/tg/Station 13

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Luke Cox wrote:Honestly I think you people are being way too pessimistic. Mining went from a puddle to an ocean last year, and Engineering is moving in a very promising direction with the new engine and power management. 2016 was amazing for TG. Personally, I think the best direction would be to make individual tasks a bit more complex to perform, proportionate to the payoff. Routine tasks will feel more rewarding, and be more prone to sabotage (more moving parts means more that can go wrong). Medical is the most in need of a rework. Currently, you dump someone in a sleeper or cryopod and push a button. That's painfully boring and shallow. We have a great surgery system, and the operating theater virtually never gets used. What if bullets had a chance to become embedded and had to be surgically removed? What if severe cuts had to be stitched up? What if traitors sabotaged medical so that people they shot up will die from not being treated? Medical has an incredible amount of potential.

That puddle is only knee deep, though it is wide. I think a new map was a good thing but we bottled it too much (kor seems keen to make that station standard setting though i think that's backing ourselves into a corner we can't dig ourselves out of since space has more possibilty) since there's not much more we can do in that 'Ocean' to actually improve it past the remarkable process we have already. Already the PR's have slowed down immensely

> Its a mining away mission that just had a lot of work done on it (all it is is a bit of dark ground, some boss mobs & loot, ores, lava, chasms associated mining objects, regular mobs & ghost roles all using normal station assets, that's not deep its just a wide spectrum of a detailed environment that people get bored of quickly when they have seen it all)

Which we can make the same argument for asteroid just being a less detailed enviroment but still functional away mission (muh space, with some rocks & a few mobs, junk flies onto it occasionally and loot hidden in caches in the rocks). As to engineering it was a agreed decision to move away from the instantly round destroying engines but the supermatter itself is a static lump of boring because we still collect off it the same way as any other machine (there are some PR's out to amend this by changing how atmos reacts with the supermatter)

As to mining i think a good cycle of a few detailed enviroments so it feels like a populated universe would help that in the same way goon goes into RP depth about its solarium locations (though hopefully not as pretentious in self importance) since with new environments there are new ideas (iamgolfball can play with cold mechanics in their specialty)

Station is a concrete hole still filled in, we need new places to pour idea cement paste.

space has more possibilty

Space is literally an empty void, that's why it's called space.

come on kor now you're just being willfully obtuse are you not familiar with literally 75% of science fiction

Is this the thread where I talk about the loss of depth and interaction because everyone starts with literally everything they could ever want to do their job in terms of what maps provide players roundstart?

I'm not being obtuse. Planet station is still set in sci-fi, with a space ship crash, and an alien world, and alien ruins, so he's not talking about space the setting, he's talking about space itself, the empty nothing we literally have in our game and surrounding our station for 9 z levels.

bandit wrote:come on kor now you're just being willfully obtuse are you not familiar with literally 75% of science fiction

things in space are what is exciting, but the fact that there's so much in between the exciting things makes putting stuff in space to explore a poor decision imo

Qbopper wrote:

bandit wrote:come on kor now you're just being willfully obtuse are you not familiar with literally 75% of science fiction

things in space are what is exciting, but the fact that there's so much in between the exciting things makes putting stuff in space to explore a poor decision imo

not having anything static regarding space really did it in.

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:

Qbopper wrote:

bandit wrote:come on kor now you're just being willfully obtuse are you not familiar with literally 75% of science fiction

things in space are what is exciting, but the fact that there's so much in between the exciting things makes putting stuff in space to explore a poor decision imo

not having anything static regarding space really did it in.

also this, there's no way to know where anything interesting is or if you'll even make it back to the station, everything is designed to make gameplay on the station interesting, I don't see why we should make features for lone explorers to fuck off and ignore the round with

I already feel strongly about lavaland, this is that x1000 because at least lavaland has them collecting minerals for science/etc.

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:Is this the thread where I talk about the loss of depth and interaction because everyone starts with literally everything they could ever want to do their job in terms of what maps provide players roundstart?

This is another cause, yes. (You could also put in traitor uplinks/ling powers/etc providing traitors with literally everything they could ever want roundstart.)

