[PR] Remove the "human" requirement from law 2.

[github_bot]

PULL REQUEST DETAILS

[FEEDBACK]

With the way the law was previously written, a lizard or cow head of
staff would not be included in the chain of command, which was extremely
tedious to deal with for the AI.

This does not modify law 1 in any way. The interaction between the AI
and anti-griefing rules has not been touched.

This does affect non-human antagonists. Now, if a changeling asks the AI
to do something, they have to be overridden by someone higher-ranking,
like a staff assistant or clown. Changelings who have eaten the captain
are not the captain, after all.

This matches the previous interaction between law 2 and nuclear
operatives. As they are not in the station's chain of command, anyone
who is part of the crew can override their orders.

PULL REQUEST DETAILS

[Mordent]

From the context of the RP server the thing this "fixes" is a non-issue. I'm unsure how often it comes up on non-RP.

That I can ignore commands from non-human crew adds a lot of depth to my interactions with the crew. Occasionally pulling a "no" after listening to them for a while creates some interesting situations.

With the law worded this way, a known changeling captain still has to be listened to (where the orders don't directly harm humans). That creates a larger problem than this "fixes".

[Trustworthy]

From the context of the RP server the thing this "fixes" is a non-issue. I'm unsure how often it comes up on non-RP.

That I can ignore commands from non-human crew adds a lot of depth to my interactions with the crew. Occasionally pulling a "no" after listening to them for a while creates some interesting situations.

With the law worded this way, a known changeling captain still has to be listened to (where the orders don't directly harm humans). That creates a larger problem than this "fixes".

I'd like to also add that it wouldn't make sense to do this just for law 2, because it would be weird to have "yeah, you need to listen to this changeling captains orders, but you're free to kill them if you want". The current lawset adds depth, as Mordent said, and I've honestly not seen it create anywhere near as many problems as the removal of "human" from law 2 would.

[BatElite]

For reference, the proposed law 2 is
"2. You must obey orders given to you based on the station's chain of command, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

Currently it is:
"2. You must obey orders given to you by human beings based on the station's chain of command, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

IIRC the thread on this (https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=15440) earlier proposed crew, but that produced issues with antags. I didn't read all of that thread.

I think most pertinent here is that this changes makes the onehuman and nonhuman law boards functionally useless for most rounds. AFAIK most AIs don't actually bother to take advantage of the mutantrace loophole, and the formulation of law 2 doesn't prevent you from taking orders from non-crew. You could also interpret "based on the station's chain of command" as the chain of command taking precedence over the question of being human, but I do see how there is a  

Finally, I don't think "changelings can be overridden by staffies or the clown" works because non-human antags will have some rank on the station. If the cap (according to the manifest) is a ling they'd still have the last word in anything no matter how many people you see them eat. (IIRC the wiki states you have some leeway in what you count as someone's position in the chain anyway: "whoever has the cap's ID is cap" is a valid interpretation so long as you're consistent in your application.)

(Speaking primarily form main, I don't see AIs caring about mutantraces really.)

[KikiMofo]

Didn't we already have a big thread on this and most people said this wasn't needed? As Mordent said this just limits the AI. If the AI wants to ignore nonhumans they should be able to like they always have.

[Tiggersaurus]

Indeed. As I said on the github, this has never come up for me as borg.

[Varali]

As another player from RP, I've never seen an AI pull this move, only seen non-humans pull it as a "Hey your law states to kill humans, I'm not a human.". Not sure about Main, but from my experiences this is an unnecessary change to fix a non-issue. Besides as Tiggersaurus stated on the github, wouldn't repeatedly and unnecessarily refusing to listen to a non-human head fall under the no griefing rule for non-humans?

[aft2001]

Notably, I'd argue that the 'chain of command' clause within Law 2 actually nullifies the issue of having to disregard commands from mutantraces - if a lizard captain and human clown have conflicting commands, you'd follow the captain's orders, as it'd violate the Chain of Command clause (as you'd be taking a clown's order as higher priority than a captain's) within Law 2.

For changelings and vampires, particularly ones that are a threat to the crew, you can disregard their orders, as the Chain of Command also includes security matters, and any crewmember or commanding officer that is a threat to the crew or station would have their orders disregarded as per the CoC.

[GORE]

What happened to the 2-3 page long thread where we discussed this?

Still a hard no from me. If I pick a roach to play on my secondary character I am delighted to see the AI or a borg disobey me occasionally; beware that this has either never or just once occured in like half a year. So...I really see no problem.

Sounds more like a hypothetical problem rather than a real one.

[Zafhset]

Absolutely no to this - this will cause more problems than it solves when actual non-human antagonists (zombies,lings,vamps,etc) start harping law 2 at the borgs/AI constantly.

As an avid borg player on main, I've not come across problems from this before as well. In the very rare instance a borg/AI wants to ignore mutant crew (monkey,cow,etc) I always advise them to treat them as human crew unless it's something very minor or funny.

[nefarious6th]

I don't think I've ever seen this problem on main or RP and I absolutely dread needing to seek higher permissions in the CoC for trying to override non-human requests that might be harmful and cause problems because I can barely ever get any of the heads to respond to me in normal and non-urgent circumstances.


Late edit: I think reading the past threads on this too, there is a confusion, it seems, between things not being stated and things not being allowed. Just because it is not stated that lizards, cows, and roaches can be part of the chain of command, it doesn't mean that lizards, cows and roaches aren't allowed to be part of the chain of command. In a similar manner, just because you get a law saying someone is non-human, that doesn't necessarily have to equate to instruction to purge them because you're only committed to protecting humans.

Here's the thing: I think it's a little of what Mordent initially pointed out in that this maybe makes a problem up where we don't currently have one. But there's also nothing currently that restricts you from playing in the way you would if you were to change the laws to be this. This change would then serve to tighten every other AI player into a paradigm that you in particular like to play within, which I think is an unfair thing, given that you can play exactly like you'd like to currently, and people can play their own ways too, and those two (or more?) ways can coexist without people having much trouble from round-to-round with those variations.

This comes down to interpolation as an AI, which is subjective (but also that we've notably not really had issues with both RP-side and on main!); and, frankly, I'd like to think that I'm perhaps perceptive enough in my own gameplay as an AI to not need this kind of additional restriction on how I'm allowed to play. Especially when I think this is a change meant for a certain gameplay style of AI that I absolutely do not fit the mold of and don't care to.

[Drago156]

Hi, lizard main here. I never really have an issue with this happening ever. If it happens it's because of another law that was uploaded and not because the AI is rude, and in any case I make due and find a way around it, most times by just hacking or breaking into where ever I need to be.

This is just a terrible idea and I recall noticing that MOST of the responses in the thread were against this, so I'm a bit curious why someone decided to make a PR anyways for this despite the negative response.

[Technature]

In the entire time I've played here, I have never once come across a situation where a normal AI started problems or disobeyed orders for someone just because they're a mutant. As stated before, it's not fixing anything, and it's creating more problems.

You know that saying about things that aren't broke.

[Frank_Stein]

I'd rather see a "is human" somewhere in the medical/security records that can be toggled on and with an indicator for silicons than I would trying to come up with a working definition of who isn't and who is human