Information rollback - crew manifest restrictions

[NerdyVampire]

Outline:

We remove the crew manifest program from PDA's and instead restrict them to consoles and synthetic bounds/AI. We stop cryogenics/arrivals from announcing newly awakened non-command crew, instead log it in the cryogenics computer.

Reason:

So before you lynch me, let's consider how every crewman has instant-access to a complete crew manifest on their PDA, and can insta-valid anyone who has even a slightly different name. Practically I actually find it rather implausible that we all know each other well enough to have a sixth sense about who is an infiltrator and who is not, yet that is the reality of Aurora right now. No antag in their right mind would change their ID and expect to get away with anything, because anyone would point them out with a vengeance.

Instead let's pretend that someone would either have to A. Ask the AI, B. Ask security to check their consoles or C. Have to find a console of their own.

Now the chances that anyone other than our vigilant security forces would check you out without at least some suspicious behavior becomes much closer to 0, while our collectivel meta-paranoia will go up a healthy amount.

I expect that we will get a much more RP based validhunting: with the added efforts to check up on someone, it requires actual reasoning to report someone to security. Once someone has been ID'd, security is right where they usually are, until then antags can enjoy an overall benefit of the doubt. Or people will have to actively admit that they find it mighty suspicious that there are *2* chefs this shift!

A compromise:

If this is way out of bounds for players, can we at least try to remove the manifest from all but sec and command players, and pretend that ordinary crew aren't expected to have an active memory and relation with all crewmen aboard or need to know when someone unimportant arrives?

Alright, commence lynching.

[Arrow768]

Voting for dismissal.
All antags with a uplink can purchase a fake announcement.

The other antags can play it off as being a visitor where central forgot to send over the records.
(We specifically added a ghost-spawner to enable that)

[NerdyVampire]

10 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

All antags with a uplink can purchase a fake announcement.

Having to purchase an announcement to justify your (seldom used) chameleon equipment and fake identity is exactly what I see as the problem. It defeats the purpose of infiltration because it will directly draw the attention of all security at once and it isn't reliable against anyone who doesn't read it.

10 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

The other antags can play it off as being a visitor where central forgot to send over the records.

And that isn't a strong solution either, it only works until security or command decides it doesn't and either watch you 24/7 or imprison you while waiting for the mandatory fax.

The whole purpose of this suggestion is to remove the 'watchdog' mentality that all crewmen get while having easy access to the crew manifest, so an antag could potentially have success impersonating a role on the station at least until they actually do something suspicious or a detective/sec find reason to actually ask someone at their console/the AI/the head of that department.

[NerdyVampire]

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about the current system, I just think I'm seeing an opportunity we might want to explore, at least as an experiment

[MEDTECH]

Another solution would be to include an auto-record addition on the purchase of the Chameleon kit / ability to edit it via their ID, and the antag would be on the manifest, no?

As long as they have the affectation needed for their infiltration on the manifest, the crew will be okay with it, and only command / AI can check if it's really valid.

[NerdyVampire]

1 hour ago, MEDTECH said:

Another solution would be to include an auto-record addition on the purchase of the Chameleon kit / ability to edit it via their ID, and the antag would be on the manifest, no?

As long as they have the affectation needed for their infiltration on the manifest, the crew will be okay with it, and only command / AI can check if it's really valid.

That sounds like another good suggestion!

[niennab]

Without a manifest readily available to the crew I fear what it would mean for lowpop or rounds where a department isn't staffed. As players might find themselves in the odd situation of standing outside a dark department going "is anyone in cargo/medical/science?" etc but with no one to answer them.

Or a miner going out onto the asteroid won't have any way of immediately knowing if medical is staffed should something go wrong. That being said these small things.

Maybe if there was a way that off station antags could get a card that adds them to the manifest perhaps that would help?

[NerdyVampire]

I kinda like that niennab, antags getting on the manifest easier. But I would still prefer that there was less reliance on the manifest either way, it seems that it should be behavior rather than a nametag that sets apart the antags. Perhaps a compromise could be to move the manifest to the station newscasters instead, that are readily available but still require at least some effort from people to access.

[Astra]

I absolutely don't want the manifest to be removed. It would be a pain to have to ask over the radio if there are miners, cargo, medical and so on at the start of every shift. It's useful for determining what you can do during a round, what places may ask you for help, and what resources you have access to. I don't anticipate removing this information to help antags much, it's often pretty easy to determine if a player is a traitor, ling or vampire anyway, and they start on the manifest.

[CatsinHD]

Either way, whether we give antags the ability to join the manifest or just move the manifest to a newscaster or something, antags who want to go all sneaky like that need to choose better names. Seeing a visitor who is clearly human with the name of "Piercer" is sticks out horrendously OOCly. ICly it would be something you either have to ignore or (as command or sec or something) question.

TLDR; if antags can join the manifest through a tool they need to choose less obvious names

[StationCrab]

I rather like the idea of doing away with the cryo announcements. Having to physically check those Cryo console logs would be fine. I'm not sure about the manifest though, it does seem like a full manifest should be something only available to certain people though.