Rehaul For The Language System

[canon35]

So, our language system's quite old. While there has been more slots added for different species and some new languages put in over the years, it's still very much a all or nothing system. You either are fluent in a language and know it extremely well or you know fuck all about it. There's certain exceptions to this like Tajara languages having partial understanding. What do I suggest? 

Swap out the slot system for a point system. Depending on your species you get more points to represent how some species can know more languages. Depending on your species you can get languages for free. Then, you have the option of 3 choices for how you would spend your points per language. Partial understanding, full understanding, speaking. Here's some examples.

Feng is a human with sol citizenship. Because he has sol citizenship set, he gets SolCom for free. Now he has 6 points. Feng's backstory has him working in eridani for a time, so he takes full understanding of tradeband for 2 points. He can't speak tradeband, but he understands it. 

Yuiakx is a unathi who fled the wasteland. She has 6 points. She knows how to speak Azizba for 1 point, speaking is cheap due to being a unathi. Her only option for sinta'unathi is full understanding or speaking because Azizba already partially understands sinta'unathi. But because she fled Moghes and didn't spend much time in Izweski lands, she doesn't need to spend those points. When she left she did so on a trading vessel who operated in the frontier. She picked up partial understanding of Freespeak, which costs 1 point. So Yuiakx somewhat understands Sinta'unathi and Freespeak while speaking Azizba fine. 

Obviously this system would need a lot of work if implemented. Prices need to be figured out per species, options for each species need to be re-examined, partial understanding that already exists might have to be changed, and if citizenship and species giving discounts or free language options is allowed that'll add onto the complications. This is also to say nothing of possible abuse of this system. However I genuinely think that having a point based system will be much better in the long run for people wanting to use languages to show off their character's backstory while also resolving any possible issues about who can take what language lore-wise. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by canon35

[KingOfThePing]

How do you think TCB should be handled with such a system?

[canon35]

7 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

How do you think TCB should be handled with such a system?

Shouldn't be changed at all. TCB should remain in as the default you cannot de-select and has full understanding. You need it to be employed on the station currently and I really don't think it makes gameplay or in universe sense to allow people to not speak it or understand it. 

[wowzewow]

I'd say this is perfectly achievable, but it's going to take a *lot* of effort.

[Haydizzle]

Speaking TCB well enough to easily communicate ideas is required to work on the station AFAIK. This of course assumes your character does not have a relevant disability, like being mute.

This suggestion looks good. It would be a good chance for us to also reexamine what species get what languages and perhaps add more in.

[RyverStyx]

I think this would be a great addition and it could fill some of the “plot holes” that the languages currently have regarding different species. I would definitely want to see this implemented in some way! +1

[Paprikue]

I fully support this, it would add real depth to languages. Now here's my little extra suggestion if we're overhauling languages: Make it so that you can change a language mid-sentence. A lot of times you simply want to insert a word from a different language into your sentence. Doing something like this:
"That's no ,3 good."

[Marlon P.]

Op has a good idea.

[KingOfThePing]

I also very much like this suggestion. But I understand that this is a lot of work for a dev to pick up.

[Captain Gecko]

That... Actually sounds like a good concept, not gonna lie. Don't know how this will be implemented, but if SS13's very existence proves one thing is that anything can be coded even on Byond.

[OffRoad99]

Would that be possible for a Human to, say, understand alien languages? Perhaps with a high investments of "points", as you put it?
A Human who worked for years among Skrell MAY be able to understand the language, even if it'd be still impossible for him to learn how to speak it?

[canon35]

32 minutes ago, OffRoad99 said:

Would that be possible for a Human to, say, understand alien languages? Perhaps with a high investments of "points", as you put it?
A Human who worked for years among Skrell MAY be able to understand the language, even if it'd be still impossible for him to learn how to speak it?

This would likely be up to the individual devs to determine what species could understand their language partially or fully. I could see full understanding options available for humans for languages like sinta'unathi, nral'malic, siik'mas, at higher prices than human languages if the devs sign off on it. 

[RyverStyx]

39 minutes ago, canon35 said:

This would likely be up to the individual devs to determine what species could understand their language partially or fully. I could see full understanding options available for humans for languages like sinta'unathi, nral'malic, siik'mas, at higher prices than human languages if the devs sign off on it. 

I would personally be all for this.

[Triogenix]

6 hours ago, OffRoad99 said:

A Human who worked for years among Skrell MAY be able to understand the language, even if it'd be still impossible for him to learn how to speak it?

This is the main reason I want this suggestion to happen. If I have a human whose lived in Crevus for the past 8 years and they can't understand a word of Siik, they don't really feel like an actual person, just someone random spouting BS. Same for skrell in the alliance. While I'm not sure I like the idea of a "points" system, I also don't really have any viable alternative.

