1 dismissal Remove Cyborg

[Omicega]

8 hours ago, greenjoe said:

What would you have in mind for That, vs removing entirely?

For maintenance drones specifically? Remove basically all their engineering tools save for whatever is strictly necessary for round-critical stuff (just the engine, I think?). I'd basically just leave them with a wrench and a gripper. I would suggest giving them more custodial stuff like a light replacer (if they don't already have one, they probably do) to compensate but then they're just infringing on service's job. As it stands, I wouldn't support leaving them with any more tools unless they had actual access restrictions implemented, similar to real engineers.

The matriarch drone I would just delete entirely; that thing is a balance nightmare on top of everything else (fastest mob on station by far with speed matrix, infinite 'stamina', has the hide verb to be essentially unclickable on many turfs, all access without even suffering from door animation lock to slow it down, functionally infinite jetpack, can bolt stuff, inbuilt fucking RCD... etc.) And you can emag it as well!

[Omicega]

2 hours ago, niennab said:

The suggestion of removing maintenance drones would of course be ridiculous considering the crucial role they play in setting up the engine during low pop hours when there are no engineers.

Those players would of course be welcome to play actual engineers, whether they're fully fleshed characters or not, in lieu of the quick and easy drone. The respawn timer is the same either way if it's a case of just joining for the engine and nothing else, and if they end up staying in round at least a non-drone character has some capability of involving themself in roleplay. It might take you a minute or two longer to walk from the lifts or cryo to get everything sorted, all things considered, which I don't think is a massive time commitment.

Failing that, I'd be okay with what my previous post suggests and just leave them as walking wrenches with a screwdriver and gripper. That lets them set the SM and upgrade its SMES, and they still have their access and silicon remote interface stuff to handle RCON, shields, thrusters, and basically any other 'vital' stuff I can think of.

[WickedCybs]

3 hours ago, KingOfThePing said:

The names guidelines to the rules are Firstname Lastname, with, some cultural limitations for some regions, that's it. I will obviously not drop any examples here but you know exactly what I mean when I say that it's no problem to adhere to these limitations while having an extraordinarily stupid or illogical name. It's not hard. It's a very objective thing, I am sure but it should not matter. 

If the name is exceedingly illogical or stupid we still ask people to change it generally, that's not really ever going to change even if someone pointed to some absence on a wiki page and used that as a reason to go overboard so no I don't really know what you mean. At most, there's been isolated cases of more whacky names that got through for whatever reason but It's never been common and it typically needs a good reason. It's not that rare of a ticket.

When I say borgs should have guidelines, I think It's clear enough it it wouldn't be exactly the same as the humanoid races though. Just that there should be something written at this point if people seemingly need that.

3 hours ago, KingOfThePing said:

Besides, this is only hardly the topic here. Maybe introduce a few naming blueprints borgs have to use to create their designation (not names, since they are equipment) to avoid this. 

I'd give some examples and some "do not do X" and leave it at that probably.

[Evandorf]

After reading through the replies I still feel like the majority of issues raised with borgs can be resolved with systems already in place ICly and OOCly. An issue would have to be serious enough and without other recourse to overcome the ‘Improve Don’t Remove’ standard. The through-line I see from many of the detractors that has no system in place to correct is the subjective dislike and irritation but I would argue that this runs counter to the other claim that borgs provide no RP value. A dislike of synthetics is almost baked into the existing lore and it’s good to have a “living” reminder of that in-game. Negative interactions with your coworkers are just as valid for RP as positive interactions. 

[Flpfs]

5 hours ago, KingOfThePing said:

This is like saying why people play mining, because miners are NPCs since they go out, off the ship and hit rocks instead of interacting with you. Some people enjoy that, like some people enjoy playing borgs. There is nothing wrong with either. 

The point is, they aren't bothering anybody. Miners are doing the job that they picked at roundstart, and nobody cares if they screw off to a derelict or ship to roleplay with 3rd parties or whatever because it's not really interrupting anybody. 

