Intercom

[miirkaelisaar]

I searched this in all three suggestion forums and only found offhanded references in a couple of threads, so I thought it would be okay to start a thread. If not I'm sorry, I was just bored and curious.

I'm not sure how it would work, but it could come in pretty handy. Maybe if there was an intercom outside in objects, like an outdoor radio transmitter. But instead of having a transmitter and receiver, just have an intercom box. If someone uses the intercom, it should be displayed outside, but ALSO inside of every building, at least in the main room. This would, if it's possible, be more realistic as an alert in a speaker would be pretty loud. Then if you could also build intercom boxes inside buildings, anyone using it would be announced the same way, in the center of town, where you'd assume the actual speaker is located, and inside of the buildings. You'd only need additional boxes to use to transmit from inside to the main speaker.

A few ways this could be used, though I really came up with this on the spot.

For one, if the town was being attacked, someone could announce it on the intercom and warn people not to come out of their homes, or alternately, to call everyone outside to defend the town.

Someone inside needing help could announce it to the entire town, if everyone's outside maybe someone in another building could come and help them instead. It offers a lot more communication.

Of course, this feature would be inconvenient if people misused it to be annoying, but that would really be up to the town building the intercom, probably not a good idea if you have annoying jokesters in your town that you know would get on there every day to say nothing at all. But if it was a quiet town, it might be nice to have someone playing Reveille every "morning" to wake everyone up =P (They do that at the base by my house every morning, you can barely hear it > >)

So yeah, just putting that out there. You wouldn't have to leave projects to get your friend and stuff.

You say into intercom box: "Billy, please report to the brewery, and bring me 200 grams of water please."

You hear from intercom box: "Billy, please report to the brewery, and bring me 200 grams of water, please."

You see Billy entering Brewery, coming from central area.

Billy gives you 200 grams of water.

Ooh~ It's like magic~

[gejyspa]

How is this substantially different from a radio? And indeed, a radio would serve this purpose very nicely, if only one-way communications is needed. For then you would only have to have one transmitter, in the town square, and every place could have a receiver tuned to a different frequency. On the other hand, you could also use notes, which are much less effort to make

[miirkaelisaar]

Maybe not substantially different. But, things would ONLY be transmitted to everywhere in town, not to other nearby towns or vehicles with a receiver or repeater, only if they were in the town or docked there. Also, there would be no frequency to change, just a box and a speaker. But you wouldn't need more than one speaker, it would extend to the buildings without the need for more building. You'd only need to build more boxes in buildings if you wanted to transmit from inside.

If you wanted to do something like this without intercom, it would have to be something like building a radio outside (I'm not sure if we can do that, anyway) and building a receiver in every building you want to hear you, with the additional transmitters for people inside buildings to broadcast over the radio. Also, other towns/vehicles would hear everything they were in range of.

It's like, a very very short range receiver and you'd only have to build more "transmitters", not more receivers indoors.

EDIT: And yeah, notes work. But you'd still have to pass them to people, which means leaving your project. Then if you "fall asleep" before you get back to the project (that happens to me when my internet kicks me off and stuff) you don't do progress. Whereas if you just sent a message over the intercom, you never had to leave the project. Though you're right, it's not a big deal. I just thought it was interesting.

[DylPickle]

I've actually kind of wanted something like this in game for a long time. It's true, you could just use radios... But radios are really mostly treasured for their long range communication, and are valued in terms of that ability.

Having a less expensive, local intercom system that used the same code as the radio, but limited it all to one town would be very useful and interesting to add to the game. I do think they should have channels though, because sometimes groups might want to keep their own intercom private to their property. Having 2 digit frequencies would be useful, keeping it separated from the radio's 3 digit frequencies.

I like it.

[Cheshierekat]

I am putting this here because I don't have time to search...

Handheld radios with an earpiece that you can still hear and transmit long distances....

[Snickie]

I am putting this here because I don't have time to search...

Handheld radios with an earpiece that you can still hear and transmit long distances....

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