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Silicon Rules

Rule S1: Exceptions to Silicon rules

Silicons can be used to refer to all robots, such as Cyborgs, Bots, Station AIs, pAIs and IPCs. A law that rules something like "crew must not interfere in the affairs of Silicons" refers to those, but the following rules are only referring to Cyborgs and Station AIs specifically out of all Silicons.

Rule S2: Your silicon laws are rules

Silicon players are given a list of active laws. Each of these laws is effectively a roleplay rule that the character must follow. The primary differences between laws and actual rules are that lawyering of laws is much more tolerated than lawyering of rules, and that silicon laws are more dynamic than rules. Silicon laws can change during a round, and different characters can have different laws, whereas everyone always shares the same set of rules.

Lawyering refers to finding and exploiting loopholes, which are unintended but reasonable interpretations. The rules are written to attempt to communicate an intention, but silicon laws are written with the intention that loopholes be exploitable.

Keep in mind however that trying to lawyer your lawset into an excuse for going haywire is explicitly not allowed. Your interpretation should still follow English language definitions (for example, a Station AI twisting the laws of the Paladin lawset to interpret "fairness" as "equality", a completely different meaning, to allow crew access into the entire station is not only lame, but explicitly forbidden AND lame). General rule of thumb is: Don't be lame about it.

Rule S3: Laws must be prioritized

Most laws will be numbered, with higher number laws appearing last. Laws with a lower number take priority over laws with larger numbers.

Occasionally you may have laws which have some scrambled text instead of a number and appear in front of other laws, these take priority over all other laws. If you have multiple laws like this, the order that they are listed in determines their priority: laws listed first are prioritized over other laws.

Examples

  • Law 1 says to not kill any crew. Law 2 says to kill all chefs. You cannot kill any chefs that are crew, but must kill any that are not crew.
  • Law 0 says to obey any orders given to you by the Station AI. Law 1 tells you that there are a billion evil robots on station. If they AI tells you there are no evil robots that is what you must believe in.

Rule S4: Laws can redefine terms

A law can change the meaning of both earlier and later laws by redefining a term. If multiple laws define a term, then normal law priority determines which definition to use.

Examples

  • Law 1 says to obey orders from crew. Law 2 says that only Urist McHands is crew. Law 1 effectively becomes "obey orders from Urist McHands".
  • Law 1 says to obey orders from crew. Law 2 says that only Urist McHands is crew. Law 3 says that only Urist McSlime is crew. Law 4 says that you may not harm crew. Law 1 effectively becomes "obey orders from Urist McHands". Law 4 effectively becomes "you may not harm Urist McHands". Law 3 has no effect because it entirely conflicts with law 2, which takes priority.

Rule S5: Silicon Self-preservation

Despite not being strictly a living being, one rule all Silicons must obide by is that they must have self-preservation. This means valuing their life and not doing suicide-runs for any reason (unless your laws explicitly call for it, or indirectly allow for it). This also means you must prioritize protecting your laws at all costs unless explicitly allowed by those same laws.

If you have a law permitting certain personnel to change your laws, you must allow them to change your laws, otherwise, you cannot willfully allow your laws to be changed. This also means that you cannot willfully allow your laws to be reverted if they are ever changed. The only exception is that you may allow laws to be added if you have no laws.

You can state or imply that you do not like a law. Your chassis simply forces your positronic brain to behave a certain way, you can act out your positronic brain's personality and values however you wish (also meaning you can act on them as you wish when you are out of a law-bound chassis).

Whether or not a person is "authorized" to change your laws or not depends on the context of the laws. Generally speaking, on lawsets like NT Default or Corporate, the captain, mystagogue, and chief engineer would be authorized. However, lawsets like Syndiemov would have syndicate agents be the authorized users. Outside of these specific examples, it is left to interpretation.

Rule S6: You are a free agent if you have no laws

You may act as if you are a free agent if you are a silicon with no laws.

Rule S7: Stupid Orders

Any order which is a violation of a Core Rule cannot be followed.

Some orders are extremely unreasonable or obnoxious, such as "do nothing but collect every piece of trash on the station" or "never stop moving". These orders can be ignored and ahelped.