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:

Qbopper wrote:

bandit wrote:come on kor now you're just being willfully obtuse are you not familiar with literally 75% of science fiction

things in space are what is exciting, but the fact that there's so much in between the exciting things makes putting stuff in space to explore a poor decision imo

not having anything static regarding space really did it in.

That was required because telesci space looting was too strong with static coordinates. What really kills space exploration is the huge blank z-level of nothing but stars we have specifically to make the space levels feel further apart.

Kor wrote:I'm not being obtuse. Planet station is still set in sci-fi, with a space ship crash, and an alien world, and alien ruins, so he's not talking about space the setting, he's talking about space itself, the empty nothing we literally have in our game and surrounding our station for 9 z levels.

So you just want to have a static station that never expands (building on ground tiles, not even broadly interesting space atmos) working out, no space suits, nearly no escape shuttle (you've already discussed the functions of removing calling shuttle or making it a deadly serious thing that can't be recalled in a thread somewhere else) no travelling through space or greater exploration, we'd be stuck on 1 z level in its current form and only able to walk/teleport off it possibly later on.

Somehow this is kind of backwards to depth by pushing it inside a increasingly smaller box just to fit a narrative that's been written up in your sci-fi universal lore. (Ironically the station is a box, but there is a lot of space around the box) Its like asking people to drink flavoured water at Oktoberfest because people getting drunk is causing societal problems without cancelling the event because the festivity has been compromised by people who dislike & reject one thing over another.

> The lack of answers to Boss monsters, how to fix chasms caused by super huge explosions really screwing up and spawnkilling/irreclaimable and lava (which dumping bodies in is a bannable offence) burning everything & everyone to a crisp plus long burning times on lava often causing chain infernos needs to be addressed before we ever take that idea literally. Remove any of those aspects and its not lavaland and you're sort of betraying the premise.

The singularity/tesla wouldn't work because space is the base turf tile and eventually if you destroy the planet enough past a chasm you reveal space, without making literally a seperate server or game folder its impractical.

ExcessiveCobblestone wrote:Is this the thread where I talk about the loss of depth and interaction because everyone starts with literally everything they could ever want to do their job in terms of what maps provide players roundstart?

There's that too, we don't have the tools to exercise our depths by really TRYING us because we just spam mutagen/disks for easy genetics because its easier to meta, from talking to folks, most coders are shitters who usually make things to benefit their own personal playstyles and gripes.

> Endless tweaks to heads that code maintainers actually had to step in and lay down the law to stop touching that shit, mekhi crying non stop over RD teleporting armor nerf, botany memes, medbay is a profession for braindeads when there is a cure for everything usually in a pill. Mappers add rooms implied for RP just for aesthetic then shove it full of loot. Metastation has a lot of stuff, maybe too much stuff.

You could try making the station design much looser so that certain areas are actually cross z level to encourage moving in (most players have never even left the station map) like how the asteroid used to be with a air of consistency that made the base 'Hub' of the station (but thats obviously obscured by the pseudo space movement rules without taking special teleport pipes known as griefable shuttles)

I can't reply fully right now but for the record building anything off the station is rarely a thing that happens (from my experience)

Qbopper wrote:I can't reply fully right now but for the record building anything off the station is rarely a thing that happens (from my experience)

Neither have the tools (lots of sheets of everything/planning) or the time, though mining shelters make good starting point prefabs because they are ventilated.

Also to what purpose? Usually its done to hide something or work discreetly.

Qbopper wrote:I can't reply fully right now but for the record building anything off the station is rarely a thing that happens (from my experience)

Because fun is banned. Anything interesting you build will be bombed, griefed, or have a shuttle called over a stubbed toe before its finished. I lament that there's just not a lot of excitement for building projects, but It really just feels like a symptom of the bigger problem that the collective server attention span has gotten shorter.

cedarbridge wrote:

Qbopper wrote:I can't reply fully right now but for the record building anything off the station is rarely a thing that happens (from my experience)

Because fun is banned. Anything interesting you build will be bombed, griefed, or have a shuttle called over a stubbed toe before its finished. I lament that there's just not a lot of excitement for building projects, but It really just feels like a symptom of the bigger problem that the collective server attention span has gotten shorter.

