Gogol's and Death

[Recusor]

Hi everyone. I'm revisiting this idea. Should A.S.S. be tied to one AI or should all AI be able to see?

[Roomba]

No particular reason why they should be AI-limited. If additional AIs were unable to access the full capabilities of the original AI, there would be no point in making them.

[MarkNstein]

Thoughts:
Ghost drones are nice from an administrative position because:

• They cannot see players, just silhouettes.
  
• They can hear, but not associate a name
  
• They can only speak with each other
  
• If they're acting "bad" (from an innocent's or antag's perspective) they are quickly removed (anyone in striking range)
  
• Their actions are, generally, obvious.
  

I don't think ghost-drones are *the* baseline, but I'm happy with them, and I think it's handy to compare.
Assuming gogols / A.S.S.es are virtual-only, the two major "losses" I see are that their actions become less obvious, and they are harder to "remove". Removal requires kill-switching the AI(s)(?), or for an AI to notice a "bad" gogol and expunge it. Now, maybe this lack of easy-removal is OK depending on how-restricted gogols are.

That leads in to: how much functionality (how many tools) does a gogol need to be fun and engaging. Too much and it becomes another AI that can't ID humans. Too little and maybe they'd rather be a ghost-drone. I dunno right now. Something I'll keep thinking about.
Right now, I do think it'd be better to restrict gogols to robotic-talk, obfuscating names, categorized by sentience; AI#101, Cyborg@562, Human#202, etc. (Don't forget, humans can use robotic talk too). Or just limit it to robotic-talk-only-AIs-and-Gogogls. If they had access to general radio, it might become unorganized?

I can also see it becoming a management game in itself: trying to keep three gogols occupied. Maybe that'd be fun. Maybe have a "control panel" where you can give and take permissions from them (APC access, etc) while giving them general responsibilities (Gog#1 you hand door requests and QM requests, Gog#2 you pass the butter, etc).

[Flaborized]

Hi I personally really don't like the idea. I've seen similar ideas floated around about letting dead players be AI helpers or something like that, but I have Issues.

1.) I think that by having every task the AI does be the AI, it feels a lot more personal. If an AI lets an assistant into sec or something you can now be sure it was The AI, but with a mechanic like this there's a lot of room to go "oh no my Ghost AI Helper did it". Also when the AI opens a door for you it's easier to feel grateful and form a connection to other player in the round than it would be if some random ghost role could do it. Easier to get attached to the AI

2.) Juggling tasks and doing triage as the AI is *supposed* to happen. Managing which tasks to do at any given time when multiple people want multiple things done is part of the fun IME, and it's rewarding to get better and more efficient at it. I don't like the easy out of that, I'd rather give the AI more interesting tools to fulfill tasks themselves, kinda like viewports.

3.) A lot of split second choices the AI makes are interpretations of laws. Especially considering how weird or complex the laws can get, and I think that by splitting the AI's actions up between different players gives the AI fewer opportunities to express said interpretations because they themselves aren't always making the choices. You could tell them to make specific *types* of choices or to interpret weird laws a specific way, but it's not the same and Worse I feel.

I also really don't like grey area rules on Main like the ghost drones, I've seen a lot of people misinterpret the laws and generally not know where the Line is with them and I see them as a Confusing Thing. I'd rather ghost roles be mechanically restricted, so that they *physically* cannot do things against the rules. 

I think the idea is fundamentally Bad for reasons above but that's just my Personal Opinion and this isn't in any way a Veto of the idea or anything :shelterfrog:

[Recusor]

Regarding tools, with the advent of kudzu nutrient pool and the already existing vampire blood point system what do people think about a sort of "CPU cycles" pool of resources that recharges over time. I was initially thinking it could be something the AI uses, but what if these very useful tools were exclusive to gogols? maybe something like "Emergency power to a local APC sector for 15-30 seconds" sort of thing. That would be a significant usage of points. Maybe a TRay scanner as another one, a diagnostic scanning system of sorts, including for voltages almost like a multitool.

I envisage purely silicon, if not purely AI - gogol network communication excluding borgos, maybe thats too far though. I think making it so gogols cannot interface with things like dwaine terminals might be a good idea too, except with certain permission levels, and even then with a whitelist of accepted commands for them if anything (to avoid them chatting to a living player without speech distortion using DWAINE).

Regarding seeing players, what level of responsibility could they have of letting people into doors if they cant see their name or details? or they maybe can ONLY see the role associated to the name in the manifest maybe? Food for thought for sure.

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Posted before I saw Flaborized did, thanks for feedback. As discussion continues i find myself really intrigued by the CPU cycle ability idea for AI maybe too.

[UrsulaMejor]

while strategic management of subservient npcs can be a fun game mechanic, I don't think it's fun to put players in the role of the NPC

managing multiple, competing priorities is a large part of the fun of ai. getting good at that stuff represents your skill level. exporting that to a group of players makes things less interesting for all of them

this might be a great idea for an ai based antagonist sorta thing, though

[BatElite]

I'm not fond of the thread of discussion in here suggesting to coopt ghostdrones for this purpose. To me at least a large part of their appeal is that they're able to potter meaningfully around the station while also completely removed from its affairs. You'd be replacing that more or less unique flavour for what's largely an AI 0,5. IIRC one of the reasons ghostdrones aren't meant to bother the crew is because ghost roles mostly aren't meant to affect the round much, and gogols sound quite the opposite of that philosphy.

Aside from that, I find generally that one's workload as AI is appropriate enough that you don't really need helpers. If you have a few, all of you would probably get bored.