Donator
What does this suggestion change/add/remove:
Adds a kind of RC "land drone" stylised after bomb defusal robots like this:
These would most likely be controlled with the existing Drone Controller SWEP and in a similar manner to existing drones, just terrestrial rather than airborne. They would be destructible - I imagine these would need a balance pass, but as a starting point, my suggestion would be to make them somewhat fragile, maybe 50 health or so?
The arm of the device would be able to 'pick up' a single item off the floor, or be given it by a player - It could drop its held item and it would also be retrievable by a player. Some of the items the device could hold:
- Keycards (Non-Biometric, would drop on destruction similar to how it works with players on death)
- Cheques, 096 pictures, Documents & Document holder items such as Briefcases/Satchels
- Maybe vCraft flasks & vials?
- This one's a long shot, but injection gun, maybe?
- ...Grenade?!?!?!
Aside from GMs, the following jobs would have access to this item:
Foundation:
- RSD Cartographer (For enhancing test RP)
- DEA Special Agent+ and/or Nu7 Specialist (I forgot what the job was called, there's a specific Nu7 job I was thinking of, but I forgot
For enhancing surface/hostage RP)
- R&D? Assessment Team? Unsure
- Strike Team? and/or DC, maybe, also unsure
- Rangers
- MC&D
In the interest of making it more accessible for RP, consider how else this may need to be accessed based on later sections - Would it be viable to make this accessible to certain other jobs provided the player has a certain VIP package?
Consider adding the ability to hack one to temporarily disable it or certain features of it (i.e. disabling its movement - disabling its camera - disabling the arm, which would prevent it from using doors or otherwise doing anything with its held item)
Considerations would need to be made regarding interactions with certain SCPs - i.e. Do you give this the "Press G to break" similar to vehicles and doors? If not, then how does 106 corrode a drone introduced to its CC - Would it have a unique interaction? Would its camera feed make it a possible vector for the operator viewing 096's face if they don't have scrambles? Could 079 hijack it during a breach and/or if introduced to its CC?
Rules would need to be added to curb improper usage of these (i.e. Tying cuffed players to it - As interesting as that could be, a device of this nature would not realistically be able to tow them)
Has something similar been suggested before? If so, why is your suggestion different?:
I recently submitted a suggestion asking for Cargo Drones.It was denied for not having a wide enough range of uses to be useful - Which I don't particularly agree with, but I don't really think I can convince you otherwise.
Regardless, this is a different suggestion as this is not an aerial drone; But rather a purely terrestrial one, which would make it far more useful inside Foundation (which is the majority of the map) compared to ordinary aerial drones. It has additional considerations which separate it from the prior idea, which are detailed in the last section.
Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):
- + An option for land-based remote reconnaissance
- + More tools for creating & enhancing RP
- + A sensible option for remote RP interactions that would make sense for certain situations - Other than bomb scenarios, there are certain SCP tests where directly exposing a Researcher to danger when trying to interact with a D-Class in a test environment doesn't really make sense; 035, 106 & 457, for example.
Possible Negatives of the suggestion:
- - Dev time & Balancing
- - Abuse/Misuse
- - Buggy, getting stuck, etc.
Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:
Hear me out, what if land drone?One particular problem issue I could see is if it gets sent into D-Block to check showers for weapons with minimal risk to Foundation, I personally would say this is not a viable use as this action, if not FailRP, would count as a sweep - So at that point to use it, you would have to have it be part of the sweep? But at that point, it would not be a reasonable improvement over a frontliner with a shield as the drone may be slower.
Other than in events, there are a lot of different uses for this kind of interactive land-based drone:
CI dropping into the site can deploy the land drone to safely get info on the area around their exit at the increased risk of more easily giving themselves away. Giving it a keycard to be able to open clearance-locked door(s) with would be a risk that'd need to be weighed, as the probability of losing that keycard is not insignificant.
RSD could use it during a test to more safely interact with an SCP, or with a D-Class interacting with an SCP, for example retrieving samples from very dangerous & hostile SCPs like 035, 106, 457 or even 682 - Especially in cases where the D-Class has died to the SCP or the D-Class stops being co-operative.
DEA & Nu7 raiding CI could use it as a sort of 'doorman' to keep pressing a keypad on the outside of a door (the example I'm thinking of here is the CI garage door leading into the base). They could conversely be used to repeatedly call lobby elevators at either end. Although both of these are questionable as in both cases, someone still needs to be on scrantons to counter dimension usage. There is likely some play here that I'm not able to think of at this time, though.
This could be used for item delivery during on-site hostage RP? After negotiation, the hostage-holding party would demand the defenders back up and send in a drone to deliver the requested item. However, the last time I saw an item exchange as part of a hostage negotiation, the requested item was a Freedom. So either there would need to be some kind of inventory on this thing or some kind of additional feature like an item crate that the drone could be made to carry, occupying its arm (so it couldn't hold anything else like a keycard)
Conversely, it could be used for threatening a hostage. If the drone would be allowed to use an injection gun, the operator could be safe behind cover while the drone is used for threatening the hostage. I did think about maybe also allowing it to use 008 syringes for this purpose, too? But A, that opens up too much abuse potential otherwise and B, when 008 would be injected in this scenario, the reduced risk to the operator compared to present methods would be negligible.
I think there'll definitely be some issues on introduction with this, but nothing that won't be smoothed out after a little while. I can see an issue with this contributing more to combative gameplay than roleplay, but I think it can create enough interesting situations to potentially warrant implementation.
