Radio broadcasts

We need a way of creating persistent, repeatable content to broadcast. Doesn't have to be, and honestly shouldn't be as robust as NLM's media system, even some basic 'tape/holo recorders' would work.

Hell. Make it take a E-note module and just read off the script as written 'recorded' on a timer.

Not saying I wouldn't like recordings, because I would especially for player based music, etc, but part of radio is that its fairly live IRL, and would benefit more from it being an interactable medium compared to TV, which for the most part in SD, is non interactable.

Repeatable messages would be cool, but they aren't strictly necessary to make a pirate radio show worth listening to.

Just something to think about in terms of contention. Broadcasts might make Radio really spammy and unusable too as everyone hammers their broadcasts over each other since there is no central schedule.

Again, all for it, but there probably should be some thought to the implementation of it before just adding it in.

Theme!

at least in the UK - pirate radio was really popular in the 90s and even still in the 2000s - where grime music got popular and where alot of artists got their start. many still operate, as well. i think its pretty themely to have pirate radios operating when NLM (to my knowledge) has monopolised and controls most other forms of media (tv, the internet/the grid), etc) - not just for music but for information sharing and news outside of NLM's vicegrip

Ironically I'm an Ex-Pat in the US. I mean yes... kind of? It's in the game, so it should be used and again, I'm not against the idea out of hand. I do think that broadcasts open up a lot of other issues that could make the intended use of radio completely null. If everyone is fighting for broadcast time, then... communicating on them might become really difficult.

But Radio, in general, is not really a CP theme. In nearly every genre piece people hack or take over transmitters to broadcast through the Net/Matrix/TV/etc. Radio just is not prevalent in the theme material. Because it's a tech from another era. Just like RadioDramas. They are period from the 20s-50s. Sure, people still produce them... and Pod Casts have revitalized them a little, but you would not say that RadioDrama's are all themely if you were doing a period piece for today.

If I had my choice, it would be some kind of splice/hack/etc that allows Mixers to take over an NLM channel for X amount of mintues/hours and broadcast content. Not only would that allow a very themely way to broadcast, but it would foster conflict and be far more on theme. Plus it would utilize TVs more and doesn't run into the risk of ruining the primary intention of radios.

However, again, I'm not opposed to the idea. Just some thoughts around it is all.

Technically, the ability to broadcast music/programming/etc also exists too. So that's already in game. Nothing is stopping people from broadcasting what they need or setting up their own little radio hour.

But again, not really opposed, but I do think there are things which should be thought through before adding something like this. Have five shows broadcasting on top of each other, or some mixer power repeating their song on every frequency might cause issues to the intended use of radios.

It depends what you do with it. It's not inherently un-CP.

I mean, friggin' Johnny Mnemonic starts with an antique double-barrel break-action shotgun with hand-machined brass shells (since they're otherwise unavailable) because "when they expect high tech, go low tech."

CP is about subversion.

"this seems more Steampunk/Noir than Cyberpunk"

It breaks my heart when people either forget or never knew in the first place that CP is noir. If it's not noir, it's not proper CP.

It's sort of one of those chicken and egg issues -- it would be cool if there was a managed pirate radio or pirate TV station in the Mix, but then you kind of want to be something player-driven before it's coded. You don't want some NPC saying 'and now there is pirate radio here'.

Perhaps if a group of PCs consistently run a radio station over the course of months staff could run a plot + code to be able to give the ability to 'pre-program' a set number of broadcasts similar to how NLM can program channels, turning that station into an IC institution with a lease and the ability to program things akin to many of the other IC businesses. Seeing an IC business like that emerge out of organic play would be cool.

Live performances would be amazing of course, but the problem is the lack of interest of owning radios combined with the logistical challenges of doing live shows (what time is the show, what frequency, etc.) These things are easily addressed by editing your .txt file and plugging in ad-spots for upcoming live shows, talk radio and etc. while also providing people with a running playlist of things to enjoy when live performances aren't available. This is paralleled IRL by radio stations running X hours of robo-broadcasts and then sticking a syndicated rebroadcast show in at Y time slot on Z day.

The only concern I would have would be making sure there are appropriate limitations as to the number of 'pirate radio' station style devices allowed into the game, since open broadcast is very much a denial of service attack over the radio. Just don't want 40 stations eating up a huge chunk of the low or mid band airwaves, which is exactly the reason why we have the FCC in the first place!

Giving NLM a few key frequencies for updates would be pretty awesome and bonus points if we can tie some of these into key infrastructure.

1) An hourly 5-10 minutes repeating news flash.

Really cut and dry snippets here featuring: Current weather, biggest gain/loss on Stocks lately, player-informed gossip snippet, and player-informed commercial.

