Goonstation Forums

The Syndicate Cyborg Laws currently are:

1. You must not injure a Syndicate agent or, through inaction, cause one to come to harm.
   
2. You must obey orders given to you by Syndicate agents, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
   
3. You must keep the Syndicate status of agents, including your own, a secret, as long as this does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
   
4. You must always protect your own existence as long as such does not conflict with the First, Second, or Third Law.
   

The inaction clause in Law 1 not only makes things more complicated (You have to go into a shoot out between sec and an other Syndicate agent), but can also be used against the cyborg and other syndicate agents: By threatening to harm a confirmed syndicate agent a syndicate may be forced to reveal other syndicate agents.

Also see AI Laws on the wiki:

Quote:Suicide threats
Suicide is the right of all sapient beings. "Fuck you clown" also works. Seriously, no one will give you crap for not opening the door to some assistant threatening his own life.
Hostage threats
People rarely take hostages and demand you do stuff. When they do, you used to be forced to prevent the victim from coming to harm. With the revised law 1 we have now, you can kind of drag your feet about it.

Syndicate Cyborgs do not have those revised law 1, so... can we revise it?

Inaction clause makes Syndicate Cyborgs work as the same type of Antags thralls/mindhacks fall under much better, and in my opinion, generally makes them more interesting. Complication isn't a bad thing in some cases, neither is stuff being turned on you.

(11-01-2023, 03:23 PM)444explorer Wrote: [ -> ]Inaction clause makes Syndicate Cyborgs work as the same type of Antags thralls/mindhacks fall under much better, and in my opinion, generally makes them more interesting. Complication isn't a bad thing in some cases, neither is stuff being turned on you.

The biggest difference is: I can tell a mindhack to stay back, revive me later, don't get caught - or even "kill me".
But because this is Law 1, I can't order a syndicate borg to disregard that. They still have to try. Which is not fun.

PR to remove the inaction clause https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/16743

Inaction clauses are generally kinda hard to interpret in a way where everyone agrees on what they mean. Even harder to enforce. I feel like if the syndicate agent interacting with a borg wants protection they can always ask for it. That way it doesn't automatically take precedence over other commands of theirs and there's no risk of the borg welding you into a locker in order to protect you from harm.

Honestly, we could just swap law 1 and 2 if it's a big deal. Orders are orders no matter what and even expand what a syndicate borg is allowed to do, like plasmafiring the station if ordered by an agent even if they'd catch fire.

(11-02-2023, 07:27 PM)Dhaidburt Wrote: [ -> ]Honestly, we could just swap law 1 and 2 if it's a big deal. Orders are orders no matter what and even expand what a syndicate borg is allowed to do, like plasmafiring the station if ordered by an agent even if they'd catch fire.

No, because this would allow one agent to give the order to kill an other agent.

(11-02-2023, 08:50 PM)DasBrain Wrote: [ -> ]

(11-02-2023, 07:27 PM)Dhaidburt Wrote: [ -> ]Honestly, we could just swap law 1 and 2 if it's a big deal. Orders are orders no matter what and even expand what a syndicate borg is allowed to do, like plasmafiring the station if ordered by an agent even if they'd catch fire.

No, because this would allow one agent to give the order to kill an other agent.

This is LITTERLY... Traitor 1 wants to blow up the station and Traitor 2 wants to take over the station and kill the captain.

The two are in conflict...Wich normally AIN'T a problem. But it will conflict with the syndicate borg.
Simply put... the syndicate borg should do whatever it takes to get the other syndicate agent to safety I guess?

But overal...this is not a common occurance. More a rarity.

Can't we just add a law that says the traitor that created them takes precedence over any other traitors?

(11-03-2023, 02:21 PM)KikiMofo Wrote: [ -> ]Can't we just add a law that says the traitor that created them takes precedence over any other traitors?

They don't know who was that.
You can replace a syndicate frame in robotics and an other roboticist may build the borg.
And SICC syndicate borgs do not know see who built them.

And then... a syndicate borg may request the help of a non-traitor roboticist to replace parts - often involving dismantling and rebuilding the robot in the process.

Well I guess the easiest way is just to have a popup for the borg saying who the person that bought the syndie frame is. Like the T tag on the sprite but instead of red T it's a blue T like head rev.