Design Experiments Log
A list of some design experiments that we have tried, and how they have been. This will mainly focus on failed experiments that never made it into the game since there is more to learn from them and they are easier to remember.
- Remove detective's gun from green alert, unlock it on blue alert.
- Reduce detective's access from areas in security.
- Remove the detective's access to be able to print ammo for their gun.
- Remove the detective's weapons at roundstart, making them more of an investigative role and less combative.
- Improve the detective being a traitor role with roundstart access to station-side weapons.
While this change was effective in its goal of making the detective a role with the full emphasis on being a support role who shouldn't be in combat, it highlighted the issue with the detective that there is not enough content with the detective in order for them to stand as their own role. Most players play the detective in a more combative play-style with the weapons due to not having anything to do before a situation that requires them occurs. Since security incidents that don't require the detective are far more frequent than ones that do, they are usually responding to them alongside security until they have something that actually requires them.
This change would work if the detective had enough content of a high enough quality so that they could exist as a standalone role focused purely on investigation. The other alternative is to integrate them closer with security and act as a security officer++, which we have been trying to avoid through rulings for a while now.
- Remove the common radio channel, replace all radios with a default channel to communicate on.
- Slow down the transfer of information across the station.
- Remove low-quality radio transmissions over common.
- While this idea succeeded at slowing the transfer of information across the station and lead to more 'blindspots' in player's knowledge of the round, which built tension, the decrease in radio traffic made the station feel more empty on lower population rounds and lead to certain department's radios being under-utilised.
- The global communication methods allowed players to feel connected and like they were in a multiplayer experience with other players, which is important for a game like space station 13.