Ship Systems - Communications #242
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One thing that would be good to hash out here is the mechanics for how these things work. What steps does the crew take to initiate a short range communication/long range communication? What are the in-universe physical mechanisms that make them possible? What ways can the Flight Director interact with it? |
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As per your suggestion, I updated the proposal to include more granularity of the in-game mechanisms. It probably needs more but that's what I could think of for now. |
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Excellent additions. Thanks for taking the time to flesh this out more. |
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For more information about the ship systems discussions, see #224
Communications
Within communications there are 3 main systems: Internal, Short Range, and Long Range Communications. The systems may share some components but more than likely will be completely separate and can operate independently of each other. This means, that system damage would be independent and not effect each other.
Internal Communications
Internal Communications are communications made between personnel within the ship. In Thorium it would be primarily used in making phone calls or chat messages from the bridge to various rooms on the ship.
An in-game chat system would be needed that could be used by the crew to privately communicate with other members of the crew. This could be used by the crew to stage a coup or any other secret communications.
A tutorial bot or ship computer might also be incorporated into internal communications. The chat bot could have predetermined questions (relevant to the current screen) that the player could select to help them with their mission.
For remote play, this would necessitate the need for an online voice call system. To begin with, I imagine that most players could use Discord (or a similar app) for voice calls. Later, it would be interesting if Vocoder could be incorporated into an in-game voice chat. Flight directors could decide assign vocoder settings to different species and the players would choose what race they are before joining a flight. The choice would automatically apply the vocoder settings for each player through the in-game voice chat. For brick and mortar facilities this would not be as useful. But, some brick and mortar facilities could decide to create a dual room simulation (bridge and main engineering) that could definitely incorporate the in-game chat.
With an in-game chat, it could also be interesting to have the voice chat effected with the internal communications system damage level. Increased damage would add additional static to the communications until it was no longer useable. Done incorrectly though, and this could make Thorium potentially unplayable by remote teams. It might be a feature that is enabled/disabled by the flight director upon mission creation.
An interesting feature could also be internal communications between AI. This would add more depth to Thorium but more than likely be a later feature.
Equipment
Crew Interaction
Internal Intercom System
Initiated by the captain asking the computer AI or the communications officer to open communications for a ship-wide broadcast. The communications officer could have a button for ship-wide on an internal communications card. The card could give a map of the ship with each room selectable so that the comms officer could also select individual rooms to broadcast to (in the situation that there was possibly a problem with crew in a section of the ship and their individual comms weren't working and the captain is trying to use the intercom system to talk to them without scaring the rest of the ship with stuff they don't need to know).
An internal communications map could add granularity to damaged internal communications.
Instant Chat/Video system (think MS Teams)
Each crew station would have an internal messaging card that would have tabs for each initiated message. The crew could start new messages where they can select any station in the flight or other generic stations in the ship (main engineering, med bay, etc.) to start a new chat or video call with (video call availability being dependent on if the stations have a camera or not).
Computer to security camera (Smart doorbell)
Initiated by the captain via the computer AI (i.e. FD).
Flight Director Interaction
Internal Intercom System
Any broadcast would mostly be an alert for the flight director. It would give them a notification that a broadcast is happening and what rooms it is being broadcast to.
Instant Chat/Video system (think MS Teams)
If the crew starts a chat with an AI station, this would send the message to the FD. Otherwise, inter-crew messages would not be seen by the FD to avoid flooding the FD with extraneous information.
Computer to security camera (Smart doorbell)
This would be completely up to the discretion of the FD as it would take more setup on their part. Using green-screen technology, a different scene could be applied for each security camera. This would make the possibility of using this for a storyline, much more likely for the FD.
Short Range Communications
Short Range Communications are voice/video chat with other ships in the vicinity. This is primarily used by the flight director for storyline dialog. Vocoder would be an essential here with various presets that can allow the FD to quickly change between voices for any characters they may be playing.
Short range communications could also be used in a multi-bridge situation. If the two ships in a mission are within communications range, then they would be able to call each other to better collaborate on the mission.
As stated in the Internal Communications section, this could also be effected by system damage.
Video chat would definitely be a cool feature to incorporate and has a lot of potential. For multi-bridge/room missions, this is the easiest to complete as it would just take a video feed. The flight director could also use it if they are dressed appropriately for the role they are portraying. They may find this difficult though, depending on the level of interaction on the FD side of things for a certain part of a mission, and how many characters they are currently playing. A future system might apply a filter (similar to snapchat) to the video chat to allow the FD to have video chat as various characters without a change of costume.
Equipment
Crew Interaction
The Short Range Comms card would show an active frequency graph with a range of the monitored frequencies (might be something that can be expanded with upgrades). The comms officer can monitor this screen for any noticeable disturbances in the frequency graph. They could use a slider to change how sensitive the receivers are (would affect the amplitude of the graph).
A second tuning display for the ships decoders, would also be shown on the Short Range Comms card. This would be used by the comms officer to try to set the ships decoders to match with an unknown transmission. This display could take many forms. For example:
For known species, buttons would be available to quickly set the correct frequency and encoder/decoder settings. Any incoming calls would show up as a notification next to their button and the comms officer would need to select their button and answer the call.
A third display would also show a 3D map with a range of the short range comms. This would let the comms officer select which ship they are trying to communicate with (in case there are multiple). As the officer changes settings, the icons might grey-out with known ships if they don't have the correct settings. Unknown ships would have a different identification as the settings are unknown.
The comms officer should also have a way to save new settings profiles that would create a new quick button for future communications with an unknown ship.
Flight Director Interaction
The FD would be able to add specific transmissions to the storyline. They could also initiate a call with the crew and select which species they are calling as. Any call from the crew would notify the FD and show the settings that the crew used. Only calls initiated with correct settings would notify the FD. Settings for unknown ships would be randomized automatically upon ship creation.
Long Range Communications
Long Range Communications are primarily email messages due to the limitations of receiving communications from such distances. Many of these messages could be automated with the storyline or ship events. For more customized messages, the FD would need to reply manually. To ease the flight directors responsibilities, pre-built replies might be incorporated into Thorium that the flight director can use to quickly reply to players' inquiries.
Equipment
Crew Interaction
The comms officer will receive these communications on the long range communications card more as a text message. This would mostly be used for the storyline. Some of these communications would be in code and need to be decoded. (A method to decode manually in-game would be helpful instead of relying on printing it out and doing it on paper.)
I don't know if there would be any active monitoring of this system by the comms officer. I see the card using a similar layout to most email programs with symbols to show what messages have not been read yet, which have been replied to, and with email chains easily viewable. The main addition would be the built-in option for writing up the decoded message. The code book could be either in the game or offered as a printable with the game files. (All the "coded" fonts would be included with the Thorium package).
Flight Director Interaction
Storyline communications would be automated by the timeline. But any replies by the crew would probably have to be handled manually. Replies would bring up a notification to the FD with the info as to what message they replied to. Some automated responses might be pre-built into the system as standard political red-tape messages.
To make messages a bit more custom and easier for the crew to view, email footers might be created for each alien species that would operate in such a way that would automatically be added to each communique delivered to the crew.
Am I missing anything? Comments, suggestions, feedback, or alternate proposals welcome!
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