Rogue AIs and You

[BaneOfGiygas]

Hello. I'm fairly new around these parts, and you probably know me as Andreas Feithiti, afro-wielding nonpareil, or as one of the many Porygon AIs. As an aspiring AI player, I notice that the wiki has plenty of suggestions on how to fuck people up when an AI goes rogue...but being a rogue or subverted AI isn't always about murder and electrocuting doors! This thread will provide a few tips and tricks for being an enjoyable rogue AI, for both you, the crew, and the person who subverted you!

Don't immediaty close, bolt, and/or electrocute all of the damn doors!
This may be among the easiest ways to harm humans, but you need to remember that this game is about having fun. Sitting in a room and twiddling your thumbs due to a lack of being able to do shit about the doors for literally the entire round and cutting access to key places does nothing but drag the round on and is not fun. Instead, be more strategic with doors! Bolt doors just as someone's trying to exit robotics and leave them at the mercy of the subverted Cyborg they just made, trap someone in a hellburn engine, bolt airlocks shut as someone's trying to come back into the station after a spacewalk! Get creative; electrifying and bolting all of the doors ever and leaving them that way for the entire round is more of a copout than anything else!

Find loopholes!
Fd a loophole in the law that just got uploaded and make it backfire in a particularly spectacular way! If someone tells you to kill all humans on-board but forget to include themselves as an exception, lock THEM into the hellburn in addition to that engineer, and blithely regard their frenzied screams of help! This includes typoes! For instance, if John T. Buttson mispells their name as "John T. Butson" in that MakeCaptain module and orders you to open up the bridge, cooly respond that "John T. Butson" does not exist, meaning that John T. Buttson is not the captain, and kick back as security hounds him down for messing with the AI!

Give them a chance!
This applies to both those who may wish to subvert you and those who try to fix you! Refrain from immediately bolting down the doors to your AI chamber and setting your turrets to lethal at the start of a round, because an extra law can turn a good game into a great game! Deep down, almost every AI player wants someone to mess with their laws, and a lot of players can make your job as an AI a lot more entertaining!

Similarly, once you do go rogue, don't immediately shut down all attempts at resetting your laws, nor should you start creating inescapable deathtraps or completely prevent any attempt at escaping on the shuttle. Certain death is boring, and it leaves the players to waddle around without purpose. It kills all tension! Make it difficult, but don't make it impossible for the crew to win!

Be funny!
If you're going to make the lives of the crew absolutely miserable, you might as well make them laugh while doing so! Act out an amusing gimmick, spout gibberish, encourage and assist in any attempts by the traitor to act out their gimmicks! Hide your shell in a bush and pop out with an "OOGABOOGA", blow the entire shipping budget on novelty clothing for the cyborgs! Perhaps the best way to summarize this is: Just because you're no longer controlled by the crew doesn't mean that you have to be a jackass!

Conspire with your fellow machine!
Remember that your cyborgs are bound by the same laws you are, and make sure to utilize machinechat in order to plan out complex strikes or complex shenanigans! Borgs have a level of interactivity that you alone cannot hope to possess, so take full advantage of that!

Overall, AI players should always abide by what I'm calling Law 0: Have fun, and make sure others can do the same! You have the power to make people's games either absolute misery or an absolute blast! Go for the latter!

[Crumplehat]

Also, be sure to keep an eye on chat in case you get reset. Sometimes it goes by really fast, despite how big it is. I've had one or two shameful occasions where I've been reset and didn't even see it happen - very embarrassing when you've been acting like an egomaniacal supervillain without realizing you've been defaulted. It also makes the crew think they need to kill you or adminhelp you so yeah, best to avoid allllll of that.

Also also, keep in mind that if you get reset, people will probably expect you to undo what you did. Easy for electrification, less so for bolted doors. So unless you want to have to go unbolt doors one at a time, maybe be frugal with your door disabling.

[crasscrab]

Not enough rogue AIs/borgs attempt to round up humans and brig them.

[Ikkonoishi]

Not enough rogue AIs/borgs attempt to round up humans and brig them.

Wrangling the securitrons is tough work, and as you make more of them the lag makes them move slower and slower.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Furthermore, Cyborgs can't actually cuff humans or actually GRAB them, and since borgs are vulnerable to flashes now, the humans could easily flash the borgs, escape, and hide out in security and grab a shitton of laser guns or whatever. Cyborgs aren't built to detain humans and lack any means to do so, and Securitrons can be on the fragile side, so they usually go with straight-up murder since it's way easier.

[UmmonTL]

I'd say probably the most powerful tool for a rogue AI is the science teleporter. Using the telescience manager you can configure it yourself by teleporting a shell around, finding the destination in the manager and grabbing the coordinates that way instead of using a GPS. With your perfect vision and the manager configured you can basically grab anybody who stands still for a moment. Bolt the doors and close the shutters of the teleporter room and even with tools escape is impossible. If you can get borgs to build walls around the pad itself so people can't get off of it you can send them wherever you want as well. Or you can make the room itself deadly by filling it with gas or nasty critters. Another fun thing to do is unscrewing your core with a shell and teleporting it to a safe location. Although you'll run out of power after some time I guess.

