Emergency Response Team

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:03 pm #36336

Minor idea I had. Back in the day Nerrti was coding a fleshed out ERT, akin to what other servers use. Sadly that never came to pass. While I lack the skills to code a functional ERT, I can do something similar.

Essentially, I propose the addition of a ERT response room on the CentCom Z-level. It would be in the same area as the Death Squad shuttle. Essentially there would be a bunch of useful equipment dividing into three roles, Medical, Engineering and Security of which there is only enough for two roles each. Admins would need to manually spawn in players to the room to suit up. There would be around six operatives.

The ERT would essentially function as a way for admins to attempt to save a station that has not yet reached the point of blowing up, as well as getting some players back into the round. They are not meant to wipe out a Xenomorph infestation, they are here to help people and not kill everything. Their armour and equipment is robust and above average, but not even on par with the Deathsquad.

The roles would function as follows:

Engineering: Has tools designed to quickly and efficiently fix damage.

Spoiler:

Medical: Holds a wide selection of robust medical tools designed to rapidly apply first aid to the target.

Spoiler:

Security: To protect the ERT team or put down a moderate threat.

Spoiler:

Any ideas or feedback would be appreciated, or even saying if this is a good/bad idea.

*EDIT* I could possibly set up a system to allow admins to spawn in a ERT akin to spawning in a antag from the 'Spawn Antags' menu. That would work well.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:47 pm #36346

Crew doesn't need uber equipment to save the station, nobody just wants to save it. In this case ERT doesn't even get special equipment apart from fancy space suits and special weapons (which is against what you said about them not here to kill everyone).

Arete · Post by **Arete** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:24 pm #36361

I like this as a mechanic to make long rounds more tolerable for ghosts. In my experience, engineering, science, and mining all die a little inside when their hard work is reset. About the only thing I'd worry about is discouraging antags from doing interesting round-ending things.

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 7:53 pm #36368

Raven776 · Post by **Raven776** » Wed Oct 15, 2014 8:31 pm #36380

I've actually played a round as an ERT. It was during a blob round that got out of hand due to badminnery and it was pretty fun getting everyone to safety and launching the long overdue shuttle.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:44 am #36492

I'll work on it then. I might have to ask for Space Suit sprites considering the sprite I'll be using is the Black/Blue Syndi space suit.

As I mentioned, I could get some code working that would allow admins to spawn ghosted players in as a ERT. It would essentially be repurposed Death Squad spawning code but it should work.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:07 am #36519

LIFE SQUAD.

Yeah but really unless they plan on rebuilding genetics or something, the medical response team is gonna be more of a body-ferry than life savers except for maybe if the engineering team gets attacked. Maybe give each one of them a 1-shot rejuvenator which puts them from dead back into low crit? Used for high-value targets like the captain or other heads?

This is gonna be admin-spawned crap after all so its perfectly fine to go into the overpowered territory.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:24 am #36526

Ok, so, here is what I've got so far in game.

I messed around with antag assignment to let admins spawn in a ERT. Sadly it was a dead end.

I'll mess around with giving the medics a one shot medipen that has a very powerful healing regent. All ERT members will have a Stun Revolver and a Stun Baton for self defence, the Security Officers get access to a improved Energy Gun and other offensive and defensive tools.

What I plan to do is place special CentCom ID's inside each locker, with each one being assigned to either a Medical Officer, Engineering Officer or a Security Officer with the access to get into their equipment room.

I will have to lodge a request for a ERT space suit, since I would prefer a new one to the Blue/Black syndi space suit.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:26 am #36529

On that note, here are the sprites posted by Neerti a long time ago, I would love to use them if I can get them.

Also, here's a side arm that Validsalad made a long time ago as well.

EDIT: Turns out I can use them, there's the suit uniform problem sorted out.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 7:55 am #36533

Here's a in game screenshot of the ERT Space Suit.

