Maintenance drones

[Mortvert]

I've been fucking around with a local copy of baystation and I've noticed a a neat feature that I think we could use in Goonstation. Namely - repair drones. Those are a very fragile bots that are being controlled by ghosts and aren't slaved to AI - they have their separate ruleset. Copied/pasted directly from the game -

Obey these laws:
1. Preserve, repair and improve the station to the best of your abilities.
2. Cause no harm to the station or anything on it.
3. Interfere with no being that is not a fellow drone.
Remember, you are not bound to any AI, you are not required to listen to them.
Systems rebooted. Loading base pattern maintenance protocol... loaded.
You are a maintenance drone, a tiny-brained robotic repair machine.
You have no individual will, no personality, and no drives or urges other than your laws.
Use :b to talk to your fellow synthetics, :d to talk to other drones, and say to speak silently to your nearby fellows.
Remember, you are lawed against interference with the crew.
Don't invade their worksites, don't steal their resources, don't tell them about the changeling in the toilets.
If a crewmember has noticed you, you are probably breaking your third law.

To eliminate metagaming issues, the drones probably could communicate with other drones and only listen in to the binary chat as well as normal station radio.
As for the functionality - the drones themselves could be limited to a single tool slot and single sight slot which would allow one to have a single tool out at a time as well a flashlight or meson scanner and perhaps a 10k battery.

[Fox McCloud]

I've always liked this idea, but I'm not sure how well most Goons would handle it.

The ability to talk to other synthetics would probably have to go on Goon, and they shouldn't have PDAs.

Incidentally, you can emag these little guys to give them a lawset on the order of something like "<emagger> is your master; obey his every instruction."



I really like the idea, I'm just not sure it would be viable for Goon.

[Haine]

I like this idea. I think it'd definitely have to be reworked a bit to work on goonstation, but I dunno that it's entirely unworkable.

I can see concerns about it regarding metagaming, but I think there's ways around it.

I dunno. I'd like to see something for people who want to stay in a round but get killed early on by an antag or an accident or something. I'm perfectly happy ghosting around and shooting the shit with other ghosts, or coming back once the server restarts, or switching servers, etc, but I know some people get very grumpy about it and want to stick around.

[Frank_Stein]

I like it. Would the maintenance bots be a new thing, or would ghosts be able to control existing bots?

Metagaming and griefing would be the biggest risks I think. I could see people trying to make things hard for the crew by blocking things off or trying to oust their murderers or something, so maybe the bots shouldn't be able to speak with anything other than other bots except through emotes.

I'm not sure what the bots would even do, but I like the idea of mysterious little robots wandering the station with secret goals of their own design.

[Frank_Stein]

Maybe there's a little room that the only the bots can get to, filled with little tools they can carry like scrub brushes, or little mobile battery chargers. Make the bots cute little helpful dudes.

[Weavel]

To make sure they don't get in anyone's way, just make them non-solid so players can walk through them. Keep their chatter to a :b channel for bots, and let them exit their bodies as ghosts whenever they like.

[Amuys]

Neat, sorta like the Citadel's Keepers?
http://i.imgur.com/NU5C6O2.jpg

[Anticheese]

Beekeepers

[atomic1fire]

I sort of like the idea in the "Help the humans survive but don't bother them" kind of way. E.g a lot of ghosts quickly working to repair the station so a few fat assistants can escape a blackhole in time for the shuttle. It's like Space lemmings.

[Mortvert]

I think it'd be better if ghosts got new drones - perhaps a pair of automated assembly lines that produces one drone per 30 seconds then goes offline after drone is produced and restarts after the drone activates (aka the ghosts takes it over and starts playing)? That way, we could avoid adding another bother of maintenance for robotics too.

And the drones shouldn't be TOO durable as well. You know, cutting costs and all.

[atomic1fire]

Instead of letting drones talk to people, why not give them various HALT style phrases.

for instance a list of commands that sound off specific phrases.

WARN-UNSAFE: Drone alerts "THIS AREA IS UNSAFE, SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY."

WARN-AIRLOSS: Drone Alerts "THIS AREA'S OXYGEN LEVEL IS DANGEROUSLY LOW, ACQUIRE AN OXYGEN TANK OR SEEK AN OXYGEN RICH AREA."

WARN-TEMP: Drone alerts "THIS AREA IS AT A DANGEROUS TEMPERATURE, SEEK SHELTER OR PROTECTIVE CLOTHING"

They can't really spoil the round by saying WIZARD, but they can also tell someone that there's a problem and you should find help.

Maybe even give them a cool siren with a cooldown so they can't spam it.

[Frank_Stein]

I think it'd be better if ghosts got new drones - perhaps a pair of automated assembly lines that produces one drone per 30 seconds then goes offline after drone is produced and restarts after the drone activates (aka the ghosts takes it over and starts playing)? That way, we could avoid adding another bother of maintenance for robotics too.

And the drones shouldn't be TOO durable as well. You know, cutting costs and all.

Yeah, a machine that automatically makes them would be good. Someone could still sabotage it if they really wanted to. The drones should be really fragile. Like, you should pretty much be able to just stomp them like roaches (maybe the drones can ride roaches?) because it would be funny and they can just jump into a new drone.

Incidentally, you can emag these little guys to give them a lawset on the order of something like "<emagger> is your master; obey his every instruction."

I don't think they should ever be able to be subverted or emagged to be able to be more mischievous, since I think that takes away from the idea of just giving dead players something to do other than spectate. Maybe there could be a place out in space though for ghosts to control hostile NPCs for people who want to be destructive, though? Somewhere they can't leave but players could plunder for fun.

[Fragmaster Lee]

If all the problems could be worked out, this would be cooler than Siberian refrigerators.

[Archenteron]

Instead of letting drones talk to people, why not give them various HALT style phrases.

for instance a list of commands that sound off specific phrases.

WARN-UNSAFE: Drone alerts "THIS AREA IS UNSAFE, SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY."

WARN-AIRLOSS: Drone Alerts "THIS AREA'S OXYGEN LEVEL IS DANGEROUSLY LOW, ACQUIRE AN OXYGEN TANK OR SEEK AN OXYGEN RICH AREA."

WARN-TEMP: Drone alerts "THIS AREA IS AT A DANGEROUS TEMPERATURE, SEEK SHELTER OR PROTECTIVE CLOTHING"

They can't really spoil the round by saying WIZARD, but they can also tell someone that there's a problem and you should find help.

Maybe even give them a cool siren with a cooldown so they can't spam it.

Give them little warning flags with O2, Fire, and Hazard symbols that pop out and wave around instead of pre-recorded messages.

[Anticheese]

Easily-removable wall stickers (possibly with a limited but regenerating supply to keep people from plastering them everywhere) that indicate a variety of hazards from WET FLOOR to DEATH