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Gogol's and Death
#1
In the excellent hard-scifi Jean le Flambeur series by Hannu Rajaniemi the concept of a gogol is introduced as part of a post-technological singularity collective of uploaded minds collectively referred to as the Sobornost.

Most of the gogols used by the Sobornost are uploaded human minds that have been enslaved to help carry out tasks, excepting those who lead the Sobornost.

My idea is to integrate the dead in a way to provide support to the AI. We already have VR ghosts and ghost drones, but have you ever been an AI at 70 minutes in with many if not all APCs dead and requests coming left right and centre for your attention?

What if instead there was an option to "generate gogol" in the AI command list. This would allow you to poll the dead to see who if anyone wants to join the AI. If someone accepts they get their own AEye and can look around and interact with many things in a similar way to the AI, but would remain entirely subservient to it and not be able to communicate to either cyborgs, or other humans, at all.

In my mind Im envisioning the AI seeing the gogol player's text as small and restricted to a character limit to represent their limited cognition. As an example -

S.A.M.: gogol's 1 and 2 please focus on restoring power to the station. gogol 3, please respond to any door requests to unrestricted areas. I need to portamed people to escape!

gogol 1: command rec. actioning
gogol 3: comply unable, power restricted
gogol 2: damaged wiring, physical presence req

alternatively, perhaps a literal text whitelist box similar to station naming where only certain words can be combined to try to convey meaning

Some thoughts on pros, cons, and suggestions for restrictions

Pros:

-Helps involve dead players in station maintenance, or perhaps destruction if AI is rogue
-Can help ease the burden of an AI that has many incoming requests and only one AEye at a time
-Is kinda cool and sci-fi-ish


Cons:


-Might be boring if its a slow round and not enough is going on. It would be a limited form of ghostdrone that doesn't allow hats frown
-If the AI pinged and got a response to quickly it may be able to be evidence of an early murder or violence. Additionally to this there would have to be hard restrictions on revealing and information made available in previous life or while dead.
-if AI is rogue and is commanding a legion of gogols to cause havoc it might be too much for a crew to handle.

Suggestions:

-I would suggest that the gogol summon/call option be made available only after 10-15 minutes
-A hard restriction on information that can be revealed to the AI by gogols, with people who violate this rule not being allowed to take advantage of the option on a limited or permanent basis
-limiting some advanced AI functions to AI only, such as interacting with computer consoles.
EDIT- Also, maybe allowing gogol's to go BACK to being dead if they get bored perhaps.

As a note, I feel the biggest downside to this would be that it might be too much work for too little return. Id love to get everyones thoughts though! This is part of my ongoing brainstorming to try to make AI more engaging and perhaps threatening when rogue.
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#2
i like this very much. definitely have it restricted until 10-15 minutes in, and id say gogol's have absolutely no memory of their life before, they exist only to help the AI, and can't communicate to anyone but the AI.

also they should probably be able to go back to being dead if wanted yeah. and there might need to be a way to get rid of them, either as the AI if they're doing bad things, or as a crew if you are sabotaging the AI
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#3
I quite like this suggestion, though 'gogol' IMO isn't a particularly good name. Dunno why but it just sounds odd. Auxiliary System Spectre is a possibly better name!

The AI should also probably be able to kick out an A.S.S if they're being an ass. And I strongly agree with the limited capabilities of these assistive ghosts. They shouldn't be capable of accessing the AI's PDA, but could still have their own PDAs with messenging permanently disabled and with some useful features (namely the teleporting equipment remotes) to help out any crew they see that are in need.

They also shouldn't be able to: Shock doors (They can unshock though), overload APC lights, interact with turret controls, speak over the radio (though being able to hear the radio would be helpful), or touch specific consoles like the announcement computers and QM Console. The AI should be alerted whenever an A.S.S bolts/unbolts a door (just a little blue notification in the chat window), opens/closes a door in Security or the Bridge, or logs into a console.

Overall I quite like everything else, though the whitelist of words sounds a bit annoying, so just having a character limit should be enough. Also a hard limit on how many A.S.S's there should be may prove to be helpful, maybe starting off with a limit of 5. Also, any of these spectres trying to share info from their past lives should probably be treated as metagamers, since it is basically metagaming.
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#4
If you want to impede language & give it a shitty faux scifi charm, just apply a fairly simple filter.
1. remove all non-leading vowels
2. capitalise everything
3. delete repeated consonnants & a few blacklisted articles

