So, everyone knows what the AI is. It's a player role designed to observe and aid the crew, at its core. Its job at its core consists of nothing but opening doors for people, alerting the crew when someone is dying through non-suicidal means, and doing mundane tasks with machines. Like a real, actual robot. The AI has a lot of control over the station and by default can see and access the vast majority of stuff. People might say this is powerful, and it is under the right circumstances, but at best it can lock people in rooms (most rooms have windows however so getting out of this isn't hard usually) and at worst it's only a minor annoyance to get around a non-compliant AI. Basic tools thwart any AI.
The tradeoff for this is that the AI can't move, but it is placed a room which is supposed to be designed to make the AI hard to access and kill.
In reality the AI sits in what basically amounts to an eggshell. It must be constantly afraid of any number of things which can kill it. The vast majority of these things have no counterplay for the AI to defend against. The AI can't run away from these, it has to rely on flimsy static defenses to, against a decent player, inconvenience the intruder. You can kill the AI without even entering the chamber, facing any static defenses, or going through any walls.
This is unacceptable. AIs have more counters then any other role in the game. No other role has counters that the player can absolutely not defend against and has no chance to combat or defend against without outside help. Even the Blob, with a huge counter in the xray gun, has a chance of winning before they're even researched, and can actively take actions to prevent this from happening (by eating research or cargo).
The only ''solution'' to preventing dying in your AI chamber requires being out of it, which requires outside help. If you're a traitor AI, you can shunt, but that''s the AI equivalent to giving yourself N2O internals. There's nothing else for you to do in the round but wait for end text, or try to get someone who isn't a validboner to card you (ha ha ha, no).
The following (which isn't an exhaustive list) are ways you can get to the AI with next to no effort:
-EMP. Really the most glaring and easiest way to kill the AI. A traitor with 2 TC can buy an EMP box which can kill the AI on most maps without ever entering the AI core sat. Drain the SMES and the APC and the AI is done. No amount of core defense can prevent this, and with an RCD you can just walk into the AI core and card it or whatever you want to do to make sure it doesn't revive. You don't even need the TC if you're a chemist or scientist or miner or any other job with basic access to a grinder, the ORM, and a few beakers. Xenobio can make infinity EMP grenades as well with yellow cores.
The only downside to EMP is that it's not instant and the AI will bitch for help on vox, though nobody ever saves the AI. Spend a few TC on c4 and you have easy access anyway. An EMP grenade is always spawned on Meta Station, so you don't even need the effort to make or buy some to kill the AI!!
-Cyborgs. AI cannot defend against rogue cyborgs. While this is kind of crucial for ops and shit to quickly kill the AI, it's lame and the AI has no counterplay. the AI core has one flash which only delays a few seconds. People can ride on cyborgs now which makes killing the AI even easier. a rogue AI can be countered just by building a new cyborg or flashing one it owns and unslaving it. Law 1, the AI is harmful, kill it. The AI has no counterplay against this, short of closing the shutters and depowering the doors and hoping it's not an engineer borg (hint: it is).
-Bombs, etc. Not really an issue, the AI will probably see it coming and one bomb usually isn't enough to kill the AI. It's one of the more acceptable ways to kill the AI since it's a static mob, it's loud and obvious, and requires actual effort on the killer's part to finish the job.
-Other AIs. Also not really an issue, most AIs will see this coming in time to deal with it.
-Mechs. Traitor AIs can counter this.
-Random Event (Meteors / Rod). The least fun way to die as an AI. Meteors and Rods treat the core walls like paper. While rod kills are very rare, it's not fun to die to a random event you had no chance to dodge, and probably won't be revived from, since very, very few people go out of their way to save a dead AI. Most people won't even realize it's happened (even the borgs who might never investigate when you stop responding)
-Turret Cheese. Let's face it, actually barging into the core and killing the AI is not actually hard. In fact, a decent player laughs at turrets. The slip foam is countered with magboots, let's ignore that. Killing the AI has become more of a 'how long can the AI stall' rather then 'can the AI actually defend itself' because core defenses are so shitty that they really are nothing but a timesink for intruders. If you die, that's because you were trying to invade the AI on Box Station, the only station with actually good turret design. Or you're just bad, I guess.
