/tg/Station 13

voiced this during the community meeting so i may as well post it here.

"my suggestion is reworking our current silicon policy is to make it so you have to follow a specific nature of the base core lawsets while actively following their laws to prevent rules lawyering on core lawset e.g. someone who has to impartial defender and aid to humans for asimov and corporate being a corporate auditor who has to maintain the station and the crew. I'm not a fan of alternative lawsets but that suggestion would allow us to bypass the issues of forming new silicon policy around lawsets while maintaining most of our current asimov policy."

I think our only decent lawsets that could work with this while preventing validhunting are asimov/corporate/tyrant which would prevent validhunting, though I'm not super used to our current lawsets. Potentially replace crew with humans to make corporate work?

Lawyering lawsets is the entire point of having lawsets. Adding additional written or unwritten "spirit of the law" to that is what gave us the current bloated mess of policy.

I forgot to elaborate, additional human added laws aren't covered by our lawset and that can be fair game to rules lawyer. Just core roundstart laws. It's meant to solve that issue though because a lot of people seem to dislike the issues it brings up.

Karp wrote:I forgot to elaborate, additional human added laws aren't covered by our lawset and that can be fair game to rules lawyer. Just core roundstart laws. It's meant to solve that issue though because a lot of people seem to dislike the issues it brings up.

I'm still at a loss as to the problem this is meant to solve. You stated a solution without a problem and then didn't elaborate a problem.

People complain about the bulkiness of silicon policy(the reason that silicon policy is half of our current rules page and full of minor caveats to prevent grief and shittery)

Would help simplify by chopping out 90% of our silicon policy

The best change to silicon policy would.be to remove silicons because all silicom players are unapologetic fucking assholes

Never have I ever met a silicon main that wasn't in one eay or another power tripping or powergaming.

That's a quote

Karp wrote:People complain about the bulkiness of silicon policy(the reason that silicon policy is half of our current rules page and full of minor caveats to prevent grief and shittery)

Would help simplify by chopping out 90% of our silicon policy

But you're replacing what we have (bulky but specific) with something substantially more vague. If you're to expect players to follow a "spirit of the lawset" instead of following the laws as they're written, what's the point of having the laws as written? Is a new player meant to consult the wiki every time they're given a new core lawset in order to read a description of that lawset and what rules they're meant to follow rather than just reading and interpreting the laws as they're given to them? As it exists, we have policy (which players don't often read unless they have a specific reason to find out or because an admin references it to them in a particular case) and everything else is left to the golden rule of AI/Borg policy. Law interpretation is left to the good faith of the player in the role (deferred to the AI in the case of a borg with an attached AI) and that they must choose an interpretation as soon as they have cause to, and that the interpretation must remain consistent. This allows for the diverse play that the role is meant for while still keeping the role constrained by the lawsets its is given.

As I said before, AIs are /meant/ to haggle their laws with the crew. Laws are /supposed/ to get in the way of things non-AIs want to do. Its a conflict point. ASIMOV is imperfect /on purpose/ and turning it into a round-edged "just help everyone and be nice" lawset misses the entire point I believe.

cedarbridge wrote:

Karp wrote:People complain about the bulkiness of silicon policy(the reason that silicon policy is half of our current rules page and full of minor caveats to prevent grief and shittery)

Would help simplify by chopping out 90% of our silicon policy

But you're replacing what we have (bulky but specific) with something substantially more vague. If you're to expect players to follow a "spirit of the lawset" instead of following the laws as they're written, what's the point of having the laws as written? Is a new player meant to consult the wiki every time they're given a new core lawset in order to read a description of that lawset and what rules they're meant to follow rather than just reading and interpreting the laws as they're given to them? As it exists, we have policy (which players don't often read unless they have a specific reason to find out or because an admin references it to them in a particular case) and everything else is left to the golden rule of AI/Borg policy. Law interpretation is left to the good faith of the player in the role (deferred to the AI in the case of a borg with an attached AI) and that they must choose an interpretation as soon as they have cause to, and that the interpretation must remain consistent. This allows for the diverse play that the role is meant for while still keeping the role constrained by the lawsets its is given.

