Small change to emagging drones

[FPK]

A huge problem with drones, among many others, is how susceptible they are to antagonist sympathizing. Players observing the round can identify a traitor, join the round as a ghost drone, then intentionally allow themselves to be emagged. This behavior can be hard to identify without constant monitoring, and even then drones can easily feign innocence or claim they were just messing around with the crew. Drones are not permitted to interact with the crew by law, but drones are protected by a "cuteness factor". It's socially acceptable for a drone to beep and ping its way onto someone's head as a hat, then hang around the bar like a robotic cat.

Furthermore, drones have a huge incentive to get emagged. Emagged drones have a very wide variety of tools, and are capable of bringing the station to its knees from the amount of harass and direct damage they're capable of. Getting emagged as a drone is like being given the keys to the antagonist candy store. This is highly appealing to many players, for self evident reasons.

In order to combat antagonist sympathizing with drones, I suggest that emagging a drone should kick the player out of the drone shell, and replace it with an observer. Traitors still get their overpowered murder robot, but drones would avoid suspicious players in fear of getting emagged. We shouldn't reward drones that allow themselves to be emagged.

[Jovaniph]

That sounds like a good idea. The player who gets kick out can rejoin as a drone again basically. No harm done.

[Norwest]

I'm bumping this 'un for attention because I nearly had an engine on the loose because of a drone. It took admin intervention (or at least, some guy whose name I didn't recognize and an 'Admin Tool-Belt' around their waist) to undo the damage that a drone caused to containment. If you're interested in causing havoc, a drone is /terrifyingly/ good at it: the crew has no means of stopping you short of physical deconstruction, you get cyborg-level access and ventcrawl to boot, and a pack of tools to cause ten different kinds of trouble. I like having drones around as a CE, but it takes a lot of effort to not just deactivate the fabricators the moment traitors are reported.

[Streaky Haddock]

I quite like this idea.

[imsxz]

+1

To add, I've also seen it suggested that something similar happens during shadowling enthrallment to discourage everyone and their mother running into maints when they're called out.

Dissimilar to the shadowling idea, drones are a (for all intents and purposes) infinitely respawning ghost role as opposed to ones actual character, and as such is a very good solution to cut down on the bulk of self antagging drones.

That is why I support OP's idea.

[Enginseer-42]

This does seem like a good idea. The only Issue that occurs to me is that one could camp the fabricator and Emag every drone produced. Since it would force ghosts into the drone, you could produce as many subservient drones as their are ghosts, rather than the limit being "However many people have become drones."

[Vargh]

All my yes, i love playing as an emaged drone but i hate looking for muh emag antag plz, so i end up running away most of the time just to respect the rules. This will give a lot of people the oportunity to play as one BUT STILL will not prevent players to seek the antags to feed them emaged drones. Still, it's a step in the right direction.

[Streaky Haddock]

1 hour ago, Enginseer-42 said:

This does seem like a good idea. The only Issue that occurs to me is that one could camp the fabricator and Emag every drone produced. Since it would force ghosts into the drone, you could produce as many subservient drones as their are ghosts, rather than the limit being "However many people have become drones."

this is a thing that you can... kinda do already.

[MarcelinePye]

4 hours ago, imsxz said:

To add, I've also seen it suggested that something similar happens during shadowling enthrallment to discourage everyone and their mother running into maints when they're called out.

If we where to do this I'ed want to remove the sling thrall identifying text, to move identification away from visual check and more towards RP consistency, but I'ed support both of these things.

[CPTCoffee]

That would make it so much easier. Fully support. 

[Mitchs98]

16 minutes ago, MarcellusPye said:

If we where to do this I'ed want to remove the sling thrall identifying text, to move identification away from visual check and more towards RP consistency, but I'ed support both of these things.

Literally no. That's a terrible idea. We can already get overwhelmed enough with thralls as is.

[MarcelinePye]

True, but otherwise it's a pretty large nerf to slings since thralls can also be discovered by RP inconsistency, but slings need a nerf...

[Enginseer-42]

3 hours ago, Streaky Haddock said:

this is a thing that you can... kinda do already.

True but the difference is, if it's snatching ghosts. All you need is one guy determined to be a drone to dronify the entirety of dead chat. Not everyone normally joins as a drone.

