Please rework firelocks

[Aeri]

They're simply terrible, they kill more spessmen than they save by a long shot, please do something about these rampant occupational hazards.


- I can't COUNT the number of times a firelock has either crushed me, or closed incessantly while I'm trying to drag people or equipment past one.

- The "Fire alarm" also goes off constantly for a broad number of conditions that aren't fire, when dismissed, the alarm tends to just immediately go off again.

- Their purpose is to minimize a fire but they never succeed at it, the station is profoundly unlikely to catch fire outside of a deliberately engineered plasma flood anyways, we already have airlocks.

- God fucking help you if you don't have a crowbar, you can only bang on the firelock impotently.

- Cant be placed via RCD, so your only ways of building them are really annoying, they're also a pain in the ass to get rid of.

[tumesuo]

get good

[cacogen]

I think we disagreed about something recently because I remember making it about the ethics of having an avatar like that but I agree I hate these fucking things and always have and I'm no longer scared to admit that about myself. Let me just address some of your points though:

1. The station is not supposed to be optimally designed it facilitates gameplay and roleplay through imperfection.
2. Yes that is shit and maybe they could stay open longer but personally I'm used to it by now
3. They also contain atmos and I think they're necessary for the atmos system to not kill the server by having every tile active simultaneously. They work well to contain the few deliberate low effort plasma floods I see nowadays though what are you taking about?
4. This has always been stupid and maybe I'll open another controversial PR making them all able to be opened by hand, albeit more slowly than crowbarring.
5. This is also bullshit and I don't think anybody would have a problem with this being remedied

[Aeri]

I think we disagreed about something recently because I remember making it about the ethics of having an avatar like that but I agree I hate these fucking things and always have and I'm no longer scared to admit that about myself. Let me just address some of your points though:

1. The station is not supposed to be optimally designed it facilitates gameplay and roleplay through imperfection.
2. Yes that is shit and maybe they could stay open longer but personally I'm used to it by now
3. They also contain atmos and I think they're necessary for the atmos system to not kill the server by having every tile active simultaneously. They work well to contain the few deliberate low effort plasma floods I see nowadays though what are you taking about?
4. This has always been stupid and maybe I'll open another controversial PR making them all able to be opened by hand, albeit more slowly than crowbarring.
5. This is also bullshit and I don't think anybody would have a problem with this being remedied

I mean I'm basically going to ignore anyone who tries to derail a post to talk about that, but anyways.

1. Yeah but that doesn't mean everything needs to always be shit
2. I could get used to sticking my hand in a blender given enough time, that's probably not the BEST thing to do though.
3. Idk maybe my perspective is skewed because I mostly play Manuel because it has less shitters, or at least it used to
4. yee
5. yee

I'm not saying "completely remove firelocks" I'm just saying maybe they could stand to be at least a bit less garbage, add something like "engineers (or anyone with engineering permissions)can alt click a fire alarm to open a command window with some options like suspending the alarm trigger for 60 seconds, perform a manual override, disable fire alarms in [region], make it require a multitool, configure what triggers the alarm (heat, cold, atmos disruptions) etc, I don't really care what exactly.

[oranges]

I'll change firelocks when you change your avatar.

[Nabski]

If their avatar gains more bust will you make airlocks more hateful towards players?

[cacogen]

Also I think the reason the problems with these have become more of a focus recently is there have been changes to atmos recently that seem to be resulting in them being triggered more often. Which is great when you inevitably find yourself stuck behind one without a crowbar and none of the adjacent rooms you have access to contain one.

[Aeri]

I'll change firelocks when you change your avatar.

okay hop to it orange man

[Aeri]

Also I think the reason the problems with these have become more of a focus recently is there have been changes to atmos recently that seem to be resulting in them being triggered more often. Which is great when you inevitably find yourself stuck behind one without a crowbar and none of the adjacent rooms you have access to contain one.

you mean how the laws of thermodynamics abruptly changed to make people freeze to death all the damn time?

[oranges]

I'll change firelocks when you change your avatar.

okay hop to it orange man

I lied

[wesoda25]

Well if not on firelocks, we've made massive progress in this thread on aeri's post readability

[Aeri]

Well if not on firelocks, we've made massive progress in this thread on aeri's post readability

You do realize I knew he'd do that and can just change it back right.

[confused rock]

I think you misunderstand, this is suggestions for the codebase. When you say rework firelocks because they're more harm than good, while that would make sense to think ICLY, oocly boo fucking hoo, not everything on the station is supposed to be perfect. Firelocks can help and they can hurt, just as access restrictions can. It would be less interesting if they could only help.

