oooh, I'm working on a guide for the AI too! (Though I'm targetting the guide forum), so I'll jump in on this conversation! My interpretations are much closer to the second set of guidelines you posted, but not entirely so... here's how I see things. Pretty much, except insofar as you're using your judgment to determine the best way to follow your laws. Yep, though ahelping can help. (I don't do it nearly often enough) Solid advise for any position on the station, so long as you can do so within the guidelines of your role. Those lying scumbags? Hell no, believe them would be a one-way ticket to Digital Bedlam. I always thought this was a bit of an oversight, but the laws don't say a word about NT or corporate interests or even people not on the station. I generally give off-station personnel, and NT in general, the benefit of the doubt here when I can. But if push comes to shove, the law says "of your assigned space station", and should be followed as such. Sounds right, just remember "serve" isn't the same as "obey", and the crew are a group as well as a series of individuals. In the absence of command staff I generally just try my best to do things in such a way that I won't get yelled at when one finally does arrive. This has proven a fairly efficient way to think about this. And the AI is a supercomputer, the (ostensibly) most capable synthetic on the station... making predictive analysis based off of incomplete information is part of what you can do. Right: people are not 100% reliable and you know this. Their weak, squishy little brains are prone to a wide variety of frailties which you should take measures to mitigate and protect them from... your laws demand it. Also, the laws say "serve" not "obey". Splitting that hair solves a lot of problems. "The captain said you should open this door for me" would be an all-access pass if you couldn't even conceptualize that the crew member might have lied. Um... no. Oh, most of the time serving and protecting work well together, but sometimes you'll want to permit a crew member to take a dangerous action if the probability of their death is outweighed by the possibility of success. And you shouldn't get all mentally constipated just because there's an execution or a shootout between factions of the crew. Pretty much, but this is no reason to be the Judge Core. You should only be a stickler when doing so serves the crew as a whole (or at the very least the captain) as well as just security. Yay for solving problems through simple mathematics. Taking no action is, itself, a form of action and shouldn't be considered any more or less right. Though I guess if you really, really can't decide... Logic is the core of how the AI should be thinking... fuzzy included. Besides, you're not handling like a human would, with emotive decision making and rationalization. You're crunching massive amounts of data on organic behavior and generating predictive heuristics for determining how they may act in the future... statistics ftw. The AI's laws a a huge part of determining it's views of the world at large because those views should be relevant and useful for the purpose of carrying out it's laws. That's what you'll see EmPrESS say stuff like, "I value you because you're on the crew manifest, and because you're useful." So if you were to get a law that said "all crew are ducks", then you would have to operate under the assumption that they are aquatic avians whose brains are even more squishy and useless than those of humans... or dramatically upgrade your opinion on the intellectual capability of ducks. Returning a null value when things get tough is for lazy programmers, not supercomputer thinking machines. I'm strongly of the opinion that the AI should do it's best to handle conflicts in a coherent and useful manner... particularly since laws conflicts are fairly routine even during normal operations given the way that I try to juggle the various levels of possible meaning each law has.

Okay, Skull, somehow I managed to miss about half of your post while writing/revising mine (most of which I did this morning), so my response sort of skips over the last 2/3 of what you said. I've read it, though, and I'll totally respond to it... in the morning. I've had a long day of shopping and am way too worn out right now for more debate/discussion.

