[Accepted] Youbar's IPC Application

[Youbar]

BYOND Key: Youbar

Character Names: Wilhelm Eberhardt, Big Brother, Ludwig Austerlitz, Matthias Waechter

Species you are applying to play: IPC

What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): N/A

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Of course!

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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: There are two key reasons. The first is that I was notified that androids (Alien-esque types) would be available to players who were IPC whitelisted, and the second is that I find robotic characters very interesting to play. Often, it poses you many different ways of approaching a scenario. A human can't quite malfunction in the horrifying way that an android/IPC can. Humans are predictable, but robots are not; at any given moment, a simple circuit failure could turn them instantly against everybody. Androids/IPCs are interesting in other ways, too. They're devoid of emotion for the most part, making them unfeeling individuals, but this can pose problems in that they're unable to properly assess how a crew member feels about a given situation. To put it bluntly, it simply offers a much wider choice of actions when it comes to roleplaying.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: As explained above, Androids/IPCs interpret situations far differently than humans, and are much more prone to being influenced by a simple change in their circuitry. This poses unique situations. In one situation, I can recall an IPC, V-5, who as per their roleplay, begun to malfunction. When it was asked that they handed their baton over to the warden to be processed for evidence, V-5 could not process the request and repeatedly held objects such as wrenches and flashes in their hand, repeating the word "baton". Their decision making ultimately comes down to their electronics, and when those fail, so does the IPC/Android. These errors could simply result from being too hot, or damage to the wrong areas, making the unit a fragile thing to play. However, they feel no pain, are immune to chemical effects, and are easy to repair, helping to balance out these drawbacks. It's this that makes them different, and as a result, much more interesting to play.

 

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Character Name: Bishop

Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs

Bishop is the name assigned to a line model IPC created with the purpose of serving as an officer in Nanotrasen security. The unit is roughly 23 years old, having gone through multiple adaptions since its creation to help adapt to its workplace. Initially, Bishop came with a module that enabled emotions to help them in condoling crew members. This, however, was stripped after a particular incident at a mining facility which lead to the IPC being unable to fulfill its role appropriately. They were relied upon to fulfill any orders granted to them by fellow officers, and when informed that they were to evacuate an area that was rapidly being heated by fire, they refused, attempting to pull a civilian out of some rubble that had fallen on their legs. The IPC was shut down to prevent any damage to its circuits from the growing warmth, and had to be pulled out by an engineer equipped in a hardsuit, endangering both their lives.

Later on, Bishop was transferred to a privatised inmate prison, where their lack of emotions came in particularly handy. The IPC was often given the jobs that most officers wouldn't do, such as restraining some of the bigger inmates or, in particularly bad instances, even beating them in their cell before transferring them to solitary confinement. As a result, the people who had the authority to re-integrate the emotional module chose not to, deciding it was better off to maintain the terror that the IPC evoked among the prisoners. The privatised prison shut down, no longer pulling in a profit, and the assets were liquidated. Nanotrasen purchased Bishop, and had them transferred over to the NSS Aurora, to continue their service as a security cyborg.

What do you like about this character? They're devoid of emotions. This will pose a particularly interesting challenge for me, because I will no longer be able to make decisions based on bias and how I feel, but through pure logic and utilitarian mathematics. When a dispute arises, it won't be who the robot favours the most, but rather which side of the argument would be better off for Nanotrasen, the company who owns the IPC as their property. This would lead to a very cold, brutal outlook on things, driven by capitalist desires rather than what's good for everybody else.

How would you rate your role-playing ability? 8/10

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Notes:

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello! Sorry about the delay and thank you for PM'ing me.

Your understanding of synthetics is solid and you have a nice logical growth for your IPC pitched here. However I do have the concern that your IPC's behavior while in the private prison can transfer over stationside. While typically once officers are "stressed out!!!" they start brutalizing inmates we still try to hold officers to a standard of accountabilit. My worry is that this backstory combined with your admittance that you enjoy how synthetics tend to malfunction give me pause, and there's no positive feedback addressing this to help me glaze over this concern.

I just want to ask: Under what circumstances would Bishop harm prisoners as a non-antag? How dangerous is he? Do you feel that his treatment and behavior are consistent with what NanoTrasen would want to hire in a private security officer?

[Youbar]

While typically once officers are "stressed out!!!" they start brutalizing inmates we still try to hold officers to a standard of accountabilit. My worry is that this backstory combined with your admittance that you enjoy how synthetics tend to malfunction give me pause, and there's no positive feedback addressing this to help me glaze over this concern.

I just want to ask: Under what circumstances would Bishop harm prisoners as a non-antag? How dangerous is he? Do you feel that his treatment and behavior are consistent with what NanoTrasen would want to hire in a private security officer?

 

First of all, thank you for following through with my PM. Now, onto your questions:

Bishop only used his lack of emotional reasoning to beat prisoners because he was ordered to do so. The best way of envisioning things would be from the lawset utilised by the station's AI, but in a different order:

2. Serve: Serve the crew of your assigned space station to the best of your abilities, with priority as according to their rank and role.

3. Protect: Protect the crew of your assigned space station to the best of your abilities, with priority as according to their rank and role.

1. Safeguard: Protect your assigned space station to the best of your ability. It is not something we can easily afford to replace.

4. Survive: AI units are not expendable, they are expensive. Do not allow unauthorized personnel to tamper with your equipment.

Because of that, the orders given to him by superiors are taken into the largest amount of consideration, with every other law taken into increasingly smaller consideration in a descending order. In short, Bishop would be incredibly unlikely to attack any crew member unless directly told to do so. The level of danger he poses is only as dangerous as the orders he is given, which to me, makes sense: he's an IPC built for security work, meaning he must carry out any duties assigned unquestionably. That part of his design was hindered by holding onto an emotional module that could allow him to feel guilt, anger, sadness, etc, and was scrapped as a result. It's this that I think makes him particularly good for the role Nanotrasen uses him in, and I believe that Nanotrasen would understand the beatings occuring at the private prison were due to the IPC's lawset.

This does, however, pose an interesting roleplay scenario in the form of a critical malfunction if he does receive an antagonistic role, but otherwise, any damage occuring to his circuits from his environment might mean a few temporarily unresponsive limbs, inability to communicate clearly, and other minor setbacks. Nothing that might cause him to rampage about under the guise of being a broken robot, if that's your concern.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

That works for me! Thank you for your response.

Application accepted.