As I said before, AIs are /meant/ to haggle their laws with the crew. Laws are /supposed/ to get in the way of things non-AIs want to do. Its a conflict point. ASIMOV is imperfect /on purpose/ and turning it into a round-edged "just help everyone and be nice" lawset misses the entire point I believe.

and yet silicons are the most unpopular role we have and we've had to gut them repeatedly to deal with them rules wise

What's the point of having rules lawyering *EDIT*on our core lawsets*EDIT* when half our rules page is dedicated to preventing rules lawyering or granting exceptions to the laws? The biggest challenge against adding new lawsets(ignoring the fundamental issues with other lawsets being validhunty as fuck) is that we have two thirds of our rules page dedicated to asimov specific exclusions which other lawsets lack

The last argument on haggling their laws is literally a pure argument to tradition and is why they're unpopular as fuck in every way(You have to read half our rules page to get the okay on playing silicons and you have to memorize it)

Karp wrote:

cedarbridge wrote:

Karp wrote:People complain about the bulkiness of silicon policy(the reason that silicon policy is half of our current rules page and full of minor caveats to prevent grief and shittery)

Would help simplify by chopping out 90% of our silicon policy

But you're replacing what we have (bulky but specific) with something substantially more vague. If you're to expect players to follow a "spirit of the lawset" instead of following the laws as they're written, what's the point of having the laws as written? Is a new player meant to consult the wiki every time they're given a new core lawset in order to read a description of that lawset and what rules they're meant to follow rather than just reading and interpreting the laws as they're given to them? As it exists, we have policy (which players don't often read unless they have a specific reason to find out or because an admin references it to them in a particular case) and everything else is left to the golden rule of AI/Borg policy. Law interpretation is left to the good faith of the player in the role (deferred to the AI in the case of a borg with an attached AI) and that they must choose an interpretation as soon as they have cause to, and that the interpretation must remain consistent. This allows for the diverse play that the role is meant for while still keeping the role constrained by the lawsets its is given.

As I said before, AIs are /meant/ to haggle their laws with the crew. Laws are /supposed/ to get in the way of things non-AIs want to do. Its a conflict point. ASIMOV is imperfect /on purpose/ and turning it into a round-edged "just help everyone and be nice" lawset misses the entire point I believe.

and yet silicons are the most unpopular role we have and we've had to gut them repeatedly to deal with them rules wise

What's the point of having rules lawyering when half our rules page is dedicated to preventing rules lawyering or granting exceptions to the laws? The biggest challenge against adding new lawsets(ignoring the fundamental issues with other lawsets being validhunty as fuck) is that we don't have two thirds of our rules page dedicated to asimov specific exclusions

The last argument on haggling their laws is literally a pure argument to tradition and is why they're unpopular as fuck in every way(You have to read half our rules page to get the okay on playing silicons and you have to memorize it)

1) You're not going to make a role more popular by removing more of its freedom. That doesn't make any sense.
2) Our rules-based exclusions, despite the bulk, are pretty simple applications of Rule 1 as applied. Literally nothing stop an AI in the current case from arguing in good faith that something is or is not harmful or is or is not self-harm. The common refrain about scilicon policy is that there's so much of it, but ultimately its just a long list of examples of what has or has not been ruled to violate Rule 1 in reference to interpreting laws under various lawsets. Asking to replace that with some vague concept of what you think the spirit or intent of that lawset is but then handwaving it when the lawset changes to a custom is going to create more confusion than it could possibly solve. Literally nothing related to ASIMOV stops us from adding new AI lawsets unless we follow your suggestion to then require that the AI memorize your specific intent of that lawset rather than just reading the words it is made out of.
3) There is no appeal to tradition anywhere in that post. Our current system and treatment of ASIMOV exists as it does because it has and does work. Without a specific reason to change it, and I still haven't heard a reason apart from that there are a lot of exceptions based on our other rules, the onus is on the one suggesting the change to present a reason to change from a working model to one that still has not addressed the problems presented against it. You're not going to make an unpopular job more popular by making it harder to do, with less freedom to act, with less ability to interact and adapt while conforming to a cookie cutter "intent." The current model escapes all of those pitfalls by being clear in what is and is not allowed, and allowing for the AI/Borg to act within its available in-game knowledge to apply text the laws they get as they are written rather than looking elsewhere to find out how an admin or coder "intended" for that law to read without actually writing it so.
4) We already went through this once with drones. Remember when we tried to give drones vague laws and then just hope for the best that the players would play along? That went really well. I remember when we tried to fix that by adding explicit text explaining the intent of that drone lawset that the players also had to abide by and had to abide by it over and above the actual laws text. That fixed nothing in the process. You're asking for step two, but on top of laws that are intentionally vague but within a framework that already works for player interaction and then attaching nebulous flavortext over the top to tell the AI to ignore what the actual laws say because the intent is something else entirely. Its entirely missing the point.

