More flavor and features on radio chat

[Frank_Stein]

Radio is the primary means of communication on the station. There are relatively few complications to it, beyond frequencies and multiple channels. Occasionally an event knocks it out for awhile, and there's a traitor item that does the same.

I was thinking, maybe there's some more ways to add flavor and content there

One idea I was thinking of is radios having a limited range. The further you got from the signal, your text would start to fade in color.
 Or interference starts to kick in and parts of the text are kicked out, replaced with asterisks (An ex***le be*ng this mes**ge) 

You could maybe create new APC features related to this, like a signal boosting component that bounces radio signals around the station.
Intercoms would be on a seperate system ran with wires.

You could sabotage one or the other to interrupt communications and silence a whole area at a time, taking out an assassination target stealthily without having to do something more obvious like kill the lights to an area.

[LuigiThirty]

Personal radios should be distorted when broadcasting from the debris field. Maybe there’s a big antenna outside that basically picks up Space VHF from pods and rebroadcasts it over the station’s radio so pods aren’t affected.

I like the idea of having more ways to mess with the radio now that flockdrones do.

[Nnystyxx]

I kind of both like and dislike tg's feature to broadcast really BIG messages using a toggleable "high volume" mode. I feel like that shouldn't be spammable the way it is on TG though.

I definitely would be up for interference mechanics, especially if it meant solar flare communications just became shitty rather than me spam-transmitting to try and get to the random probability that I might actually send a message successfully, rather than having it eaten with no feedback

Knocking out/disturbing comms in an area sounds quite flavorful also

[Frank_Stein]

Another thing I was thinking about was additional chat channels.

Like, how ; is the normal chat, and : plus a letter is a department channel, maybe an additional channel could be given that's a slightly more important than normal chat but still reaching everyone

[Cirrial]

There's an event on tgstation that knocks out the telecommunications equipment, requiring it to be fixed.

It's kind of just their analogue of our solar flare (it can drop or garble the signal) but I liked the interaction between existing machines and needing to maintain them. Having said that, telecomms is pretty much only there to be sabotaged or repaired, and last I checked kind of languished in obscurity as another random engineering department responsibility.

[atomic1fire]

I'd like to see something like tg telecoms, but have a ghetto component as well.

Telecoms becomes compatible with mechanics, whereall the station's main radio traffic can be interacted with by bored mechanics.

Radios can be modified to use off network radio bands, this has a benefit of being able to work without a perminent radio system, but it's also bulkier unless mechanics builds custom headsets as well.

Spectrum Analyzers could be added, they can detect traffic from most of the network (encrypted of course) but can also be used to determine which frequencies aren't blocked out by an solar flare, giving engineering a hardier network if they need it.

Listening to Sec: Should Mechanics become the defacto radio guys, it might be cool if they could brute force radio traffic until they've decrypted it and built their own relay station to listen in on security or other departments.

Science and Mining:

Some Minerals could be changed to add resistance to radio signals, making essentially radio proof walls, this could also be used to great effect in telescience levels when you want it to be spookier.

Science: Due to their experiments, chemicals or devices that are unshielded will do bad things to the radio network. Most of their radio intercoms should be directly wired into the network, but any new toys they get could be a cause of interference if science has any holes in it.

Tatortots: Generating your own interference could be possible with a radio jammer, or just hooking some components into the network and screwing with the signals.

Long term exposure to certain frequencies is ill advised, so don't sit next to the radio antenna without a radsuit or industrial space armor.

[LuigiThirty]

Noise artifacts should broadcast garbage or interfere with the radio signal.

[Triacontakai]

-snip-

A system integrating the radio into mechanics would be absolutely amazing

[Frank_Stein]

-snip-

A system integrating the radio into mechanics would be absolutely amazing

Watch someone build a radio word filter, where it looks for specific words in peoples chat and replaces it with another

[medsal15]

-snip-

A system integrating the radio into mechanics would be absolutely amazing

Watch someone build a radio word filter, where it looks for specific words in peoples chat and replaces it with another

Finally, my wild dreams of making radio buttbots will come true!

[Nnystyxx]

-snip-

A system integrating the radio into mechanics would be absolutely amazing

Watch someone build a radio word filter, where it looks for specific words in peoples chat and replaces it with another

Yes please. Done properly on TG this is really funny, and we have a better sense of humor so it will actually be done properly. A component that emphasizes certain words to get the crew's attention/bolds stuff would also be useful.

[Technature]

-snip-

A system integrating the radio into mechanics would be absolutely amazing

Watch someone build a radio word filter, where it looks for specific words in peoples chat and replaces it with another

Yes please. Done properly on TG this is really funny, and we have a better sense of humor so it will actually be done properly. A component that emphasizes certain words to get the crew's attention/bolds stuff would also be useful.

[145.9]:All of you little shits are nothing but a bunch of ASSholes.