Phalanx300 · Post by **Phalanx300** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:29 am #36548

Great idea, really makes sense as well that Nanotrasen would send a elite team to deal with the situation if security isn't capable anymore.

What will be the requirements to summon them? Having a way to summon them without admin intereference sounds good, maybe tying it to the alert system.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:57 am #36551

Sadly anything of that calibre is beyond my capabilities. The current system will essentially require a admin to manually spawn in six ghosts, the equipment lockers have been set up to account for this.

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On firearms. Here is how the gun selection is going.

Energy Pistol:

This is the standard issue sidearm, a military grade energy gun. It will hold 10 rounds akin to a normal civilian grade energy gun, except it can also fit in your pocket. All ERT Officers will have one.

MkII Energy Gun:

The Security Response Officers' primary firearm. A military variant of the civilian version, this will hold 30 rounds.

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Any feedback, or equipment suggestions, would be great!

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:22 am #36554

Why would I not take the best gun, the best healing equipment and the best engineering equipment and be the one man ERT?

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:25 am #36555

Because each locker has one specific ID card to only one of the three equipment rooms. If you get the Engineering locker your a Engineering Officer.

If you go stealing other ERT Officers ID cards, well, don't forget they have access to a Energy Pistol.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:32 am #36556

Here's how each individual ERT Officer would look like when equiped with their default equipment. In addition their ID cards denote what role they are. Left to right its: Security, Engineer and Medic.

There is nothing stopping the ERT members from mixing and matching their equipment. The initial, and expected, set up simply specializes each member into one of three roles.

Gun Hog · Post by **Gun Hog** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:40 am #36557

Consider making the Security suit have red highlights and the Engineer suit have orange. The Medical suit may stay as it is. Color coded for your convenience!

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:48 am #36558

They are all wearing their relevant dept backpacks. I'll look into adding a bit of colour.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:52 am #36559

Steelpoint wrote:Because each locker has one specific ID card to only one of the three equipment rooms. If you get the Engineering locker your a Engineering Officer.

If you go stealing other ERT Officers ID cards, well, don't forget they have access to a Energy Pistol.

Fair enough, but what if less than six people spawn? I think that spawning with equipment would be better.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 12:55 pm #36566

What I've done, for the moment, is code a way to let admins select a mobs equipment to give them the standard issue ERT objects, minus the Space Suit. Mainly this helps cut down time. The members still have to get a ID, a backpack and suit up.

I'm going to look at altering the sprites around to better denote which person is doing what job.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:13 pm #36567

Here's my first attempt at differentiating the officers role.

Lo6a4evskiy · Post by **Lo6a4evskiy** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:42 pm #36571

Give officer an uplink to teleport in cool items.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 2:47 pm #36586

Steelpoint wrote:Because each locker has one specific ID card to only one of the three equipment rooms. If you get the Engineering locker your a Engineering Officer.

If you go stealing other ERT Officers ID cards, well, don't forget they have access to a Energy Pistol.

>ERT actually teamworks
>They share shit
>Your ID locked doors ale 0/10

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 2:50 pm #36587

They could just, you know, pass over gear and what not.

mrpain · Post by **mrpain** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 7:16 am #36808

I think people would be more likely to save the station if the shuttle where ping pong locked and they were placed back into the round with objectives, such as ERT can/should bring, than if they were just playing engineers. "LOL COMS DED HOLE IN MAIN HALLWAY DIDNT BORK ANYTHING I CANT FIX BUT BETTER CALL SHUTTLE ANYWAYS" would be harder to justify.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 11:27 am #36840

One of the principles I'm operating on is to give each of the three roles one unique, and powerful, item and fill the rest out with standard equipment.

For the Security Officer, they get a Mk2 Energy Gun which holds 30 rounds before depletion.

For the Engineering Officer, they get a Military RCD which holds 90 cartridge units.

For the Medical Officer, they get a single use medipen (or two) with a near instant healing regent.

------

Violaceus wrote:You people should consider one thing.

