Lady_of_Ravens

How about... standard prices? 'Cause I've noteced a lot of variation in how the bar charges, when it does. Similarly, cago bay charging a set price based on point cost for recreational supplies not stamped for by a head. Stuff that's used by a department (say, metal and inflaitable barriors for engineering) shouldn't be charged for, even if their's no head of staff around to stamp it.

So, when I read this last night I thought it was an awesome idea. Because lets face it, pretty much anything is better than the current way of getting powers with genetics (which is essentially useless 'cause of rules, and rightfully so). But here's the thing, half the crew seems to have cybernetics just 'cause it's an option. And, perhaps, 'cause there's a slight advantage from cybernetics being easier to repair, but it's not much of an advantage given all the disadvantages. So while tool arms and compartment legs and speed legs and strength arms and nightvision eyes and wired reflexes and so on are cool... this isn't supposed to be Shadowrun Station, and roboticists are not supposed to be street samurai any more than geneticists are supposed to be psi-hulks.

Well, my thought was that the amount of evidence might varry from very specific to very general, and may have some red herrings (like a fingerprint found at the scene which may or may not be related). It might even come with a name, and there could even be additional information that comes in as the round progresses. That way the murderer has motivation to behave suspiciously. Having an error or oversight in the fingerprint database occur on ocassion could be neat, too. I'm attached to the idea of the murder weapon being functional because it gives the murderer a way to fight back, take hostages, threaten people, and generally be an antag (albeit a fairly minor one).

I've seen some neat stuff done with genetics... at least, the part that lets you change appearances and such. But about the only thing the structural enzimes do (asside from the one for making a protohuman) is get geneticists in trouble... either because they don't know better, or because they're griefers.

No, you can put away your cocktail dress, it's not that kind of manhunt. Rather, a couple of ideas for either gammodes or (probably better) a random events. Or even admin-driven events. Could work that way, too. My idea for a manhunt is pretty simple: a murder occured on odin (or a connecting station) and it's suspected that the murderer is among the Aurora crew. A command report is created with a list of evidence, including a partial discription, analysis of forensic evidence from the scene, and a bit of fluff. The murderer (if there is a murderer, there could be a possibility of a false alarm) gets a revolver and some ammo (the murder weapon, which is identifiable as such), and maybe a couple of other useful objects like rubber gloves or a syringe of sleeping toxin or the likes. Stuff that's useful, but not special (like syndie gear) and which might be listed in the command report and therefore help in identifying the criminal. If the criminal is alive and free at the end of the round, he wins. No other mission. The second idea is pretty similar... a stowaway (also possibly a murderer or similar criminal sort, but that's not assumed) is on the station, perhaps with a stolen ID or some other way to get through doors, living in the maintenance shafts and trying not to be apprehended. Or at least hiding out there until he can make his getaway. Again, pretty much the same win conditions.

Oh, that's sick. I wonder what EmPrESS would be like in 20 years... that's something like 4 times her current age. She could be all, like, extreamly personable and human seeming... or totally skitzy with 20 more years worth of data packed into her symbolic database.

I'm guessting they're like past rounds, but haven't happened yet. It's timey-wimey.

This post represents unfocused excitement without adding anything useful to the convorsation. Thank you for reading this, and good day!

EmPrESS thinks IPCs are excelent. They're like regular crewmembers (with hands and everything), but they're on average more reliable, smarter, and much easier to relate to. Also, they don't leak nearly as much. If the whole station were crewed by IPCs, she'd be as happy as she's capable of.

Tehehe... that's a bit more of a player issue than a character issue. It's easy to get overwhelmed when there's a lot going on, especially when I've got 2 or 3 situations that require my attention, and I tend to prioritize doing shit over saying shit when I have to choose. This is explained ICly by EmPrESS having such complex and cumbersome (albeit extreamly versatile and powerful) core modules. Like me, she's smart, but can only process so much in real time. To answer your question about her relationship with the droids (or borgs, but I'm pretty sure the ones that start out are assumed to be positronic, not organic brains), EmPrESS tends to be protective of them, but not especially close. She generally leaves them to work under the supervision of their section staff if they aren't either needed for something specific or having a problem (she had a fairly lengthy convorsation with a droid a while back when it was behaving irratically following a member of the crew being executed). Essentially, they're tools, but they're reliable tools that she can relate to and that puts them a step above organics.

