---
# System prepended metadata

title: '[Sector XIV] Silicons'
tags: [xiv-dev]

---

# Sector XIV: Silicons

## What is this

We want to rewrite silicons.

## Why?

They suck. Roll credits!

Okay, but seriously, let's split this into two reasons why this doesn't work.

### ships / sector-xiv

How are you going to make AI work here?
Do you want to:

- Remove them
- Make them sit on the ship all day while the crew goes to do other things
- Make them a main station role and make them sit on the station all day while the playerbase goes off to do other things

Bleak.

### large ships / station format / roleplay-xiv

AIs suck for long-form, main-ship/station format.

- Omnipresent via tons of cameras. Reports everyone's locations to security.
- While certainly not omnipotent, presents an 'insulated gloves' tax.
    - And for cyborgs, presents an EMP / flash tax - if you can even get up close. Unlike ~~main~~ sector-xiv, roleplay-xiv is planned to not pull that many punches regarding balancing.

To be entirely blunt, Baystation was right to remove AIs as they don't seem to have the development power and framework to change these two things.

Unfortunately for the people whom really, *really* want powerful silicons, I say **No**. I will not have AIs cramping our style as we start to develop conflict and whatnot, **and** I don't want AI to be the same gameplay it is in 13.

## What to do & What is being accomplished

This draft will be somewhat short, dev-ideas-notes style, as per the purpose of these dev drafts.

- You can tell by the 'provides a human-level shell' that I plan to utterly gut their actual problem points.

The goal here is to entirely divorce AI from the omnipresence it has, and make it less of a situation where it has access and sight to **literally everything**, to more having it be, well, an installation AI.

- Vision (and therefore knowledge) is imperfect. Want to bolt someone? You need to know where they are. You need to **guess**.
    - Want to open a door? How do you know that person isn't using a voice changer? **You don't.**
- With this changed, we now grant them **way** more interactivity. AIs can use human-level shells and (roleplay-xiv) will often start off with them.
    - You are no longer just here to open doors and run machinery, you can physically engage with the world. **You are now a crew-member.**

## body

### AI

AIs have remote control over:

- robots - cyborg shells without inhabiting minds
    - Provides vision while active; linked cyborgs give it too.
- robots - simpler networked station bots
    - Doesn't provide vision.
- (roleplay-xiv) holosphere shells (to-be-made species of hardlight)
    - **Provides a human-level shell.**
    - Provides vision while active.
- rigsuits, if/when those are ever recreated.
    - **Provides a human-level shell.**

'Provides vision' means provides normal, optical vision; not that simpler bots won't be visible on network vision. More on that below.

### Cyborg

Cyborgs will be modular. They come with:

- A chassis that determines many base stats, space, etc
- Base components / subsystems that can be swapped around. Your radio is considered a component, so is your sight.
- A base 'framework' that determines your core items.
    - Powerful (so, very impactful, not necessarily powerful) items like rapid construction devices, fast toolsets, will be in the frameworks. This prevents someone from having a cyborgs that cross-cut jobs too much.
- Space to add 'modules' that can do everything from upgrade things, provide toggled perks, and add more items.
    - Majority of items should be module-based. This lets players pick/choose.

## body (really ambitious, WIP)

AIs are not an AI core. AIs are a classification, but not *really*. AIs extend their control through peripherals, with examples of:

- AI core providing networked control to networked objects
- Cyborgs with installed upgrades / components / subsystems allowing for them to have the same networked control to connected things, whether it may be a station or their ship
- Cybernetic augments providing control link to a server on a ship
- Remote holosphere/rigsuit/cyborg shell control being manually wired into someone's body

AIs ~~are just a social construct~~ don't have to be the literal AI core, basically.

(roleplay-xiv) Smaller ships often have a good reason to have a cyborg or even a crew synth have control over things instead, so they can go with them.

### vision

#### Optical Vision

By default, cameras don't exist in the majority of places.

