TheSnyGuy's Zeng-Hu IPC Whitelist Application

[TheSnyGuy]

BYOND Key: TheSnyGuy
Character Names:
-Seth Sorensen
-Jorge Vega
-Cole Perkins
(probably a few throwaway one-use characters if the detection isn't based on character slots)

Species you are applying to play: Zeng Hu Mobility Frame IPC
What color do you plan on making your first alien character: A snazzy-as-hecc gunmetal grey to suit the backstory
Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes, nearly religiously for the past week or so while trying out IPC gameplay specifics in a private instance of aurorastation

Why do you wish to play this specific race: More possibilities for dynamic character interactions due to how I intend to play, and the higher mobility but lower health and crippling allergy to lasers and damage would force me to think more tactically in any given crisis situation instead of allowing to be confident that me and whatever I'm up against is generally evenly matched in most regards, be it transporting goods, or trying to survive antags/as antag

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Possibilities are nearly endless when it comes to a probably-not-fully-sapient IPC with things like social interactions seeming to be more with the doctrine of the corporation owning the IPC than the IPC itself, and even fully sapient ones can have interesting roleplaying potential that simply doesn't exist for their biological counterparts, like roleplaying out the actions of an IPC with a staggering intellect, but lacking foundational childhood level knowledge that's often taken for granted by biological species.
Basically : Not thematically restricted to the point of view of a person, nor a person with life experience, intuitive social skills or agendas and common sense considerations

Character Name: TalOS

Backstory : Original date of manufacture not entirely known, but assumed and thus legally stated as 2459. TalOS was one among a calculated 300-400 inactive Zeng-Hu mobility frame IPC units on board an unmarked cargo freighter traversing a known smuggling route relatively near the Aurora.
The freighter began straying off-course and entered the proximity of the Aurora's autonomous drone network and was shot down almost instantly upon failing to respond to hails. Given the size of the freighter a salvage crew was launched and found a variety of high level, high price technology inside, including the remains of a cargo hold now holding only 57 salvageable ZH IPC frames, the rest either turned to scrap, vented into space, or both.
TalOS, or Unit Serial VS200-1469/B was brought on board the Aurora and activated in an attempt to learn about the freighter. After it became clear TalOS was booting for the first time and had no memory or prior awareness they instead decided to deactivate it and start taking it apart to check for modifications or other clues, only to later modify, repair and reboot TalOS to assist with an emergency.
After managing to indirectly prevent a phoron fire from spreading to critical rooms TalOS wa re-initialised under NanoTrasen ownership under request of the science team responsible for modifying it and has been serving with them aboard the Aurora ever since.
The remaining 56 ZH IPC frames were sold to other corporations along with the majority of the salvaged technology, in spite of protests from the science department.

What do you like about this character? I like the personality I've thought out for him, where his entire understanding of the universe is aurorastation culture and his understanding of social interactions almost entirely comes from mirroring other people, leading to awkward situations where he says the wrong thing while also being an innocent, clueless muffin.
Plus he's a robot, and it's scientifically proven that robots are cool and people who think otherwise are psychopaths.

How would you rate your role-playing ability? A solid 6.5-7 for human/bio characters, but with my experiences with playing borg and AIs inside and out of aurorastation I think my machine roleplay is a solid 8-9 given how my mind seems to work more like one than that of a person.

Notes: I might consider making a combat negotiator oriented ZH IPC security officer after I complete enough rounds as cadet and officer to turn the role into a second nature like I've done with science and this character, though I'm also thinking of going down that route as a freshly bought, empty-minded IPC for that role and roleplay purely-logical yet-not-always-entirely-sensible extrapolative machine learning for some funny situations.

[niennab]

Hello, thank you for applying! I like the point about how a lacking a foundational childhood would effect an IPC. Are you able to expand on how IPCs differ from humans?

