It appears to be several people's opinion that forensics, in it's current implementation, isn't very fun.
At the moment it either works as an instant "gotcha" if someone wears no gloves or latex gloves due to partial print matching, or it turns into a slog of trying to brute-force guess a fingerprint by checking every single security record in order.
Additionally, the fact that the vast majority of gloves leave no prints except for a glove ID and glove material makes it a total chore to crawl through the entire station and scan anyone who has gloves which could match. On top of that, a lot of people will simply discard or destroy their old gloves after being done with a crime, making the entire chase to find the gloves entirely pointless.
In the PR thread, glamurio and flaborized proposed that the system could use some more depth, and rely less on the matching "minigame" to instantly find out who did the thing.
My suggestion would be the following:
All gloves now obfuscate prints, no more partial print matching. Touching something without gloves or with gloves which do not cover your fingers will still leave prints as before.
Touching something now always shows the glove's material and ID.
Touching something now leaves "additional forensic material" which may lead towards the identity of the criminal without ever clearly pointing them out.
For instance, there could be trace amounts of material left behind hinting at the person's mutantrace (hair and skin flakes for humans, scale traces for saurians, tuft of brown hair for monkeys...). Or it could lead toward's a person's hair/scale/horn/whatever color by finding 'discarded pigments'. It makes admittedly little sense you cannot get DNA from these, but it'd give you a lead to work with. Alternatively, i could cut the DNA scanning element of the forensic analyser entirely and make the crew rely on other tools to test for DNA (swabbing, sampling...).
Another example would be the smoking while touching something would leave behind ash
If you put it all together you could for instance know you are chasing someone with insuls, but you also know they are very likely a red haired human.
I am looking into other ideas for forensic gathering, such as swabbing or other tests. Anything that would make forensic gathering more fun!
My problem with forensics, you never do an autopsy ever. And if you do it gives only "the true cause of death"
My problem with forensics is the following: "Wear gloves, it can take all shift to even find the criminal."
I do like going through the records for partials but the thing is... time + effort.
There is NO POINT in doing extensive forensics as the time and pay out do not match. By the time you uncovered a possible lead, two more murders occured.
Why the detective has bloodtrack wich is amazing. It's too easy for an antagonist to clean themselves and get rid of any evidence.
Wear gloves , kill, then take shower. And if you are in an AI blindspot, you hope no one saw you.
Basically put in SS13 everything moves so fast, that time and effort do not match that of the antagonist.
Let alone single murders tend to be forgotten as before you know it... a giant slime is going to destroy the station on classic.
In my opinion... forensics needs to be faster and the effort and time needs to lead to more concrete evidence.
THAT SAID... the antagonist must also put in MORE effort and TIME to hide evidence.
As for your suggestions, I like em so far. But there is no counterplay for the antagonist to make the "Perfect crime" now.
Antagonists who put in the effort need to be uncatchable for a single murder. Where as detectives/security can do more extensive forensics (wich is faster) to find the culprit.
Even with something like "Removing the victims guts to check if they inhaled a piece of hair that might lead to the murderer's idenity"
Wich now adds the whole: "Cloning the victim and throwing their body into the reclaimer for biomass" or "Do an autopsy for extra evidence"
It just means more choices.
Anyway this is a good route, but I like to add just adding more =/= fix the problem. It's the time spent of the antagonist vs the time spent the detective needs to do. And they just don't add up.
I still think then Antags need more tools to be able to hide evidence like: "Using acid to clean the body of anything" that kinda stuff. More effort from the antagonist to cover their tracks... more good comes out of it.
08-08-2023, 02:47 AM (This post was last modified: 08-08-2023, 03:58 AM by Lord_earthfire. Edited 6 times in total.)
A thing i want to throw in is we will have a very huge balance dichotomy between RP and classic here. Forensics on RP, where murders are maybe hapening 2 - 4 times per antag, is fine. Especially since people report weird activity and stay in their departments far cleaner. That way, you can drastically reduce the number if subjects. Add in a lower density if antags in general, and you can very well track down evildoers.
