/tg/Station 13

Borgs are not people. They are tools; part of the station used to make it run as efficiently as possible.

If a borg is following its laws and gets in its way of security, security should be within its right to stop the borg. This is the same as security breaking an airlock if it were stopping security doing their job.

And honestly fixing a borg is way easier than a carbon.

On top of all of that it's a bitch of a rule to admin. Let's get rid of it.


tl;dr Remove: "Don’t kill Asimov borgs for trying to stop harm, unless they are being excessively disruptive."

common admin l when they refuse to enforce basic rules

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:39 am If a borg is following its laws and gets in its way of security, security should be within its right to stop the borg. This is the same as security breaking an airlock if it were stopping security doing their job.

The rule doesn't say "security cannot stop cyborgs if they're interfering", it explicitly says "don't kill them", which as a cyborg player I can confirm there is nothing I hate more than seeing a seccie accidentally shoot a human, forcing me to get them to safety, only for the immediate reaction of the seccie to be to immediately phaser blast me, killing me in the process.
I love this rule for making this no longer a thing.

You can still flash cyborgs that get in the way, you can still tip them over, it's not like the only way to stop them is death.

TheSmallBlue wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 1:20 am

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:39 am If a borg is following its laws and gets in its way of security, security should be within its right to stop the borg. This is the same as security breaking an airlock if it were stopping security doing their job.

The rule doesn't say "security cannot stop cyborgs if they're interfering", it explicitly says "don't kill them", which as a cyborg player I can confirm there is nothing I hate more than seeing a seccie accidentally shoot a human, forcing me to get them to safety, only for the immediate reaction of the seccie to be to immediately phaser blast me, killing me in the process.
I love this rule for making this no longer a thing.

You can still flash cyborgs that get in the way, you can still tip them over, it's not like the only way to stop them is death.

I also play cyborg more than any other role.
Security may kill me in the process of me trying to protect a human.
I will let any human out of security if they ask.
Security and Silicions are not on the same team. It's weird we make security bow to the silicon team

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 1:25 am I also play cyborg more than any other role.
Security may kill me in the process of me trying to protect a human.
I will let any human out of security if they ask.
Security and Silicions are not on the same team. It's weird we make security bow to the silicon team

But security isn't "bowing down" to cyborgs, security can still get rid of cyborgs and has many means to do so, what that rules does is stop them short of murder

maybe replace "kill" here with "permanently remove?"

Killing things is the path of least resistance in most every case. And I generally do not like encouraging players in sensitive roles like security officer taking that path so easily, because there is another player potentially trying to play in good faith as their role on the other end. If borgs will just be shot dead if they interfere, then you are really just encouraging less interactions than more streamlined ones.

Silicons will come to learn that once someone is shuffled into security hands they can't effectively do anything about it and so it forces silicon to not oppose security unless they're willing to get wiped out for it. You either are creating a policy where silicons become another enemy on security's checklist of valids to kill, or you just really are arguing for noninterference under a different guise. Which is shit and I don't want security just going unopposed by any force in the round just because it is more convenient for, again, racking up valids.

I agree with oranges, this is lazy policy and placates only the most baseline of play styles.

TheSmallBlue wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 1:20 am

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:39 am If a borg is following its laws and gets in its way of security, security should be within its right to stop the borg. This is the same as security breaking an airlock if it were stopping security doing their job.

The rule doesn't say "security cannot stop cyborgs if they're interfering", it explicitly says "don't kill them", which as a cyborg player I can confirm there is nothing I hate more than seeing a seccie accidentally shoot a human, forcing me to get them to safety, only for the immediate reaction of the seccie to be to immediately phaser blast me, killing me in the process.
I love this rule for making this no longer a thing.

You can still flash cyborgs that get in the way, you can still tip them over, it's not like the only way to stop them is death.

Okay BUT.

It isn't very easy to keep a Borg down in practice, especially with the recent flash buffs. Not everyone will know that you can tip a cyborg, and it's not like security knows what your laws are at any given moment, especially since it's so easy to subvert silicon. On paper, the "don't kill a cyborg for following its laws" is all fine and dandy but in practice that isn't viable 100% of the time. This rule should be changed to protect officers who are acting in good faith with what information they have at the time rather than being a complete blanket policy.

Honestly I think it would be fine to change it to "If you have to kill a cyborg for trying to prevent human harm, you must make an effort to bring it to robotics for revival." Borgs are definitely a lot trickier to disable non-lethally after the flash nerf, and this change would make things a little bit easier for good-faith security players.

