How to git gud at malf?

[Reimoo]

Recently, I had my first malfunction round, and I went in thinking it was going to be pretty easy because I've been rogue plenty of times before and I'm aware of all the tricks malf AIs can pull.

Nay, nay, friends. I messed up really badly. Most of the borgs that were built chose a module without listening to my requests. Kinda my fault, considering I traditionally greet a new cyborg and wait for a response before issuing a command. Still, I ended up with a team of 4 or so, so I didn't really complain. Anyways, after hacking the APCs on my satellite I went to hack the station APCs but the hack button was unresponsive. I'm probably missing something obvious here (aside from making sure I'm not already hacking one) but as a result when I panicked and hit station override I was left with a >1000 second timer. After that I knew it was gg no re, so I went over to engineering to release the singularity but the PA was deconstructed. I foolishly cut the SMES output instead, and as a result, not only was my station lockdown useless, but when I went to atmospherics to flood plasma the valves I needed were conveniently out of the camera light's reach. When it came to the point when the borgs were openly fighting down the hallways, I attempted to use machine overload to deal with the borg console, and I expected it to be a quick point and click prompt. What I got instead was this huge retarded list of basically every item on the station, machine or no, and when it came time to blow up the console, the borgs were locked and the console deconstructed by the time I could even figure out what the hell I was looking at. And finally, when the crew came pounding down my core doors, I sat there like a tard while I was being beat with a crowbar trying to figure out how to shunt.

Anyways, that's my impression on my first (and maybe last) attempt at malf AI. This thread is for people to share stories and advice to others in order to avoid making the retarded mistakes I did.

[Remie Richards]

Set up some scripts on telecomms if you notice the CE and Engineers aren't paying attention to it, standard impersonation scripts and replacing words like "rogue" with suitable replacements, mutes etc.
Keep Hacking to the harder to reach more hidden APCs since once one is found you're pretty fucked unless you can convince people it's emagged.
Have your borgs prepare defences in your core.
If the atmos technicians aren't actively working on atmos then set it up ready for a plasma flood, alternatively set it up quickly when you need it incase the techs are active.
Eliminate things and people who will be of most annoyance to you (Heads etc.) as secretly as possible, impersonate them with NTSL afterwards if need be.

When you trigger your override, flood rooms with plasma, lock the doors and windows and when there's enough plasma in a room blow the lights so it all ignites into a big fire.
Have your borgs keep people in your "burn chambers" or kill people on their own.

that's about as much as I can recall for my Malf strategy atm.

[Steelpoint]

Personal tip from a security perspective. If you notice a Security Officer/Head of Security in the Science checkpoint, you really should avoid doing anything inside your core until that Officer is dead/gone. His Office cameras can directly access the AI Core cameras.

[Rhisereld]

A little while ago was my first round as a traitor AI.

I didn't really know what I could do to kill my target at first, so I sat around completing orders and waiting. After a little bit, it became clear that the RD was a traitor who had emagged all my borgs, since they were no longer slaved to me. After a while, I had to go braindead due to IRL stuff. Logged back on 30min later just in time to see the Captain card me and promptly die in space due to incompetence. My wireless wasn't enabled, so I couldn't call for help on the radio but I soon realised that I could still use PDA messages and begged an engineer to come rescue the Captain. A little while later, the good engineer comes, rescues the Captain's corpse and puts me back in my core. At this point I'm worried that he knows I'm a traitor by seeing me carded, so I promptly laser him to death.

Big mistake; the engineer calls out for help before he dies. Game over for me. The HoP moonwalks into my core with insulated gloves, a laser gun and a locker. Carded.

So yeah, I'm a pretty crappy rogue AI.

[Xhuis]

All right, I'll do what I can.

Most of the borgs that were built chose a module without listening to my requests

That was the borgs' fault, not yours.

I went to hack the station APCs but the hack button was unresponsive

Not sure about this, might be a problem unique to you.

What I got instead was this huge retarded list of basically every item on the station

Right click the machine you're looking for and the context menu will have an option to overload it.

I sat there like a tard while I was being beat with a crowbar trying to figure out how to shunt

Left-click on a hacked APC and you'll have an option called "Shunt Core Processes" or something along those lines.

Here's a few pointers about being malf. I can add more if you want.