Cyborgs, besides the mining and clerical modules, all have jobs that involve doing something that crew could be doing. They also have additional powers since they're equipment and have all-access plus communications with the AI. They can also go anywhere. I've seen many borgs butting into situations that they weren't even invited for. It's not (rules-wise unless they keep doing it) forbidden since their role allows it.

And, again, yes, you could tell a cyborg to leave and go do something else if its doing your job, but that's rude and creates an awkward situation for both players ICly and OOCly.

The main issue is that they're boring to play, boring to interact with, and often cause more harm than good because their role encourages them to be intrusive.

[Evandorf]

1 hour ago, Flpfs said:

The main issue is that they're boring to play, boring to interact with, and often cause more harm than good because their role encourages them to be intrusive.

But you’re not required to play them and you’re not required to interact with them. There are people who find them fun to play and fun to interact with. It’s completely subjective.

I don’t think removing a role that people enjoy and has utility during lowpop rounds is justified by the reasons given. I think limiting slots on highpop is a good step and possibly even limiting access based on their assignment is reasonable but we should stick to Improve Don’t Remove. 

[Gem]

8 minutes ago, Evandorf said:

you’re not required to interact with them. [...] but we should stick to Improve Don't Remove.

you are if they overstep their boundaries and do your job for you, or if you want to roleplay on the roleplaying server.
"improve don't remove" is a flawed method to deal with things that can't be reworked and/or nobody wants to rework. keeping something in limbo forever doesn't do anything, quite literally. take a look at gamemodes that people regularly complain about for an example.

[Evandorf]

1 hour ago, Gem said:

you are if they overstep their boundaries and do your job for you, or if you want to roleplay on the roleplaying server.
"improve don't remove" is a flawed method to deal with things that can't be reworked and/or nobody wants to rework. keeping something in limbo forever doesn't do anything, quite literally. take a look at gamemodes that people regularly complain about for an example.

I don’t understand why a dislike for how you interact with a character equates to being unable to roleplay with others or having your roleplay suffer in general. There are plenty of characters that I don’t care to interact with. For instance, I dislike talking to dionae. I know some people don’t feel comfortable interacting with unathi because of their somewhat problematic culture. In these cases though there is a reasonable expectation on your part to take steps to inform the other player oocly and take steps ICly to distance yourself. In the case of borgs, the laws make it very easy to do so. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Evandorf
Clarity

[Montyfatcat]

10 hours ago, Dreamix said:

and there should be no free posibrains in the mechanist workshop to build borgs with.

Hard disagree here, spiderbots still exist and players can still build IPC frames from scratch. Instead hard remove positronic borg frames, since they're the aspect that actually causes the issue.

[Montyfatcat]

2 hours ago, Evandorf said:

and you’re not required to interact with them

This is just patently false, honestly. Sure you can directly tell a borg "fuck off" and such, but if they refuse then it will immediately drag the situation into both ooc awkwardness and an ooc rulebreak that needs to be ahelped. Not only that, borgs have another effect on jobs, being that some people won't join the job to replace the borg if the borg is already doing the job, which is negative for RP as it eliminates that potential interaction with an actual purpose. The majority of borgs that are memorable also seem to be on the borderline of just being IPCs that have no whitelist, which shows through even more when they take a service role as service roles are inherently chatty and sociable roles.

[Carver]

10 minutes ago, Montyfatcat said:

Hard disagree here, spiderbots still exist and players can still build IPC frames from scratch. Instead hard remove positronic borg frames, since they're the aspect that actually causes the issue.

I don't think you're typically supposed to be building new IPCs from scratch, and spiderbots are remarkably useless. If positronic shipbounds were out the door, the free posibrains would logically have to go with them (and I say this as someone who wants to keep all shipbounds and maintain the status quo with their existence).

[Montyfatcat]

Just now, Carver said:

spiderbots are remarkably useless

They're remarkably misunderstood is what they are. So much robotics knowledge has gone to the wayside through lack of wiki maintenance with small update after small update. Pretty sure it still has outdated sprites for the multitool.

Spiderbots serve multiple functions, such as clerical and workshop help, scouting drones capable of walking through the small holes in doors that maintenance drones can, impromptu mech pilots that can help pad the crew's numbers in a crisis, and most importantly, friends.

