[RULE CHANGE] Make overrides and precedence no longer apply to AI laws.

[amylizzle]

"This law overrides law 2..."

"This law takes precedence over all other laws..."


Proposal

A rule change: remove the override and precedence sections from the ss13 wiki AI laws page and announce the corresponding rule change (probably in big letters somewhere, it'll take a while for this to reach everyone).



Reasoning

It's a pain in the ass, especially when you're playing AI in a chaotic round, figuring out which laws should take priority. It used to be that this was necessary, because you had to work around the fixed position of the default Asimov laws. That's no longer the case.

Now that we have AI Law Racks, you can remove and move the Asimov laws. If you want a law to take precedence over all other laws, you should move the Asimov laws and put your new law first. If you want your law to override another, you better remove that other law and put your new law in its place.


Problems

So, it takes a while to move 3 laws that are welded and screwed in. Moving all the Asimov laws would be a huge pain. It could be worth having them default start with an empty slot first. Or maybe a slot with a placeholder or something in it, so that it's not trivial to essentially put in a law 0, but not impossible either.


Communicating a change like this to players is gonna be a pain. People have been playing with "This law overrides..." for a long time now, and it'll take a while for AI players to learn that it no longer applies, and for non-AI players to stop trying to do it. It could be worth adding it to a MOTD in big red letters for a while.

Benefits

No more trying to figure out which of the five laws claiming overrides are the one you should follow! Laws can be interpreted in order!
No more accidentally roguing the AI when you use "override" instead of "precedence" for your captain gimmick law!
Maybe less ahelps because AI laws are simpler for everyone to understand and respond to?

[magic mountain]

yea i support this, its a good evolution of the reality of ais and laws vs the intentions of ais and laws

[Caro]

I was having mixed feelings at first when I saw this thread, but now I thought about this for a brief moment and I like the idea, I think it's interesting.
The addition of AI racks introduced a ton of flexibility when it comes to having control over the order of the laws, as you can add, remove, mix and match the laws in any way you desire.
So the order of them having actual impact wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

Note that his is just my personal opinion, and not an official stance of the admin team (it's also true for any dev/admin post that may appear in this thread). 

[Kotlol]

I like this idea alot, but to make sure you don't have to UNWELD laws and UNSCREW laws, I recommend the FOLLOWING for the rack to be changed.

Remove all laws being welded from the start. As lore wise this could break components and unwelding them would destroy them. This means the extra security also means you will DESTROY THE LAW MODULE when it's removed from welding.
And have a screw driver in the upload chamber from the start (laws are screwed in from the start)

I know it's easy to have a screw driver with you, but as an It mechanic, if you have to enter an area and fix something constantly with a screwdriver, you tend to leave them there.

I think this will make it more doable for the order, since I think the welding part is the most ridiclous thing of the law rack. Since you need a welder, fuel and eyewear protection as well if you dont want eye damage. Also you don't weld things with drives in place if it's ment to be replaced.. so screwing should be enough.

[Mouse]

Gonna be honest I'm not a fan of any rule change that requires the AI to ignore parts of the laws.  People are still going to put them in, and new silicon players will be especially confused.  I can't see this doing anything other than causing annoyance.

[amylizzle]

Gonna be honest I'm not a fan of any rule change that requires the AI to ignore parts of the laws.  People are still going to put them in, and new silicon players will be especially confused.  I can't see this doing anything other than causing annoyance.

We do already have those though - you can ignore laws that force you to say things, you can ignore laws that force you to suicide. You are explicitly required to ignore laws that conflict with other laws (ie, law 4: murder this dude - conflicts with law 1). This just removes another annoying caveat that you have to puzzle out as AI - simplifying things, not making them more complex. Law precedence would be determined exclusively by law ordering - anything else is nonsense and can and should be ignored.

[Danger Noodle]

I don't mind this and think it'd be beneficial for most AI players, with the new system that type of law is pretty pointless. As a side note I do think that taking out and inserting laws could get a shorter actionbar. Maybe 1.5 seconds less? I think it's around 3 seconds right now and you can weld/screw in a law if you need extra protection.

[LeahTheTech]

Having the AI going psycho hinge on the difference in definition between override and precedence definitely contributed to a lot of the frustration around AI law jank (have been threatened with kill switch for arguing about it), so with the law rack having been around a while I think we could definitely see it gone.
The zeroeth law slot would probably have to exist, otherwise any attempt to rogue the AI is going to go: get into upload -> remove law 1 to insert funny law -> AI gets informed it can now murder humans -> get instantly annihilated by the turrets while the AI laughs maniacally.

