/tg/Station 13

Half the fun of the game is in having to act on incomplete information and common radio chat makes things too easy. Departmental radio would still exist

Pros:
Increased departmental unity
Heads would go from being merely "Engineer+1" to actually having a role in facilitating communication between departments via command radio
Disinformation campaigns more successful
Newscasters will be actually useful to distribute infk through the station

Cons:
Can't yell "IT'S REVS" to let the whole server know

I like the idea of security sending a team into a department because nobody's heard from them in a while

How am i going to call the engineers incompetent shit for brain retards and tell sec to arrest them when they fuck up the crystal? Walk all the way to engineering and breaj into their autism fort and then walk all the way to security and get arrested for loitering by the front door? Stupid!

You get to angrily vent about them in your department, turning your whole gang against the engineers without the engies having a way to defend themselves against your accusations until they walk to the kitchen to get food and everyone within earshot calls them a fuck up at once since it's the first opportunity they've gotten

The idea is intriguing. Another benefit would be that the chatbox would be much easier to read, and people would be less likely to miss chat messages.

However, a major con is that if you're alone, you can't really call for help. When the whole station hears "HELP LIBRARY" some validhunter is going to be there in seconds. Restricting calls for help to departmental radio reduces the pool of people able to help you while also slowing down the relay of distress messages to security.

Exactly, it's great, now you'll be like "hey man want to grab some food with me?" so you have a buddy for safety instead of being a lone and silent avenger protected by a radio channel

This is also why officers assigned to specific departments have that departments radio channel

this gets suggested every few years. remove your headset in game for a week then come back and see if your opinion changes

Lazengann wrote: Pros:
Heads would go from being merely "Engineer+1" to actually having a role in facilitating communication between departments via command radio

You seem to have mis-filed this under "Pros". So now not only do I have to deal with everyone who enters medical with 20 brute damage (because they tend to poke the CMO rather than MDs), as well as potentially being the acting captain, I now get to copypaste conversations between medical and command and back just so that my team has any idea whats going on.

What a fun new dynamic. Also bit of a screw over for the departments without heads. Or dead. "AI, law two, copy all (informative) messages between departments and command, and command and departments". Nice, delegated.

Personally methinks you wade into the thick of things and get called out over radio too often and you blame this on the radio rather than your approach. Pretty blind guess mind.

CMO is a masochist job anyway

It's been discussed before we just need someone who's handsome and sexy enough to do it

cocothegogo wrote:this gets suggested every few years. remove your headset in game for a week then come back and see if your opinion changes

I tried it, my opinion hasn't changed

more like someone handsome and sexy enough to convince us

this has been discussed ad nauseum. I'm against it because i think people have trouble talking to each other enough in this game that i don't like anything that adds too much a barrier to it

Do we still have station traits?

This would be an interesting station trait

This could make the game more like a space station and less like an xbox live lobby

Jaredfogle wrote:more like someone handsome and sexy enough to convince us

I know a few maintainers that were interested in it when it was discussed, obviously any big change is going to be controversial so the only way to settle it is to PR it and watch all the maintainers fight over it!

Not much can be said that hasn't already although I will mention the lack of communication between players is compounded by the fact there's basically a global chat that tells everyone everything that's going on in the station and so there's rarely any need to exchange information on a personal basis, so I think you're looking at the issue from the wrong angle

Stickymayhem wrote:Do we still have station traits?

This would be an interesting station trait

This could make the game more like a space station and less like an xbox live lobby

A similar idea:

On real radios, only one person can be talking at once. A weird and delightfully annoying station trait could make it so whenever somebody talks on a radio channel, nobody else can talk on it for several seconds, depending on the length of the preceding message. Make every message count- since you never know if your call for help will be drowned out by some goofus yelling at Slippy the Clown over common.

Instant paragraphs-of-WGW time

Give the radio a cooldown

Stickymayhem wrote:Do we still have station traits?

This would be an interesting station trait

This could make the game more like a space station and less like an xbox live lobby

I also forgot to say but this, with a low chance, could be cool occasionally.

How about an "Emergency" channel that can be accessed by Station Bounced Radio, the intercoms and the people that should be making station-wide announcements?

Basically, the heads, sec officers and paramedics would have it on their headset. Any message spoken here will be heard by anyone with it on their headset (duh), with a station-bounced radio or near an intercom. Whenever a message is sent in Emergency, it'd be broadcasted in the intercoms. If comms is down, Emergency would still work off the radios, but not off the headsets or be broadcasted into the intercoms.

