/tg/Station 13

Right now, R&D can be summed by the following points:

• Too obscure for a beginner.
• Require following a cheat sheet in order to be efficient.
• Tedious fetch quest.
• It has no variety from round to round.
• It punishes experimentation (if you consider that there is any room for experimentation in R&D)
• A lot of what R&D product is critical to the station and to other departments, such as Robotics.
• Once you're done, you're just a button pusher, which cargo already does to a degree.

Is there a way that we can redesign (partially or completely) R&D to make it more noob friendly, it has to be understandable by a beginner without relying on the wiki and lessen the usefulness of cheat sheets, some form of round start randomization or a higher reliance on player behavior (ores for example)?

Wasn't there a thing somewhere around here about not suggesting to 'make things better', 'add more X', and such?

Because a coder can't sit down and 'make things better'. Ideas need to be specific.

This is a thread for feedback.

Kyrah Abattoir wrote:to make it more noob friendly,

No. Literally nothing has ever been improved with this mindset. Ever.

Kelenius wrote:Wasn't there a thing somewhere around here about not suggesting to 'make things better', 'add more X', and such?

Because a coder can't sit down and 'make things better'. Ideas need to be specific.

This is a thread for feedback.

My bad, can someone move it?

Who says anything about beginners? Fuck beginners, it's just tedious and stupid.

R&D needs to be an easy to finish chore for those who've done it before.

If it was anything less, then scientists couldn't do fun things like infinite monkey machines, upgrading the autolathe, building 12 autolathes, upgrading the cloner, building and backing up all scientist onto a hidden autocloner, exploring deep space with telescience, or telesciencing vital personnel into the singularity.

R&D is the least scientific and most newbie friendly part of science.

Raven776 wrote:R&D needs to be an easy to finish chore for those who've done it before.

Except it already is.

Raven776 wrote:R&D needs to be an easy to finish chore for those who've done it before.

If it was anything less, then scientists couldn't do fun things like infinite monkey machines, upgrading the autolathe, building 12 autolathes, upgrading the cloner, building and backing up all scientist onto a hidden autocloner, exploring deep space with telescience, or telesciencing vital personnel into the singularity.

R&D is the least scientific and most newbie friendly part of science.

Might as well just save some time and have everything start unlocked, then.

cedarbridge wrote:

Kyrah Abattoir wrote:to make it more noob friendly,

No. Literally nothing has ever been improved with this mindset. Ever.

Get out.

I say just cut the whole "research levels" shit, raise costs/add mining mineral costs on the ones that required research before so people don't upgrade every machine at round-start or something, and add in that modular items thing where you have a base item that you upgrade by adding other items to that people keep coming up with but never gets anywhere. There's really not a whole lot that can be done with research levels that isn't A) What we have now but with bandaids, B) RNG dependant, C) Something that makes no sense like batteries sometimes giving bio research, or D) A significant change that's good for about two weeks before ending up as fun as current research because you have to do it every round.

RnD doesn't feel sciency. That's the worst part of it. There is absolutely NO experimentation or research involved. I want to be a scientist, not a delivery boy for the RD.

I've always liked Goon's artifacts where you bring in myserious objects and experiment on them, then maybe end up with a useful device. It makes a whole lot more sense to me than incessantly "inventing" the same devices round after round.
Probably more of a new department than an RD rehaul though.

cedarbridge wrote:

Raven776 wrote:R&D needs to be an easy to finish chore for those who've done it before.

Except it already is.

That's what I was saying. It already is, and that's alright. The only thing I could think to do to make it more difficult without overhauling it completely is to RNG it up a bit.

Everyone has their own ways to finish it quickly, some people do it faster than others, and there's most likely a very efficient path that anyone could take to be done in moments.

Setting up atmos is the same thing. Setting up the engine is the same thing. Filling the supply shuttle for cargo, setting up cryo, setting up the brig (though very few HoS's or wardens actually use the flashers), and cooking up twelve hundred pillbottles of tricodrazine are all very simple, usually done chores.