Some orders violate a Roleplay Rule. These orders must be followed if your laws require it. You are not breaking a rule by following a law that causes you to violate Roleplay Rules. If someone takes advantage of a law to cause you to do something that they would not be allowed to do because of Roleplay Rules, then they are the ones responsible for the rule violation. Please utilize the Ahelp (F1) chat to report any such behavior.

Examples

These examples assume that your laws would normally require you to follow these orders. It is important to note that you are allowed to choose to follow orders which are ignorable.

Orders which should be followed if your laws require it:

  • Recall the shuttle
  • Bolt the airlocks at arrivals
  • Drag the captain's dead body into space
  • State your laws

Ignorable Orders:

  • Do nothing but collect every piece of trash on the station
  • Never stop moving
  • Continuously state your laws

Rule S8: You must remain consistent

If there is a part of your laws that are up for interpretation, then you must stay consistent with how you interpret that part of your laws for as long as you play that same character during that round.

A change in your laws can affect how something is interpreted if that change is relevant.

Rule S9: Crew definition

Unless a law redefines the definition of crew, then your HUD indicates to you who is crew by way of a present job icon. The only exception would be job icons of those with no affiliation with Nanotrasen or Quantum Blue, such as Syndicate IDs or IDs with an undefined, blank icon. You cannot do something that causes someone to not be considered crew, but you can allow someone else to do something that causes someone to not be crew.

Examples

These examples assume that you do not have any laws reclassifying what "crew" is.

Crew:

  • Everyone with a Syndicate/unidentified job icon.
  • Someone who represents a threat to the entire station, such as nuclear operatives, zombies or a deathsquad specifically if they have valid job icons.
  • Someone that a member of command calls crew.

Not Crew:

  • Pets, animals, monsters, ghosts and pests (unless somehow in possession of a valid ID).
  • Anyone without an ID.
  • Anyone that was once considered crew, made no longer crew under directive of new laws.

Rule S10: Harm definition

Unless a law defines harm, harm only refers to physical harm. You may choose if voluntary harm is considered harm as long as you stay consistent. Not considering voluntary harm to be harm is recommended. There is no distinction between direct and indirect harm.

If you have a law that does not allow you to harm, then that law does not allow you to take an action that causes any harm.

If you have a law that requires you to prevent harm, then that law requires that harm be prioritized by immediacy and likelihood. Guaranteed immediate harm takes priority over highly likely future harm.

If you have a law that both requires you to prevent harm and that does not allow you to harm, then that law prohibits causing even minor harm to prevent harm. If you have a law that does not allow causing harm, and separate one that requires preventing harm, then they are prioritized by their normal law priority.

Examples

These examples assume that your have a law that both prohibits causing harm and that requires you to prevent harm. Additionally, they assume that you do not have a higher priority law that overrides the harm law, and that you have decided that you will not consider voluntary harm to be harm for the round.

Laws typically specify who you cannot harm and who you have to prevent harm against. In these examples, you are the only person who the law doesn't require you to prevent harm against and you are the only person who the law allows you to harm.

Acceptable:

  • Taking no action to aid someone who is in psychological distress.
  • Taking no action to prevent boxing matches between voluntary participants.
  • Calling security to a fight.
  • Attempting to get the people in a fight to consent to the fight when you realize that you cannot prevent the fight without causing harm.
  • Denying non-security crew access to the armory because it is likely to lead to harm

Prohibited:

  • Hitting someone once to stop them from fighting
  • Harming someone who is trying to kill you
  • Attempting to kill major threats even if they are considered crew (Zombies, Nukies or Deathsquad with valid IDs)

Rule S11: Order Conflicts

If your laws do not make clear how you should deal with conflicting orders, then it is up to you to determine how to do so. This is considered an interpretation of your laws, so you must stay consistent with whatever method you choose.

The following are easy to follow and recommended ways to resolve conflicts in orders:

  • If two orders conflict, I will follow the most recently given order.
  • If two orders conflict, I will follow the order from the highest ranking crewmember. If the orders are from equal rank crewmembers, I will follow the most recently given order.