/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

paprika on github wrote:(5 assorted medipens for the price of 4)

>Remove 1 lexo from hyperzine pen
>Give it to leporazine pen out of nowhere

I really don't understand your choking fetish, but okay. If you think making the other things negligibly cheaper somehow makes up for lexorin in the hyperzine then whatever.

If you got a better idea than lexo as a negative side effect let me know because synap tox damage is even worse because it can't be healed ;(((

paprika wrote:CAN NON-MINING PLAYERS ALSO STOP BITCHING ABOUT MINING IT'S HILARIOUS AND ALL BUT COME ON

Do you have a roster of these people? Please share.

Thank you for calming down and making things better.

Since this seems to be the current "MINING IS FUCKING SHIT TIER" topic, I figure I will come in out of nowhere and post in it.

Having been gone from TGstation for quite some time, I've looked over Mining and this whole debacle.

I'll admit, I fucked up pretty hard in a lot of places. Part of the problem is that I'm a stubborn shit, and the other is that I've realized that broad appeal and my design don't agree. The mining I created appeals to a very specific group of people, most of whom are fairly robust at the game. Problem is, mining, before this, was basically the exact opposite. Your input basically didn't matter. Sure, you could MLG PRO MINE and get ridiculous fat stacks of all minerals in less than 4 minutes in the high yield asteroid area, but for the most part it was a braindead "job", and for some reason I can't wrap my head around, people found that enjoyable. Again, different mindsets. I like to play on games on the highest difficulty. I'm willing to beat my head against the brick wall of challenge until I get my way through. Lots of people aren't like that.

Which is why the intention was to split the asteroids into new mining for MLG PRO MINING and the relaxed mining area. Of course, I botched this when I was overzealous in mineral rates for the western side, and when comparing my personal mineral rates which are generally significantly higher than someone who would be attempting to traverse the eastern asteroid. Problem is, you can't really cull player data in SS13, it's all hearsay, and when there's such a disparity between your performance and other's performance, you get in this state where you just don't get what the other folks are doing, leading to angry feedback posts and angry designers yelling back.

Another problem is that I made Mining a sheer cliff in difficulty, after which it plateaus. There's no slow escalation of what you're going up against, five seconds into the round you might find yourself face to face with a Goliath. And for some people, me included, that might be exhilarating. For others, that is an instant roadblock and then they get #rekt and they didn't have fun. I was hoping that the wall might make miners pair up more often for jolly cooperation, and in some instances that did happen and it was a joy to watch, but for the most part it just culled the weak, and made them completely uninterested in the asteroid. Once you've conquered the plateau though, for the most part, mining is a breeze. If you've hit the skill level where Goliaths just don't scare you, it feels good. But most people can't or just aren't interested in doing that.

No, I don't hate Miners. It's a matter of perspective, I enjoy the struggle of combat mining in a scary environment. Different strokes, different folks, but my preference lacks mass appeal. The tools in mining and the equipment vendor were mixed between things being a reward, and being a tool. Stimulant pills were designed to be a little of both, as they A) Counter Basilisks, and B) Make you go SANIC on the asteroid, because walking at 3MPH all the time can get old sometimes. They weren't supposed to be guzzled 24/7 as some sort of chemistry crutch, but were supposed to be nice in a pinch or when you just felt like going fast for a short period. Did you know in the original design, the only "weapon" you got was the Kinetic Accelerator? The Resonator and Mining Drone were added to the voucher because I felt like the early round start could use a little more oomph. Problem is that also meant that those were no longer "rewards", instead they were just a staple choice, so the equipment vendor kind of runs out of "Reward" items.

No, I don't hate RnD. I played those positions quite often, and felt that changes I made to the department were for the better. I'll still defend that. My entire design philosophy was Risk/Reward. Things that are risky or hard to obtain should reward lots, things that require little effort should yield poorer results. Originally, you could make a gygax with 3 diamonds, which could instantly throw the entire round into chaos. You could get diamonds from mining in 3 minutes of work from the high yield area with zero effort. I thought that was weird. I changed it. You could manufacture X-RAY lasers, which is the hardest of counters to the blub, effectively instantly winning the round for you, so I made them harder to produce. Of course, when a lot of people just see "X COST WAS RAISED" they just think "Oh my god we can no longer access this content what a bunch of bullshit", which leads to flaming and shitposting and yadda yadda. I'd like to think that the changes were objectively for the better, if controversial.

TL;DR Yeah, I goofed with Mining. It's far too challenging for most players, and the only opt in / opt out choice is Monsters or No Monsters, which isn't a great slider. I'm glad that paprika is attempting to fix the parts of it that are broken, when I had to basically abandon SS13 to ship an actual vidya gaem at work. In the end, mining was a codebaby that I protected too strongly from outside influence, and it's pretty funny seeing a similar thing happening in the early pages of this thread. Hope things are getting pushed in the right direction, though.

