Emergency Shutter Windows

[Kaed]

I have been on other servers where someone drew a little tinted window in the sprite for the emergency shutter, and more importantly, made you able to see what is happening on the other side. The value of this feature is immense, because, quite often people on the other side of the shuttles have very little context of WHY the shutter is down, other than some colored flashing lights and a temperature/pressure readout. If one is able to see the giant hole in the hull on the other side, or the raging fire, or team of psychotic red suited mercenaries breaking things, it would lead to a whole lot better judgement in decisions.

Please add this as a feature of shutters.

Pls.

[Conservatron]

As an engineer, this will be useful.

but please dont, you don't need to see whats on the other side of the door, just don't touch it. Its as simple as that. If you REALLY need to see whats on the other side, go to a camera console.

if you don't have access to a camera console you don't actually need to see whats on the other side of the door, you just want to see whats on the other side of the door.

Personally, I'd go the other way. Double the time it takes to force open emergency doors with crowbar, keep it the same with fire axe, and have everything id locked so only engineers and stupid security officers can go through emergency doors

[Bedshaped]

I would be concerned that someone looks through emergency shutters, thinks they see nothing wrong, opens them based on not enough information.

I would rather see the flashing light system improved so you can have information on the direction of the warning and what type (vacuum or superhot).

[Nanako]

shutter lights already tell you the direction and problem, at least for temperatures, the light appears only on one side

personally i don't think windows would make sense because these shutters are designed to be solid. adding glass to them would weaken them structurally

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I'd rather not. Closing shutters on people has tactical advantages. They already provide a LOT of information; you know if a shutter is safe (assuming the place isn't depowered) if it isn't flashing.

[witchbells]

We used to have windows. It would be nice if the windows were brought back, they ought to still have sprites somewhere.

[Bedshaped]

shutter lights already tell you the direction and problem, at least for temperatures, the light appears only on one side

personally i don't think windows would make sense because these shutters are designed to be solid. adding glass to them would weaken them structurally

 

I think they're actually broken right now. From what I've noticed the lights only seem to update when they're triggered again; like opening and closing them.

[Conservatron]

observe a door and it gives you a ton of information, probably more than is reasonable tbh

[Kaed]

I see a lot of people saying that the way things are now has 'tactical advantages', or 'non-engineers don't need to know anything', and that 'it wouldn't make sense to have windows'.

There are problems with all of these things. Let me point out a few.

-The idea that only engineers and security need to know about it, which ideally correct, does not take into account general round chaos. What if all of engineering is dead? What if someone is trapped between two sets of shutters, one leading to safety, one to death, and absent someone immediately available to rescue them, all they have to go on is some door readouts they might not even understand? In another situation, I have legitimately killed an entire station during a power outage before because my context of the area outside the place I was trapped in was nonexistent. It would be more correct to say that the atmos readout is only relevant to engineering, whereas everyone else pretty much can and do ignore more than a glance at it if they know the function exists.

-The fact is, there is more to the question of 'is it safe to open this shutter' than the readouts on atmosphere. There are extenuating circumstances, hazards not conveyed by atmosphere readouts. You can pretend all you want that we are all logical people who can all glean relevant information from some numbers on a readout, but we are all human (we, the players), and we generally gain more understandable information from visual information than numerical The number of dumb accidents that could be avoided by being able to see an obvious hazard, like a hole in the station, on the other side of a shutter, vastly outweigh the number of situations where someone will see 'nothing wrong' and open the door.

-What 'tactical advantage' does closing a shuttle give that would be negated by making it see through? It's already a block to movement. I think being able to see through the shutters opens more opportunities for roleplay than making them a visual block gives benefits. Because of the way the game is coded, if you can't see someone, you can't hear them. You can be two squares away from each other, but if there is something blocking your vision, you can't hear each other (by contrast, you can be on opposite sides of a vacuum and hear each other, sooo) The ability for players to have someone to talk to on the other side of a shutter (it's not at all the same as talking over the radio, trust me) would open all kind of of opportunities, like hostage negotiations where you can't be shot at by rambo security, two civilians being able to talk to each other, being able to tell all nearby behind the shutters civilians to stay back Because, as things are now, if you're in an area with shutters all around you, radios are down, there is no way out, no way to see what is going on outside, no way to communicate with anyone. This is a terrible position to be in, and people are eventually going to log out or ghost, or go play something else. There is a point where you need to sacrifice a little bit of perceived grimdark realism to make things more fun for people.