[amylizzle]

The zeroeth law slot would probably have to exist, otherwise any attempt to rogue the AI is going to go: get into upload -> remove law 1 to insert funny law -> AI gets informed it can now murder humans -> get instantly annihilated by the turrets while the AI laughs maniacally.

You say that like it's a bug and not a feature  





But yeah, I was thinking maybe we move the asimov laws from slots 0,1,2 to slots 1,2,3 and maybe have a blank slate or something that needs to be removed in the slot 0 position? Or we could just leave it as is, since law 0 should be hard to change.

[Mouse]

Gonna be honest I'm not a fan of any rule change that requires the AI to ignore parts of the laws.  People are still going to put them in, and new silicon players will be especially confused.  I can't see this doing anything other than causing annoyance.

We do already have those though - you can ignore laws that force you to say things, you can ignore laws that force you to suicide. You are explicitly required to ignore laws that conflict with other laws (ie, law 4: murder this dude - conflicts with law 1). This just removes another annoying caveat that you have to puzzle out as AI - simplifying things, not making them more complex. Law precedence would be determined exclusively by law ordering - anything else is nonsense and can and should be ignored.

Most players don't know that you can ignore speech laws and follow them anyways, and I have literally never heard of being allowed to ignore suicide laws.

[nefarious6th]

not for this. I use freeform in a bind to override ion storm laws until can get a multitool, which is the sparsest of tool types because of mats.
any complex law changes like makecaptaining and then adding a freeform then require removal of law 1 to move things down a slot, which, as leah pointed out, opens a window to get blasted to death. considering turrets are balanced at a level of having a barrier or an egun to effectively discharge them fast enough, I dont think forcing people now to open up more windows to get shot is good gameplay balance.

[amylizzle]

Gonna be honest I'm not a fan of any rule change that requires the AI to ignore parts of the laws.  People are still going to put them in, and new silicon players will be especially confused.  I can't see this doing anything other than causing annoyance.

We do already have those though - you can ignore laws that force you to say things, you can ignore laws that force you to suicide. You are explicitly required to ignore laws that conflict with other laws (ie, law 4: murder this dude - conflicts with law 1). This just removes another annoying caveat that you have to puzzle out as AI - simplifying things, not making them more complex. Law precedence would be determined exclusively by law ordering - anything else is nonsense and can and should be ignored.

Most players don't know that you can ignore speech laws and follow them anyways, and I have literally never heard of being allowed to ignore suicide laws.

Oh, minor correction: I was wrong about suicide laws. I'm not sure you can make the claim about most players not knowing about the basic AI law rules though. It's literally on the wiki for anyone to read, along with the other rules stuff I'm discussing here.

[KikiMofo]

Just because a law is above the other laws doesnt mean its more important than the other laws. You would still need to state in the new law that that law takes precedence.

[Maegor]

Not sure how I'd feel about this yet, but I would miss the overrides making me rogue.

Oh, minor correction: I was wrong about suicide laws. I'm not sure you can make the claim about most players not knowing about the basic AI law rules though. It's literally on the wiki for anyone to read, along with the other rules stuff I'm discussing here.

I think it's just that the type of AI that gets suicide laws is also the type that's not going to follow it even if you word it perfectly.

not for this. I use freeform in a bind to override ion storm laws until can get a multitool, which is the sparsest of tool types because of mats.
any complex law changes like makecaptaining and then adding a freeform then require removal of law 1 to move things down a slot, which, as leah pointed out, opens a window to get blasted to death. considering turrets are balanced at a level of having a barrier or an egun to effectively discharge them fast enough, I dont think forcing people now to open up more windows to get shot is good gameplay balance.

You could order the AI not to shoot you, due to law 2, provided you are a head of staff. But having a Law 0 slot available by default that you can add a law to also works.

[LeahTheTech]

Just because a law is above the other laws doesnt mean its more important than the other laws. You would still need to state in the new law that that law takes precedence.

From the wiki page on AI laws:

IMPORTANT: Do note that if there's a conflict between two any two laws and either law doesn't explicitly (e.g. in writing) override or take precedence over the other law, then you are to prioritize the lower numbered law.

Lower numbered laws always take priority, the asimov laws just state it explicitly because that's how they were in I, Robot

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Now might be a good time to remove the explicit conflict resolution clauses on the asimov laws, since they aren't required and make people think that without them law 2 could override law 1