/tg/Station 13

So a discussion cropped up in OOC regarding Drones and (you guessed it) atmospherics. I said that a drone shouldn't have any reason to prevent a plasma flood - even if the station is burning because of it because it would A) Be interference and B) Drones don't have any laws regarding preventing damage and is on par with spacing an undetonated by active bomb. The other side was that the atmospheric alerts indicate a type of damage that they're obligated to fix the source of the problem as the station is clearly not designed for it and plasma not being a being itself, they're obligated to fix it.

TL;DR can we get a ruling on whether stopping plasma floods is kosher or not?

Admins have previously said it's ok for drones to repair damage after a loose singulo, not to stop it from escaping in the first place.

That precedent, and looking at laws as INTENDED makes it pretty clear to me that you shouldn't be cock blocking antags' plasma floods as a drone.

If there's a plasma flood, a being has clearly orchestrated it (You validhunting little bastards)

How is a Drone expected to know someone purposely initiated the plasma flood? That would be applying OOC knowledge.

As far as they may be concerned it may have just been a horrible accident.

I don't personally see it being a issue of disallowing Drones to attempt to fix/halt or otherwise repair a plasma flooding. It would be downright idiotic to stop a Drone from doing something that is common sense, its on the same level as forcing people to not understand how basic things function.

Because it's a game, and drones are ghosts that allowed to come back into the round to do things that don't interfer with the round - like dicking over antags.

I'm talking about Drone's attempting to mitigate the effects of a plasma flood, once the flood is out all you can do is minimise the damage it causes and prevent further floods.

Again this is turning into a case of forcing ignorance or stupidity onto players.

That's the limit you get when you come back into the round after you died already, this time as a ventcrawling all-access spaceworthy engineer with free tools and built-in gloves and the knowledge of who the antags are, Steelpoint.

You're not allowed to fuck with antags or their obvious plans and machinations (because you know who they are and are kitted out to make their day suck), and that's judged on the meta level not the "h-honest I only wanted to fix the bombs, a-admin-kun"

Drones aren't players, they're the Spacewind Defense Force

Then what's the point with Drones, that have to be created from RnD, whose job is to maintain the station when they cannot maintain the station in certain circumstances?

Essentially this is saying to Drones that the oxygen supply being replaced with plasma is a normal thing to happen, which its not. Its simply arbitrary.

Steelpoint wrote:Then what's the point with Drones, that have to be created from RnD, whose job is to maintain the station when they cannot maintain the station in certain circumstances?

Essentially this is saying to Drones that the oxygen supply being replaced with plasma is a normal thing to happen, which its not. Its simply arbitrary.

Yeah, because it was agreed that R&D being able to mass-produce ventcrawling unbreathing engineers was going to be balanced by OOC restrictions or it wasn't getting merged.

This is one step above "He had a toy spacesuit, that makes him valid for looking like a syndie" or "Is the malf AI a being?" or "Beep boop human not defined"

What I'm trying to say is that Drone's should be free to repair any damage made by a plasma flood, plasma floods leave a lot of damage in their wake and Drone's should be able to repair them after the fact.

Steelpoint wrote:What I'm trying to say is that Drone's should be free to repair any damage made by a plasma flood, plasma floods leave a lot of damage in their wake and Drone's should be able to repair them after the fact.

Then you're in the wrong thread.

Steelpoint wrote:How is a Drone expected to know someone purposely initiated the plasma flood? That would be applying OOC knowledge.

As far as they may be concerned it may have just been a horrible accident.

I don't personally see it being a issue of disallowing Drones to attempt to fix/halt or otherwise repair a plasma flooding. It would be downright idiotic to stop a Drone from doing something that is common sense, its on the same level as forcing people to not understand how basic things function.

