Cloning backups and memories after scan.

[Xerux]

Bottom post of the previous page:

This came up in a ban request.

> English, unfortunately, had a clone backup, and immediately called for my head, and that he was an innocent. <
This is meta knowledge from after death. His clone back up should have no idea what happened to the original body. When you are scanned, you only have information from the time before the scan, not after.
As an example : If you are scanned at minute 1, and die at hour mark 2, you only retain the memories of what happened right as the scan hit . Meaning you don't know what you did, you don't know who did what if you are restored in this fashion later in the game.

And I was curious about it. In all the time I've played here I've never heard of this rule or anyone getting in trouble because of it. (It also seems pretty difficult to enforce.) Every time I've seen someone cloned from an earlier backup or after it was introduced, the autocloner, they've remembered who killed them.

[Alex Crimson]

What about:

Scanned from corpse - you remember the killer and everything else.

Scanned from backup - remember non-crucial things like if some place has a breach or something, but don't remember specifically: where your corpse is and who murdered you.

Honestly i think the "scanned from backup" suggestion would fit fine for both scenarios. No matter how you are cloned, you are allowed to resume your previous character adventure, but not allowed to act on any information regarding the events of your death. Lore-wise you can just say its from the trauma.

[imblyings]

>Scanned from backup - remember non-crucial things like if some place has a breach or something, but don't remember specifically: where your corpse is and who murdered you.
>but not allowed to act on any information regarding the events of your death.
>But I like the idea of remembering everything except how you died and who killed you and whatnot, it seems like a possible thing we could do since it's pretty straightforward?

Let's examine the implications of that.

>killer is engineer
>victim now avoids engineering and maintenance, avoids all interaction with engineering staff
>victim hovers mouse over stunprod when forced into interaction with engineering staff

or

>killer is sectraitor
>is the victim obliged by server policies to not protest when the sectraitor 'arrests' them again?
>what about when the sectraitor calls the victim to the brig for an innocent-sounding request, how can you tell if the victim is acting on pre-death information to avoid carrying out the request?
>is the victim allowed to use 'paranoia' and 'trauma' as an excuse to go through job changes, ui/ue changes etc to avoid the killer? Can we distinguish between people doing this to avoid a murderer and doing this because they want to? Are we meant to automatically assume the first if this policy goes into effect?

Should a victim have a server-enforced obligation to feign ignorance so the killer can easily kill them again? Is a victim obliged to continue carrying out behaviour which makes them vulnerable to their murderer? This is a loaded question because what this entire thread hasn't ignores or hasn't thought carefully about is this. What obligations do antags and non-antags have towards the round and the 'fun' in the round?

Antags have no obligations towards the round obviously, apart from team obligations. They are free to parapen-c4 their target and be quiet for the rest of the round, and they are free to do magic shows in the bar with cham projectors. Non-antags have no obligations bar those in sec/engineering/command jobs and arguably, they only have an obligation to not detract from a round- they have no obligation to add anything to it.

When you say that clones are not allowed to shout out the name of their killer or act upon any pre-death information which impacts upon the round of the killer, you are in effect saying that the non-antag has an obligation towards the fun of the antag when there is no obligation in the other direction. Now obviously, it's a bit more nuanced than that. There is a difference between an antag that parapen-C4's a victim and an antag that does magic shows for the entire round and only slips away for a minute to kill a target before doing their best to amuse the crew. Do we acknowledge that difference? Do we treat outing antags who don't contribute and antags who do differently? Do all non-antags have an obligation to accept their death for the greater good of a round? If so, why aren't antags similarly obliged to contribute to the fun of the round in some way?

What good are we aiming for here anyway? The fun of the antag-player? The quality of the round attributed to the tension by having active antags?

Anyway, back to the implications of enforcing this rule.

It's nigh-impossible. You could just put a blanket ban on not saying your murderer's name or job out loud. Anyone would still be free to go into space where they can't be found by their murderer or make a bunch of stunprods in order to robust their murderer when they show the slightest sign of provocation. Are admins volunteering to track a victim's clone for the entirety of the round and analyze how often they seem to avoid places that their murderer might be associated with? Are coders volunteering to code something that does that? Are headmins volunteering to announce to the playerbase that once you've been cloned from a backup, you are less 'entitled' to continue playing the game than your murderer is?