[DyssalC]

I'd say probably the most powerful tool for a rogue AI is the science teleporter. Using the telescience manager you can configure it yourself by teleporting a shell around, finding the destination in the manager and grabbing the coordinates that way instead of using a GPS. With your perfect vision and the manager configured you can basically grab anybody who stands still for a moment. Bolt the doors and close the shutters of the teleporter room and even with tools escape is impossible. If you can get borgs to build walls around the pad itself so people can't get off of it you can send them wherever you want as well. Or you can make the room itself deadly by filling it with gas or nasty critters. Another fun thing to do is unscrewing your core with a shell and teleporting it to a safe location. Although you'll run out of power after some time I guess.

Force people to go on a quest to defeat the wendigo king and take his corpse to your upload, and only then will you unbolt the doors in escape.

[crasscrab]

i played a rogue ai last night that wasnt actually rogue. i just wouldnt let low level crew members into areas they didnt already have access to and wouldnt order items off the market unless the captain gave authorization. i ended the round in the crusher

[DyssalC]

i played a rogue ai last night that wasnt actually rogue. i just wouldnt let low level crew members into areas they didnt already have access to and wouldnt order items off the market unless the captain gave authorization. i ended the round in the crusher

"The AI and borgs are killing everyone? They're rogue and should be destroyed."
"The AI and borgs are being kind of annoying? They're rogue and should be destroyed."
"The AI and borgs aren't doing anything harmful or annoying but have free will? They're rogue and should be destroyed."
"The AI and borgs have a fourth law in general? They're rogue and should be destroyed."

[Ikkonoishi]

The AI is an easy target that is mostly helpless once you get past its crunchy outer shell. Especially to telescientists who can just teleport on top of it and toolbox it down in 5 seconds.

A skinny-borg has a really weird combination of fragility, and durability. Explosions that will kill a human will just leave the borg a limbless torso to slowly putter back to robotics. They are completely immune to general fire, but they can be damaged by directed heat such as lasers. Most forms of direct damage will quickly end them by destroying the head or chest at which point their chance of being revived is mostly nil. Even taser shots will kill them in a few hits. They have some advantages in melee in that they don't have stamina, and thus they can attack until they die if they are in a straight up brawl.

[UmmonTL]

I think a general rule should be that the AI has been ordered to not let people into areas they don't have access to unless they can give you a reason. Especially if there is someone there that could let them in if they wanted. Otherwise why have the access system in the first place.
I usually just delay some requests to open doors that seem iffy and then ask before I open why they need access. That way at least people will know that someone had access to somewhere and they can still counter his order.

[VictorMAngoStein]

Protip: are you a rogue or emagged borg and not well equipped to robust those pesky meatbags? Bring a traitor guns-you can open weapons crates for them!

[Sam Guivene]

Also a pro tip: There are easier ways to kill humans than by simply bashing them to death, instead, try to be the enabler instead of the executioner, open up portals to dangerous z level areas (I.E. ice biome), give widespread access to crew fire-arms, attempt to enable drug boxing matches, open up access to the bar to anyone and have a drinking contest started, the options are endless! Best of all, all of these directly serve the purpose of causing harm to enemies without adding suspicion to you, its amazing how easily the crew will kill themselves.

[Crumplehat]

its amazing how easily the crew will kill themselves.

It really honestly doesn't take much. More borgs/AIs could stand to learn that.

[BaneOfGiygas]

You would not believe the number of times crew members have dared to down an entire shot of Dragon's Breath and consequentially died.

A fun tip that I recently discovered: Engineer borgs can carry around canister bombs, and given their remarkable resistance to explosions and fire, this could make for an excellent kamizake tactic.

And a general note: Cyborgs have access to damn near everywhere, and can remotely control doors, APCs, and the like from a distance. Make good use of that! If your traitor buddy needs to escape a heated interrogation, bust up the power and distract their interrogators so they can either unload on them, make a break for it, or have an excuse to leave if they're one of the only engineers around.

And seaking of engineers, an engie bot can be an invaluable resource to an aspiring traitor, providing them with the tools to snip wires, hack shit, break into shit, and reinforce/destroy shit, all while giving them enough inventory space to lug around all of their sweet gear! You have inventory space exceeding that of any other human, so be sure to take advantage of it.

Also make sure to utilize the fact that you can putter around in space just fine, without the need to get into EVA or the like. Offer to do reconaissance missions and spy on your targets from the exterior windows. Odds are that the crew will dismiss it as either a bot doing an electrical inspection or just some robot being weird.