[bryanayalalugo]

Yeah, and there could be those drones who actually just want to clean/repair/build, if in theory, they get kicked when emagged, how long do they have to wait before going to be a drone again? (10 minutes wait after you die is how long in game before being a drone).

Edited October 7, 2017 by bryanayalalugo

[Tayswift]

10 hours ago, imsxz said:

To add, I've also seen it suggested that something similar happens during shadowling enthrallment to discourage everyone and their mother running into maints when they're called out.

This is a great idea, but the original player wouldn't be able to do anything till dethrallment. Also, there could be a situation where there's not enough ghosts to take over the thralls.

[Enginseer-42]

Perhaps a better idea for the Shadowling Enthrallment. The Ghost takes over the body, but the person taken over becomes sort of like a holoparasite? Able to talk to their 'master'.

[imsxz]

1 hour ago, Tayswift said:

This is a great idea, but the original player wouldn't be able to do anything till dethrallment. Also, there could be a situation where there's not enough ghosts to take over the thralls.

If you get thralled while antag banned, and there's no willing ghosts to take over your mob, you get to play as a thrall. I assume we could easily make a similar compromise.

Off topic but speaking of antag bans, you don't regain control of your character post dethralling/deconverting, or ever unless the one who possessed you ghosted themselves. That's something I'd enjoy seeing changed.

[Tayswift]

2 hours ago, Enginseer-42 said:

Perhaps a better idea for the Shadowling Enthrallment. The Ghost takes over the body, but the person taken over becomes sort of like a holoparasite? Able to talk to their 'master'.

Sort of like borers. The shadowling tumor should act like a borer...when it gets removed, you gain control of your body back, which would solve the problem @imsxz mentioned. This sounds really interesting, actually. The facial recognition thing for thralls should be removed since slings will have a harder time once civilians aren't running into maintenance. This would increase the paranoia and uncertainty of the station, since you wouldn't know who's actually in control of their own mind. I feel like this would be able to create the feeling that changelings were intended to evoke. It would probably bring new life to a game mode that is relatively stale for the most part.

[Streaky Haddock]

except we already have code for booting someone out of a mind and putting another person in.

I don't think we have code for booting someone out, remembering who was booted out, and putting them back in again.

[Shadeykins]

On 10/7/2017 at 3:24 AM, Streaky Haddock said:

except we already have code for booting someone out of a mind and putting another person in.

I don't think we have code for booting someone out, remembering who was booted out, and putting them back in again.

Borers kind of do this already.

We for sure have the booting out of the mind on conversion code, because that's how antag bans function for conversion antags. (IE: if you're antag banned and you get thralled or culted, a ghost gets put in your body).

[Streaky Haddock]

Except borers are mind swapping, where the old mind is stored in another body that already exists.

We're talking about ghosting here.

 

Also with shadowings it just doesn't sound fun.

[TwoCam]

On 10/6/2017 at 10:04 PM, bryanayalalugo said:

Yeah, and there could be those drones who actually just want to clean/repair/build, if in theory, they get kicked when emagged, how long do they have to wait before going to be a drone again? (10 minutes wait after you die is how long in game before being a drone).

I've suicided as a drone before and you can immediately respawn. I'm pretty sure that the same applies if you're killed.

[Tayswift]

Fyi, @FPK, I implemented your idea

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/8433

[EvadableMoxie]

After seeing a recent round in which a maint drone walked right up to nukies, allowed itself to be emagged and then yelled "FUCK YEA!" once it was, I can't support this enough.

Personally, I don't think they should be emaggable at all. Most of their power comes from the fact that the interface is limited and in many situations you literally cannot target a drone. They can be hidden entirely by tables, and you really can't get them via the floor menu as long as they're moving. Something being powerful due to the interface is just poor design.  

But, since they are emaggable, at this will prevent the worst abuses.

Edited December 6, 2017 by EvadableMoxie

[Tayswift]

1 hour ago, EvadableMoxie said:

After seeing a recent round in which a maint drone walked right up to nukies, allowed itself to be emagged and then yelled "FUCK YEA!" once it was, I can't support this enough.

Drones have no shame. This happened on a nukies round I was in, too, and I mention it in the PR description.

Agreed, wish this could be removed entirely. But that would never pass the PR process, sadly. Because for some reason a ghost role that was added for ghosts to not get bored became one of the most powerful ghost role antags.