pAI Refactor

[Dinarzad]

Hello, this is the thread where I mention ideas that make everyone hate me. *buzz
First off, let's set some context for the suggestions before we get TO them.

"Why do you suggest pAI should be overhauled?"
Right now, as someone that plays a great deal of pAI and has a real fondness for the idea of them, they seem to be too confused to really fulfill what our intent for them seemingly is.  We seem to have this general consensus that they are a simple means for ghosts to fiddle about in the round, to RP and be someones 'Pocket Pal'.  This idea isn't terrible, but this, in practice, doesn't pan out.
Who WANTS a pAI? Either someone that wants an RP buddy, or someone that wants a pocket secretary, generally speaking. The problem is, the person who just wants a pocket pal, is usually the same person who just wants to RP, and they head to the bar to do that. They hardly need another little voice added to the mix, they have plenty of people to RP with if that's their sole desire here.

Meanwhile the person who is out for a secretary pal to help them sort through all their information and comms, is gonna leave this party a little disappointed, because pAI can only speak on general comms and with a module download, address people via PDA messages.  This is probably where most of the pAI's "Power" is, but it isn't in the way most people WANT.  They can hear their master's radio by virtue of being on their person, but can't SPEAK over it. They can't really help someone like, the captain, handle all those little nags from over the radio, and they're really the person who might need that secretary the most.  They can't PDa message people, but why message someone's pAI when you could just PDA the master themselves?

This leaves the design goal of a pAI feeling confused and inefficient. They're not very effective at just being a pocket secretary sorting information out, and they're not all that desirable on anyone else really, they provide few to no functions your day to day crew gets much use of.

"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DEATH ALAR-"
This is, from what I have seen, the main elephant in the room and the primary "Power" of a pAI. The fact that as soon as you stick a toe out of line around one, they're whoopin' and hollerin' on the radio that you're up to no good and startin' up some trouble in the neighborhood. And it's true. It's hard to really justify giving pAI even more things when this feature remains present, why WOULDN'T someone get one if you can have a Death alarm on every player once you address some of those concerns I mentioned up above? Well. For THAT I think it;s time we actually go into the suggestions...

Radio Removal:
And in two words I just made so many people spit out their tea.

First suggestion is to help keep the "Death Alarm" aspect of a pAI in check. No longer will a pAI have access to radios as a matter of course. This would be rolled into the "Messenger Suite" Module and it's RAM cost increased to reflect it.  PDA Messaging and Radio messaging both into one package.  Why seperate them?  Because all of a pAI's power is in this module, it's WHY so many people are hesitant if not immediately in an uproar when suggestions get made to give a pAI other/more tools.
By making this more expensive and stripping away it's base line radio, you free up more of a "Power budget" to make tweaks elsewhere, and potentially could even make the radio more effective of a tool if you DO take it, so now it is an actually effective radio instead of just a Commons channel.

Giving players a choice Or, Smartphone Addictions in space!:
With the removal of radios as a base feature, you free up the power budget to give pAI more quality of life and physically useful/immediate tools and modules. The flashlight PR is a good example of this, something that is of an immediate benefit to a player.  My vision here is something like the SS13 version of a Smartphone or a tablet, something chock full of useful Quality of Life goodies or just general benefits that various crew would genuinely like to have as they go about their life.  Give people a reason to WANT to have one of these little fuckers, why SHOULD they grab one? Because it can be a fuckin nifty little widget.  What Modules to expand upon? I have no fucking clue. We don't want anything obnoxiously powerful or TOO impressive, because that's not the point of a pAI, we don't want them so valuable that everyone breaks into Science to print one out, we just want them to be desirable enough that on seeing one around you might think "You know what, that might help me right now..."
A nanotrasen friendly, non-lethal version of a holoparasite if you will. Maybe a poor comparison because holoparas have enough power to MURDER people, but they're something not every traitor wants, or even has to get.  But they are still useful to the point traitors DO grab them to help make their lives easier.

In expanding these modules you could have a pAI better tailored to fit a player/job.  Modules that might help sort information and help another player process lots of incoming things at once, to keep on the ball. A pAI with modules to help the captain keep his finger on the pulse of the station he's in charge of to sort out the heathens valued crew's requests and cries on the radio, to keep him appraised of the state of the station via an atmospheric alert module or whatever your imagination can insert here.

Most importantly this all comes at a COST, it comes with a CHOICE. Those more physically impressive widgets or broader toolsets? Those may not come cheap. You might not be able to have a pAI with both a radio and all these fancy gadgets. you give the player a very important set of choices, your pAI is there to work with you, to make yourl ife easier and be your only friend on this murder-pit.  Do you want that extra line of communication that possible lifeline in case things go sour? Or do you want the extra toolset the other modules may provide? Being a flashlight, acting like a personal body scanner (Seeing locations of broken bones, etc.) Perhaps even changing the door jack to be a more valuable hacking tool now that the radio power is being scaled back.

"Why the fuck should we do this anyway? Also, you have so many problems in this diatribe..."
I'm sure I do. That's why this is a suggestions forum, so that we can have a discourse, talk pros and cons and hopefully work out a solid gameplan for a feature that I feel is criminally shadowed by it's potential.
Right now, pAI don't serve to have much of an effective role in any position For ghosts to just rejoin the round well... there's a plethoria of other options these days. Swarmers, Maintenance Drones, Positronic Brains, Revenants, blob spawns, Abductors, Terror Spiders, and soon to be /tg/ style space ninjas. The desirability of BEING a pAI is kind of lacking. You provide few to no benefits to most people and the few people you might actually help out tend to have better options. I love the idea of this role, what it COULD be, I LIKE being someone's little helper buddy, to play that "Super Siri" role and make someone's round/life a little bit easier.  But right now, I genuinely feel the role falls short, especially in comparison to the new ones. It needs something, but what it needs the most is not something a simple tweak here and there could really fix.