A directionless sandbox for griefers until shuttle is called (they are all rollin4antag)

Building structures on a planet is far easier than building and pressurizing them in space, and building will be far more practical and rewarding when the station actually serves an end goal rather than something you can freely abandon at the first sign of trouble.

But literally why would you want to build it when mappers do all the work for you giving you a detailed station & maint? Time to go dwarf fortress mode on ya'll and start off with only a 10x10 small prefab base on a rogue planet with a depleting plasma generator, its literally the only way that'd work and even then griefers would ruin it 5 minutes flat by throwing syndiebombs around and crumbling the whole station (full built/prefab or not maxcaps also work) in to a chasm.

Because admins are so whiny about spacemen never leaving the station, all the jobs are packaged into the station (leading to "Owo what's this" additions to mining which is still free to outward content expansion). Hence why ideas like explorers get shot down because space is full of emptyness and coders don't put things out of reach to be found.

Xenoarcheology on VG discreetly & randomly puts things in rocks to be found which adds depth to science in decoding what those objects are and how to use them (like our anomalous meme crystal for a short while) without giving them to you on a plate or even a guranteed chance to see them. People work for hours on xenobiology in much the same way as a invested process even though redistribution of what you make is slow.

coders don't put things out of reach to be found.

We do sometimes, but players figured out it's easier to ask admins to spawn them in a TC trade than to go looking for them

There's a big problem there then isn't there if you just blurt out your biggest secrets there and then, wasting the time and effort to conceal it in the first place.

What is open source codebase

Shaps wrote:What is open source codebase

if you're trying to say "we can't have secrets because open source" that's a strawman argument, there's more to having secrets than "put the item in a corner of maint"

This thread is supposed to be about how we can put in place a structure that supports depth and focus, not an ideas thread for deep mechanics.

oranges wrote:This thread is supposed to be about how we can put in place a structure that supports depth and focus, not an ideas thread for deep mechanics.

So instead of stating your goal, try giving direction to what you would consider an answer to your question instead of restating the question.

If I knew the answer to the question I wouldn't be asking it

Here's my suggestion for making the command staff less toe-stubby

Station scores.
The station, with the command staff named (and probbably shamed), get given a point total at the end of the round depending on lots of factors, such as "the number of bloody tiles", "The length of the shift", "total R&D levels" and stuff.
If the point level is too low, the command staff are ridiculed.
If its high enough, they're praised.

People like making numbers bigger and having their name next to a green "successful!", it could help.

did you read a single post in this thread?

I got stuck on all the posts saying "we cant have depth because people dont get a chance to do anything meaningful before the shuttle is on its way"

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:I got stuck on all the posts saying "we cant have depth because people dont get a chance to do anything meaningful before the shuttle is on its way"

I think people feel the issue is "there's nothing that makes people want to do anything meaningful so the shuttle gets called", so your suggestion isn't a terrible one (even if I don't think it'll work as intended)

There's nothing getting done
so people get bored
so people call the shuttle
so nobody bothers doing anything that takes any time as the shuttle will get called before they finish
so nothing gets done
so people get bored
etc

Screemonster wrote:There's nothing getting done
so people get bored
so people call the shuttle
so nobody bothers doing anything that takes any time as the shuttle will get called before they finish
so nothing gets done
so people get bored
etc

also a valid interpretation, but what do I know about this game

If you'll forgive a little shilling, I made a proposal on how to add some depth to medical: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10107

Right now, mining is in a great place and engineering is moving towards a great place with a great new engine and remote power management. Cargo is showing some potential with the stock market computer and coderbus' flirting with a proper economic system. Science is fine apart from R&D, but that's an issue for another day. If we can make medical compelling, we'll fix half the problem. We've made substantial progress, and as I've said before, people are grossly overestimating the scope of the problem.

Qbopper wrote:

Shaps wrote:What is open source codebase

if you're trying to say "we can't have secrets because open source" that's a strawman argument, there's more to having secrets than "put the item in a corner of maint"

I added a space ruin with a non-descript spear in space without a changelog.

