Petition To Bring Back Drones

[Paintling]

So it has been a long time since drones were removed and I still fail to understand exactly why they were completely obliterated from the game.

I think drones should be brought back for the following reasons.
-1: Drones are fun. People enjoy playing drones and generally shitting around the station being a little meme and conversing with the other drones. Plus most players enjoyed either destroying drones or using them as hats.

-2: It gives ghosts another option. A similar reason to #1, it gave ghosts a chill role to do besides just sitting there spectating but didn't want to jump back into the round with a 'real' role. As well as the fact that it was just the most prolific ghost role when people actually stocked the machine.

-3: It benefited the station. Drones fixed most if not all the small problems on the station, and a decent amount of the big ones, proir to removal. While them being removed gives engies and borgs more to do, they usually have more important things to do than generally tidy up all the wires in maint or fix any number of small problems. Plus drones got places easier.

-4: There was no real reason to remove the role entirely. I have heard that it was removed because players were abusing the drone role and just doing w/e. However while I understand the admins are ultimately in charge of what is and isnt the rule to a degree, it says in the drone rules that if they do not follow drone laws and are just a lil shit the whole time then they get job banned. I don't understand why they weren't just simply job-banned from drone or the role was restricted, although I suppose the latter might have been a bit more work than people might have been willing to do to prevent people from being shits on such a small role.

-5: Drones were good for learning. Drones allowed players to learn a sizable amount of jobs and mechanics without any sense of urgency, besides the jobs that they obviously can't experiment with (medical, etc.).

-6 This brings me to my last (for now) point. Drones made a decent cheap crew replacement for certain roles that people didn't want to do when pop is low or when people just don't care. No cook and everyones starving? A drone can do that but you better not want meat. No botanist? Drones. No engies? Drones. No bartender? Drones. Janitor? Drones. Chemist? Drones. They can easily do the job nobody else is/wants to do (so long as the person playing the drone wants to and isn't interacting with the peoples. For the record I do not considering the creation of medicine for stocking the medivendor or the creation of food as interacting but I could be wrong.).

I believe that for these reasons drones should be re-implemented and if people abuse the role they should be banned from it instead of just wiping it from reality. I mean by that logic you could also remove almost any of the other roles because people constantly do stupid shit with them. Regardless I intend to fight for the drone role so long as I draw breath and TG station still stands (and im not banned from all the servers). I hope you too can see why we need drones back to their memey lil shit ways, thank you for your time.

#Freedrones

[Lumbermancer]

Bring back Drones and remove griff ghosts and shit.

[Farquaar]

#Freedrones

[datorangebottle]

F r e e d r o n e s

[zxaber]

I remember two distinct issues with drones;

• Drones were allowed to fix the SM except if it was sabotaged. Sabotage and incompetence is not always easily distinguishable. It seems like we could totallt just add an item, built with common parts though the hand-craft system, that would disable nearby drones, which would allow tators to do their thing and also safeguard their work from drones without a policy thing, but whatever.

• Drones often took to upgrading the station or performing other jobs, potentially spending research points or using the last of the mats in the silo or otherwise annoying people actually working those jobs. If you ask me, drones were for upkeep rather than improvement, and a code solution might just be making them unable to access any computer or machine other than the ORM/Silo, and I suppose the SM monitor console.

[Ayy Lemoh]

There's no logs for construction.

Drone grief is still undetectable unless there's only one drone, you see it, or one of the other logs detected their mistake.

[Dr_bee]

Or just make them a ghost role that can fix whatever and not worry about the lawset as much.

Massively Increase the cost of drone shells, make them only orderable via cargo or made via robotics. This makes it require direct human involvement to get drones in the first place. The drone machine was a bad idea.

Complaints about drones should be countered with, "why did you let them get built in the first place", and "why did you not just say "AI law 2 blow the drones"

[Floiven]

Or just make them a ghost role that can fix whatever and not worry about the lawset as much.

Massively Increase the cost of drone shells, make them only orderable via cargo or made via robotics. This makes it require direct human involvement to get drones in the first place. The drone machine was a bad idea.

Complaints about drones should be countered with, "why did you let them get built in the first place", and "why did you not just say "AI law 2 blow the drones"

This is probably the best solution. If you want to cause massive destruction to the station and don't want any interference, it's probably not too much to ask that you plan ahead to prevent repair of that damage. Plus, round lengths are correlated to station integrity, having a squad of drones that are allowed to do what they need to do in order to fix the place in an expedient manner sounds like a benefit for the rest of the crew, as well as allowing ghosts to get back and contribute in a meaningful way without worry of eating a ban.

[Mooshimi]

Drones should also have a console in the bridge so ANY head of staff can lock or shut them down if they're being a shit, and not just a console in the RD's office. The bridge console should not include borgs/shells on it.

[D&B]

If you don't understand why they were removed then simply scroll fown to the discussion thread that sparked their removal.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Just pray or something as a ghost and see if the admins will just let you be one? It's probably easier for admins to give drones to people who can be trusted with them rather than just spawning shells and making it a free-for-all

[somerandomguy]

Just pray or something as a ghost and see if the admins will just let you be one? It's probably easier for admins to give drones to people who can be trusted with them rather than just spawning shells and making it a free-for-all

when was the last time you saw that happen

[Cobby]

From an admin pov, I'd rather not encourage a defacto whitelist since it means people would feel like they can't be genuine with us (particularly with criticisms) without potentially losing the ability to play a portion of the game.

