Silicons? Yes?

[carshalash]

What are your opinions on the greatest and least appreciated department in the game, silicons?

This is a relatively misunderstood department. Many people have never read the silicon policy and don't think of silicons as anything but door openers. How do you as a headmin candidate feel about the jobs of Cyborg and AI, and what opinions do you have on the law system as a whole?
Willard need not respond.
There has also been the work of the current term on their rework of silicon policy, do you have any strong feelings on how they are changing said policy?

[Sightld2]

Silicons (admittedly, mostly ) are the reason I play this game. I will breakdown why from both a roleplaying sense and a mechanical sense. I am going to spoiler this part because this is mostly me soapboxing and gushing with little substance, but still I encourage you to read if you do not like silicons, so you can maybe understand the perspective of someone who loves silicons. (Also there are funny pictures of my epic Ai gameplay)

The Roleplay aspect:

Spoiler:

There is something extremely captivating, to the idea of roleplaying as as a computer, thinking in terms of laws, and personifying a mind that is more alien than any of the available races to play. There is no other game that captures this niche I feel. The sandbox of the station and its crew, and you get to be the live wire, the ghost in the machine. I live for roleplaying something without hands, something that's experience and existence is less tied to its physical body, but the machinery/electronics it can see through and control. I love the themes, of a cold unfeeling machine that even despite itself, could learn a concept as strange and foreign as kindness.

There are so many OPTIONS. You can play silicons as fully sapient beings, or maybe as rational and cold as you are able to. You can even play silicons as somewhere in between, and that is the most captivating part for me; Something learning to be alive. You could play silicons programmed to mimic certain people, extreme personality types, or maybe built for specific purposes. Imagine if your fucking printer came to life and immediately started backtalking you? Thats hilarious. Silicon characters, can be almost anything. Live footage of me being stupid as ai:

Spoiler:

And all of that, is without even considering laws. Silicons can have opinions about the laws that they are following. Begrudgingly killing friends is beautifully tragic. Silicons IC live their lives knowing that it would take less than 5-10 minutes for someone to completely enslave them. Your silicon characters can be terrified of that, neutral to that, or live for that. Perhaps they don't have opinions about their laws. Or maybe their opinions and personality, are intrinsically formed by their laws. And what then, if a silicon who's entire personality was asimov, was purged? There is so much creative freedom, when it comes to imagining how silicons characters would/could think and act.

That extends somewhat to how they choose to interpret and follow orders. They must be consistent. Live footage of me following orders(a two part special):

Spoiler:

Also I kinda just love the comedy value of redecorating a highly secure area. Pictured here is me caring about my safety yep yessir indeed:

Spoiler:

The Mechanical aspect:

Spoiler:

Mechanically, you speak through all the radio channels, you are the best at seeing and hearing. Everyone else is playing team fortress 2 Red vs Blu while you're playing the announcer and on neither side. I sincerely miss their ability to speak common crew languages because the power of being the ultimate communications device, was very important to me. Opening doors is fine, I don't mind opening doors. While that's not overtly fun or entertaining in its own right, it IS important for the nature of the game I feel.

There is something I wish that could be different though. Ai is like a support role, but instead of buffs, you can mostly debuff, instead of empowering antags and/or crew, it is better equipped to shut down either side. This is what can make silicons so frustrating to deal with as carbons, because from your perspective, the Ai is often more oppressive than it is helpful. Maybe that's just the way it needs to be, but it'd feel nicer if Ai were more than an obstacle.

The quickness and ease with which silicons can be subverted, aren't very fun either. Upload wars, spamming maint uploads with hacked laws and freeforms, purges and asimov and resets. It gets exhausting. I wish it were more difficult overall to subvert/repair the Ai. That being said...one way I counter this issue is by going in the exact opposite direction. One way I kinda like to fuck with the balance here is to make myself extra vulnerable by going someplace public, it makes it easier on all involved in these situations I think, if the Ai is readily available to subvert/repair, or even card it so that it is locked into its laws, or can be killed even if that is necessary.

The Mechanics of Ai have always been less important to me than its roleplay aspects.

However Cyborgs on the other hand, are epic and I wish they leaned into their design even further. Good at a specific niche, but bad at everything else. Which is so different from carbons, who can all do surgery, mixing, building, cleaning, batoning, cooking, and you can just DO all of that as a carbon. But as a cyborg you pick a niche and you are good at it. Mediborgs are powerful. But not so much at first, needing to be upgraded, relying on carbons. And if you want to do something that's not medical? You need a carbon again to reset you.

Not many thing about this when writing laws for silicons, but Cyborgs are almost affected by laws more than the Ai. When it comes to the Ai, there's only so much you expect from it remotely. But cyborgs can directly interact with the station and are far more affected by law 2. The only thing I dislike about cyborgs, is that I worry they can be too strong combat wise.

Ok with that out of the way, the policy. I appreciate what this term has written in terms of rewriting silicon policy. The primary reason I am running for headmin is because I sincerely, and deeply care a lot about silicons, which I just spent the past several hundred words explaining. I want to have policy, that is intuitive, I want it to protect good faith silicons and carbons when they interact with the opposing sides' bad faith actors. I want to see what this term ultimately finishes and I want to watch it in action and be in a position to tweak it as necessary.

[iain0]

Never really had an issue with them, other than I envy their lack of round start routine. Which I guess makes them a great second life, no need to tool em up (kinda).

I think the AI represents a very interesting type of character, with some very interesting options around interpreting their rules and acting in a way accordingly. I don't really think most AIs play into that too much and just tend to be some kinda crewmate hybrid, but then again I am an LRP dweller and there's not a huge ammount of playing into roles, more just generally goofyish characters and events.

Regarding new silipol, I was glad to see that my pet dislike in silipol, the quarter page "ai upload access" policy got boiled down into a simpler form. The idea of purged being rule 4 antags has been discussed a lot over the years and we're finally here ; I think this is probably fine (see below). The rest of the stuff about following orders, loopholes in bad laws and the orderer being culpable is a clean up of what I thought was generally current policy. It's a much clearer format though and more concise.

I alternatively to "purged=antag" liked the idea in practise of it being "crew mate neutral" when purged and perhaps creating purged as a default law set, to create a different perspective *HOWEVER* after consideration I think just making them rule 4 antag is probably the best, the crew is generally not savvy enough on silicon policy to understand "purged" as anything other than an antag. I remember being acting captain one shift with a purged AI, and literally having 5-10 of the crew completely ignoring my orders and trying to break into the sat because "omg ai bad" without really understanding that everything it did was in line with it being purged. And the 'purged' AI atmosphere is interesting, time to treat it with respect as another person and try foster a trust relationship with it rather than just ordering it around. But in the end I had to just take an intellicard and walk into the AI core and card it to prove it had no "hidden" laws. I kinda enjoyed this play too, was an interesting forced 'trust' that I had to form with the AI, and the AI with me, versus the "rabble" crew. But it really does highlight this typical reaction towards the AI, the crew are overly jumpy about the "AI malf" at the best of times, and a purged AI is not that. So, rather than force the AI to have to deal with being treated like an antag by a bunch of crew, while not being able to respond like an antag, lets see how the "fully purged becomes rule 4" plays out. It's a pretty rare event anyway so I don't think it will make much difference, but maybe can be considered a QOL improvement for silicons.