- Cameras are harder to place, harder to wire up. You can't get around this by just installing more cameras everywhere roundstart without spending a chunk of time.
    - network limits to how many cameras are on one link? idk, mechanically enforce this if people do it anyways.
- Cameras potentially require a camera server for tracking/whatnot.
    - AI core + their mind can augment this, along with other capabilities. As an example, a special antag role `truly digital AI spread across cores` can probably ignore this, while some dude shoved in a MMI can't compute for shit.

Instead, AIs gain optical vision via:

- Connected cyborgs if they are powered on.
    - Does not need a mind to be powered on; AIs can power on their shells but not inhabit them. This obviously means the shells are burning their power cells.
- Same deal for holosphere/rig shells, once they're made.
- Cameras still, duh.

Tracking and other camera functions require processing. 
- The more vision you have, the slower / more difficult it is to use it.
- It is sometimes beneficial to keep most cameras in slow / mode and **set priority** on other cameras, shells, etc, which makes tracking go faster (or even be instant) for those.

#### Network Vision

AIs, cyborgs, and other things with connected control over things (see: 'body (ambitious) section') gain **network** vision.

- The AI (and others) can see everything connected to them at all times, with their locations and statuses - and can control them.
    - **You cannot stop the AI by cutting cameras. You must cut their control.**
- Peripherals like doors will have IDs auto-assigned to them.
- AI gets a Duskers-like command line. `open d126` is valid.
- Interaction updates will be important for this.
    - Example: You can no longer yell for the AI to open a door as they cannot track you 98% of the time. You instead press the door's request button, which notifies the AI on their HUD. You then can radio the AI and confirm that it's you requesting a specific door opened, and then can pan over and do that despite not having a camera.

### control (WIP)

Control comes from providers. There's a lot of WIP here but uh tl;dr

- APC linking things under them
- Things defaulting to obeying their powernet link
- Wireless control with keys
- Idfk I want AI wars man we'll figure it out

### mind

No intellicarding/intellicoring/etc. An AI's mind is in a frame, whether it's a MMI or otherwise. AIs are not actually code most of the time.

- They *can* be, though, and if they *are* considered a fully digital mind, they can inhabit any linked AI core at once.

#### roleplay-xiv

Special notes;

- **No human brains being made into full AI cores via MMIs.** Cyborgs are fine. Full AI cores require proper synth-minds to run at full power.
    - Potentially willing to budge to instead make MMI AI cores disadvantaged (see 'camera server' for what theme this has).
- **No player-acquirable (excluding special roles later on) fully digital AIs.** All AIs will be some form of synth-brain.
 
### enhancement (WIP)

Extremely WIP idea.

AIs are peripheral-driven (see body).

Those peripherals can grant resources, including various forms of processing power. The 'camera server' idea doesn't need to stop at camera servers; you can get processing resources (not just a number, more different types).

The AI core can be an actual reinforced core, with distributed server rooms and nodes across the station.

This lets **you** do things like:

- augment machines to make them run faster
- (wip) set up triggers to automatically have things happen when other events are true, like notifying you when motion happens on a camera (no more motion **upgrades**, the AI does it via camera server compute power)
- augment the ship's controls to make them respond faster, add more dodge to the ship, etc
- augment a **person**'s cybernetics to make them go better

This lets **not you** do things like:

- dismantle your servers to reduce your power (HAL 9000)
- knock out your control nodes across the ship and make you have to have someone on your side / run a shell over to fix it

### laws - roleplay-xiv main ship/station only

This is only for the roleplay server project.

Laws will be entirely rewritten. AIs/cyborgs will no longer have the 'obey crew' laws universally. The main AI will have an adapted variant, but the silicons are **no longer the puppets of the command staff alone**/

They are provided by \[main faction name(s)] of the main map to both 1. be part of the crew and 2. assist the crew.

This does not mean they have no laws / can do whatever they want, but as an example, engineering / medical cyborgs are **not** law-bound to obey security's orders to try to detain someone. Nor is the AI in some cases.

This is the last piece of 'we **really** don't want silicons to just be used for bad-guy-hunting'. This is not negotiable.
