Adds in radio fuzzing in maintenance

[PowerfulBacon]

About The Pull Request

Blocks outgoing signals while in maintenance.

Any outgoing radio messages will be fuzzy, although you will still see incoming messages as normal (similarly to how signal jamming usually works, partly because radio code doesn't make it easy to fuzz messages for specific users).

The following things are jammed while in maintenance:

• Comms messages go out, but will be fuzzy and unreadable (AI comms are not affected, nor are centcom or syndicate comms)
• Recieving comms messages is unaffected
• Suit sensors will have scrambled data
• AIs will be unable to track you through suit sensors
• Pinpointers will not function if you or your target are in maintenance

Why It's Good For The Game

The maintenance tunnels are a scary place, they should be able to serve as a home turf for antagonists and give advantages to those antagonists who act independantly and alone. The maintenance tunnels can't come to you, you have to decide to go to them.

Testing Photographs and Procedure

Messages come in normally:

Crew pinpointers break when taken into maintenance:

Changelog

🆑
add: Outgoing radio messages will become fuzzy if they originate from the maintenance tunnels.
add: Disruptions to the suit sensor and tracking network while the user is in maintenance.
/:cl:

[mrmanlikesbt]

Are syndicate contract pinpointers affected? If so, I don't think they should be considering how inaccurate they already are.

Maybe instead of whenever any level of jamming is applied to suit sensors and the returning health is just randomized, you could have it so if JAM_MINOR is active then the returning value is within a randomized 0-100 range? I do think having JAM_FULL should completely obfuscate your suit sensors

[PowerfulBacon]

Only crew pinpointers get jammed, jam full will make sensors not work at all (current behaviour of radio jammer)

[Fronsis]

The more i think about this PR, the worse it gets, in paper i see your points if i only think solely on Antag vs Victims vs Sec but this also raises a lot of issues and i don't think this is the way to approach what you intend to do

1- Signal Jammer will become less relevant to buy even if you have the camera and hallway advantage.

2- Let's be honest NO ONE enjoys the Ion Anomaly and the only reason people bear with it it's because it goes away denying basic communication it's just annoying, it's not fun.

3- This will make finding bodies 150% more difficult, we already had a good balance since the refresh rate of sensors was changed, you no longer see insta-security or paramedics arriving in 0.1 seconds, unecessary change.

4- Antagonists have plenty of tools to ''shut'' their target one was made by you on #11911 (Even if people have given negative feedback but that's for another time) Cultists stuns, Heretics mute (and even more with your proposed rebalance on discord think-tank), Sleepy pen, mute toxin, drinks that make you mute, EMP, taking advantage of ION anomalies, etcetera we don't need to hugbox antagonists to this extent

5- One that i think it's extremely important and it's above Antag vs target vs sec: You fuck up basic communication on a normal scenario.
Are you not thinking how much of a pain in the ass is to roundstart trying to talk with your friends/co-workers because one is in mainteance trying to call you over because they found something cool but they can't because ''muh dangerous maint with tinfoil covered walls''

You fuck up people that get trapped by accident (Lots of newbies run across this, it's a classic for janitors with the cart for example)

You obliterate anyone trying to do gimmicks using the maint rooms, barber shop? private psychiatrist office? private bars? shops? questionable surgery bay or engineering project? a cozy home to invite friends over? Delayed, becomes a pain in the ass for the sake of a random rebalance of antagonist when it ends up affecting people that has nothing to do with it.

6- Coordinating sec becomes more of a pain in the ass, even if we had #11280 merged (which is ready to go but blocked for some reason) it becomes useless, you'll force Security to move together or in pairs, which is fine that i don't mind but you end up making things worse for your ''antag buff'' because now you'll be facing the entire sec force that's moving on a conga-line instead of a random officer that you have a higher chance to kill and advance your antagonist agenda from there

Those

antagonists who act independantly and alone

Need to be smart and use the plenty of tools at their disposal to antagonize and accomplish silent kills, in fact a lot of people do stealth kills nowadays, they don't need an entire maintenance shut down just for their commodity when it affects the entire crew just to hugbox, it's also a #skill issue on their part.

[BarteG44]

i'd still want to at least see it test merged. Even if it screws up balance, it sounds like an interesting change.

