[CLOSED PR] Remove RCD from ghostdrones

[DimWhat]

This seems like a much more preferable option to ghost drones losing their RCD.

[nefarious6th]

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Granted it means antags can also permanently get rid of ghost drones with enough effort, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

that would certainly resolve people's concerns i think about the drone law 1 interpretation issue where people want to be able to bomb things or destroy sections and have it be left like that; make them do just a little high risk defense work afterwards to get rid of any drones and then have the high reward of a destroyed, airless section that's potentially not transversable.

i'm also partial to whitelist ideas for building roles if it means keeping some of the tools; i understand not piling more on admins in a separate selection process so i think the easiest implementation for that would be to do what brixx said and make it a mentor-specific role too.

i really, really, really want to like the cardboard RCD idea, and liked it when it first came about, but i think it might not address low-effort griefing of build-mode stuff like mazes in escape or layers of walls; even though they'remore fragile, if someone is determined to be Bad with the role, i think they'd just make a 7 or 8 or 9 layer thick wall or w/e in lieu of a 2 or 3 layer thick wall. maybe in addition with other controls like higher battery use or something. i'd be interested to see how it plays, though, i've been intrigued by the concept for it for a while. 

if admins are also tired of reading between the lines on Every Drone Grief Ahelp Ever about what is/isn't breaking laws for interactions, and there's a rework of that maybe in mind to move drones to a separate z-level or prefab, i think that could also be a safe and controlled way to play with construction in an environment like the afterlife bar or vr. also i feel like the name "Drone Zone" is a good opportunity, but take that for whatever it's worth.

[Chickenish]

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Granted it means antags can also permanently get rid of ghost drones with enough effort, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

that would certainly resolve people's concerns i think about the drone law 1 interpretation issue where people want to be able to bomb things or destroy sections and have it be left like that; make them do just a little high risk defense work afterwards to get rid of any drones and then have the high reward of a destroyed, airless section that's potentially not transversable.

i'm also partial to whitelist ideas for building roles if it means keeping some of the tools; i understand not piling more on admins in a separate selection process so i think the easiest implementation for that would be to do what brixx said and make it a mentor-specific role too.

i really, really, really want to like the cardboard RCD idea, and liked it when it first came about, but i think it might not address low-effort griefing of build-mode stuff like mazes in escape or layers of walls; even though they'remore fragile, if someone is determined to be Bad with the role, i think they'd just make a 7 or 8 or 9 layer thick wall or w/e in lieu of a 2 or 3 layer thick wall. maybe in addition with other controls like higher battery use or something. i'd be interested to see how it plays, though, i've been intrigued by the concept for it for a while. 

if admins are also tired of reading between the lines on Every Drone Grief Ahelp Ever about what is/isn't breaking laws for interactions, and there's a rework of that maybe in mind to move drones to a separate z-level or prefab, i think that could also be a safe and controlled way to play with construction in an environment like the afterlife bar or vr. also i feel like the name "Drone Zone" is a good opportunity, but take that for whatever it's worth.

As it is currently implemented, taking apart cardboard with a cutting or snipping tool takes three seconds to remove the plating, then three seconds to cut apart the girder. The action bar for this is not interrupted by starting to cut apart another wall/girder, meaning you can cut apart all the walls/girders within reach at once.
Constructing a cardboard wall with the C-RCD takes five seconds and 300 power units, and is not interrupted by doing more RCD operations. As you can place a wall on yourself with the RCD, this means you can place two layers of wall at once, each three tiles wide.

If it was a window, it would only cost 200 power units instead of 300 and only take 2 seconds instead of 5, but would have no girder stage to slow down the spaceman; if the window disassembly action bar wasn't so slow en masse it would also be a viable method.
If the spaceman in question did not have a cutting tool, any melee or thrown weapon could be used to crumple the walls, with the chance to crumple being force/throwforce*3, this would also have a chance to skip the girder stage.

In practical use, this means the 9 layer thick wall would take roughly a minute for a single player to cut a 3*9 chunk out of it, and it would take roughly 50 seconds and 8,100/15,000 power units to construct; even filling a two wide hallway for nine tiles would still cost 5,400/15,000.
A cardboard maze would be even faster to disassemble, as the scissors would be able to access more tiles at once and have less tiles to remove, and the ghostdrone would not be able to build this much faster, as doing so would require slowing itself down with the maze it is building.

If required, I could fiddle with the numbers a bit.

TL;DR: ghost drone build fast, spaceman destroy faster if have cutting/snipping tool, if no have snipping tool but have hitting thing, can destroy fast enough to get cutting/snipping tool.

[onetoughcreampuff]

I am one of many drones who enjoy projects like escape bars and whatnot, so this feels like a direct punishment. I recently had a round where i died in a situation where i wasnt going to be revived, and it was low pop. So i started on a project to make a big escape bar, and so the round went on. Then a bad dron came along, and they started ruining things and no admins were online to deal with it or admins were busy, the crew then agreed to lynch the drone and then a staffie entered my almost finished escape bar and saw me. I knew what was happening so i ran to avoid lynching, but this made me look so much more suspisous and i got my little head beaten in and couldnt finish my bar (Later general radio found out i was the cool drone and tried to avoid this situation by labeling the bad drone as bad drone).

