Drone Laws

[Nanako]

Lets talk about drone laws. Two major points should be discussed:

1. The laws and their enforcement

The list of drone laws, in their exact text, is as follows:

Obey these laws:

1. Preserve, repair and improve the station to the best of your abilities.

2. Cause no harm to the station or anything on it.

3. Interact with no being that is not a fellow maintenance drone.

Like with other synthetics, these laws are not prioritised, all must be paid equal attention to, and any conflict between them should result in null action.

Law 2 is the one i most want to discuss here. No harm to the station or ' or anything on it.'. This is clear cut and not open to interpretation. If it is a thing, you cannot harm it. This means that a drone is breaking its laws if it attacks blobs, spiders, space carp, antagonists of any kind, mice, lizards, walking mushrooms, cats, dogs, chickens, goats, wall mold, cows, chicks, other drones, rogue drones, syndicate cyborgs, space vines and foxes. You cannot harm things, period.

Law 3 is slightly more specific, 'being' rather than 'thing' specifically implies life of some sort but it is nevertheless similarly restrictive. Killing something definitely involves interacting with it.

However administration seems to disagree on this, breaking the rule on not harming things is regularly allowed, even encouraged, by admin staff. Their exact definitions of what a drone is allowed to harm varies depending on who you ask, but it seems like they don't want to enforce the law as its written, favouring their own version. Which brings me to point 2:

2. Changing things

I believe this situation is not fine, and that something should be changed. I see two options:

A. Have the administration draw up a new drone lawset that better reflects how they believe drone players should behave. With clarification on these matters

or

B. Enforce the laws as they are written. To this end i've created a PR awaiting review which adds mechanical enforcement of drone laws. If implemented, it will restrict drones from using items on any mob that isn't either dead, or another drone (unless the user is malfunctioning/emagged/traitor, and thus not bound to laws)

Now, for discussion and opinions, my thoughts:

I like the current drone lawset for several reasons, and would like to see it enforced rigidly as written. It is obviously very restrictive, but i don't see that as a bad thing. Drones are very simple machines, essentially a circuitboard and a toolbox on legs. They have no positronic brain, very low intelligence, and thus no ability to interpret situations or act intelligently. I would argue that if you don't like restrictions, you shouldn't play synthetics, or at least play one of the synthetic classes with less restrictive laws. Playing drones is about being restricted, and enjoying the interesting RP opportunities that can present.

I rather like the RP guidelines other servers have written for drones, and this somewhat reflects how i try to play them. For example: https://www.tgstation13.org/wiki/Drone

In general, i believe a drone should be completely blind to other beings. It should act, as much as possible, as if they don't exist, and go about your repairs with a simple, singleminded fashion. You don't take orders from anyone, in fact your noninteraction law forbids you from following orders or even listening to anyone besides other drones. You go around merrily fixing things, being efficient and robust without a care in the world as to what the station affairs are. It's a different experience, unlike that offered by any other.

If you want to kill things, iwould say drones are not for you. They are not fighters, it's not their job to hunt threats, or to try tpo prevent damage by preemptively disabling things. You just go around after threats cleaning up their messes. Sometimes this can result in hilarious things

I believe drones aren't supposed to affect other people's RP or enjoyment much, which is why i support the no harm law. Spiders can have a major effect, taking important people by surprise, and thus out of the round for a while due to injuries, which creates interesting stories and moments. Every threat you kill is one less thing for security to do, every pest you kill is one less thing for the janitor to do. Killing mice and lizards is a janitor's job imo

It's my belief that giving drones more flexibility, and less restrictive laws, simply makes them more like cyborgs, and detracts from their uniqueness. We already have cyborgs.. Different roles should offer distinctly different experiences.

What are your thoughts? How should drones behave? And if you disagree with the current laws, what should their lawset be changed to?

[Shadow]

Since you are suggesting a change this thread will be moved to the suggestions sub.

Also, people already came up with an altered lawset:

- Preserve, repair and improve the station to the best of your abilities.

- Cause no harm to the station or crew.

- Interact with no humanoid or synthetic being. that is not a fellow maintenance drone.