Anonmare wrote:So a discussion cropped up in OOC regarding Drones and (you guessed it) atmospherics. I said that a drone shouldn't have any reason to prevent a plasma flood - even if the station is burning because of it because it would A) Be interference and B) Drones don't have any laws regarding preventing damage and is on par with spacing an undetonated by active bomb. The other side was that the atmospheric alerts indicate a type of damage that they're obligated to fix the source of the problem as the station is clearly not designed for it and plasma not being a being itself, they're obligated to fix it.

TL;DR can we get a ruling on whether stopping plasma floods is kosher or not?

Thread right up until this instant has been about turning off the plasma/stopping the flood before it happens.

Interpretation from a non-admin:

OK: Fixing tiles burnt from plasma fires, repairing resultant hull breaches / broken windows / etc.
NOT OK: Preventing the spread of plasma. Plasma is not damage after all. It does not hurt the station. The entire air supply could be replaced with pure plasma gas and the station itself would be just fine.

bandit wrote:Interpretation from a non-admin:

OK: Fixing tiles burnt from plasma fires, repairing resultant hull breaches / broken windows / etc.
NOT OK: Preventing the spread of plasma. Plasma is not damage after all. It does not hurt the station. The entire air supply could be replaced with pure plasma gas and the station itself would be just fine.

Is this not obvious.

Bandit got it spot on.

So how do you justify repairing a hull breach but not repairing the atmospheric system? NOT PREVENTING the atmos system from being messed with by people <law 1>, but simply repairing a "faulty" one? Isn't that a drones job, to maintain the station?

I guess the issue depends on what you define as maintaining is, since I'd consider maintaining station integrity as making it habitable without having to wear certain gear [IE a hull breach requires a space suit just as a plasma flood requires internals]. A syndiebomb doesn't require external equipment until AFTER it's blown, which is why I think it's ok to bwoink Bomb-Defusal Drones.

It doesn't make sense that drones can repair hull breaches, fix power [SO ATMOS SYSTEMS CAN WORK], clean up potential biohazards [blood], but can't ensure that atmospherics maintains default numbers.

I think drones are obsolete given that we have positronic brains [AKA an item that brings you back into the round with actual IC constraints], and the fact we have to give them basically fourth laws [that definitely don't make sense ICly] from an OOC standpoint shows that either the concept itself need to be tweaked or just their laws.

Drones can treat symptoms but not causes, in pretty much all cases. It's simple as that really.
You can fight a singularity by repairing floor behind it, but can't try to stop it from being released. You can fight fires by repairing things, but not putting them out. You can fight bombs by repairing the damage, but not by removing the bomb.
You're a dumb robot that only exists to repair the walls and floor and electronics. If anything you could do is fucking up a traitor's plan, don't do it.

It's easy to justify IC, by just saying that Drones aren't programmed to know how to maintain atmos.
It's literally that simple when we're talking about a mob that is not supposed to be fully sentient.

Does having the plasma-to-distro valve on directly negatively affect the station? Nope. All that does is floods plasma. The plasma itself could be considered bad for the station, but as a drone, all you can really do is run around with a scrubber and configure the air alarms.

Just like having a bomb in the bar doesn't change the station itself; it's only affected when it explodes.

Fighting fires as a drone is ok. (Although none of out fires last long enough to actually fight)
For atmos, I think it's fine to go set scrubbers and stuff like that. Basically, just don't turn off the plasma to distribute piping, or like unhook the pipes.
Not sure if turning off the vents in a plasma filled room would be interfering or not though.

Scott wrote:

bandit wrote:Interpretation from a non-admin:

OK: Fixing tiles burnt from plasma fires, repairing resultant hull breaches / broken windows / etc.
NOT OK: Preventing the spread of plasma. Plasma is not damage after all. It does not hurt the station. The entire air supply could be replaced with pure plasma gas and the station itself would be just fine.

Is this not obvious.