Anyho, removing the RCD would be like removing their purpose, to quickly repair the station/build cool things. The only way i can see around this is to give them the massive sheets of metal, wires, rods and windows that engineer borgs get for free in their loadout, it stops them removing floors or griefing, AND its directly helps out drones who are working on projects/rebuilding the station as its waaaay less of a power use, without the need for using magtrack to do the same thing

EDIT: oh and yes i think the best way out of this is to whitelist ghostdrone as it will create some admin work in the end, this will save sooooo much time with drone griefing its worth it

[Mordent]

For what it's worth, giving mentors extra toys here is a non-starter.

[walpvrgis]

I use ghost drone a lot for building projects that I make for other players to enjoy (escape bars, cafes and rec rooms), and as kind of a relaxing downtime. Repairing the station is a lot of fun, and I only do repair work if no borgs or mechanics/engineers are around to help. I know of a few other players (on RP anyway) who treat the role in the same way and it would honestly be a bummer to have it removed or nerfed to an extent that it's not really worth playing. On the other hand I've encountered griefy drones a couple of times as well, and I get the need to stop that from happening.

I like the whitelist option the most, as ghost drones do have access to a lot of tools that can negatively impact other players, aside from the RCD itself (ie making lights look like Hell, an entire toolbox permanently attached at all times as well as a Hand which even borgs don't have access to). Whitelist and perhaps some rewriting or the ghost drone laws to make it more clear that they shouldn't really be messing too much with antagonist destruction might also help with that point brought up previously. There idea of making drone RCD only able to deconstruct what they have built sounds great too.

I'm not too big on the drone z-level idea personally as a big draw of the role for me is making things for living players to use, but i get that not everyone plays ghost drone for that. Also not big on making it a mentor-only role as mentors exist for a completely diff purpose to ghost drones, there's no real connection between the two, and plenty of trustworthy drone players aren't mentors.

[coolvape]

maybe just remove "destruction" as a thing ghostdrone can do with the rcd?.
It'll stop the basic "depressurize a room", while making construction mistakes a little more time consuming, but it'd likely be worth it.

Griefy new construction exists, sure, but is easier in some ways to fix than depressurization.
Adding them to the Killswitch computer would also make them easier to handle - maybe even allow the ai to Killswitch them, so a human can order them to Killswitch a ghostdrone griefer if the ai doesn't catch them(to limit damage)

are griefy ghost drones that big of a problem? I see them occasionally but not that often, but maybe it's more widespread than I thought

[Mouse]

From the admin side of things I'd expect griefy ghostdrones to appear to be more common relative to other griefers than they appear to the player side of things for the simple reason that ghostdrones are never going to get the benefit of the doubt that they might be an antag/rogue and consequently are more likely to get ahelped.

This doesn't mean that they aren't more likely to grief, but it is one possible explanation for the seeming disconnect between between Mordent's experience and the experience of a number of people in this thread.

Another option for the whole problem would be to raise the round limit to be a ghostdrone.

[coolvape]

makes sense
i agree on round limit - if most of the ghostdrone grief is from people with less than 50 rounds, then increasing the limit seems like it would help reduce the problems while still allowing the creative uses of ghostdrone for existing players

[Chickenish]

maybe just remove "destruction" as a thing ghostdrone can do with the rcd?.
It'll stop the basic "depressurize a room", while making construction mistakes a little more time consuming, but it'd likely be worth it.

~snip~

This can be done by replacing the RCD with the C-RCD.
The Cardboard RCD can only construct and deconstruct cardboard, and would allow freedom of building low-tech things such as cardboard walls, cardboard windows, and cardboard-wood doors. It is intended as a less griefy alternative for the RCD, as cardboard is also very destructible with this change.
https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/4639

[Tarmunora]

maybe just remove "destruction" as a thing ghostdrone can do with the rcd?.
It'll stop the basic "depressurize a room", while making construction mistakes a little more time consuming, but it'd likely be worth it.

~snip~

This can be done by replacing the RCD with the C-RCD.
The Cardboard RCD can only construct and deconstruct cardboard, and would allow freedom of building low-tech things such as cardboard walls, cardboard windows, and cardboard-wood doors. It is intended as a less griefy alternative for the RCD, as cardboard is also very destructible with this change.
https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/4639

this has happened

[zcrow]

I definitely agree with the points Mouse has made.

I don't know if a Rule-based solution will work, but, how about:
Gang members are not allowed to directly involve others in conflicts with other gangs. This includes:
Doing things with guaranteed/very likely collateral damage (bombs and the like)
Rogueing the AI
Killing non-gangers
Starting plasma fires

Essentially, they are not allowed to grief anyone except people in gangs. This would be an older rule being revived. Additionally, requiring gang members to **always** be wearing their uniform, or having some semi-reliable way to figure out who's in a gang that is not yours, would ensure that people get afraid of attacking someone they only suspect of being in a gang on account of the grief restrictions, or people attacking others purposefully and just using the excuse "I thought they were in a gang."

From the admin side of things I'd expect griefy ghostdrones to appear to be more common relative to other griefers than they appear to the player side of things for the simple reason that ghostdrones are never going to get the benefit of the doubt that they might be an antag/rogue and consequently are more likely to get ahelped.

This doesn't mean that they aren't more likely to grief, but it is one possible explanation for the seeming disconnect between between Mordent's experience and the experience of a number of people in this thread.

Another option for the whole problem would be to raise the round limit to be a ghostdrone.

That'd be my preferred outcome. Filter out the short term players who maybe don't know any better, but not punishing those who've been around long enough to understand the role and its expectations.