Increase difficulty of tac-comp scans
plz no insta scan

Making a scan take ten to twenty seconds would mostly solve the issue I have with them, but I'm unsure if anyone else thinks it's a problem or not. Therefore, this thread.

Perhaps we could add a nano or piece of chrome that interferes with electronic scans, allowing you to resist. But as previously mentioned, I don't see how someone is meant to resist a laser.

I don't think that there's anything else that needs to be added code-wise to the scanner, unless you want to add something like I mentioned earlier.

I can imagine a Judge standing on a street corner trying to scan thousands of people walking by them mid-day on Gold.

This doesn't have to do with the TAC-COMP being abused by PCs though. It has to do with the fact that the scan is instant and there is no way the person on the other end can react to it. Making it last long enough for someone to move rooms would be way more RP than just inputting a command without giving a chance for the person on the other end.

Makes perfect sense

Sure, you can sneak off AFTER you've been already scanned but by that point you're done for.

Like Necro said, it'd have people actually change their meta up to rely on their teammates more, hold them in place etc. etc.

Just like how other people with legal/illegal identifying tools can't do everything by themselves.

Was I shadow'd so they were able to complete the photograph process? Maybe but it didn't seem that way.

My expectation is that WJF players will police themselves. If/when I wanted to harass a random person on ground of suspicion as a dirty mixer - I'd aim at them, freeze them in the room, tell them to halt, and actually engage with them. Not just point my Tac-Comp at every baka who walks in off the bat.

We talk a lot about providing people experiences on the bgbb. I think the WJF should be the held to the highest standard in this regard.

I'm a little surprised they're not policing themselves too and maybe that needs to be addressed. Being a Judge involves a definite level of trust that you're not going to be meta/abuse the many tools at your disposal in ways you shouldn't for game balance.

@necro I think they should be at an advantage already, what with being The Law and all, but I'm definitely in agreement that it can (and has) been used poorly for small-worlding bullshit.

I'd like to see how it changes first with a more OOC-focused policing of its use, because I think a coded change would increase tedium for both players and staff in situations outside of 'I gotta escape Steele before he scans me and sees I'm wanted for stealing baby carrots.'.

but too bad, right, they should just xhelp about it and grow a pair :)

That's the risk of going topside. You got caught. That's the risk.

Maybe require the tac-comp be 'aimed' at somebody so you at least have the chance to flee.

Voila.

Judge players who abuse things like this will not be judges for long.

Kinda why I like the scans to be not everyone-you-pass, but only when there is some sort of RP behind it. Otherwise, you would have an almost endless stream of scans to sort through, not just the selected players.

You are literally never not under observation of some kind, and we have always been at war with Eurasia.

It's kind of like saying "at least now you can't look at disguised people's names to actually find out who they are now that we have actual disguised names, people sure would prefer what we have now over what we had!"

Yet we added disguised ambient pop on top of that and it was better for the game, ultimately, no?

Subconciously we're all open to doing meta and I think it just plays a role so a minor code change wouldn't affect much.

@Kiwi

It's not really about getting caught doing topside crime. It's about walking on Gold after running crates or updating your clone and suddenly a Judge PC out of nowhere decides to scan you and do all the things to you without giving you a chance to react and then walks off without RP before and after the scanning. Do you not see how that's harmful to an RPI game?

Like Necronex said, if xhelping GMs is the cure, then the windup time would be the prevention so that players don't have to xhelp a GM only after damage is already done.

I think this is a made-up and inflated problem.

How many of the people saying ALL Judges are scanning EVERYONE are standing around and watching the person in question doing it?

s m d h

I KNOW MY RIGHTS PIG AM I BEING DETAINED AM I FREE TO LEAVE IM EXERCISING MY RIGHT TO TRAVEL THIS IS POLICE BRUTALITY WHERE IS YOUR MANAGER LET ME SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER WHERES YOUR PROBABLE CAUSE

The WJF already almost can't catch alias hoppers(even with the alias lock), and the guards at the gate just outright don't update the database so fresh chips are not in the database at all(which is what prompts WJF people to be fast on the scan in the first place, so they can actually enforce the Law and ID people).

