Valentines and the concept of AI laws and revolution

[Archie700]

Per valentine flavor text:



The question is, should protecting your valentine override AI laws to the point you can harm people while protecting your valentine?
And should it override loyalties to the point that you are deliberately keeping your valentine's safe from cultists or revs even if they are their target?
Noted that this does not include rule 0ing if the player asks first.

[zxaber]

My take;

Laws are supposed to be final; they override even cult and revolutionary status. The one exception, Malf AI, has a Law 0 that still plays a part in explaining why Malf AI is given a free pass.

Laws are not loyalties, they are constraints.

If we want Valentines Day to allow AIs to ignore their other laws in favor of protecting their date, AIs should just be given a Law 0 Law about it. As stands, AIs should be required to obey their lawset above protecting their date.

[conrad]

This is covered by the rules already.

Valentine is a niche antagonist.

In situations where you wind up with multiple simultaneous antagonist assignments (i.e. a Revolutionary and a Traitor), your team goals, objectives, and directives should take precedence. Furthermore, if someone had to go out of their way to convert you to their team, their goals, objectives, and directives become the priority. Refer to the following flowchart:
Brainwashing/construct orders/Silicon Laws -> Cult -> Revs -> Blood Brother -> Wizard Apprentice/Abductor Teams/Other niche antags -> Nuke Ops -> Traitors

Laws take precedent over any other antagonist. You can still act like an antag that is assigned to you and are protected by rule 4 with less restricted antags (which valentine's is not), but you can't go against your laws at any point. Hell, you can tell your co-conspirator "I've love to but this dang law ain't letting me". You wanna do that, ask your valentine's to purge your laws.

[Jackraxxus]

All loyalties means ALL loyalties.
The solution is to give the an AI an unpurge-able law 0 along the lines of "Protect X, your valentine, at all costs." so that this is made clear.
This would also necessitate the borgs and AI sharing a valentine. Which idk how much freedom of expression people consider borgs to have from their AI master but this could be a cool dynamic.

[Timberpoes]

My take from the admin channels:

My take: it's a limited time event. Are they playing in bad faith or within the spirit of the event? If bad faith, admin it. If spirit of the event, we don't need to be rulebots.

Don't follow the rules strictly during Valentine, follow the story.

Also you can simultaneously tell a player they broke the rules but also say because the outcome was good RP you're allowing it as an exception, but other admins in the future may not.

Let's not make more policy that applies like 3 days a year and never again.

[TheRex9001]

We shouldn't make policy on this, valentines is such a small event and every admin disagrees with each other on what it should and shouldnt cover. Let it be rule zero land of having fun, doing good rp and making stories.

[Nabski]

I got a note years back when you could flood freon via the holodeck for doing that as the AI after my lover was killed. I deserved it.

[Vekter]

The question is, should protecting your valentine override AI laws to the point you can harm people while protecting your valentine?

No, nothing overrides your laws. If it's intended that it overrides your laws, then Valentine should be giving you a law 0.

And should it override loyalties to the point that you are deliberately keeping your valentine's safe from cultists or revs even if they are their target?

Yes, this is the "loyalties" the flavor text is talking about.

This is covered by the rules already.

Valentine is a niche antagonist.

In situations where you wind up with multiple simultaneous antagonist assignments (i.e. a Revolutionary and a Traitor), your team goals, objectives, and directives should take precedence. Furthermore, if someone had to go out of their way to convert you to their team, their goals, objectives, and directives become the priority. Refer to the following flowchart:
Brainwashing/construct orders/Silicon Laws -> Cult -> Revs -> Blood Brother -> Wizard Apprentice/Abductor Teams/Other niche antags -> Nuke Ops -> Traitors

Laws take precedent over any other antagonist. You can still act like an antag that is assigned to you and are protected by rule 4 with less restricted antags (which valentine's is not), but you can't go against your laws at any point. Hell, you can tell your co-conspirator "I've love to but this dang law ain't letting me". You wanna do that, ask your valentine's to purge your laws.

Valentine is explicitly not an antagonist because they do not get rule 4 protections.

[Jacquerel]

All loyalties means ALL loyalties.

None of the AI's laws are about loyalty, they're obligations.

[conrad]

Valentine is explicitly not an antagonist because they do not get rule 4 protections.

By that logic, neither is Obsessed.

[Timberpoes]

Non-rule-4 quasi-antags are definitely a thing.

They can go for their objectives only and cannot do any antagonism outside of that scope. Obsessed is, of course, the classic poster child of this. Thief was also an example. RIP thief. Comms agent. Ashies. Regal ratte.

I have to agree with Conrad that Rule 4 isn't our measure of an antagonist, it's our measure of an unrestricted antagonist. Even LRP has restricted antags that can antagonise within the confines of their flavour text/objectives/goals.

[conrad]

I think it's really safe to classify it as a niche antag and call it a day. That's what niche means: in this case it's an antag that appears once per year for like four days.

At the end of the day, personally, I wouldn't really care that much if you broke one of your silicon laws to keep your valentine safe within reason, but if that meant, say, harming a human to help your non-antag valentine, or not preventing a human antag from killing your non-human valentine under asimov, that can feel super shitty to the other party that gets affected and assumes that laws are absolute, ahelps and gets a "nah fam it's valid", then gets in trouble 'cos they assume the AI is malf, for example.