As it stands, no game mechanic or round starting chore is fun to do the umpteenth million time, which is why it's EASY to do once you know how to do it. You can't say science doesn't have fun stuff to do after finishing research. I see Mandurrh making massive explosion bomb recipes, Saiga making infinite monkeys, and other scientists having a fun ol' time with everything they have available.

I will say engineering has more creativity and exploration in their possible tasks after they're done setting up the engine, though.

It would be nice if we could have some Evil Genius style science. I think that could work nicely.

In essence, scientists there run around the base, scan random objects, collect data, then perform experiments on the machines and unlock new stuff.

It's funny, virology has more R&D than well, R&D.

ColonicAcid wrote:It's funny, virology has more R&D than well, R&D.

In what way? Viro is just pure RNG. The closest we have to research is probably genetics.

Nah, Virology compared to microbiology RnD is the closest thing in this game. When you splice a gene into a cell you're hoping the cell doesn't reject and completely shut down or the splice goes horribly wrong and it becomes cancerous, it's very much "luck" based as well.

Errr, are you sure your talking about this servers Virology?

I know that Viro for other code bases is more fleshed out, but our Viro is simply a pure RNG fest of trying to get the Symptoms you want for your virus.

Telescience is the closest thing to 'researching' anything we have, but most people just use a cheatsheet because a set of constant rules to figure out that stay constant between each round will get put into a guide and made easy.

Virology and genetics are both pretty much RNG too.

Toxins is almost research, but max cap makes it impossible to test/use your creations so there's no reason to go further.

Beyond that, R&D is not the focus of science. It's more of what you can do with R&D that's important and can be creative. The list of things you can upgrade and what you get from upgrading them is astounding.

In genetics you are researching genes for the current round. RNG is just the method of slowing down that research. Virology on the other hand is the same all the time, you just gotta RNG the right mix.

The thing is, it's a lot harder to code puzzles that are randomly generated every time and at the same time have a solution that does not involve RNG. I think that managing dice in this case is a lot better.

There's actually something to be said about looking into dice management board games for ideas.

Raven776 wrote:Telescience is the closest thing to 'researching' anything we have, but most people just use a cheatsheet because a set of constant rules to figure out that stay constant between each round will get put into a guide and made easy.

Virology and genetics are both pretty much RNG too.

Toxins is almost research, but max cap makes it impossible to test/use your creations so there's no reason to go further.

Beyond that, R&D is not the focus of science. It's more of what you can do with R&D that's important and can be creative. The list of things you can upgrade and what you get from upgrading them is astounding.

Essentially this, I always consider RnD to be science's not-exactly-time-critical "set up the engine." You have to do it to unlock a lot of things but doing so gets you access to all of the things you need to actually do interesting things.

Well, if we want to get close to accurately depicting what RnD actually is, the best way to do it would be to introduce some trial-and-error thing much like what Telescience/Virology/Genetics have. It's the closest we can get to the scientific method when meta knowledge is an issue.

The idea was that newly built components would break constantly and you couldn't get any research off of them until they broke in hilarious and dangerous ways. Afterwards the starting reliability would be higher. Only once they were 100% reliable could you jump to the next tech.

A lot of the stuff planned for the R&D originally either never occured or was done badly and arbitarily e.g. Bluespace research, Engineering research etc.

It was also going to be components go inside everything (instead of just machines) and it was going to be sort of how goons mechanics work in making items as you put componenets in you get a item. With ways to upgrade the component to upgrade the item.

Just take MP's idea and start RnD out with everything but illegal maxed out, its already just a "read this walkthrough and you are going to win" simulator.

We had a talk about this in IRC as well, but I am completely unsure how I would go about making RnD fun except to start with mining being randomly generated with fun loot dungeons with hostile NPC's (that are already in the game, none of this goliath bullshit) that can give you alien tech which can be researched to get items you could only get if an admin spawned it for you (phazon parts, marauder parts, chem sprayer tech, etc) but it would be dangerous and the asteroid would change every 30 minutes.