 

2 minutes ago, Carver said:

I don't think you're typically supposed to be building new IPCs from scratch

As far as I'm aware it's not explicitly disallowed, it just takes a hell of a lot of convincing for an OM to be willing to spend 5-10k on a machinist's project. It's honestly a great way of introducing a new IPC character if you want to help someone who already has the whitelist, and also helps bring the emphasis that machinists have the power to create a god damn person if they so wish. There's plenty of multi-arc shit that can be borne of a machinist simply making an IPC one day, if done right.

[Evandorf]

7 minutes ago, Montyfatcat said:

This is just patently false, honestly. Sure you can directly tell a borg "fuck off" and such, but if they refuse then it will immediately drag the situation into both ooc awkwardness and an ooc rulebreak that needs to be ahelped.

Telling a borg off is barely an interaction. If they refuse and draw it out then that’s an issue with the player not abiding by server rules and should be ahelped. It’s not an issue with borg as a role and something that can be resolved with other suggestions made in this thread like a whitelist. 

[Omicega]

The point is that a lot of people feel awkward about flat-out telling another player to basically stop playing the game, so the whole 'you can just tell a cyborg to go away' excuse isn't a feasible solution. I wouldn't be surprised if staff would pull someone up on grounds of 'don't be a dick' for repeatedly law 2ing cyborgs to stop playing or swiping an ID through a maintenance drone to deactivate it.

Yes, you can do both these things to solve the problem of maintenance drones and/or cyborgs sucking up all your gameplay like the all-access perfect problem-solvers they are, but I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it on a regular basis.

[Evandorf]

7 minutes ago, Omicega said:

The point is that a lot of people feel awkward about flat-out telling another player to basically stop playing the game, so the whole 'you can just tell a cyborg to go away' excuse isn't a feasible solution. I wouldn't be surprised if staff would pull someone up on grounds of 'don't be a dick' for repeatedly law 2ing cyborgs to stop playing or swiping an ID through a maintenance drone to deactivate it.

Yes, you can do both these things to solve the problem of maintenance drones and/or cyborgs sucking up all your gameplay like the all-access perfect problem-solvers they are, but I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it on a regular basis.

How is someone supposed to know that they are irritating you or causing you issues if you don’t let them know? Pestering or harassing someone is ahelpable but the player has to know that it’s an issue to be at fault.

I understand that some people have issues with confrontation but you have to take some reasonable action to resolve the issue via normal means. If it’s really an issue I would say ahelp and have the mod/admin speak to them if it’s something you feel uncomfortable with. I wouldn’t have any issue doing that for someone and I don’t think other staff would either. 

[MattAtlas]

My opinion on the matter is that I think borgs and maintenance drones are problematic because they're the remnant of a really, really ancient design philosophy.

What I mean by this is that borgs were created for the LRP/MRP round cycle from a long time ago: very little player courtesy, player speeds were all the same (borgs were slower!), no roleplay was required or expected, and people were essentially walking toolbelts with a name.

It's really obvious that a cyborg is just that when you look at it: it has a set of tools, it can't pick up anything that it isn't explicitly allowed to, it doesn't interact with most game mechanics (no organs, no antag interactions beyond emagging which never happens anyway, ...), it doesn't have any lore beyond "You are a posibrain made to serve", it has to follow a stringent lawset in order to balance it, so on and so forth.

Expectations never increased for cyborgs the way they did for human characters. We expect characters to take the time out of their round and roleplay, take things with a certain degree of slowness (engineers have several more caution steps to take than a cyborg in order to do most tasks: welding goggles, insulated gloves, hacking into places, going generally slower, ...). Cyborgs are required to do none of those things and are pretty much capable of handling almost* entire departments on their own, while being practically able to go the whole round without speaking to anybody. Maintenance drones suffer the same issues but even worse: they straight up cannot roleplay. And to everyone saying that playing a background character is fine: there is a difference between playing a normal background character, and a background character with inbuilt buffs that exists purely to steal your job, as it cannot have meaningful gameplay interactions or even offtime.

