Restrict access to PDA Manifest

[LanceLynxx]

I would suggest removing access to the Manifest from PDAs from anyone who isn't Command staff.

IC-wise, this type of personal information detailing crew placement wouldn't be available to general crew, only to the higher-ups in administration, for being a technically sensitive type of information.

OOC-wise, would make antags much more able to attempt to blend into a department without anyone simply looking at the manifest and going "whoops who dis"

Antaggery aside, you'd have to communicate with people to find out who is where, doiing what, perhaps pay them a visit or something, which arguably forces people to make an effort to acquire information, and makes contact more interesting, in my opinion.

PDA messaging should be fine as is with a list, just remove the job title from after the name.

[MO_oNyMan]

I totally agree. It would make for a more interesting infiltration type antags and make slightly more sense.

The only downside i see with it is that you wouldn't be able to quickly contact the guy you want to contact (since you don't know who to message because pdas are no longer labeled and you can't use crew manifest to find the guy you want)

Overall +1

Edited May 21, 2018 by Guest

[LanceLynxx]

The only downside i see with it is that you wouldn't be able to quickly contact the guy you want to contact (since you don't know who to message because pdas are no longer labeled and you can't use crew manifest to find the guy you want

 

Even more reason for you to get to know your colleagues. Know who they are and where they work!

(unfortunately there is job hopping but that's beyond the point)

[Scheveningen]

As far as how the manifest goes, most of the crew roster are well acquainted with one another. Barring visitors, of course.

 

OOC-wise, would make antags much more able to attempt to blend into a department without anyone simply looking at the manifest and going "whoops who dis"

 

While this is an understandable concern as to try and make certain non-crew antagonists viable in a stealth capacity, I don't believe this is really the right way to go about it.

The problem with non-crew stealthing is how convoluted the process is in trying to blend in with a full crew roster with records, a snapshot photo and other fluff blurbs that everyone else that is crew happens to spawn with. Oh, and also appears on the manifest with name and rank.

And the problem with that is creating a new set of records in the 'dirty' way is incredibly difficult to pull off to a degree of accuracy that matches the existing non-antag crew. It's also very time-consuming and it requires an insane amount of infiltrating areas you shouldn't have access to and stealing things you shouldn't have. It's a lot of breaking and entering just to blend in properly.

I'd rather suggest tackling that issue of the records thing rather than outright removing 3/4s of the crew roster being able to identify anyone on the station. That's just flat out tacking on artificial difficulty without compensation.

[Bauser]

I'm going to be very disappointed if I lose the ability to secretly relay information to security via PDA because I can't tell who the security officers are on the messenger list. Every security report does not need to be relayed over the public party line, for everyone to chime in.

[MO_oNyMan]

I'm going to be very disappointed if I lose the ability to secretly relay information to security via PDA because I can't tell who the security officers are on the messenger list. Every security report does not need to be relayed over the public party line, for everyone to chime in.

 

Request console -> Relay anonymous information -> Security

It would be very nice to see other types of communication aside from headsets and pdas used

[Scheveningen]

There's no guarantee security will check those.

[MO_oNyMan]

there's a giant blinking exclamation mark at the console when it recieves a message, wdym there's no guarantee they will check those? If only to prevent accidental epileptic seizure

[Bauser]

It requires a security officer to be in physical proximity to the requests console, which is not the case plenty of the time. EDIT: That, or requires one of them to link their PDA to it... at which point we're back to just PDA-to-PDA communication, just with extra (and unreliable) steps.

[BurgerBB]

Ultimately this is going to be more crippling than beneficial on it's current implementation. While it may allow for some stealth crew options, it's going to cause some problems down the road. For example, people won't know if there is 0 medical staff, 0 engineering staff, or 0 mining staff unless told. There will be situations where science will bitch at the miners for 10 minutes straight until they realize they have no miners. Someone will drag their ass to medical, only to realise that there are no doctors currently in medbay. You'll have to implement a way to let crewmembers know how much staff there is in each department, or include a general PDA warning where it says there are 0 or low amounts of staff in a department.

[Kaed]

There's no guarantee security will check those.

 

The only reason people don't check these and other non-PDA/Common channel methods of communication is because they become utterly irrelevant with the presence of those said easy forms of instant communication, barring specific scenarios like a comms outage.

If you change the communication dynamic, people will adapt to it, they won't just sit in a corner and sob because no one can hear them.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Bad idea. Having no idea who is where has no positives outside arbitrary (paranoia) which is just confusion in this case. Identity theft is reasonably easy. The hard part is making it foolproof, which we dont want.