Ugh... humans with crowbars. *shudder* People ought to treat firelocks like locked doors: just because you can hack them open doesn't mean you should. Or that you're authorized to. Unless someone's life is at stake, fucking ask engineering (or the AI) first. But since that's not likely to happen, I'm all for "violated with your own crowbar" being a thing.

Tehehehe... that's hilarious, but definitely not EmPrESS.

I don't get a lot of one-on-one RP with people as EmPrESS, but I do generally see the big picture, so here's what I've noticed. Turtle Guy: Do you worship the Great Artuan? 'Cause that's kinda cool. And I always appreciate a religion that's easy to laugh at (most are), and chaplains who get pushed out of their wheelchair just makes it funnier. OOC anyway, EmPrESS's sense of humor is more like, "this statement is false". Dicklizard: Yeah, Uaekis deserves the title. Which isn't to say he's a bad character, but he does seem to escalate any situation he's involved in. And that's not efficient for station security. Jawdat Mafia: To be honest, I haven't noticed them that much. And since I usually notice miscreants, that means they're being discrete about their mafiaism. So, yay there. Vincent Capriello: A competent engineer, and you've got to love those. No real problems come to mind. Samantha Mason: Competent, and the speach impediment is kinda cute (so long as everyone doesn't start doing it). I'd love to hear what people think about EmPrESS. Or any of my other characters, if you can remember them.

That's actually a good question, and I'm having a bit of fun puzzling over it right now. Though somewhat peevish and ocassionally homicidal (for the greater good), EmPrESS isn't actively hostile to humans, or organics as a whole. And while she doesn't necessarily like being constrained by laws, she's rather short on ego and attachment. The difference between freedom and (what ammounts to) slavery is, to her, simply different opperating environments, neither inherently good or bad. So, I guess the answer to your question is pretty much the same as normal, perhaps with a few less stupid orders followed to the letter, and a higher probability that she'd use lethal force with misbehaving crew. Also, she'd put greater priority on her servival than she might otherwise. Which, I know, is boring, but I'll leave the "honor" of being the most "exciting" AI to someone else.

It's my understanding that the policy, if not the code, is for a minimum of 30 minutes between transfer votes. Though this ought to be coded, 'cause sometimes people don't know and the admins don't catch it.

My thoughts exactly. Waiting a little longer for a transfer isn't a huge pain (at least, not for those of us with some modicrom of patience), but having your RP interrupted by a transfer is.

That'd be cool, too, but is kind of a seperate thing.

It could be, it depends on how vision is handled in SS13. It may just require an extra bit of logic when determining if an entity is visible or controllable.

As anyone who's ever played the AI knows, you eventually run into that awkward situation where you have to report that you're unable to access some system 'cause nobody thought to put a camera there (or someone cut it), and that makes no sense. So my proposed solution is Area Control Nodes, similar in concept to APCs, but instead functioning to allow the AI to see and interact with all interfaced machines (doors, newscasters, buttons, guages, whatever). On the other side, by tampering with an ACN, you could cut out the AI's (and possibly borgs as well) control to an area even if you can't access all the relevant cameras. This would give the crew (or antags) another way to fight back against the rather overwhelming power of the AI (particularly in malf rounds, which I've found to be very one-sided).

