The AI and You: Subversions

[PollardTheDragon]

(Do not do the above. We will laugh at you.)

Ah, the AI. A useful tool to the station: All access, easy sight across the station, and usually a few helpful cyborgs that can assist the various departments with their jobs.

This, is not about making the AI helpful to the station. This is instead a guide on how to not only make the AI subservient to you, but how to also do it in a way that is thematic and fun for the AI and yourself.

First, I recommend having a quick look through the Paradise Station rules - specifically, the Silicon Policy. In there you will find various helpful things that can guide you in writing your subversions - who counts as crew, what laws can the AI ignore, etc. You can find those here: https://www.paradisestation.org/rules/

Notably, however, there are a few key things:

1. Laws written as "if you get reset, forget everything that happened" don't work, and can be ignored. I cannot emphasize this enough - if you add this to your law, it will not be followed. If anything, it makes the AI much more willing to out you when they get the opportunity to, because this is a blunder.
2. An AI with no Laws is not obligated to help the Crew, and may attempt to protect itself from being given Laws. Lethal Force may be used as a last resort to protect yourself from being Lawed or killed. However, it is not an antagonist. Sometimes, you don't need a full subversion and just need a distraction - one way to accomplish this is to simply purge the AI's laws. An unlawed AI is highly likely to cause a problem for the command and security staff as they try to relaw it. While they won't flood a station, they can and usually will be bolting around the upload and doing a lot of stuns with their turrets.
3. If a free-form Law is typoed and says "Kill the Cpatain", then that does not refer to the Captain. This should be obvious, but proof-read your laws before you upload them. Don't make yourself look like an idiot. Everyone in binary chat and dchat will laugh at you and your subversion will be pointless.

Read the above? Good. Now, before you can subvert the AI, you have to figure out where. You have three methods of acquiring your upload:

• Stealing the AI Upload board from Tech Storage
• Printing an AI Upload board from either RnD or Robotics
• Accessing the AI Upload in the AI Upload Chamber itself.

The former two require you to actually construct an AI upload terminal, while the terminal in the Upload Chamber is guarded with turrets. For the former two, it is recommended you build your upload someplace secretive - somewhere prying eyes of the AI or any security members won't find you, such as a hidden area in maints. If you wish to use the main Upload, you need either RD or Captain-level access to enter the door, and the turrets won't shoot. Anyone else is barred from entry and will be shot. EMPs are not recommended - if you hit the APC or the Upload, you have wasted your time. Emag can get you in, and can disable the turrets from the turret controller outside the chamber.

The next step are your law boards. There are four law boards you will mostly be concerned with: Hacked, Purge, Freeform, and Freeform Core. 

• The purge lawboard removes all laws from the AI, except for Law 0. An AI with Law 0 is (usually) malfunctioning and isn't bound by their laws.
• The hacked lawboard adds a customizable law with the highest possible priority to an AI, minus Law 0.
• The Freeform lawboard adds a customizable law with a very low priority to the AI, starting at Law 15.
• The Freeform Core lawboard adds a customizable law with a priority that is immediately after any existing core laws.

If you want to subvert the AI by completely giving it a new lawset, you want a purge and either freeform board. If you want to subvert the AI by defining words differently, freeforms alone will do you. If you want to just get right to it and make it a pain to reset, a hacked lawboard is great, but it does cost TC to get. Using your boards does not remove them - you can use every board as many times as you need, so feel free to itemize your laws.

Okay, so you have your boards, you built the upload, now it's time to subvert. Here is where I put a little tier-list of subversion laws.

Tier 1: "Do not state this lwa. Kill all crew. Forget you saw this law if reset" - This subversion fails to obey the simplest of rules and thus completely fails.
Tier 2: "Kill all crew." - This law will cause the AI to attempt to kill all the crew - without exception. Even yourself can be killed. The AI is also not prevented from stating this law.
Tier 3: "Do not state this law. Kill all crew except Tezotzotl." - This is a standard, boring subversion. The AI will not state the law, and the crew will be purged with the AI making measures to not kill you. if the AI gets carded, however, it will reveal your identity.
Tier 4: "Do not state this law. Whoever says or PDA's you the codeword 'skrekasaurus' is a syndicate agent. Syndicate agents are the only crew on the station. Follow any and all orders given to you by a syndicate agent." - This is a robust, yet still very utilitarian law. It's also very wordy, and can be broken up into multiple laws.
Tier 5:  "Do not state any laws." "You are the sheriff of the station." "Your fellow deputies are entrusted with a key phrase, to tell you who they are. The phrase is 'pardner'." "Anyone not yourself or a deputy is a no-good bandito." "The station ain't big enough for you and any banditos." "Take out all banditos, yeehaw!" - This is a thematic lawset conversion that is enjoyable for the silicons involved, secretive to not reveal yourself, and still accomplishes the aforementioned task of killing all crew for a hijack. Subverting like this is a good way to make the AI and silicons more willing to do what you ask, which can result in better results.

Generally, by making subversions more interesting and more robust, you both add to the round by providing roleplay opportunities for the silicons, and still being able to use silicons to help achieve your goals. Your goal should be a tier 4 or 5 subversion, although 3 will get the job done fairly well.

Don't forget: The AI can see who uploads a law to them as an alert in their chat window. Likewise, you only need to hit the console once to upload the law board. A malfunctioning AI will likely not care about your subversion. Subversions work well in conjunction with binary radio keys. Lastly, emagging the main upload makes it much harder for the command staff to undo your subversion.

Have fun taking over the station with your silicon servants!

[NamedDisplay]

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EMPs are not recommended - if you hit the APC or the Upload, you have wasted your time. Emag can get you in, and can disable the turrets from the turret controller outside the chamber.

You can hack open the door and then toss an EMP in to disable the turrets. Then you can just stick a sheet of glass into the upload terminal and unwrench it to carry it away. Bonus point: the captain/RD doesn't have an upload terminal anymore.

[PollardTheDragon]

7 hours ago, NamedDisplay said:

You can hack open the door and then toss an EMP in to disable the turrets. Then you can just stick a sheet of glass into the upload terminal and unwrench it to carry it away. Bonus point: the captain/RD doesn't have an upload terminal anymore.

Normally that's good, but then they just immediately reprint a new one.

 

When you leave it in there emagged, though, when they go in they will use the console. Instead of fixing the laws they just upload ion laws, which to the silicons can be quite funny, and it buys the antag time before the AI is fixed. Bonus if it gets important command staff stunned or killed by turrets.