Detective Grumpings

[Clarks]

So, the detective has very few tools to investigate, and this has been discussed several times and blabla.

A few weeks ago I had a fun round with Wydamn as detective. I joined as hos and found Wydamn interrogating a suspected mindslave.
I said a few bullying things and left the suspect with the good cop. Wydamn got a confession and hunted the guy named as master. He got the dude arrested, and found out we had been fooled by a false confession.
The real master came shooting on the shuttle, but we shot him better.

Investigating can be kind of flawed and slow, but it really is fun.

So... let's add the paraffin glove test, or something similar. A test to find out if Subject X shot a firearm. or if a specific pair of gloves were used when shooting a firearm.
Some way for the detective to swab a hand/glove and get a result when the subject shot a gun/shotgun. Energy guns and tasers could leave a different trace, because who cares about real life science, but maybe those could stay undetectable.

If you read the description below, you'll see that it's very unreliable. I'm not proposing the test to fail or misidentify non shooters.
It would always work correctly, but only tell you if that dude fired a gun, any gun.

The first such test was the "paraffin test" also known
as the "Dermal Nitrate" or "diphenylamine test." (1) It was introduced in
the United States in 1933 by Teodoro Gonzalez of the criminal
identification laboratory, Mexico City police headquarters. In this test,
the hands were coated with a layer of paraffin. After cooling, the casts
were removed and treated with an acid solution of diphenylamine, a reagent
used to detect nitrates and nitrites that originate from gunpowder and may
be deposited on the skin after firing a weapon. A positive test was
indicated by the presence of blue flecks in the paraffin. Although this
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
test often but not invariably gave positive results on the hands of
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
individuals who fired weapons, it also gave positive results on the hands
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
of individuals who had not fired weapons because of the widespread
distribution of nitrates and nitrites in our environment. The paraffin
test is in fact nonspecific and is of no use scientifically.

[Klayboxx]

He got the dude arrested, and found out we had been fooled by a false confession.
The real master came shooting on the shuttle, but we shot him better.

No dude, I never want this shit to go away. It's like the M. Night Shyamalan twist or some shit. You think you've made the station safe when suddenly a big hulking vat grown monster wielding two revolvers kicks in the escape shuttles doors and begins wildly firing in rage since you arrested his poor mindslave.

That shit wouldn't have happened if you had a ton of lame tests to figure out what happened. This game relies heavily on espionage. And not only physical espionage, when it comes down to it you have to have a golden tongue to get out of situations. But if a detective has every tool ever he's just going to spritz your tongue until the gold paint melts off so he can get a good saliva sample.

[epicdwarf]

I think we should give the detective access to the security notice at the beginning of the round. Also, this idea sounds cool!

[Clarks]

He got the dude arrested, and found out we had been fooled by a false confession.
The real master came shooting on the shuttle, but we shot him better.

No dude, I never want this shit to go away. It's like the M. Night Shyamalan twist or some shit. You think you've made the station safe when suddenly a big hulking vat grown monster wielding two revolvers kicks in the escape shuttles doors and begins wildly firing in rage since you arrested his poor mindslave.

Dude, I loved the whole thing. Including the false confession and the wrong turn. Wydamn made the best detectiving I've seen in a while.

I just wish there were a few more quick tests to encourage detective to start investigations rather than relying on thermals.

[Sundance]

A gunshot residue test?
That would be pretty awesome.
If we got that doormaster logging thing suggested in Mozi's thread, that would also be a great thing for the detective.

3 suggestions, they have been suggested before, (more than likely by me)

1. A bug. Something that you could slap on a traitors backpack after releasing him, or slapping it to an area where you think shit may go down. All it is, is a hidden tape recorder that feeds back a log to soemewhere or something. Something that'd be shit-hot for the detectives pda perhaps.

2. A small fix for the scanner. Allow it to scan blood residue on people. If someone is totally bloody, you scan them and it reads back nothing. I'm not sure if you strip them off and scan their clothes whether it gives you a trace either.

3. Fix his stupid camera. I've made a thread about it.

[Cogwerks]

Gunpowder residue, better forensic tracking of subtypes of damage caused (instead of just brute / fire, have it show blunt trauma, stab wounds, cuts, bullet holes, chemical burns, fire burns, laser burns, etc), and bugs would all be fun.
There is already a work-in-progress camera bug thing in the code, I'll look into adapting that.

[atomic1fire]

You could still choose to be the detective version of the artist formerly and currently known as prince and decide to ignore half the detective tools because "All those numbers can't be good for your head"

[Wydamn]

That was an excellent round. The more investigating tools for the detective, the better. If the detective had some tool to help perform autopsies, that would be awesome. Instead of having 320 brute damage on a corpse, it would be cool if you were able to see, for example, that he took cyalume sabre hits before dying, and took damage from spacing postmortem, and that the victim threw some punches in self defense.

Also, if fighting someone sometimes left threads from your jumpsuit that the detective could find, that would have awesome implications. It would also give you something to work with other than finger prints which are easily obscured by gloves, and has the potential for framing others (for example, steal the HoP's suit before brawling the captain, so that the HoP becomes the primary suspect).

[Cogwerks]

A list of damage sources is something I've had planned as a backburner project for awhile, I'll probably get to it eventually.

[atomic1fire]

It would be ultra sweet if updates to the detective were combined with drug updates that were suggested in another thread so a detective could figure out if someone was OD'd or actually poisoned with something more sinister.

Also traitors could OD people on bad drugs and convince sec it was entirely accidental.

E.g this person has syringe marks and traces of heroin/cocaine/whatever. Looks like they were doing drugs and OD'd.

This person has head trauma and several syringe marks, PROBABLY OD GUYS.