Fix Odysseus/Firefighter Ripley so they are actually used.

[Helios]

Odysseus and Firefighter ripley are useless for the jobs that are given to them
The Odysseus sleeper doesn't let you inject things into the person inside of it. If you look as Odysseus as a tool for doctors to go to a hostile environment to heal people, it fails that as you end up putting someone who's on fire or dying into the sleeper, and they just die in the sleeper.
The Odysseus syringe gun is almost always used for murder instead of healing, as the good healing chems require patches, which the Syringe gun can't do.
If it isn't limited by the amount of chemicals it can, automatically producing them, why doesn't it have a Hypospray like tool, so a doctor can inject people instead of shooting them, and then finding the syringe.

The Firefighter ripley is simply never made. It has two tools for it, a cable layer and fire extinguisher. Make it more useful for fighting fires, and an end all tool for atmos, including making metal foam, acting as a mobile air siphon/filterer, instead of that thing you find in one away mission.
Metal Foam was deemed too powerful for atmos techs, so why not put it on the Firefighter Ripley so it actually has some use?

[TechnoAlchemist]

The syringe gun worked perfectly well before, perhaps you could Lobby goof to make bicardine and kelotane actually make able.

[Helios]

The syringe gun worked perfectly well before, perhaps you could Lobby goof to make bicardine and kelotane actually make able.

You wouldn't even have to make them make able, you could just have them that starts loaded into the Odysseus scanner, like Epinephrine and Charcoal

[iamgoofball]

Yeah, there's a default list on the syringe gun I can throw those into. Remind me after the freeze ends.

In general I need to work on the syringe gun and what it can do. It should really be able to generate its own syringes, it's pretty shitty to have to /manually load each syringe in from outside the mech at once/.

[DemonFiren]

I thought you could click syringe boxes with the gun out to load it?

[lumipharon]

yeah, you can click on syringes, or containers with syringes inside of it, to load them into the gun.
Still a clunky fuck system considering mechs can generate bullets and rockets out of energy.

[DemonFiren]

It was probably placed as limitation to prevent you from murder-syringing everything.

[Super Aggro Crag]

>no one uses mechs because they're useless at the job they're supposed to do

factually incorrect, you obviously don't play the game, no one uses mechs because science only makes durands for themselves so they can swing their dick around and murder half the station for little provocation and claim it was valid escalation because someone slipped him 40 minutes ago.

[Helios]

>no one uses mechs because they're useless at the job they're supposed to do

factually incorrect, you obviously don't play the game, no one uses mechs because science only makes durands for themselves so they can swing their dick around and murder half the station for little provocation and claim it was valid escalation because someone slipped him 40 minutes ago.

I've seen robotics give miners Ripley's. It hypothetically happens

[Takeguru]

That only happens because it only takes a trivial amount of stuff to make one
Robotics generally gets the better end of the deal

[Anonmare]

I'd make Firefighter mechs if they had more utility and didn't use up a firesuit in construction, they're a fairly plasteel expensive mech to not be buildable at roundstart and are hypothetically just a Ripley mech with some extra bits welded on so making them arbitrarily not having some exosuit equipment or being upgradeable with goliath bits already detracts from any point in building them.

And the Odysseus is a kidnapping meme with the only thing it having over other mechs is being slightly faster.

I mean, Medical would appreciate an exosuit to go out into space to retrieve bodies with if the CMO won't share their spacesuit and atmospherics would love something to help combat fire (A nanoforest launcher, fire extinguisher and RCD module would make cleaning up plasma fires less of a chore, or a portable huge scrubber for quickly cleaning gas leaks.).

Promoting inter-department cooperation is what everyone is always yammering for ain't it?

[newfren]

The odysseus is actually good if you're the CMO/you can convince him to let you scan some Omnizine from his hypo because then you can actually heal people with it.

Whenever I used to play CMO I'd go badger robotics to make me one because it's fun to walk around healing people in a big stompy robot.

Also good is scanning cryox so you can take other people into space without killing them in the sleepers.

[Random Players]

>no one uses mechs because they're useless at the job they're supposed to do

factually incorrect, you obviously don't play the game, no one uses mechs because science only makes durands for themselves so they can swing their dick around and murder half the station for little provocation and claim it was valid escalation because someone slipped him 40 minutes ago.