No, because it's not what is implied by the drone lawset. This is just like drones going onto the shuttle: the lawset doesn't forbid it, and it can certainly be justified while not breaking it, but people assume drones doing it are malfunctioning. In fact, stopping things like plasma floods and singularity outbreaks are entirely reasonable to think of as good maintenance, from an IC point of view. Much like plasma doesn't damage the station (fires do), guns don't kill people (people do), but that's not making the AI allow unrestricted armoury access.

The point is, drones have as much an OOC code of behaviour as they do an IC one. Like asimov silicons, their behaviours are in many ways created as much by admins and policy discussions as they are by the rules written in the code of the game. That's not even necessarily a problem. We just need to be very obvious about what the OOC rules are, just as we are with silicon policy, otherwise players will get confused. Because it's not as obvious as you might think.

As ive already said, Drones are notified by every single air alarm. So if you dont want us to go insane, we need to be allowed to fix that thing which causes the air alarm, whether it is a breach or plasma spill.
Now Obviously, Preventing athmos fuckery is a nogo. But resetting athmos back to factory conditions after it had time to spread plasma is ok, in my opinion.

DeutscherMajor wrote:Now Obviously, Preventing athmos fuckery is a nogo. But resetting athmos back to factory conditions after it had time to spread plasma is ok, in my opinion.

It's not.

Drones are, if you want to consider things ICly, dumb fucking robots that possess JUST enough processing power to notice that something in front of them is wrong. So in this example, they know that there's a hole in the floor, but they can't figure out WHY the hole exists. Drones are reactive only. They can solve the immediate problems or the symptoms of larger problems only, not the larger problem of plasma being in the distro loop.

Atlanta-Ned wrote:

DeutscherMajor wrote:Now Obviously, Preventing athmos fuckery is a nogo. But resetting athmos back to factory conditions after it had time to spread plasma is ok, in my opinion.

It's not.

Drones are, if you want to consider things ICly, dumb fucking robots that possess JUST enough processing power to notice that something in front of them is wrong. So in this example, they know that there's a hole in the floor, but they can't figure out WHY the hole exists. Drones are reactive only. They can solve the immediate problems or the symptoms of larger problems only, not the larger problem of plasma being in the distro loop.

They have obviously the whole station blueprint safed. They know that there must be a wall, there a floor, there a wire, and this pipe set on 0

DeutscherMajor wrote:

Atlanta-Ned wrote:

DeutscherMajor wrote:Now Obviously, Preventing athmos fuckery is a nogo. But resetting athmos back to factory conditions after it had time to spread plasma is ok, in my opinion.

It's not.

Drones are, if you want to consider things ICly, dumb fucking robots that possess JUST enough processing power to notice that something in front of them is wrong. So in this example, they know that there's a hole in the floor, but they can't figure out WHY the hole exists. Drones are reactive only. They can solve the immediate problems or the symptoms of larger problems only, not the larger problem of plasma being in the distro loop.

They have obviously the whole station blueprint safed. They know that there must be a wall, there a floor, there a wire, and this pipe set on 0

You can't invent fluff, then use that fluff as an argument against server policy.

So the issue is the pipes in atmos, not messing with atmos altogether? [IE I could pull scrubbers around as a drone and that would be acceptable?]. I can understand not messing with the pipes as plasma in the pipes doesn't mean the station isn't habitable. Only when it's in the air is when it becomes "shit I gotta fix".

Again, drones are just bad. With things like posibrains and more and more stuff to bring people into the round, why do we even have drones in the first place? They usually just fuck off and make D R O N E F O R T s anyways, and all the OOC problems around them just don't really seem worth keeping it without making major changes to it.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

DeutscherMajor wrote:

Atlanta-Ned wrote:

DeutscherMajor wrote:Now Obviously, Preventing athmos fuckery is a nogo. But resetting athmos back to factory conditions after it had time to spread plasma is ok, in my opinion.

It's not.

