Un-nerfing thermals, with a twist.

[Sundance]

Maybe it'd be better to give the detective more avenues for actual forensic science than magic x-ray vision.

I agree that other detective stuff should be improved. In fact, I've already made a thread about it: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4640

Life without thermals is grand. It even has me using the cameras for a change!

Spying is great, but the actual CCTV system is god fucking awful (general aft area 5 - where the fuck is that, etc) CCTV camera's can be improved a fuck-ton (i.e: make it either grouped like medical wing -etc, or even better make it work like hitting points on a map)


However neither of those points take away from the fact that thermals right now are as about as useful as a wet fart.
Leaving thermals as they are is not the solution. They are useless because:
A) Cloakers can be uncloaked easily these days. They can't go off firing shit while invisible.
B) Cloak of Darkness can be countered with a flashlight.

Now i'm not saying thermals should go back the way they were to counter the above, because i've clearly raised the point that the stuff that thermals once combated are now not as common place.

I've personally gone off the idea of the infrared overlay. It's too fundamentally the same as thermals once were. You can still chase targets, you can still get an idea what's going on, especially if someone is strangling another, or dragging the stunned person to a bad place. Just because you cant distinguish names or actions, some stuff in game may be still crystal clear. It would still mess up alot of traitor stuff and I don't think that's a road we should take.

I'll go back to my OP. It should allow to see people over a 3x3 or 4x4 radius. That way, you can spy on people on the other side of a door and make out SOME stuff, but you can't do it on the other side of the screen. It would be difficult to chase the target as once it goes out of view, the chase has gone cold. Bodies can still be found, but you'll have to go trawling through maint and close to the scene of the crime to spot it.

I dunno. It just seems to me restricting thermals to a smaller area of vision addresses the key issues of WHY thermals were nerfed, while the infrared idea is cool and all but addresses none of the issues.

[Ed Venture]

Thermals have been nerfed so hard that I'm left asking "Why are they still in the game?" They've are pretty much useless now as said above they are used to see cloakers but hardly anyone uses cloakers since they too got nerfed. Why would a HOS or Detective want to wear them because as soon as they enter or leave Security they are going to get flashed on their way in or out.

I still think we should have gone the "heat signature" route, where you could see everyone on screen but only as a hazy human shaped blob

If you are going to change them to make them somewhat useful then this is the route to take in my opinion.

Yeah with the nerf they aren't much better than sunglasses considering everyone can grab a flash and if you have to be on the same hallway as someone to see them with the thermals it's easy to flash the guy with thermals. Also seeing as those fucking portable flashers are back it's even more annoying to use thermals.

I liked the heat signature idea.

I agree with this 100%. You are a fool if you choose Thermals over Sunglasses at this point.


Do I think Thermals should go back to the way they were? No. Thermals were so OP that cloakers would be found out if they had bad luck and stumble into a room with the HOS, security officer (back when the officers could have them as well) or the detective then they would be killed on the spot or hunted all round. Do I agree with how hard they were nerfed? No not at all. I feel like no thought went into the nerfing of them, at least with the cloaker they change how it worked. But with Thermals they changed nothing and took almost everything that made them appealing away. No thought went into making them better all the thought went into making them boring. So it was sad to see the last time a thermal thread popped up with great ideas that all those ideas got shot down.

[Mageziya]

An interesting thing to note about how thermals are right now is that they are actually worse than useless, you are actually at a disadvantage by wearing them due to increased sensitivity to flashes. Unless that was removed with the nerf.

With buffing thermals, they don't have to be buffed back into god-tier usefulness. Why not just keep their current function, but give them the same resistance to flashes that sunglasses have? This means that they would, at least, actually be used. Just a pair of fancy sunglasses to be reserved for use by the highest ranking person on the station and a questionable fellow in a trench-coat.

[Frank_Stein]

Yeah, that heat signature was overly complicated, I don't know what I was thinking. Short range x-ray would be better, though maybe they should still look like an unknown heat blob so you can't just spy and radio their name?

Also, CCTV improvement would be great. I've used it successfully as a Detective to scope out suspicious activity, and it would be great to make doing that easier.

More snooping gear!

[Marquesas]

Without having read the rest of the thread (sorry!) I'm going to lay down some things.

Expand on 3, allow thermals to see much further in the dark
This would be hella useful. One of the major reasons I use thermals is because I can be sneaky as fuck in maint and can get the drop on someone.

This one is possible and probably sane, I'd support this.

Allow thermals to see through walls, but only as far as three tiles around you (6x6)
This way, you still can see through shit but it's nowhere near as lame as it originally was, if a traitor escapes you won't be able to see him on the other side of the screen.

This one is as tacky as it gets, the only way to do this is through some serious, laggy hoops and thus is off the table.