New Telescience

[ProperPants]

 

Bring back Telescience. Everyone loves it, and most of the time, the RD ends up making it anyway.

 

[davidchan]

 

Telescience is still in the code, the starter equipment was removed because people were abusing it to steal anything not bolted down/accelerate antag objectives without using any antag resources (teleport a murder target to your pad, promise to send them back because accident then shunt them into deep space, ect...)

 

Telescience right now requires RnD to be completed to at least bluespace 6 as well as miners bringing back diamonds and/or 5+ bluespace crystals to build the machinery.

 

Also, giving Science their own teleporter on the network is a terrible idea, you'd have people gunning right for voidsuits and the hand tele at round start regardless of antag status or not.

 

[Keroman]

 

Maybe set it to people with bridge access only? That would severely limit the number of suspects if things started going missing in rooms where it was obvious nobody has emagged or hacked their way in.

 

Even if a traitor scientist emagged their way into the teleporter room the pool of suspects grows by just the people in the Science department.

 

Though I like the possible placement of the room I do not like how close it is to the maintenance tunnels. A random traitor without access to that area would only need to get through 2 doors to get in and start mucking around with a teleporter, unless the console could be access-locked too.

 

Overall while I would like to see a telesci room added I recognize it would cause a lot of problems that would need to be fixed or accounted for in some way.

 

[Shadeykins]

I don't really think the department that has all the things, can make all the things, and wields an ungodly amount of power over other departments needs more perks.

[Spacemanspark]

I don't really think the department that has all the things, can make all the things, and wields an ungodly amount of power over other departments needs more perks.

[Plotron]

 

I don't really think the department that has all the things, can make all the things, and wields an ungodly amount of power over other departments needs more perks.

 

[Tauka Usanake]

I'd still like to throw Telescience out on to the Science Outpost whenever it gets reinstated

[Arenn]

The problem being, I don't think many people want it to return under science's control. Having the division take the time to construct the machinery is well and good, by then, anything that people want secured is secure, et cetera. An antag depending on Telescience being set up is going to fail 4/10 times because the amount of time it would be left unguarded long enough to do antag things is piss-poor odds.

[Dinarzad]

 

Personally speaking, T-sci is a problem right now on many fronts and this is gonna be a Wall o' Text, so... apologies.

Prefacing this thing with I really like T-sci, but it is a balancing nightmare

You can't have it at round start because then people just steal whatever with it.

You can't just lock it off like this either because then it may as well be removed, frankly, it BARELY sees the light of day. I Can count on one hand the amount of times I have seen T-sci rebuilt. It's a pain in the ass just to USE, almost requiring a seperate tool to make the calculations in any kind of decent time. It's not fun.

 

It's gotta change on a more core level and I'm not wholly sure how, but this is just an idea I had.

The idea I always had was it was more of an engineering thing then a science thing and it was more 'Star Trek'-ish. By that I mean, currently teleporting something is pretty much instant. It takes a moment and then the Teleport happens which is instant.

What if instead it took time, again like a Star Trek transporter? A channeled effect that is very visible, like when Swarmers are eating an item.

If the object/person moves form the very obviously being Teleported coordinates, then congrats you get empty air.

 

To make sure T-sci doesn't just "Lol rob the bridge" at round start, could make an alternative version of the bluespace beacons, that interrupt the Teleport in an area around it. Dump one on the bridge and congrats, you cannot teleport into or out of the bridge using T-sci.

On the FLIP side though, you could maybe, finally make those bluespace beacons not totally worthless and give RnD a REASON to make them, make it so T-sci machines can "Lock onto" them for a Destination.

 

Right now, you have to do asinine calculations or drudge through a third party tool to make said calculations just to teleport one item. And if you're trying to be helpful and teleport that Miner's corpse/dying frame to medical bay, you then have to make a SECOND set of calculations to plonk him into medbay, which is something you can't really do unless you have a coordinate map of the station. If he wasn't dead before, he probably is now.

By making T-sci take a channel time to teleport AND making it incredibly obvious it's happening, I feel it's not that bad of a crime to make teleporting to a location a bit easier to off-set the loss. You could additionally make T-sci able to lock onto GPS units in the same way, I'm sure miners would be thrilled.

 

TL;DR:

Give T-sci a channel time instead of insta-ports.

Make it super obvious T-sci is trying to teleport stuff when it's being channeled.

Anti-Bluespace Beacons that can put a stop to T-sci shenanigans in an area around them. Probably put them on bridge and armory at round start. RnD can make more for people that want them, like in brig cells probably.

Bluespace Beacons get a lot more use, can become easy lock on points for T-sci to be a destination.

Maybe do it for GPS units also, or maybe special bluespace GPS units, fuck if I know. It's an idea. Probably bad.

Maybe put T-sci into Engineering (Under a new name) to not give Science all the power of the universe. (Or not, I mean I don't really care, people just said they don't want Science to have all the things.)