I've seen robotics give miners Ripley's. It hypothetically happens

Ripleys are worse than useless though if you have any idea what you're doing while mining though.

[Cheimon]

I agree that these mechs aren't that good. Generally speaking a well equipped person is always better, which seems ridiculous. Non-combat mechs have become the world's clunkiest space suits instead of something practical, and while it's fairly easy to produce them they aren't really wanted so much.

The obvious direction for mechs to go is one which involves them having larger and better equipment than a person could normally carry, with the tradeoff being manouverability and expense. So, some ideas for improvement are needed.

Odysseus mechs are currently a bit limited because the syringe gun is very suspicious (and does brute damage) while the sleeper is unbelievably suspicious (and becomes a vehicle purely for kidnapping). When I last used them you could inject people in the sleepers, but apparently that's broken? That's a pretty core part of their functionality so that seems weird. There are however some pretty clear concepts that could be added: some kind of ranged health analyser would be useful (ie more than just the medihud), a mounted variant of the medi-beam could be a great asset, a kind of mounted hypospray would also make sense, potentially you could even take the mech's current 'medicine synthesis' function further and make it able to dispense from a stock of generated bruise patches and ointments. A really fancy medical mech might even be able to be converted into a kind of mobile cryogenics tube, where if you supplied enough oxygen and cryo fluid it would cool the environment and allow you to heal someone on the go. All this would be very powerful, but the idea would be that you could have a kind of mobile infirmary, more powerful than a mobile doctor, at the cost of some better minerals for better parts.

The ripley is more complex: I'm not normally mining, so I'm not certain what miners want, but as far as I'm aware mobility in combat is an issue. The big concept with an APLU is that it can move crates a human can't, but with the 'pull' function this is irrelevant. Perhaps its capacity could be expanded to two crates without sacrificing another slot, perhaps you could add some sort of 'heavy' variant of the Kinetic Accelerator, perhaps some sort of function where the mining drone could be loaded and unloaded from the mech to gather minerals. I think all of these might be useful, it would really require extensive collaboration with someone who cares about the mining job.

As for the firefighter, again it needs to be advantageous compared to a normal person. It could be made a bit faster, you could have some sort of 'heavy' nanofrost variant (apparently this is much more useful than fire extinguishers, but I'm not an atmos tech), maybe it could even come with facilities to mount functional scrubbers and air pumps if it doesn't already. It could be the mech that carries everything you need to fight fire and treat the zone afterwards, rather than having to go back and forth acquiring different bits. You could even have a setting where you leave it locked in an area and it'll keep scrubbing while you go and take a break at the bar, or whatever.

Mechs have huge potential. They just need to have imaginative new modules that take into account the core point of them, which is to carry more than a human can and to protect more than a human can. They're also a vehicle for new technologies that aren't compact enough to be handheld yet. Also, if the APLU mechs were a bit more mobile that would be a huge boost, since nobody wants their journey time in the asteroid to be doubled, or for themselves to not be able to reach fires in time. At least Odysseus works in that regard. And there are other issues: it's tough to identify who's in a mech, and that means security shoots a lot of them rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt. Some sort of function to display an ID card, if you wanted, could be a great boon to civilians. These are all just thoughts, obviously if you want the mechs to be that much more powerful you may need to increase their material costs, but at the moment they're barely useful for anything but the great game of Sec vs Antags and that kind of sucks when they have so much potential.

[Actionb]

Ripleys are great for mining. You can get them much faster than any high-tech mining gear, they move faster in no atmosphere than you in a hardsuit, they don't give a fuck about mining mobs, they pick up everything you mine (this is a pretty big time saver), mine three tiles at once. If you get them right when you come back to the station after your first haul, they are a definite upgrade.
Ripleys can mount a ton of equipment. Every other mech is limited to three items - the ripley can carry twice that. A mining ripley can carry the usual three mining items + repair droid, reactive armor (close combat, though armor generally feels underwhelming) and a reactor or energy relay. If you build a construction ripley for shits and giggles you have a ranged (!) RCD, cable layer, extinguisher, drill, energy relay, fun-clamp. It's a fun toy.
For its low price the ripey can do a lot of stuff, be it during rev, blob or what have you. Definitely one of the best mechs.