[Sebbe]

You people know we live in a world IRL without manifests, how do we check here? We call someone (use the radio) and check or we walk there. Negatives are just people being lazy, go for it, force people to interact ^^

[ben10083]

[mention]Sebbe[/mention] many company's have records of who has what occupation, hell, some governments also have those records. Manifests exist irl, just not as easy to access due to personal information. However I must say...removing manifests are a horrible idea. If we remove them, it will be a pain in the ASS to get stuff done with other departments, encouraging working by yourself or having to message every person just to say "Whats your job?" and flooding their PDAm -1

[MO_oNyMan]

@Sebbe many company's have records of who has what occupation, hell, some governments also have those records. Manifests exist irl, just not as easy to access due to personal information. However I must say...removing manifests are a horrible idea. If we remove them, it will be a pain in the ASS to get stuff done with other departments, encouraging working by yourself or having to message every person just to say "Whats your job?" and flooding their PDAm -1

 

the suggestion is not to remove the manifest but to restrict it from common crew. Security still has access to records, medical still has access to records, command still has access to manifest

[Asheram]

So instead of checking the PDA manifest we instead have to go to the PDA messenger and scroll through names until you find someone with the job you're interested in contacting?

-1

The information is readily available if just a little bit more annoying to get.

[witchbells]

No.

Players should not be crippled for the sake of antagonists being able to put less effort into their game.

[MO_oNyMan]

So instead of checking the PDA manifest we instead have to go to the PDA messenger and scroll through names until you find someone with the job you're interested in contacting?

-1

The information is readily available if just a little bit more annoying to get.

 

read the suggestion to the end

PDA messaging should be fine as is with a list, just remove the job title from after the name.

[Asheram]

read the suggestion to the end

Ah yes, my bad.

[ben10083]

cant you just create a record and make yourself that? it will be basically foolproof unless someone finds out your id number isnt on

[Zundy]

All that'll happen here is that command will be asked constantly who's doing what and new characters will largely be ignored in place of well known characters.

It's frustrating in real life having to ask around the office for a critical staff member because the company is garbage with its records let alone a game in which the main focus is communicating with people. At least in an office the workers don't completely change three to four times a day.

I'm just not really feeling it to be honest.

[Scheveningen]

there's a giant blinking exclamation mark at the console when it recieves a message, wdym there's no guarantee they will check those? If only to prevent accidental epileptic seizure

 

My playstyle is very dynamic and consistently moving. I do not enjoy being rooted in place for long periods of time when I play security unless I'm being actively engaged in a situation pertaining to my IC role or a social call pertaining to the relevance of my character's relationships with others.

When I play HOS I don't like my officers sitting around idly either. They're not at their best possible potential for helpfulness by sitting around waiting for a console to flash especially if there's no guarantee someone will even bother to anonymously send security information that is difficult to immediately verify in the first place since anyone can send out information to security. Odds are security already either knows what's being anonymously sent or it's not useful to the current case, compared to how often anonymously sent info is actually going to be relevant.

I doubt anyone actually plays security to sit around at a console. If they do it's because nothing's happened yet, and when something does happen, they're all over it for the rest of the round. Likewise, I don't think we need to force the absolute extreme in which people need to jump over incredible hurdles of walking around and asking up/down the chain just to figure out who they're supposed to be talking to for menial errands or expected requirements to their job.

If my team and myself are actively tied up chasing pirates/traitors/lings/vampires around the station to nab for their associated crimes they've committed, odds are I'm going to prioritize the response to a console with dubious levels of verifiable information very low on my list of things I'll actively care about.

It seems like everyone in addition to antagonists, is going to suffer from this. If you're non-command staff as a changeling and you don't have immediate ability to check your PDA to see what department you can infiltrate first and also consider the possibility of who will walk into your absorbing of someone, you're going to have a really short round real quick. Artificial difficulty done right is making things more difficult by adding different kinds of meaningful depth to the game that can make or break a person's individual experience. Depth is never added by removing something without immediate compensation.

[Bauser]

To top it all off, it just doesn't make sense for a person who works at a job to not know who their co-workers are. So the MAXIMUM implementation of this idea that I could see being feasible would be to provide the crew manifest but freeze it at round-start, not adding late-joiners to the list, but still announcing their arrival over radio. That way you know for sure that certain people are legit, while also allowing antagonists to slip in without the manifest immediately blowing their cover.

I would love to see an antagonist use a voice-changer to mimic the Arrivals Announcement Computer to insert themselves into a department.

[LanceLynxx]

how about this

Remove the manifest from PDA

BUT!!!!

Have manifest publicly available in requests consoles or newscasters?

That way, most issues raised here go out the window, but it also doesn't make it as easy as pulling up a PDA to check the manifest.

[Scheveningen]

Okay. Again back to point one.

How does making it incredibly difficult to find out if there's a doctor/roboticist/engineer/security officer to handle any array of issues lead to better gameplay? Can you rationalize for me as to how removing gameplay features with nothing substantial in return somehow adds depth to the game?

Reworking mechanics is supposed to be better for gameflow, not for adding arbitrary difficulty and insidious tedium in comparison.