Hailing CMDRs and Non-Wing Voice Comms

[North Kozar]

While this isn't something totally new, I was thinking about how voice chat that isn't restricted to Wings could be implemented and I thought about having there be a way to hail other ships. Similarly to how you can target a ship and start typing a direct message, it could be a key binding or option that when pressed would hail the other ship. For the ship being hailed, they would get a notification (phone ringing type of deal, maybe the ship voice saying "You are being hailed") and at which point the CMDR receiving the hail can choose to open comms with the ship or deny.
With the eventual introduction of player avatars, it could display your avatar when the comms are open, too. This could be used on any ship that's target-able either in super cruise or not.

Could it become annoying if you are being harassed by comm notifications and hail attempts? Most likely. To remedy this, there could simply be a small system that prevents anymore than 3 hails within a certain time span (5-10 minutes) from the same ship if each one is denied. After that time, they can attempt to hail you again. Or if you hail them, it resets that timeout restriction. As well, settings would need to be included to allow you to: be able to block players, be able to restrict hailing to 'friends only,' or turn off voice chat all together. If you were to hail a ship that had voice chat off or set to friends only, you would receive a notification saying they have their comms restricted or closed. And to deal with hailing while in wings, there could simply be two channels of voice chat you could switch between: Wing comms and direct comms.

Anyway, there's my thoughts on a way to introduce voice chat that's outside of wings... Thanks for reading! Thoughts? Comments?

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Could it become annoying if you are being harassed by comm notifications and hail attempts? Most likely. To remedy this, there could simply be a small system that prevents anymore than 3 hails within a certain time span (5-10 minutes) from the same ship if each one is denied.

A superior solution in my opinion would be to simply mute any hail notifications that come in if there is already a pending hail request from that CMDR that has been viewed or denied. Make this last until either a new game session or the CMDR accepts the call. I don't think it's wise to actually stop someone from attempting to hail when only the notification sound would be a problem. So the solution should only address the notification sound.


Otherwise I think it's a fantastic idea.

 

[North Kozar]

A superior solution in my opinion would be to simply mute any hail notifications that come in if there is already a pending hail request from that CMDR that has been viewed or denied. Make this last until either a new game session or the CMDR accepts the call. I don't think it's wise to actually stop someone from attempting to hail when only the notification sound would be a problem. So the solution should only address the notification sound.


Otherwise I think it's a fantastic idea.

Certainly that is a great idea! Makes good sense to me, too. Mostly I was thinking if there was a visual indicator or something and you deny them and they call again, you deny, they call again repeatedly to hit a threshold where they couldn't again. But your idea does streamline and simplify that plus still make it possible to respond to the hail if so desired.

 

[Hydrino]

+1 for the idea. Obv some potential issues like Psycho Romeo mentions, but nothing that couldn't be worked around.