"How do I cheese the turrets" you ask? Oh, let me list the ways:
-Just shoot them. Turrets have a long windup time of like 2 seconds. You can fire at them a few times before they even have a chance to fire back. Turrets need LOS to even activate, and when they lose LOS they take another 2 seconds to unwind. Shoot then move behind a wall. If you die to turrets like this git gud.
-EMP them. Because, of course, who needs effort when you can just use the No Counterplay solution to win??
--Shoot them while they're EMP'd, or even better, just wrench them. Unwrenched turrets can't activate again. Good as dead.
-Use smoke. This blocks LOS, which, again, means you can just kill the turrets without them ever able to shoot at you. Or just walk around them, whatever. A chaplain in the AI chamber means the AI is dead.
-Just deactivate them. A two man squad can make their way to the core with little chance the AI can do jack shit about it.The rogue AI could blow the controls after activating them or turn off the power, but that leaves them stuck in one position (or even just off) and you often need both stun and kill to actually hurt anyone.
-Go around them. The most time-intensive solution, you can skip the majority of core defenses by just going around the back and through the walls. C4 them, thermite, abuse the hand tele, or just slowly decon them, eventually you're going to get to the AI and only have to face a couple turrets. Usually intentional design but you can quickly get the walls down with only minor preparation or a few TC.
-Build girders / lockers / any other solid object and block them. This doesn't stop upgraded laser turrets, but does block the stunbolts, which, again, you usually need as AI to kill anyone invading.
-Cut the power. EMPs will do this immediately (unsurprisingly). You can also hack through the wall if it's not the core chamber to manually deactivate / destroy the APC.
Almost all of these methods leave the AI helpless to defend itself. Even careful use of turrets isn't much to stop most people from just cheesing them and going in.
There's multiple code solutions we can use to make the AI actually have some chance to defend itself against the cheesiest ways of killing the AI.
Make AI Sat Rwalls and Doors block EMP blasts
EMP is cancer and the fact you can kill the AI without ever going into its core is cancer. Traitor or not, all AI housing should have basic protection against EMPs. This can either just be a special alloy wall/door that gives obvious protection against EMPs, or just make the default rwalls around the core have a special rule that blocks EMPs. In the latter solution Normal Rwalls wouldn't block EMPs, so if you had to rebuild a sat wall the AI would still be vulnerable.
Significantly Reduce the Turret Windup animation
The main problem with turrets is that they take like 2 seconds before they can even fire, so they often can't fight back. An easy solution would just be to make the turrets pop up instantly or extremely quickly, so they force combatants to actually have to dodge quickly and make them harder to actually kill.
Give Traitor AIs More Defensive Buyables
Traitor AI usually goes one of maybe 4 (or a combo therof) ways (Gas flood / siphon, autoborger, do nothing, or hope the round lasts two hours dominate a PHAZON and sax away while nuking) on top of the usual 'shock all the doors and overload machines'. Giving the AI a reason to actually want to defend its sat and not just teleport away to the mining base would make defending the core actually fun.
--Give it a module that EMP-proofs the whole sat. This powerful, probably 50 Cycle option completely neutralizes the one threat every AI hates. Combined with EMP-proof walls, ensures that even if a traitor goes in the sat or hacks through the walls, they'll actually have to deal with the turrets and other things. Includes the APCs, turrets, SMES, doors, and cameras.
--Give it a module that lets the AI player-control turrets. Something I've always wanted, especially since pixel projectiles made it so the turrets couldn't do their weird wall-bending shots, was the ability to actually dictate where the turrets fired. Either giving them a tile to concentrate fire on, or actually putting yourself in the turret (like a borg shell) would make defending the core amazingly more robust since you don't have to worry about requiring Line of Sight or someone abusing the AI by hiding behind a wall and firing at blind spots. Defending the sat should feel like a game of tower defense or an RTS, not just hoping someone will make a mistake and get killed by turrets. This also solves the core problem of dealing with rogue borgs, since you can now force the turrets to shoot at them. It might not actually be enough to kill the borg before it kills you, but it will definitely be an actual deterrent or stall them.
I actually have a lot of ideas for additional modules a traitor AI could buy. Auto-installing borg upgrades, the ability to place rechargers (or upgrade them since science never does), ability to hack borgs without the Robotics console, but that's ideas for a different thread.
AIs should be more robust and we need to cut down on AI sat cheese. Enough is enough.