printed power cells aren't charged

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:55 am #399777

why

also

" BlueNothing commented on Feb 11

Cells will take an extended period of time to charge, and in this arrangement, there's a strong disincentive to upgrade cells, because of the outage period, the charge period, and the, for the most part, failure of cell upgrades to allow independence from the grid. I do not support this arrangement, and think that cells starting powered is reasonable, and incentivizes individual and departmental actions to handle power problems in the event that engineering is AWOL, or worse, incompetent, as they often appear to be."

vs

" Cyberboss commented on Feb 9

cl
balance: Printed power cells must now be charged before use
/cl

This is a bad power balance meme that needs to go"

why the hell is forcing players to wait around to charge cells good game design

Kel-the-Oblivious · Fri Apr 13, 2018 6:09 am

Do you not upgrade the cell chargers as well, or get a charged yellow core from Xenobio to cram into the APC and become power independent?

SpaceManiac · Post by **SpaceManiac** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 6:42 am #399780

I understand it to fall out of a desire to make power actually mean something, rather than (as is oft repeated) a binary between zero power and unlimited power. When you print a cell, where is the energy coming from to fill it? Draining the APC would make any cell larger than the one you already have in the APC unprintable.

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:17 am #399783

Its a feature of our ad hoc design system that we've always been plagued with. Power needs a real hard looking at, but its also central to so much of the game's operation that any monkey business needs a very strong look before its added. Instead we'll end up with papercut changes like this that fix things that probably need fixing but do it in a way that isnt' compensated for in a real or meaningful way.

Post by **Dax Dupont** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:32 am #399799

Just a FYI I made battery chargers buildable and upgradable after this change was put in to compensate but just like the cyborg chargers nobody upgrades them.

Bluespace · Post by **Bluespace** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:05 am #399801

Always fun waiting 3 minutes after a cell is printed to change it for a cyborg.

Post by **Arianya** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 10:54 am #399807

Let's just remove the powercells entirely and increase SMES battery capacity. Now if someone cuts the wire to your department, instant blackout.

Have UPSs/powercells only in high-importance sectors like Cloning, Perma, Bridge.

Also means that Engineering can choose to cut off a department to save power and it'll have an actual immediate impact.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:04 am #399808

>save power
ahahahahahahhhahahaha

Screemonster · Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:06 am

Wasn't it done to stop people just powering their departments indefinitely without an engine by printing off new cells to swap out when the APC died?

Iatots · Post by **Iatots** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:09 am #399811

Have cell chargers take power from the wires instead of the area; You don't recharge batteries by hooking them up to a similarly sized battery.
Something like arianya's suggestion would be cool, but the whole power situation needs a rework. Kor/Mso were working on it last year(?) but they might have moved on since they are so busy.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:54 pm #399842

APCs will use power from the wires before they use their battery, the battery is the back-up power supply and will only be usd to power machines if they aren't detecting an external power supply.

Just upgrade the rechargers, it takes literally no effort and they're piss easy to make now

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:09 pm #399883

There are several problems here with upgrading battery chargers that unfortunately are shared with similar departments like engineering, security, botany, or with the cyborg rechargers:

-Upgrading provides no immediate and obvious benefits to the upgrader .(robotics is the only one charging cells)
-It's not obvious to the typical scientist that these machines can be upgraded (I didn't know about upgradable cell chargers until I saw this topic)
-Machine is either out of the way and not easily accessible to an upgrading scientist, or is too small and not easy to spot (in this case, cell chargers are often buried under other items but besides medbay which is superseded by being vital to upgrade, most departments don't get upgrades simply due to lack of access.)

SpaceManiac · Post by **SpaceManiac** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:33 pm #399889

By the way if you do upgrade the cell charger it takes less than a minute to charge a bluespace cell.

When I play engineer I often help with upgrading since I need to be carrying stock parts to build machines for people anyways. With a Bluespace RPED (accessible early, only need one silver bar) you can pretty much click anything electronic on-screen until it stops going BZHOOM.