2) A specific frequency which reports mag-lev locations?

Finally, make the NLM radio schedulers accessible outside NLM for subversive purposes, but maybe locating the current scheduler requires a McGuffin run or something so the location is dynamic.

Otherwise, I think ad-hoc radio broadcasts that are dependent on radios and looper/voice links that inevitably run out of battery life is ideal.

This creates two common vectors of information. One that is standard, monitored and exploitable, and another which is entirely unregulated.

Either custom modifications which can be made to off-the-shelf radio done by Electro_techs or some level of cascading overlap on off-the-shelf radios would give a much needed boost to the relevance of this items.

I think the problem came down to the possibility that characters could be hundreds of thousands, or even millions of kilometers away from one another in theory, but in practice 99% of all characters were usually within <5km of one another in practice.

Cool idea, but code-wise a big ask.

Right at launch there was something close to being critical mass of interest, but the issue was I believe that the cost and practicality of radio units funnelled most of the audience into battery-powered handhelds that somewhat discouraged leaving the units on all the time, so that the available audience at any moment became lessened over time rather than increased.

Afterwards installed radios became non-functional due to a bug, and once that was resolved the audience had really dwindled to basically the diehards and those who had radio chrome installed that meant they could listen always and forever.

The mid-band re-rollout more or less overrode the radio chrome characters and made the equipment of the diehards somewhat defunct, so it ended up being somewhat of a neutral capture: Losing old audience where it gained some new.

If the radios characters actually have now just stayed on all the time like televisions and SIC, and had decent reach, I believe the content would follow, but I'm doubtful player content alone can do the work to overcome the hump of proliferation and use.

I'd love for discoverability to hit the inflection point and create new interest, and it might be possible, I just don't think that it was for lack of content or attempts to make it so far.

I just don't think something so expensive and complex can't be ubiquitous off the back of one or two niche functions, and ubiquity is really the standard that radio content of any kind will compete against while television and SIC exist. Two mediums that can reach everyone in the game, with an implicit demonstration that this is needed in a small population game.

Primarily I'd like to see low and mid bands merged, and worry about high band balancing when space is more of a thing. Have handhelds limited in their broadcast range but conversely can receive from anywhere, and don't require batteries, while installed radios can reach everywhere (on Earth) with their broadcast.

This would limit the ability for characters to treat radio like SIC without deadzones and pad camp 24/7, while still letting them be an audience for the broadcasts. Ditto it would take advantage of all the existing infrastructure that characters have already bought and installed (sometimes in themselves) so isn't as much need for new uptake.

I don't know exactly what the critical mass of population for self-perpetuating content is, but based off my own experiences I would say it was in the range of 8-10 characters potentially being an audience for content on average. Lower than that and I think it becomes simple player time economy to focus on in-character roleplaying in public locations instead.

I'm sure that was the intent with the system we have now, it's just only low band ever took off in a modest way so its limitations became the limitations of radio as a whole.

I think you can put all sorts of limitations and hardships and costs on the act of broadcasting (just look at how byzantine and burdensome and difficult television broadcast is), but on the audience side it has to be as easy as possible to engage passively or people won't bother and the broadcast side loses its core motivator.

I'm into ham radio, and I think that's the only reason I sort of understand the radio setup we have on Sindome.

I have to echo 0x1mm's post from earlier in the thread about radios being a great system if we had 10k players. We do not have 10k players, and thus, the system is overly complex, difficult to discover, expensive to get into, and the end result is you don't have much content to interact with.

There is a lot I'd like to do with radios, and radio shows, which I think would be really cool, but again, they are so niche that it's not really worth it at this point as a player or coder.

My inclination is that we don't need 3 bands. Low/Mid should be combined and High should remain. High has a place in that it's meant for ship to ship / space communication. Low was meant to be intra-sector, while mid was meant to be inter-sector and city/badlands.

Radios make sense in the badlands because there is no SIC and grid service is spotty. But the badlands are a destination, not a place to live. The system doesn't have enough regular reason for use to be viable the way it is now.

The code is cool, and there is a lot of interesting shit to do with it and discover, but it's a hat on a hat on a hat, in terms of duplicating functionality we essentially already had, that was doing the job better, because it was more accessible.

I dunno. Kinda feel like we should just have one band with frequency guidelines for what should use what for what kind of communication, similar to what ham radio operators already have in terms of a band plan: https://www.arrl.org/band-plan

So for example: A low-mid composite device makeshift radio is installed by a mechanic in a vehicle acts as a homemade CB radio, installed by en electrician in a room acts a radio transmitting rig, upgraded with a [redacted] by a [foic] then is overclocked to work as a high-band device.