Ghost drones ideas and discussion

[Noah Buttes]

 I find it hilarious and fitting of a drone to fix a hole while absolute chaos reigns around them and then groan when another hole forms just a few feet away.

The imagery of this alone is hilarious enough to support it.

[Frank_Stein]

I just see some conflict with the "drones shouldn't have a significant impact on the round" idea behind them and their ability to repair hull breaches, though I'd rather see it stack towards drone law 3 rather than law 1 because of rule of fun.

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 I find it hilarious and fitting of a drone to fix a hole while absolute chaos reigns around them and then groan when another hole forms just a few feet away.

The imagery of this alone is hilarious enough to support it.

I'm waiting for a dedicated cleaning tool so I can follow a bleeding human dragging themselves to medbay.

[Nnystyxx]

I once blew up the Cafeteria, then lost my 'significant damage' objective because drones were retiling everything. I'd feel bad harshing on a drone, though. Still, I didn't care that round besides. I use antag more as 'have fun' than 'valid salad, greentext only'.

[Vitatroll]

I once blew up the Cafeteria, then lost my 'significant damage' objective because drones were retiling everything. I'd feel bad harshing on a drone, though. Still, I didn't care that round besides. I use antag more as 'have fun' than 'valid salad, greentext only'.

At this point I think that objective should be axed. It's consistently bugged. There's been a few rounds where somebody erased their objective-area with a canbomb and they still failed.

As for repairing breaches, well, people already think that breaches, with cold movement and atmos problems, are unbalanced. I find that drones actually balance them a little more. The possible problem comes from something I really want to keep; the RCD.  We may have to ditch it eventually, but I'd rather wait on that until drone fever dies down.

[NateTheSquid]

Whenever I end up as a drone, I grab a hat, then a trash cart and get to work. The way I work as a drone is I pick up trash in the halls. I see anything that shouldn't be there and I stuff it in the cart. Random bits of metal, organs, crowbars, guns, etc. Everything goes in the cart.

EDIT: Then I normally end up spacing the whole crate for rubbish disposals, cause disposals keeps getting broken.

[poland spring]

I had a weird error where I couldn't see any humans except in rare occasions when I was a ghost drone.

[Ed Venture]

I had a weird error where I couldn't see any humans except in rare occasions when I was a ghost drone.

From what I've been told in IRC Ghost Drones are not supposed to see other human players.

[poland spring]

Oh that's kinda weird but makes sense I guess . I hope they can at least communicate with other drones

[Vitatroll]

Yes, they can. Both local and broad range. Mobs are shown as shadowy silhouettes and their speech is shown as said by 'human', 'silicon', etc.

Starting to get firmly on the side of ditching the RCD. They could be replaced with borg floors/rods/steel/glass. It'd be a shame, but so many are misusing them.

Another problem is grones (yes, I'm calling them that now) playing hero. Grones shouldn't help people. Grones shouldn't save people. Since people don't seem to get it, I think the rules should be more meta. No interfering with antag's rounds that isn't repairing damage. No deactivating traps. No carting off dangerous items. No bringing IDs to people. Nothing like any of that. People need that jabbed into their brain.

I really like Grones and would hate for them to be whitelisted or watered down because 'this is why we can't have nice things'.

[Ed Venture]

Adminhelp people who do that Vitatroll. Admins said countless times before ghost drones released that they would jobban anyone from ghostdrones who misused them and I agree it should be considered metagaming. Also just saying I'm all for drones getting whitelisted if more and more people start abusing them.

[Sundance]

No interfering with antag's rounds that isn't repairing damage. No deactivating traps. No carting off dangerous items. No bringing IDs to people. Nothing like any of that. People need that jabbed into their brain.

Law 1 implicitly states against all that behaviour.
People don't seem to get that these are laws, not friggin' guidelines. Put the damn banhammer down on them.

[Nnystyxx]

Half the reason the RCD is used is to break walls because drone access is still an issue, and half is to build them on top of the odd "reinforced" because I've tried multiple times to fix those with reinforced metal and it's done nothing. It's really not overwhelmingly useful. (Also airlock stuff. If airlocks can be made in a slower, more responsible way that'd be quite nice tho.)