[LordFowl]

The law is too rigid for its own good to begin with. Enforcing the second law strictly creates a severe logical hole - the term "anything" doesn't restrict itself to living beings. They can literally do no harm to anything, including inanimate objects. You want to tear down that nonessential wall? Too bad, you're harming the wall fucko. You accidentally misplaced a chair? Oh well.

Accepting that if we observe the laws too closely it will lead to our downfall, let's step back a bit. This change is obviously motivated by the idea that drones shouldn't be killing mice. You argue that it is the janitor's job. I argue that cleaning is also the janitor's job, yet that is something drones are expected to do as well. Drones are fully equipped to deal with pests - they are specifically equipped with a matter decompiler that makes very short work of these pests.

We thus have two options;

Leave everything as is, and just don't look so closely at laws.

Or

Change the laws because someone decided to look too closely.

[Nanako]

This change is obviously motivated by the idea that drones shouldn't be killing mice. You argue that it is the janitor's job. I argue that cleaning is also the janitor's job, yet that is something drones are expected to do as well.

 

Only one of many motivations. I argue that they shouldn't be killing anything.

Amongst other things, these laws exist to prevent drones from powergaming the station out of any threats. They have a very robust array of tools that can be used as weapons, they can walk through tables and doors which most monsters can't, allowing them to use these as easy cover, they have as much health as any human crewmember too. They simply die, rather than falling unconscious, at 100 damage.

And most of all, they respawn in ten minutes. they have no character or personality, nobody will mourn their death, and thus they are completely expendable. Allowing them to fight off threats devalues both these threats, and the security department that's supposed to fight them

[Arrow768]

[...]Allowing them to fight off threats devalues both these threats, and the security department that's supposed to fight them

 

Threats like:

• Mice
  
• Lizards
  
• Maybe the occasional carp.

 

I am very sure that our security department is really challenged having to deal with Mice and Lizards and removing the drones ability to deal with them will add a huge RP value to the game.

(Obviously this is not meant serious)

[Nanako]

Threats like carp, spiders, blobs, space vines, animated furniture, rogue drones and bats spawned by vampires. plus cult constructs

This isn't just about mice

[Zundy]

This boils down to the non issue of drones killing pests (mice/lizards) which seems to be a pretty big deal out of nowhere as of late. If we must change the law set because people just can't handle it then:

 

- Preserve, repair and improve the station to the best of your abilities.

- Cause no harm to the station or crew.

- Interact with no humanoid or synthetic being. that is not a fellow maintenance drone.

 

Is pretty much perfect.

[witchbells]

Since you are suggesting a change this thread will be moved to the suggestions sub.

Also, people already came up with an altered lawset:

- Preserve, repair and improve the station to the best of your abilities.

- Cause no harm to the station or crew.

- Interact with no humanoid or synthetic being. that is not a fellow maintenance drone.

 

This is optimal, if something absolutely must be done.

[Taintedglory]

I mean, I don't know why a drone would not remove a pest. Its a pest on the station that could potentially cause a hazard with Breeding, Dying, Eating, Chewing and disease.

[November]

Were it that maintenance drones were designed to kill pests, then it stands to reason that they need some more efficient tool to do so. There is a dissonance between the drone laws, how people play them, and the "lore" of the drones themselves. The different axes to shift upon have been mentioned above, and it honestly just comes down to opinion.

Law 3 as it is written should extend to vermin, and until it is changed that should be what's enforced. I think that it's fine to leave it that way, because it's very black and white for something as simple as a drone. It's perfectly acceptable I think for a drone to sit there and repair the wire as a vermin chews it away, because they're supposed to be simple with a pretty specific job: just worry about the station. Otherwise you're just an engiborg with no overhead.

[Nikov]

Law 3 seems silly. Don't interact with anyone, including the engineer who picks you up and throws you at a hull breach. "Interact" should be "Interfere", otherwise we can't direct drones to tasks even with the control console.

[SierraKomodo]

Law 3 seems silly. Don't interact with anyone, including the engineer who picks you up and throws you at a hull breach. "Interact" should be "Interfere", otherwise we can't direct drones to tasks even with the control console.

 

You know.. This entire time I thought it said interfere, not interact. I've been breaking that law /alot/ then.

[Nikov]

Nope! Can't interact. Looking at an engineer and pinging? Law violation, ban he all minnits.

[Nanako]

New drone laws are now in the PR, and mechanical enforcement removed