The oddy is shit for healing, it always has been. But great for dispensing all kinds of chemicals. Unlimited plasma/omnizine/meth.
It really needs a less clunky interface: the reagent list is a horror to adjust because it keeps updating while selecting new chemicals. Nobody fucking knows how to scan reagents in the first place. The sleeper needs to be more versatile than just an epi-autoinjector. Maybe let the mech carry one more item (four in total) so you have some more freedom in module choices.
It also is just a fun toy for chemists and CMOs.

Firefighter is just a joke. It has a wee bit more armor than a ripley, but costs a silly amount of plasteel. No idea why you'd want one other than for the sake of building one of each mech. Considering fire doesn't affect mechs at all, maybe it's time to just ditch this mech variant all together.
Make an EVA-worthy mech instead? I don't know.
All the mechs have their own special niche - so if you want to revamp the firefighter, you'd have to find a niche that isn't already filled by the other models.
Ripley is the versatile heavy industry mech. Oddy is the druglord chem dispenser 2.0. Gygax is the fast one, durand the sturdy one. Phazon is the Imma-phase-through-the-wall-and-punch-you one.

[Takeguru]

A large nanofrost thing would definitely make a firefighter more useful.
Of course, fires being what they are if it's bad enough to call in the FF Ripley it's bad enough to shuttle call oh hey here comes the shuttle

Also, the FF is just as slow as a normal Ripley, so any fire it can actually handle burns itself out before the FF is halfway there.
Up the speed on the FF. Not Gygax or Oddy speed, but faster than the Durand.
Allow it to take goliath plating as well, just for the sake of consistency.

MAYBE nerf the other mechs so they aren't fire immune.
Resistant, maybe, but not immune.

[Helios]

A large nanofrost thing would definitely make a firefighter more useful.
Of course, fires being what they are if it's bad enough to call in the FF Ripley it's bad enough to shuttle call oh hey here comes the shuttle

Also, the FF is just as slow as a normal Ripley, so any fire it can actually handle burns itself out before the FF is halfway there.
Up the speed on the FF. Not Gygax or Oddy speed, but faster than the Durand.
Allow it to take goliath plating as well, just for the sake of consistency.

MAYBE nerf the other mechs so they aren't fire immune.
Resistant, maybe, but not immune.

With how atmosphere works on the station, if a sufficiently large fire breaks out that area is inhospitable long after the fire burns out due to the air being massively overheated. The role it would take is putting out fires, and then making the formerly plasma filled hallway navigatable.

[1g88a]

I support the idea of the firefighter having scrubbers and a better extinguisher. Maybe give it a longer range as if it were a syndicate chemsprayer. Maybe let it mount some of the more general utility items and make it more fragile than the Ripley since it doens't need armor to stop fires. Oh, and what about a researchable metal foam mortar since this mech is essentially an atmos tech-oriented-mech>

[Incomptinence]

Crag no once uses civ mechs because they aren't good enough.

Civilian mechs are made mostly of metal and glass with rippley only needing a little plasma in the form of plasteel. Their components therefore are comparatively cheap even before upgraded exofab, once you have ripleys mining the basic materials come in by the thousands literally. If assembly is the issue the roboticist can just plonk the components in front of the guy who wants it and he can make it with basic tools and cable coil. It is feasible to have an exosuit for every man and woman on the station and I vaguely recall being party to this once.

It rarely ever happens because there is little demand. Civilian mechs are not great (I personally love ripley mining though more of a flavour thing) at what they can do and due to "BOOK STOCKING MECH" being one of the classic mocked suggestions are kept narrow as all hell in what they can do with like no new utility modules I can recall.

[Jacough]

The Firefighter ripley is simply never made. It has two tools for it, a cable layer and fire extinguisher. Make it more useful for fighting fires, and an end all tool for atmos, including making metal foam, acting as a mobile air siphon/filterer, instead of that thing you find in one away mission.
Metal Foam was deemed too powerful for atmos techs, so why not put it on the Firefighter Ripley so it actually has some use?

The thing that kind of sucks about being an atmostech is that the fire suits slow you way the fuck down and you have to swap out your backpack for the backpack extinguisher. A fast moving mech that's fire proof and has the functions of the backpack extinguisher would be pretty nice.

[peoplearestrange]

Not sure if its been mentioned but the fire-fighter ripley could really do with a Ice canon. Like the fire fighting backpack had/has. Which fires a ball of ice, that explodes dropping the temperature, putting out a fire, or freezing people depending on application.

