Replace Maintenance Access Doors with Maintenance Panels

[Zundy]

I think we should remove maintenance access doors and instead have access panels. You unscrew them and then pry them open to get into maint. You can crowbar them back in and screw driver them shut. Means more sneaky access to maint and sounds more maintenance-ey in my opinion. It'd also free up space because instead of having a door which needs floor clearance it's a wall panel thus tables, plant pots, lockers etc could go in front of them. 

 

Radiation storm wise we could either keep as is but with the time between "storm approaching" and "storm here" tweeked to be longer so people can unscrew panels, make is so other areas of the station offer protection or I guess remove it but I'd rather not.

 

Thoughts and ideas?

Edited March 21, 2019 by Zundy
T Y P O S

[Zundy]

I'd also say leave a few doors in engineering and other key engineering places for drones and I guess weenie engineers who are too weenie to unscrew.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Zundy
tYpOs

[Butterrobber202]

Y e s. I’m all for this. It would make navigating maintenance so much more fun if it was tighter and spookier. We'd need icons and stuff but yeah. This would be so fun.

[DeadLantern]

There should be a way that engineering and sec could get in and out fast, maybe also an ID lock.

[Arrow768]

Not a fan since that would pretty much remove the access restrictions from maint.
Anyone could enter or exit maint tunnels without any real effort involved and that is not something that should be done.

[Zundy]

Why though?

[Arrow768]

The average crew member has no business being in a maintenence tunnel.

If you remove the IC restriction then administration would have to oocly enforce that and that would result in quite a bit of a workload if people got bwoinked and asked what business they had for being in a maint tunnel.

[Zundy]

They'd have to physically break in with tools in the same way you can physically break into any department with tools. The same people who deconstruct glass to get into X restricted area would be the same people who do this thus no net increase in bwoinks.

 

I actually want to see dodgy dealings in maintenance without having to include an engineer. There's nothing wrong with it imo unless people starting doing low LRP stuff though I'm not sure what they would even be.

[Arrow768]

7 minutes ago, Zundy said:

They'd have to physically break in with tools in the same way you can physically break into any department with tools.
The same people who deconstruct glass to get into X restricted area would be the same people who do this thus no net increase in bwoinks.

There is a bit of a difference between dismantling a window (which is not supposed to be easily dismantled) and a hatch which is supposed to be opened and closed.
If opening maint hatches without access restrictions is equivalent to "physically breaking into a department with tools", then people can already do that, by dismantling the walls that lead into maint.

If people want to do shady dealings in maint, then they already have the option to do so.
The airlocks leading into maint, that are directly adjacent to the departments can be accessed with the departmental access.

[Itanimulli]

what happens during rad storms

More specifically what happens to new players during rad storms who have no idea how to do anything except move

Edited March 21, 2019 by Itanimulli

[Kaed]

1 hour ago, Itanimulli said:

what happens during rad storms

More specifically what happens to new players during rad storms who have no idea how to do anything except move

Presumably, the same thing that happens to a new player who walks onto an openspace tile or gets attacked by a spider or bear, if they're still a thing.

They call for help and someone helps them or they end up in pain crit until they leave.

Threats to character safety should be intuitive to avoid, but they don't need to be baby safe. Tools are publicly available to every crew member, it's not hard to find them with a little experience, and it is not unintuitive to unscrew a maintenance panel to get into the tunnel.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Kaed

[Carver]

Doesn't this effectively demand everyone carry a screwdriver and crowbar, or to make screwdrivers far more accessible (via emergency lockers) due to radstorms?

[Kaed]

3 minutes ago, Carver said:

Doesn't this effectively demand everyone carry a screwdriver and crowbar, or to make screwdrivers far more accessible (via emergency lockers) due to radstorms?

Not really.  Does everyone need to carry a weapon just in case of spiders? Get someone to help you. Gather general tools to put on a table in your department, in case someone needs them. Power failures happen, it's already common knowledge you need a crowbar around in case of emergency, what's a screwdriver too? They are already very common. I could see adding them to heads that don't already have it, but we don't need to be placing them on every table.

[Carver]

12 minutes ago, Kaed said:

Not really.  Does everyone need to carry a weapon just in case of spiders? Get someone to help you. Gather general tools to put on a table in your department, in case someone needs them. Power failures happen, it's already common knowledge you need a crowbar around in case of emergency, what's a screwdriver too? They are already very common. I could see adding them to heads that don't already have it, but we don't need to be placing them on every table.

If screwdrivers weren't in emergency lockers I can just see a lot more people dying of radstorms because of this during lowpop or emergencies where others are busy.

[Kaed]

24 minutes ago, Carver said:

If screwdrivers weren't in emergency lockers I can just see a lot more people dying of radstorms because of this during lowpop or emergencies where others are busy.

You can't design a game intented for 20+ people around 'what if lowpop'  All sorts of bad things happen in lowpop rounds you can't do anything about such as:

• There is no engineering so the station has no power
• There is no security so the changeling/vamp succs everyone
• There is no medical so people that get injuries just die
• There is no science and the malf AI borgs everyone

For the sake of argument though, let's actually look at the radstorm event.  What actually happens? 