What happens to ERT when emergency passes?

Do they return to CentCom? And sit there? Get wiped by admin?

Do they stay on station to round end¿

If by chance that the ERT are able to save the station, they can easily return to the CentCom Shuttle and leave the station. I would expect the admins to do something to usher them off the station once the threat has passed.

------

While I might toy with sectioning off a area to hold heavier equipment, as far as I'm concernd the ERT is ready to be put up for a PR, barring that there is no code selection to spawn in a ERT automaticly. However I'll have to wait for the other map PR's to be merged before I can do my PR.

Raven776 · Post by **Raven776** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 1:41 pm #36852

It's assumed that the emergency would be a round ending one if it ever came up, such as late game random blob eating half of the station, level (fucked) meteors, uncurable disease, xenomorphs, massive bombings...

You can fix a lot of things, but the moment atmos is fucked over, the singularity is loose, or a blob has eaten 25% of the station, there's no going back to the way things were. You can't fix all of the oxygen supply being vented into space any more than you can fix a gibbed body.

Ezel · Post by **Ezel** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:02 pm #36921

Idea about Emergency response team>telling engineers are lazy>shitcurity being more shitty>medbay not saving poeple because they didnt use suit sensors

Its a good idea tho
but even deathdquad tries to save the station from aliens
they rather shoot them than to be auctally helped

what would happen to ert to i mean with competent miners and research
they easily can destroy the sing orr does ert start with bag of holding?

QuartzCrystal · Mon Oct 20, 2014 6:59 pm

As an admin potentially sending ERT's in. I would probably most likely spawn them to be highly trained pro's to supplement the now dead crew as Nanotrasen wants to perpetuate their investment as long as possible.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 1:05 pm #38248

I was about to send up a ERT PR but for some reason there is some run time error that is effecting the game.

It seems to occur even when I downloaded fresh code.

I'll have to wait until this is fixed and/or if its some weird problem on my end before going ahead.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:06 pm #47883

Feature Freeze is almost over, once its officially done I'll get a PR on this up and on the way.

Since all the Z-Levels are now split up in separate files, this should be easier to do and not likely get in the way of anyone else's changes.

Saintish · Post by **Saintish** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 12:23 pm #47885

Let them be summoned by the crew via the same keycard authorization used for code red and early launch. Allow admins to flag certain players as more suitable for the role - sort of like a reverse antag ban.

Give the Captain or Head of Security a device to gib them remotely.

deathhoof · Post by **deathhoof** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 1:44 pm #47896

I agree with admins tagging good players, but I doubt that admins pay enough attention to random players to pick out all the good players. What will probably happen is exclusively admin metafriend ert.

Spacemanspark · Wed Dec 03, 2014 2:31 pm

Please don't let the admins flag certain players, let the players actually get the same opportunities to play the role, and if they're horrible at it, then job ban them.

As for what they can do after they're done (Hahaha, good joke.), give them a few arcade machines, security camera consoles, atmospheric consoles, mini kitchen, etc.. if shit starts to go wrong again, they'll be able to see it and pop right back in again and assist further.

Are we going to have a character customization menu before they're allowed to spawn? Eye colour/ hair colour, hair type, beard, name, etc..

Preamble · Post by **Preamble** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 3:46 pm #47919

Should be renamed to Emergency Response Personnel.

Akkryls · Post by **Akkryls** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 3:49 pm #47920

Preamble wrote:Should be renamed to Emergency Response Personnel.

And should be given off-red (HOT PINK) coloured uniforms.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 4:27 pm #47931

Your all mistaking me for someone who can code.

As I've said prior, I'm simply creating the facilities needed, as well as all the equipment, unique or otherwise, to allow a admin to manually spawn in players as a ERT. The system is set up so all the admin has to do is spawn in six players and they can get all the equipment they need without admin intervention, which was the problem before the Death Squad was readded as it meant the admins had to manually spawn in all their equipment which was time consuming.

soulgamer · Post by **soulgamer** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 7:47 pm #47968

Why not give the med ERT a one handed defib?

