Leaderboard

Name; John Stewert Age; 30 Gender; Male Race; Human Blood Type; O+ General Occupational Roles; Civilian Biography; Originated from Sol with no significant developments. Moved to an isolated mining city called Geminus; records revealing noticeable criminal record including the alleged murder of the city founder. Found employment on Space Station 13 shortly after Pollux (Geminus' home planet) was abandoned for monetary reasons. Qualifications; N/A Employment Records; Was briefly employed in supply management on Geminus. Along with a brief stint as a farmer for a prominent produce manufacturer in the city. Security Records; Medical Records; Personal appearance; Slim build with slumped shoulders. A relatively tall man with a dour expression the majority of the day. Other Notes;

Some dipshit in a kevlar suit once said: "With great power comes great responsibility." TLDR at the bottom. Synthetics, but especially the AI for the purposes of this discussion, walk a thin line when it comes to validhunting. As per rule 8, since they are not security (with few exceptions like Combat module cyborgs), they should not be seeking to stop antagonists at all. Frequently, however, you will see AI play a far more active role in the stations security (bolting doors to stop someone running, calling out crimes or contraband), and typically I believe this oversteps their laws and their boundaries. Obviously, this will depend a lot on the context and the laws, but I'll try and explain why I think AI players are way overdoing it. Firstly, let's talk about everyone's least favorite: crewsimov. It's exploitable, it's annoying, it leads to repetitive tasks, and it's here to stay. Here's a refresher on what the lawset says, because I'll be referencing it. Crewsimov. Now, let's explore why an AI might, for example, bolt a maintenance door that someone is running to, in an attempt to escape from security. Because of law 1: The person has demonstrated harm towards the crew (shooting lasers, ballistics at people), and letting them go would allow them to do more harm. Notably, even if they ask you to unbolt the door, you may not follow their orders, since doing so would violate law 1. Because of law 2: Security asked you to. Notably, in this case, if they were to ask you to unbolt the door, under advanced rules, you may do so if their rank is higher than that of the Security member that asked you to bolt it. So, there's two reasons. If there is a criminal running from security, and they haven't used lethal force, and security hasn't asked you to prevent their escape, you shouldn't bolt anything. Should you? Well, this is muddied by the fact that AI players are supposed to have "common sense," until they aren't. They are supposed to be reasonably loyalist to NT, until they aren't. I'll quote a line from the advanced rules here. Other than the obvious fact that sense isn't common, AI players playing like humans isn't necessarily bad (they're humans, after all), but playing like the embodiment of Space Law not only is super unfun for antagonists (vis-a-vis getting game-ended by a bolted door 20 minutes into your traitor role), but also doesn't really make any sense with regards to how an AI would act. Indeed, there is no reason an AI should care about SOP or space law, barring obvious things like letting security execute that Unknown that they claim is the powered vampire a few seconds before they're revealed to be, yes, the powered vampire. Or not letting a prisoner out of their cell just because they asked politely. That NNO that just executed the HOP without terminating their record? Not crew. Really, he's an armed hostile. This rule is probably designed to stop AIs from rules lawyering every single set of laws their given to screw over either the crew or the antag. I think it's having the opposite effect, where AIs disregard their laws in favor of "common sense," which usually means getting the epic redtext on that assistant because, I dunno. He's probably going to do something bad in the future. He's valid, you know? This applies not only to bolting doors, but to telling Security that HOP just gave themselves all access, or that cargo tech is suspiciously holding their PDA in the warehouse. These things don't cause harm, and let's face it: no one asked. Other lawsets may give reason to report crimes though, so let's have a look. NT: Default Law one for NT default states that you must protect the station and it's assets. Amusingly, from NT's point of view, everyone with a contract is an asset of the corporation, and thus the station, anyway. I'll be ignoring that (and you should too) for the sake of law 1 not contradicting itself, but it's a funny tidbit. NT: Default is awkwardly written, considering the above paragraph, and also that law 2 is basically innate to all AIs via the advanced rules anyway, but it is a very safe lawset that is very hard to lawyer, exploit, or manipulate nonetheless. You should bolt per law 2 doors if a person with a high enough rank asks you to, and disregard if someone with higher rank than them asks you to. Law three is vague in terms of what the difference between "preserving safety" and "harm" is, but we can reasonably assume that we should do whatever provides the highest well-being to staff and stop people from lowering the well-being of others. How very moralistic. I initially tried to rewrite NT: Default, removing the superfluous text and bringing it to the barest scraps to see if theres any possibly justification for validhunting with it, but I realized when I was finished that it's just crewsimov again. Moving on. Corporate. This lawset is by far the validhunty-est. It also makes the least sense of the three starting modules, because Law 4 is needlessly long and is placed at the bottom of the list even though it is the most important law. This confuses newer players, but that's a topic (really, its a novella at this point) for another day. Since "revenue" is never defined, that is left to common sense, and common sense indicates it is utterly worthless because nobody wants to play the bar's slot machines over and over to actually maximize revenue. Like crewsimov, for the purposes of this discussion we only care about two laws: #2 and #3. The former is easy: if the person is damaging the station in some way by sabotaging power, atmospherics, or otherwise creating superfluous holes in the hull, they are to be stopped. Law 3 is ridiculous, and allows any disruption (read: stopping people from doing their job) or hindrance (read: literally anything) to be quelled with the necessary reaction, provided that reaction doesn't create more expenses than doing nothing. Bolting a door causes zero expenses. Telling security about that shady Unknown in dorms incurs expenses only in so far as wasting Security's time. With that being said, you're within your laws to play Corporate like it's Robocop. So that's it. That's how it all concludes. Crewsimov and NT: Default are just the same lawset, and Corporate is filled with so many holes that you can do whatever you'd like. Well? No, not at all. Bolting doors? Calling out non-lethal, crew-manifest antagonists? Bear in mind that these are things that you can do under corporate, and you'll have laws that can back you up, but per rule 8 on validhunting, these are not things you should do, provided you aren't egregiously disregarding Security's wishes. TLDR; (and read this, even if you read everything else,) There is no good excuse for validhunting on two out of the three lawsets. Plus, at the end of the day, it's more fun to simply let antagonists be. The problem of AI validhunting and 'doing too much' is not a problem this thread is going to fix, but if I stop one person from control clicking another door and turning the round into extended because you feel like if you don't, you're not robust, this writeup will have been worth it. The problem wasn't just secborgs, or a few bad apples, the problem is synthetic's mindset. Removing the control-click shortcut would be a good start, though.

Monke abductor has a message for you.