Pros:
-> Chat isn't people screaming at the clown / engineering / eachother 24/7
-> It gives an "official" way for the heads or security to announce threats, an easy way for paramedics and security to go where they have to go. It makes so people who have a IC reason to go to to an antagonist can know where they are, not everyone. This reduces the amount of non-sec validhunters.
-> Those announcements are misable; being in maintenance, or some other place with no intercom, would mean you'd miss them. Helps with the idea of SS13 being a paranoia-ridden landscape.
-> If you survive a antagonist encounter, you can still warn the entire station by going to a intercom.
-> However there's still antagonist counterplay; you can PDA the AI to disable intercoms, for example.
But more importantly,
-> Heads will no longer have to copy and paste from command chat to their department chat. Now, if one of the heads wants something for the entire station to hear, they can use Emergency to broadcast it on all intercoms. And if a non-head wants, they can use the intercom.

Cons:
-> People are probably going to lynch whoever speaks here for bullshit
-> It's not as all-or-nothing as removing Common entirely.

-----

This solution basically filters out all of bullshit from the chat, while still providing vital info to the crew without having all the heads copy and pasting it. At the same time, if you're on maint you can easily miss the announcement, increasing the paranoia of the game.

It solves the problem of Common (bullshit / unecessary info in chat, perfect information for everyone) while solving the biggest problems of no-Common (heads having to copy and paste, almost no information). What do you guys think?

just tell the AI to make a station announcement

Personally I think it's a great idea and would make me consider returning to play. More lack of information instead of more pvp balanced combat is the right direction.
Testmerges are great for this kind of stuff.

I like the concept, but mothblocks also makes a worrying point. Good assesment of the goals though, more then no functional reason to use non radio comms would be good I think

Testmerges might be a good shittest, but it's not a good way to properly test player behavior stuff like this longterm

this will make the game boring as fuck

^

cacogen wrote:^

I clicked the read square cacogen it just leads me to your post

better idea, make temporarily disabling common radio much easier to do. presently for everything stronger than an EMP you may as well run in and disassemble or smash up all the machines to break it permanently with the amount of commitment it takes.

I think it'd be good to trial removing common from headsets. Common channel is accessible only from intercoms forcing you to commit effort to using it. Maybe ditch mobile radios too since they'll probably immediately become worth their weight in gold

I thought the whole point of the game was to say things on Common

yeah

Based

Noone has the balls to testmerge it.

I've done a fair amount of comms fuckery as either AI or engineer.

Filtering security into common and just turning off common are the funniest.

But that's all it is, a stupid gimmick that's amusing for a single round.

If you wanna see how it plays out, roll captain and make it your stupid captain gimmick

actually only do this during highpop
the australians play at weird gremlin hours so they're right when they say it'd be boring for them because there's only ever 5 people online when they play

Stickymayhem wrote:Do we still have station traits?

This would be an interesting station trait

This could make the game more like a space station and less like an xbox live lobby

this could work would actually give people a reason to build a coms. i don't think I've ever seen anyone fix tcoms if its been bombed in all my years

I don't think anybody knows how it works

Stickymayhem wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 6:35 am I think it'd be good to trial removing common from headsets. Common channel is accessible only from intercoms forcing you to commit effort to using it. Maybe ditch mobile radios too since they'll probably immediately become worth their weight in gold

Just make it a station trait. The concept has too large an impact to constantly experience it each round, but having it rarely pop isn’t too huge of a change, and rather serves as a good mix-up.

I too propose we keep the common radio but limit it to intercoms.

Hardly anybody uses the newscasters around the station anymore. This might make them useful while not removing headsets entirely. I can't say I disagree with this, but assistants will need to default to a random department or to service.

what makes newscasters being useful important, they're roleplay fluff

Just add it as a station trait and when it's predictably shit people can be like "I'm so glad this isn't every round".

cacogen wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:25 am Just add it as a station trait and when it's predictably shit people can be like "I'm so glad this isn't every round".

That's what I'm saying. It's obviously going to play out badly, so just make it a station trait, so the engineers can jury rig a commons channel each time it happens.

If it's so bad why are we entertaining the idea of putting it in the game in any form

Because having mix-ups that positively add to or subtract from the enjoyability of the game are something that'll constantly be an occurrence. No commons channel is one such thing, but isn't so bad it's not fixable.

>start round
>randomly-makes-you-have-less-fun-when-d6-rolls-1 device decides your round won't be as fun this time
>you champion it as the king of game design

Could try making headsets "recieve only", so anybody wanting to broadcast would need to get next to an intercom.