AI Camera, or "BAYSTATION IS BETTER YOU SUCK COG BLOO BLOO"

[shrapnel]

I've played AI primarily for years and I've always hated our camera system. A user interface neeeeeds to be intuitive: if you think, "oh, if I hit leftarrow I'll be able to see that area" and then hitting leftarrow takes you somewhere entirely other, that's a failed system. and that happens constantly on goonstation. the new systems are super intriguing conceptually, but in practice they make AIing even more hilariously stupid. I can't tell you how many times just in my three or four newcamera AI rounds I've tracked someone and -not had them on the camera.- and it's worse than that, of course; you also can't see doors or APCs if they're in meson view, which makes specific doors and APCs infinitely harder to find. And empty rooms? What do they even mean? There's no instant way to tell the difference between a room you CAN see with no one in it and a room you THINK you can see but can't actually that's packed with changelings.

I'm in favor of AI LoS, but it should be universal. All cameras should have LoS shared from all other active cameras if we're gonna do it that way. LLA (I think?) has the AI camera moving like a ghost, with visibility only where cameras can see, and it's -so much fucking better- than this shit we use today, even pre-change. Probably the only thing they do better than goonstation. The camera fiddlyness just doesn't behave the way humans would expect it to, and I'm sure it's turned scads of newbies off AIhood.

[Lainge]

words My apologies for the strong language.

Strong language was used in your post?

I didn't really get a chance to play AI when the experiments were taking place and I assume X-ray has been reimplemented because I finally got a round as AI and it seemed to be working.

I will say that I absolutely hate the camera system for AI, trying to go 1 camera to the east and bam you've gone significantly south-east and going north puts you past your goal further is really frustrating.
Maybe I'm a little biased but I would like the AI to be more threatening.
Taking a page out of System Shock and having the AI as horrifyingly frightening as having Xerxes or Shodan breathing down your neck, giving the AI the option to send the securitrons to locations and having hidden turrets in set locations on the station only usable when a certain protocol is activated.
With the limitation of the cameras to only giving sight based on the direction they're pointing, while giving the AI a ghost-like movement over the station.

...It's a pipe-dream I know.
But damn I would love t- Glory to the flesh. Glory to the mass.

[shrapnel]

Maybe I'm a little biased but I would like the AI to be more threatening.
Taking a page out of System Shock and having the AI as horrifyingly frightening as having Xerxes or Shodan breathing down your neck, giving the AI the option to send the securitrons to locations and having hidden turrets in set locations on the station only usable when a certain protocol is activated.

It's very funny how dangerous players thing the AI is. It's like, I can bolt and shock doors! And if I bolt antagonists in somewhere they can't escape, they'll probably adminhelp it and I'll be shamed as a supercop, regardless of my laws! Borgs are hugely more frightening. I've wondered for a long time if we should maybe have an "emergency powers" module that lets the AI do things like shock all doors with a buttonpress, more directly turn off life support, deploy to a murderbot, etc. An underpowered AI is probably better than an overpowered AI, though. Panopticon tracking is already really potent just by itself.