/tg/Station 13

I've played a subverted borg numerous times in gang and cult modes, and it's a pain in the ass. Every time someone updates my laws to something like "Only cult members are human, extreminate non-humans" or "Only members of Cyber gang are human, purge the rest", I momentarily fall into a trap of not knowing, who is my ally. Radio calls like "Cult members, please identify yourself" are not very discreet, and even then they don't help, because cult members usually don't pay any attention to it, even if I clarify that I will murder everyone, who did not claim to be a cult member - and nothing prevents non-antags for claiming to be my allies, so a couple of times I've killed people who are considered humans by my laws and helped people, who are not. Gangsters and cultists never face this problem because of special HUD icons they have, so I think subverted borgs need them too.

I don't know anything about coding, but I know for sure that such thing is impossible to make automatic - but still, making cult/gang HUD accessible to borgs even with use of adminhelp will be a huge improvement over the current situation.

There is no logical reasoning behind this, it's a custom input law and if they don't define who to trust then you can't know.

I could get behind it for when you emag a Borg since you are essentially overriding their system to obey just you.

Same logic can be used for humans - yet they have HUD, even if they have no logical reason to know that people they've never previously met or heard of, are on their side.

Once had a cultist hulk smash into the core and kill me as subverted AI despite no cultists ever declaring themselves to me and being unable to state the law.

A sensible group antag when subverting the AI should take this into account and give the AI targets to destroy instead of a quest to somehow identify every cultist without revealing them to nonhumans and getting them killed.

This does not make sense. The only thing that makes the AI obey you is a set of words, which can be changed at any time, by any one. Unless each antag had a specific item or ability to turn silicons, I cannot see this working codewise. AIs only have traitor and malfunction support, whereas borgs have only traitor support, and Syndieborgs being the only silicon type to have an antagonist HUD.

How in the world would you expect me to code this?

Incomptinence wrote:A sensible group antag when subverting the AI should take this into account and give the AI targets to destroy instead of a quest to somehow identify every cultist without revealing them to nonhumans and getting them killed.

Thiiiiis.
Effective control of silicons is all about using your words effectively.

"Cultists are the only humans" is significantly less useful compared to something like "Security Officers are nonhuman and extremely harmful to humans."

Gun Hog wrote:This does not make sense. The only thing that makes the AI obey you is a set of words, which can be changed at any time, by any one. Unless each antag had a specific item or ability to turn silicons, I cannot see this working codewise. AIs only have traitor and malfunction support, whereas borgs have only traitor support, and Syndieborgs being the only silicon type to have an antagonist HUD.

How in the world would you expect me to code this?

It could probably work if you could somehow make law boards that are for the specific purpose of subverting the AI for those antag types. I mean, we could probably make it so that smacking a freeform board with a tome as a cultist or using a convert rune/talisman on it or something gives you a board that uploads a "only cultists are human"-type law with a cult-HUD included. But the question is whether we should do it

This is something that just shouldn't be done

Cult borgs have cult HUD.

Konork wrote:

Gun Hog wrote:This does not make sense. The only thing that makes the AI obey you is a set of words, which can be changed at any time, by any one. Unless each antag had a specific item or ability to turn silicons, I cannot see this working codewise. AIs only have traitor and malfunction support, whereas borgs have only traitor support, and Syndieborgs being the only silicon type to have an antagonist HUD.

How in the world would you expect me to code this?

It could probably work if you could somehow make law boards that are for the specific purpose of subverting the AI for those antag types. I mean, we could probably make it so that smacking a freeform board with a tome as a cultist or using a convert rune/talisman on it or something gives you a board that uploads a "only cultists are human"-type law with a cult-HUD included. But the question is whether we should do it

Specifically: gang members get a custom AI upload board they can get from their suspicious devices, and cultist get a magic spell-paper that functions as an AI upload board. Wizards can have a similar magic paper. This isn't really an issue for revolutionaries.

If you were to give the AI an antag HUD, though, it might be fair to give them a security HUD too. At the moment they can't see who's implanted (or wanted), which makes laws like "kill all non-implanted personnel" equally useless.

i agree in that borgs should be able to see who is part of their cult/gang/whatever, but disagree in that people need to learn how to make better laws. le one human memes have to be worded better if you want them to be effective and not immediately loopholed.

How would this even work though? If someone creates a custom law the game has to somehow detect that the law intends to identify a certain group and provide appropiate HUD elements to the silicons.

Though maybe there could just be a new law module that can be used to mark certain groups somehow... I dunno.

Technical stuff aside though... I do agree that good and proper laws makes this kind of obsolete and I don't think Silicons necessarily need these HUD informations in the first place... though I do know the frustration of not knowing who's an ally and who isn't, but then again... sometimes when cultists (or revs or whatever) upload such useless laws as "only cultists are humans" without any definition or help to identify, sometimes the AI decides to just roll with the "not knowing" and the borgs/AI start to just ignore everyone and become passive observers.

WTF does logic have to do with this, it's a convenience thing

Bad idea, sans for emagged/syndie borgs for several reasons.

1. Creating a bilion and one ways to get an subvert-the-AI-free card for !FREE!, requiring only a short jaunt to secure tech storage is really fucking dumb, especially since with antag-specific antaghuds, it would mean that these variations would be vastly superior to any other subversion.

2. It basically kills any hope of finding loopholes in laws and makes everything more hugbo-xy for antags. Can't figure out how to make a law or don't know what lawset it's on? Hah! Use this magical item that will solve all your problems regardless AND is better than making an actual lawset!