In terms of the backstory, what was TalOS' original reason for manufacturing and why? Was TalOS being smuggled? If so, why, and how did they acquire the cargo? Why were they headed to the Aurora? Why didn't they answer the station? If the units were found to be stolen, why weren't they returned? Why were all the other units sold other than TalOS? What role will they be on station?

Lastly, I confirmed with the human maintainer but the NSS Aurora wouldn't shoot down an entire freighter. Although they would shoot down an unresponsive shuttle or escape pod. 

[TheSnyGuy]

Testing with tiny message

[TheSnyGuy]

[niennab]

Thank you for the clarifications and expansions. I am curious what you mean by the line:

Quote

with rare exceptions almost entirely dominated by older, experienced, more socially-conscious IPCs.

Where did TalOS' name originate from? Did they choose it? Since they've spent some time on the station, how do they feel or think about their existence or purpose?

[TheSnyGuy]

Where did TalOS' name originate from? : Scientist came up with that as a name for him during his official documentation as machinery on board the Aurora

Since they've spent some time on the station, how do they feel or think about their existence or purpose? : Hasn't come to question anything even remotely close to that yet,  from both lack of personal experience with such concepts and being an IPC with nothing to ground them in reality beyond following the orders of other scientists.
(I'm saving him questioning his life and role in it to be an actual ingame thing that could happen, as opposed to some fluff text)

[TheSnyGuy]

"with rare exceptions almost entirely dominated by older, experienced, more socially-conscious IPCs."

was about the exceptions to IPCs not being given fair trials or having positive 'humanising' qualities, since the more fresh and machine-like ones stand basically no chance of seeing due process or being socially received positively.

[niennab]

Thanks for the further clarifications. I convened with my team and we just had one last set of questions.

16 hours ago, TheSnyGuy said:

Scientist came up with that as a name for him during his official documentation as machinery on board the Aurora

Why TalOS over anything else however?

In terms of the how they differ from humans question, you get into the fundamentals and where they belong. Are you able to expand on how they think? If Talos hasn't thought about his purpose or existence but chooses to mirror other people/adopt traits, why is this? Where did the choice come from?

[TheSnyGuy]

It was one among many that the scientist thought up in quick succession, imploring TalOS to  pick one or come up with his own one.
TalOS basically straight up refused because he didn't have a weighting system for which'd be better, nor any personal preferences, the scientist just decided to (as science does) make a random number generator circuit and let that decide, instead of using a dice or other actually-practical measure to decide.

TalOS's mind is(in my overly simplistic explanation) basically like a chatbot/basic neural network in every regard(plus the downloaded knowledge of the R&D servers), it takes in stimulus and connects it to other memories of stimulus, so if he sees someone barter for an item once but sees a pirate successfully threaten someone with a gun for an item three times, he has a three quarter chance to try to threaten someone for an item(with no concept of what to use to threaten the person, only how to hold it, so he could be waving around a banana or capgun for all intents and purposes) if he needs it and a one quarter chance to try to barter for it(without understanding relative values, so he'll probably suggest a really uneven deal in one direction or the other), with no concept of simply asking for the item or taking it directly.

Over time he'll gradually develop to the point of having a wider array of knowledge, the capacity to extrapolate past experiences into future predictions, and be more aware of the 'textures' and finer details of interactions, but as it currently stands he's basically a chatbot with a body, still formulating even the foundational aspects of having a self.
Of course he's going to have had some experience on the Aurora canonically, so he's very unlikely to do anything too outlandish in normal scenarios, but might be liable to act unpredictably when exposed to rare stimuli, like continuing to go about his duties unflinchingly when held at gunpoint and treating threats like polite requests since that'd be all he'd know.