From a coder pov, I'd rather we make them harder to mass produce (no dispensers), make them opaque in terms of hitbox, make them same speed/slower than default humans, and have the laws reworded to say to simply ignore all beings rather than not interfere.

This means if someone is constantly breaking a window they can constantly repair it since they are ignoring the human but not the byproducts of said human's actions. The nerfs are so that antags who are getting indirectly harassed can easily kill them and the player can't just immediately hop into a new shell.

[Paintling]

Honestly what Cobby said is probably the best way to make em work so that everyone is reasonably satisfied.

[4dplanner]

Drones are also great for preventing early shuttle calls if you allow them to be built early on, which I think is a good thing.

[wesoda25]

Drones suck, make them unable to interact with machines of any sort (therefore can't interact with SM whatsoever). They should only be maintenance, not touch things as important as the SM or atmos etc etc.

[Dr_bee]

From a coder pov, I'd rather we make them harder to mass produce (no dispensers), make them opaque in terms of hitbox, make them same speed/slower than default humans, and have the laws reworded to say to simply ignore all beings rather than not interfere.

This means if someone is constantly breaking a window they can constantly repair it since they are ignoring the human but not the byproducts of said human's actions. The nerfs are so that antags who are getting indirectly harassed can easily kill them and the player can't just immediately hop into a new shell.

Back before drones were removed I was screaming for this kind of change. Drones' laws were nearly impossible to not accidentally tread on. They assumed near omnipotence on the drones part.

Drones laws are a holdover from the days before ghost roles.

[Mickyan]

In my opinion the only way to bring back drones without ending the same way as they did before is to make them proper silicons instead of the independent gremlins they are now

Standard borg laws, no all access and no vent crawling, a mix of janitor/engiborg modules instead of free hands. They're simply discount-borgs that are easier to manufacture en masse and more disposable.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

From a coder pov, I'd rather we make them harder to mass produce (no dispensers), make them opaque in terms of hitbox, make them same speed/slower than default humans, and have the laws reworded to say to simply ignore all beings rather than not interfere.

This means if someone is constantly breaking a window they can constantly repair it since they are ignoring the human but not the byproducts of said human's actions. The nerfs are so that antags who are getting indirectly harassed can easily kill them and the player can't just immediately hop into a new shell.

Back before drones were removed I was screaming for this kind of change. Drones' laws were nearly impossible to not accidentally tread on. They assumed near omnipotence on the drones part.

Drones laws are a holdover from the days before ghost roles.

If we changed it from "no interference" to "ignore" then we could make mobs invisible to drones with the dronevision system which would be neat

[Dr_bee]

From a coder pov, I'd rather we make them harder to mass produce (no dispensers), make them opaque in terms of hitbox, make them same speed/slower than default humans, and have the laws reworded to say to simply ignore all beings rather than not interfere.

This means if someone is constantly breaking a window they can constantly repair it since they are ignoring the human but not the byproducts of said human's actions. The nerfs are so that antags who are getting indirectly harassed can easily kill them and the player can't just immediately hop into a new shell.

Back before drones were removed I was screaming for this kind of change. Drones' laws were nearly impossible to not accidentally tread on. They assumed near omnipotence on the drones part.

Drones laws are a holdover from the days before ghost roles.

If we changed it from "no interference" to "ignore" then we could make mobs invisible to drones with the dronevision system which would be neat

Making them unable to see mobs is too far. Drones should be part of the round like other ghost roles, but heavily nerfed in production speed.

Let them keep the ability to run away or make silly memes like a dronebar or something.

Removing their bullet passover and making them as fast as humans would be enough of a nerf for their HP. Remember, drones only have 30hp, thats 3 smacks with a toolbox or 2 with a circular saw. or a single revolver bullet. Just making them not stupidly hard to hit would be a significant step in the right direction.

[Dr_bee]

On the topic of dronevision, It could still be useful. You could make drones unable to see things such as powersinks and syndicate bombs. This will make drones unable to, or at least unlikely to, fuck with them. Giving some antag sabotage protection from drones preventing it.

Sabotaging the SM is and having drones fix it is acceptable in my eyes, as you could very easily sabotage or prevent drones from spawning if spawning is nerfed., but spending TC on sabotage and having drones fuck it would be a bit too far even in my drone loving brain.

[ATHATH]

Idea: Add an item (preferably with limited charges) that marks something with a special glow that only drones can see that indicates to them that they should not touch/mess with that thing. Perhaps give it some minor (as there'd be plenty of ways to "get around" this if you really wanted to break the rules/make the admins mad at you/make the admins droneban you) mechanical enforcement too by making drones physically unable to click on marked things (unless they're emagged or the like). Maybe let it mark an area as well? "Stay out of engineering, I'm sabotaging the SM." "Stay out of R&D, I don't want you wasting our points." "Stay out of my upload, I don't want you 'accidentally' letting assistants into it."