Have faith in the spooky honor system! [Ghost Drone Chat Ideas Here Please]

[Frank_Stein]

My other opinion on ghost drones: They're both too powerful and too limited

They don't have full access, but they have a full set of tools for hacking and an RCD for rapidly building and deconstruction.

That's a powerful set of tools for something that's supposed to be inconsequential.

I'd rather they have more freedom with little power, than the power to do a lot but little freedom to do it

Take away their mag tractors, take away their RCD, give them crappier versions of those tools, give them a dedicated cleaning tool. They should be glorified roombas

[Ed Venture]

if people are being shit about ghost drones: adminhelp it! so many people complain but barely anyone actually ahelps it! and then it keeps happening

See I said they get away with things on low pop cause hardly any admins are on during those hours. I've adminhelped plenty of people during low pop and from what I can tell they never get in trouble. There's even a complaint about this on the front page on this subject. Hufflaw even admitted in said thread that we need more new admins.

[Frank_Stein]

if people are being shit about ghost drones: adminhelp it! so many people complain but barely anyone actually ahelps it! and then it keeps happening

See I said they get away with things on low pop cause hardly any admins are on during those hours. I've adminhelped plenty of people during low pop and from what I can tell they never get in trouble. There's even a complaint about this on the front page on this subject. Hufflaw even admitted in said thread that we need more new admins.

 Would help if it was easier to take care of shit ghost drones in game

Longer cooldowns between drone production, easier way to disable their production

[Vitatroll]

Lack of ghost chat is probably the main reason I avoid them.

Give GDs the ability to phase through objects. Biggest troublemaking with drones is them hacking doors and cracking windows because they get 'stuck'. Even though they can just, y'know, respawn.

Restrict them from certain things. Buffers. Segways. Dragging certain things like lockers or people. Not sure if they still can do stuff like that, but they really shouldn't.

Add a drone killswitch to the robotics control computer as a last resort; the living come first.

The RCD causes problems, but it's also the only reason I play GDs. Repairs and other projects just take too long without them. I don't think it's the problem, though. Walling off an area or deleting tiles is a naked transgression. Those people would have found some way to abuse GDs, RCD or no.

[NateTheSquid]

Add a drone killswitch to the robotics control computer as a last resort; the living come first.

this would be a good solution. keeping track of ghost drone names is a pain in the ass though. maybe it just killswitches all the ghost drones? or an alternate button to killswitch all of them if you insert multiple head ID's, in case they are all a mess. and definitely a button or computer thing somewhere on the GD factory to turn it off

[Sundance]

Yes to ghostdrone killswitch. Extremely handy for an AI who spots one misbehaving and/or breaking the rules.

Something that was suggested before with ghost drones was their access, but honestly I have no trouble getting around as one. You can pass over tables and the lark and if you're truly stuck, you can rcd your way in/out and then politely rcd the wall back in place (avoid rcd'ing doors for this reason)

And i'm not entirely against synthetic speech, I just have my reservations. Teetering on the "is it worth it" and "effort" kind of scale. Deadchat speech just seems like an obvious pro.

And i'd be against restricting them any further than they are currently. You need to be able to drag crates/lockers if you're attempting to do a full repair, such as lights, or if you want to do janitorial work.

[Nnystyxx]

I swear to God I know SOMEBODY in the admin or coder team said "people being turbonerds is not an argument against implementation of a feature". Anyway, let them speak to ghosts. I want to be able to help build a sweet bar in space without losing out on a convo I'm having with the ghosts, and again, honor system for drones prevents them from being like 'HMMMM THOSE GHOSTS SURE SAID SOME NEAT STUFF ABOUT A BAD GUY IN MEDBAY BETTER POP A HOLE TO SPACE NEXT TO HIM'. If they do that they get shitcanned forever. Killswitch is also a good idea imo, although if it was abused in turn to fuck over drones, the person abusing it should be reprimanded.

Only being able to killswitch all the drones instead of one at a time is an idea, however, that can absolutely go fuck off and die in a hole forever because one of my greatest annoyances is being punished for other people's misdeeds. One at a time please.

EDIT: Also keep the RCD because it makes building things not horrible ok thanks

[Frank_Stein]

What I mean is, destroying a whole wall and then rebuilding it seems silly when you could just as easily let them open and close doors. Or just fly through them! Assume they're using a little doggie door built just for them.

And sure, the RCD is a good tool for rapid building and repair, but it's weird to me that the guys who aren't supposed to affect the round are also the best at repair damage from someone's bombs. Depressurizing an area is often a desired thing for an antag, a robots that can stop that from happening are saving people and foiling that plan indirectly.

Like I said, I'd rather they have less power and more agency than the other way around.

I dunno, I guess this is all derailment. I support them having more chat privileges.

[warcrimes]

RE: Depressurisation vs not-interfering
by the time a drone manages to repressurise an area, that particular area-denial has long outlived its usefulness as everyone in it is either dead or has internals. It's in the stage where it's just annoying because it's cold and you can't hear farts.