• A notice comes up that radiation storm is on the way
• Everyone who cares wanders to the nearest maint shaft and heads inside
• Everyone stands around for 2-3 minutes staring into space or talking to each other, waiting for it to end so they can get back to their round.

That isn't very interesting. I think it would be a much more exciting event if there was some iota of danger, a smidgen of threat for the unprepared, rather than just turning into Maint Station 13 for couple minutes.

Edited March 22, 2019 by Kaed

[Carver]

37 minutes ago, Kaed said:

That isn't very interesting. I think it would be a much more exciting event if there was some iota of danger, a smidgen of threat for the unprepared, rather than just turning into Maint Station 13 for couple minutes.

The point isn't danger as much as creating an opening for antagonists to do sneaky shit whilst everyone's effectively locked into maintenance for 3 minutes. A good majority of random events are simply distractions to create opening for clever antagonists to exploit.

[Kaed]

3 minutes ago, Carver said:

The point isn't danger as much as creating an opening for antagonists to do sneaky shit whilst everyone's effectively locked into maintenance for 3 minutes. A good majority of random events are simply distractions to create opening for clever antagonists to exploit.

No reason it can't do more than one thing, really.  And it still happens on extended, when there are no antagonists, sooo.

[Conspiir]

1 hour ago, Kaed said:

For the sake of argument though, let's actually look at the radstorm event.  What actually happens? 

• A notice comes up that radiation storm is on the way
• Everyone who cares wanders to the nearest maint shaft and heads inside
• Everyone stands around for 2-3 minutes staring into space or talking to each other, waiting for it to end so they can get back to their round.

That isn't very interesting. I think it would be a much more exciting event if there was some iota of danger, a smidgen of threat for the unprepared, rather than just turning into Maint Station 13 for couple minutes.

I don't think this suggestion is going to solve that. What it would create is:

• A notice comes up that radiation storm is on the way
• Everyone who cares runs to find the nearest screwdriver by bombarding cargo/science to print one off, finding an engineer and demanding to be let inside a hatch, or running into the elevator to get to tool storage and grab a screwdriver and hide out on the surface
• Everyone stands around for 2-3 minutes staring into space or talking to each other, waiting for it to end so they can get back to their round.

The same exact scenario, with added unnecessary baggage. More difficult and time-consuming != more interactive and fun. It usually just means more annoying. Like Carver says, it's meant to be a possible distraction and hiccup. It's not meant to be this huge event that takes ages to make sure you're safe. Do we need more events that are? Maybe. Right now only blob comes to mind as anything that can be formidable. Maybe spiders, if they're in a place you don't expect. But on the same coin, perhaps we don't. Perhaps just blob is well and truly big enough. Depends on your outlook.

 

2 hours ago, Kaed said:

Power failures happen, it's already common knowledge you need a crowbar around in case of emergency, what's a screwdriver too? 

The common man hasn't needed crowbars for power outages in a long while. Doors revert to their open state.

[Butterrobber202]

We could make it like the Alien: Isolation tunnels, you know the ones that have that circular opening and ladders n' stuff. It would accomplish the same goal, but the vents would only open to the correct IDs.

[Juani2400]

I love this idea, but not without some minor modifications:

• Maintenance still needs to be "easily" accesible in case of radiation storms, and such. It would be ideal to keep a few (maybe around 3-4) actual maintenance airlocks accessible only from the hallways. That would imply removing all departmental doors. One airlock per section of hallway should suffice; that's one for the central area, one for the southern, western and eastern hallways. This way, people could still move into maintenance relatively easy in case of storm. All other accesses would be of the type that the OP describes.
• Removal of maintenance access. I agree that the tunnels should be kept only accessible for crew that is actually meant to be there. Basically engineers, and potentially paramedics in order to access the rescue airlocks that are found along the hull of the station. No one else (except the captain, obviously). The access requirement would be ignored in case of a rad-storm, as it is the case currently.
• The hatches should require access. Because it wouldn't make sense to have access-locked airlocks into maintenance, but then basically allow everyone with a screwdriver into the tunnels, I suggest that an item is impletemented, that engineers and paramedics would spawn with, which would look something similar to one of these long keys used by safes (see picture below). It would be necessary to use this item on the hatch to unlock it, which would then have to be crowbarred out. This item could have a chance to be spawned in Cargo or the tunnels themselves, as well. If Security needs access into maintenance, for whatever reason, the Command swipers have already an option to disable access on all maintenance airlocks, which would unlock those 3-4 airlocks mentioned before.

Just my two cents for this idea. I'd quite like this to be implemented, one way or another.

Picture of the key:

[VTCobaltblood]

On 21/03/2019 at 21:15, Arrow768 said:

The average crew member has no business being in a maintenence tunnel.

If you remove the IC restriction then administration would have to oocly enforce that and that would result in quite a bit of a workload if people got bwoinked and asked what business they had for being in a maint tunnel.

This is needlessly conservative and contains little to no actual arguments against the crew being able to access maint. "You have no business being there" is an IC issue - trespassing. Why would you enforce it OOCly?

 

I think the suggestion is pretty dope for encouraging shady behavior among crew, which is all what I live for. So it's a +1 from me, definitely.

Edited March 25, 2019 by VTCobaltblood