1: I don't mean popular for the players, I mean popular among everyone else who has to deal with silicon bullshittery and rules lawyering trying to avoid their core laws either because they dont understand them or because new silicons don't realise x or y is the case. This is primarily due to the sheer volume and the fact that it's spread out across headmin rulings+silicon policy

2: silicons are given full server rule exemptions while following their laws though, it's on the law uploader to not be a turd. some of it does cover interactions to prevent the ai from being a dick or to allow the ai to escape people being assholes like suicide orders and being called rogue, but i think you're underestimating how much of our current policy is dictated to prevent rules lawyering, and that we can leave the definitions but remove all of the stuff we have in policy to prevent rules lawyering.

3: You're saying we should have rules lawyering because we've had rules lawyering in the past and its a core aspect of the role in the past. My suggestion's point is to cut down on our current silicon policy ruleset and to potentially allow us to add more core lawsets into the game without having to define everything all over again like we've had to do with paragraphs of silicon policy to prevent silicons from rules lawyering their way into griefing or making the role unbearable to play with.

4: The issue with drones wasn't exclusively with their laws, ignoring that they were small as shit and impossible to click it was more the fact that they could spawn infinitely once set up as a ghost role spawn due to the dumbass that mapped the drone dispenser roundstart and that one bad player repeatedly spawning over and over in the shells could become nearly unstoppable if they were smart. They generally were hidden off in maint and only had a simple metal and glass cost to infinitely spawn as while cyborgs and AIs are much harder to create and are more expensive to create. You can become 5 drones within the span of 3 minutes interfering with a plasmaflooder or breaking your laws with other humans while killing a silicon generally means they're dead for the remainder of the round if you don't want them revived.

Karp wrote:1: I don't mean popular for the players, I mean popular among everyone else who has to deal with silicon bullshittery and rules lawyering trying to avoid their core laws either because they dont understand them or because new silicons don't realise x or y is the case. This is primarily due to the sheer volume and the fact that it's spread out across headmin rulings+silicon policy

2: silicons are given full server rule exemptions while following their laws though, it's on the law uploader to not be a turd. some of it does cover interactions to prevent the ai from being a dick or to allow the ai to escape people being assholes like suicide orders and being called rogue, but i think you're underestimating how much of our current policy is dictated to prevent rules lawyering, and that we can leave the definitions but remove all of the stuff we have in policy to prevent rules lawyering.

3: You're saying we should have rules lawyering because we've had rules lawyering in the past and its a core aspect of the role in the past. My suggestion's point is to cut down on our current silicon policy ruleset and to potentially allow us to add more core lawsets into the game without having to define everything all over again like we've had to do with paragraphs of silicon policy to prevent silicons from rules lawyering their way into griefing or making the role unbearable to play with.

4: The issue with drones wasn't exclusively with their laws, ignoring that they were small as shit and impossible to click it was more the fact that they could spawn infinitely once set up as a ghost role spawn due to the dumbass that mapped the drone dispenser roundstart and that one bad player repeatedly spawning over and over in the shells could become nearly unstoppable if they were smart. They generally were hidden off in maint and only had a simple metal and glass cost to infinitely spawn as while cyborgs and AIs are much harder to create and are more expensive to create. You can become 5 drones within the span of 3 minutes interfering with a plasmaflooder or breaking your laws with other humans while killing a silicon generally means they're dead for the remainder of the round if you don't want them revived.