[Actionb]

Guys please. Nobody is going to build a mech for atmos techs, because there's never a need for one.
If there's a plasma leak in a confined area like toxins, the scrubbers will take care of it.
If there's an isolated fire, say an emagged holodeck, you just seal the area and let it burn itself out - or help out by removing the plating. The area is fucked for a while anyway, nanofrost will only help marginally.
If the entire station is plasma and so hot that even the devil would break a sweat, you call the shuttle.

Scrap the FF ripley, improve the oddy's healing capabilities.

[Gun Hog]

I have been planning to add a mech version of the Medical Beamgun for the Odysseus, once the Bio 6 gate has been bypassed by research. I believe it will become a mech desired by CMOs everywhere.

[Jacquerel]

Being able to plant the Odysseus like a Siege Tank and turn it into a mobile cryo tube is actually a pretty cool idea.

[Malkevin]

Odysseus and Firefighter ripley are useless for the jobs that are given to them
The Odysseus sleeper doesn't let you inject things into the person inside of it. If you look as Odysseus as a tool for doctors to go to a hostile environment to heal people, it fails that as you end up putting someone who's on fire or dying into the sleeper, and they just die in the sleeper.
The Odysseus syringe gun is almost always used for murder instead of healing, as the good healing chems require patches, which the Syringe gun can't do.
If it isn't limited by the amount of chemicals it can, automatically producing them, why doesn't it have a Hypospray like tool, so a doctor can inject people instead of shooting them, and then finding the syringe.

The Firefighter ripley is simply never made. It has two tools for it, a cable layer and fire extinguisher. Make it more useful for fighting fires, and an end all tool for atmos, including making metal foam, acting as a mobile air siphon/filterer, instead of that thing you find in one away mission.
Metal Foam was deemed too powerful for atmos techs, so why not put it on the Firefighter Ripley so it actually has some use?

What?

Firefighter used to be a Ripley Deluxe, all the features and modules (all engineering modules including: drills, clamps, cable layer, and mech RCD, power plants, etc) of the regular Ripley plus being fireproof.

Odysseus used to be able to inject patients in the sleepers if it also had a syringe gun equipped.

Who the fuck changed that???

Being able to plant the Odysseus like a Siege Tank and turn it into a mobile cryo tube is actually a pretty cool idea.

You used to be able to inject occupants with cryo chems and then stand outside the airlock to function as a ghetto cryotube.

[Cheimon]

What would also be an excellent addition to mechs generally is the ability to see what modules it has on the sprite, instead of just by examination. But, uhh, they're not that commonly used a feature (most rounds have less than 2 mechs, I'd guess) and it would be quite a lot of work. Also, some sort of way to identify the mech, maybe as a tradeoff for DNA locking it would say whose DNA was bound to it?

[Helios]

Odysseus and Firefighter ripley are useless for the jobs that are given to them
The Odysseus sleeper doesn't let you inject things into the person inside of it. If you look as Odysseus as a tool for doctors to go to a hostile environment to heal people, it fails that as you end up putting someone who's on fire or dying into the sleeper, and they just die in the sleeper.
The Odysseus syringe gun is almost always used for murder instead of healing, as the good healing chems require patches, which the Syringe gun can't do.
If it isn't limited by the amount of chemicals it can, automatically producing them, why doesn't it have a Hypospray like tool, so a doctor can inject people instead of shooting them, and then finding the syringe.

The Firefighter ripley is simply never made. It has two tools for it, a cable layer and fire extinguisher. Make it more useful for fighting fires, and an end all tool for atmos, including making metal foam, acting as a mobile air siphon/filterer, instead of that thing you find in one away mission.
Metal Foam was deemed too powerful for atmos techs, so why not put it on the Firefighter Ripley so it actually has some use?

What?

Firefighter used to be a Ripley Deluxe, all the features and modules (all engineering modules including: drills, clamps, cable layer, and mech RCD, power plants, etc) of the regular Ripley plus being fireproof.

Odysseus used to be able to inject patients in the sleepers if it also had a syringe gun equipped.

Who the fuck changed that???

Being able to plant the Odysseus like a Siege Tank and turn it into a mobile cryo tube is actually a pretty cool idea.

You used to be able to inject occupants with cryo chems and then stand outside the airlock to function as a ghetto cryotube.