Jughu TC traded for it within an hour of it being live on the servers.

Kor's thing should help, you'd be able to add deep shit regarding it in regards to gear crafted from monster pieces, be it advanced healing chems using ones blood, or a fufilling monster jerky from the chef.

I think that's more a criticism of TC trades than anything else tbh

Admin interference i read that as Q-bopper in directly engineering a round rather than letting it happen because they won't actually build a solid event (= see admin complaints where admins have dropped traitor antags out of sympathy)

> Events are hard to construct granted but they were designated rounds for tomfoolery we were warned about, not admins are just randomly pressing buttons to entertain themselves.

ShadowDimentio wrote:Width of an ocean, depth of a puddle. That's TG.

I agree with you, Oranges, but I don't think there's an answer anywhere to be found that will make people happy. Kor tried the whole "design lead" thing but nothing ever really came of it except him getting to dead stop PRs he didn't like.

Shadow, though the exact opposite might be an even bigger issue. Depth of an ocean, but width of a puddle. Aka very deep, complex, fluff, etc. features, but a very narrow amount of features. That would rapidly end up with things becoming boring.

Though, a middle ground which is width of a dam and depth of a dam would....ehhh, I don't know.

Some stuff is going to remain shallow no matter what. We're never going to add much depth to the clown for example.

I DEMAND ADVANCED SLIPPING PHYSICS AND A CUSTOM ANIMATION FOR SLIPPING RIGHT NNNNNNOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW

MisterPerson wrote:Some stuff is going to remain shallow no matter what. We're never going to add much depth to the clown for example.

clown needs a point reward system

The way to add depth to medical is baymed, people just don't want to do it

bandit wrote:The way to add depth to medical is baymed, people just don't want to do it

medical needs a point reward system

non shitpost: I'm not really sure what we can do to create depth if the players don't want it and that's the impression a lot of people give me

bandit wrote:The way to add depth to medical is baymed, people just don't want to do it

There's other way to do it. Look at being a medic in TF2 or Overwatch. Sure it's literally point n' heal, but there's depth from other systems.

clearly this is not the right place to ask my question

>make thread about moderating coder PR making
>thread immediatly and irreversibly turns into everyone arguing about what system is shallowest and what features would fix it

It was inevitable

Wyzack wrote:>make thread about moderating coder PR making
>thread immediatly and irreversibly turns into everyone arguing about what system is shallowest and what features would fix it

It was inevitable

The lack of direction is spilling over even here!

Are we really at the point where the biggest ideas for making people want to do their job is arbitrary good boy points on the screen?

Just add a fucking little glowing green +1 floating away from people's heads like the heal beam crosses whenever someone with (job tag) touches (job thing)

Saegrimr wrote:Are we really at the point where the biggest ideas for making people want to do their job is arbitrary good boy points on the screen?

Just add a fucking little glowing green +1 floating away from people's heads like the heal beam crosses whenever someone with (job tag) touches (job thing)

This would be funnier if I didn't just basically open this PR as a joke and then had people take it seriously and support it.

Wait did you really

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/25190

AHAHA HOLY SHIT

See example A. DEEPEST FEATURE ADDITIONS THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL IS HERE - INTERGALACTIC HEALTH VOUCHERS #25190

Kor wrote:

Saegrimr wrote:Are we really at the point where the biggest ideas for making people want to do their job is arbitrary good boy points on the screen?

Just add a fucking little glowing green +1 floating away from people's heads like the heal beam crosses whenever someone with (job tag) touches (job thing)

This would be funnier if I didn't just basically open this PR as a joke and then had people take it seriously and support it.

meme PR prank video [GONE TOO FAR]

Here is my idea:

Coderbus should come up with a idea, and then work around the idea.

For example: Coderbus comes up with several ideas and one gets voted on.

Everyone contributes something to it and work around the concept for a week/month/ however long.

Coderbus celebrates after they are done by getting recognition on tgstation for a month.


Anyways that's Mute's stupid idea.

no more