/tg/Station 13

i was talking to a friend and something they mentioned is that the current players do not understand what “AA” means. in fact, some people consider AA being one of those boomer things. which i think is fucked up. AA breaking out every round wasn’t fun, but I feel like the paranoia involved with AA is no longer there. you’re no longer questioning whether someone has access that they’re not meant to have. no longer do i see an assistant and get paranoid that they could effortlessly walk through doors to get to me in my department.

i feel like the current access system is simply too oppressive. hell, you can’t even get high security places like brig, armory, virology as wild cards. you can’t even have command access if you don’t have a silver ID. roundstart hop lines are no longer a thing. keeping an eye on the hop to see if he’s handing out free access is no longer a thing. beating the shit out of the hop because they left the console logged in is no longer a thing.

we should bring back access paranoia but not the free-for-all AA breakout that happened every round. perhaps silver IDs could hold All Access, keeping the valuable limited supply philosophy while also upping the antae (and keeping it conspicuous if you're holding AA). wildcard slots should increase for normal IDs as well, and there should simply be zero security restrictions depending on what kind of trim you have. perhaps by default there's a program installed on crew tablet PDAs that read out their current access, allowing nefarious evil-doers to try to hide their tracks by deleting the program (but it would still be installable). these are ideas i'm simply spitballing.

the main issue with all-access that makes it explosive is that ID console access is part of all-access so maybe that's the part that should be looked at, rather than the nitty-gritty details like "how many departments can a card hold at once" and needing a silver ID to get command access and so on (thereby making it a hard tell if an assistant walks through a door that an assistant ID can't be legitimately modified to open)

it's funny how access is generally backwards from how access cards tend to work in the real world - if we wanted to do a realistic thing then ID access should be a case of a central computer/database that stores what accesses each user ID has, and that would be the thing that gets queried when you go to open a door - which would allow IDs to have whatever granular accesses are needed (without the need for wildcard slots) while also solving the problem of "oh no all-access got out now we'll never get the genie back in the bottle as even one person with id console access can start handing it out again" by making it trivial for the HoP to just remotely revoke access from people that shouldn't have it. It'd also reward some degree of stealth to go with your murder as a stolen ID is only good for as long as it takes for someone to report it stolen.

Agent IDs would need a rework under this system by making them spoof the credentials of whatever people's IDs they've copied - watch out if the person you swiped science access from gets fired or found dead!

At least the Head cards should be able to have all access.

Silver access cards are currently too accessible and would just lead to the same sort of old AA distribution shenanigans the new system is preventing if you could put all-access on them. There's at least an entire box of spare silver IDs in the hop's (office/backpack?) roundstart, and I remember being able to order more from cargo.

AA rounds were horrible; they were the same level of NRP chaos as the average wizard staff of change round, but capable of being perpetuated entirely by nonantags in any round ever.

I also don't see why you wouldn't feel paranoia about someone's ability to follow you into your department. Anyone can whip out a set of tools, use some funny antagonist ability, PDA message the AI, or pull a stolen ID out of their pocket- hell, they can still go to the HoP and have the access tacked onto their ID! It's not the fault of the access system that you're less paranoid about people being able to walk into your secure rooms whenever they want.