Some will bring up exceptions but they do not unmake a rule.

This all a bit problematic because stealing gameplay from others *is* a real, tangible issue. It has repercussions on the medical and engineering gameplay loop.

The only real solution is removal, purely because there is no developer or administrative will for a rework and there will never really be. This kind of shows how much people are actually invested in borgs, which is little to nothing -- they have never received any real updates (despite having severe and obvious issues) beyond power creeping here and there or some variable changes. The same can't be said of any other department or species.

 

[Evandorf]

9 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

The only real solution is removal, purely because there is no developer or administrative will for a rework and there will never really be. This kind of shows how much people are actually invested in borgs, which is little to nothing -- they have never received any real updates (despite having severe and obvious issues) beyond power creeping here and there or some variable changes. The same can't be said of any other department or species.

 

If I had any coding ability I would be more than willing to try and rework it.

If medic and engineering are the most affected and AI had already been placed squarely in research then maybe removing the mediborg/engiborg is a reasonable step. It could be that the research option is the only option. There are so many diverse parts of research that a borg could find a spot to help and not be in the way. 
 

I would say that other modules like mining should stay because it makes sense but in the new map I don’t know that mining borgs can or should be just taking the shuttle. 

[Sneakyranger]

I really think Gem's statement "'improve don't remove' is a flawed method to deal with things that can't be reworked and/or nobody wants to rework." really cannot be emphasized enough. Even if those who would re-work it exist, not having the skills and being unable/unwilling to take the time to build them is ultimately the same as "can't be reworked". 

Aside from calling attention to the above, I have experienced the drones and borgs rendering human characters obsolete many times. There is no in-game reason to tell these two to stop working on whatever it is they are working on unless they are doing it purely incorrectly; I cannot imagine all but the most mindlessly anti-synthetic characters or the most vehement workaholics intentionally creating more work for themselves in-character, even though that work is the reason the player probably joined the game as that specific job in the first place. Having an alarm completely tended to and repaired by an all-access super-engineer by the time you finally get to it is just disheartening, and is something I personally find to be the more pressing of the two issues regarding borgs brought up in this thread, the other half being is that this super-job ability is not even in service to a character.

Matt sums it up well here: "And to everyone saying that playing a background character is fine: there is a difference between playing a normal background character, and a background character with inbuilt buffs that exists purely to steal your job, as it cannot have meaningful gameplay interactions or even offtime."

I also would like to mention that it is my opinion that Viax and cyborgs are not comparable in the topics being brought up here, because cyborgs are far more potent for most tasks, are relatively more common, and - for a slightly subjective statement - have less sensible leeway than Viax vis a vis interaction with crew characters.

In short: I not only support consideration of soft-removal of cyborgs, but even Omi's drone nerf proposal. 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Sneakyranger

[Carver]

I heavily dislike this consistent mindset of one's job being 'stolen', to the contrary I always appreciate having a cyborg in my department. It eases up on the stress of a workload, frees up my time to interact with other crew and in general makes life consistently easier. I couldn't be more against them being removed for such a reason.

[Evandorf]

2 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

I really think Gem's statement "'improve don't remove' is a flawed method to deal with things that can't be reworked and/or nobody wants to rework." really cannot be emphasized enough. Even if those who would re-work it exist, not having the skills and being unable/unwilling to take the time to build them is ultimately the same as "can't be reworked".

Improve Don't Remove doesn't mean nothing can be removed or nerfed; it's a baseline. We don't want things to be removed out of hand without an attempt to try an mitigate whatever the issue is because then it will truly never come back without the will to overhaul or rework it. There are plenty of people who enjoy borgs but even if we agree they need to be changed there are plenty of alternatives that have been suggested which should be tried first before outright removal. These changes don't require a rework or an invested dev to impliment; whitelists, removal of the engi/medic modules, access restrictions, ect.

[DekserBecauseILostMyAccoun]

I've seen a lot of points here, thought I'd drop my 2 cents.