+1

[greenjoe]

10 hours ago, Paprikue said:

I fully support this, it would add real depth to languages. Now here's my little extra suggestion if we're overhauling languages: Make it so that you can change a language mid-sentence. A lot of times you simply want to insert a word from a different language into your sentence. Doing something like this:
"That's no ,3 good."

Polaris has this as a feature, it works exactly as you showed in your example

[Boggle08]

I like this concept. There's a lot of cultures or backgrounds that would really benefit from this proposed system, but are cucked out of it by current restrictions (ex. Wasteland K'lax and pretty much anyone from Ouerea).

One thing I am kind of worried about is quality control, or people arbitrarily picking up languages that contradict precedents set in the lore (i.e. a Dominian priest that can fluently understand EAL, or someone that picks up a language only to play with a station clique). It might be worth considering to have it so access to the languages across species and characters are tied to their respective whitelists. Just to hold people accountable and prevent unnecessary load on the moderation team from happening.

Edited December 17, 2021 by Boggle08

[Paprikue]

1 hour ago, greenjoe said:

Polaris has this as a feature, it works exactly as you showed in your example

Maybe I'll port it!

[niennab]

I like this idea a lot and I think it'd add a lot more realism to the day to day.

However I think the Vaurcan, IPC and AI/Stationbound language should be exempt from being selected unless you are that race due to the nature of how the language operates.

It may be worth implementing it in the same way we allow certain races to have crossing languages if you have both whitelists as well.

[KingOfThePing]

I think this needs close cooperation with the lore teams. But otherwise I think this is a great suggestion 

[canon35]

3 hours ago, niennab said:

I like this idea a lot and I think it'd add a lot more realism to the day to day.

However I think the Vaurcan, IPC and AI/Stationbound language should be exempt from being selected unless you are that race due to the nature of how the language operates.

It may be worth implementing it in the same way we allow certain races to have crossing languages if you have both whitelists as well.

Heavy agree. Hivenet requires augmentation exclusive to only Vaurcae for it to work and I severely doubt any organic ear could interpret EAL or binary properly. It would make zero sense for those languages to be available as any of the proposed 3 options for other species. 

 

[Skull132]

On 15/12/2021 at 23:57, canon35 said:

Shouldn't be changed at all. TCB should remain in as the default you cannot de-select and has full understanding. You need it to be employed on the station currently and I really don't think it makes gameplay or in universe sense to allow people to not speak it or understand it. 

For maximum curiosity, I think that doing away with TCB's default status might be a funky and interesting decision to explore. Although, how could this be made to work without a cop-out solution (like translators in the ear pieces).

[lukebr2]

and how it would be with some planets with big alien populations where its inhabitants would at least understand certain lenguages like Himeo with tajaran,Cervus with Unathi,etc? and would there be a restriction per species like Humans can learn x,y,z or per citzenship like Eridani can learn z,Coalition can learn x,etc?

 

[Marlon P.]

Allowing people to not need Basic would be fun. Since we "live" on the nbt ship as a community it'd make a sense. At least for me; i lived in a region where a lot of people didn't speak english and I'd work with them anyway. 

[OffRoad99]

8 hours ago, Skull132 said:

For maximum curiosity, I think that doing away with TCB's default status might be a funky and interesting decision to explore. Although, how could this be made to work without a cop-out solution (like translators in the ear pieces).

I agree here, although...Tau Ceti Basic is the de-facto lingua franca of the Spur. Imho it'd be fine if some sort of pop-up warning showed up when you remove it from your known languages. It would particulary be helpful for new players.

[canon35]

9 hours ago, Skull132 said:

For maximum curiosity, I think that doing away with TCB's default status might be a funky and interesting decision to explore. Although, how could this be made to work without a cop-out solution (like translators in the ear pieces).

That sounds like a conversation for another day IMO. But, with this system, you could argue that people would only need to have full understanding of TCB minimum to work and the crew can use others to function as translators if needed. And as Offroad99 points out, any option to remove that should seriously come with a notification regarding why TCB is used.

4 hours ago, lukebr2 said:

and how it would be with some planets with big alien populations where its inhabitants would at least understand certain lenguages like Himeo with tajaran,Cervus with Unathi,etc? and would there be a restriction per species like Humans can learn x,y,z or per citzenship like Eridani can learn z,Coalition can learn x,etc?

 

It'd be up to the player (For now.) to determine if it's right for their character to understand any part of the language or not. For instance, Europa has a skrell population living on it but not all people would probably interact with them enough to understand some of nral'malic. However if your character's backstory involves them being on a ship with skrell they got along with, you could justify them having a partial understanding of nral'malic fine. If possible though, it would probably be a smart idea to have some sort of tooltip or small window that explains how someone might know this language like how selecting citizenship will tell you about the nation you selected.