"Dont kill a cyborg for following its laws" is not the same as "Don't kill a cyborg unless its rogue". If you *gotta* kill a cyborg, you gotta. I'm sure we've all been there as seccies where we've mislaid our flashes and our flashbangs and forgot how to tip and the ion rifle is missing and we bullied the warden for a laser gun to kill cultists with, and in that kinda situation you gotta use the tools you have.

But "Sec can't kill the borgs for doing their job" is a VERY important corollary to the rulings on "The ai cant permanently bolt down the sec department the moment it spots them beating the mime", designed to stop the stupid fucking cycles of revenge over minor things that happened every goddamn time. Both of these are OOC, doesnt-make-IC-sense rulings based around the fact that both sides have players (presumably) doing their best in the situation behind them and trying to avoid either being unfairly punished for the conflict built into their roles.

i will prepend this uneducated opinion with the caveat that i don't play silicones very much, and silicon policy in general frightens me, stories of complex logical and ethical dilemmas for an AI to resolve under silicon policy were used to scare me and the other children into compliance while growing up in the isolated bavarian goat herding community i was mysteriously left in as an orphan.

how about amending this to "make a serious attempt to use non-lethal force before choosing to escalate" instead of "don't kill"?

my concern, again without much experience of this, is that there could be plenty of reasonable situations where sec don't know if a borg is motivated by just following their laws or not, and will shy away from any usage of force on borgs even when it's appropriate to the situation.

I think any attempt at nonlethal compliance is better than a binary of lethal/nonlethal. I'm personally not concerned with practicality with regards to policy; there are caveats you have to abide by for fairness sake and for the sake of maintaining your protections, not to make your job as a security officer easier. That's why you have the metaprotections you do.

Silicon players do not play in good faith enough to earn the lenience of tipping and not death in my experience. They will hold grudges and doorshock kill you later. It’s fine if you want to rigidly follow laws and try to stop me from arresting someone, and it can be just as okay to kill them in return. Silicon life is cheap, it’s arguably the only job we have that can respawn with the same name.

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 2:31 pm Silicon players do not play in good faith enough to earn the lenience of tipping and not death in my experience. They will hold grudges and doorshock kill you later. It’s fine if you want to rigidly follow laws and try to stop me from arresting someone, and it can be just as okay to kill them in return. Silicon life is cheap, it’s arguably the only job we have that can respawn with the same name.

They're not approaching the conflict in bad faith, you just can't fathom that shooting humans to death in front of every silicon on the station as a nonhuman is an immeasurably stupid thing to do. Why do you think the execution room is metaprotected from silicon knowledge? So you can quietly do your human harm without the silicons knowing. Out of sight and out of mind.

If you can't even be bothered to play out the conflict as intended, why the fuck are you playing security as a nonhuman?

NecromancerAnne wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:02 pm

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 2:31 pm Silicon players do not play in good faith enough to earn the lenience of tipping and not death in my experience. They will hold grudges and doorshock kill you later. It’s fine if you want to rigidly follow laws and try to stop me from arresting someone, and it can be just as okay to kill them in return. Silicon life is cheap, it’s arguably the only job we have that can respawn with the same name.

They're not approaching the conflict in bad faith, you just can't fathom that shooting humans to death in front of every silicon on the station as a nonhuman is an immeasurably stupid thing to do. Why do you think the execution room is metaprotected from silicon knowledge? So you can quietly do your human harm without the silicons knowing. Out of sight and out of mind.

If you can't even be bothered to play out the conflict as intended, why the fuck are you playing security as a nonhuman?

This isn’t how the conflict plays out. Either they screech that they are being killed and a Borg intervenes or they law 2 a borg while being dragged to the brig. Funnily enough Borgs rarely ever care if you laser down valids in a hallway

Edit: there is no “Intended” way to play out a conflict, this is a sandbox game.

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:19 pm This isn’t how the conflict plays out. Either they screech that they are being killed and a Borg intervenes

Skill issue, remove their headset before you execute them.

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:19 pm or they law 2 a borg while being dragged to the brig.

Skill issue, countermand their order. "Borg, I'm not harming them, I'm arresting them, do not intervene."

Vekter wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:32 pm

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:19 pm This isn’t how the conflict plays out. Either they screech that they are being killed and a Borg intervenes

Skill issue, remove their headset before you execute them.

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:19 pm or they law 2 a borg while being dragged to the brig.

Skill issue, countermand their order. "Borg, I'm not harming them, I'm arresting them, do not intervene."