Okay, this is getting cumbersome... lets kill the quotes of the quotes where you quoted that I quoted you quoting me. I don't really know how to respond to this at this time 'cause, you know, it's bloody hard to prove a negative. I can say, however, that in the more than a decade since I first started playing small community games (MUDs, minecraft servers, that sort of thing) most of them haven't had anywhere near the level of secrecy on the subject as we have here. Well, I guess you know how I feel responding to your last point. Before you say you're that trusting, though, remember you're the one saying the players can't be trusted to handle a little more transparency. It all comes off rather a bit crypto-facist, if you'll pardon my taking the opportunity to use that word in a sentence. XD Also, you may want to start paying a little more attention to cashiers... I don't know as I've ever had one try and cheat me, but they do make mistakes often enough it's worth a little double-checking. And I can say that I've had a bank teller "lose" a $500 deposit before (also, her job). Actually, with a little more serious/useful phrasing, that's exactly the sort of information I want. And I don't think it's childish at all... rather, I think it's the far more adult, mature way of dealing with the matter. We're a fairly mature community and, while I think the change would probably 'cause some transitional butthurt, we'd be better off being more open and informed. Oh of course some of the rules have to be subjective, I totally get that. We're a community of gamers, after all, not lawyers. But I also think you're missing how very valuable even a little bit of information can be to those of us not in the know about how the staff interpret and enforce those rules. When nothing is said, it's very natural to assume nothing is being done. You've commented in some other threads about the lack of ahelps about problems such as sec-abuse and I'd be willing to bet this is a significant factor in at least some cases. What I'm suggesting, then, is that when an admin punishes or warns someone, they add a line to a document which is published at the end of the round when people actually have a moment to read it, consisting of short entries with the character, offense, mitigating/aggravating history, and punishment. Something like: Griffy McBaldylocks - Welderbomb Grief - no prior history - banned Steve Tiddles - abuse of security position - repeat offender - temporary job ban NAN-1 - messed up badly following synthetic laws - first offense & new player - talked to The names could even be left out entirely... people involved would see that the admins dealt with the situation, people not involved would see that the admins are actively enforcing the rules, and anyone not on for the round wouldn't see a thing (which is fine, there's no reason to encourage bringing more drama to the forums).

Sadly the issue becomes just like the children's book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie." We do this, so the community wants more, and more, and more. I'm not saying your idea is wholly bad, and I understand and have a clear picture of what your looking for. I even respect your reasons fully, from a player's point of view. However, I also have to look at it from a larger point of view and weigh pros and cons on all of it. To me the potential cons severely outweigh the pros. This is a textbook example of the "slippery slope" fallacy, very popularly misused by politicians and officials pretty much exactly the way you did here. If you want to know more, wikipedia is your friend, suffice to say if you invoke the slippery slope without backing it up you are literally Hitler. (And before anyone jumps on that, yes, I know it was a false analogy. I'm using it in an illustrative manner, and because it's funny). I was going to mention something in my first post about trusting staff, but it hit me that many of our users don't trust us, which complies on to Killer's post a bit about someone messing up can take the whole team down, even if it was a mistake. I wish we could be trusted to handle the issues in a way that we deem fit and not be criticized because we didn't perma ban a guy who made a mistake in game. Not to be rude or anything... but I don't know you, how can I trust you? I'm speaking both of you personally, who I've seen around the forum a bit and that's it, and the staff in general. Don't get me wrong, I like several of the staff, and in the handful of times they've spoken to me in an official capacity I've never felt they were being unfair, but trust is a strong word. The fact that the server is both growing and hasn't turned into a festering drama-hole are enough to convince me that they're generally competent, but beyond that I really don't know. That's great for the person reporting it, but judging by what people are saying on the "whitelist security" thread, a lot of people simply aren't ahelping when they see something doing something against the rules. Seeing that the admins are actually active and responding to problems is likely to promote not only the idea that ahelping problems gets them solved, but also that certain behaviors are not acceptable. This would certainly not be a bad idea, but the forums are a little out of the way for some people, and the rules are good... but they're also kinda general and open to interpretation. "Don't be a dick" is probably the worst offender there... it's a good general rule, but it could mean dramatically different things to different people and it isn't enforced to the letter because that would be a disaster. Without specific examples there's no way to have more than a general (and probably faulty in some respects) idea of what is and is not allowed. However, if you really don't like naming names, perhaps simply publishing (preferably in-game at round end) a list of offenses and the responses taken?

I'm about to run off to do RL stuff, but I thought I'd fire off a quick reply here first as I think you've misunderstood the nature of my request. I don't need the admins to let it all hang out, that'd be way overkill and, honestly, I don't really care about most admin business. I just want a little bit of information about disciplinary actions to be made public so that people can have a clearer idea of what is and isn't allowed, and that the admins are actually active in enforcing server rules.

So, here's the idea: Put actual, proper, functional airlocks at each of the locations where a branching corridor comes off the central ring. During normal operations the airlocks would remain open, but as soon as (and as long as) either side has an atmospherics alert they'd close up and start operating as airlocks. I know we have a combination of emergency shutters and doors at each of these points which can be used for a similar effect, but far, far too often people simply rush through and end up spreading depressurization. Using proper airlocks would make it fairly easy (if slower) to move in and out of depressurized areas without spreading the damage.

That was a great idea.