Anonmare wrote: APCs will use power from the wires before they use their battery, the battery is the back-up power supply and will only be usd to power machines if they aren't detecting an external power supply.

I forget the exact rules but I don't think this is the case.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:37 pm #399894

>Build a camera console
>Build a BRPED
>Fill BRPED with parts
>Click BRPED on machine while looking through camera
>Never have problems with upgrading ever again

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:59 pm #399898

You're talking methods the typical smoothbrain TG scientist isn't willing to go for upgrades

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:01 pm #399899

Yakumo_Chen wrote:You're talking methods the typical smoothbrain TG scientist isn't willing to go for upgrades

Institute mandatory wrinkle testing for science roles

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Fri Apr 13, 2018 9:10 pm #399902

it isn't really worth it anyway to upgrade every machine on the station anyway, for the same reason it isn't worth it to wait 3 minutes to sit around for a powercell to charge: three minutes spent doing anything is wasting 5% of your round 75% of the time because the round rolled revs/ops/ cult/ wizard/Griff Murderbone the Traitorling did toxins and bought Syndiebomb / engineers fucked up SM yet again

Jalleo · Post by **Jalleo** » Sun Apr 15, 2018 10:31 pm #400405

All I will say is this.
Power is not a easy system to replace becayse it literally touches every machine, areas and beyond. Please be concise if you mean powernets that is a task by itself. If you means by power scaling another ballgame there. And if you mean by UPS etc etc you have no idea how complex power is code end already. People easily bikeshed on this.

Selea · Post by **Selea** » Sun Apr 15, 2018 11:27 pm #400419

bikeshed,or not.But power scales is developed stupidily.Because, station can be powered, or not powered.And one BS battery can store more energy, than entire station(IIRC).But you still can charge this cell, because of power multiplier.
Why even need to buildthem uncharged, if there are no meaningful power balance?

Post by **Cobby** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 1:26 am #400433

“People don’t do it” is such an odd balance argument.

If they don’t do it, teach them to do it so they will in future rounds. If it’s needed to be done, I don’t see why someone would purposely not do it.

Not everyone has put in a thousand hours into the game to know every nook and cranny feature ss13 offers, buffing items because of this makes no sense.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 4:31 am #400461

Question: Do guns still print with power cells charged?

Karp · Post by **Karp** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 4:39 am #400464

being forced to charge cells doesn't make power useful in any way, all it does is add a useless chore. As ausops said, it's god awful game design.

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 7:30 am #400487

Why is station power even a balance issue when all our engines create virtually unlimited power from basically nothing? The "main" engines we use operate literally on a feedback loop which generates power at near-infinite exponential gains.

Hell, the Energy Ball is basically a giant joke about conservation of energy. It's a ball of electricity that literally outputs electricity by feeding it more electricity.

If you want to whine about power balance then add some kind of upkeep to engines that isn't just "refill radiation collectors once every [amount of ingame time that we have never reached]"

I mean, the supermatter shard creates radiation from electricity, which is generated by plasma, which the supermatter shard ALSO generates.

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 7:38 am #400490

But actually don't give engineering any more to do because they're not actually capable of leaving a supermatter running for more 10 minutes in the first place, which apparently admins and coders think is somehow a better track record then we had when the Singularity was the engine of choice

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 7:41 am #400492

Our current engine balance is such a gigantic meme that even after making the "fix me" warnings scream over public comms, and now after adding on top of that a giant baby mode "I am about to explode" countdown, it still explodes more often then the singularity, which had no baby safety net, went loose

Post by **Arianya** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:16 am #400495

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Our current engine balance is such a gigantic meme that even after making the "fix me" warnings scream over public comms, and now after adding on top of that a giant baby mode "I am about to explode" countdown, it still explodes more often then the singularity, which had no baby safety net, went loose

You are in fact misremembering just how often singuloose would happen.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:59 am #400500

Cobby wrote:“People don’t do it” is such an odd balance argument.