This is just a silly 2d spessmen game yes but this thread so far has been very silly about this topic.

[Deuryn]

Your solution is exactly what some people here, myself included, think is silly. Its an RP trap. You are forced to forget things and play in a way that is just no damn fun. Forget everything from that round? Just think of how you would need to act if you were restored from backup 1 hour into a long round. Can you honestly tell me you would enjoy playing from that point on? Id rather just suicide.

I understand that. Unfortunately, it's really difficult from an administrative perspective for this issue to have a grey area.

What about:

Scanned from corpse - you remember the killer and everything else.

Scanned from backup - remember non-crucial things like if some place has a breach or something, but don't remember specifically: where your corpse is and who murdered you.

See, I like this idea. The problem for me is, the "non-crucial" part. If we say you're not allowed to remember anything from the round, then if they act on something from before, admins can act on it. If we say you can act on SOME things from the round, it leads to the possibility for say, a player "going to fix something in maintenance where a thing broke when suddenly you just HAPPEN across your corpse, full of evidence of your murderer."

Backups don't happen that often. I don't think asking players to do a little roleplay for extra round endurance is too much to ask.

What it boils down to in my mind, isn't an issue of how fun we're making this. It's how enforceable it is. It is a game, so fun obviously needs to be an aspect. But it also needs to be done in a way that admins can clearly and consistently enforce.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Here's what I think.

If you get cloned from your corpse, you have all your memories from life. If you get cloned from a backup, you have no memories from the round. Period. Makes it simple for the admins, makes it simple for the players. You can justify it lorewise (because people care about the lore right?) by cloning from your body being a full recreation from the body. The backup is just your genetic information, and the memory is downloaded from what Centcomm has on file from who you are.

Does this seem like a reasonable way to handle things?

Well then we'd have to change some of the code around to let ghosts know what kind of backup was used and allow the machine to "update" the record if corpse is scanned even if the record exists.

The thing is, what does it even fix? Corpses still have to be gibbed, the only way to investigate is to wait for the clone to finish, is there even a point?

What about:

Scanned from corpse - you remember the killer and everything else.

Scanned from backup - remember non-crucial things like if some place has a breach or something, but don't remember specifically: where your corpse is and who murdered you.

I like this, and yeah, like it was said, it could work both ways.

[Aurx]

Come to think of it, there's also the option to remove the root of the matter by removing cloning from backup.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Come to think of it, there's also the option to remove the root of the matter by removing cloning from backup.

What would that solve? It's hardly a problem if you ask me.

[Steelpoint]

Its a non issue. The only people this effects negatively are antags that fail to properly dispose of a corpse, as people have said all this will do is force a massive amount of unneeded work on the admins, get people banned unfairly and overall be a giant mess for no real tangible gain.

[Apsis]

If you have to forget everything that happened, what's going to stop people from just knowing everything anyway? Not round specifics, but the start of the round information you can use. Your characters personality shouldn't just vanish right? So, say you're paranoid, savvy, intelligent, etc at round start. That doesn't go away.

Antags still have to dispose of a body the same old way because who knows if they got scanned prior? If anyone finds this guys body he'll have all his memories. If he does have a backup he can just ignore me, where I'll be, and will likely be VERY paranoid because he died somehow. He might grab a pAI, or stick by people. Basically, you're going to punish people who don't want to die again. You can't keep restricting the actions of non-antags. Especially if they're good at the game.

[CreationPro]

So, Deuryn, Hibbles, have you come to a conclusion yet?

[Raven776]

Two sides to look at this: A regular shmuck and an antag.

Have you ever had fun getting prescanned and blurting out antag secrets because they disposed of the wrong corpse? Has this ever made a round better for more people than just the two of you?

What aspects of play does prescanning affect? Making a telescience hidden autocloner is a great deal of work for possibly no benefit, but would people consider such a level of immortality unfair?

As an Antag, do you find the idea that someone might have gotten scanned in beforehand unfair to your round? Does the idea that you need to then check the cloning database and dispose of any records/cloning body make your round more interesting, stressful, dull, or unsatisfying?

As an antag, are there any tools that you might want to deal with any issues of autocloners beyond what is already available?

[oranges]

The way I usually handle this is to follow rule 1

I won't reveal who killed me because that pisses on their fun, but if they come after me a again I will do my best to kill them.