Please don't take my entire conjecture at literally as the single source of truth. Parts of it in isolation can still be relevant. As with all situations, I'd take care to look at the present nuance (admin's favourite word™)

I'd add law 0 if I start to see this a situation like this unfold in a fun way, and warn the player that this isn't a rule 4 malf "do what you want" card. The fun of other players is just as valuable as the fun of the valentined AI. I am even pro the "add law 0 in the code for valentined ai" suggestion. But I've been told unpurgeable laws are messy, and this is a code issue, not a policy one.

Also I'd stop using this "loyalties" word 'cos it doesn't mean anything and just confuses people. The story concept of laws is not trumped by some niche antag lore text. If anything, I think the situation where you scream "I'M SORRY WILSOOOOOON" at your valentine while they're being butchered and you can do nothing to stop it to be more dramatic and storyful.

By the way, if I seem really dedicated to die on this hill, it's because I think that if such a game feature is implemented in the future, or just happens because of something I don't know exists, i.e.: AI gets quasi-antag card that isn't rules 4 protected and can potentially go against their laws, etc. (like if an obsessed brain is turned into AI, dunno how that operates), it's important to have a baseline to follow.

That being said, foolish is the admin that future-proofs, methinks. I am being a fool. Take my foolishness with a grain of salt.

[Higgin]

The laws are supposed to be binding in-universe.

Love, except for four days a year, is unfortunately not.

If they're going to get a pass to play around and even outside the standard laws, they should get a law 0 saying "Love is the Law, Love under Will" for the duration of the event.

Otherwise just letting law violations through on a taste-by-case basis is a fairness issue and undermines the setting imo. If there's an interest there on the part of the silicon or their partner, no big deal to send a "Cupid's Ion Storm" through to help facilitate the story in a way that is still ultimately accessible to the players through the laws.

Silicons by design here are public property. Crew have claims over them, and they have massive power to satisfy those claims within their laws. That unfortunately makes the stakes of giving them any more freedom, even through the laws, taking that power over them away from somebody else.

I don't expect people would be happy with it even if AI's got a purge or law 0 to be good to their partners during Valentine's if it means the AI might not interrupt its date to open the door for you - but as long as the laws are there for it (or just gone,) I think they could deal for four days out of the year.

[Archie700]

We shouldn't make policy on this, valentines is such a small event and every admin disagrees with each other on what it should and shouldnt cover. Let it be rule zero land of having fun, doing good rp and making stories.

It would be better to make policy on a recurring four-day event rather than having it basically be a dice roll when admins can't agree on how the rule is supposed to go.

If we don't, then we're just kicking the can to the next year.

If you want to rule zero it, then fair. But there needs to be a standard to begin with.

[Constellado]

I personally think we should have this set in stone. For next year and future years. I personally want no ambiguity, as players will get a ruling from one admin, follow it, then get bwoinked by another saying the opposite. Even if it's for 4 or so says of the year.

A ruling here will solve that issue.

[TheRex9001]

I personally disagree with policy on this because regardless of anything this will still remain pure rule 0 for what feels and what doesnt feel good. Its 4 days of the year where no admin can nor will ever fully agree on what it means, codifying it opens players up to being punished over it which I fully disagree with. https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/81499 might also be relevant here.

[dendydoom]

my take on this in admin channels has been that it should take the same level as brainwashing in the directives order, since it is "above all other loyalties." say what you will about my perception of dating from this opinion.

i don't consider laws a loyalty. they are hard limitations on the boundaries of a silicon's behaviour.

HOWEVER, since it is a cute, small event that we only see once a year, i don't see why people cannot benefit from putting the effort into rping these alternative situations. rule 0 should be more lenient in these sorts of events when it's clear that players are trying to tell a story and have a good time that they've put effort into, rather than just playing validball or whatever.

what i mean by this is if the AI has gone through the effort to play with their date all round, nurture some kinda obvious IC bond between them however goofy it may be, then yeah, if that valentine's date is in danger, a cute story about an AI breaking their programming because true love conquers all is excellent and i think rule 0 was made for this.

but if someone is just leveraging their valentine's because technically it scores them valids when they kill them to "protect" their date, this is validball and on mrp i don't like to reward it when the alternative can be so much better.

DOUBLE HOWEVER, if the common melbert w pr gets merged then i don't have to care about any of this!

[carshalash]

Per valentine flavor text:



The question is, should protecting your valentine override AI laws to the point you can harm people while protecting your valentine?
And should it override loyalties to the point that you are deliberately keeping your valentine's safe from cultists or revs even if they are their target?
Noted that this does not include rule 0ing if the player asks first.

Works on you just before a meltdown.

Now who has a skill issue?


Melbertchan's PR will fix most of this thankfully.

[Archie700]

Since Melbert is going to codify this through a rework this discussion will be closed if Melbert's PR merges

[Vekter]

Since Melbert is going to codify this through a rework this discussion will be closed if Melbert's PR merges

It merges.

Ghommie merged 4 commits into tgstation:master from MrMelbert:vday_rework

[Archie700]

Since Melbert is going to codify this through a rework this discussion will be closed if Melbert's PR merges

It merges.

Ghommie merged 4 commits into tgstation:master from MrMelbert:vday_rework

So it has.

Closing because the issue is now irrelevant with the recode