Give the ghostrole PAI more to do!

Hello! I’m kinda new to space station and one of my favorite items to find around the station is a PAI. However I find other players and I uninterested most of the time on joining in as a PAI since there in my opinion very little to do.

I was hoping more can be added in terms of helpfulness like having:

• A Gas Analyzer installed in

• Comms installed to help with call outs or if our friend has gotten in trouble

• Access to the news channel since not everyone will have the time to look at it but the PAI would!

• Hud overview like sec visors and/or med visors

• a Coordinator to help our pal not get lost in space!

There might be better options (or more appropriate options) but these will make a PAI much more useful, more interesting for ghost roles to join and may add more cooperation or roleplay between the player and their PAI! (at least that’s what I think)

6 Likes

i think some are really good, a notekeeper could be cool aswell. i think comms access could be a problem though as it would be really annoying to try and kill someone as a syndie and the pai instantly starts screaming in comms about it

1 Like

thoughts from an occasional pAI player:

  • gas analyzer could go either way. it’s not super hard to get a readout on the gas environment in an area right now, so i doubt it’d be game-breaking.
  • it used to have the ability to speak on and hear binary comms, but those got taken away for a variety of reasons, including its ability to snitch - in both directions. it’s not very fun to hypo/kill someone before they can cry out, only for the pAI to call out for them - especially if you didn’t even know they had one. that said, i get why you’d want this, since back in the day it felt good to be able to alert the station’s borgs of my owner’s peril.
  • i think a built-in news-checking module for pAIs would be harmless. they could check the news for their owner, and relay what the reporters are going on about - it’s a neat little feature.
  • they do not need HUDs. either a given HUD would have way too much utility to be given to any random crew member with a pAI (secHUDs/adminHUDs), or it’d be virtually useless for a pAI (medHUDs, hunger/thirst HUDs).
  • a built-in GPS is a neat idea, but i think it risks going too far with the idea, since it turns your pAI into a GPS that can fit in your PDA. it only frees up a 1x2 space, but that’s still something that impacts balance - especially for salvagers and other roles prone to space-drifting.

i agree with the general idea that pAIs could use a little more functionality, but that has to be balanced carefully against the fact that they’re just… little buddies that fit in your PDA. their current job is to prevent loneliness, play a little music, and check the station map for you. expand their utility too much, and suddenly a pAI turns from a neat toy into a necessity for some roles.

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It is not really a replacement for anything. The pAI needs its role taken for it to work, and the pAI would still need to relay that info to you.

The pAI could have health HUD, diagnostics HUD, GPS, etc. But that only IT can see, and maybe in a limited radius (or only on the owner)

And it still would be fine because again, you have to get a pAI, get the ghost role filled, and hope the pAI is as chatty as you want it to be or is a fast enough typer for your situation. That is in no way a replacement for the actual tool that you hold in your hand and instantly does what you want.

If you want an extra nerf, you can make the HUD switch need a do-after for extra inconvinience.
And the rewards for all this is more RP incentives, so it is very much a net positive.

I still believe that pAI in the PDA should get full access to the pda features. So that your pAI could atleast eg: be a news summarizer (and syndicates could tell their pAI to buy stuff for them)

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that’s still something that impacts balance - especially for salvagers

salvage all have gps as a pda cartridge now