[itsmeow]

I like this idea but I think we need more tools and mechanics that reduce its overall impact.

Reducing accuracy of pinpointers and sensors rather than making them useless overall (e.g., you can determine the general area / side of the station). So recovering bodies doesn't become nigh impossible. Also, adding intercoms in some deep maintenance areas making communication possible in more select, intentional spots, for those without other comms methods and a little bit of cunning.

It might also be worth making the emergency station-bounced radios able to resist this effect (maybe with limited uses?).

Do note for the people stating it makes comms in maints impossible: That's not true, you can use NTNet/ PDA Messenger just fine.

Essentially, comms from maints need to be more intentional now, rather than

"Y -> HELP MED MAINTS!!"

[DarnTheMarn]

I don't see the complaints stated above as all that valid. The problem with ion anomaly, jammers, and stuff like EMP's is that they are done arbitrarily to you. Going into maint is your decision. If you don't want the risk, stay out of maint and take the long way around somewhere. If you know a killer is in maint, don't go in without a battle buddy. A rambo wannabe charging into maint at the first sound of someone getting 5 brute is exactly the type of person that should be ganked in maint.

[Fronsis]

From a IC perspective on a normal shift where nothing out of the ordinary happens, at best people should worry about the questionable maintenance rooms, the dirtyness, darkness and suspicous blood but besides that it offers interesting rooms for people to do gimmicks with or loot and that's when the antagonist enter at play with their surprise appearance that disrupt that ''normal shift''

Historically in Bee and other servers maintenance has been a mix of ''danger'' and ''opportunities'', there is a reason why Assistants used to line up to get maint access before it was removed, to loot and use the rooms to set up gimmicks, not everyone has the ''Send to All'' PDA messaging, not everyone want to bother the AI to advertise whatever they're doing, i don't know why something that used to be A to B needs to become A to F just because we're hugboxing the antagonists when they already have many tools to achieve that same goal.

If you know a killer is in maint, don't go in without a battle buddy

Sure, that i agree, in my case it's very easy for me to adapt and order my officers to pair up, but that will just go to one of Bacon's original complaints from months ago where the antag can't 1v1 because they get surrounded by 30 officers in less than one minute *shrug, i'm just thinking about the players that are neither antag nor security that will get the short stick of this when this is unecessary, if everything what Kat suggested is more balanced because at the very least you have an option to stay communicated if you put an effort for it instead of randomly denying the comms of the entirty of maint that ruins the flow of communication and information in non-dangerous times (not necessarily relevant to reporting a crime or antag related)

Also about the PDA's i can already predict messages being sent by quick copy-pasting, walking with the pda tab open or people rushing HoP office vendor and Lawyer office to get the Send All cartdrige.

Lastly, Bacon i've witnessed a lot of your antags rounds these recents times and i've noticed most of the time as a regular traitor you choose the Comms Jammer as part of your loadout and i've even seen you say it makes everything easy to go stealth and accomplish your objectives, this change basically amplifies it and i'm not sure what you're trying to achieve other than making stealth things easier when you should be well aware that everyone that has a decent amount of hours on Bee would rather see an interesting gimmick or something loud than a random greentext of someone who stole a hand tele and did a random bomb on cargo that makes you go ''Oh X was an antag? i had no clue!!!'' the more experienced and robust players will just have an even easier time to do stuff they're already good at as an antagonist and the new players will still be stuck in maint trying to ask for help while no one can even use a pinpointer to get to them.

The issue of communications, body recoveries and so much more are still present and all the downsides do not, in my opinion, justify this absurd change to maintenance.

[Fronsis]

Anyways in short this boils down to: Is this fun/enjoyable for the general players on a shift? What do we earn? What do we lose? Why did people like/dislike the current system? And when i find myself answering these type of questions i feel like this commodity for antags doesn't weight properly against the current system in terms of enjoyment or fun, i wouldn't mind a few testmerges of this of course just to get more feedback but these were my starting thoughts when reading the Why is it good for the game.

[DarnTheMarn]

antag can't 1v1 because they get surrounded by 30 officers in less than one minute

I think the idea here is that if you have to meet up before heading in, that'll take more than one minute to organize.