The Problem

Powergame, metaknowledge, and general frustration everywhere! There's two aspects to this problem:

The antag-experts: Simply put, the fact that people know EVERYTHING about any given antag and their antag gear; holding a pen in public is enough to make you extremely suspicious, and god forbid you want to play pizza delivery man. Part of this is alleviated by disguised items, but part of this will also be solved by The Solution
The job-stealers: Everybody hates being a med doctor and having some random idiot who slipped on a banana peel casually stroll into medbay and cryo themselves. Or the non-engineers who instantly flood to a breach to patch all the holes even though they're fucking cargo techs or something. The whole point of certain jobs is being stripped away by excessive meta-knowledge on how to do everything.
The greytide-vigilantes: An interesting subcategory, but one that exists nevertheless; people who do their job fully most of the time, but when shit hits the fan, they suddenly become unprecedented experts in everything from hacking to medicine.

Thus, I present...

The Solution

Two main points: knowledge levels and training implants.

Knowledge Levels would, simply put, be your ability to identify and use equipment, both on station and... less legal. This is a game mechanic, not an RP mechanic. How does that work? Well, let's take two examples:

Let's say you stumble upon a Syndicate powersink. If you're in security or engineering, you are instantly able to identify what it is, what it does, and how to deal with it. If you're not in either of those departments, its physical model will be there- but mousing over it will show "unknown object" and its description will say "you're not sure exactly what this is, but it doesn't look entirely legal...". If you attempt to interact with it without having the appropriate knowledge, bad things will probably happen, depending on what the object actually is. So, trying to open a powersink with a screwdriver without having engineering expertise will probably lead to very, very nasty electrocution.
Let's also say you spot a cryo chamber without being in Medical. You will, of course, know what it is- but upon attempting to self-cryo like the little powergamer you are, there's a very high chance of being unable to activate it ("you fiddle with the control panel, but you simply don't have the expertise to use this correctly!"). This also extends to just doing random things, such as hacking (higher chance of electrocuting yourself, or cutting wires not being instant), building (slower build times, chance of messing up and dropping things/hurting yourself), etc.

Knowledge Levels would be simplified into three levels: Unaware/Suspicious, Familiar, and Trained.

Unaware would apply to, for instance, an assistant and the Particle Accelerator. You have just about no clue how to operate the thing and will probably fuck up terribly if you try.
Suspicious is the same as Unaware, except Unaware applies to legal station items- things that you can recognize for what they are, but not know how to operate at all. Suspicious, on the other hand, applies to illegal items such as an emag. You would instantly be able to tell that this is not a legal thing, and you should probably give it in to Security- but it's still pretty fruitless to use it. (90% chance of failing upon attempted use; "you try to use the weird card-like thing, but just can't figure out what to put where!"). Also applies to tomes for all but the Chaplain; you know that that's pretty illegal and that the posessor should be arrested, but only the Chaplain can go "that's the tome of the NARSIE cult"
Familiar would be the odd middleman category mostly applying to Sec, Engineering, and Science, especially with illegal items; for instance, a Sec officer and an aforementioned powersink. You know what it is, and that it is ILLEGAL AS ALL HELL, but trying to mess with it will probably lead to you getting electrocuted (at a lower risk than Suspicious). Scientists and Engineers would also have this Knowledge Level for a fair few illegal items; for instance, Scientists would be able to identify an emag and the general gist of what it can do, but still have a bit of issue actually USING it. (As an exception, the Syndicate Nuke is by default Familiar to everyone. I mean, for christ's sakes, it's a pretty obvious nuclear bomb. Now, trying to actually interact with it without being engineering/sec...)

This also applies to medkits for anyone not in Medical; you'll be able to successfully apply basic medical items (patches/bruise packs/etc.) the vast majority of the time, but a trained doctor will be able to do it faster and with zero chance of failure. And that leads us to...

Trained is what it sounds like. You can operate this equipment/perform this action/identify this item flawlessly; it's your job to. This is the Chaplain to cult tomes, Security to Syndicate weapons, Engineers to the PA, and most importantly, doctors to their cryo tubes (along with a bunch of other examples). More interestingly, this will also apply to chefs and bartenders: trying to prepare food as a non-Chef/bartender may lead to slightly unpleasant results!

If you perform an action sufficiently, your knowledge level can slowly increase from Unaware to Familiar- but never to Trained. I'm sorta iffy on whether to include crafting in this system, but let's leave it as it is for now.

Now, let's look at the problems there: "But pargon u dumbass, how will the game know what you are- people can change jobs"

Simple! Here's part two: Training Implants.

Training Implants are dead-simple "implants", more akin to the SE injectors than implants (in the sense that they dispose of themselves instantly upon use and can be produced infinitely from an appropriate dispenser), that are found in machines in every department (and maybe we can even have a room filled with each department's vendor). If you have an ID with relevant access, you can interact with the machine, eject an implant, jab yourself with it, and voila! You've retrained and now have access to all the information your department needs, both RP-wise and by aforementioned game mechanics. (Without losing your old knowledge)

This carries a few caveats:

In event of a code red situation, the Medical and Engineering training implant dispensers become open-access, much like the medical machines already are. This means that in a real emergency where all of Medbay is dead, joe mcshmoe CAN jab himself with an implant and be able to heroically save the station with his newfound knowledge.
Traitors, Double Agents, and Nuclear Operatives are, from the start, trained to use everything. Every other antag can be evaluated on a case-by-case basis (Cybermen hacking dispensers to transmit the knowledge within to their whole system?). People metagaming this fact ("hey, that assistant just used a sleeper successfully, LYNCH") will be cracked down on heavily.
The Captain is a tricksy example as he technically has access to every dispenser, but he will have knowledge of Security from roundstart. A captain jabbing himself with every training implant on the station without adequate reason to should be punished under powergaming rules, just like a cap stealing his laser and space suit at roundstart.
Distributing training implants freely for no reason will be a severe crime under space law, and probably frowned upon by server rules too. Obviously, if everything's falling to shit or it's code red time, distributing the training implants is very much accepted and even advised- at the discretion of the distributor.

Now obviously, this system won't consume EVERYTHING. Using a mop is pretty straightforward, as is operating most computers. And it WILL take a while to code, as a LOT of items must be looked at specifically- but I think, overall, once the system is finally ready, the benefits will certainly be well worth it.

And hell, it won't solve everything. But hopefully this is a start-

...and most importantly, it'll finally let med doctors do their damn jobs.

yogstation13 / yogstation-classic

Training implants and a huge revival of what godforsaken "RP" we have #1251

The Problem

The Solution