Communications

[onleavedontatme]

Telecomms is very easy to disable. This is generally crippling to the crew.

Almost every antag (even traitor!) has some sort of inbuilt hivemind/comms. This is a massive advantage in its own right, but combined with being able to just flip off radio for the crew, is a bit silly, and makes disabling telecomms a nobrainer.

I'm not sure if this is as big a problem as I think it is at the moment, I guess I'll reread this in the morning. Giving everyone innate uncrackable comms as a workaround to radio being so heavily monitored seems lazy to me though. Not sure if a solution is needed either, or where I am going with this, just idle thoughts.

[Luke Cox]

The tools to rebuild telcoms are there, and it's not even that difficult. It gets said a lot, but git gud

[onleavedontatme]

The tools to rebuild telcoms are there, and it's not even that difficult. It gets said a lot, but git gud

Maybe the antags with built in super comms need to get good.

If something is 100% the best option every time, maybe that option should be examined.

[InsaneHyena]

Of all antags, only cult, shadowlings, changelings have this telepathy that can help them coordinate. Gang has gangtool messages, yes, but they are limited to the leaders and suck. Disabling telecoms during rev and gang is as likely to hurt you as to help, while getting syndiecomms as a tator requires you to spend TCs. I would argue that shadowlings absolutely require their telepathy too, since as a thrall you need to kidnap a guy, drag him to a secluded place and somehow signal that he's here to a shadowling.
I do think, however, that changeling hivemind needs to go. They aren't team antag, they are biotraitors, they have no business having hivemind. If they want to team up, they have to do it the way traitors do. Does anybody remember pure changeling rounds, where four changelings would team up and recall the shuttle for hours until they've murderboned everyone on the station? That was great!

I second Luke Cox, git gud.

[Steelpoint]

Aren't all the materials needed to fix telecoms in Secure Storage?

I can't recall if all the needed materials needed are even there, last I recall half of it was hidden in RnD. Though I may have moved those to Secure Storage a while ago.

The problem with fixing Tecomms is that its non-intuitive, considering it consists of 1000 machines yet you only need four of them for tcomms to work, not to mention the guides to fixing them are spread over two pages (or so).

It takes significantly more effort to fix tcomms than it does to break it.

[lumipharon]

Disabling comms has been scientifically proven to increase FUN by 97%.
Seriously though, whenyou don't have to worry about people shouting out on radio, and all of sec coming down on you like a ton of bricks, you have far, far more freedom as an antag.
That said, that's mainly from the perspective of traitors (and I guess lings, but fuck lings so eh). In the other, group antag modes the power of disabling comms varies, but it's definitely stronger, and much more beneficial than a lone traitor doing it.
All the conversion antags can get a lot of shit down with comms down, so it's more likely to be 'unfair' in the sense it's the crew vs antag group and there's actual winning and losing, where as in traitor, it's just crew with certain crew happening to be murderous/dirty thieves, and the crew don't win or lose, only the traitors need to care about that.

I've also always been against the syndie headset for traitors - it makes working together far too easy, and is completely independent from tcomms which (balance concerns aside) makes no sense - if station comms needs it to run, and nuke ops ostensibly have their shuttle, what the fuck are traitors using to bounce their comms?

[DemonFiren]

Syndiecomms should require tcomms to run, but should also stay as uplink option.

Most fun I've ever had as traitor was with them: co-ordinating with a detective traitor during double agents, followed by a collective OH SHIT IT'S DA, co-ordinating as ling with a CE traitor and an emagged borg (then inevitably blowing my cover because I was the mime and caught talking), and so on.

[Actionb]

Aren't all the materials needed to fix telecoms in Secure Storage?

For the barebones ghetto comms setup (reciever, CPU, mainframe, broadcaster; link everything to the mainframe), yes almost.
You need a couple more manipulators, I think - but you can scavenge those from almost any other machine out there or make them with the autolathe.
Maybe need another comms snowflake item like one more treatment disk, but not quite sure on that.

Bottom line is: it is easy to disable comms, but it's just as easy to restore it. It's just most people don't even bother trying to fix it.
Back when NTSL was still a thing we even had selective muting scripts, and nobody really complained (maybe because we couldn't hear them scream ).
If comms are out for longer than a few minutes, everyone with half a brain cell will grab a station bounced anyhow.

[Ezel]

Syndiecomms should require tcomms to run, but should also stay as uplink option.

Most fun I've ever had as traitor was with them: co-ordinating with a detective traitor during double agents, followed by a collective OH SHIT IT'S DA, co-ordinating as ling with a CE traitor and an emagged borg (then inevitably blowing my cover because I was the mime and caught talking), and so on.

