Get rid of faction radios

[alessiodoomboy]

Faction radios are pretty dumb and only serve to make the server less interesting. It means insurgent groups have an even harder time infiltrating city-based organisations and also mean that there are a lot of extra radio scripts that are just unnecassary.

Faction radios have literally no benefit, other than maybe preventing an accidental discovery of the frequency or a brute force attempt at the frequency, but this could be solved by changing frequencies every so often.
Compare that to the benefits of giving all the factions their own radios - they can be tapped and used by rebel groups to help plan operations - they can be used by rebels WITHIN certain factions to contact their rebel friends to help co-ordinate. They'd still have to be smart about it - where they can't let anyone, especially their colleagues, see that their radio is being used, as it will raise suspiscion.

 

[Kappatalist]

hi we do this for CMU and its PERFECTLY FINE

 

[ShadoWiz4rd]

Only real exception I'd say should be OSI/CP/OTA of course. but yeah never understood why civillian radios get encrypted. Even IRL Paramedics and what not aren't encrypted.

 

[Gr4Ss]

Faction radios actually are 'encrypted' (as in tuned to a specific channel) as it otherwise becomes too easy for loyalist factions to turn rogue and communicate with rebels.

Either way, there still is a TODO on our list (one that I started with but dropped again as I wasn't happy with the result) to replace loyalist factions their radios with pagers. The idea being communication is possible but much more limited. And easily eavesdropped by rebels who get their hands on a device and set it up the right way. Just got to toy a bit more with the idea so it is easy enough to use without turning into essentially a radio replacement that works slightly differently but does the same thing.

Might I just do pagers by restricting multicast messages (aka messages that go to multiple people) to only some devices or just banning them outright. Combined with message character limit and only being able to read one message at a time... You'd be left with potentially-not-private DM's that you do not wish to use for any conversation beyond 'let us meet up at x to talk'

 

[Kappatalist]

Faction radios actually are 'encrypted' (as in tuned to a specific channel) as it otherwise becomes too easy for loyalist factions to turn rogue and communicate with rebels.

CMU & CWU Being able to communicate with rebels on the sly is a good thing I feel because it's a very powerful tool that gives rebels a chance to commit crimes in the city and having some sort of lookout - you wouldn't survive five minutes in the city if you were just an ordinary bloke with a radio. It makes getting rebels into these factions worthwhile, there's a risk and reward for a civil services lookout that makes it worth the risk of being discovered, it's low enough to consider it an option but risky enough that it isn't a broken feature.

Anything that promotes rebels being in the city more and infiltrating factions is a plus in my eyes, instead of sitting over in the slums.


Ofc if the worry is that entire factions will turn rogue that's valid but rogue rules can be in place to stop them from crippling a faction, although neglecting your duties in these factions is a quick ticket to being sacked, ergo it should be completely fine even if say half the faction was openly working with rebels.

Regarding pagers I quite like the idea of them itself but I don't think replacing radios with them entirely is quite a good thing, I don't really see the need to slow the whole process down of communication.

 

[Pandafish]

I would have no encryption whatsoever. Handheld radios for everyone!
Let's be real here; what is the CMU (or any civilian Combine faction) trying to hide in the first place? They use the radio to relay medical info, and they rarely operate upon Overwatch forces. If anything, encryption would disguise their messages from the Combine itself, which I can't see them allowing.
This is yet another HL2RP-ism designed to remove agency from people seeking to infiltrate the Combine. I found a paramedic channel on my own handheld radio IRL and I guarantee you it's not remotely interesting whatsoever. If CMU rogues decide to use it as a medium to relay rebel shit, that seems like an IC issue to me, and one that it easily investigated because the frequency isn't even encrypted. (But it currently is, since it hides behind the faction radio plugin).

 

[alessiodoomboy]

Faction radios actually are 'encrypted' (as in tuned to a specific channel) as it otherwise becomes too easy for loyalist factions to turn rogue and communicate with rebels.

As Kappa said, the point of making them non-encrypted would be to make it easier. The benefit of communication is pretty low, and the risk of entire factions going rogue wouldn't even need OOC rogue rules to protect against - if the faction is rogue and not doing their job, CPs should come sort it out. If someone manages to organise an entire faction being taken over and it doesn't negatively impact the server as whole? They've earnt it.

That being said, it'd be very much unlikely that rebels would talk to their infiltrator friends on the frequency OF the faction, since CPs would obviously know those frequencies and tap into them every now and then. The only reason a rebel would access the frequency a faction is using is because they'd want to listen in - and really, what benefit would that be on it's own?

The value of de-encrypting the faction radios is nothing on it's own. It only provides oppurtunity, which would require hard work from rebels to take actually take advantage of. Taking away this oppurtunity is not beneficial to the server whatsoever, and only serves to limit rebel options and give civil facilities less to think about.

 

[Lost Coast Chanties]

i think this would be really beneficial to rp

+ support