/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

The new hype for roboticsts seems to be to simply not make any slaved borgs at all and instead unslave every borg they make from roundstart.

This completely fucks over any traitor ai because they have literally zero defence against unslaved engineering borgs. They also lose all the borgs they would have under their control otherwise.

The only reason to do this is the meta information that AI's can be rogue and that unslaved borgs are always loyal.

If have however seen no policy regarding this.

Well yeah but unsyncing secborgs meant one less infinite ammo laser gun against you

You don't need ammo when you can have the hole in the floor kill for you.

Unsyncing borgs is fine - when you have a reason. The AI is acting really, really shifty ("I'm sorry, lizard, I don't know how that door got electrified"; "Oh, those rows of bolted doors in my core? Interior decorating", etc); it's actively rogue and doing stuff; and so on. Even if the AI Upload board is gone from Tech Storage, maybe. But when you don't have any reason to suspect the AI might be rogue, taking measures to stop its potential rogue power is metagaming; what's different between this and replacing the plasma valve with a manual valve?

On the one hand this should be treat the same as ai proofing atmos


But on the other I wouldn't want to block people's abilities to have independent borgs for shenanigans, like building all sec borgs with robosec or paladin whilst leaving the ai Asimov

Saegrimr wrote:

Zilenan91 wrote:Now that secborgs hopefully aren't a thing anymore there isn't a whole lot of point in doing this.

An unsynced engiborg is worse than a secborg to a rogue AI. No amount of door depowering will slow it down.

Last night a malf mediborg dunked the entire sec team.

I played two rounds as malf ai last night:

First round, I got cucked by an unslaved borg that was created well in advance of my going loud.
Second round, same story. Borg pops online and immediately starts screaming that I'm rouge.

To my knowledge, none of the responsible parties were punished. This can not stand.

or one more

cmspano wrote:

Saegrimr wrote:

Zilenan91 wrote:Now that secborgs hopefully aren't a thing anymore there isn't a whole lot of point in doing this.

An unsynced engiborg is worse than a secborg to a rogue AI. No amount of door depowering will slow it down.

Last night a malf mediborg dunked the entire sec team.

To be fair I used my charm to get away with most killings.

Also Kor told me the hacked acid was shit after I tried spraying someone 15 times. (I thought you guys changed it to something decent, like cholal or something)

Atlanta-Ned wrote:I played two rounds as malf ai last night:

First round, I got cucked by an unslaved borg that was created well in advance of my going loud.
Second round, same story. Borg pops online and immediately starts screaming that I'm rouge.

To my knowledge, none of the responsible parties were punished. This can not stand.

I was that borg. The first round was valid. Someone asked you why atmos was bolted, you didn't respond, people started yelling about ai rogue. I happened to go into robotics for repairs and they flashed me, pulled my brain out, and rebuilt me unsynced because they thought you were rogue.

The second round that whiney guy who got banned built me unsynced 4NoRaison at all. After the fact I felt kinda bad but at the time I was Asimov and you were talking with the other borgs about venting plasma so I had to say something.

Round 2 you definitely got shit on, round 1 was just unlucky that they noticed you fucking with atmos and killed me.

Shad0vvs wrote: Also Kor told me the hacked acid was shit after I tried spraying someone 15 times. (I thought you guys changed it to something decent, like cholal or something)

You know, I ran into that too. One time I was a Rev chef, with a few Rev botanists to work with. They made 100 potency death nettle and hooked me up with gloves so I spent like 10 minutes grinding it up, filtering out the other chems, and filling their spraybottles with acid. Then I sprayed an officer with it in a fight and it didn't do shit.

things I could implement:
1. unslaved borgs don't have access to Binary
2. unslaved borgs don't have access to non-public doors
3. unslaved borgs have reduced tools
4. unslaved borgs are targeted by AI core turrets

I think precedent that unsyncing borgs for absolutely no reason is on the same level as ripping up atmos valves at round start would be good.

One code idea though, maybe allow the AI to be aware of unsynced borgs like their slaved borgs. Give them the message that happens when they come online too. At least then the AI knows that the borgs exist.

