/tg/Station 13

I'm seeing Comm Consoles with forced shuttle recalls and extra AIs on the White Ship being built more and more often. It's basically impossible to counterplay this if the guy commandeering the white ship isn't a lobotomite because of the range of movement the white ship allows and this shit working across Z-Levels. Keep in mind that AI uploads across Z-Levels don't work so you can't even tell the AI to kill itself as counterplay.
There's probably other stuff you can abuse that I can't think of right now.

There need to be rules in places disallowing this.

Alternatively disable AIs working on Z-Levels other than their own, plus Lavaland for the Station AI aswell as Comm Consoles working across Z-Levels and force the White Ship to stay docked with the Station for an extended amount of time whenever it does to give the crew a chance to storm it. Yes I'm aware this would be coding feedback but I'm throwing it in the ring anyway.

It'd be interesting to have station control of things tied to some sort of physical connection that would get severed in a ship/shuttle move, like base it on which power grid your APC is connected to or something with some comms node to allow access, and uploads on the same network could affect AIs on that network, or some other connectivity mechanic to decide which areas could be controlled by what

so you could build an AI on the ship but if you wanted it to have any control over the station you'd have to make it vulnerable to upload consoles on the station

In that case you would still need to force a cooldown on the movement of the White Ship, otherwise you could dock at the station, do your thing and leave before anybody has a chance to board the ship, at the very least.

IMO AI uploads shouldn't work cross Z-level, that's fine as it is. You don't want the golems to fuck up the station AI or vice versa.

However I think AIs should not have any control off Z-level. No Golem AI interfering with the station, no station AI hiding in the gulag from ops/cult.

Comms console should probably only work on the station Z-level as well. Building a console on the derelict or white ship so you can perma recall is really gay.

WarbossLincoln wrote:Comms console should probably only work on the station Z-level as well. Building a console on the derelict or white ship so you can perma recall is really gay.

I'd probably drop an ERT on it.

WarbossLincoln wrote:IMO AI uploads shouldn't work cross Z-level, that's fine as it is. You don't want the golems to fuck up the station AI or vice versa.

I agree.

WarbossLincoln wrote: However I think AIs should not have any control off Z-level. No Golem AI interfering with the station, no station AI hiding in the gulag from ops/cult.

I would agree if it wouldn't make Lavaland too strong for cults.

WarbossLincoln wrote: Comms console should probably only work on the station Z-level as well. Building a console on the derelict or white ship so you can perma recall is really gay.

Yes, and there needs to be something to prevent the white ship from docking, recalling and leaving and enjoying another at the very least 5 minutes of shittering.

cedarbridge wrote:

WarbossLincoln wrote:Comms console should probably only work on the station Z-level as well. Building a console on the derelict or white ship so you can perma recall is really gay.

I'd probably drop an ERT on it.

How do you expect them to catch a guy who can move his entire base across z-levels at will? If he has an AI on the thing and X-Ray-Motion Cameras on the hull of his ship -- which require no more than an autolathe to mass produce -- he'll know well in advance when someone is coming, IF someone is even capable of finding him in deep spess, and then he can yeet off, meanwhile everyone else has to normally cross z-levels. Or the AI can just do it whenever a white ship motion alarm pops up in its chat log.
Additionally you won't always have an admin around to intervene in such a situation.

terranaut wrote:

cedarbridge wrote:

WarbossLincoln wrote:Comms console should probably only work on the station Z-level as well. Building a console on the derelict or white ship so you can perma recall is really gay.

I'd probably drop an ERT on it.

How do you expect them to catch a guy who can move his entire base across z-levels at will? If he has an AI on the thing and X-Ray-Motion Cameras on the hull of his ship -- which require no more than an autolathe to mass produce -- he'll know well in advance when someone is coming, IF someone is even capable of finding him in deep spess, and then he can yeet off, meanwhile everyone else has to normally cross z-levels. Or the AI can just do it whenever a white ship motion alarm pops up in its chat log.

You underestimate my ability to physically spawn them on top of the ship.

cedarbridge wrote:You underestimate my ability to physically spawn them on top of the ship.

Literally dropping them onto the ship with centcom drop pods.

That's nice and all when there's Admins around but you shouldn't balance around that.

We did have a PR to confine AIs to actng on their own Z level, and it did get merged. It just didn't actually work.

Simply preventing comms consoles from working on a ship at all would probably be the easiest solution. Just cite something like bluespace inference when calling/recalling a shuttle.

Also, this thread ought to be in ideas or coding feedback, there's not much policy to be had here.

zxaber wrote:Also, this thread ought to be in ideas or coding feedback, there's not much policy to be had here.

True, we should probably make a new thread there with possible code changes and axe this one. We're not talking about making a rule against putting a comms console off z-level.

What if, instead of disabling AI control across all z-levels that aren't their own, we just disabled the ability to call the shuttle of AIs who aren't on the station's z-level (or who haven't been on the station's z-level at any point in the last 5 minutes)? We could apply the same thing to comms consoles as well, except with shuttle calling AND shuttle recalling.

#savethegolemAIs

isn't the white ship an area of it's own...

This is a code problem not a policy problem, admins already act on this kinda stuff.