RE: messing with people's projects
I think that's a law interpretation issue.
The drones are required to maintain, repair, or improve the station, so it's well within their directive to undo harmful modifications-
See: Dismantling unnecessary blockades ( freer access / flow of personnel = +++ )
NOT: Dismantling someone's cool Mech Comp ( cool stuff = +++ )

Regardless, even if GDs had AI-level access, machinetalk, AND ghostchat, none of the issues brought up are issues with the feature itself.
Treat GDs like any other role, make the rules more clear, and job ban shitty drones.
And while theres obviously some trepidation about creating a plaintext link between dead and 'living' - it'd only be with the silicons anyways (plus roboticists i guess) who already deal with strict lawsets and face much higher scrutiny for playstyle than any other role bar security.

It's just so easy to crack down on any possible misuse, not to mention so easy to choose not to collaborate with a GD who tries to meta.

Drone tries to mention to you there's a body in maint?
Ahelp. Then gib the body.
(/Salt)

[Mordent]

See I said they get away with things on low pop cause hardly any admins are on during those hours. I've adminhelped plenty of people during low pop and from what I can tell they never get in trouble. There's even a complaint about this on the front page on this subject. Hufflaw even admitted in said thread that we need more new admins.

A) Short of a "I'll take a look" I almost never give feedback to people adminhelping about any consequences. You have literally no idea what they were told, what notes were added about them, or if they received a ban. If I'm not playing a game and just keeping an eye on adminhelps via IRC I don't always even respond to the adminhelper, especially if it's been 5-10 minutes between them doing it and me noticing.

B) Even if no one looks into it that round, keep adminhelping. Most of us have our IRC set up so we see things sent even if we're not logged in when we log back in. Even if we don't go digging back through logs we can notice trends.

C) We have two new admins, both of whom are (from what I've seen) doing stellar jobs.

Honestly, I've said A and B in forum threads, Discord, and IRC more times than I care to mention in the past few weeks, I'm not entirely sure why you're still spouting the "nothing happens if we adminhelp and no admins are on" rhetoric. If you're not happy with the process (namely the lack of "I banned them" feedback, which is probably never going to happen for all but the most extreme/obvious cases) then I'm not sure what to tell you other than "suggest something to fix it".

Looking casually through the IRC at the last 24 or so hours, less than ten adminhelps appeared to go unanswered, and all but one of those were things best suited for mentorhelp. Which brings me on to another point: use mentorhelp for game mechanics questions, you're more likely to get a speedy result (admins will see it anyway, but so will mentors).

I'm not looking to derail this topic further, if you wish to respond to my points here please do so via a separate thread or in IRC/Discord (I'll just delete anything else otherwise, to keep it on point).

EDIT: Had a chat with Ed via IRC, letting him sum up below. I'd still really like to keep this topic on track rather than devolving into "but adminhelping doesn't fix it". That's a totally valid topic, just one for a different thread.

[Ed Venture]

I was granted permission to respond to this.


To anyone who feels I was implying that I was saying it's not worth adminhelping during low pop then I have this to say.

That's not what I was going for. Sorry. What I was saying was in my experience when I adminhelp during low pop nothing gets done and in worst cases you can tell cause the people being shit do not stop being shit. I still adminhelp cause when they do see it they can at least keep a eye on those players in the future.

I never have not adminhelp when I feel people are breaking the rules. At most when I adminhelp all I want in a reply is a "I'll look into it" not "Yeah I banned him". Being left in silence while shit people keep being shit sucks. Even more so if you can't stop them yourself. For the record like I said in the past all I want out of a reply from my Adminhelps is a "I'll look into it" that way I know they are checking it out. I don't ask for any information on how they are handling it. It just is nice to know that they are there and my adminhelp got attention.

Always adminhelp even if no one gets punished, give as much information on what is happening and the people invloved as you can. The more info you give the easier it is for them to do their job. When they do see your adminhelps that just gives them information on players that could be shit and will in turn watch out for them or have a point of reference if others adminhelp them and they are on to see it as it's happening.

Part of what I was saying is people get away with a lot on low population and I feel they take advantage of the fact that most of the time no admins are on.

I hope this clears that up and I apologize for not being clearer and for the confusion I caused. I also am sorry for how disrespectful that my post came off towards the admins. That was not my goal and again I am sorry about it.

[ZeWaka]

I'm changed my stance on this over time and I now think allowing deadchat access for ghostdrones could be a good idea.

probably the biggest blocker for the idea is this, it's really easy to give ghostdrones deadchat access

[Wire]

i'm do the thing

[Wire]

I have done the thing, ghostdrones can now hear deadchat and communicate on it via the :d chat prefix.

[NateTheSquid]

I have done the thing, ghostdrones can now hear deadchat and communicate on it via the :d chat prefix.

ghost drones finally got the :d