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AI Malfunction, updated!
#1
Hello my fine spacemen!

If you were around for the earlier parts of ss13, you may have played a mode called AI Malfunction
In this mode, the ai was secretly given a an objective to take over the station and detonate it, as well as an immovable law that allowed it to complete this objective.

The crew would be informed of the AI's malfunction roughly 15 mins in, although it often could become more obvious depending on the AI's behaviour. The crew then had to fly to the AI satellite and destroy it against the clock.

Things moved on, and AI malfunction did not. But what if it was re-added with lots of neat and new features?? wouldn't that be FUN??

Allow me to present some pretty rough ideas as to how this old mode could be revived and implemented, feel free to laugh at them if you want.

GAMEPLAY

The base objectives are still the same ( the crew must kill the AI, the AI must take control of the station) but the mechanics would be different!

To 'control' an area, the AI would have to 'upload' itself into the APC and any electrical equipment in the room, marking that room as under 'control of the AI', in a similar way to wizard corruption. The process takes time and can be reversed.

The AI sat no longer exists and the AI would die very quickly with its mainframe on the station. In malfunction, the AI has two presences. The first, It's mainframe, serves as a decoy, and can be destroyed at no disadvantage to the AI.

The second, It's Electronic presence, exists in the station machines and wiring. The Malf AI can freely move between any electrical machine, computer, or along wiring, and still enact orders.

The Malf AI gets special 'perks' and abilities to aid it in taking over the station: Some are free, some cost power, and some can be bought via the use of something similar to tele crystals, (or a traitor menu??)

Innate abilities (the ai starts with these, they have a cooldown)

Hack machine/APC: hacks a selected machine or apc and takes control of it
Electrify machine: Electrifies the selected machine, 45 sec cooldown
Check % of station controlled: self-explanatory.
Reactivate Camera: Allows you to reactivate a specific camera if it has been cut. 1 min 30 cooldown
Mimic Voice: Same as changeling ability

Innate perks:

Faster turrets: Your upload turrets turn and shoot faster
Formless: The destruction of your upload does not matter, as you are formless!


Bought abilities

Syndicate killbot Summons a syndicate killbot armed with shotguns to a location you choose. 1 use
Nanite cloud: Spawns a cloud of nanites at the location you choose, 4 uses
PDA bomb: blows up a selected pda
Electobolt: fires an electric bolt at a selected person. (possible cooldown?)
Bug: A remote bug you can control, which can pick up things not spoken on the radio
Illusion Spawns a randomly named crewmember at a location you choose
Upgrade Cyborg: Upgrades a selected cyborg to have a special syndicate item depending on it's module

I'm outta time and there is still a ton of stuff that needs discussing.. how are cyborgs dealt with in this mode? How do the crew win? Lots more abilities need to be suggested too!

Please post your suggestions to add flesh to these rough ideas!
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#2
Part of the original issue with Malf was that there was no relevant reason to ever attack the crew-you could just grind the timer out. Further, it is practically impossible to kill the entire crew.

You have given the exact same issue. In malfunction, and in this suggestion, there is no reason for the Malf AI to ever indirectly or directly attack or interfere with crew members.

You can't exactly give the AI normal traitor objectives and leave it the same, either, because the AI has such a frightening number of tools at their disposal that any "normal" objective are piss-easy to go through with while never being caught.

The AI is also significantly powerful, and does not really need any more tools when the gloves come off.

My advice is this: Alter the Malf AI's goals to simply be "Destroy the escape (or all three?) shuttle(s) with the device(s) in your upload." With no new tools you will want to aggressively and efficiently acquire resources (people brains, helpful hands, metal, etc) for your robotic legion while ending the lives of anyone who could possibly stop you. It will also definitely give the vibe that the AI doesn't necessarily want to kill EVERYONE.

It just wants to trap you here.

Forever.

I do agree that Malf AI should not be in the satellite.
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#3
one of the upgrades should be putting a jetpack on the AI core that lets it zoom around and kill/destroy whatever it rams into
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#4
I have to disagree with the AI's supposed superpowers compared to a flesh and blood traitor. Apart from the technospells that Nubcake brainstormed(Some of which seem kinda cool), the malf AI has no way apart from its borgs(which it almost never has, and are now all fragile as fuck lightborgs now) and its complete control over doors that don't have cut wires.

