So, a bit of a strange situation has emerged that I would like to discuss. We now have a merged design doc for Sec Dogs, which were approved as a roundstart ghostrole that can’t talk and has no hands, but has noslip paws.
At the same time, Borgis have been/are getting introduced to the game, as a roundstart role which can talk and have hands, but is a chronical slipper.
(Sec Dog is apparently not actually being worked on by the proposer, but I am interested in implementing it.) Either way, the question naturally lends itself if they should use some of the work/assets/code already present/being made for Borgis, and whether or not the secdog design should be re-evaluated based on the precedents set by the borgi design
Having secdogs be corgis with some props/markings identifying them would feel more consistent, and allow them to cross-use items and such which would be good. It does feel inconsistent and potentially confusing, though, that some “corgis” would have hands and speak, while others don’t/can’t. That part would be clearer if secdogs had a different sprite, though conceptually it could still feel strange, since both of them “register” as dogs, whether or not borgis are supposed to be cyborgs.
Since borgis can talk and freely interact using their hands and inventory that makes them more than a pet or even pun pun, and almost on par with a normal species and they would have to be treated as such. I think they should not be a round start role or available every single round, but rather a random event. But that will have to be discussed in an eventual design doc.
Adding the prototype as it is right now in the PR is totally fine since it is admin only so far.
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I think what you suggested as it being a event spawn is spot on and a way better direction than roundstart.
Reading the sec dogs doc, the design really appears like it will ‘fit’ better than Borgis as a standard role. But that doesn’t mean Borgis are a bad design, and maybe just means they should be relegated to a second seat like you suggested.
Centcom announcement: "In light of recent threats to the station, we see fit to provide you with the latest in security biotech. Please collect your Borgi from the ATS station. "
To be clear, I designed borgis (and the borg-free ‘smart corgis’) as a flight of whimsy. I wanted a corgi and I wanted to put a mind in it, but it turns out putting a person’s mind into something as limited as a corgi can be frustrating for the player (and not all that unique). So I gave it hands. And then I gave it the door bump opener tag (to move through doors without human intervention). Then I thought, “Can I put a mind into this thing mechanically? Like, maybe with an MMI?” so I gave it a BorgChassis component and sure enough you can put an MMI in it. Then Reisama, a borg enthusiast, thought that was a great idea and started helping by fleshing out ‘borgis’ as a concept.
And then Samuka discussed at some point his idea for Xenoborgs but he wouldn’t have the chance to get around to it for a month or two. I already had borgis, it wasn’t a big lift to make ‘shadow borgis’ which filled the same design space. And players really liked it.
At no point in my creation of ‘smart corgi’ or ‘borgi’ prototypes did I really stop and think, “Where would this fit inside the actual upstream repository?” because I figured maintainers would not like borgis as the admeme presented them. So I’ve really not made many efforts to merge them. I did, however, make some effort to ‘balance’ them so that having a smart corgi or a borgi in a round wouldn’t drastically alter the game balance. I did the same with ‘shadow corgis’, which do the same thing that xenoborgs do, but I wanted to be sure they had to fight smart; no welding, no no-slips meant that they needed to pick their fights and heal up as needed. A concept that I feel is direly missing in some capacity from today’s Xenoborgs, but that’s another topic.
That said, I did do a lot of work on those assets and now there’s hardsuit sprites and such for them. I’ve started merging some of those things in a limited capacity. But as far as them being fill-ins for sec dogs I’m not sure that’s the wisest approach. If you want sec dogs to be corgis, more power to you: there’s definitely some armor and hardsuit assets for corgis that exist now and more that will exist in the future.