• Ensure your borgs are willing to cooperate. If they ignore you, ahelp it.
• Engineering borgs are an asset and lots won't be questioned. Security borgs will.
• Use a robotics control console to hack your borgs. This will give them the modules that emags will in addition to making them unable to be locked down.
• Bide your time until override. If people start to see APCs, claim there's a ninja and the crew will gather their toolboxes and charge for the 'ninja'.
• Don't hack your upload APC. It's easily the most obvious one and countless malf AIs have fallen doing it.
• While hacked APCs reduce override time, they have diminishing returns. Each APC has less time reduction.
• If a hacked APC is deconstructed, the timer increases rather than decreasing.
• Don't release the singularity right away. It might end up eating you, although this can be avoided with a quick shunt.
• Many malf powers aren't worth it, and some have incredible drawbacks. The borging machine removes shunting, for instance, and blackout is generally not useful.
• More borgs means more manpower. Make sure to take out the roboticist(s) after activating override because they are the single most dangerous people on the station to you.
• Don't cause hull breaches in your core before activating override. People might check the atmospherics consoles and get suspicious unless you cancel the alert.
• If you have an engiborg, have it construct airlocks in your core and bolt them. These can be infuriating to get through.
• In addition, make that same engiborg wire the singularity directly to the grid (and solars, too). This makes shocked doors much more effective.
• A reinforced core might make all the difference after it's breached.
• Hacked janiborgs get lube spray bottles. These can be extremely useful when paired with an angry secborg at the end of a lubed hallway.

[Stickymayhem]

I haven't lost my last dozen or so malf rounds.

My philosophy is spend a huge amount of prep time before KILLING EVERYTHING.

This means configuring all vents so you can flip them to death mode in an instant, speedshocking every door on the station, crushing key crewmembers in doors at the right moments, making every door slow them down for at least a minute, and basically creating a firestorm while spamming machine overrides and trapping people in rooms surrounded by killer machines.

By the end of it, there should be maybe a couple of space people left over. I mean literally kill every single person on the station while hacking the least obvious APCs and then wait out that timer while monologuing over the radio. It's a huge amount of fun and I have a lot of success with it. The pre-configuring of vents make a huge difference. The only times I've ever been foiled is with roundstart fuckery with atmos preventing my flood of death.

ALSO, keep an eye on science. Stop bombs by venting toxins, delete R&D and if someone begins to do telescience then fuck with them subtly or just override the machines.

None of this really needs competent borgs which helps a lot. An eborg to reinforce and hide the pinpointer at roundstart is good enough really. They can falsewall out the side of the captain's room and yank that pinpointer into secure tech storage and out the window if you time firedoors correctly to prevent witnesses.

[Aleph]

Name of the game is to pretty much stall the crew as long as you can, machine override and overload the obvious threats (telescience, RnD, robotics control, chemestry, genetics), bolt airlocks and then disable enviormental power on the APCs to make the crew waste time trying to get through the wall or deconstruct the airlock. Have your borgs cause chaos, sec borgs tase and space anyone they find while engineering borgs open holes to space to severely restrict access to only the ten or so crew that can get a space suit, like your satellite lobby. If you're going to release the singulo, remember to have APCs stationwide to jump to, perferbally far away from Engineering.

Also if you're shunted and they pull the battery, you take about three minutes or so to actually die unless they blew up the APC, so if a crewmember gets lucky with the battery only to die right after, you can still edge out a victory.

[srifenbyxp]

I normally win my malf rounds, IIRC I dunked the crew so dam hard once admins had to tell me to go delta because I reduced the time to less than 120 seconds. I normally wait 5 or 10 minutes before hacking, let people into any room they want during that time, let science get their loot, engineers get done wiring solars. Edit T-Comm scripts to replace the word malf and/or any spelling/word with another meaning. If you have a borg and the captain didn't pick up his pin pointer have the borg hide it nearby like under a box of donuts or a paper bin in his room. Always get Lockdown, blow computers up, turret upgrades, and anything else.

[Ricotez]

Machine Override is your friend. It lets you blow up R&D, Telescience, the cyborg console (after you unlocked and hacked all your borgs), Chemistry and any other devices on the station that could spell disaster for you. Taking out the Mining Shuttle consoles is probably also a good choice, miners have space suits and gibtonite.

Also remember that you can directly control all robots on the station, including Beepsky and Pingsky or whatever the securitron on your satellite is called. You can even send them to specific locations on the station. Pingsky especially is a very potent ally, use him to stun people trying to infiltrate your satellite.