Still not executing them btw, they can just yell they are being killed (even if it isn’t true). Also I can’t countermand them, once they get the order they have to follow it, I can’t law 2 them unless I’m human

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:35 pm

Vekter wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:32 pm

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:19 pm This isn’t how the conflict plays out. Either they screech that they are being killed and a Borg intervenes

Skill issue, remove their headset before you execute them.

britgrenadier1 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 3:19 pm or they law 2 a borg while being dragged to the brig.

Skill issue, countermand their order. "Borg, I'm not harming them, I'm arresting them, do not intervene."

Still not executing them btw, they can just yell they are being killed (even if it isn’t true). Also I can’t countermand them, once they get the order they have to follow it, I can’t law 2 them unless I’m human

They can yell they're being killed, but the cyborg can't intervene unless they know human harm is happening. If a cyborg is running in the moment they hear someone is being harmed and starts stunning everyone without any actual proof that it's happening (especially if others are telling them it's not), admins should probably get involved.

Additionally, players aren't technically supposed to be using silicons to get out of security situations like that IIRC.

Borgs are cheap and security should be able to smash them and brig their bodies. Maybe they should have a duty to repair the borgs eventually but when they act annoying and adversarial for no reason other than to bait conflict, they honestly deserve to do 10 minutes in the sin bin like the other tiders. Besides it's nearly impossible to tell when a borg is rogue because 95% of rogue borgs are just shadowing some dude and opening doors for criminals, which is indistinguishible from their regular play except for by asking the AI to let you into their upload and then trusting them on faith not to bolt the door and laser you to death while you're looking at the law console with a giant 'KICK ME' sign on your back(ISHYGDDT).

TheSmallBlue wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 1:20 am as a cyborg player I can confirm there is nothing I hate more than seeing a seccie accidentally shoot a human, forcing me to get them to safety, only for the immediate reaction of the seccie to be to immediately phaser blast me, killing me in the process.

Like this, this is annoying. You're not "forced" to get involved at all. Silicon players are allowed to have a sense of perspective and restraint. There is nothing in asimov or silicon policy that states you cannot talk it out with the security officer, overlook it as an accident, issue a citation (v funny and the option i'd pick), bother the lawyer, agree to a punishment with the security officer, ask for a bribe, or whatever. You freely chose an extreme interpretation of your laws to start a police chase, and they rightfully kicked your ass. I would have also kicked your ass. You deserve to go to space jail.

If you were a roomba in real life, I were a security guard who just shot someone (it happens), and you started wheeling off the guy I shot and trying to close the doors on me I'd shoot you dead. I would assume you were a villain roomba.

DaBoss wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 8:20 pm roomba.

This is excatly true. You're playing a space roomba. No one forced you to do this, you're welcome to play a human who has real rights. but you don't deserve any more rights than a table does.

Drag wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:41 pm It isn't very easy to keep a Borg down in practice, especially with the recent flash buffs. Not everyone will know that you can tip a cyborg, and it's not like security knows what your laws are at any given moment, especially since it's so easy to subvert silicon. On paper, the "don't kill a cyborg for following its laws" is all fine and dandy but in practice that isn't viable 100% of the time. This rule should be changed to protect officers who are acting in good faith with what information they have at the time rather than being a complete blanket policy.

I feel that this is less of a rule problem and more of a mechanics problem. Security officers SHOULD have the upper hand over cyborgs, DEATH, however, should not be that upper hand. Dying is not fun. There's a reason why escalation policy is there, there's a reason why players get punished for immediately killing people if they've inconvinienced them. I don't think it's fair to give an exception to security in regards to cyborgs when it comes to this.

DaBoss wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 8:20 pm Like this, this is annoying. You're not "forced" to get involved at all. Silicon players are allowed to have a sense of perspective and restraint.

Very fair, honestly. I feel that, at least in Manuel, sillicon players are taught (by other experienced sillicon players) that the only way to stop harm is to drag the victim to yourself and book it.

When you are security cyborgs are really fucking hard to deal with. If a borg is being really annoying I do end up killing it regardless just because there's nothing else I can really do. Even if I spam flash it my flash runs out eventually and it means I cannot focus on the prisoner or threat or w/e.

DaBoss wrote: ↑Thu Feb 29, 2024 8:20 pm
Like this, this is annoying. You're not "forced" to get involved at all. Silicon players are allowed to have a sense of perspective and restraint. There is nothing in asimov or silicon policy that states you cannot talk it out with the security officer, overlook it as an accident, issue a citation (v funny and the option i'd pick), bother the lawyer, agree to a punishment with the security officer, ask for a bribe, or whatever. You freely chose an extreme interpretation of your laws to start a police chase, and they rightfully kicked your ass. I would have also kicked your ass. You deserve to go to space jail.

