Remove Common Radio [145.9]

[Agux909]

Going to preface this by saying that I'm aware of how subjective I'm being here, and that I wouldn't be realistical expecting many to agree with me. With that being said, I just ask you to please keep an open mind, and then for a little of your time and attention:
Ever since I started playing SS13, I held this feeling in, and with passing years I've learnt to just cope and live with it, but at long last I've decided to openly say it: common radio has never failed to persistently annoy the crap out of me, give me all the NRP vibes, and take me out of immersion.

As such, I'm a firm believer it has to go.

------

TL;DR section is, of course, at the end of the post, for if you don't enjoy essay posts with +1000 words. No fancy formatting because I just want to get this idea across, and have it stand on its own merits:

Interaction is a big if not the biggest part of this game, and so is communication. It's understandable that with the passing of years (decades), such a simple feature has remained as the default way of communication, not only for /tg/, but for most, if not all, other playerbases. It's been settled in the game without anyone ever questioning it for ages, passively being taken for granted. And of course I can't deny that, in such a social game as this one, most players (at least the ones who enjoy human interaction) feel the innate need to be able to read what everyone has to say, at all times, or to be able to quickly relay to everyone what they want to say. Be it trivial things, or something serious; A silly joke, or a murder report; people just want to hear(read) the station is ALIVE.
And while these are good points, my opinion is that common radio is, simply put, incredibly cheap; a NRP mechanic that everyone has grown to accept as the norm by force of habit and convenience's sake. It turns a social part of the game into a literal public chatroom, that everyone can quickly access from the moment they arrive at the station. It's goofy, unrealistic and ridiculous, unfitting to the setting. Yet paradoxically, its goofiness, unrealisticness and ridiculousness is also what makes it fitting to the setting, but not without its caveats: It takes away a big part of the feeling of paranoia and helplessness the setting can always benefit more from; it renders the alternative ways of communication moot and unattractive, with the exception of specific scenarios; and it undermines the importance of communication as a whole, by making it a cheap, lazily accessible thing.

It's no coincidence I'm coming up with this thread a little after scryers were added. Side note, Scryers are great and I love them, they have already grown on me and I love seeing people walking around, minding their own bussiness and talking to their holographic screens, they are very fitting and immersive to see and interact with.

And it also has made this camel's back all the sorer. Because aside from scryers, we have PDA messages, literal chatrooms, holographic calls, announcements, newscasters. We also have the ol' walking up to someone to talk to them. Relaying messages from person to person. Heck when was the last time ANYONE sent an actual letter to someone? Yeah we can do that too. I'm probably missing a couple other ways to tell that catgirl you're waiting for them in dorms 4, but you get the idea. Bloat. Bloat is all common radio is nowadays. It makes all of the alternative mechanics feel exactly like that, alternative mechanics, afterthought gimmicks. Did you know you can switch the radio frequency manually? That never stopped being a thing, but many surely don't know or remember you can because 99% of the time, it JUST DOESN'T MATTER.

But enough rambling. So what IS IT that I'm proposing?
I propose the following to anyone willing and daring to experiment, you know, have a little fun:

145.9 is no longer to be the default comms channel for headsets, radios, intercomms, etc. Instead, depending on your department, they will default to that department. 145.9 is also no longer "common", it's another frequency from the bunch that you can tune into, and is labeled just "145.9". Wall intercomms can default to the department they're in. Public ones and normal radios can just start "turned off" with the dial on a null position, which needs to be dialed somewhere to even work. The details of course can be brainstormed and fine-tuned (no pun intended) later on.

The most important thing here is that technically, this wouldn't be removing any feature. People would still be able to adjust their headset/radio/intercomm to any frequency, then encourage others to use that frequency, and retain the same function as old common. Difference being, this would now require and integrate more player choice and interaction to the equation. It ideally would make communication more involved, adding substantially and equivalently more value to the alternatives, making it truly feel like an important aspect of the game, instead of a default freebie, which does the exact opposite: undermine and trivialize the importance of communication as one of the main pilars of SS13.

The station will be SCARY(-er). No longer will EVERYONE immediately know the second you're getting your skull bashed in by the clown in maints. Just close your eyes and imagine those moments in which shit was going down, but because comms were taken out, you were clueless as to what was happening two walls away from you, and you didn't have access to an immediate source of information to know! Suddenly you see no people around and it dawns on you. The uncertainty, the anxiety, the paranoia!! Isn't it irresistible?