Recent events have shown is that "no crime topside" isn't real, it happens. You just have to put a put more effort into it than "I wanted to walk up and shoot this guy."

s m d h

Just because fresh SIC chips are not at the database does not really excuse people just spamming commands and walking away without a single RP interaction with other players either.

If we're gonna be using the arguement that during this period of increased terrorism that players should be scanned more thoroughly, then there could be actually RP behind it instead of "input command, instascan, walk away". That's actually a great RP and plot point. I'll list a few things you can actually do instead of doing this instascan walk away thing.

1- Gather up in front of lev stations as a semi-formal checkpoint. Scan people that come out of them.

2- RP you're also scanning ambient pop.

3- Stop people, look at them for signs of infection.

4- Stop people, frisk them to make sure they're not carrying any contraband.

5- Stop people, ask them if they have seen anything suspicious.

6- Scan them, and then RP with the person on the other end to FILL OUT the rest of the TAC-COMP data.

These are all things you can do before or after a TAC-COMP scan to actually provide RP experience to the person instead of just instascanning and walking away without any RP and like Reefer said, we are here to provide each other RP and experiences, right? The RP and experience you get is severely limited by the fact that people simply abuse the instascan thing and walk off without a need to actually RP with the person since when they DO input the command, it's all done, there's no point to further engage with them.

@Grey0

I've never argued this makes it easier for topside crime to happen. Just that it provides more roleplay and allows the playerbase to engage with each other more effectively instead of avoiding each other.

If there was RP, you'd might have a chance to avoid it.

I'm actually in agreement that people should not be randomly scanning anyone who walks by and shouldn't be doing so without RP. But we're all acting here like the 10-20 seconds you proposed in your original post isn't somehow going to make it so no one who doesn't want to be scanned won't be scanned. You can leave a room, come back and leave a room in that period. Multiple times if it's on the higher end.

That's not a good solution.

Even Ranger's post in the last post is that this really isn't about delay. It's people doing it without RP. That's the concern. If you think a delay will cause people to RP, I think you're wrong. The point of a delay is just an overarching bandaid 'fix', a loose term here, to cover the meat of the issue - lack of RP in you getting scanned. This is an issue that's handled through OOC training to people with access to these tools.

You're not contributing to this thread by saying "oh it's not actually happening, players are just complaining about imaginary boogeyman" because clearly by the tendency in this thread it is currently happening.

And yes, coded solutions are the best solution to meta or powergamey situations in Sindome because you can't expect everyone to policy themselves all the time no matter how many yellow walls of text you shove through.

I've been royally fucked over through meta assumptions by exploits in the code. The GMs looked at it but there was nothing I could do since the die had already been rolled. Guess what? These players were max UE veterans with years of experience and their malicious intent was all the same.

What do you do when you add a coded delay, making it so people have to stop to RP, but the person you're trying to scan, knowing they have a limited time to bounce, don't RP and just walk off.

There. It's the same issue only in reverse now..

The difference being there's skill checks in determining whether you can attack, disarm, or grapple somebody in movement.

For tac-comps this is obviously not the case.

Even for cybernetic scanners and weapons detectors there's a "processing" period to which you can respond, get out of the way, disarm the person scanning you, etc.

The "frequency of incidents" you're trying to claim isn't, at all, taking into account that a majority of them are hypothetical or people have no clue why they were scanned to begin with.

I am positive if this was an actual problem and people were xhelping about the frequency, which again implies these players have access to those sort of statistics, then the GMs would be working to circumvent that... which they said they would've..

And by that, yes, I am contributing to the conversation when it's totally fabricated and a bunch of players are just jumping up and down to unnecessarily neuter a part of the game.

Maybe we should all chill until Johnny, Slither, or Glitch have a chance to look at it.

Help farming

Specifically there is a mention in there that players should be targeting NPCs and PCs in roughly equal numbers. It seems like a similar logic should be applied to scanning.

The only other thing I want to say is that reading between the lines here, the sense I got is that one or two of the recently promoted Cadets has been going crazy with the TACCOMP. Fail them out of the WJF as an example to others of what happens when you abuse your power. Include this incident as training to future Cadets. Frame it in IC terms like, "Remember when Cadet Baka overwhelmed the scanning database with thousands of worthless cans? Don't be a baka."

This is the best solution.

1) Vee

2) Hemo

3) Complaint BB about OpFor