ALSO THE RCD SPRAYS SPARKS EVERYWHERE & BREAKS LIGHTS = BAD
&&@ my previous suggestion for drones to talk to ghosts: less lonely for people who go ghostdrone, and the ghosts can inform them as to where breaches & shit to fix is (and if they get caught drone-heroing, or the ghosts egg them on to do so, someone gets In Trouble).

EDIT: I am totally in favor of drones having integrated materials though so they don't have to yank them away from crewmen.

[TheOnlyRyan]

&&@ my previous suggestion for drones to talk to ghosts: less lonely for people who go ghostdrone, and the ghosts can inform them as to where breaches & shit to fix is (and if they get caught drone-heroing, or the ghosts egg them on to do so, someone gets In Trouble).

This this and this. The few times I have gone drone they've been really lonely, everyone else who goes drone is doing their own thing and it wouldn't surprise me if it were actually a drone playing the game as a drone. 
Please give drones the ability to have banter with dead chat, thanks!

[Wire]

I'm still reading this thread constantly and I'd just like to weigh in on the recent discussion.

RCD Chat
I would vastly prefer to keep the RCD in for ease of use/repair speed reasons, however I can see where the RCD falls flat and gets annoying at times. However, instead of removing it or swapping it out for materials just yet, I would much rather just improve how the RCD functions. The way I see it the following would help:

• No sparks on mode switch (specific to ghostdrone module only)
  
• Ability to floor over lattices
  
• Ability to wall over girders
  
• Perhaps allow window construction (unsure as of yet)
  

The reason for this is that, while ghostdrones largely don't interact with the crew at all, I would still like to keep them in the station "ecosystem" instead of an entirely closed system, and when they go ahead and steal metal sheets from a place QM or whoever has to replenish those stocks, which I think is a good thing. That being said I will add a wire dispenser module simply because of how annoying wires are.

Speaking to ghosts
The whole reason ghosts can hear humans is so that they can be directed to repair areas as needed. Adding ghosts to the mix doesn't really help here aside from alleviate drone boredom/lack of social interaction, to which I say: deal with it. I won't be adding this.

Ghostdrones repairing traitor-caused holes
To put this simply: yes this is fine + intended. To elaborate: Drones should be considered rather "dumb" repairbots and their laws respect that (making no distinctions between what repairs to carry out and what not to). As a result, they should absolutely be allowed to repair any and all damage they see regardless of cause (barring some edge cases like a note/crayon wording telling them not to). This is the sort of secondary-effect interference than I'm not concerned about (first-effect being interacting directly with the crew, which brings us to...).

Interfering with the crew
I've said this before but it's worth re-stating for clarity: Drones should absolutely never interact directly with the crew/traitors/blobs/literally anything controlled by a player that isn't another drone. This includes but is not limited to:

• Saving a dude trapped by a fire by RCD-ing out a wall. Drones are free to let that sucker burn.
  
• Dragging any items to a crew member.
  
• Attacking any antags (e.g. blob) whether directly or indirectly (e.g. dragging a lit welder around blob tiles).
  
• Saving an area by dragging a bomb away. They repair they don't prevent.
  
• Just...fuckin anything that isn't repairing or building a sick bar in space.
  

Reminder that while these rules are strict and may seem constricting to some, being a drone is a second chance to play in the round. You already died so just suck it up and be happy you get to do anything at all.

Oh also: It is fully allowed to fuckin murder a drone you see breaking these rules. That's why I made them so weak (50 health). Just bonk 'em a couple times with a toolbox. (Note: actively hunting drones for no reason will get you banned)

Access
Lots of people have complained about access levels and I increased it to that of an Engineer as a sort of stop-gap solution for the time being. However, in the near future I want to create a system that allows them to enter rooms without access (e.g. the "passing through doors without opening them" idea). I just need to hammer out exactly how this will look and the best way to implement. (For example, I don't want to add drone-flaps to every room, that's a mapping nightmare, but clipping through doors without opening them isn't much better either)

[Vitatroll]

I had been wondering why there was resistance to materials on grones when they have an RCD but I just remembered metal sheets are used for more than just building walls. D'oh.

- Windows on the RCD is something I've always wanted. That makes me biased. I can guarantee it would make for prettier construction because people are lazy. It depends on which among grone consumption or building prettiness is more important.
- Wire for drones would be great. Especially if we want to see more wire art.

Honestly, the only problem I have with the RCD is with the dumb people using the RCD. Luckily these people will thin themselves out by getting dronebanned.

Oh, and thanks for the patience Wire.