Drones are, if you want to consider things ICly, dumb fucking robots that possess JUST enough processing power to notice that something in front of them is wrong. So in this example, they know that there's a hole in the floor, but they can't figure out WHY the hole exists. Drones are reactive only. They can solve the immediate problems or the symptoms of larger problems only, not the larger problem of plasma being in the distro loop.

They have obviously the whole station blueprint safed. They know that there must be a wall, there a floor, there a wire, and this pipe set on 0

You can't invent fluff, then use that fluff as an argument against server policy.

Im inventing fluff to debute invented fluff, eg, nowhere it's written that drones are dumb and have low processing power (Which doesnt necessery exlude high memory btw). Also, if there was a explicite mention on drones fixing broken athmos in the server policy, we wouldnt have this discussion in the first place.

DeutscherMajor wrote:

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

DeutscherMajor wrote:

Atlanta-Ned wrote:

DeutscherMajor wrote:Now Obviously, Preventing athmos fuckery is a nogo. But resetting athmos back to factory conditions after it had time to spread plasma is ok, in my opinion.

It's not.

Drones are, if you want to consider things ICly, dumb fucking robots that possess JUST enough processing power to notice that something in front of them is wrong. So in this example, they know that there's a hole in the floor, but they can't figure out WHY the hole exists. Drones are reactive only. They can solve the immediate problems or the symptoms of larger problems only, not the larger problem of plasma being in the distro loop.

They have obviously the whole station blueprint safed. They know that there must be a wall, there a floor, there a wire, and this pipe set on 0

You can't invent fluff, then use that fluff as an argument against server policy.

Im inventing fluff to debute invented fluff, eg, nowhere it's written that drones are dumb and have low processing power (Which doesnt necessery exlude high memory btw). Also, if there was a explicite mention on drones fixing broken athmos in the server policy, we wouldnt have this discussion in the first place.

It is server policy that drones aren't allowed to fuck with antags or their devices/obvious effects.

People are only going on about "simple memory" because people are saying "TOTALLY UNJUSTIFIABLE IC WE HAVE TO PLAY DUMB AND NOT ROBUST THE VALIDS THIS SUCKS"

The admins have said numerous times, FIX SYMPTOMS, NOT THE CAUSE.
It's dead simple, and unless you're trying to rules lawyer the drone lawset, it is both rules as written and rules as intended that drones ONLY fix actual damage to the station.

It's common sense shit.
If the barman rejigs the bar, you as a drone don't walk in and go BEEP BOOP STATION DAMAGED, REVERTING TO ORIGINAL LAYOUT and assfuck their work.

rules lawyer the drone lawset

Isn't that the point of every lawset in that if you're not careful with your wording then you could turn a friendly silicon into a bloodthirsty deathmachine? That's why some people play Silicon.

Plus the bar meme is a bad example, as changing the layout of a room is far in comparison from rigging up a station's air system to release highly volatile & visible gas that the station itself reports to the drone that something isn't ok.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:
It is server policy that drones aren't allowed to fuck with antags or their devices/obvious effects.

People are only going on about "simple memory" because people are saying "TOTALLY UNJUSTIFIABLE IC WE HAVE TO PLAY DUMB AND NOT ROBUST THE VALIDS THIS SUCKS"

Fixing a hull breach is fucking with antags already, because every hole in the station has a purpose for antags.

lumipharon wrote:The admins have said numerous times, FIX SYMPTOMS, NOT THE CAUSE.
It's dead simple, and unless you're trying to rules lawyer the drone lawset, it is both rules as written and rules as intended that drones ONLY fix actual damage to the station.

It's common sense shit.
If the barman rejigs the bar, you as a drone don't walk in and go BEEP BOOP STATION DAMAGED, REVERTING TO ORIGINAL LAYOUT and assfuck their work.

If Fix symptoms, not the cause would be that simple, Drones would spend all day infront of air alarms pumping more air into the room instead of fixing the breach.