As I said, I would love to see this idea as a little of an experiment. You know, it doesn't have to be anything final, just adding some waves to the pool to see what happens, a bit of spice to the mix.

And as a plus, I think people who always enable antags will especially like this idea, as it could be (potentially) one balancing factor for all the direct and indirect nerfs antags (traitor specifically) have been receiving over the years.

------

TL;DR

Common radio is cheap and feels like a NRP feature, especially nowadays with so many alternative ways of communicating. Let us players actually choose how to communicate with each other, instead of strongarming everyone into the lazy, comfy freebie that is common radio. No longer will comms be an entitled public chatroom everyone joins roundstart, people will now feel more isolated, and will have to put some effort when seeking company or comfort from their crewmates. There will be no longer any guarantee EVERY lucid player is listening in,(only your own dept.) and this will hopefully encourage using other methods of communication, while making them equally attractive.

[BlueMemesauce]

Do a gimmick where you remove common radio as captain and see where it turns out

[BlueMemesauce]

I also would be willing to make this a station trait, although changing all the intercoms would probably be too much for a trait

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

I get why you feel this way, but everyone will just come to a mutual agreement to always tune into whatever frequency is nu-common every shift. It will be more bloat to shift-start actions, like your suit sensors. I don't think everyone will just not have common.

I would love to see what would happen if we disabled common and common-alternatives like frequency tuning for a week though.

[WineAllWine]

This is a horrible essay post and I didnt read it. I do think no-common-radio should be a station trait though

[Justice12354]

I would fucking love to play a round with no common radio. That does sound really immersive

[Archie700]

thanks for stealth buffing malf AI

This would be fun as a trait or an admin event, NOT as a normal thing

[kinnebian]

This is a horrible essay post and I didnt read it. I do think no-common-radio should be a station trait though

jokes on you, this was a good read

[Archie700]

Per headcoder directive:

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/HyOAnhDPI

Common Radio
Common radio shall not be removed from the game. At this point in time, it is critically important to getting people to interact with each other, and to assist the global narrative of the round.

[warbluke]

I like this conceptually, but in the hellworld that is lowpop I can see some serious issues arising. Lowpop is already empty and dead feeling on most maps, and removing common would make it so much fucking worse since you would end up with stations where there's a viro, xenobio, and miner and they don't interact with another player for three hours. They could use all the other cool ways of communication, but the problem is that they're all doing stuff and don't have time to jump through even a single hoop to communicate. I haven't actually seen these scryer things in game yet but enabling them stationwide on lowpop might help.

Also, there should be more ways to use chatrooms and modular computers because I want to be able to shitpost anonymously on a server named after /tg/. Make them accessible through PDAs or even just make a roundstart room called "nanochan" or something.

[BlueMemesauce]

Per headcoder directive:

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/HyOAnhDPI

Common Radio
Common radio shall not be removed from the game. At this point in time, it is critically important to getting people to interact with each other, and to assist the global narrative of the round.

would they still let me put in the station trait i already coded it

[Not-Dorsidarf]

If its added as a station trait it had better be one locked to an actual high population, where global radio isnt necessecary for any kind of casual group interactions.

[conrad]

I kinda wanna do that as an event to see how it would work

[ekaterina]

It takes away a big part of the feeling of paranoia and helplessness the setting can always benefit more from

Helplessness is the single worst part of the game. Dying because the other player was more skilled than you is to be expected. Dying because the other player had better gear too.
Dying because you got stunned in a single hit and then couldn't fight back at all, i.e. you were helpless, is the worst this game has to offer, it does nothing but make players seethe in dead chat.

If you call for help in your department radio, nobody will care. The end result of this would be players not being able to call out for help at all, unless they happen to already have a security radio key or are both human and lucky enough for the AI to notice them and relay their cry for help to security.

Did you know you can switch the radio frequency manually? That never stopped being a thing, but many surely don't know or remember you can because 99% of the time, it JUST DOESN'T MATTER.

It doesn't matter because it can't go down far enough to actually reach any frequencies other than common and AI private. Changing frequencies is useless 99% of the time. If you want to make this feature matter, make it able to actually listen in to department radios if you know the code. Maybe even make it so you only understand some words unless you have an encryption key.

No longer will EVERYONE immediately know the second you're getting your skull bashed in by the clown in maints.