First of all, I agree that there is a problem with borgs at the moment but total removal of them just seems like a lazy solution. There are clearly other options that people aren't seeing or are ignoring. Like why haven't we whitelisted shipbounds (both AI and borgs). I've seen the argument "because the whitelist doesn't work" but it isn't the whitelist or the role's fault that it doesn't work. I've never seen problematic malf AI players have their whitelists removed, mostly because nobody reports problematic malf AI's, they just card them.

On Carvers point:

Quote

I heavily dislike this consistent mindset of one's job being 'stolen', to the contrary I always appreciate having a cyborg in my department

I could not agree more, to add more onto this, you can just tell a shipbound to do something else if you want to take over what it was doing. Since their lawset makes them listen to you.

There is a HUGE OOC hatred for shipbounds, the last time I played AI and delayed a command by a minute to prioritize another few commands, people screamed malf and bloody murder. I think everybody needs to chill, shipbounds need to be whitelisted and there needs to be OOC guidelines set in place for equipment players (and maybe a few department modules removed).

[Dreamix]

Quote

whitelists

Whitelists are not going to solve the problem. The things that people do not like borgs doing, are not really rule-breaking in any way.

An engineering or medical borg that instantly responds to every call, is just doing the thing that borgs are supposed to be doing.

If borgs were whitelisted, it would change nothing, except to drastically reduce the number of borgs in game... and then they'd be removed anyways after a few months, when their playerbase would shrink to near-zero (just like we have very few AIs lately, with most rounds that I play having no AI at all)

 

 

Quote

just tell the borg to not do that

It was said already in the thread many times. It's really awkward and uncomfortable to do that on a OOC level, to basically tell the borg to not play the game, cause it is not supposed to really refuse or rebel in any way.

[MattAtlas]

13 hours ago, Carver said:

I heavily dislike this consistent mindset of one's job being 'stolen', to the contrary I always appreciate having a cyborg in my department. It eases up on the stress of a workload, frees up my time to interact with other crew and in general makes life consistently easier. I couldn't be more against them being removed for such a reason.

People play certain depts (engineering, medical) for a mix of gameplay and roleplay. If someone who is faster and more efficient than you is constantly taking your job, how is that not stealing?

Your argument would work if a borg could only do specific things. That's not the case -- a borg does everything and anything in a department, better than you, faster than you, with less limitations, less gameplay issues, no access issues and no roleplay requirements.

Nevermind that there is more than enough free time in a round for both medical and engineering for them to not really want even more.

[Carver]

9 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

People play certain depts (engineering, medical) for a mix of gameplay and roleplay. If someone who is faster and more efficient than you is constantly taking your job, how is that not stealing?

Your argument would work if a borg could only do specific things. That's not the case -- a borg does everything and anything in a department, better than you, faster than you, with less limitations, less gameplay issues, no access issues and no roleplay requirements.

Nevermind that there is more than enough free time in a round for both medical and engineering for them to not really want even more.

Didn't we have separate modules for engineering and medical - as in, two separate ones per department with specialization?

[Flpfs]

On 12/10/2022 at 18:14, Evandorf said:

I understand that some people have issues with confrontation but you have to take some reasonable action to resolve the issue via normal means. If it’s really an issue I would say ahelp and have the mod/admin speak to them if it’s something you feel uncomfortable with. I wouldn’t have any issue doing that for someone and I don’t think other staff would either. 

The problem is, the role itself existing forces these situations, which is a sign it is bad, and has to go. It's a relic of old and doesn't quite fit in anymore.

The station isn't an island, and cyborgs do things in the game, in the ship. It's not just a matter of ignoring them, since their job involves doing your job. There's no real way to ignore them, seeing as they're forced to interact with you, and you're forced to interact with them.

 

23 hours ago, Carver said:

I heavily dislike this consistent mindset of one's job being 'stolen', to the contrary I always appreciate having a cyborg in my department. It eases up on the stress of a workload, frees up my time to interact with other crew and in general makes life consistently easier. I couldn't be more against them being removed for such a reason.

I don't get the point of this. Why join as a job if you dislike the workload? There are the off-duty roles, which allow you roleplay without any responsibility already.

 

Anyways, I've made the pull-request, it is linked here: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/14926