[cacogen]

I don't think getting stuck behind firelocks without any way of getting out without outside help or getting a crowbar each round is good design, especially given how temperamental they are. The alarm panels to turn them off aren't always accessible either. Then they reactivate. Maybe if the game better communicated the reason for the alarm, and therefore what could be done to resolve it, but even then there's only so much a random crewmember can do and who wants to take time out of their agenda to fix a problem that should be resolved by people with atmos access?

[Aeri]

not everything on the station is supposed to be perfect. Firelocks can help and they can hurt, just as access restrictions can. It would be less interesting if they could only help.

Cacogen put it pretty well, but in addition to his points I feel like that's kind of a dumb take. I feel that by that logic we should've just left hygiene bots the way they were, ludicrously easy to mass produce and annoying as hell. not everything has to be perfect right? I could, given time call up scores of examples of gameplay shit that's been changed over time on account of something generally being terribly un-fun from a gameplay perspective.

Fuck it why bother making any QOL changes ever like the cool new UIs some objects got a while ago, no more new PRs, ever, server's done it's okay guys, sTation DOEsN't nEEd to bE PErFeCt guys, this rock dude solved all your problems at once, he's a visionary who says what we're all truly thinking. Hell we might as well go back to this version of Spess

This is fine, the station doesn't need to be perfect, as we've established


Maybe things are different outside of Manuel where I guess people just plasma flood for fun whenever, but I've almost never thought to myself "oh thank god this firelock was here to stop the situation from getting any worse", it's usually more along the lines of "OH MY GOD WOULD THIS THING STOP CLOSING CONSTANTLY EVEN THOUGH I JUST OPENED IT THERE ISN'T EVEN A FIRE FUCK OFF OH GOD IT'S CRUSHING ME HELP" I never say "oh boy this sure is an interesting scenario I find myself in, trapped in a hallway during a state of an emergency until I die because I'm not a role that carries tools and can't open firelocks"


Like, it's pretty wild in my opinion to just throw your hands up and say "NO THEY'RE AWFUL ON PURPOSE SHUT UP"; they could at the very least have safety sensors like airlocks so they don't spam-close while you're trying to haul people in crit out of an exploded room or whatever. The only real loss being "oh no less funee man get squished by firelock"

The alarm panels to turn them off aren't always accessible either. Then they reactivate.

As an aside, the panel to turn them off is superfluous as well, I've cut the wires and pried the board out of every fire alarm I could see and the bastard thing still kept going off moments after I dismissed the alarm.

[cacogen]

I think it's the air alarm that activates them and that you can adjust the thresholds there. But non-atmos techs shouldn't have to deal with that. I just grab a crowbar every round for things like this which is a dumb thing to inadvertently encourage.

[Aeri]

I think it's the air alarm that activates them and that you can adjust the thresholds there. But non-atmos techs shouldn't have to deal with that. I just grab a crowbar every round for things like this which is a dumb thing to inadvertently encourage.

I've taken to just dismantling fire alarms until they dismiss, that seems to work, it's a stupid ass way to fix the problem but it works.

[sinfulbliss]

I agree firelocks have been annoying ever since fastmos (I think that's when they became faster?).

Recently on Kilo as cap there was a pyro anomaly in my office, I got an analyzer and signaler to stop it, but the firelocks were SO bad (there were two layers of them for some reason), the doors wouldn't unbolt because they kept closing over the door, preventing the remote from working. Tl;dr: both me and the HoS got trapped in a small firelocked deathtrap with a giant charged pyro slime and died. It was funny at least.

That's just an anecdote but yeah firelocks are too fast and incredibly annoying. The fact most "fires" come from plasmafloods, i.e., firelocks don't really help them, is also a great point.

[Qustinnus]

what was their avatar

[cacogen]

They changed it back after oranges' inability to lift a finger was revealed so it's just the 15 year old anime girl with the 10,000 year old tits. i think she's also a robot and visual calculus from disco elysium

[legoscape]

big biddies.

Can we get the 1 sided airlocks. They're so cool and can fit under windoors.

[Pandarsenic]

I fucking beg, remove the high pitched whining alarm sound they play.

[cacogen]

I've played atmos tech a lot recently. It's made me realise firelocks are integral to preventing atmosphere problems from generalising. Fastmos causes atmosphere to equalise between areas very quickly.

Firelocks shutting fast, crushing and being hard to open are their point. Atmos across the entire station would be worse if they were easier to open or remained open longer. It would trigger more fire alarms too.

