"Burner phone" item

[Octu]

Might make certain cases where you search for people easier if you were able to call them remotely. Say you have a building and a phone number but no name or tenant directory, you could use a burner phone to call the person and listen for the ringing

Otherwise call the phone to distract someone into another room so you can sneak around

Maybe for balance and tech reasons it could only be used to make their phone ring, not send or receive voices, and can only be used a limited number of times

[Sylverone]

That's a nifty idea. It could alternatively be an item called a "ringer", sold from the city hall or underground, with limited uses?

If wireless is undesired for thematic reasons, it could be a code-breaker type device that you attach to the telephone router of a building enter a valid number in that building, then you can walk through the building looking for the sound for about 15 mins or so? Maybe if the number you enter is not a valid number in that building, it can fail, so you can narrow things down that way? Maybe that would be too OP... because it would be too reliable, yet very tedious to eliminate all buildings... or maybe not.

Anyway, cool idea.

[Octu]

Only concern is it might be anachronistic to have a wireless device in a world where telecommunications are carried out via pneumatic tube networks. Though, is there any in-universe justification behind the bloodhound trackers?

[Booker T-Witt]

Originally posted by Octu:

Only concern is it might be anachronistic to have a wireless device in a world where telecommunications are carried out via pneumatic tube networks. Though, is there any in-universe justification behind the bloodhound trackers?

yes there is no lore reason for there to be a mobile phones, especially when emails are literal tubes. not a bad idea though, and good point about the trackers, plus the fingerprint scanner has to have some wireless functionality, otherwise it couldn't function at all

[Mama Llama]

I'm assuming the bloodhound trackers are using a sort of RF signal to identify the person you place them on. The game also has Television which was delivered wirelessly before cable TV and then digital cable TV became the standard so we're living in a world where wireless communication is possible, but prohibitively expensive for personal use.

Personally, I think vMail as a concept adds more problems than it solves since there are clearly wires running between the great island cities. If you look out into the distance off of a pier you can see a cable running from a tower going down into the waste water below, like today's trans-Atlantic internet connection between the continents works. Personally, I'd be more willing to believe the email system (especially one that connects across city islands) uses electric pulses of morse code (IE: Telegraph) than pressurized air.

[Isabelle]

Originally posted by Octu:

Only concern is it might be anachronistic to have a wireless device in a world where telecommunications are carried out via pneumatic tube networks. Though, is there any in-universe justification behind the bloodhound trackers?

I assumed they were RFID. RFID chips can't communicate any unique information, they just scream their current location out into the void for a receiver.