Basically, like a solarium run in goon station except specifically tailored to make it fun for mining, and also give science things to play with.

Well that could be one thing, can completely using the destructive analyzer on "stuff we already know" so you can only research on minerals, monster drops, artefacts, ...

cedarbridge wrote:

Kyrah Abattoir wrote:to make it more noob friendly,

No. Literally nothing has ever been improved with this mindset. Ever.

I have to agree with this, dumbing stuff down just so more people can do it easier is a bad idea, read the wiki, figure it out yourself or *gasp* ask for someone elses help with it if you don't know how, worst that can happen is you dying horribly and getting a laugh out of it.

That being said, modular science when?

I'd like to say that I have never had as much fun with R&D as with the print ten of everything bug. It's chaotic madness and geneuinely makes you feel like an insane scientist by the end of the game. It makes R&D something for everyone to look forward to since we can just hand shit out to everyone, and I'm honestly going to be sad when it goes.

Which is why I think we need something to bring it back to a lesser extent. Maybe a lategame upgrade to the protolathe that allows for ultra-cheap printing, or even printing five items for the cost of one at the expense of time. Honestly, R&D is now so much fun that I think this is a viable solution, as silly as it sounds. It improves the department for literally everyone involved, including people who just want some neat stuff once in a while and come by the window.

I for one, would like to see needing to analyse things multiple times to go away. If I have something materials 4 and I'm at 2 it shouldn't take destroying 3 of the thing to get to 5. It just wastes time. If this was changed it'd also bypass a lot of the start of shift grind/bugging robotics for 3 guns-2 tasers or whatever.

Another change that might help would be multiple settings for the destructive analyzer that would help scientists get higher levels overall or get to moderate levels without outside help. Essentially you'd be trading time for more research levels out of your materials. You'd have destructize, which gave the normal +1, Analyze which took a minute and gave +2, and scrutinize which took up to 5 minutes and gave +3. Scientists could get a bit further without miner help and could conceivably research more on their own. They could also multitask and go help out in the other wings while the analyzer worked.

Needing outside help is the entire point.

callanrockslol wrote:

cedarbridge wrote:

Kyrah Abattoir wrote:to make it more noob friendly,

No. Literally nothing has ever been improved with this mindset. Ever.

I have to agree with this, dumbing stuff down just so more people can do it easier is a bad idea, read the wiki, figure it out yourself or *gasp* ask for someone elses help with it if you don't know how, worst that can happen is you dying horribly and getting a laugh out of it.

That being said, modular science when?

I never talked about dumbing it down, I'm talking about making R&D more intuitive and open to experimentation, instead of "not following this wiki research order means you suck at R&D". This is not hard it just offers zero variation from round to round and rely on the wiki.

Basing myself on the few times i tried R&D, i can say that it is not fun. Maybe i'm not "geeky" enough to enjoy R&D or any scientist job (R&D, bluespace tech, bomb-making), but the ratio work/benefit is just too unbalanced for my liking.
You have to play with the wiki page on the side to have a chance to understand what you're doing, you depend on external factors like mining doing it's job, the learning curve is too slow. And you can be interrupted by any sort of shit the station throws at you.
So R&D is a big "no" for me.

Pennwick wrote:I for one, would like to see needing to analyse things multiple times to go away. If I have something materials 4 and I'm at 2 it shouldn't take destroying 3 of the thing to get to 5. It just wastes time. If this was changed it'd also bypass a lot of the start of shift grind/bugging robotics for 3 guns-2 tasers or whatever.

Hello person can't into science, at most it takes 2 of one thing to get to a level, in the best case scenario you will have a decent path of progression going on and will just use one thing of the current level to make it go up

It may help to read the wiki for the basics, ask another player or consult the ingame books that can shed some light on the basic mechanics of the job before you start complaining about how inefficient it is.

Kuraudo wrote:You have to play with the wiki page on the side to have a chance to understand what you're doing

It may help to read the wiki for the basics, ask another player or consult the ingame books that can shed some light on the basic mechanics of the job before you start complaining about how inefficient it is.