Fuck Almayer comms, use station bouncers

[ThePiachu]

I've seen a few people trying to lock themselves in Almayer comms at the end of the round to repair it and hold it off against xenos. A good number of CEs die this way, some synths on occasion, and it often ends up just delaying the round as the rows and rows of barricades are erected to protect the comms APC.

How about an alternative strategy - just print a bunch of station bouncer radios. They are cheap to make. Print a few early round and distribute them across all the major rooms. When xenos hijack a ship, print a bunch more and toss them everywhere. Leave one next to every ERT landing site. This way you will have a way to communicate with everyone the moment xenos hit and you will be able to spend your precious metal and manpower somewhere more productive.

[davidofmk771]

Intercoms still work after the crash if the power is still on. Start flipping on those mics so people can get in touch.

[Renomaki]

sadly, it would be pretty meta to do this in advance the way you describe.

However, bounced radios are HORRIBLY underused, being quite useful back in the day when Ice's Tcomms was MILES from LZ1. Hell, once as CO, I tired to create a radioman role that involved the use of bounced radios, back when people were still struggling to adapt to the new comms update...

... Most people didn't give a shit, though...

[Bulaven]

Printing a shitload of radios and keeping them in stock on the Almayer might be considered Meta by some of the more Role-play sensitive folks in the audience.

However, I see creating a 'Radioman' from the get-go is actually a brilliant idea which I fully endorse.

[Sulaboy]

Suggest adding more emergency tool boxes around the ship. They have crowbars, flashlights, and station bounced radios. You wouldn't need to print them off if people could just pop open the emergency supplies.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

However, bounced radios are HORRIBLY underused

Yes, they really are.

Intercoms still work after the crash if the power is still on. Start flipping on those mics so people can get in touch.

Your usually moving too quickly to make use of them.

Suggest adding more emergency tool boxes around the ship. They have crowbars, flashlights, and station bounced radios. You wouldn't need to print them off if people could just pop open the emergency supplies.

Completely agree and good suggestions, i think the ships could definitely use some more easily accessible handheld radios/emergency toolboxes.

Im glad you made this post OP.

[Davidchan]

How about, and bear with me on this one, the drop ship only wrecks the area where it lands and doesn't cripple the entire ship. Comms going down when the DS strikes the brig is absurd.

[Grubstank]

How about, and bear with me on this one, the drop ship only wrecks the area where it lands and doesn't cripple the entire ship. Comms going down when the DS strikes the brig is absurd.

I would like to see this. It's a military ship. Even if we suspend disbelief enough to assume that it has no AA defenses to take down an oncoming transport shuttle, it's absurd that every subsystem would be taken down at once.
Speaking from a balance perspective, I believe that the majority of rooms remaining powered would actually improve gameplay. The devs constantly nerf whatever holdout becomes the meta. By enabling power, you actually give the marines a much more varied end-of-round gameplay (ie, they have options other than "banzai charge the crash site and pray")

[Retrokinesis]

I always make sure to bring one with me as a transport PO, synth, or the rare times I'm sent as groundside SO. It lets you talk to the ship before comms are brought online and, if there are any survivors carrying radios of their own, they'll hear you and will be able to radio in with their location. People on the Almayer won't hear the survivor and might think you're talking to yourself, but I get someone on the other end fairly often and it makes perfect sense that personnel deploying on what is supposed to be a rescue mission would bring some way of attempting to contact survivors. It's also very useful for keeping in contact with command during an evac when comms going down is possible-to-likely and screaming at the CIC to call the ship up if you're about to be eaten or the like.

As for intercoms, something a lot of people don't seem to know is that you can talk into them without actually turning the microphone on by standing near them and prefacing your messages with .i instead of whatever channel you'd normally use. This will work even if you're nested near one or otherwise physically unable to move enough to turn the microphone on. Good for laying on the floor of the dropship and screaming at the POs to launch because a runner is chewing on your leg.

[Bulaven]

Come to think of it, wouldn't you think that a combat vessel would have some sort of failsafe on, at the very least, communications? A bit of reinforcing so that it has a chance of surviving, instead of having to switch to (Unreliable) secondary systems such as the intercom?

I don't like saying this, but as it stands, the ship appears more and more like Tiny Tim, hobbling around on crutches, in danger of expiring prematurely, an early death brought on by polio. Difficult enough to try and organize things at the end of the round, but now it's a situation where communication is more reliably performed by Chipmunks with tiny messenger bags.

[Davidchan]

I just want to know why it's a feature for every door to become unpowered but there isn't a o2 cabinet with a crowbar in every room given how easy it is for late joins to get strande in Cryosdorms or prep rooms

[ThePiachu]

Remember - Almayer is a shitty ship, and if it's run SS13 style, you would expect it to be in an even worse shape.