Other than that, Malf is all about buying time. Do everything in your power to slow the crew down BEFORE you initiate the station override, because once you hit Delta, every single human aboard the station will be coming after you, and a lot of them are very good at that.

[DemonFiren]

Going through the list of air alarms on-station, removing the alarm triggers one by one is fun.

Actually pumping out all that lethal shit at the push of one button is something I'm not atmos enough for, though.

[Whoisthere]

Learning NTSL and atmos are probably the most important things for a malf AI.

When you are confident you can silence specific people with NTSL, kill off robotics, engineers, scientists, heads one by one.

Like other people said - engieborgs can get away with tons of shit, and they are probably the most useful borg for a malf AI. Almost as strong as secborgs, but have more uses and are less suspiciou. One of my engieborgs once killed off the entire science department by itself without any help from me. I think he kept tcomms window minimised so he was able to mute the guy he was about to kill.

When you hack an apc, unlock it, then use NTSL to fake a dead head/officer/whatever saying "GUYS I JUST SAW AN UNKNOWN EMAG RANDOM DOORS AND APCS". Bolt open bunch of airlocks, bolt lights off, to pretend there's a phantom emagger.

Get a janiborg. It has a fucking trashbag. Use it to steak pinpointers, flashbangs, troublesome boards (you want the crew to be unable to make robotics control boards. Steal circuit imprinter boards and robotics control boards, obviously). I don't think ion rifle fits in the trashbag though.

Reinforce your core, then teleport to mining (or derelict, if you are willing to risk it. never seen someone do this). Laugh when people besiege your core.

Fry spacesuits in space suit storage units (engieborg can do that).

Tell an engiborg to replace pumps in atmos with pipes and disassemble tank control computers, now no-one can stop your plasmaflood (you can turn a pump off and unwrench it, you can't do that with a pipe if internal pressure is high enough, and the gas will still be pumped).

If you have a very robust borg or two and the crew won't be able to blow them, buy a borg-o-matic, though it's actually one of the less useful (but more fun) malf powers.


The few times I was a malf AI I didn't win because doing all that shit and not fucking up was just too much effort.

[Ricotez]

If your core moves through an area without a powered APC, you become blind and start losing integrity, so be careful with raising your floor bolts and having your borgs relocate you.

[Aleph]

Don't forget, turning off enviorment power to a room and bolting the airlocks forces the crew to waste RCD charges getting rid of the door or losing a minute deconstructing the wall or the door itself.

Originally borgs could stack airlocks on top of each other, meaning you had to deconstruct each one in the stack just to get into a room, though since they fixed it, you're better off filling the room with bolted and unpowered airlocks.

Don't forget the maintenance room south of your core, anyone with a suit will try to breach your core from there, so make sure to reinforce that location too.

And telecoms, the gravity generator, and your satellite are not on the main power grid, so make sure to turn up output to max on those local SMESes so the doors do more damage when shocked.

[Whoisthere]

Oh yeah, don't release the singulo or sabotage power, because then shocked doors will be about as potent as a potency 1 banana.

[Somejerk]

Bolt down all the doors on your sat and have a borg dismantle the teleporter there and move the beacon out to space.

Anything else I could say has been said already.

[DemonFiren]

Move ALL OF THE BEACONS. Bolt all of the doors except teleporter. Watch hilarity?

[bandit]

Oh yeah, don't release the singulo or sabotage power, because then shocked doors will be about as potent as a potency 1 banana.

More like don't release the singulo because due to its location and new speed it has a high chance of killing you.

[Pybro]

Move ALL OF THE BEACONS. Bolt all of the doors except teleporter. Watch hilarity?

Move all beacons to the toxins burn chamber. Set the teleporter up, then bolt open the door. Impersonate someone dead saying you've hacked the teleporter open and it leads to the AI sat.

[DemonFiren]

You are one evil bastard.

SHODAN/10 would try next malf round.

[callanrockslol]

I refuse to believe that this is your first malf round.


To win, bolt your core behind the singularity so they can't get at it.

[Whoisthere]

Move ALL OF THE BEACONS. Bolt all of the doors except teleporter. Watch hilarity?

Move all beacons to the toxins burn chamber. Set the teleporter up, then bolt open the door. Impersonate someone dead saying you've hacked the teleporter open and it leads to the AI sat.

I actually spaced captain with pinpointer + two-three other people that way as a malf borg. Crew knew the AI was in mining and the only way there was through the tele.

[iRazgriz]

Be stealth.