-Structural weakness, Nanako? What are you even talking about. we are in a setting where there is magic purple glass that stops all heat from passing through, and shutters that you can fire lasers at all day without even scratching them. I don't think adding a small, thick window viewing hole is impossible by people who are actually engineers, not people pretending to play engineers. I recommend it be coded to not be laserable through, though, These aren't like big station viewing windows, they're tiny slots in the shutters you can peer through.

[Conservatron]

look i understand everything you're saying

but still, just no. You said you killed everyone opening a shutter, which goes back to my original 'if you aren't engineering, don't open shutters'

the only thing i agree with is that you should be able to hear across them.

[Nanako]

the only thing i agree with is that you should be able to hear across them.

 

I'm not sure how or if i could make speech work without vision, afaik hearing things is entirely tied to who can see the speaker

[Arrow768]

I do not support this, as shutters as a way of blocking the vision into a area have their uses.

Lets say you got space carp in an area --> Easiest thing: Drop the shutters --> They cant see you --> They wont come for you

[Nanako]

I do not support this, as shutters as a way of blocking the vision into a area have their uses.

Lets say you got space carp in an area --> Easiest thing: Drop the shutters --> They cant see you --> They wont come for you

I'd thought of this but i decided against mentioning it, because afaik firedoors are indestructible. It wouldn't matter if they could see you, they can't get you.

[Kaed]

look i understand everything you're saying

but still, just no. You said you killed everyone opening a shutter, which goes back to my original 'if you aren't engineering, don't open shutters'

the only thing i agree with is that you should be able to hear across them.

 

This is too short-sighted. There are no absolutes in a simulation game. Because life doesn't have absolutes. You can't just say 'If you're not X, you should never Y". Because people want to have fun in their spessman game that lasts 2 hours, rather than sitting alone in a sealed room no one can or will open.

And it will always be impossible to hear people you cannot see, unless the entire code is changed.

I don't see a compelling reason WHY we shouldn't be able to see the other side of shutters, other than 'noooo change is bad whiiiine'. I'm pretty sure the shutters are already invulnerable, so making it so lasers can't path through them would remove that being exploited. And allow people on either side to communicate, facilitating further roleplay in an emergency.

[Conservatron]

the only way i'd be ok with windows on firedoors is if they have 1 tile visibility like tinted glass.

and even then its still a no imo

[Kaed]

Could you perhaps give actual reasons why this is a bad idea, rather than just going noooooooooooo?

Thus far, I've seen vagueness (they have strategic purposes when opaque! (but I'm not going to elaborate on these, because they are self-evident to myself)), inaccurate assumptions (the carp will be able to attack me if he can see through the invulnerable shutter!), and a whole lot of engineering elitism from one person who continues to 'acknowledge' that what I am saying has merit but refuses to accept it because because they want to keep things how they are.

This suggestion is about an enhancement. By definition it is taking an aspect of the game and adding something to it. Simply saying 'we don't need it' is not actually a reason why something shouldn't be added or changed. There are plenty of things in the game that work fine, but could work BETTER. Paranoia that people will be dumb, dumb sheep and fuck everything up if you give them access to more data than blinking lights is also not only condescending, but is actively stifling to improvement.

There need to be actual, well thought out answers to why this is a bad idea. What problems will it cause, balance wise, that are not based on assumptions of how stupid people will be? I'm giving well thought out replies to refute people's points, and getting short one to two sentence answers that amounts to 'NOOOOOOOOOOO I DUN WANNA' intellectually. If you can't contribute something coherent to the thread, just don't .

[Guest]

Could you perhaps give actual reasons why this is a bad idea, rather than just going noooooooooooo?

 

I can.

Vision is a very important staple of the game, being able to analyze what's going on around your limited viewport range and adapt to the situation makes for a robust player.

BUT, limitation of vision (via opaque objects obstructing levels of vision) helps fulfill immersion and balances out people who are extremely well adjusted to the game and respond to issues as soon as they see them. We don't want players to be invincible and omniscient of what's going on most of the time, do we? It's fun when everyone is inhibited at the same level. It shows that everyone has limits, as opposed to everyone having an excess of available information that they practically should not have.

Most of us don't really want that, as that can lead to some spectacularly hilarious and impractical situations.

Being able to see through firelocks, which are often used by smart escaping antagonists to obstruct vision from security in addition to delaying the chase, would take away an important facet of vision limitation. This is one thing I wouldn't be a fan of changing, since I very much love the mechanical ramifications of forced near-sightedness, as it ironically adds a level of depth to lacking depth perception from a user perspective.