... which is not a good thing. Even with everyone knowing, unless you happen to have a metafriend, 33% of the time nobody gives a shit, 33% of the time only one guy will come looking for you (and probably get killed by your own killer), and the remaining 33% of the time you'll actually get a response to the threat, like an actual raid by the security department. You want to make the frustrating experience of being killed and nobody even knowing even more common, which is poor game design.

As others have said, it could be cool as a station trait to spice things up, though.

[Constellado]

Once upon a time an admin decided to turn off comms as an admin event and OH MY GOD people were so angry it absolutely was a SALT MINE in Manuel discord. I wasn't even in the round and the salt was visible from a mile away.

Removing common would be a mess. I personally don't see common as NRP that much. I see general conversations, people asking for things from other departments. Or whatnot. Having to message every miner via PDA instead of asking over common for a Lazarus would be a pain and way more tedious when I have other things to do. I may even get more than one Lazarus because I cannot communicate to all of them at once! Having a radio just makes sense in a space station.

Mind you, if it was just common radio and was a station trait, it would be more engineering content as they can go set it all up themselves. Engineering content good.

[BrolyButterfingers]

Gonna make atmospherics the absolute loneliest place on planet earth.

[saprasam]

no

[TheLoLSwat]

Bad(!!) change so it would be a good trait, also a lot of your issues are not caused by common radio existing. Nobody is busting out the Pen and paper to write about how much they dislike the HOS they are a mime or it’s a gimmick and that’s not a bad thing.

[Kendrickorium]

most station traits are garbage, this one would be too

also, i want you to pretend you are playing on a round where the AI cut comms

there ya go, theres how your pr would go, thats the immersive fun you would have

[HeyHey]

didn't read, just turn off your radio bozo.

[Justice12354]

Just hosted this as an event on Terry. Well, I didn't do it in a way that made it impossible to access common radio, which was what I was aiming for, but I don't think it went that bad.

I simply deleted the Common Server, which wouldn't be what this change/trait would do (I suppose), given that people can still use intercoms and station-bounced radios since the frequency was still saved on everything and that would make it far too easy to replace. Not so related, the Chief Engineer managed to set up the common server back even without building a new Server, which was cool, I guess.

Some players seemed to be incredibly upset for some reason, but, honestly, that was a bit predictable. I really didn't get the chance to ask for feedback at round end but, let's be honest, if I put up a poll about it, it'd be insane amounts of copium without proper constructive feedback. If anyone was on that round and isn't gonna cry for the sake of crying, please give your feedback!

[Agux909]

I appreciate the constructive inputs to the idea in such a short amount of time. I want to clarify form the get go that I DO NOT CODE, and never plan to do so, so you don't need to worry as this is not an "I want to see if people are on board with me futilely attempting to merge this" and more of a "trying to find someone who would be interested in experimenting with it, to ANY sort of degree, while having a constructive discussion about it". Also a reminder that what drove me to write this idea is something that's bothering ME in particular, and not something I would say it's "factual" or actually damaging the gameplay. I'm of course interested on seeing the consensus and how it resonates with different points of view, while also remaining hopeful that it could still be integrated maybe more than once, as I said, as non-permanent, monitored experiments.

As many have suggested, station traits and admin run events would both be really good testing grounds for it.

I get why you feel this way, but everyone will just come to a mutual agreement to always tune into whatever frequency is nu-common every shift. It will be more bloat to shift-start actions, like your suit sensors. I don't think everyone will just not have common.

I would love to see what would happen if we disabled common and common-alternatives like frequency tuning for a week though.

I like choice making. Suit sensors is very binary, but I disagree with it being just roundstart bloat, because you are given the ability to choose between the chances of getting tracked by virtually anyone, against the chances of never returning to the round as that character after dying in the stupidest way. Both can contribute to your round in different ways.

Also I think it's unlikely EVERYONE will agree on a specific frequency (maybe Manuel?), because of the amount of players that come and go, time zones and other factors, but If people start deciding to switch to certain frequencies to communicate with each other, all the power to them.

I like this conceptually, but in the hellworld that is lowpop I can see some serious issues arising. Lowpop is already empty and dead feeling on most maps, and removing common would make it so much fucking worse since you would end up with stations where there's a viro, xenobio, and miner and they don't interact with another player for three hours. They could use all the other cool ways of communication, but the problem is that they're all doing stuff and don't have time to jump through even a single hoop to communicate. I haven't actually seen these scryer things in game yet but enabling them stationwide on lowpop might help.