If they don’t do it, teach them to do it so they will in future rounds. If it’s needed to be done, I don’t see why someone would purposely not do it.

Not everyone has put in a thousand hours into the game to know every nook and cranny feature ss13 offers, buffing items because of this makes no sense.

>x is an odd balance argument

>teach them to do it isn't

hmmmmmmmmmmm

Post by **Armhulen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 4:20 pm #400564

players can adapt to changes like these easily, that's why it's an odd argument

Kel-the-Oblivious · Mon Apr 16, 2018 4:42 pm

This is why I just randomly click machines when I'm holding a Bluespace RPED. If you can upgrade it, but don't have the parts, it'll still send out the squiggly blue line.

I knew you could upgrade charger shortly after it was made upgradeable because I just ran around clicking machines to see if there was something I missed. I also read the changelog.

I LIKE the fact the batteries don't come out pre-charged. Means you need to put some effort into it. Not like you can't just make five chargers around the protolathe, make the batteries in batches of five, throw them on until greeen, repeat. That, or get on Xenobio's case and have them make like, 20 or so charge slime cores. Unless you are upgrading SMES cells (Which you should) with them, you'll never go through that many cores.

But 20 cores is too many! I hear some say. 20 cores is seven yellow slimes with pico/super bin upgraded extractor. Even with Hi-Eff parts moving further up the tech tree, that is still easy to do within the first 5 minutes of game.

somerandomguy · Mon Apr 16, 2018 4:58 pm

Kel-the-Oblivious wrote:But 20 cores is too many! I hear some say. 20 cores is seven yellow slimes with pico/super bin upgraded extractor. Even with Hi-Eff parts moving further up the tech tree, that is still easy to do within the first 5 minutes of game.

Or ~a minute with a yellow reproductive extract

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:23 pm #400588

My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.

Post by **Armhulen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:24 pm #400590

cedarbridge wrote:My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.

conflict

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:27 pm #400593

Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.
conflict

Its a fairly shallow and hollow conflict. In the tech's mind they've done nothing wrong. In the barkeep's mind they've been robbed of power charge but ultimately they still have fully functional and "upgraded" machinery. There's not really anything they can do but be annoyed by it and since the BRPED (moreso since it apparently works through cameras) it can't be prevented.

Post by **Armhulen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:44 pm #400603

cedarbridge wrote:
Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.
conflict
Its a fairly shallow and hollow conflict. In the tech's mind they've done nothing wrong. In the barkeep's mind they've been robbed of power charge but ultimately they still have fully functional and "upgraded" machinery. There's not really anything they can do but be annoyed by it and since the BRPED (moreso since it apparently works through cameras) it can't be prevented.

if they are running around the station replacing every machine with a dead battery i'm positive they'll get some feedback on that.

seriously chemists will go fuckin wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild when this happens to them

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:50 pm #400606

Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:
Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.
conflict
Its a fairly shallow and hollow conflict. In the tech's mind they've done nothing wrong. In the barkeep's mind they've been robbed of power charge but ultimately they still have fully functional and "upgraded" machinery. There's not really anything they can do but be annoyed by it and since the BRPED (moreso since it apparently works through cameras) it can't be prevented.
if they are running around the station replacing every machine with a dead battery i'm positive they'll get some feedback on that.

seriously chemists will go fuckin wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild when this happens to them

Unless something has changed, you can't RPED the medbay chem dispensers.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:52 pm #400609

cedarbridge wrote:
Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:
Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.
conflict
Its a fairly shallow and hollow conflict. In the tech's mind they've done nothing wrong. In the barkeep's mind they've been robbed of power charge but ultimately they still have fully functional and "upgraded" machinery. There's not really anything they can do but be annoyed by it and since the BRPED (moreso since it apparently works through cameras) it can't be prevented.
if they are running around the station replacing every machine with a dead battery i'm positive they'll get some feedback on that.

seriously chemists will go fuckin wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild when this happens to them
Unless something has changed, you can't RPED the medbay chem dispensers.