Firelocks lend themselves to death and frustration too much though. They make it too hard to cross the station. They lead to entire departments becoming disused. A breach in a couple of areas locks down every adjacent area.

Holofirelocks would prevent endless gridlock. But you'd lose the danger of firelocks if people could pass through them. There's probably a better solution.

A lot of the time I find myself undoing firelocks so the atmosphere can equalise between two areas. This fixes the alarm in one or both of them. I wish lockdowns would cancel when mixing with the adjacent area would solve the problem. I'm not sure how meaningfully this would affect the overall issue of firelocks lasting too long though.

[Omega_DarkPotato]

honestly the part about "firelocks are integral to preventing atmosphere problems from generalizing" really doesn't feel like it's always the case
with fastmos, it takes one man with a crowbar to open a firelock and suddenly the next two rooms are locked down.
but it'll take ages to fix those rooms since they're all individually locked, and you have to now deal with the oh-so-sensitive air alarms to get these things to work again.

I wish there was some way for atmospheric technicians to moderate general air alarm settings or an easy-access "switch" to set air alarms to a vastly reduced degree of sensitivity, so that when you DO get around to fixing that breach/cold temperatures/1% less oxygen than an air alarm will allow you can reliably expect the firelocks up to help make that fix actually spread.


As for the locks and regular player interaction, I honestly think that maybe being able to upgrade firelocks into holofirelocks through some sort of tool or system would be a neat concept for engineering
sure, it takes away the "danger", but it's
A) an upgrade, so there's some new job for people to do that isn't an "absolute necessity" like the supermatter is for engies, but a very enjoyable benefit to the crew.
B) something that could be controlled through a sciweb to ensure that this isn't another roundstart chore but rather a benefit for a well-running station

[oranges]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

[Farquaar]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

They're intended to close when there are no fires or hull breaches in the area?

[cacogen]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

I know you don't actually care about the issue and just wanted to have an opinion, but this is like bastardising one of my points and taking the wrong conclusion from it.

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

They're intended to close when there are no fires or hull breaches in the area?

This seems to happen when there's an atmosphere alarm in the adjacent area. I guess to prevent the atmosphere from spreading further if somebody crowbars up a firelock?

But it means if a couple of rooms are breached in a department every adjacent area will be locked down too. This renders departments inaccessible to people who don't have crowbars or a huge chore to move around for people who do. Even people with crowbars won't use a department when it's in that state. The sound and everything being obfuscated by red colouration is off-putting too. If somebody isn't there to invest time into fixing the issue then it will be like that for the entire round. Surely there's a better way.

I honestly think that maybe being able to upgrade firelocks into holofirelocks through some sort of tool or system would be a neat concept for engineering

Only if it was fast, though. If it required a finicky sequence of tools or a lengthy do_after per firelock nobody would do it. Engineering isn't going to do shit, either. Give it to atmospherics, who are at least supposed to have a vested interest in the state of the atmosphere on the station.

[oranges]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

I know you don't actually care about the issue and just wante

I don't read any of your points because you are a fucking idiot, I was responding to the OP

[oranges]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

They're intended to close when there are no fires or hull breaches in the area?

yes it causes paranoia

[Jonathan Gupta]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

They're intended to close when there are no fires or hull breaches in the area?

yes it causes paranoia

oranges, an admin pm sound gives me PTSD, PTSD it's not a joke anymore I know I joke on the damn forums but it's not a joke whenever I hear DERT DERT DERT I break out in a cold sweat, I physically shiver. There was a fire in real life and I stood still for a solid 10 seconds before being able to walk.

[Tarhalindur]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

They're intended to close when there are no fires or hull breaches in the area?

yes it causes paranoia

Except it doesn't because you can just see that there's no problem because they're see through

[Fishimun]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

They're intended to close when there are no fires or hull breaches in the area?

yes it causes paranoia

Except it doesn't because you can just see that there's no problem because they're see through

rework firelocks and give them opaque windows so you can't see through, it will cause more paranoia

[cacogen]

they're meant to be annoying, this is them working as intended.

I know you don't actually care about the issue and just wante

I don't read any of your points because you are a fucking idiot, I was responding to the OP

I don't believe it and what you've said here is dumb and reveals a lack of understanding or real interest in the issue

[legoscape]

Could we at least get the one-sided airlocks? They open when you walk into them and don't crush you the second you try to get under them

[Flatulent]

firelocks crushing femboys is intended design