Also, there should be more ways to use chatrooms and modular computers because I want to be able to shitpost anonymously on a server named after /tg/. Make them accessible through PDAs or even just make a roundstart room called "nanochan" or something.

I feel you here. And this is a valid concern, and one of the many reasons my idea is nowhere near to perfect.
Scryers can be printed at robotics and have to be researched, so yeah, they're too new and still at a relative premium at this point in time to count them as a RELIABLE way of communication. But they're cool as hell and intuitive to use.
You can already do the chatroom thing, and also name different "servers", while having your own nickname separate from your static's name.

Per headcoder directive:

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/HyOAnhDPI

Common Radio
Common radio shall not be removed from the game. At this point in time, it is critically important to getting people to interact with each other, and to assist the global narrative of the round.

would they still let me put in the station trait i already coded it

Cheers! And if you get any response on this I would also like to know how it goes.

If its added as a station trait it had better be one locked to an actual high population, where global radio isnt necessecary for any kind of casual group interactions.

Agreed.

I kinda wanna do that as an event to see how it would work

If you're serious about it, please let me know in this thread if and when you'd be doing it, I would love to be there and experience first hand something resembling OP

most station traits are garbage, this one would be too

also, i want you to pretend you are playing on a round where the AI cut comms

there ya go, theres how your pr would go, thats the immersive fun you would have

Departmental comms would still work in this hypothetical, and so would agreed-upon frequencies in which people could CHOOSE to join in to communicate with others on the same freq. My idea just makes it literally so there's no shared common for ALL the crew roundstart, so the difference between OP and straight up shutting down comms is that one would still allow communicating via these means while the other wouldn't.

didn't read, just turn off your radio bozo.

Turning off your own comms is something I have done (when I've had rp reasons for) and others probably do too sometimes, but this changes nothing, as everyone is expecting everyone on the station to be aware about things said in common to such a degree that they still neglect most of the other ways of communication available to the crew, which (tellin ya cause you didn't read) is one of the main problems I take issue with. So this pretty much solves nothing.

Just hosted this as an event on Terry. Well, I didn't do it in a way that made it impossible to access common radio, which was what I was aiming for, but I don't think it went that bad.

I simply deleted the Common Server, which wouldn't be what this change/trait would do (I suppose), given that people can still use intercoms and station-bounced radios since the frequency was still saved on everything and that would make it far too easy to replace. Not so related, the Chief Engineer managed to set up the common server back even without building a new Server, which was cool, I guess.

Some players seemed to be incredibly upset for some reason, but, honestly, that was a bit predictable. I really didn't get the chance to ask for feedback at round end but, let's be honest, if I put up a poll about it, it'd be insane amounts of copium without proper constructive feedback. If anyone was on that round and isn't gonna cry for the sake of crying, please give your feedback!

Damn I would've liked to see that. I'm also interested on reading some feedback.

[RedBaronFlyer]

Like a bunch of other people have said. This would absolutely fuck over low/mid pop stations (which already tend to get antag rolled as is), and would suck, depending on your job. (cargo, atmos, science, mining, etc.) I've always loved the common radio for being the equivalent of an IRC chatroom. Like, yeah, theoretically, people would actually use the console chatrooms if there wasn't a common radio channel, but eh.

I would hate this as a station trait. It would be right up there with "all the lightbulbs are broken" and "all the vending machines are almost out of stock", where it doesn't actually do anything interesting, it just adds tedium (janitor/borgs being screamed at for 25 minutes to replace all the bulbs, cargo having to mass ship in a bunch of vending restocks, etc.) It wouldn't be so much of an issue if SS13 players weren't little rabic gremlins that go berzerk over the slightest issues. Like, yeah I don't have an issue with ordering a vendor restock, but a week ago we literally had people trying to barge into cargo to order a clothes vender restock order (this was on Manuel, no they didn't use words until the cargo crew were shoving them out of cargo)

Jobs (or the station) having to "set up" at the start of each shift is fine (See cargo, medical, botany, the kitchen, science, robotics, engineering, atmos, etc). A job literally not working because important stuff is flat-out missing/not working is annoying as shit. I die inside every time when someone runs up to cargo begging for a GPS when we can't print them out at shift start (this happens almost every shift)

All it would do is have engineering being bitched at for the first ten minutes of the round to set up a common channel for tcomms. (I have no idea how comms works, to be honest)

[BlueMemesauce]

Yea it would probably result in the AI fixing it immediately if they knew how or at least an engineer having to fix it.
What makes it interesting is that most people dont know how to fix tcomms so theres a chance it wouldnt get fixed
But it would probably suck even more to have people scream at them when they dont know how to fix it
I dont know how you can say it doesnt do anything interesting at all though, it would lead to alot of people trying to find alternate methods of communication. The station wouldn't just be one giant chatroom for the time it takes for the common channel to be added back to tcomms. At least if the ai doesnt fix it instantly which is probably the main flaw.

