Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Proposal: Subroutine Rehash

Reached quorum 5 votes to 0. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 21 Jan 2015 10:17:27 UTC

Enact a new rule, “Subroutines”:-

The Ship’s Computer operates more effectively when the parameters of its operation are defined. The total number of Dynastic Rules (excluding Subrules) is referred to as the Ship Computer’s Organisation Index (or OI).

The Computer privately tracks a queue of Subroutines and corresponding Subjects, which may be empty. Possible Subroutines are listed below with the following Designations, Thresholds and effects.

  • MD1C - Threshold: 6 OI. The Subject has an Emotion removed at random, if they have any.
  • S33R - Threshold: 9 OI. The Subject is privately sent a copy of the current queue of Subroutines.
  • B3LY - Threshold: 12 OI. All Subroutines with the Subject as their Subject are discarded from the queue.
  • XP0S - Threshold: 15 OI. The Ship’s Computer picks a random Crewmember, and tells the Subject whether that Crewmember is Human or Android.

If the Computer reads the phrase “EXECUTE SUBROUTINE XXXX YYYY” in any written medium (where XXXX is the Designation of a Subroutine and YYYY is the name of a Crewmember), and it has not read that phrase in that exact place before, and if the Threshold of that Subroutine is less than or equal to the OI, and if the queue contains no Subroutines with that Crewmember as its Subject, then the Computer may add a Subroutine of that Designation to the end of its queue with the named Crewmember as its Subject.

As a daily action, the Computer may process the Subroutine at the start of its queue: it posts a blog entry naming the Subroutine but not its Subject, and then removes that Subroutine from the queue.

Reproposing with tweaks. Still spammable, because I like the idea of anonymous commands, but it’s harmless for the first three levels, and we can work out how to fix it later.

posted by Kevan at 20 Jan 2015 22:12:00 UTC Comments (8)

Comments

Bucky:

20-01-2015 22:27:24 UTC

imperial

Note that Disabled crew members can still queue actions.

Josh: Imperator he/they

20-01-2015 22:40:17 UTC

for This is definitely a Cerebral action.

I think XP0S may be too cheap but what the hell, it’ll be a while until we get there.

Josh: Imperator he/they

20-01-2015 22:43:24 UTC

Although some tweaking is still needed.

“and if the queue contains no Subroutines with that Crewmember as its Subject” - doesn’t that just encourage spamming? Androids in particular will just make sure there’s always an MD1C with their name on it in the queue. It also makes B3LY impossible to deliver upon.

Kevan: he/him

20-01-2015 23:03:20 UTC

And spurious MD1C requests will become reasons for suspicion. And a way to cast it upon others.

But yes, still room for spam, not sure there’s really a way to have anonymous subroutines that can’t be spammed. Or that there’s any real benefit beyond it amusing me that people might send me commands via SMS; private messages through the blog system are equally invisible to other players. Tweak away.

Skju:

20-01-2015 23:13:55 UTC

for

Bucky:

21-01-2015 00:47:08 UTC

Adding things to the queue is optional for the Computer.  So the Computer can exclude commands it considers ‘spammy’.

ayesdeeef:

21-01-2015 01:36:19 UTC

Josh, why would androids in particular want to ensure that they always have an MD1C?

XP0S’ potential to tell the crewmember whether he himself is an android is a bit trolly… was that intentional?

Josh makes a good point; as is, B3LY does nothing.

Brendan: he/him

21-01-2015 04:21:17 UTC

for