Roundstart Equipment Documents

[iaada]

Originally started following Maintainer Meeting (27 September 2025) which brought up concerns about PRs changing round start gear, and what gear should be available. This document translates and expands upon that meeting to provide a more concrete form to the definitions, and where players get the items they start with.

[ArtisticRoomba]

My hero

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

More docs for the maintainer meeting!!!

[slarticodefast]

Thanks for taking the time to write this, like Roomba said, this is a heroic effort ❤️

[Partmedia]

Thanks for taking time to start this doc. I feel that it is not necessary to split it into so many different parts at this time, because it seems like that would just make information needlessly difficult to find. If you want a summary, maybe include a table at the top with links to specific guidelines to anchored headings below.

[Partmedia]

Overall, I feel that the document doesn't sufficiently explain the decision making process to determine whether or not a specific item should be included in a particular starting location. The purpose of the design doc is so that anyone reading the doc can with relative confidence determine if a change would be accepted or not.

If I were reading the doc, I don't think I could make a call on whether or not adding a T-ray scanner to some of the listed locations would be accepted or not.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Thanks for taking the time to write this document. I've left my thoughts on some items below.

[iaada]

Another rewrite started, though I didn't have time to finish / start loadouts. I addressed the reviews and squished it into one page, which I think was the right idea. I have the page start off with a set of definitions to hopefully add clarity to what kinds of items go where.

[Hitlinemoss]

General feedback on a few sections.

[Hitlinemoss]

I would probably also mention shoes here (though I guess those aren't technically universal since diona characters can't wear shoes). Would be weird for players to show up to work barefoot despite having their full uniform otherwise.

[iaada]

I'd like to make shoes optional in loadouts. I hold a radical anti-shoe agenda. Mechanically shoes are most interesting in their absence (glass shards, etc.), so we need more ways to get those pigs free. One such way is to give RP focused players the option to nerf themselves outright and not show up with shoes in the first place.

[Hitlinemoss]

I'd like to make shoes optional in loadouts.

Oh, to be clear, I don't think shoes should be required if players want to intentionally not have them. Mostly I just mean that the option of shoes should be part of the minimum loadout requirements (and a pair of shoes should be selected by default).

[iaada]

Finally done. I really dragged myself over the finish line on this one.

[kontakt]

Really glad to see this doc up for PR!

[kontakt]

This concerns me a bit - making the act of wearing gloves into something suspicious on a meta level could lead to trouble. I would reference how sensors start in a random state as an example of IC meta cover given to antags. Additionally, wouldn't this limit creator glove options to fingerless gloves?

[kontakt]

To expand on this and suggest a different path, I think roundstart gloves should be limited to a single fiber type per department. The issue with fibers from the detective perspective is less the universal usage of gloves and more "Black fibers, yellow insulated fibers, this evidence is worthless". Providing a default glove type that identifies a department is a good middle ground between anti-metagame cover and detective information usage.

[Hitlinemoss]

To expand on this and suggest a different path, I think roundstart gloves should be limited to a single fiber type per department.

Agree with the principle here, though I'll note that we don't necessarily need exactly one type of fiber for departments' roundstart gloves so much as we just need the fiber types to be easily traceable back to that department (e.g, medical has both nitrile gloves and latex gloves, so we could have both "blue sterile fibers" and "white sterile fibers" and in both cases a detective can see that and assume that the evidence points to medical).

[iaada]

While I see your point that wearing gloves becomes more suspicious on a meta level, I don't see it as a problem. The desire is for gloves to be less common and to cast some suspicion on people wearing them. There are enough non-antagonist reasons to wear gloves (from fashion to ripping out a wall light) that it simply becomes one more way for security to profile a suspect (which is not metagaming, its literally the detective's job).

[kontakt]

"Antagonists will similarly seek out these lockers" I agree that they should be driven to seek out lockers for role specific utility items, but availability through vending is going to be the easier path for players without access.

[iaada]

It's simply another option. A traitor with an access breaker or strong structural damage would prefer the speed of nabbing a locker, over the slow process of hacking a vend and waiting for each item to dispense.

A way to reinforce this behavior would be to make it clearer what lockers have been claimed, and what lockers still have items inside.

[kontakt]

Looks great to me. Can't wait to start executing.

[Hitlinemoss]

Something that's just now occurring to me (as I'm preparing to sit down and implement some of these changes): Cargo Technicians don't currently have a job locker, and arguably it's kind of a waste for them to have a locker with nothing in it but an appraisal tool. We could remove the tool from their pockets and expect them to grab them from the lathe instead, but that feels less intuitive for new players than either spawning with the item or having a clearly-designated "this is where you grab your items" locker.

Honestly we probably want to map Cargo Technician lockers anyway just for futureproofing (i.e we might add more cargo-related tools in the future). Shrug.

[ArtisticRoomba]

Something that's just now occurring to me [...]

this is an extremely small barrier to accepting this document and can be easily resolved via giving cargo techs actually meaningful personal equipment

[Hitlinemoss]

Something that's just now occurring to me [...]

this is an extremely small barrier to accepting this document and can be easily resolved via giving cargo techs actually meaningful personal equipment

To be clear I'm not mentioning this as a barrier to this document, just mentioning it as something to be aware of when implementing what this document proposes.

[Hitlinemoss]

Something that might be good to clarify is whether or not we want winter clothing to be available in loadout; player being able to spawn with very good temperature insulation might make cold a bit less threatening than we'd like (in the same way that players spawning with fingered gloves makes forensics a bit less threatening than we'd like).

[Hitlinemoss]

Thought: what does "items are rarely scattered around the starting room" actually mean, here? Is this mostly just saying that this is an acceptable alternative for mappers to choose?

[Hitlinemoss]

Clarification: does this include special eyewear that some roles use (e.g sec glasses, medical HUDs)?

[Hitlinemoss]

I'd also mention that if members of a department have unique PDA apps (e.g AstroNav, MedTek) then the head's locker should include cartridges for those apps.