Same coder who nerfed transform sting so it doesn't transfer disabilities, had 2 minute cooldown from using anything else as well as generic cooldowns for changelings. Same coder who made traitor AIs borgs immune to emags.

[lumipharon]

Ripleys are robust as fuck.

Sure, MLGpr0 miner with their dual wielded hyper kinetic rock slappers and a BOH filled with blue space satchels can mine faster then a ripley, but a ripley is easymodo as fuck, and doesn't require an actual miner with miner shit to operate.
A greyshirt or a scientist can hop into a ripley and mine perfectly fine when the miners are dead/rogue/nonexistant.
Also as previously mentioned, ripleys have SIX modules instead of 3. This is hugely useful, although the good shit like mech RCD's require a lot of minerals. Speaking of which, the mech RCD is rediculously robust - it's a ranged RCD that even works on r-walls.

And a ripley can store like, an absurd amount of stuff (and a huge variety for that matter) inside with the clamp. When I used to do white ship autism shit on meta, I would carry on machine frames, computer frames, lockers full of shit etc (back then you couldn't build frames on shuttle tiles). What's more, I could carry something like 20 of these massive items at once. Hell, you could even carry other mechs so long as you hadn't finished the final step, which was pretty amusing.

Firefighting ripley is shit though, it has 1 less module then a normal ripley, fire extinguishers are literally useless for anything more then some dude running around on fire, and I can't imagine a wirelayer is faster then doing it by hand, although I may be wrong.

[newfren]

The fire extinguisher is useful for when gravity dies or you accidentally space your own mech, but the RCD probably fulfills the same purpose? I'm not sure if floors stop a mech actually, but you might be able to quickly build a wall as well before you hit it.

[lumipharon]

Projectiles don't make mechs move in space (last time I tried, which was a while ago), which basically means you're fucked if you misstep. I don't know if the extinguisher works differently/it's changed since then or what.

Also I've discovered more that one that if a ripley is more that capable of drillin away all the wall tiles near it(for example, mining into the asteroid from space). Because the drill deletes a 1x3 area, you make your mech get stuck, since you don't seem to be able to move when next to ground tiles when this happens, even though you can normally.

[Jacough]

Guys please. Nobody is going to build a mech for atmos techs, because there's never a need for one.
If there's a plasma leak in a confined area like toxins, the scrubbers will take care of it.
If there's an isolated fire, say an emagged holodeck, you just seal the area and let it burn itself out - or help out by removing the plating. The area is fucked for a while anyway, nanofrost will only help marginally.
If the entire station is plasma and so hot that even the devil would break a sweat, you call the shuttle.

Scrap the FF ripley, improve the oddy's healing capabilities.

The way you put it brings up the question of why we have atmos techs in the first place. Putting out fires and stabilizing the atmosphere for rooms is the primary purpose of atmos engineers but as you said, pretty much all of that is handled automatically. Scrubbers automatically filler air, fire doors automatically seal off infernos, and of course if all else fails there's the emergency shuttle.

So before we start adding to the atmos Ripley maybe we should address the atmos tech itself. How do we let them do an air scrubber's work manually in a way that's better than just automatically letting the air scrubber do its thing? How do we make them more useful in the case of a blazing inferno that's got an entire area locked down and inhospitable? How do we give them a chance to be the hero of the station when things have gone to shit, pretty much the whole station is on fire, and the emergency shuttle seems like the best solution?

As far as the Odysseus goes, honestly I like the idea Jacquerel proposed. Instead of trying to have the Odysseus be a glorified medic have it be a mobile clinic. An example being giving it the ability to do shit like render itself stationary to provide a surgery table and surgical tools. Xeno invasion? Build an Odysseus, deploy it near a xeno nest, have a few doctors nearby to use the tools to triage and treat xeno victims.

[Actionb]

Atmos techs are engineers-light, most atmos techs barely have an idea what they are doing. You cannot rely on having an atmos god every round to save the station from a flood, so you have to make the atmospheric system fairly bland and automatic so even the slowest derp can at least do -something-.
Atmos techs also need to be mobile, being able to manipulate air alarms, ferry scrubbers and pumps around, repairing pipes. I don't see why you would ever need a mech as atmos tech unless it is literally immune to heat when fusion makes a return. But even then, you need to hop out of the mech to manipulate air alarms and all other mechs are immune too.
Firefighting is suprisingly rare, either you are too slow and the fire is out before you get there or it is too big and cannot be contained faster than if you were just letting it burn out on its own. I always smirk when I see an eager atmos tech in full firefighting gear arriving at the location of a big fire - it's like fighting windmills. And that's coming from me, a huge fan of atmos.
In all honesty, a book stocking mech is more useful than an atmos mech.

