Phone Improvements

[Frank_Stein]

This is sort of half question-half suggestion. I feel like the phone functionality and sounds would have made more sense to be an intercom improvement/rewrite, as opposed to creating a new object.

Don't get me wrong, phones are pretty fun and I'm 100% for adding new objects to the game, but I think that it's important to avoid bloat in terms of items on the station. The telephone objects take up space on a table tile in areas where table space is already scarce, like the bar and kitchen.

Intercoms are relatively unused and slightly unnecessary, but they do have several important functions for spreading information around a department, or for the AI. But intercoms are already placed everywhere on every station, in overlapping locations with many phones.

In terms of general functionality, phones and intercoms are nearly identical. i.e. calling a specific locations (but phones are more direct and has a sort of guaranteed message receive receipt since you know when someone picks up your call). The main things that set phones apart from intercoms is the required wired connection, their fancy sprites, and nice sound effects. So why not build the phone features into the intercoms instead?

I'd suggest, keeping both but changing how they function. 

Phones for interdepartmental communication, intercoms for intradepartment communication, with the option to patch phone calls through the intercoms.

So, when you use the intercoms, it will only pick up and send audio through it's own department network. To contact another department, you have to phone them, and once connected could choose to broadcast your call through your own intercom system, while they can do the same on the other end?

---