[Justice12354]

Like a bunch of other people have said. This would absolutely fuck over low/mid pop stations (which already tend to get antag rolled as is), and would suck, depending on your job. (cargo, atmos, science, mining, etc.) I've always loved the common radio for being the equivalent of an IRC chatroom. Like, yeah, theoretically, people would actually use the console chatrooms if there wasn't a common radio channel, but eh.

I would hate this as a station trait. It would be right up there with "all the lightbulbs are broken" and "all the vending machines are almost out of stock", where it doesn't actually do anything interesting, it just adds tedium (janitor/borgs being screamed at for 25 minutes to replace all the bulbs, cargo having to mass ship in a bunch of vending restocks, etc.) It wouldn't be so much of an issue if SS13 players weren't little rabic gremlins that go berzerk over the slightest issues. Like, yeah I don't have an issue with ordering a vendor restock, but a week ago we literally had people trying to barge into cargo to order a clothes vender restock order (this was on Manuel, no they didn't use words until the cargo crew were shoving them out of cargo)

Jobs (or the station) having to "set up" at the start of each shift is fine (See cargo, medical, botany, the kitchen, science, robotics, engineering, atmos, etc). A job literally not working because important stuff is flat-out missing/not working is annoying as shit. I die inside every time when someone runs up to cargo begging for a GPS when we can't print them out at shift start (this happens almost every shift)

All it would do is have engineering being bitched at for the first ten minutes of the round to set up a common channel for tcomms. (I have no idea how comms works, to be honest)

Yea it would probably result in the AI fixing it immediately if they knew how or at least an engineer having to fix it.
What makes it interesting is that most people dont know how to fix tcomms so theres a chance it wouldnt get fixed
But it would probably suck even more to have people scream at them when they dont know how to fix it
I dont know how you can say it doesnt do anything interesting at all though, it would lead to alot of people trying to find alternate methods of communication. The station wouldn't just be one giant chatroom for the time it takes for the common channel to be added back to tcomms. At least if the ai doesnt fix it instantly which is probably the main flaw.

My reply applies to both of your posts:
To be fair, you'll get yelled at if you don't do your job perfectly anyway. Or sometimes you do and you're yelled at regardless. There will always be people with a ridiculously low temper and they should not matter for balance purposes.
I feel like the difference between no lightbulbs/stock and no comms is that the former is simply straight-up annoying, and the latter leads to a different way of playing the game, which should hopefully lead to interesting stories.
If the channel is re-added quickly, then it's more content for Engineering. If it's not, it leads to an interesting change in the game's route. I think it's a win-win, personally.

Edit: Someone suggested a bit back that this should not be enabled on lowpop and I totally agree

[Archie700]

To cut a long story short, we have done "no Comms" rounds before and the general sentiment is that while it does increase paranoia, not every round need this.

Common Comms is essential to the balance of antagonists because it's bar none the best way to communicate critical information like "CULT" or "AI MALF" to a lot of people in a short amount of time. We want people to feel relatively safe for a while before increasing the paranoia and cutting Comms is one of the best ways to do it. Forcibly increasing paranoia by removing Common totally is just a bad idea in general and lessens work for the antagonists to earn their fun.

I believe it's better off as a rare station trait on mid-high pop rounds to keep people on their toes. I'll extend this to all departments having their own version of the trait, and a VERY RARE trait where all Comms are removed for the True Paranoia Experience

[dendydoom]

i think it would be interesting when it's used to run an event that needs less communication for it to work. something that would benefit from the increased paranoia and isolation.

otherwise, being able to communicate with the crew is how you organize any sort of player-run shenanigans. it's a painstaking, sometimes even impossible process without it. you would be cutting off a crucial lifeline to the player's ability to impact a round meaningfully.