Make the syndie comms require another tcomms that is in another z level ((listening post))

[Gun Hog]

Most people do not bother learning how Tcomms works. All you need are the four machines stated above. Note that you need the hub intact if you want to connect to the mining and DJ Z-levels. As long as the essential machines exist plus the APC, anyone can restore Tcomms, even the AI can do so if the cameras are intact. You simply need to know what machine performs what actions. Before NTSL was stolen from us, I would often re-route Tcomms through one set of machines to allow my script to affect all channels at once.

Antags having private comms is a very important thing to their stealth (Although I enjoy the concept of being able to compromise that by killing an antag and harvesting it to gain access), as most team antags will be at a crushing disadvantage if they are discovered too early in the round. Taking out comms for the crew is thus a solid tactic which allows an antag to act quickly before Tcomms is repaired or the crew switches to station-bounced comms.

I do not recommend changing this, except for minor adjustments here and there.

[WarbossLincoln]

It's pretty easy to ghetto rig up another common channel with I think 3 machines. If someone cuts tcomms then put up several common channel servers in public places.

[Atlanta-Ned]

If anything, make the ion storm events that disable comms much more infrequent. Or replace them entirely with the one that disables the processor units and makes everything sound like gibberish. That one's easier to fix and doesn't suck as much as 'lel tcomms disabled completely no matter what you do'.

For love of all that is holy though, do not simplify tcomms.

[Incomptinence]

I do think, however, that changeling hivemind needs to go. They aren't team antag, they are biotraitors, they have no business having hivemind. If they want to team up, they have to do it the way traitors do. Does anybody remember pure changeling rounds, where four changelings would team up and recall the shuttle for hours until they've murderboned everyone on the station? That was great!

They weren't doing those rounds because they were dicks, their objectives were literally a laundry list because coders were flat out brain damaged when they made old changeling objectives and thought they were stronger than traitors. That huge wait on the shuttle and crew cull? That was what it took for most oldlings to win as coders intended.

[PKPenguin321]

this is in no way an issue
most rounds comms do not get cut, when they do things do tend to get hectic very quickly but that is in no way a bad thing imo

[onleavedontatme]

I also think the proliferation of team hud/team comms for everyone is terrible for non balance reasons (we really are a TDM codebase).

[Lati]

I've never even tried to fix telecomms (other than rebuilding the main hub) since it looks so complicated with so many different machines. Just rebuilding them doesn't even put the comms back, you have to do some button pressing on the consoles too.

Aside from making telecomms maybe a bit simpler to rebuild and restart, I'd just hope players would use more portable radios and intercomms when normal comms get disabled. Grabbing a portable radio is always the first thing I do when I notice comms going down. Usually the only places producing radios are just cargo and maybe R&D which are both behind access rights though. But the silent chaos of no radio is fun too.

[Atlanta-Ned]

Aside from making telecomms maybe a bit simpler to rebuild and restart,

NO.

PS telecommunications is criminally easy to set up if you read the wiki page

[Actionb]

I've never even tried to fix telecomms (other than rebuilding the main hub) since it looks so complicated with so many different machines. Just rebuilding them doesn't even put the comms back, you have to do some button pressing on the consoles too.

Very easy breakdown:
reciever: recieves input
mainframe: main junction between all the machines
cpu: turns input signal into a comprehensible output signal
server: logs the signals (and with NTSL: makes modifications to those signals)
hub: another junction, but it enables the use of comms relays to communicate across z-levels
broadcaster: sends output

You don't need the server, you don't need the hub for station z-level comms.
If you do include a hub in your comms setup, things get a little bit more complicated, so ignore it for a quick and dirty solution. Nobody cares about mining anyway.
I've had problems with getting a sabotaged comms system to work again, until yours truly Pandarsenic (I do hope they come back at some point, what a great guy) announced this very easy 'quick'n'dirty' solution:
- put a mainframe on your multitool, delete ALL links and filtered frequencies on the mainframe
- go to one of each of these machines: reciever, CPU, broadcacster and do the following
- delete all links and filtered frequencies
- link the machines to the mainframe via your multitool
Done. Enjoy your comms.

[Anonmare]

You know, I never actually figured out what the filtered frequency shit is for. Deleting it doesn't *seem* to do anything that I've noticed.

[Actionb]

You know, I never actually figured out what the filtered frequency shit is for. Deleting it doesn't *seem* to do anything that I've noticed.

Afaik (meaning, I don't really know either) frequencies are just for fluff. Back with NTSL you could access certain radio channels on which you wanted to run your scripts by routing the specific frequencies of radio channels to those servers (because NTSL magic happens on servers; that's what Gun Hog did with his superscript, I assume). Without NTSL, these servers only serve a message logging function, and by that, the frequency filtering feature only helps with organizing the logs by dividing them into the 8 different categories.

