Make Ai able to leave from game by cryo unit./ AI AFK interface

[meaow589]

AI is a very useful and important role in station.and sometime player who play AI might need to leave in the middle of game.in other role in the game they have choice to use cryounit to save their character or choose to become observe mode to make the role slot be avaliable.
Right now in game when AI need to leave they have 2 choice > sucide or AFK. the slot still occupide and player need to figure out what happen with AI and might need effort to make new one/or repair the old one.
From the story above imply that AI AFK is some kind of problem and need pretty effort to replace new one.
So I think AI should able to use cryo unit to leave an obsserve mode and open slot for AI.

the idea is simple 
once you touch the Cryounit it will show pop up for obsevere once you confirm you gonna leave the game and become ghost and annocment for it. 

Another idea is relate with AFK when AI afk it should have a little annocment that your AI in station is offline. so people can know that AI is not awake and not try to call them.

[Cal]

yeah would be nice

[JOELED]

This would be nice.

[Lefinch]

Yes please. Don't mind how you facilitate it but letting the AI role free back up via cryo/ghost would be nice.

[Kotlol]

I like this, but.. AI's going offline and having to be replaced by building was nice.. but since it's locked behind MDir now.. I see no reason to stop this suggestion.

Though new AI's will be shipped into cargo!

[Lefinch]

Definitely a solid point, but nothing stopping robotics making up a new AI regardless. I also like the idea of new AI's being "Shipped in" though it's more of a side thing, the idea is just funny. I was previously just imagining handwaving the concept and allow the AI to pop in the discarded shell, or some kind of "Announcement: Backup AI online" thing.

One thing to bear in mind is that of course the suggestion is that it be like cryo, so that in that case, the AI itself could just go into "suspended hibernation" and come back later if they didn't actually use the ghost command. I think that's good, but I also think that if we did it like that we might want a clear distinction between "Player of the original AI has just gone into AI cryo" and "Player has used the ghost command and not coming back"

Alternatively, making it a one-way trip makes the process simpler, but loses the advantage of letting the player return (We all need to take calls or use the loo or scream into a pillow for five minutes sometimes) and really the same's achieved by suicide so it's a bit redundant as Meaow already covered in the original proposal: which is all a bit wonky. Having a different method to duck out than suicide also prevents the weird guessing game of "Did the AI player just need to leave or did something bad happen?"

[meaow589]

One thing to bear in mind is that of course the suggestion is that it be like cryo, so that in that case, the AI itself could just go into "suspended hibernation" and come back later if they didn't actually use the ghost command. I think that's good, but I also think that if we did it like that we might want a clear distinction between "Player of the original AI has just gone into AI cryo" and "Player has used the ghost command and not coming back"

Thank for everyone feedback it very good idea on your additional idea 
And for this comment.at first I want AI able to cryo and comeback but it seem like this might not a reason for me to make a AI slot open.And it might have problem if The original AI comeback after someone already take AI role. Lead to the question what happen if the original AI comeback when somebody already taken their place. So I cut the problem by not let it have so the different of using cryo between other role and AI is AI can’t use it for temporary cryo so they can’t comeback.

[Zamujasa]

Definitely a solid point, but nothing stopping robotics making up a new AI regardless.

i am pretty sure robotics is prevented from just making more ai cores by the fact that the thing that lets you make additional ai cores is locked behind the mdir unlocking it, and even then i think it's limited in how many it lets you make.



this whole thread is fun for me, because "having some way of saying you are AFK" was one of my pet projects; you might be familiar with one of my other features, the "Zz" overhead indicator

i frequently need to get up and step away from my computer for health reasons (usually every 30-60m), and having to hide in a locker every time (and hope nobody found me / understood what it meant), or log out + suffer a 30 second delay* in addition to not actually getting to see anything that happens while you're up


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that said, my dream setup for this

- every player gets a "set afk" button. it puts a little "(AFK)" over your head and pops up a dialog box you have to close. it doesn't actually do anything mechanics wise -- nobody with it is granted the protection actually being offline/SSD gives you -- but it's useful to say "i had to step away for a bit, i'll be back". "but what if people abuse it" deal with it.

- the ai also has access to this feature. for the ai maybe this puts a special image on the ai status screens, i'm not sure. it's difficult to communicate the ai status because it generally doesn't have any physical representation other than its core, and its core is typically behind command doors and turrets. this is partially why the overhead "remote" overlay exists for the ai and its shell, to communicate some of that. (alas, i never added one for the SICC...)

- the ai should be able to use cryo, or alternatively another command, to "observe", the same way players can with the cryotron. this creates a command announcement and reverts the core to a SICC; players can either open it up and replace that with a player, or just let it go and have someone new join. presumably you'd want to reset their status/color/name when the original one leaves.

if you really want to go full chaos mode, make the ai announcement ping active ghosts to see if anyone wants to be the ai instead. do another command announcement that the ai has been changed. hell, maybe even go a step further and offer SICCs to ghosts -- aka tg's positronic brains.



("but what if people abuse ooc knowledge" then you get to enforce the rules! #lifehack)

[Lefinch]

Zz's have been a tremendous QoL change, especially being able to eyeball if someone's briefly dropped off for a second or has been gone for half a round.
The Dream setup? Those all basically work great. (I'd say the status screens for option two would be okay but they seem to be a little invisible for the most part: I've put "I bet you won't read this" on them on 90% of rounds and only been called on it once.) This is personal but I've not yet once encountered someone just "Drop out" mid antagonism. The -absolute- worst has been someone who's had to briefly disappear and been tremendously apologetic upon return. Guess what: It's okay it's a game stuff happens don't sweat it. That's a personal experience though so as always if admins felt it would make too much/any more work for them I get it.

I'd rather have clear methods and lines to determine the state of a player in regards to the game because of the fact that you don't want to mess with someone AFK for the rules and you also just kind of don't want to be a jerk to someone who's line has briefly dropped or someone's knocked on their front door (speaking as someone who regularly just gets unlucky with their connection, I appreciate this) so I don't mind what we do, but I do think giving AI's the same basic opportunity to go "Hey I gotta go for a bit/forever" makes sense if we do it for pretty much everyone else, and having something that's very apparent what's going on means if we need to, we can get someone in what's a fairly high-priority role, OR give that player a break and wait for them to come back.

Also good point on the blueprint, robotics isn't a strong point for me but it would explain why I haven't seen 12 dozen core frames sitting around or something. I think 4's the most I've seen at once.

[Zamujasa]

same. for whatever reason the Zz feature / afk suggestion got immense pushback from some devs, so i wouldn't say any sort of afk feature is likely

[Lefinch]

"Go offline" is pretty good for the record: I appreciate the disclaimer message making it clear it's a one-way thing, that it's not remotely IC (to prevent people ordering such nonsense) and the station announcement.
Very cool!

[meaow589]

After the PR seem like this pretty work well and i like this alot 10/10 for JORJ949 who code it.

[Michealj56]

Great idea! Letting the AI go AFK with a cryo option would be super helpful. It’s tough when the AI goes inactive and players don’t know if the player left or just stepped away. If the AI could ‘cryo out’ or show an offline message, it would make things easier for everyone. Plus, a quick alert to let the crew know when the AI is away would be awesome. This would make the AI role much smoother to manage!