Unslaved cyborgs are still a 100% counter to rogue AIs, even if the Roboticists do have reason to believe they're rogue. Giving malfunctioning or traitor AIs the ability to remotely detonate unslaved cyborgs would help.

iamgoofball wrote:things I could implement:
1. unslaved borgs don't have access to Binary
2. unslaved borgs don't have access to non-public doors
3. unslaved borgs have reduced tools
4. unslaved borgs are targeted by AI core turrets

1. Definitely a good change. I'd say the largest issue with unsynced borgs is one coming on line right as a malf ai is talking about malf stuff on binary. Really sucky and shouldn't happen.
2. Mayyybee - syndi borgs for definate.
3. Nah
4. Yes, especially syndiborgs.

1. Not a bad idea at all
2. Bad Idea, what if you get borged and they unslave you, now you can't do shit. Doing this to syndie borgs is a good idea. Make them emag.
3. Nah
4. Probably a good idea. An unslaved borg has no honest reason to be in the AI Core. They aren't slaved to that AI, they don't care about the AI, and their laws don't require them to protect or interact with the AI at all.

iamgoofball wrote: 4. unslaved borgs are targeted by AI core turrets

Winner

Oh, maybe remove AI satellite access from unslaved borgs. I don't know if this would stop a borg from using the AI's flash but that should be coded too. One of the ways I was able to overcome Atlanta-Ned is that I could trigger his flash myself. He flashed me once but there's a like a 8 second cooldown on the wall mounted flasher. I backed off, flashed it, and ran in and welded him up while the flasher was on cooldown.

Unsyncing a Borg goes both ways. It's shielded from a poorly programmed AI but it's also harder to detect a fault since the AI can't check their connection via the robotics console or lock them down if they act in a faulty fashion. Technically anyone with robotics access can locks Borg down but the one of the reasons the AI exists is specifically to keep cyborgs in line.
The AI "can" check if they're emagged or not by using the cyborg upload console but if there's a lot of unsynced borgs roaming around, one can slip through the net without notice, and subverted borg's will escape scrutiny entirely.

The AI is the manager of station systems and isolating the AI from those systems means that faults will go longer without notice. Plus a subverted Cyborg (not emagged) is impossible to detect unless you catch them in the act, assuming the subverted, unsynced borg hasn't already killed the AI.

IC-wise it's suspicious as fuck to make systems isolated from the station's computer, especially something as delicate and valuable and dangerous as a cyborg. I treat it as akin to cutting security cameras in secure areas so you should have a good reason why you're doing it.

Atlanta-Ned wrote: To my knowledge, none of the responsible parties were punished. This can not stand.

The person who built the unslaved borg the second round got banned later after a long argument in OOC.

And you can't really punish the borg for being unslaved

Archie700 wrote:And you can't really punish the borg for being unslaved

Yeah this, borgs often get the shit end of the stick but at least they're usually not responsible for following really shitty orders. That's on the people abusing them.

Just give traitor AIs the ability to resume they borgs/steal them from non traitor AIs and the problem is solved.

Much yes on unslaved borgs being targeted by turrets though.

I think making the turrets target unslaved borgs, and, if possible, remove AI upload/satellite access from unslaved borgs would be good changes. I dunno how integrated the code for borg control of doors is but I imagine you could put a condition on it.

It'd have to be really snowflake-y code to work. You'll have to ask a coder on the technical side of things but my gut tells me few if any coders will try to code it.

yeah, turret code afaik is really awful and no fun to tweak

>make the turrets target unslaved borgs
the only part of this i do not like is that now you can't kill an AI by emagging a borg and having the borg stab it in the back

Didn't we get the much better faction flag system to cover simple mob aggression? Man this would be so much simpler if turrets were mobs and only slaved borgs and AI were in their faction.

+1 on the turrets targeting unslaved borgs. Nerfs syndicate borgs too

I approve of that idea.

AFAIK turrets should be able to target things based on factions or something, which is why syndi shuttle turrets don't turn the nuke ops into red mist.

afaik the Nuke Op turrets just check if the Ops have agent IDs worn on them, not that they're in an Operative faction