Something has changed

Gun Hog · Post by **Gun Hog** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 7:18 pm #400619

The BSRPED is supposed to have a *positive effect only* change. It would be great if the machine being upgraded preserved its energy level. This is has the added benefit of making the effect of the upgrade immediately noticeable. The chemist should not be furious because a helpful scientist inadvertently emptied his machine. The LAST thing we need is a reason to discourage Scientists from doing upgrades any more than the loss of items caused by the fragmentation of R&D or increased node cost for unlocking upgraded stock parts (this is somewhat negated by the lack of incentive to work on nodes unrelated to mining or science).

Post by **Armhulen** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 7:50 pm #400640

Gun Hog wrote:The BSRPED is supposed to have a *positive effect only* change. It would be great if the machine being upgraded preserved its energy level. This is has the added benefit of making the effect of the upgrade immediately noticeable. The chemist should not be furious because a helpful scientist inadvertently emptied his machine. The LAST thing we need is a reason to discourage Scientists from doing upgrades any more than the loss of items caused by the fragmentation of R&D or increased node cost for unlocking upgraded stock parts (this is somewhat negated by the lack of incentive to work on nodes unrelated to mining or science).

It's a mistake they only make once, if you let them know. It's conflict for the game and it's healthy

Mon Apr 16, 2018 9:34 pm

Armhulen wrote:
cedarbridge wrote:My only gripe is the "helpful" science nerd that comes by to "upgrade" my booze mixer in the bar with empty cells so I lose the full charge I had for the boon of a higher maximum and a slightly faster trickle charge.
conflict

not a meaningful conflict which means it may not even exist in the first place

Deitus · Post by **Deitus** » Mon Apr 16, 2018 10:55 pm #400693

Anonmare wrote:>Build a camera console
>Build a BRPED
>Fill BRPED with parts
>Click BRPED on machine while looking through camera
>Never have problems with upgrading ever again

Pretty sure you can't do this anymore because the departmental lathe update made sec cams seclathe only, did it get changed back?

Spoiler:

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 1:26 am #400717

Steal the engineering printer, they have every board

Deitus · Post by **Deitus** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 3:23 am #400728

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Steal the engineering printer, they have every board

didnt they also make it so the boards spawn in the head of department's lockers now so you cant even do that

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 3:39 am #400731

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Steal the engineering printer, they have every board

Or you can choose to not be a dickhead and just ask the CE for his spare board from his locker. 9/10 they will give it to you if you mention that you are going to upgrade stuff.

Seriously so much shit can be solved by just asking nicely.

somerandomguy · Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:51 pm

Dr_bee wrote:
Yakumo_Chen wrote:Steal the engineering printer, they have every board
Or you can choose to not be a dickhead and just ask the CE for his spare board from his locker. 9/10 they will give it to you if you mention that you are going to upgrade stuff.

Seriously so much shit can be solved by just asking nicely.

You can print a circuit imprinter board in your printer, it's under research.

Deitus · Post by **Deitus** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 3:03 pm #400806

>make a circuit imprinter to make a circuit for the machine to make a circuit
THANKS CODERS

iamgoofball · Post by **iamgoofball** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:35 pm #400865

if science keeps getting uppity I'll take away the bonus boards and the ability to deconstruct the printers when I kill the omnilathes later this week

iamgoofball · Post by **iamgoofball** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 6:36 pm #400866

i'll fix the power cell shit tho

Selea · Post by **Selea** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:32 pm #400883

Goof, why do you want to kill thing, which is already killed?

cedarbridge · Post by **cedarbridge** » Tue Apr 17, 2018 7:58 pm #400887

iamgoofball wrote:if science keeps getting uppity I'll take away the bonus boards and the ability to deconstruct the printers when I kill the omnilathes later this week

Link the PR so we can laugh at your latest closed tantrum.

Denton · Post by **Denton** » Wed Apr 18, 2018 10:16 am #401012

iamgoofball wrote:when I kill the omnilathes later this week

You already made this PR though https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/34619