by Wickedtemp » Wed Jul 20, 2016 5:11 pm
It's been discussed before, but if you're talking about the comments and notes that Officers and Doctors can add to the crew's records, those probably shouldn't be persistent (in the sense that it's going to carry over into the next round). Not only would it be allowing OTHER PEOPLE to effectively change and modify YOUR characters records however they please, it's also just abusable. Could these comments be deleted? If so, nothing is stopping me from joining as a security officer for a shift to cleanse the records of any past crimes. If they aren't, then if someone decided to be funny and leave a note or comment that ended up being false, oh well, nothing can be done.
It's up to the individual player to format their records however they please. Some people make them as profesional as possible, others opt out of records entirely and put "Records not added to database..." as a placeholder, and some people have used their Medical records as a Corruption of Champions-styled stats sheet, detailing the elasticity of various orifices.
There's even some extremely well done templates for character records on the Bay12 forums, created by AlabasterTempest, I tend to use those as they're essentially "Fill in the blank." for your character details, and they cover all of the important bits. Past arrests, post-mortem instructions, next of kin, identifying features, age and weight, etc.
As for improvements for the record system itself? Here's a small one. You know those laptops that let you view the records? How about a "Next" and "Previous" button that you can use to view record after record, instead of 'Click Record' -> 'Look at it' -> 'Back to record list' -> 'Click next record' x20 for all of the crew. Instead, just let me go from one set of records to the next one on the list.
Back to the original suggestion, the current notes/comments system is as organized as you make it. At least with Medical, anyways. It takes no time at all to add a note to a patient's medical history, "[Current Time]: [Patient Name] had a [Type of Injury], [Doctor who Helped Patient] tended to them, cleared and discharged." Some medical players don't mess with notes/comments at all, some add a note whenever someone walks into Medbay with a papercut. There's no uniform format for these either, but that's okay, because they don't persist between rounds unless the patient's player adds them in. If you want it to be super neat, then it's within your power to do so. If you wanted to play a less profesional character who just makes notes and comments about how so-and-so has terrible fashion sense, you can do that. If you don't want to mess with it at all, go for it, because the current system allows for all of that, because it isn't persistent.
Course if by "persistent" you mean something OTHER than "It'll carry over into future rounds." then.. Yeah, there's room for improvement in the fact that there's no uniform format for the notes/comments. To me, that isn't really a big deal because it lets me leave short "Patient broke their right leg, fracture was mended by Dr. Nurse - [Time Stamp]." notes and it's easy as that. You COULD make it more complex with drop down menus where you select the relevant injury or reason for their visit to Medbay, or reason for their arrest, automatic timestamps and other things, but you could also just...type it out in the comment itself.