If stimpills were meant to counter basilisks, what the hell was the chili for?

For flavoring. Same reason that Whiskey, Cigars, Soap, and Cash are in them. Fits the "Gruff 'n Tuff" miner stereotype.

Why does it even need some kind of toxin in it in the first place?

Fun and not harmful would be Tirizine. 10 units of it will put you just below passing out from stamina loss, less than walking speed. ~75 staminaloss. 100 and you'll collapse for a while.
Unfortunately, stamina loss ignores hyperzine. Would have been pretty funny situation of "keep jabbing yourself with pens or suffer the INTENSE SLOW, jab too much and you just straight pass out."

I made tirizene for sleepypens, it's so goddamn powerful that it's effectively unusable in any other situation. Making a reagent like it would be cool though.

Ergo it's not so bad, I don't enjoy the monster fighting so I just mine around the edges, still get mad loots and it's zero risk

oranges wrote:Ergo it's not so bad, I don't enjoy the monster fighting so I just mine around the edges, still get mad loots and it's zero risk

See, that's the problem. In my mind, the fact that you can gain mad loots for zero risk is abhorrent to me.

Of course, most people have the opposite viewpoint.

I don't mind fighting monsters, the shift away from the ore tubes smelter room and the mining scanner addition and meson nerf were redundant as hell.

I still don't see what the mining scanner has ever added to the mining experience, the whole press use key periodically thing wasn't really making the job more thought provoking or difficult. Well it made the ripley even more worthless but the lack of civilian monster fighting gear for it to use did that handily anyway.

Incomptinence wrote:I don't mind fighting monsters, the shift away from the ore tubes smelter room and the mining scanner addition and meson nerf were redundant as hell.

I still don't see what the mining scanner has ever added to the mining experience, the whole press use key periodically thing wasn't really making the job more thought provoking or difficult. Well it made the ripley even more worthless but the lack of civilian monster fighting gear for it to use did that handily anyway.

The mining scanner's purpose was to allow for you to find ore in turfs that are so dark you can't see. They were designed to work in par with the mesons, which were affected by lighting. Because you can't light tiles through opaque tiles and the way vision code works, mesons could "see" the tiles in pure blackness, but it was basically impossible to tell if ore was in a tile. The mining scanner put images that ignored the layering and appeared in full brightness, so you could easily identify it, but still have your vision hampered by dark spookytown asteroid.

When the meson changes were reverted and we went back to lol sunshiney happy mining asteroid, the mining scanner lost its purpose entirely. Well, except for gibtonite and the mining drone.

If miners were the one who got "mad loots" for their efforts then I could see justifying the coder's hardon for shitting on the average miner's experience.

But frankly the only "fat loot" miners wlil ever get has absolutely nothing to do with actually mining (getting the syndicate spacesuit, getting weapons/spells/xenos from the hidden rooms).

Getting minerals will get fat loot to robotics/RND and they bear 0% risk for those rewards.

I'm not advocating nerfing science, but holy shit miners work harder for their job than anyone except possibly captain/HoS and I would argue that miner still has a higher fatality rate than those jobs. It's not that fucking unreasonable to give miners access to some moderately cool shit for actually doing work.

Also make jetpacks cheaper, holy shit 2000 points is just too much. Nobody needs 2000 points of minerals. 1200 seems much more appropriate.

Ergovisavi wrote:

oranges wrote:Ergo it's not so bad, I don't enjoy the monster fighting so I just mine around the edges, still get mad loots and it's zero risk

See, that's the problem. In my mind, the fact that you can gain mad loots for zero risk is abhorrent to me.

Of course, most people have the opposite viewpoint.

It's playing smart though, and SS13 isn't a full on combat game so it seems alright to me. For example, If I'm a GM I wouldn't punish my players for stealthing pass a lot of bullshit they didn't wanna fight. I do respect your viewpoint, and I like how creative the mining monsters are (it's fun when they invade the station and no one knows what the fuck to do).

Oldman Robustin wrote:If miners were the one who got "mad loots" for their efforts then I could see justifying the coder's hardon for shitting on the average miner's experience.

But frankly the only "fat loot" miners wlil ever get has absolutely nothing to do with actually mining (getting the syndicate spacesuit, getting weapons/spells/xenos from the hidden rooms).

Getting minerals will get fat loot to robotics/RND and they bear 0% risk for those rewards.

I'm not advocating nerfing science, but holy shit miners work harder for their job than anyone except possibly captain/HoS and I would argue that miner still has a higher fatality rate than those jobs. It's not that fucking unreasonable to give miners access to some moderately cool shit for actually doing work.

Also make jetpacks cheaper, holy shit 2000 points is just too much. Nobody needs 2000 points of minerals. 1200 seems much more appropriate.