[Kendrickorium]

Kendrickorium wrote: ↑Mon Aug 21, 2023 7:07 pm
most station traits are garbage, this one would be too

also, i want you to pretend you are playing on a round where the AI cut comms

there ya go, theres how your pr would go, thats the immersive fun you would have
Departmental comms would still work in this hypothetical, and so would agreed-upon frequencies in which people could CHOOSE to join in to communicate with others on the same freq. My idea just makes it literally so there's no shared common for ALL the crew roundstart, so the difference between OP and straight up shutting down comms is that one would still allow communicating via these means while the other wouldn't.

ohhhh interesting

i kind of feel like after a week everyone would have a meta frequency they just set it to though

[The Wrench]

Gwowing to pweface this by saying dat I’m awawe of how subjectiwe I’m being hewe, and dat I wouldn’t be weawisticawwy expecting many to agwee with me. With dat being said, I just ask you to pwease keep an open mind, and den fow a wittle of youw time and attention: Evew since I stawted pwaying SS13, I hewd this feewing in, and with passing yeaws I’ve leawnt to just cope and wive with it, but at wong wast I’ve decided to openwy say it: common wadio has nevew faiwed to pewsistently annoy the cwap out of me, give me aww the NWP vibes, and take me out of imme-w-sion.

As such, I’m a fiwm bewie-w-ew it has to go.

TW;DW section is, of couwse, at the end of the post, fow if you don’t enjoy essay posts with +1000 wowds. No fancy fowmatting because I just want to get this idea acwoss, and have it stand on its own mewits:

Intewaction is a big if not the biggest pawt of this game, and so is communication. It’s undewstandabwe that with the passing of yeaws (decades), such a simpwe featuwe has wemained as the defauwt way of communication, not onwy fow /tg/, but fow most, if not aww, othew pwayewbases. It’s been settwed in the game without anyone evew questioning it fow ages, passivewy being taken fow gwanted. And of couwse I can’t deny that, in such a sociaw game as this one, most pwayews (at weast the ones who enjoy human intewaction) feew the innate need to be abwe to wead what evewyone has to say, at aww times, ow to be abwe to quickly weway to evewyone what they want to say. Be it twiviaw things, ow something sewious; A siwwy joke, ow a muwde-w wepowt; peopwe just want to heaw(wead) the station is AWIVE.
And whiwe these awe good points, my opinion is that common wadio is, simpwy put, incwedibwy cheap; a NWP mechanic that evewyone has gwown to accept as the nowm by fowce of habit and convewience’s sake. It tuwns a sociaw pawt of the game into a witewaw pubwic chatwoom, that evewyone can quickly access fwom the moment they aw-wive at the station. It’s goofy, unweawistic and widicuwous, unfitting to the setting. Yet pawadoxically, its goofiness, unweawisticness and widicuwousness is awso what makes it fitting to the setting, but not without its caveats: It takes away a big pawt of the feewing of pawanoia and hewpwessness the setting can aw-w-ays benefit mowe fwom; it wendews the aw-w-tewnative ways of communication moot and unattwactive, with the exception of specific scenaw-ios; and it undewmines the impowtance of communication as a whowe, by making it a cheap, wazily accessibwe thing.

It’s no coincidence I’m coming up with this thwead a wittwe aftew scwye-ws wewe added. Side note, Scwye-ws awe gweat and I wove them, they have awweady gwown on me and I wove seeing peopwe waw-w-king awound, minding theiw own bussiness and taw-w-king to theiw h-owogwaphic scweens, they awe vewy fitting and imme-w-sive to see and intewact with.

And it awso has made this camew’s back aww the sow-w-ew. Because aside fwom scwye-ws, we have PDA messages, witewaw chatwooms, h-owogwaphic caw-w-s, ann-ow-ncements, newscaste-w-s. We awso have the ow-w- waw-w-king up to someone to tawk to them. Weway-ing messages fwom pew-son to pew-son. Heck when was the wast time ANYONE sent an actuaw wet-tew to someone? Yeah we can do that too. I’m pwobabwy missing a coupwe othew ways to tew-w-w that catgiww you’we waiting fow them in dowms 4, but you get the idea. Bwoat. Bwoat is aww common wadio is nowaw-w-days. It makes aww of the aw-w-tewnative mechanics feew exactwy wike that, aw-w-tewnative mechanics, aftewthought gimmicks. Did you know you can switch the wadio fwequency manuawwy? That nevew stopped being a thing, but many suwewy don’t know ow-w-wemembew you can because 99% of the time, it JUST DOESN’T MATTEW.