Raven776 · Post by **Raven776** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:44 pm #47994

With no damage restriction but instead a time restriction...

Or the other way around.

Metafive · Post by **Metafive** » Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:46 pm #47995

soulgamer wrote:Why not give the med ERT a one handed defib?

I think it'd be more sensible to have that worked into its own medipen. Analog to epinephrine or atropine, or give it its own silly name like resuscitussin.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 4:48 am #48070

There is a chemical that does revive people, adminorphazine or something, however it does not work nor is anyone inclined to fix it due to it being a never used chemical.

Ergovisavi · Post by **Ergovisavi** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 5:42 am #48077

A chemical can't revive people because corpses don't process chemicals.

Spacemanspark · Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:23 pm

Clearly you didn't read the chemical name.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:25 pm #48148

The chemical used to be able to revive corpses, it just can't because, as stated, dead bodies don't process chemicals.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:27 am #48563

If you make them able to be summoned by the crew I guarantee they'll be summoned at the start of every round, while a ton of players stop playing and start observing in hopes that they'll get picked.

Make it a button and leave it at that.

Spacemanspark · Sat Dec 06, 2014 7:35 am

And then watch it rarely ever get called at all.
There should be some sort of limitation for it, that would allow players to call it, but something that would stop the players from observing (Which would only happen initially, I assure you.)...

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 2:18 pm #48628

Not to mention if it is an admin button badger will never get to use it because we rarely get any fucking admins unless we all ahelp about a shitter or something.

ColonicAcid · Post by **ColonicAcid** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 2:23 pm #48629

Make the uniforms more distinct than just the armband being red or blue or yellow.
Bay has it the whole thing being the corresponding colour. Engineering ERT's are yellow, Security ERT's are red and so on.

Also anon that's silly talk it'll happen maybe once or twice at the start and then everyone gets fucking bored by it. Besides the point you can just regulate it and say don't press it unless it's an emergency.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 2:26 pm #48630

I think making it a admin only button is fine, gives a more middle ground way to bring people back into the round. Death Squad is essentially the "gg no re" button whereas a ERT would allow the possibility for the station to continue to operate.

A ERT being a player controlled event simply throws in a massive balance problem. What if the Captain calls in help during a Nuke Ops/Cult/Rev round? We can put in a time limit of 20-30 minutes into a shift before they can be called but that would only go so far, what if they are called in for no good reason?

Perhaps safeguards like a longer calling system, only letting the Captains ID being able to call the ERT, being able to arrest the Cap if he abuses the system might all help. But its a massive balance problem that would require its own seperate thread and discussion to decide upon.

Spacemanspark · Sat Dec 06, 2014 5:24 pm

Steelpoint wrote:What if the Captain calls in help during a Nuke Ops/Cult/Rev round? We can put in a time limit of 20-30 minutes into a shift before they can be called but that would only go so far, what if they are called in for no good reason?

What do you mean, if they call it during Nuke Ops/ cult/ rev? That's, you know, the point of an EMERGENCY response team. It's the same on Baystation, Paradise, Unbound Travels, whatever server that has them.
If a captain calls in a team for no good reason (It happens on Paradise from time to time.), then they should either be A) Arrested by the ERT, or B) Job banned from captain. It's not that fucking hard.

Steelpoint wrote:Perhaps safeguards like a longer calling system, only letting the Captains ID being able to call the ERT

Or just using the ID swipers that are found in the Bridge. Two ID's to call the team. Perhaps one should be the captain's ID, I don't know.

Timbrewolf · Post by **Timbrewolf** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 7:21 pm #48651

Forcing us to have to create new rules and a system to police abuses of a new game function

vs.

Simple Adminbutton.

Should be pretty obvious which one is better implemented. If players want an ERT to come in they can ask centcomm from the console.