[Incomptinence]

What is the average lifetime for a blaze in fastmsos anyway?

[DemonFiren]

Nanofrost might be less useless if it somehow, I don't know, helped restore a room to breathable levels beyond putting out the fire and freezing everyone.
Firefighter with cluster-nanofrost or an omnidirectional extinguisher could probably just walk into an inferno, shit its payload everywhere, and the fire is gone.

Scrubber and pump modules for a firefighter are a must, as is fast movement. Handwave it as having much lighter plating than a Ripley, and make other mechs take heat damage.
Of course a heater/cooler module can't be ignored, either; the lack of oxygen is only half the pain of a plasma fire aftermath - the other half is the lack of non-sun-temperature air.

[Actionb]

What is the average lifetime for a blaze in fastmsos anyway?

You need to ask yourself when does a firefighting mech become useful?
A mining ripley is useful as long you aren't yet decked out in sonic jackhammers. (Supply)
Odysseus is currently not useful for its intended purpose. Never gets built. (Medbay)
Durand is your go to mech and you'd want one when bad stuff like aliens are around. (Security/Clown)
Gygax is more for showing off your diamonds, but still a good combat mech. (Security)
A FF mech would be useful if the station is in a REALLY bad shape - but that would mean the shuttle is already coming. Any situation less dire could just be handled by engineering.

If anything, design a general engineering mech. Don't make it exclusive to one of the least appreciated departments of the station. The built-in scrubber and the nanofrost mech launcher are great ideas, but I do not feel they're enough to warrant their own mech.
An engineering mech could be space-worthy (magboots or limited jetpack), RCD, RPD, maybe have a synthesizer for commonly needed engineering items (power control modules, low cap batteries, an engivend on wheels), obviously is going to have to be able to use tools. A bit like an engiborg on steroids. Make it a great mech to have around after a bomb or a meteor shower - and not just when toxins fucked up again. Yes, you could do most of these things with a ripley, but they are way too slow to be an improvement over an engineer.
That said, I am not so sure the current mech interface can handle all that.

@Demon: extinguishing a plasma fire with water is just a fool's idea. Nanofrost replaces the plasma with nitrogen (via magic, I guess) - that's the biggest advantage of it. Yeah it cools stuff down a bit, but the replacing bit is the key. Without it, the plasma would just reignite again. The mech extinguisher is utterly worthless.
Unlike in ye olde days, before atmos hardsuits were a thing and coffee + dragging a heater were a necessity for breach-fixing atmosians, I never use heaters nowadays. Fastmos is pretty gud at establishing a decent temperature after a fire either via 'replace air' mode scrubbers or with nanofrost. Fusion aftermath is another thing, because it's just broken.
There's SO MANY heaters around, they really do not need to be on a mech if you do need one.

[Cheimon]

I was only proposing that the firefighting mech be made into *the* atmospherics mech. Carries everything you need there, you can put out the fire if it's still going, and then you don't need to go and fetch anything: you can plonk down your scrubbers, your heaters, your gas pumps, literally everything and fix the room in a much shorter space of time.

[DemonFiren]

That said, can't scrubbers and pumps and such shit be loaded into the cargo compartment?

[lumipharon]

RPD makes that pretty redundant though - only thing useful for the mech would be a mech mounted rpd.

I still think we need a mech mounted man cannon however.
Pick up people and fire them out the cannon later.

[Malkevin]

Firefighter can carry clamp, yes?

Load up canisters of supercooled n2, dump them into the fire, use drill to pop the can.

[Jazaen]

Speaking of mechs, I might actually try to code something (God help me) and make a ghetto mech.
The main trouble with most mechs is that roboticists are NOT going to give them to anyone but themselves (and if not, round must be going really long), except for RIPLEYs. For every round ODYSSEUS they deliver to the medbay, which does sometimes happen, there are three more when mechs are a privilege of roboticists, RD and maybe someone who just hacked into robotics because station is burning or losing air/crew/lebensraum/whatever to make a mech and meme away.