A machine will only handle the frequencies it is set to filter out - or all frequencies if no filter has been set.
That said, I am certain that an incoming signal will prefer a reciever with a matching frequency over a general reciever... which, if the filtering reciever is part of an unfunctional setup (missing links, etc.), may lead to comms on that frequency not working. At least that's what I noticed when telecomms was only 'partially' sabotaged.
When in doubt, always turn off all other machines that aren't part of your core comms setup and you'll be good.

On that note, the hub is powered by evil voodoo magic and will fuck up comms if it is not set up properly with all frequencies and correct links etc.

[Zilenan91]

We can't really fix the problem of lacking PvE to keep people busy unless we get a new map. A planet map would give us a lot of room to expand threats players may face.

[PKPenguin321]

We can't really fix the problem of lacking PvE to keep people busy unless we get a new map. A planet map would give us a lot of room to expand threats players may face.

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6446
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6446
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6446

[Zilenan91]

I would map one myself but I honestly don't have time to try and make a map in dream daemon

[oranges]

Just pop a station bounced radio in your bag and away you go.

[Oldman Robustin]

It's mostly fine as-is. Only if disabled comms becomes something appears in 40%+ rounds would I consider making it harder to shut down.

One compromise I could imagine is giving security a separate comms satellite floating above the armory or wherever that would let sec continue to stay in touch. Disabling Tcomms would still let you murder most people without AI+Sec immediately homing in on you, but it wouldn't cripple sec like it does now.

[oranges]

pls stop

[ShadowDimentio]

How about we not fuck with critical parts of game balance and potentially throw everything out of whack when it's not even an issue

[Steelpoint]

How about we not fuck with critical parts of game balance and potentially throw everything out of whack when it's not even an issue

The voice of reason???

[ShadowDimentio]

I'm always the voice of reason, shitposting is just a side job

[Actionb]

It's mostly fine as-is. Only if disabled comms becomes something appears in 40%+ rounds would I consider making it harder to shut down.

I remember a time where it was common practice to sabotage comms almost every round (looking at you sticky). And that was before traitor-headsets. And with NTSL.
If anything, disrupting communications (despite it being a very powerful tactic) has become less of an issue. I guess, the 'flavour of the month' and personal preference of the antags has more do with it than the actual ease of sabotaging telecomms...

Just set your station bounced radio to one of the 10+ frequencies that it can handle and you have a semi-private radio channel for your department.

[Atlanta-Ned]

I still feel like they're easy to disable on Box. Meanwhile Meta has tcomms on the sat with the AI, but you've gotta get through the foyer to reach the server room. I think a happy medium would be having tcomms on a satellite, but with fewer doors (and turrets) in between.

[Anonmare]

I liked Efficiency's T-Comms satellite the most, I'd like anything that emulated it.

[Takeguru]

You know, I never actually figured out what the filtered frequency shit is for. Deleting it doesn't *seem* to do anything that I've noticed.

Afaik (meaning, I don't really know either) frequencies are just for fluff.

ACTUALLY, every department chat uses a number code to talk

Used to be, before mappers removed fun, that the librarian would have an intercom in the library that was capable of going down low enough to tap into those channels

It's been so long I forgot the exact numbers, but they were down in the 110-120 range

Syndie comms work the same way as well, I think

[Anonmare]

That was a F E A T U R E
Return unrestricted Librarian intercom when?

[Lati]

Let's compare the machines in tcomms and in other departments, for example medbay which has quite many machines. It would be better to compare a sub-department of medbay, like genetics, since tcomms is only a part of engineering.

Tcomms has 24 machines and 3 consoles.
The entire medbay has about 16 machines and about 5 consoles. Genetics has 5 machines and 3 consoles.

Tcomms machines need special parts and there aren't enough of them in storage to rebuild the machines.
Medbay machines only need basic parts which you can make with an autolathe.

When building the tcomms machines back up, they are not working. You still need to reconfigure them (by using a multitool and writing stuff on the console?).
In medbay, once you quickly put the machine up and hit it with a RPED, it's ready and working. Cryo is the only thing you need help from atmos techs to rebuild.

If tcomms machines get destroyed, it's hard to know which ones you need since they're using the same sprites and have weird names.
Medbay has basically 2 of everything so it's fast to just build one of everything to get all functionality back up.


So especially in box where the comms are fairly easy to sabotage the rebuild part is just a huge pain. Reduce the total number of machines to like 5 from that 24 and it's good. I wouldn't mind if reconfiguring was made somehow harder but just building all those weird machines is just terrible.

[Takeguru]

Rebuilding tcomms is easy

You only need a hub, a receiver, a processor, and whatever the machine that looks like a different colored receiver is called