[niennab]

1 hour ago, TheSnyGuy said:

it takes in stimulus and connects it to other memories of stimulus, so if he sees someone barter for an item once but sees a pirate successfully threaten someone with a gun for an item three times, he has a three quarter chance to try to threaten someone for an item(with no concept of what to use to threaten the person,

Aah I was worried this was in part the case. As an IPC (and an IPC loaded with information in order to be a Scientist), TalOS should understand the consequence of their actions and thus threatening someone over an item shouldn't ever reasonably happen, even if they've seen it done. An IPC would understand the political fragility they have and that by threatening a person, they are more or less opting to risk dismantlement, which in turn would go against Self Preservation. If TalOS is a chat box in a body, why have him be a scientist over an assistant?

[TheSnyGuy]

An extreme example, yes, but that was a theoretical one that I'm using to demonstrate the learning style I'm going for with the character (while avoiding going into a multi-page essay on pure neural networking), not the character's actions in and of themselves, or what they may end up doing.
It's why I articulated that they'd already have a baseline of experience after I gave the example, not before, since the latter would contract the former outside that context.

IC the basics would already fully need to be understood in order for security to have ever accepted the idea of keeping it active on the station for longer than they necessarily needed it to be, and him being patiently taught some of the do's and don'ts of social situations bit by bit by the science department in the past while performing otherwise mundane tasks a lot more rapidly and unquestioningly than his biological superiors without becoming bored or unfocused (ZengHu's being a high speed, high dexterity frame able to carry out fine detail motions at exceeding speed without fault, making him perfect for things like mass fabricating components for the science team who's actually doing the interesting tests and research) would give the character a good ic reason to view the science team as close to a family as the character would be capable of understanding it, and also give a good ic basis for deferring to his actual superiors for knowledge and instructions instead of consulting the station hobo with a gun for what he should do next

OOC I know what he does can't cross the implicit golden rule of 'don't be a party pooper and put people in actual or theoretical danger as crew, including yourself', so it'll be restricted to things like repeating memorable things that other characters said to others in loose-fitting contexts, repeating actions he's recently seen other people do and such.
I've no intention of using this character to exploit any loopholes or rule lawyer anyone, especially when one of the main reasons I've set aurorastation as the only SS13 server I play on now is because of the nice, fun and non-confrontational community that seems pretty much exclusive to the server, and I wouldn't want to contribute to any loss of community quality or ruin anyone's experience
 

The character's overall intellect will be more comparable to some forms of high functioning autism in teenage/very early adulthood years. 
Grasping large, abstract theoretical concepts with ease and coming up with purely logic-driven solutions that seem alien to everyone else, but being largely tone deaf to social situations while still being able to avoid properly bad situations(IC that other crew have had to put with in the past and politely ask him to not shout at the security staff, sit him down, and kindly explain to him why you don't talk to the chief of security over a document that was already in transit to the science department in the same way the chief of security talks to someone suspicious about showing their identification. OOC situations that come near rulebreaking or failing the self preservation check, or generally being an ass, and situations where this is a possibility will be dismissed by the character recalling something like a past event where he tried something similar and didn't get the intended result)
 

You make a good point with the database thing, too, since that'd also likely include social, cultural, religious and psychological studies, too. Not just how to put together medical brews or how to build complex scientific machinery.
An additional layer I could add to the character's personality would be the cold interpretation of those facts, but without drawing much of the social lessons humans or other sapient species would if given the same facts, largely missing correlations and connections where they'd otherwise exist to the more socially competent IPC, where his reasons for doing things socially sound more like a research paper than an explanation.
That, and the main thing I also want to accomplish with the character's learning style is directly having them learn the universe from the people on the station and to be moulded in the image of what he experiences with little reservation beyond things either being illogical,  directly or indirectly leading to his own termination, or impeding his ability to perform his duties as a scientist

[niennab]

Sounds good. Although it isn't clear on the wiki (something we're working on) databases function as an IPCs way of knowing the more complicated actions of their job while also giving us an in-lore reason for why a robot can't know everything (and thus job hop).

Nevertheless, your application demonstrates an understanding of IPCs, accepted.