[DemonFiren]

Firefighter can carry clamp, yes?

Load up canisters of supercooled n2, dump them into the fire, use drill to pop the can.

I don't think busted canisters can be recycled.

Don't quote me on that, of course.

[lumipharon]

A ripley can carry like, 20 somethin canisters, and they only cost like 10 metal to make.

It would be better if there was just a chem launcher type module that could be connected to containers (canister for gas, water/welding tanks, bluespace beakers etc) that you've loaded into your hold.
That gives it genuine use as some sort of fire fighting tool, as well as invariably a nightmare flamethrower/rape cannon.

[DemonFiren]

>mech-mounted heavy flamethrower/chem sprayer combination

YES PLEASE. It'll be OP as fuck, then nerfed or gated to death, but for just a short while, I want to see something like this.

[Actionb]

Speaking of mechs, I might actually try to code something (God help me) and make a ghetto mech.
The main trouble with most mechs is that roboticists are NOT going to give them to anyone but themselves (and if not, round must be going really long), except for RIPLEYs. For every round ODYSSEUS they deliver to the medbay, which does sometimes happen, there are three more when mechs are a privilege of roboticists, RD and maybe someone who just hacked into robotics because station is burning or losing air/crew/lebensraum/whatever to make a mech and meme away.

You would be suprised how many heads say 'No thanks' when offered a durand.
Half the times I've built a combat mech for security it ended up in the hands of some officer or the warden (oh god why). Mining ripleys gathering dust in the cargo office while miners rush past it... oddys rusting away in chemistry, not being used to shoot the clown with meth/ephedrine/crank mixtures.
Maybe mechs are just generally too inflexible?
Sure, Greyshit McHasNothingElseToDo would gladly take a mech, but that's not really a smart idea now is it.
I feel like I have written that before...

>mech-mounted heavy flamethrower.

Death to xenoscum! Down with WJ!

[lumipharon]

mechs are slow and clunky.
People don't like being slow, and most jobs involve doing a lot of things you can do while inside a mech.

[Jazaen]

Though combat mechs are exceedingly useful in xenobio, if you are messing with gold slime cores.

[Cheimon]

Yeah, the Head of Security needs to be very mobile, needs to be able to give personal leadership, to move criminals around and assist his officers and to be a clear 'face' for the department. Having a mech hurts his capacity to do all those things, it only gives him a combat boost (and even then, mechs are bigger and slower targets). It's exactly the kind of thing to give to an officer who'll be more competent and less hamstrung by it.

Mechs like the ody often aren't that flexible, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ideally, they are the 'big guns': very specialised, somewhat slow, but when you really need them they're really good.

[Malkevin]

Giving a combat mech is like giving a british beat cop a gun.
Sure it vastly improves his chances of taking down a rabid mohamed but its completely useless in aiding in an arrest.


Gygaxs and durands are the wrong mech to give to sec, oddy's are actually better because you can shoot a syringe of sleep tox into someone and then cart them off to the brig (or scoop them up and give them a lethal injection)

[TheNightingale]

A combat mech is for combat situations - when there's an active cult, for example, or a revolution, or you need to shoot some aliens. If you're using it to patrol the halls, you probably shouldn't. (But remember, a Solaris laser cannon does 60 burn per shot, so you can shoot someone twice, restrain them, heal them and then call for someone else to pick them up.)

[Cheimon]

Giving a combat mech is like giving a british beat cop a gun.
Sure it vastly improves his chances of taking down a rabid mohamed but its completely useless in aiding in an arrest.


Gygaxs and durands are the wrong mech to give to sec, oddy's are actually better because you can shoot a syringe of sleep tox into someone and then cart them off to the brig (or scoop them up and give them a lethal injection)

Yes - excellent analogy.

Having said that, Odysseus armour is weak shit. You can break one of those mechs more easily than you can crit a human (well, not quite, but it's still only got 120 health), so that sleep tox needs to be fast acting.

For reference, a ripley gets 200 health and some damage absorption (not certain how that works), gygax 250, durand 400. All mechs also get a reflection chance of 15. A purpose built security mech would be interesting, but ultimately fairly pointless: if you can't handle it with normal officers, it's really time you stopped trying to arrest people and rocked up with mech cannons.