1) AI/Borgs will never be popular among players whether those players understand the way AI/Borgs function or not. This is because the laws as structured (and intentionally so, this is a game built on conflict to the point its baked into the role itself) forces the AI/Borgs to intervene and prevent players from doing a pretty sizeable number of things those players would like to be doing (beating eachother to death with toolboxes for a start.) You're not going to improve the game for anyone by making players pretend that their laws don't mean what they say and instead just substituting it with a flavortext replacement. Short of the conflict cases, AI can be an extremely boring role of opening and closing doors and only a masochist would put themselves through that.

2) Did we swing to custom laws now? I'm pretty sure I made it clear we're talking about the core laws. Like ASIMOV. Those lawsets are currently bound by Rule 1. In fact, our rules regarding AIs are all founded on Rule 1 applications of acting in good faith towards the completion of the AI's laws. Yes, it is up to the uploader not to be stupid and leave the AI an obvious loophole or a poor wording. That said, those are custom laws and not something that is featured prominently in the AI policy you're talking about abrogating. Our policy system is dedicated to dealing with those cases where the rules actually do interact with lawsets. Given that the predictable lawsets are the ones the round starts with, we have policy for those and we apply Rule 1 to them in order to make them reasonable in those cases that have already been administrated.

3) Now I'm getting lost again because we were talking about players (AI and crew) haggling the application of their laws and the interpretation of those laws to in-game outcomes, but now you're talking about OOC rules lawyering. As I've said before, our policy (for as long as it is) is really not that complicated. The vast majority of breakdowns that players have with AI/Borgs and their laws is that they don't understand that the laws are rules that the AI/Borg players cannot merely choose not to follow. They presume they can just ask the AI/Borg really nicely and they'll stop doing it and that creates cases where they argue with the admins about whether the AI/Borg is being a shitter for not spacing the clown on demand or whatever. Its also the reason that players complain endlessly about the AI/Borgs in most rounds because those complaining generally don't actually play law-restricting roles and don't understand what they can and cannot do. You talk at length here about AI/Borg players "rules lawyering" in what I presume you mean to be an OOC realm, but I've seen hardly any of that in recent times (much more in the past for various reasons and almost always in the case of custom laws.) If the lawyering is getting out of had to that degree then we need to get the admin team together and sort things out. It should rarely be a major undertaking to say "Yes, that interpretation of your laws is correct" or "No, that is not correct." Even with the exceptions in policy for stock lawsets, the answer is still going to be one of those two answers.

And I stand by what I said before and that you apparently misread: crew and AI arguing about law interpretation is a good thing and should stay. It is a key point of conflict that lawsets were implemented to create between the AI and the crew. If the AI is obviously griefing by using a bad faith interpretation then we already have avenues to deal with that and the players have them in-game. I don't see a reason to remove that conflict point from the game.

4) A bad player that spawns once or a bad player that spawns twice is still a bad player. A player with poorly written instructions is still given poorly written instructions whether they get one chance to fuck them up or seven. My point remains. If you try to replace AI laws as we have them currently and as they function pretty damn well, with something we already tried elsewhere to a general failure, you're going to have a bad time.

https://tgstation13.org/wiki/User:Terranaut
reminder that a much better written and much shorter version of our silicon policy exists

terranaut wrote:https://tgstation13.org/wiki/User:Terranaut
reminder that a much better written and much shorter version of our silicon policy exists

Still a cancerous mess that no one should be expected to read just to play one role

IMO silicon policy probably only needs to be "Follow your laws" and a list of specific exceptions to that, such as the one where asimov borgs don't have to commit suicide by a human order.

Qbmax32 wrote:

terranaut wrote:https://tgstation13.org/wiki/User:Terranaut
reminder that a much better written and much shorter version of our silicon policy exists

Still a cancerous mess that no one should be expected to read just to play one role

sadly its a necessity for silicon policy to exist. maybe it wouldnt be if there was a heavy timegate on at least AI (so that an AI player will be able to instruct an inexperienced cyborg) or if jobbans were applied more liberally but as it is, it's necessary.