Harvester-speaking - the "election"

[Omi]

Firstly, this may be in the wrong place, and apologies if it is, but I decided to keep it out of Flood in the hopes that it belongs out of there and that it wouldn't drown in a sea of, well, flood.

All right, well, as you may or may not know, I have a harvester character flying around Sirius. I love him, and I like to think that he loves me too, despite being an emotionless machine.

Basically, the whole "this unit" this, "this unit", that thing is beginning to wear on me...I've seen a couple of other AIs floating about, and Harvester_63 in particular made me wish that I'd chosen a better way of representing AI speech. So, I debated about it a bit, and now I've decided on "bugger it, I'll get some opinions on it."

So, this is just a topic for you to come in with your say on how my harvester should speak. I definitely want it to sound machine-like in its speaking..no "I" and "you", please. A couple of the poll choices are inspired by the Beast from Homeworld: Cataclysm, as that thing could have been quite good at the whole self-part thing if it'd spoken more.

Anyone else who has an AI character, or anyone who's met my harvester in game, will probably (hopefully?) have a better understanding of what I'm blithering on about.

I *think* I've stuffed everything I basically need into the poll there...however, I will remember the other thousand things I wanted to ask the second I hit post, probably, so may as well.

This poll may or may not affect how my harvester ends up speaking..but I'd like to get some outside opinions on it, too. I'd like it to be different to other AIs, but not a perfect-diction-and-usage-of-English AI. Again, if you've played Homeworld: Cataclysm and know how the Beast in it speaks, basically something like that except maybe more machine-like or more usage of "self" "part", et cetera.

Thanks in advance, everyone!

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[AJBeast]

If the Harvesters are a collective then each "individual" should refer to itself as "This unit". About others, frankly, I haven't the slightest. About the vocabulary, it should definitely be broader. I mean, Harvesters are basically super machines, doing tons of calculations per second yet they can't translate that into proper english? That's just a stupid sci-fi stereotype.

[Sprolf]

Yes... you can't exactly be a Harvester and refer to yourself as anything else.

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[Boss]

As a Keeper (that is, a member of a group consensus) I'm entirely aware of the difficulty in expressing oneself singularly rather than as the whole. Can't use personal pronouns, really, since there's no "I". "We" gets used a lot, but can be overdone, plus it doesn't work for an individual. Because of that, I've often resorted to 'This one' or 'This form', but it's not perfect. As far as an AI goes, if someone gives my character a distinctive nickname, I'll occasionally use that just to mix it up a bit.

As far as referring to others goes, again as a Keeper, it's hard. 'Darknames' is cliche, and Yuri doesn't like us using it anyways. Some I've used are 'song-less', 'lost', 'broken', etc., referring to their lack of connection to the Mindshare. Or I'll just call them 'Name-name', i.e. 'Dangen-name' to steal from Canis Lupus a bit. On an AI, I'll record a designation for a given person and then use that. (Example would be a BHG gunship named Sparkle. I'd call it 'gunship-designate: "Sparkle".)

As far as limiting vocabulary goes, it really depends on the situation and 'age' of the AI. If it's been around humans a lot, stands to reason it'll be a bit more relaxed.

Good luck, and I hope that helped a bit.

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Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Thurgret]

This immediately came to mind: (warning, ME geth reference here, might want to skip it if you want to avoid a chance of a spoiler)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Chpj2_X3k#t=3m20s

I think 'this unit' and variations thereof to refer to others are fine, but I guess there may be better options.

[Sentient Beta]

This unit processor, in its various unit bodies, has no issues referring to bio-units and other assorted creations of biological entities or machine entities with appropriate terminology and/or phrasing.

Part of the dilema facing a human bio-unit playing as a Harvester tagged AI drone stems from this: http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=54751

Please note that more than 6 standard Sirius weeks have passed from that date. While this unit processor is encouraged that other AI units exist within Sirius....

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Sentient Machine Alliance

[SMA] Communications Channel

[Magoo!]

Personally, "This unit" annoys me to no end. Any AI worth its salt wouldn't go about talking like a Hanar from ME. Especially without a societal reason for it like, say, the Hanar. But maybe I'm overestimating the actually intelligence of the artificial intelligence.

... no "I" and "you", please.

Request denied.

I think everyone here stereotypes it by speaking like a cumbersome, slightly stupid machine with a calculator in place of a brain. I myself prefer,

"I can't let you do that, Dave." Over,

"This unit is forbidden to allow such actions to occur. Hee-gee-ger-gurk."

Its clumsy, and like I said, stereotyped. I'm the only person who's played an "I can't let you do that, Dave" that I've ever known. If you think about it, you can play HAL as well as I can and you can give your AI some class while you're at it. If nothing else, I think a thousand years in the future would yield some collective entities an at least somewhat better form of interaction than a basic AI today. Heck, even today we're making interactive AI that is better than that.

Even if you're part of a collective, the Prime (or whatever you want to call it) AI is still in there somewhere. He would likely say, if he wasn't created by something, "... I slowly became aware..." (running off of cliches, but hey... /irony). If he 'awoke' others, then they'd be like fingers on his hand. Hand goes here, fingers do things, still that 'I' presence, or they'd otherwise refer to the Prime and his wishes. If they awoke themselves, then there's still that element of 'I'.

-Edit- Although, if there are hundreds of thousands of you, Thurgret's Geth reference makes perfect sense. But then again, the Geth grow more intelligent the more there are in a group, so that's another special situational difference between the Harvesters and the Geth. 'We' are Geth... *points to finger scenario*

[Shazbot11]

Considering that the name of the first Harvester was 'First Thought/Giver-of-Will', this immediately came to mind as to how Harvesters would talk:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybrids_%28St...Cybrid_Language

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Maybe some day, they'll see a hero is just a man who knows he's free.

[Omi]

Considering that the name of the first Harvester was 'First Thought/Giver-of-Will', this immediately came to mind as to how Harvesters would talk:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybrids_%28St...Cybrid_Language

Okay, THAT is quite..nice. Maybe that's what Scorn was aiming for with the whole FTGW thing...I'll probably end up going along with some variation of that, now. Cheers!

Oh, and yes, HAL was incredibly chilling, with his perfect grasp of English, but stereotyped, clumsy or whatever else you called it, that's the way I want to go. I'm not saying that an AI which speaks like HAL is bad, I'm just saying that I don't want to go down that route.
The way I see it, my Harvester's strength lies in its analysis and thought process capabilities. In my regrettably limited knowledge of Harvester lore, there was a "Voice of the Machine" aspect which dealt with diplomacy and such, and that is what I envisage as talking perfectly with humans, if any of the Harvesters do. My Harvester, however, different from other Harvesters though it is, what with the informational-gathering thing, is still a Harvester and thus I see it talking like one. Modified, yes, but it's only received a slight directive modification to gather data rather than eat things, and likely that the original "eat things" directive didn't require it to do much talking, though it would still have basic capabilities.

The Geth thing was also interesting, as well, though the lack of many other Harvesters floating around in-game prevents much of a "collective" thing for me..while it still exists in-RP, the lack of the in-game presence is what clinches it for me. Although, it does allow my unit to diversify itself...given that if the Harvesters ever do get a foothold in Disco again, I may need to haul this all back in line with the faction..I'll have to see what happens.

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[kuth]

I personally enjoy seeing an AI encounter a human and call them a meatbag.

As for refering to yourself. Unsure, I don't like the 'this unit' stuff and think that most AIs that are self aware aren't going to be stupid and not be able to speak like humans do, with their odd quirks.

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Lurker