Let's talk sleuthing.

[Lumbermancer]

Can someone with an insight into how the code works tell me how on earth a used syndicate implanter can have no forensic traces whatsoever? Or a fully build computer console?

Do you think forensics system is due for a revamp, to make it more engaging and interactive?

[Remie Richards]

It doesn't have prints because prints are added:

• Generically on touch
• Specifically by code

Construction and things, forcing items in/out of your hands, spawning new machines etc. means that you tend to miss out on case 1, the nice generic system.
Which means if someone fails to implement case 2 as a backup, you get no prints/gloves/blood etc.

[ShadowDimentio]

>Engaging and interactive

Our system is fucking great. Often when I'm playing HoS I have to constantly be consulting my sleuthing skills to try and get in the mind of the antag and locate them. Can't tell ya how many times a good hunch and a search turned up a backpack full of traitor gear.

And when lings are afoot, you HAVE to use sleuthing OR be lucky enough to catch a ling in the middle of using ling shit. I fondly remember a round once where I was sec and lings were afoot. I scoured maint looking for corpses that had been succed, and found a naked one with janitor gear strewn nearby. Thus, I concluded, the janitor was very likely a ling in disguise. Eventually I got in a firefight with a miner who was declared a ling and after I searched his bag I found the janitor's stuff. I was right on the monay.

[Lumbermancer]

Correct, but I'm talking about systems, because current one is simplistic and binary.

Here are few of my ideas:

Make forensic clues more ubiquitous but also limited, prints and fibers and dna should be common, but not obvious.

Fibers should tell you only colour and/or textile if colour is obfuscated by wear, or paint or blood or whatever. i.e white fiber could mean medical jumpsuit, but also a roboticists lab coat. Fiber could be two coloured, so white-blue fiber would point you more specifically towards medical jumpsuit (but not always, since there's a white suit with blue elements in the vending machines). Textile would allow to tell you engineer's jumpsuit from radiation suit.

Fingerprints would be common as well, but you would rarely get full ones. Most common would be partial prints (I believe this was a thing a long time ago), which would force you to comb through the database in search of a match. But you wouldn't be able to just paste the partial string into the box to find results like you can now, the search would only work with full prints. Instead you will have to mix and match all the clues you've gathered, for example a yellow fiber would narrow your search down to cargo, engineering and atmos.

Sometimes you would still get multiple hits, you could then try and use new clue to figure things out = hair. If found at the crime scene, you can use it to warn your officers to look out for that murderous aryan blond greyshirt.

If bad guys have some water or a damp rag or other cleaning implement, they can attempt to clean the crime scene - shortening partial prints, removing fiber colours, or simply getting rid of all the clues altogether.

Anyway, this system would still allow you to pinpoint a baddie precisely (but with more effort) while also improving your in-the-field sleuthing (the aforementioned aryan greyshirt).

Either way I'm just thinking out loud. This would probably be hard to code.

[Cobby]

"Fibers should tell you only colour and/or textile if colour is obfuscated by wear, or paint or blood or whatever. i.e white fiber could mean medical jumpsuit, but also a roboticists lab coat. Fiber could be two coloured, so white-blue fiber would point you more specifically towards medical jumpsuit (but not always, since there's a white suit with blue elements in the vending machines). Textile would allow to tell you engineer's jumpsuit from radiation suit."

This shouldn't be too hard but more of a pain as you could give a var to clothes that sets the colour of the fibers [the pain part being you have to set it to each outfit that doesn't use the inherited fiber colour] so when you scan it they're "[clothes.fiber_colour] fibers" as opposed to "fibers from a [clothes]".