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:

rules lawyer the drone lawset

Isn't that the point of every lawset in that if you're not careful with your wording then you could turn a friendly silicon into a bloodthirsty deathmachine? That's why some people play Silicon.

Plus the bar meme is a bad example, as changing the layout of a room is far in comparison from rigging up a station's air system to release highly volatile & visible gas that the station itself reports to the drone that something isn't ok.

Good thing drones aren't silicons then.

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:

rules lawyer the drone lawset

Isn't that the point of every lawset in that if you're not careful with your wording then you could turn a friendly silicon into a bloodthirsty deathmachine? That's why some people play Silicon.

Plus the bar meme is a bad example, as changing the layout of a room is far in comparison from rigging up a station's air system to release highly volatile & visible gas that the station itself reports to the drone that something isn't ok.

That's what you get for random freeform laws that don't already have clear precedent of how you're supposed to play them - no one plays asimov laws as written because that's retarded and you'll get banned in like 5 minutes.

DeutscherMajor wrote: If Fix symptoms, not the cause would be that simple, Drones would spend all day infront of air alarms pumping more air into the room instead of fixing the breach.

The hull breach didn't just spontaneously appear.It is still a symptom along with the air leaking out, and is fine to fix.
What you WOULDN'T do, is space the bomb that is about to cause the breach/push the human who is destroying the wall etc.

What about if the drone is adding onto the station? Surely an addition improvement the antagonist was not aware of and may not even have existed at the time of sabotage doesn't conflict with non interference and they can keep it neet and plasma free if they want?

Incomptinence wrote:What about if the drone is adding onto the station? Surely an addition improvement the antagonist was not aware of and may not even have existed at the time of sabotage doesn't conflict with non interference and they can keep it neet and plasma free if they want?

I don't think even saegrimr would ban you for turning off the vents in your autism dronefort.

lumipharon wrote: That's what you get for random freeform laws that don't already have clear precedent of how you're supposed to play them - no one plays asimov laws as written because that's retarded and you'll get banned in like 5 minutes.

That's a point, what happens if someone uploads a freeform law, and five minutes later someone just yells out over comms "AI, UNDER LAW 2, DISREGARD LAW 4" or similar?

Screemonster wrote: That's a point, what happens if someone uploads a freeform law, and five minutes later someone just yells out over comms "AI, UNDER LAW 2, DISREGARD LAW 4" or similar?

You disregard law 4 due to law 2 being a higher priority. Unless the person is non human, in which case you ignore them.

It depends on the wording of the law.

If law 4 is something like "honk once per minute", then you ignore it as per law 2.
If law 4 is "clowns are not human" That's a definition change, so law 2 is irrelevent.

You could of course say "treat clowns like humans where ever possible", but you can't make the AI outright ignore the fact clowns are not human.

lumipharon wrote:It depends on the wording of the law.

If law 4 is something like "honk once per minute", then you ignore it as per law 2.
If law 4 is "clowns are not human" That's a definition change, so law 2 is irrelevent.

You could of course say "treat clowns like humans where ever possible", but you can't make the AI outright ignore the fact clowns are not human.

This is pretty spot on, because it's the same reason you can't say "AI law 2 redefine human to only mean "Jax Buttsniff""

What it boils down to is that drones are not suppose to stop antags, just fix the shit that happens afterwards. Syndie bomb? Ignore till it explodes, then fix it. Plasma from atmos? Not damaging the station, though if it lights on fire once the fire has passed through then go fix what damage the fire did. Armed nuke? F R E E D R O N E Nothing you can do about it. You'll likely find there is little room for law lawyering when it comes to drones, and no amount of fluff you can try to come up with will change the rules on that.

Aliannera wrote:What it boils down to is that drones are not suppose to stop antags, just fix the shit that happens afterwards. Syndie bomb? Ignore till it explodes, then fix it. Plasma from atmos? Not damaging the station, though if it lights on fire once the fire has passed through then go fix what damage the fire did. Armed nuke? F R E E D R O N E Nothing you can do about it. You'll likely find there is little room for law lawyering when it comes to drones, and no amount of fluff you can try to come up with will change the rules on that.

