Maint access restriction on code red

[Eler00]

Do you know how code red says people should stay in their departments yet they gladly wander maint even with cult and shadowlings around?

Do you know how maint access is completely pointless because everyone has it?

Do you know how the station usually goes to code red and never comes down because there's no downsides to it at all?

 

I think I've found a solution for all three problems at once. Let me elaborate:

Make it so doors that grant access to maint work differently based on the alert level. At green or blue, they do not require any access at all to open, so that everyone can use them. But when the alert is raised to red, they require maint access to open. At the same time, we could remove maint access from civilians, science and other jobs that have no legitimate reason to go into maint. They can still go greytiding in maint on green or blue, but on red it becomes a lot more inconvenient for them. It gives maint access a reason for existing, makes red alert actually inconvenient so as to discourage having it on constantly and should limit the amount of assistants lurking in maint when there's shadowlings that "just so happen" to be converted.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Edit: In an emergency that requires general access to maint like a blob in maint, you could still grant emergency maint access, which is I believe a function that's rarely if ever used?

 

Edited August 14, 2018 by TDS

[McRamon]

Sounds logical but antags will suffer from it so hard.

 

If instead of removing access restrictions from maint which is pointless, there was a button that made maint airlocks only engineering or security access only, and required red alert to do so, that could possibly be good

[Benjaminfallout]

The main problem I see with it is people getting locked in maintenance when it goes to red. You don't often see it being announced beforehand.

[MarsMond]

As a side note about the emergency maint access: It removes all access requirements, that includes the normal access required. So a maint door to medbay could be used by anyone. Which could lead to stuff like dropping to blue to fight a blob (midround one), return to red once dealt with for the prior reason of the alert.
It might be worth giving a second toggle for the maintenance access you can swipe for, toggling whether maint access is required or not, which might only work for a certain time if it sets it to the option that does the opposite behaviour of the alert, requiring a reconfirmation if it's needed to be kept. Should also need a reason for the toggle, so it could be handled why the captain uses red as basically blue alert and not blue alert.

There also should be a grace period before shutting down maintenance access, to allow people to leave maint before they get locked in rather than out.

[ZN23X]

Coming from a sec main, maint is the only safe place antags have for the most part, restricting thier maint access while not restricting secs access would hurt antags wayyy too much.

I think the alert levels need more of a rework than maint access does, but thats a whole nother topic that regularly gets kicked around.

Edited August 14, 2018 by ZN23X

[Rurik]

I'd be willing to try it, but as others said, non engi antags will hurt a lot. I could easily see more antags going engineering roundstart or trying to get a transfer just to get around this.

[Eler00]

Consensus is that science is the overpowered antag department, right? Giving engineering something else to go for it isn't the worst thing ever.

[Biffthegreat]

Automatically restricting access to maint on red might be problematic.

Sure, SOP says people should stay in department - but that is just standard operating procedure.

There are many code-red situations where maint access is useful to the station and its crew. For example:

Blob - where crew can use maint to get to it.

Spiders - where crew can use maint to get away from them.

Nuke ops - if a bomb goes off in (say) medbay, maint allows crew to escape.

 

Surely in an emergency more access would be available - so you can escape danger. The problem is that this is a game and sometimes shitty people want their characters to "get into danger" so they can be cult or thrall.

 

And yet, where it is problematic (Cult/Shadowling) with people almost self-antagging can be solved by decent security or command leadership; either sweeping maint in pairs, making proper use of stop & search or asking AI to bolt down sections.

 

Limiting maint access would severely hamper antags - especially clings/vampires. Could experienced players get around this using eva/gateway/outposts etc - of course. But it would limit the experience for inexperienced antags. It would also make sling/cult laughably easy to stop. 

[pinatacolada]

On 8/15/2018 at 10:25 AM, Biffthegreat said:

The problem is that this is a game and sometimes shitty people want their characters to "get into danger" so they can be cult or thrall.

This is ahelpable behavior afaik