After a discussion with Fresh and several other staff members regarding AI Language Laws. Fresh and Llol has decided that rule 7.11 will remain in the case of antagonists changing an AI to speak a specific language (that the AI player is able to speak) other than English.
This upsets me as changing the AI to speak a specific language is an incredible fun way to spread confussion without causing any direct harm to the crew. Especially when added to the end of their current lawsets.
Change
This is a suggestion to change the current rule of 7.11 to give an exception in the case that an antagonist changes the AIs laws to enforce a language or that the AI itself is MALF. However, if the AI would be unable to speak it, it could be disregarded with the IC reasoning being the lack of a compatible language module.
Example:
Laws:
Reaction
I remember that the AIs had a lot of fun, Command were confused and the rest of the crew seemed entertained and confused by it!
One potential problem I see is that some people may use this to subtly insert illicit words from their language. However, I doubt AIs would use this in poor faith as it requires an antag to actually convert them to the required lawset, of which would be incredibly rare.
I could see this being ok for antags but I don’t think that normal crew should be able to do this. I don’t want to see the AI speaking gobbledy■■■■every round because basically everyone on Bee understands and can type in and English proficiently, if the AI is speaking something like Mongolian then realistically it’s not really engaging as much with the crew. Its funny as a meme occasionally but I’d find it very frustrating if it happened every day, especially as an AI.
So just tell it to speak golem/plant language so curator has something to do and not an IRL language you have to use a translator website to understand.
This is really valid arguement, but I feel like it removes the “flavour” of what languages can provide. It feels more interesting having it be a legit language rather than sentences being randomly scrambled because you’re not supposed to know this for the sake of gameplay.
Alt-tabbing to translate what the AI said, a very interesting and engaging flavour of gameplay.
Both the headmins have already spoken out about being against the idea, why do you keep pushing it? There is an in-game option of making it speak a different language, why do you want to completely bypass it?
Sure, or just don’t and accept you don’t speak whatever language it happens to be.
Because it isn’t a real functional language.
Because I like it and find it interesting. If there is significant interesting in allowing this then what is the harm in rewriting the rules to include it?
Because it opens up the path to metagangs forming that primarily speak in a non-english language.
There’s a rather good reason English only is a primary server rule.
A rule change that lets you bypass the rules in a specific circumstance would be inconsistent. The server is english only and uploading laws that force an AI to break laws is on the person uploading the laws.
if you want to do a language gimmick, then upload “Speaking galactic common is harmful”.
We can’t reasonably and consistently moderate non-English languages due to the server’s (and thus our staff’s) demographic. This isn’t really something I think we could feasibly allow even on a case by case basis.
Ss13 already has such a cool language system that most games don’t, just utilise that.
Voltaic, slime or calcic is just as confusing as dutch but it doesn’t break the rules.
Language laws sound like a nice idea but are actually annoying and not that funny to anyone besides yourself. Again, like Wilson said you use what is provided to you in game. Having me use Google translator isn’t fun or engaging.
I have an issue with gimmicks that overstay their welcome, even my own.
We must realise that being original is an ongoing effort. And we shouldn’t just give up new ideas when we think we found something cool. Because things should be new and refreshing everyday.
Since I guess this needs an official response, I’ll make it fairly simple.
We are unwilling to make an exception to our rules in this case.
Do not do this moving forward. You have been henceforth warned.
To give a more expanded response, this suggestion has two major problems associated with it.
Moderation
Interactivity & fun
For the first, it’s a lot of work for admins to have to constantly check over everything that an AI is saying in another language. It’d be a constant effort and it’d remove eyes from more important things going on in the round.
For the second… To put it bluntly, the concept is just kind of bad. As some others have said, it really isn’t all that engaging for players and, while it might be funny for a round or two, it’s one of those gimmicks that grows old incredibly fast.
Sticking with in-universe languages is substantially better and alleviates both of those problems. Admins don’t have to constantly use Google translate for everything the AI is saying, and players who have characters with the appropriate language quirk can actually interact with it. There’s significantly more play to be had when using in-universe languages over trying to shoehorn real-world languages that aren’t supported by the game nor our rules.