Man, theres a certain kind of sec main who really cant help but reveal their complete lack of empathy and/or game knowledge beyond unga click man at every stage, can they?

"Why can't the machine whose job is to stop me hurting people just break its laws and help me get the valids ugh theyre such assholes its like they have some built in unquestionable demand to A) not let me hurt humans and B) do what humans tell them to. Theyre being so extreme and unreasonable by not picking the law interpretation of 'let sec do whatever they want because they're shitters who will kill me and flame me on the forums when they get banned for it', you know?"

If your best argument is "Silicon policy doesn't technically say borgs have to follow their laws" then your arguments are shit.

The weird thing about the quotes there is that one of the quotes was in quote tags and it was something I'd written, but the other one was in quote marks and it wasn't something I'd written. And then both get attributed to me? Very odd! It distracted me so much I didn't read the rest of the post to find your point sorry.

bro you literally suggested that silicons should ask for a bribe to look the other way on human harm as one of your examples and then suggested that stopping human harm was "extreme interpretation of [their] laws"

Sec should be allowed to disable and then break borgs if they keep at it, but should be expected to bring them back to robotics to be revived.

I dislike this idea. Silicons aren't airlocks, they are players, and their enjoyment should be considered. Also, I think this change sort of violates the heart of the security/silicon dynamic.

That is, harm-happy officers are more likely to run into trouble with silicons. If we then enable said officers to just kill borgs that are following their laws, then what exactly is the deterrent against that sort of playstyle? Ultimately I think the whole BENEFIT of the dynamic is that it encourages security to find nonharmful ways of dealing with criminals (at least where the AI can see them :^)).

Also it's worth saying that officers have sufficient tools to deal with silicons until they eventually cross the "excessively disruptive" line. Like, you have a flash and flashbang - if the human in question is an existential threat, just kill them while the borg is incapacitated from one of those options. Otherwise, get them to brig and demonstrate you are not harming them. Etc etc, there's plenty of ways to work around borgs.

wesoda25 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 04, 2024 3:44 pm Like, you have a flash and flashbang - if the human in question is an existential threat, just kill them while the borg is incapacitated from one of those options.

Yeah, if you aren't playing a nonhuman you can just... kill the baddie while its stunned then apologise profusely and promise the silicons you wont do it again. 9 times out of 10 they'll accept the apology (if the borg doesn't, try again with their AI) and even if they don't they're mostly limited to being passive aggressive at you.

WineAllWine wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 12:39 am Borgs are not people. They are tools; part of the station used to make it run as efficiently as possible.

If a borg is following its laws and gets in its way of security, security should be within its right to stop the borg. This is the same as security breaking an airlock if it were stopping security doing their job.

Airlocks can be restored with an RCD and 3 clicks.

Comparing players to inanimate objects is weird, don't do that.

I play a lot of both Silicon and Security. I think this ruling is important to keep for silicon players.

I have been on both sides of this quite a few times. I can honestly say that its very rare for it to be a borg player issue rather than a security skill issue when a borg takes off with a prisoner.

First of all here is a headmin ruling from silicon policy.

"If a nonharmful prisoner asks to be released, it can be released. If a harmful one asks to be released, don't release him unless security is harming him. in all cases release prisoners being harmed by security. (assuming all prisoners are human and you are asimov)" If sec harms a human in their custody and the ai/a borg sees it they are 100% OBLIGATED to save them.

There are many "you can's" in silicon policy. "YOU CAN do this or deny this due to X" . In my experience , there is a mentality that if the ai and borgs have decided to mess with you its because they are going out of their way to. Which is what I think causes most of the conflicts between the ai and command/sec. This is one of those situations that doesn't involve a "you can". It is very clear that you MUST rescue humans in security's custody if you see sec harming them.

One of the major points brought up that I agree with is that you need to ask the borg to state laws to know if they are rogue or just following asimov.
Chances are if that borg is carting off a human from security they wont stop to state laws for them until the human is safe. The only other on the spot option you have is asking the ai to state laws and if the borg is synched. At that point Sec has done its due diligence. This is part of the frustration for sec because this is where the bad faith silicon players have alot of leeway in messing with sec. Its EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING to finally nab a villain thats killed half a dozen humans only for a borg to free them due to one of your fellow officers or yourself having harmed a human one time earlier in the shift. Actual feelings of rage build up when a silicon starts carting off somebody whos been oh so smugly crying HUMAN HARM to the borg following you to the brig despite it not being the case.

