Scramble names displayed on radio into unique identifiers

[Scheveningen]

It is not quite fun for random idjits to magically know the wizard's name without said wizard having already told the entire crew who he is.

It's unreasonable to assume administrators would be able to enforce this to a reasonable extent where this immersion-breaking behavior is even punishable if it's done maliciously.

My proposition is as follows:

 

• Each character as part of their set-up has a unique radio identifier scrambled in 8 characters with various numbers and letters. Once it is rolled in character creation it can never be changed, it is set in stone forever until you make a new character. Your ID could be an embarassing S3XMOLE1 and you could do nothing about it besides ask for a regeneration of the identifier by an admin.
• The radio UID for each character remains the same every round and no two characters can have the exact same UID. Getting a new headset doesn't change the UID as it's based entirely on employee DNA recognition.
  
• Certain antagonist types get randomly scrambled hashes and the antagonists may choose to modify their headset to adopt hashes of existing crewmembers if necessary, by default the hashes are always ########.
  
• Names of characters no longer display on the radio. Instead, the radio UIDs substitute displayed names. For the AI and borgs, if the UID belongs to an existing crewmember it displays their name instead, even if it's actually the fault of a modified headset. To ensure this isn't entirely flawed, if the modified headset wearer is attempting to adopt the individual's identity the synthetics will see the text displayed in italics if the perp is not wearing a voice changer. Otherwise it acts as normal.
  
• Radio UIDs can also be looked up on telecommunications to identify who is abusing communications or not. Each headset upon examination also displays its last registered UID. Voice changing abuse may also be identified in this way with display notifications that state there are audio distortion anomalies but it is more subtle.
  
• The heads of staff now all have telecommunications monitoring modules on their computers in their office, allowing them to see who's abusing their headset, however, this is more limited than the main monitoring console in that it cannot identify anything other than the radio UID and the message that was sent. This allows for information balance.

 

As an example for display:

Now;

[Command] Joss Nann says, "Have you ever had a dreams that, that you, um, you had, you'd, you would, you could, you'd do, you would, you want, you, you could do so, you, you'd do, you could, you, you want, you want him to do you so much you could do anything?"

Instead:

[Command] [s3XMOLE1] says, "Have you ever had a dreams that, that you, um, you had, you'd, you would, you could, you'd do, you would, you want, you, you could do so, you, you'd do, you could, you, you want, you want him to do you so much you could do anything?"

My proposed system would create more interesting scenarios in terms of radio communications and transmissions of information thereof. This has the mild consequence of completely invalidating crew banter over radio comms since nobody knows who is talking, but a dash of proper radio comms SOP would allow people to transmit the necessary information in a reasonable way. That, and why are you sitting at your desk like a slob expecting to get social interaction that way? If you want to chat with your clique you should go through the effort of finding them to chat them up instead, which would certainly encourage more close-up interaction for less important matters.

[Azande]

no thanks. This is a game, I shouldn't need to remember 50 hashes to know who my friends are.

[Kaed]

I like the idea, but I acknowledge what Azande is saying is a valid point - the casuals/normies who don't like to think too hard about things in game would be put off.

That's apparently a bad thing, from what I hear every time someone wants to complicate the format.

[Arrow768]

If this is implemented then it would need the following features:

• The ability to assign a name to a Radio-Hash (per user) -> So each user can name the radio hashes he knows.
  
• The option to persist that between rounds.
  

 

Every other option would be utterly annoying, because you can not expect players to remember all these radio hashes and you can not expect them to reset the names every round.

However, this comes at a price:

All the hash to name lists would need to be loaded into the ram for each player on the server

For each message that is transmitted, it would need to go through each players "hash to name" list and replace the hash with a name if it exists.

I am not sure if that is worth the overhead.

[sdtwbaj]

I see what you're trying to do, but a better way to handle it would be adding a "recognition" system, similar to HL2RP. In HL2RP, you can only see character descriptions. Their names and voices in chat display the desc of their name or of their voice, until you use their recognition system that enables anyone within a certain range to know who you are. For example, you could whisper "im Grey Tidingson", and then with F2 I think it is, go into a menu and let everyone in-range recognize you, so now instead of "[grey jumpsuit, bald, mid 30s...] says, "Hello" " it becomes "Grey Tidingson says, 'Hello"" to those that can recognize him.

now, we don't have to use descriptions because we're much more visual than HL2RP, it would simply be an 'Unknown says, "Hello"".

People with their IDs visible could possibly be temporary recognized if you examine them while they have their ID on.