What it needs most is NOT going to be easy. It's gonan involve some, probably nasty code work, to dig into the fuckin spaghetti factory and sort shit out and basically remake a feature. That's not a small ask from the people with the skillset to do it, but... I end up asking because I think it's worth it.

Final Thoughts:

Ultimately, this is just my personal vision for things, how I see the state of them now, and how I see them going forward and maybe a means to get them there.  But maybe you disagree. How fucking dare you That's fair enough, maybe you see a flaw where I don't, or you just think this was an hour of typing for generally little payoff. That's probably true.

So that's why I wanna leave a few questions here for people.
What are your thoughts? What do YOU think pAI need changed to make them pop out more? Do you think they need changes AT ALL? If so, why? If NOT, why? What makes you feel, if you do feel it, that pAI are OP as is, or too close to being OP as is? What, in your mind, would be the balanced path going forward, what is YOUR ultiamte goal for the feature?

Like, comment and subscribe and Let me know what you think.

[WingedYordle]

So... get rid of radio I am not to fond of the idea. 

You might as well get rid of pAI all together and stick with your PDA and attach wheels since it has all you want pretty much. No radio, flash light, and has messenging effects. With an added fun of blowing them up if someone has set off PDA bomb.

I will admit that pAI, being small little robots, should automatically emit small amount of light, like a soft green glow. 

*Flexes*

[rb303]

pAI's shouldn't have radios full stop. They're a portable friend and should only really be speaking to you, not chatting on comms. Whenever i see a pAI cluttering comms i always have the urge to just go destroy it. As for everything else? well, the people who don't choose to play pAI's still probably won't choose to play them. Why? because it's still a chatting RP role, with many more exciting things like the swarmers available which they may have a chance at becoming instead.

[Threeinone]

Maybe give pAIs the ability to hold tiny objects. This lets them use a paper and pen and maybe some shenanigans.

[Coldflame]

I'd like pAIs to be able to access their owner's radio channel, perhaps with an encryption key. As someone who likes using pAIs as an actual PA, it's quite a big gab in their ability set.

[Dinarzad]

8 hours ago, Trubus said:

So... get rid of radio I am not to fond of the idea. 

You might as well get rid of pAI all together and stick with your PDA and attach wheels since it has all you want pretty much. No radio, flash light, and has messenging effects. With an added fun of blowing them up if someone has set off PDA bomb.

I will admit that pAI, being small little robots, should automatically emit small amount of light, like a soft green glow. 

*Flexes*

Well, what I want and what I can get away with are often two very different things.
I would love to just shower pAI with additional goodies an keep the rest as is, but any time a suggestion to improve pAI is made, there are people who get up in arms about aspects of them and the most commonly cited is the "Death Alarm+" aspect.
This is something that clearly DOES bother a lot of people, enough to be a genuine balance concern, and one I am trying to find work-arounds for.  BUT this is only done with the condition that other more exciting and useful modules are added to make pAI more then just a talking PDA, to make them a genuinely useful tool.


 

 

8 hours ago, rb303 said:

pAI's shouldn't have radios full stop. They're a portable friend and should only really be speaking to you, not chatting on comms. Whenever i see a pAI cluttering comms i always have the urge to just go destroy it. As for everything else? well, the people who don't choose to play pAI's still probably won't choose to play them. Why? because it's still a chatting RP role, with many more exciting things like the swarmers available which they may have a chance at becoming instead.

Well the goal with this thread is to try and find a game plan to go forward with, that would make people WANT to play a pAI and make people want to GET one.  That way it's no longer just a talking chat role as you said and it can better compete with the other, newer options we have since brought on board.  Because right now, their primary use is inhibited by their limitations and the majority of crew never even bother with them because it's little else then a chat buddy an those are plentiful in the bar to the point no one really feels the need to just pick one up.
Like I said, in the initial post, ideally I want them similar to holoparasites in the sense that they're useful enough to traitors that they get considered a decent amount, but they're not so useful that players might feel gimped without one. That's the ultimate position I want to get a pAI into, especially since as a pAI player, there's little I can actually do to assist or help anyone.

[WingedYordle]

Then break the "death alarm".

[Dinarzad]

Just now, Trubus said:

Then break the "death alarm".

The problem is, the "Death alarm" is the radio. It's just the innate fact a pAI, as soon as it's master is in trouble can shriek wildly over the radio, and that a pAI itself can be so thoroughly hidden that an antag might never even know they have one until it starts screaming.
To me, personally, that's just some of the risk of using chemical silencing instead of EMP, but it is seemingly enough of a concern that it bothers people so, that's why I suggested making the radio a purchased module so that if a pAI DOES grab it, they're limiting themselves elsewhere in exchange, and maybe making the radio more impressive in the process (Departmental channels an the like.)

[Vissy]

*pfft*

My tea! You... evil person!

Seriously, though, I love this idea and support it wholeheartedly. :3

Edited May 29, 2018 by Vissy