I started a queue on robotics manufacturer
becomes *
STRTD Q ON RBTCS MNFCTR
now it's cyberpuke
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#5
I like this it would make the AI be able to operate as an omnipresent being, which it should be.
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#6
Perhaps there should be 2 kinds of A.S.S.'s, one that can speak but not do anything and another that cannot speak but can do things (outside of a small whitelist of basic responses, like 'affirmitive' and 'problem' and stuff, just basic things to get simple messages across). The former would be able to observe and relay information to the AI, possibly keeping a watch on an area and reporting any changes, or roaming the station and looking for something specific. The latter would solely be taking orders from the AI, with a sort of 'lawset' that the AI can modify at any time for the A.S.S. The AI cannot make it do anything rogue-like, since that'd be breaking Law 1/2 for the AI. It'd be up to 4 laws, 1 unique set for every worker A.S.S. So, the AI would assign A.S.S. 1 the law 'Ensure that the station power grid remains operational', on top of the default laws 1 & 2. This A.S.S. cannot do ANYTHING besides what their lawset says.
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#7
Administrative ASS, Executive ASS.
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#8
This kinda feels like ghost power rangers controlling a mechazord, but instead of a mech it's the station's doors

"Go Gol Power Rangers"
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#9
I've always wanted ghost drones to be more like that, helpers for the AI. Maybe now that ghost critters are a thing, we can change up ghost drones to be more involved in-game.

Maybe make them a thing that have to be built, then they are available for ghosts to commandeer and carry out AI commands
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#10
Combine this and ghost drone? Let the gogol's wander through the station being mini-AI. From there they can hop into empty ghost drone shells located in and produced by the ghost drone chargers?
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#11
^ Yes, that one

Would this make Ghost Drones become like Ghost Zords? Can we mash together 5 Ghost Drones to make a Megadrone?
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#12
(12-12-2018, 09:57 PM)Erev Wrote: Combine this and ghost drone? Let the gogol's wander through the station being mini-AI. From there they can hop into empty ghost drone shells located in and produced by the ghost drone chargers?

ooo very cool idea. Im all for removing the term gogol too, A.S.S. sounds great.
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#13
Oddly enough I've been working on an idea that's eerily similar to the AI Ghost bots suggested earlier.  I was planning on posting the idea when the summary was finished and all the dumber ideas were removed/reconstructed, but I don't want to seem like I'm trying to claim credit for others' work since it's taken me a few months to get as far as I've gotten, and I'm sure it'll take me more still to finish it.  I've pasted the entire idea below due to the similarity, but I'll still be working on the summary to properly post it later.



Critter - Spiderbot (TODO: change name, spider is too close to ling limbs)
AI designated assistant bot.  AIs can summon spiderbots to complete dangerous tasks, ones meant for extermination rather than assistance.
Spiderbots are small, medium, or large sized bots (see sprite size reference: eyespider, handspider, legworm sizes)
Large: brute bot, can destroy doors, damage walls, and break tables.  Melee only, designed to draw attention.  Can grapple. Destroyed with 4 toolbox hits
Medium: Ranged bot, can fire pellets that will act as if hit by a revolver.  Capable of hiding under tables but cannot shoot if hiding. Destroyed in 2-3 extinguisher hits
Small: Scout bot, small melee slashing damage that has a small chance to cause bleed damage, decently fast and capable of hiding under tables.  Can drop additional eyes for AI to see in places, can hack into doors, APCs, equipment, and cyborgs to emag them.  Destroyed in 1 hit.
Spiderbots can either have AI (not the player) controlled, or controlled by ghosts.
Spiderbots can beep, boop, bwip, and talk in silicon, but cannot talk outside of silicon.
The AI has to release them of their own accord, the AI on default laws cannot release them
Spiderbot deploys means the station’s FUCKED (OPs or subverted AI)
Spiderbots will attack anyone set for arrest by default, or designated by the AI to attack.  AI can tell them to attack anyone they want whenever they want.  Spiderbots deployed CANNOT be shut down, they have to be destroyed.
Spiderbots have a chance to be fried via EMP grenade
Spiderbots only laws are those set by the AI.  Humans can change the laws of the spiderbots on their own, but the bots do not keep the same laws as the AI.


TODO:
  • Figure out formula for number of bots spawned
  • see if there should be a way to be able to spawn more
  • decide if bots should be able to hold things
  • Should there be an announcement when the bots are deployed?

COMMENTS:
  • The bots are extremely powerful, they probably should be a traitor only item (TC req)
    • Non-traitor version may be hard to obtain, as well as require additional steps.  Console to activate bots should be in either the killswitch chamber or upload, and should not be recreatable
  • Revolver is pretty fucking powerful
    • I do not know much about ranged weapons honestly, I was thinking the revolver was the det’s weaker revolver than the TC revolver.
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#14
I'd like that too, maybe nerf the bots down to zip gun damage and give them more utilities for Non-Evil AI (So the AI isn't immediately known as evil once a bot is seen and so non-malf AI can be more useful)
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#15
very, very interesting Eibel. Regarding medium bot ranged weapon, id suggest taser or stun revolver rounds. maybe even just rubber bullets from shotgun?

Regarding formula for bots spawned, maybe something like a nanomachine factory that is slowly piecing together components for the spider represented as a general "resources" value. It can tick up over time, or crew/borgs can bring materials somewhere to add to this more quickly. As I type this though perhaps this is too close to the system that flockdrones use?
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