But enough wambwing. So what IS IT that I’m pwoposing?
I pwopose the fowwowing to anyone wiwwing and dawing to expewiment, you know, have a wittle fun:

145.9 is no wongew to be the defauwt comms chann-w-wew fow headsets, wadios, intewcomms, etc. Instead, depending on youw depawtment, they wiww defauwt to that depawtment. 145.9 is awso no wongew “common”, it’s anothew fwequency fwom the bunch that you can tune into, and is wabewed just “145.9”. Waww intewcomms can defauwt to the depawtment they’we in. Public ones and now-maw wadios can just stawt “tuwned off” with the diaw on a nuww position, which needs to be diawed somewhewe to even wow-k. The detaiws of couwse can be bwa-w-nstormed and fine-tuned (no pun intended) wate-w on.

The most impowtant thing hewe is that technicawwy, this wouwdn’t be wemoving any featuwe. Peopwe wouwd stiww be abwe to adjust theiw headset/wadio/intewcomm to any fwequency, then encouwage othews to use that fwequency, and wetain the same function as owd common. Diffewence being, this wouwd now wequiwe and integwate mowe pwayew choice and intewaction to the equation. It ideawwy would make communication mowe involved, adding substantiawwy and equiwawentwy mowe value to the aw-w-tewnativez, making it twuwy feew like an impowtant aspect of the game, instead of a defauwt fweebie, which does the exact opposite: undewmine and twiviawize the impowtance of communication as one of the main piwaws of SS13.

The station wiww be SCAWY(-ew). No wongew wiww EVEWYONE immediatewy knyow the second you’we getting youw skull bashed in by the cwown in maints. Just cwose youw eyes and imagine dose moments in which shit was going down, but because comms wewe taken out, you wewe cwuewess as to what was happening two walls away fwom you, and you didn’t have access to an immediate souwce of infowmation to knyow! Suddenly you see no peopwe awound and it dawns on you. The uncewtainty, the anxiety, the pawanoia!! Isn’t it iw-wesistibwe?

As I said, I would wove to see this idea as a wittwe of an expewiment. You knyow, it doesn’t have to be anything finaw, just adding some waves to the poow to see what happens, a bit of spice to the mix.

And as a pwus, I think peopwe who always enyabwe antags wiww especiawwy wike this idea, as it couwd be (potentiawwy) one bawancing factow fow aww the diw-wect and indiw-wect nyewfs antags (twaitow specificawwy) have been weceiving ovew the yeaws.

TW;DW

Common wadio is cheap and feews wike a NWP featuwe, especiawwy nowaw-w-days with so many aw-w-tewnative ways of communyicating. Wet us pwayews actuawwy choose how to communyicate with each othew, instead of stwongaw-w-ming evewyone into the wazy, comfy fweebie that is common wadio. No wongew wiww comms be an entitwed pubwic chatwoom evewyone joins woundstawt, peopwe wiww nyow feew mowe isowated, and wiww have to put some effowt when seeking company ow comfowt fwom theiw c-ew-mates. Thewe wiww be no wongew any guawantee EVEWY wucid pwayew is wistening in, (onyy youw own dept.) and this wiww hopefuwwy encouwage using othew methods of communyication, whiwe making them equawwy attwactive.




Forgive me lord for I hathe sinned

[datorangebottle]

God is dead. God wemains dead. And we have kiwwed him.

[Featherfield]

This would make playing security or trying to rely on them for help absolute hell and useless so you would be better off always gearing up for trouble.
Also assistants would be even more cut off from the workers

[SkyMonster]

I wouldn't mind it as a trait. I'd even play a few shifts as a test merge to see how it goes. I played that shift on Manuel with no comms which was shit. Pretty sure that was a code bug and not an "event". However, if it's only common then you could expect department heads to do their job and relay requests between departments. Alternatively, use the requests/alert consoles in every department. It's definitely something that would be best done on highpop.

Forgive me lord for I hathe sinned

I've reported your post to the International Criminal Court at The Hague as a crime against humanity.

[Sightld2]

I played that shift on Manuel with no comms which was shit. Pretty sure that was a code bug and not an "event".

Nah it was. That's what the discord comments in my forum signature are about.

[WineAllWine]

I kinda wanna do that as an event to see how it would work

I did it as an "event" once (read: I right-click deleted the common server and made a CC announcement). it was...fine. It wasn't really an event. It was at the level of station-trait level of interesting. I guess it's telling that a competent engi could've fixed the common channel and no-one bothered

[SkyMonster]

I played that shift on Manuel with no comms which was shit. Pretty sure that was a code bug and not an "event".