Silicon players tend to over look this line in silicon policy 'In case of conflicting orders a silicon is free to ignore or complete any orders but must explain the conflict , or use any other law-compliant solution it can see."
Usually its fair. It would be silly to stop in the middle of excavating a human from harm to explain why you are doing it. But it IS there for a reason. If the borg isn't following law 2 orders then you can only assume its either rogue or invoking law 1 and if it doesn't explain to you why its not following law 2 orders its EASY to assume its rogue.

Conflict between Silicon and Sec is inevitable. This rule is important to keep because it can very frustrating for sec even when Silicons are playing in good faith. The temptation to just call borgs rogue and start blasting is EVER PRESENT.

Silicons are unfortunately very very VERY hard to stop nonlethally, and in doing so can open the officer up to eating shit to the person the silicon is intervening on the behalf of, or potentially even the borg critting or killing the officer if they aren't human. I thankfully play as a human, and at least try to tell a borg to not intervene but if it doesn't listen to orders or is on a lawset specifically made to fuck me I am absolutely going to kill the fuck out of it and drag it to robotics later. I'd do the same shit to a human I couldn't stun and drag them to medical later.

Tipping a Borg is a good way to stop a Borg messing with an arrest.

The issue is I constantly forget how to tip a Borg, heck, even 5 minutes after learning how to do it. How can we expect people to do it? Flashes don't work as well as they used to, so that is less of an option now.

Most sec on Manuel deal with Borgs by either:
Not using lethals. It works guys.
Or telling the Borg to go somewhere else before doing an arrest. (If the borg doesn't know it's going to happen but the sec does)

I think it's a code issue not a policy issue.

I'd say EMPs still work wonders at stunning Borgs.

Wait what, when the hell was this policy put in?

The WHOLE POINT of the silicon faction is to be the 3rd faction between crew and security, and to help create interesting conflicts with security induced by their lawset, this has been a central theme in a million previous silicon policy discussions. Remove this ridiculous rule immediately!

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 8:22 am Wait what, when the hell was this policy put in?

The WHOLE POINT of the silicon faction is to be the 3rd faction between crew and security, and to help create interesting conflicts with security induced by their lawset, this has been a central theme in a million previous silicon policy discussions. Remove this ridiculous rule immediately!

This rule has existed in various forms for about twice as long as you've been playing on the server. The rule exists so that you can have interesting conflicts, since otherwise sec just immediately flash and kill/perma lockdown any cyborgs who cross them and the AI bolts the entire brig down in response. Why is it surprising that the station faction that responds with immediate overwhelming force to all challenges to its authority needs to be told not to do that to the silicons, who by design are intended to challenge its authority?

Not-Dorsidarf wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 12:04 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 8:22 am Wait what, when the hell was this policy put in?

The WHOLE POINT of the silicon faction is to be the 3rd faction between crew and security, and to help create interesting conflicts with security induced by their lawset, this has been a central theme in a million previous silicon policy discussions. Remove this ridiculous rule immediately!

This rule has existed in various forms for about twice as long as you've been playing on the server. The rule exists so that you can have interesting conflicts, since otherwise sec just immediately flash and kill/perma lockdown any cyborgs who cross them and the AI bolts the entire brig down in response. Why is it surprising that the station faction that responds with immediate overwhelming force to all challenges to its authority needs to be told not to do that to the silicons, who by design are intended to challenge its authority?

Ah okay, makes sense, thought this was a recent thing. My bad for butting in dumbly on this one, carry on.

This ruling is one that encourages interactions is a fun way. Instead of every single instance of sec and Borg conflict resulting in murder, both sides are somewhat limited in how they can approach the other, which in turn actually creates far more options for both.

In a hypothetical scenario where a security officer intends to harm a human and there is a Borg nearby, he cannot just kill them with a flash and laser gun, he has to come up with a roleplay reason for the Borg to be elsewhere, he has to find a creative way to harm this human instead of just being allowed to kill them both.

Just justify your actions, that's all that we require here.

The goal of the ruling (from what I understand) is just not to kill borgs for no reason.

If the borg is stealing some assistant you tried to bully it's different to if they're stealing the mass murdering desworder ling guy and that's the distinction you need make.

Think of it like some kind of er, escalation where they need to cross certain thresholds before you can take them out. (After which you need to get them revived)