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# System prepended metadata

title: Suit Sensors

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This is an *example* design doc. It does not necessarily correctly explain the design principles behind suit sensors, though it does accurately represent my interpretation of them.

# Suit Sensors

## Abstract

Suit sensors are a feature that allow players to report their vitals and their location to anyone with a crew monitor console. They are attached to your jumpsuit, and thus all information will be lost when it is taken off. This means that players who die from game scenarios such as meteors, bad air, etc will have greater potential to be revived, while someone who is explicitly sought after by an antagonist will not. However, this information is publicly available, making the player more likely to be found by antagonists looking to kill them.

## Goals

1. Provide players who die in unconvential scenarios the possibility of revival.
2. Give medical a general overview of the health of the station.
3. Give paramedics a clear task to accomplish--saving and finding dead/unhealthy people.

## Non-goals
1. Discentivize stealthy antagonist behavior (as a victim). Suit sensors are easy to turn off as an antagonist--by taking off the jumpsuit, chosen because you're probably going to do that anyway if you're a stealthy antagonist, but not so much as one just going on a murder spree. Crew monitor consoles also will not provide a "cache" or similar feature to show people who *used* to have sensors on, but now don't.
2. Discentivize antagonist behavior as the antagonist. It should not be suspicious if a player does not have suit sensors on. To do this, suit sensor information will be easily available, and roundstart suit sensor settings will be randomized, to provide plausible deniability behind settings used by antagonists.

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Every jumpsuit has the ability to toggle between the following suit sensors:

- Off. This provides no information to crew monitor consoles, and will not even show the wearer on the list.
- Binary vitals. This will simply mark them as alive or dead.
- Exact vitals. This will detail your exact brute / burn / toxin / oxygen levels.
- Tracking beacon. This will provide both exact vitals and your exact location.

The initial setting is set randomly for every jumpsuit, to prevent non-goal #2. As 3/4 of the time, you will still at least see if the person is *alive*, this fits with goal #2.

Suit sensor readings can be read on the "crew monitor console", which will be given to medbay roundstart, as well as accessible to paramedics through a portable crew monitor. It is easy to create new ones through a basic computer board researched under Computer Consoles.

Suit sensors will only report if they are worn by someone, and will report the ID of the person wearing them, rather than the *real* name of the wearer. This is both to prevent bloating of the crew monitor console, as well as providing stealthy antagonists an obvious way to disable them (as per non-goal #2).

## Alternatives

- Placing suit sensors on something other than the jumpsuit. The jumpsuit was chosen because it's something you're fairly unlikely to change. While lots of people might customize their character in other ways, jumpsuits are generally unchanged as doing so drops your belt, ID, etc.
- Requiring players to engage with medical directly in order to have suit sensors. This severely limits their usability, and would fail goal #2, to provide a general overview of the health of the station.

## Potential Changes

If it is found that medical is checking suit sensors live, throughout the round, then this poses the issue of defeating non-goal #1. Doctors/paramedics would be able to see antagonistic action as it is happening, and otherwise would be bored looking at vitals updates.

This can be adjusted by making more antagonistic acts defeat suit sensors, such as heavy damage temporarily disabling them, and after death giving them enough time to remove the jumpsuit completely.

Removing exact vitals can also help resolve this, as then the only factors known are the location and their status, which makes it harder to know *as* someone is dying. This has the problem of not helping people who are on the *cusp* of death, but not quite dead.

It could also help to have suit signals require some sort of signal, where they would not work in maintenance, but would work outside of it. This still aligns with goal #1, as most unconventional deaths happen outside of maintenance, while maintenance is meant to be an unsafe place where antagonists can thrive.

It is also possible that this will heavily nerf simpler antagonists, such as blob or spiders, who are unable to take off jumpsuits. If this is seen as a problem, then these simpler antagonists can be given the ability to disable suit sensors just through repeated attack.

