Discussion for recent ion storm changes

[CrystalClover]

Ion storms were recently changed to now have these effects:

• Affected APCs always have AI control disabled
  
• Doors may now be temporarily shocked, opened/closed and then bolted, or have their access shuffled (to that of a previously messed with door).
  
• Doors that are bolted/shocked by ion storm will have ai control disabled
  

This is a forum thread for people to discuss and offer feedback regarding this.

[Lord_earthfire]

Before, it was just "AI, please unbolt/unshock doors and reset APC's", which was kinda boring. Now, i think Engineering will use APC pinpointers a lot more.

I kinda like it, but i will need to play around a bit with how it feels.

[CrystalClover]

my main issue with this is the fact that using the Access Pro is very cumbersome and you are unable to see what access doors have exactly

[444explorer]

Sounds like a positive change to me, and, I imagine the AccessPro could do with some changes eventually to make it more of a ease of use item compared to the AccessLite.

[CrystalClover]

I would appreciate if the Access Pro had a functionality where if it were used on a door it told you its current access. that would make this change a lot nicer imo

[Cal]

Sure, sounds like a fine thing to Pr.

The purpose of this was to make Ion storms more impactful and less "ai unbolt unshock all now" and them getting harassed when they choose to do it manually, it also has the side effect of giving Engineering something else to work on.

[Kotlol]

I wouldn't mind this... if the AI didn't get an Ion law as well.

If anything we should split the Ion storms in 2 version.

1: Ion Storm that affects Laws and messes with lights/apcs.
2: Ion storm that effects airlocks and doors.
OR
Give a warning in advance like Meteor showers/Rad storms. So engineering won't be called half way through.

The combination is abit too drastic... It basically encourages every player to now have gloves, toolbelt and know how to fix hack doors... cause now during an ion storm they can be stuck till an engineer bails them out. Wich kinda annoys people to no end and cuts them off from playing.

Ion storms were always annoying, but they got brutal before without an AI.. or worst.. an AI with an Ion law that shuts everything down constantly.

So either split them or make a warning in advance.

I don't mind the changes, but consider this... if you are stuck in a room with the APC broken, the doors are electirified and you gotta wait for 10 mins till engineer finds your lil working corner... it ruins it.. especially if you are an antagonist plotting in a corner... you'd get busted and nothing you can do about it. (unless you got tools and gloves)

[Error2147483647]

Of note is on the RP servers, where due to the longer shift times (and general lack of mass station destruction forcing shuttle calls), ion storms can roll twice, even thrice in a shift, making things progressively more fucked if they don't get dealt with. This is going to be even worse when there's no engineers around, as is often the case on RP4. I actually feel obligated to play engineer because of this change, otherwise people are going to have their rounds fucked because they're stuck in a shocked, bolted room like the AI went postal, with no way of fixing it. Or, if not to play engineer, at the very least incentivize me to grab a pair of insulated gloves as soon as possible.

Additionally, the AccessPro is a tool that what, five people total know how to properly use? And I'm told that you need an original ID with access slotted in, in order to actually make changes. Imagine if the upload got swapped to armoury access and you don't have a HoS. Or if the escape hallway suddenly needed crematorium access and there's no chaplain on the station.

Also, the 'reset all APCs' button is pretty useless now, since an APC automatically gets its AI control wire cut if it's ion stormed. It's barely useful in any other case.

This is not to say I don't like the direction of the change, I do! I just think it's a bit overtuned, especially the access shuffle as it is now. At the very least, I'd like to know if there are some doors which are hardened against the ion storm because of how powerful it'd be if they had their access swapped to like, maint or something. Notably the HoS office, the armoury, and the AI upload.

[Lord_earthfire]

I think the ion storm assess swapper does scare people a bit. Fixing it is not that hard for an Engineer:

RCD/cut access wire of the door, place a new one, acess lite the access ot is supposed to have.

I'm thinking for longer about changing deconstruction in a way that soneone with access to a door can deconstruct it, which will remove this issue almost entirely.

[DasBrain]

For me, the biggest problem is when ion storms effects are when discovered by the wrong person.

I once had an Ion Storm disable the Armory APC. As CE, I was monitoring the power network and noticed it that way.
Otherwise anyone with a crowbar could have opened the armory doors.

Similar with restricted areas like the bridge.
If the access changes to and the CE office now has engineering access, I probably won't even notice it until someone takes the RCD.

It's fine that fixing stuff takes some time and is not a simple push of a button, but the problems should be easily discoverable.

[Error2147483647]

I think the ion storm assess swapper does scare people a bit. Fixing it is not that hard for an Engineer:

RCD/cut access wire of the door, place a new one, acess lite the access ot is supposed to have.

I'm thinking for longer about changing deconstruction in a way that soneone with access to a door can deconstruct it, which will remove this issue almost entirely.

The solution to a door being zapped by an ion storm should NOT be to destroy it, and RCD a new one into place. That's completely counter-intuitive, and you won't always have the RCD. e.g. if the CE's gone cryo with it in their pocket.

[Cherman0]

I like it conceptually in that it gives the non laws-related part of ion storms a bit more weight, but I feel like alongside the laws-related part it ends up very tedious for a random unannounced event. The Ai loses a lot of ability to rescue people and also probably ends up compromised on some way, meaning the station really relies on having engineers. Which is often not a given.

Anything to do with ID access is inherently pretty scuffed because ID access is old techdebt code. Theres tons of unused ID accesses that make actually finding whatever youre looking for a pain, and a lot of the accesses are named rather unintuitively. The access pro is very archaic and the access lite is not able to change the access on doors that already have set access, leaving just busting down the door and building a new one as the most likely choice. This is unnecessarily tedious aside from being inelegant.

Overall, I would split ion storm into two events: "Memory Corruption" which is an unannounced event that is just the AI laws corruption and no other effects (allowing the AI to actually get to play around with their laws instead of getting fixed 3 nanoseconds after an APC turns off) and "Ion Storm" which is an announced event and is just the interference with station devices part and does not change laws. Ion storm as it stands is an extremely bloated event in terms of what it does and it ends up just feeling annoying whenever it rolls around (at least as engineer) because it means you're going to have like 5 unique flavors of pointless busywork to deal with for the next 15 minutes.