Giving the AI more control over electronic devices on the station would be pretty fun. Maybe give it the ability to interface with vending machines and lathes like it had an autolathe, so you have assistants and botanists screaming at it to hack their machines for them. Maybe let it overload computers so they explode like they had a fancy graphics card in them.

Also, as a malf AI ability, how about being able to emag any borg/bot/whatever? That way it can have an army of whirling securitrons roaming the station.
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#5
Nappist Wrote:the AI has such a frightening number of tools at their disposal that any "normal" objective are piss-easy to go through with while never being caught.

The AI is also significantly powerful, and does not really need any more tools when the gloves come off.

Have you ever played a rogue AI? Past instances had you release the singularity and laugh from your satelite, but nowdays you can do pretty much nothing but shock doors, delete commaster fruitlessly and get bombed.

You are literally a big target sitting in a small room that anyone with 15 minutes to spare can kill with no retaliation.
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#6
Weavel Wrote:You are literally a big target sitting in a small room that anyone with 15 minutes to spare can kill with no retaliation.

more like two minutes, a beaker of thermite, and an extinguisher

way too easy now, used to take at least 10 minutes to get a suit, get to the satellite, bypass the turrets, and kill the ai

now you can just hack your way into a tiny room from the outside where the turrets can't shoot at all instead of the way it used to be where turrets could shoot you no matter which way you came into the room from
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#7
Currently it's so easy to murder the AI with a toolbox and a space suit, and the AI can't do fucking anything except -WONK. I like these ideas, and maybe make the AI's blast doors go behind it so extreme jerks can't break in so easy?
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#8
Make taking over rooms require huge amounts of power, that way the crew pretty much has the choice of killing the power entirely, or fighting the AI.

Also perhaps AI should be able to blow pda's up remotely in malfunction, since it's basically just causing them to overheat. A computer brain could probably figure out all the design flaws.
Also if AI could modify one of it's drones to be a full body, then go boss mode, that would be kind of cool.
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#9
atomic1fire Wrote:Make taking over rooms require huge amounts of power, that way the crew pretty much has the choice of killing the power entirely, or fighting the AI.

this is the problem with the ai being on station, it is absolutely incredibly easy to murder or restrain the ai by simply cutting a few wires and not setting up the engine since cyborgs can't do all the actions required to use the engine
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#10
It's extremely easy to kill a lone human, after all, they're generally out in the open with no Rwalls, space, and no laser turrets defending their form.

obviously we should buff traitors
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#11
See, what I like about this idea is that there is a FORMLESS perk. This can help immensely and the added suggestion of being able to buy a full body for your shells is also great. Need I remind people that taking a borg down is not a matter of how strong and buff they are(nerds) but how robust YOU are, more so because they have been nerfed, iirc. And really, this could easily be an admin picked mode, like gang and others. but, you know, secret. It's not like a crew of three people would have to deal with taking down a fortress because they were unlucky enough to get a malfunctioning AI. I think this could work, but with a few fixes, as was suggested. It could be very fun and invite players to use their imagination to complete the tasks at hand instead of bolting and shocking every door.
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#12
Nappist Wrote:It's extremely easy to kill a lone human, after all, they're generally out in the open with no Rwalls, space, and no laser turrets defending their form.

obviously we should buff traitors

really? You need a space suit and a toolbox, and the AI is fucking dead. It has no protection from behind except for an r-wall which can be broken down in less than a minute, then you can beat the AI to death with your shoes, because it's turrets can't fire behind it.
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#13
Last time I was a rogue AI I killed a good majority of the station with a simple 'Airbridge on, airbridge off' And for some reason people kept walking across it.

Otherwise you have basically no weapons. Nobody is stupid enough to open doors without gloves when they know you're rogue, and if they do it doesn't even do much without a borg around. A rogue AI is an inconvenience more than anything.
And what's worse is, because now the core and upload are in the same room, but the core is safer to reach, killing the AI has become the new optimal solution to a rogue AI.

Rogue AI isn't really that fun anymore.
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#14
Quote:And what's worse is, because now the core and upload are in the same room, but the core is safer to reach, killing the AI has become the new optimal solution to a rogue AI.

This is really bad and needs to be fixed
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#15
It doesn't help that no reset module spawns in the upload itself, but rather in the comparatively hard-to-access radio room north of the bridge. Is there even a second one on the main station anymore? So far, I haven't found it.
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