Greencomms Removal

This proposal aims to either completely remove or heavily restrict usage of the common radio channel, henceforth referred to as ‘greencomms’ within this document.

Reasoning

There are several ways which greencomms hinders gameplay:

  • Information spread
    • With unrestricted access to greencomms, station coordination is instantaneous and concise. While having the ability to call out any issue in a moments notice may seem beneficial at a surface level, this level of clarity impedes on the ability of station events to develop, reducing their impact value. With the removal of greencomms, events will now be given more opportunity to advance, without the risk of instant responses from the crew.

Example

A common complaint is that any “John Tider” can callout an antag over the radio the moment they see them, and the entire crew will fall into a learned response based on whatever was called out. This is undesirable because it leads into very repetitive gameplay, leaving very little room for nuance, stealth, or any plan which deviates from the norm. This in turn incentivizes antags against taking creative liberties out of fear of being caught.

  • Social and Departmental interaction
    • Common radio allows crewmembers to isolate themselves while performing their job. Why physically go to a department or a person and ask for what you need when you can just radio them? Without greencomms, departments will need to get more involved with each other in order to collaborate, which will in turn inspire more interactions and roleplay.
    • People often will use greencomms as a surrogate to contacting or talking to other people, rather than heading to a social space such as the bar. This will make people who want to talk have to travel to these locations, which in turn makes them more populated and used.
    • With the removal of greencomms, heads of staff have a greater impact on the shift for their ability to act as a conduit for interdepartmental communication. Information that is required to be expedited between departments will now go to each department’s head of staff and across the command radio channel, rather than publicly across the common radio channel. This encourages distinction between heads of staff and their departments, rather than treating heads of staff as simply another role within said department.

Considerations

  • The Antag-buff

    • This will make antagonists stronger and give them more leeway to get away with their crimes. However at the time of writing, the discrepancy between the power of antagonists and security is often what causes security to be targeted preemptively, as being caught is guaranteed and a devastating liability. With the removal of greencomms, antagonists can afford to be creative, without needing to annihilate security to progress their goals.
    • A consideration to offset this is an emergency channel to medical and security, which can be pinged via the PDA. It would send a notification that the person in question needs help, without providing further information.

  • Makes the station lonelier

    • This is a valid criticism, as it stands, there are roles that would not receive much social interaction outside of what they seek out outside of their job. However, we intend to offset this by providing more vectors of meaningful social interaction across all departments. This does require revealing the pain points to reveal the areas of improvement, but it is a priority as our Social Interaction and Collaborative Story Generator design pillars.
    • One of the considered methods of offsetting this is though a social media app, potentially with pictures that people could comment on.

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