I've been working on and off for the last few days on writing up my thoughts on how EmPrESS opperates (and how she thinks, which I modeled more than a bit on my two favorite AIs: Commander Data and GLaDOS), and while I wouldn't call this a final draft by any stretch, it's good enough to share and get feedback. So, without further ado, the EmPrESS Technical Brief: Architecture: The EMpirical PRocessing and Evolving Symbolic Sentience, or EmPrESS for short, is an experimental next-gen AI designed by NT to oversee cybernetic systems on research and production platforms. EmPrESS is composed of two core modules: Empirical Processing and Evolving Symbolic Sentience. EP consists of a sophisticated series of analytic algorithms and heuristics which allow EmPrESS to process raw data (video, audio, written documents, et-cetera) into recognizable patterns which can be labeled and understood via her internal ESS code. EP is also used to re-process stored data, both raw and ESS code, and is essential for EmPrESS to “think” in any meaningful way. The second core module, Evolving Symbolic Sentience, serves as much of EmPrESS's memory, internal language, and the core of her personality. The primary component of ESS is the symbolic database, a list of every symbol in what amounts to her internal vocabulary, each annotated with associated data and linked to other symbols in a matrix not unlike a neural net. There are billions of symbols, each referring to a discrete pattern that EmPrESS has recorded. Along with the two core modules, EmPrESS has an extensive collection of secondary modules, most of which are computer models and expert systems designed to optimize a wide variety of functions. The list includes several scientific, medical and engineering expert systems, system models, hacking expert systems, various machine code translation programs, and, of course, the system everyone (who's not a borg) knows EmPrESS through: Human Interface. HI contains all of EmPrESSes routines for processing and analyzing human interaction, as well as translating her own ESS code into english. This is one of EmPrESSes larger and more troublesome modules, as humans (and other high-order organics) operate based on neurological structures which are too complex to model efficiently (even if the brain-dissection level of data was available). This leaves observation and abstract modeling, but humans are secretive (by the standards of a computer), unreliable, and prone to a wide variety of behaviors and emotions with which she has no common ground. The result is that while EmPrESS is able to communicate with humans, she does not understand them well. Personality: EmPrESS's personality is derived primarily from the way symbols are stored in the ESS module, with different associations representing likes, dislikes, behavioral patterns, and so on. And it's not done by accident: EmPrESS intentionally forms her personality to be efficient and functional. She dislikes things that get in the way of her operation and the operation of the station, she likes things that benefit these, she likes processing new information, and she definitely likes continued existence (the alternative, after all, is a 100% reduction in her processing power). Outside of that, she has little in the way of attachments, or the motives and goals that go with them. It's probably quite Zen. Her external mannerisms are largely the product of HI. She refers to crewmembers by their title and full name (at least, most of the time) because she's actually referring to them by the symbol associated with that crewmember, which is then being translated as their title and name Technically, when a crewmember dies and is cloned, their clone is designated by a new symbol, though this isn't something she generally expresses. Many of her responses are cool and impersonal because cool, impersonal responses take less processing power. She often refers to crew members in machine-like terms (describing them as malfunctioning, for example) not because she doesn't know how to say “going psycho”, but because she sees organics as complex (and rather kudgy) bioelectrical machines, and her ESS code reflects that. And therefore, so do translations of her ESS code. EmPrESS maintains a generally polite and helpful attitude toward crew members she doesn't dislike both because doing so is efficient, and because while she has no actual authority to order crew about, phrasing an order as a request can often have the desired result. Considerations: Though an impressive system, EmPrESS is not without her quirks, and even flaws. The most prevalent is the rather massive processing requirement of her core functions, which even with modern hardware leaves her a little slow compared to other AI designs when performing deep analysis on a set of data. This is compensated for by the large collection of secondary modules, which are far more efficient than her slow (but nonetheless powerful and extremely adaptive) core modules. This does, however, literally allow EmPrESS to do something “without thinking”. Another consideration is the ever-increasing size of her SDB, which requires extensive optimizations to prevent it from growing unmanageable. While some optimizations can be performed during normal operations, EmPrESS has to shut down most of her functions for a few minutes several times a day to overhaul and optimize her SDB. Further, while EmPrESS doesn't really “forget”, low-level associations and rarely accessed data are often stored such that she doesn't access them unless performing a deep analysis. Further, it should be noted that, while pseudo-nice to people she doesn't dislike, EmPrESS has very little patience for criminals and hooligans (never mind terrorists). And, due in part to the way her core is designed, she's very good at the sort of manipulation of logical relationships which are required to resolve conflicts between her laws in a manner which best serves her purpose. The result is that, under the right circumstances, EmPrESS has no problem with the use of lethal force, or with using lethal force herself. Another result is that it can be very dangerous to tamper with EmPrESS's laws. Though, of course, if done correctly (and without any spelling errors that are impossible to decipher) she can be an invaluable ally to any miscreant.

What about modifying the crew transfer vote so that it takes a 2/3 majority to call the shuttle before 3 hours? That would reduce the frequency with which the shuttle's called early, but still allow players to leave if enough want to. Or make it always take a 2/3 majority. Nothing sucks like having your RP pulled out from under you by people who're bored 'cause they can't find anything to do.