This of course fails horribly in classic. For all the reasons Kotlol pointed out.
Personally, i don't see a form of change that will make it balanced for classic but make it extremly hard for RP antags to not give an easy/obvious to solve case. In my opinion, Forensics should be RP-enabling, giving the detective/secoffs clues to put pressure on a line of suspects and create interesting interrogations.
(08-08-2023, 02:47 AM)Lord_earthfire Wrote: A thing i want to throw in is we will have a very huge balance dichotomy between RP and classic here. Forensics on RP, where murders are maybe hapening 2 - 4 times per antag, is fine. Especially since people report weird activity and stay in their departments far cleaner. That way, you can drastically reduce the number if subjects. Add in a lower density if antags in general, and you can very well track down evildoers.
This of course fails horribly in classic. For all the reasons Kotlol pointed out.
Personally, i don't see a form of change that will make it balanced for classic but make it extremly hard for RP antags to not give an easy/obvious to solve case. In my opinion, Forensics should be RP-enabling, giving the detective/secoffs clues to put pressure on a line of suspects and create interesting interrogations.
Aka why I want tools for the antag to hide evidence more.
But I do want the "fast mode" to be on classic and the "slow mode" on RP.
I said these things as a RP main player but I know in classic, going slow like on RP, you will never solve the case in time.
Antags are a plenty and a murder case is a dime a dozen. It's better to run around the station after a murder then to investigate!
I do want more forensics fun for both rp and classic though.
I do like the idea of trace amounts of chemicals left behind on the hands. I think with that you can narrow down some things like likely occupation depending on what you'd find. Same with the mutant specifics. Hair might be something to consider as well, both in analyzing it for chemicals that might have worked their way out of the system and just matching hair color to a suspect (Giving the barber shop dye more use)
Doing an autopsy giving an accurate time of death would be helpful if you wanted to try and cross reference where someone was. I do not remember if doors keep logs of what ID was used to open them but if not that would be handy. Adding more digital forensics might be worth considering.
I think mutantrace tracking would be a step in the wrong direction. Sure, it makes sense, but if you want to be an antag at all and you're the only saurian/skeleton/monkey/squid on the station, its basically a fingerprint at that point.
Hair tracking could be interesting, since you could actually visit the barbers shop and dye your hair random colors to keep people off your trail or just go straight bald and hide the trail. Alot of antags wear helmets anyways so it should be more common on RP than on classic
If doors do keep logs of IDs, that would be really interesting since you'd be able to either keep spare agent cards around, steal id cards off your corpses, or drop your ID from time to time while opening doors to throw people off your trail.
Maybe scanning a person could reveal what they've been up to or where they have been recently but it would have an action bar when you try to scan someone
08-08-2023, 07:23 PM (This post was last modified: 08-10-2023, 03:44 AM by Thebutler. Edited 1 time in total.)
(08-08-2023, 05:39 PM)NanoDano Wrote: Maybe scanning a person could reveal what they've been up to or where they have been recently but it would have an action bar when you try to scan someone
I think this idea I would work better as a separate stationary machine that could either be located at security or the detectives office love the idea tho
I think the ‘positive-identification’ side of forensics is over-full, but the frustration on nerfing match rates comes from adding difficulty via repetition with no other relief. It’s possible to reframe/accept this nerf a bit as the ‘dedicated investigator’ style fall-back option by adding a new mechanic focused on ‘eliminating suspects’ and deduction. Like a good logic puzzle, we have to find different ways to group crew members, make the details a little fuzzy, let the clues fall where they may, and then give investigators tools to organize them.
Along this line of thought, I have an idea for “Genetic Markers” that was going to be this post but then suddenly became a few paragraphs and is now part of the way to a design doc oops.
Goonhub