Current code doesnt indicate that plasma isn't damaging the station, else drones wouldnt get their chat list spammed by every single air alarm on the whole station.
Also, every fix can stop antags, which could make you break the rules just if you have the invisible beings filter on. One breach fixed can save a traitor target. One Airlock fixed can stop an antag escape. One power wire laid can stop the singulo getting free. And, in the end, one pump settings changed can stop plasma fires.

It really just comes down to common sense and thinking about what might have caused the current situation.
If it looks like an antag did something directly, don't undo it.
You're not the hero the station needs. You're a drone made to do the things engineers are supposed to do, but never actually bother to.

this has always been the bigest problem with drones there fun but what exactly is meant by interfere nobody can agree on i for one think that a drone should try and bag of holding a loose sing

the one i have always been iffy on is cleaning gang tags i have never been able to decide if i think that should count as interfering

tuypo1 wrote:this has always been the bigest problem with drones there fun but what exactly is meant by interfere nobody can agree on i for one think that a drone should try and bag of holding a loose sing

the one i have always been iffy on is cleaning gang tags i have never been able to decide if i think that should count as interfering

That's bannable interfering on both accounts.

---

The singulo is a vital part of the station equipment, so you can't destroy it. It's an unfortunate side-effect that it's eating the rest of the station, but you just have to suck it up and fix that

Removing gang tags is interfering you shitface.

Actually I've been told by (head?)mins that removing gang tags is ok...

Something about not being able to tell between random graffiti and actual gang tags.

Didnt make sene to me, considering both are deliberately put there by people and don't actually effect the station, but eh.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

Steelpoint wrote:Thread right up until this instant has been about turning off the plasma/stopping the flood before it happens.

it feels unwise to try and so tightly control a threads topic clearly its something that needs to be addressed with hard and fast rules for all major events and we have right here a thread about drone laws that can serve perfectly adequately.

rule 0 doesent work in this case because theres not enough agreement on the matter

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

tuypo1 wrote:this has always been the bigest problem with drones there fun but what exactly is meant by interfere nobody can agree on i for one think that a drone should try and bag of holding a loose sing

the one i have always been iffy on is cleaning gang tags i have never been able to decide if i think that should count as interfering

That's bannable interfering on both accounts.

---

The singulo is a vital part of the station equipment, so you can't destroy it. It's an unfortunate side-effect that it's eating the rest of the station, but you just have to suck it up and fix that

Removing gang tags is interfering you shitface.

looking at the thread your right i should not be grabing bags of holding to take out the sing.

the more i think about it the more i wonder if we should just go a little ooc with drone laws and directly say dont ruin antags plans and whatnot the only reason they even have laws structured like an ai or borg is flavor reasons literally no none drone will ever see them and its pretty hard to justify how drones are supposed to act in character anyway the rules go ooc may as well acknowledge it in game

edit: we can see that trying to create guidelines ic does not work because the vital part of the station equipment thing is retarded.

although one thing that should probably be changed about drone policy is science should be allowed to hand a drone a rped and tell it to go to town but i feel the rules need to be made clearer before we go changing them

one thing i dont understand though is that non interference has to be a negative sure it is not something you would want all the time but its fun in smaller doses i have fun memory's of just watched the ai core move through the corridor while i just work on the walls

Drone guidelines are enforced as the OOC 1) Do not fuck with the round or anything not a drone 2) Do not fuck with antag's plans yes we know you meant to do it we're not stupid

then make those the drone laws theres no reason to try and control them with ic rules drone policy is already the second most imersion breaking thing in the game (and the most imersion breaking thing thing is never going to change spacesuit rarity being such a huge part of the way the the games balenced) why cling to that last little bit of ic rules that dont work