 

Again sorry for wall of text, buuuuuut. There it is. Probably a nightmare to code, but I honestly think Telescience needs more in-depth changes to make it more possible to balance, because as it is exists in it's current state, it's not only overpowered but it isn't fun either having to use third party tools to just slog through shit on every single fucking teleport, even when you're not being a shitter.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

I don't really think the department that has all the things, can make all the things, and wields an ungodly amount of power over other departments needs more perks.

 

Couldn't have stated it better myself.

 

I will add this though:

 

The amount of people who knew how to telescience insanely well was very small, but those who did/could do so had an insanely dramatic impact on how the round progressed.

 

[Lolzyking]

 

perhaps their could be a non science telescience/teleportation job tasked with body retrieval and moving lazy people around.

 

You could either add it to cargo, or make it a karma job and put it in the teleporter room, and expand it using the empty space behind the captains room.

 

[Plotron]

 

perhaps their could be a non science telescience/teleportation job tasked with body retrieval and moving lazy people around.

"HALP! AM BEING ABSORB!!! HALOGEN IN MORGUE SUCKING ME!!!"

"Sure thing, I've got your sensors."

*click, woosh, bam bam, smoke errrywhere*

"THX FOR SAVIN ME M8"

"No probs."

---------

That aside, I do remember some cool rounds when we had tele-rescue service back in the day. It was quite... powerful.

 

[Dinarzad]

 

Why not put it in Engineering?

They have a total of 3 Non-karma jobs (Engie, Atmos Tech an CE.)

And if they can make a fuckin contained singularity for the purposes of generating power, I dare say they are probably smart enough to know how to work bluespace a little.

 

Can even dump that where the assembly line is.

Main problem putting it outside science is really just proximity to Bridge and Armory, you need less upgrades to reach that far. Bridge would probably even be available at round start unless you REALLY crippled it.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

perhaps their could be a non science telescience/teleportation job tasked with body retrieval and moving lazy people around.

"HALP! AM BEING ABSORB!!! HALOGEN IN MORGUE SUCKING ME!!!"

"Sure thing, I've got your sensors."

*click, woosh, bam bam, smoke errrywhere*

"THX FOR SAVIN ME M8"

"No probs."

---------

That aside, I do remember some cool rounds when we had tele-rescue service back in the day. It was quite... powerful.

 

I'M NOT EVEN SAFE ON THE FORUMS ANYMORE

 

; - ;

 

[Plotron]

 

Can even dump that where the assembly line is.

 

They have an unused gravity generator room.

 

And yes, Bridge would be... easily reachable.

 

[davidchan]

 

The only place that would even be remotely balanced would be to put telescience in the bridge teleporter room or nearby (shunting gravity back to engineering maybe?)

 

Make it a Bridge/Command access room, So Captain, Heads of Staff, Blueshield and NT Rep (And Magistrate?) would all have access to it. Protocol would be much how gateway is now, Captain's permission should be sought before fiddling with it, but if someone wants to fiddle with it they can request access to the room. Would make for a very interesting play if a Blueshield knew how to work it (or had someone show them) so they could recall heads to them as needed (so long as they don't have the disk)

 

It's not terribly hard to hack into teleporter or gravity generator as it stands right now, so an antag that wanted to use it could easily bust their way in, but the close proximity to the bridge and tell tale sound of the telescience gear working would make it likely HoP, Captain or anyone on the bridge would hear and be able to investigate.

 

[Dinarzad]

 

The only place that would even be remotely balanced would be to put telescience in the bridge teleporter room or nearby (shunting gravity back to engineering maybe?)

 

Make it a Bridge/Command access room, So Captain, Heads of Staff, Blueshield and NT Rep (And Magistrate?) would all have access to it. Protocol would be much how gateway is now, Captain's permission should be sought before fiddling with it, but if someone wants to fiddle with it they can request access to the room. Would make for a very interesting play if a Blueshield knew how to work it (or had someone show them) so they could recall heads to them as needed (so long as they don't have the disk)

 

It's not terribly hard to hack into teleporter or gravity generator as it stands right now, so an antag that wanted to use it could easily bust their way in, but the close proximity to the bridge and tell tale sound of the telescience gear working would make it likely HoP, Captain or anyone on the bridge would hear and be able to investigate.

 

I sorta like that idea, actually. Given how high profile T-sci is, it does fit to put it on the bridge and if it's related to teleporting would make sense to put it next to the Teleporter, as one would assume the two systems are somewhat related.

 

[Kluys]

 

Mapped in telescience will not come back. Its to much off a balance issue and the current situation was made because people liked it while others were discussing completely nuking the entire thing. The impact on gameplay it has is simply to great no matter how you twist it.

 

This is made progressively worse by the fact that its completely possible and quite easy for some to create your own calculator. In fact I have my own calculator that I made in excell.

 

[scrubmcnoob]

Tele science is really OP, it does not make sense for the gear to be at round start. Let people work for it, science already has enough other toys to play with.