Nah it was. That's what the discord comments in my forum signature are about.

Ah gotcha. I admit I was one of those people who wanted to just suicide. Might not have been so bad if it was just common.

[Jacquerel]

Per headcoder directive:

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/HyOAnhDPI

Common Radio
Common radio shall not be removed from the game. At this point in time, it is critically important to getting people to interact with each other, and to assist the global narrative of the round.

would they still let me put in the station trait i already coded it

if you’ve already coded it then pr it and find out, having already spent the time you have nothing left to lose

[BlueMemesauce]

Per headcoder directive:

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/HyOAnhDPI

Common Radio
Common radio shall not be removed from the game. At this point in time, it is critically important to getting people to interact with each other, and to assist the global narrative of the round.

would they still let me put in the station trait i already coded it

if you’ve already coded it then pr it and find out, having already spent the time you have nothing left to lose

idk if this counts as maintainer approval but its a pr now everyone move your comments there https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/77863

[Agux909]

Per headcoder directive:

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/HyOAnhDPI

Common Radio
Common radio shall not be removed from the game. At this point in time, it is critically important to getting people to interact with each other, and to assist the global narrative of the round.

would they still let me put in the station trait i already coded it

if you’ve already coded it then pr it and find out, having already spent the time you have nothing left to lose

idk if this counts as maintainer approval but its a pr now everyone move your comments there https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/77863

It was a fair and honest good try, some things are just not meant to be.

I guess what's left are admin events and head of staff IC gimmicks, as some suggested in this thread.

Gonna leave this open for anyone else wanting to leave their 2 cents, and for if any admin/s want to let anyone interested (me) know if and when they're doing these events.

[Ziiro]

which machine do I disable in the tcoms infastructure to cause this, specifically, because I wish to do this during a round

[Agux909]

which machine do I disable in the tcoms infastructure to cause this, specifically, because I wish to do this during a round

[zxaber]

I'd like to see common disabled on high-pop. I think low-pop (< 25 players) would have players lacking in department coworkers to interact with, and station lacking in a proper chain of communication. For highpop, these aren't normally an issue, and you'd probably have assistants relaying information by word-of-mouth.

I still believe that most players don't know heads of staff can force-connect holopads to any other holopad on the station except in the Captain's quarters and on the AI sat. Lack of common would possibly make this a more used feature.

[BlueMemesauce]

its joever

[Archie700]

I'd like to see common disabled on high-pop. I think low-pop (< 25 players) would have players lacking in department coworkers to interact with, and station lacking in a proper chain of communication. For highpop, these aren't normally an issue, and you'd probably have assistants relaying information by word-of-mouth.

I still believe that most players don't know heads of staff can force-connect holopads to any other holopad on the station except in the Captain's quarters and on the AI sat. Lack of common would possibly make this a more used feature.

Removing features to encourage using other features has never worked well in any capacity unless the other feature is basically the same.

[BlueMemesauce]

removing excessively op features that are better than every other option generally works well to encourage other features
we removed cloning and that worked well. now people actually do surgery instead of just killing people and shoving them in the cloning machine

[Archie700]

removing excessively op features that are better than every other option generally works well to encourage other features
we removed cloning and that worked well. now people actually do surgery instead of just killing people and shoving them in the cloning machine

That's because we buffed defibbing in exchange

[rellyreri]

Remove Common Radio [198.4]

[Drag]

Good on paper, bad in practice. Too much of the game relies on communication. There's a reason why common is a target for nukies/malf ais.

[ekaterina]

There's a reason why common is a target for nukies/malf ais.

I've never seen someone specifically go after common instead of going after comms in general.

[RedBaronFlyer]

There's a reason why common is a target for nukies/malf ais.

I've never seen someone specifically go after common instead of going after comms in general.

While your there, you might as well fuck up all the comms channels, right? Yeah, people usually don't go for all the comms, but they sure as hell will go for general comms. And if they have the ability to take out general comms, then the method they're using will probably fuck up non-general comms as well.

[conrad]

There's a reason why common is a target for nukies/malf ais.

I've never seen someone specifically go after common instead of going after comms in general.

That sounds like a funny dumb law to add as an antag.

"Listening and speaking on the common radio is human harm. Ensure that common radio is disabled on telecomms."