Ship Reports Transporter "unavailable" when damaged

[martianant]

This might sound silly, but I think this is a very unhelpful message. I am not sure if the ship will report "Transporter is unavailable" for other reasons beyond being inoperable, but it sounds to me like a "I should keep trying" rather than a "It's broke captain." I propose the message is changed to something more clear, like "Transporter is unavailable due to damage." or maybe "Transporters are inoperable" (see, that last one hints that trying again later won't help!) It's a little thing, but I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out why my transporter wasn't working before I thought to check if it was destroyed.

[AnrDaemon]

You can't know why it is unavailable, unless you inspected it one way or another.
There should be no free intel.

[Vectorus]

The only other times when transporters can't be used, "beyond range", "insufficient power", "shields up" or "already active" are covered by their own messages. Therefore, I believe the "unavailable" message always refers to inoperability, and the experienced player already knows not to keep trying. There is then no reason not to change it to the more precise "transporter is inoperable".

I assume the "unavailable" message may also be used generically for unhandled failures when a bug is affecting transporter code, but I have never seen it happen.

[martianant]

"There should be no free intel"
You're right, the ship shouldn't ever respond on the comms channel if no one is on aboard, better make everyone find their way on board. Also remove the handy "Damage Report" UI option, that's free intel. You gotta find your way to the new Damage Control station and start checking every system manually. It shouldn't be presented on one page or screen, it should show each system as it's own thing. You gotta use something else to keep track of it, wouldn't want the game to give too much information to it's players!

"the experienced player already knows not to keep trying" This was entirely geared so that inexperienced players aren't getting frustrated.
"beyond range" "insufficient power" "shields up" "already active" those are all very clear as to why the transporter cannot be used. "Unavailable" could be said for each of those reasons but how would you tell the difference? My point is even changing unavailable to inoperable would make it more in line with all the other messages in making it clear what is actually happening with your ship.

[Deantwo]

You can't know why it is unavailable, unless you inspected it one way or another.
There should be no free intel.

The ship and crew only respond to avatars that are allowed to use the transporters, so it is not free intel to the enemy.
We are talking about messages sent over private ship and crew channels, and some time the hail channel if people are lazy, so you can already limit who sees the message.

[Vectorus]

Martianant, reread my post, I'm agreeing with you.