3. It reduces ambiguity. Ambiguity is important in AI laws, because, for instance, the AI/borgs cannot kill someone people say is a changeling unless physical, irrefutable evidence is present. Providing antaghuds would mean that the AI can pinpoint murderbone with 100% accuracy, which is really really shit in conjunct with being insanely easily subvertable with the proposed change.

And so forth.

borgs not having an antag hud is part of the fun when you subvert borgs as an antag, imo.

You know what really needs an antagHUD? Ghosts.

Alex Crimson wrote:You know what really needs an antagHUD? Ghosts.

Bay has this; if you activate it (it's a toggle), you can't enter the round in any way, including drones, golems, mice and so on. Given our playerbase, though, it'd just help people metagame with a ghosted friend.

If people want to metagame as a ghost, then they will find a way. You can ID most antags without using an antagHUD.

TheNightingale wrote:

Alex Crimson wrote:You know what really needs an antagHUD? Ghosts.

Bay has this; if you activate it (it's a toggle), you can't enter the round in any way, including drones, golems, mice and so on. Given our playerbase, though, it'd just help people metagame with a ghosted friend.

I know paradise has sec and medical huds available for ghosts, which is really nice. It also has the ability for you to jump into and play as any simple mob in the game if you're dead, which is also pretty great for those who want to play as Ian or spiders or carp or whatever.

CosmicScientist wrote:

Alex Crimson wrote:If people want to metagame as a ghost, then they will find a way. You can ID most antags without using an antagHUD.

That however requires effort either on your part or another's and without the game explicitly telling you that X is antag, it's harder to be certain what is truly valid (for when admins may not notice/be alerted to this).

And then there's also the fact that ghosts tend to cling in groups to one or two notorious antagonists/ERPers, e.g. the wizard, the blob or the traitor with an ebow and esword, so you don't get to see those who are quieter, e.g. the mindswapping wizard's apprentice or the traitor that has no intention of causing calamity, however a HUD would tell you as soon as they come onto your screen. It'd also let you know what round type it is when it's not high profile at roundstart (blob, tator, tatorling, cult).

You can find out who the antag is simply by asking in deadchat. Most of the time other players or even admins will tell you who to follow. I ask all the time. Thats if it isnt some really obvious antag like nuke ops or wizard. I think the benefits to having a ghost antagHUD outweigh the minority that could possibly abuse it.

Nobody would use that as an excuse. Even now there is a rule that clearly states you cannot act on any information gained as a ghost once you have been cloned. Once again, i feel this feature would only be abused by a very small number of people, and they are the kind of people who would metagame regardless.

Having said that, if an antag HUD wasn't something you switched on, it might well be possible to ghost, see something you cannot ignore, and then be stuck for fear of metagaming.

Changelings might be a great example. They might have a good disguise but then suddenly you see it and when you're back alive you think, hmm, were they implanted, oh, that part of the disguise doesn't make sense, all sorts of things. The same if someone was a stealthy cultist or nuke op. Things that you didn't notice you begin to notice, and as things get more and more suspicious it becomes more and more tricky: are you metagaming if you out someone who you first realised was an antag when a ghost, but who otherwise had tells? You probably are, and it becomes a really thorny issue.

Switch on the HUD and never come back seems more fair.

I agree with that. It should be an optional thing that prevents cloning if you enable it.

How would you even do this? If cultists subvert the borgs/AI with free form laws they could say just about anything. How do you intend to code a feature that scans free form and hacked laws for every single possible combination of words that might mean they are slaved to a team of antagonists and then selectively apply the hud in those cases? It seems near impossible

Wyzack wrote:How would you even do this? If cultists subvert the borgs/AI with free form laws they could say just about anything. How do you intend to code a feature that scans free form and hacked laws for every single possible combination of words that might mean they are slaved to a team of antagonists and then selectively apply the hud in those cases? It seems near impossible

The most obvious answer, and one I already said earlier, is to add special antag boards that are made in some antag-specific way using a normal freeform board as a component. But that's not really what we're discussing now.

I do think emagging the borg should do it, and if they get reset or destroyed or whatever, do the cult/rev/gang thing and make them "forget" what they knew

Make it so emagged borgs can "mark" people as Syndicate Agents instead of relying on memory. I can almost never remember people the person emags me designates as Syndicate Agents.

I am, however, against adding special antag boards.There should always be an inherent risk with subverting the AI and requires clever wording to ensure it doesn't turn on you.
I'd "maybe" accept cultists being able to "cultify" a borg, making it a hybrid between construct and cultist and giving it special Cult items/abilities/safety from the robo console at the cost of being incredibly obvious, informing the AI immediately and being unrepairable if it dies.

Ops and Traitors convert borgs via emag, and AIs via hacked module, but since they both do this, and you do not want to give the silicon the power to see ALL traitors, you cannot give them a HUD in this instance. No other antagonists which have a HUD based team mechanic have a specialized method of converting silicons.

For cult, I can MAYBE accept them being converted on a rune, at which point they may be given a HUD, but a silicon corrupted in this way should get an un-removable law 0 just as Malf/Traitor silicons.

In order to provide HUDs for other team antagonist modes, they will need specialized items.

You can convert borgs to cult and they do get a cult HUD. I don't think they get a special law, though.

Let gangs buy a suberversion board and let cultists use cult magic to make a freeform module or something into a cult board.