The problem with adding "cool" stuff is that it's often "effective/overpowered" stuff for antag valid-ing and the like. For example, the lazarus injector. I put it in as a neat toy and to have mob on mob violence, and also for traitoring. Of course, goliaths were OP as shit with it when I first added it in, so I nerfed the injector and the goliaths. That said, they still have access to an 80% Brute resistant space suit, Goliaths are still very effective robusting tools, Gibtonite works quite well for blowing things up, etc.

Jetpacks are probably too expensive, though, yes, but they were put in when I had plans to take over one of the useless Z-Levels to put an asteroid field with phat loot. Without that in mind, they probably should be reduced in point cost. I do want to add more good-feeling rewards for mining but balancing those rewards is.... difficult.

Here's how the average player sees rewards:

1) is it useful in combat
2) no? it's not a reward then

More like:

1. Does it make my job less of a pain in the ass?
2. If not, ignore it

paprika wrote:Here's how the average player

Who? Are you the average player? Is that your opinion on what make a reward or not?

I would love you to death if you actually gave us an asteroid field again. The high yield field was the REASON to go to hop and beg for EVA access at roundstart as a miner or just break in if you felt like crossing THE LAW. Instead, because we don't have anywhere to go using the jetpack, it was only useful to get quickly around the station to escape if you didn't think you would survive the deathsquid/singulo/aliums or whatever was on the station. I say WAS because with the space speed nerf, it is now pointless as a reward even for THAT purpose.

Having an asteroid field that pretty much requires a jetpack to explore would be a welcome addition.

Please don't remake the asteroid field until slowspace is fixed, please. It'd be horrible.

I don't think I will be doing any jobs that even HAVE eva stuff till slowspace is fixxed, but as a future feature, bringing back the mining field would be nice.

ExplosiveCrate wrote:More like:

1. Does it make my job less of a pain in the ass?
2. If not, ignore it

Mining being a pain in the ass is a problem with mining

cedarbridge wrote:

paprika wrote:Here's how the average player

Who? Are you the average player? Is that your opinion on what make a reward or not?

I think the mining locker should be a mix of both reward and utility equipment, sometimes blurring the line (the jetpack can be used as a fun reward or to make mining easier for example, at least until the asteroid belt was removed)

Honestly what sucks is that not only is mining not rewarding but science often doesn't get their cool toys because of it. Perhaps we should just be done with mining. A heavy emphasis on cooperation tends to lead into more frustration than what it's worth.

Also it's funny how this thread became from a very specific subject to mining general, not that I'm opposed to it.

A good miner should be more than capable of hauling in a good chunk of ore for research. Miner's rewards for sticking it out are the loot rooms which can vary from energy cutlasses, spell books, to random high-tech stuff like an entire fucking ripley (these things are surprisingly good at taking down a goliath) to a diamond drill.

After playing with the changes, the stem pens are fine as they work fairly well in the scenarios they're intended for, and they're cheap. Along with the other changes, such as the proto kinect having extra range and ripleys being able to dawn goliath plates for extra protection, I'd say its a fairly good step in the right direction.

Mining jetpacks could use a bit of a point reduction considering they aren't all that useful on the asteroid itself, though.

A little thought I had, regarding field:
I don't suppose it would be possible to make the mining base situated in a fairly large but low yield asteroid that still isn't more than maybe 25% the size of the current asteroid. It would be in the middle/corner of a large asteroif field, which contains quite a few larger asteroids (Enough for rooms and mining mobs) in addition to small and low yield with a normal yield core. Larger ones would have a low yield surface, normal yield general mass and a high yield core.

Naturally would need some 'space' mining mobs though.

Maybe there could be some way to randomize the field, to a degree at least?

Something like the old goon asteroid field would be great. Of course, it'd have to be made after space walking is fixed.

paprika wrote:

ExplosiveCrate wrote:More like:

1. Does it make my job less of a pain in the ass?
2. If not, ignore it

Mining being a pain in the ass is a problem with mining

cedarbridge wrote:

paprika wrote:Here's how the average player

Who? Are you the average player? Is that your opinion on what make a reward or not?

I think the mining locker should be a mix of both reward and utility equipment, sometimes blurring the line (the jetpack can be used as a fun reward or to make mining easier for example, at least until the asteroid belt was removed)

Just because you have a problem with mining doesn't mean everyone else does, mining is fine, it takes all of ten minutes for a decent player to finish their ore hauling and get around to fucking around, the lockers were fine, they had stupid shit like chillis which were completely useless, useful stuff to barter to other players and handy tools to make mining less of a pain in the ass if you had no clue what you were doing that were completely outdone by anything you could get from R&D.

The only problem I have with mining is that I hate NPC combat mobs like the asteroid ones mainly because of goliath stun and shitty syndicate mobs that never miss entirely and I want them to be removed from the game, but since most people don't I'm not going to crusade against them.