/tg/Station 13

My preferred techweb strat of rushing Advanced Mining and T4 parts takes twenty minutes to complete and costs 63.500~ish research points as detailed on this thread. Not every round is the same, however, and often you'll have to prioritize weapons research for nuke ops/blob/xenos/whatever or some other techweb for a project.

Research and Development can either be a slow, pacing process or something that you have to absolutely rush for the wellbeing of the station, yourself and others. Consider as well that most rounds in Sybil last for around 30 minutes in length. With a 30 minute span and a research point rate of 3240+ research points per minute, you are looking at a resource pool of 97.200 research points available to you.

With nanites, much like any other techweb, you have one of two options. Either research it at round start or delay it for more important technology. I like to use my mining/T4 strat for the absolute best research points to benefits ratio. This process, as stated before, takes 63.500 points and 20 minutes. Assuming our beforementioned pool of 97k, you now have 33700 points available to you. This is the point where as a Scientist you have to consider what's best for the station's needs and its crew, assuming that you've covered most of the basics for Mining and Engineering.

Now assume you've, instead of pursuing my techweb progression, you decide to go for nanites and absolutely nothing else. First of all, you've to spend all of the research points required for the precursors of the technology. Data Theory (2500), Robotics (2500), Advanced Robotics (2500), Industrial Engineering (7500), Biological Technology (2500) and Neural Programming (2500). This alone spends you 20.000 research points for every single preceding technology NOT counting for military/hazard nanites.

After the preciding tech is done, you now have all of the nanite tiers to research. Basic Nanite Programming (2500), Smart Nanite Programming (2000), Mesh Nanite Programming (2500), Biological Nanite Programming (2500), Neural Nanite Programming (2500), Synaptic Nanite Programming (2500) and Harmonic Nanite Programming (4000). This tech tree, not counting Military or Hazard Nanites, costs you a total of 18.500 research points for a grand total of 38.500 points and 11 minutes of research time. At this point, you've spent more than a third of your resource pool for a tech tree that can only benefit itself and its users, barring those that benefit from the precursor technologies researched.

This leaves you with 19 minutes and an economy of 61.560 research points. Which is more than enough to research up to T4 parts, but leaves you at the end of our 30-minute round with no additional technology for the crew to be able to use. No weapons, advanced health scanners, positronic brains, cyborg/exo upgrades, implants/augments, mining tech, upgraded machinery (at least none above T2+).

On the opposite side, if you DO researching T4 parts and advanced mining first, you can research up to Harmonic Nanites but at the end of the 30 minute round and with no real practical use, adding to the problem of not having any additional technology for the crew to use. It becomes a problem of sticking to one R&D route to satisfy many, and that usually ends with many unsatisfied people crying "but upgrades! but nanites! but tools!". It ends up as being the extreme min-maxing job without the capacity to satisfy everyone.

tl;dr What I'd like to see would be nanites being INTEGRATED into existing techwebs rather than having their own techweb, to allow for more players getting upgraded technology in a reasonable timeframe. Maybe adding Basic and Smart Nanites to Robotics and Advanced Robotics respectively, Biological Nanites to Advanced Biological Technology, Neural Nanites to Neural Programming (which is garbage in terms to the points-to-benefit ratio), Mesh, Harmonic and Military Nanites to the Implants and Augments tech tree or any sort of suggestion that integrates nanites into the techwebs that we have right now.

It's definitely doable, but the issue is that techwebs are pretty much the only gating mechanism that limits nanites; if i integrated their research with nodes that you'd research in any case i'd be removing that roadblock and would have to introduce something else in its place (material costs, timers, etc.).

That said, techwebs was initially designed precisely to not allow every path at once in an average round; sadly this will mean people complaining since not everyone wants the same path, but it's an important game mechanic to make rounds different from each other. My initial vision for nanites was that they'd be bought with spare research a bit at a time, with neural and so on coming on the later stage when the higher priority nodes have been researched, but someone can make the choice of rushing it if they so want, driving the round in a different direction.

One thing i could implement is a parallel computing nanite program, which would regularly add research points. It would incentivize giving nanites to as many people as possible, and would make nanite research more of an investment (if people do get nanites).

As much as I sound like an asshole saying this but seems like techwebs is doing its job.

Also techwebs was initially designed for 90 minute passive gen completion but got buffed if rounds can't even last more than 30 minutes that sounds like not a techwebs issue.

kevinz000 wrote:As much as I sound like an asshole saying this but seems like techwebs is doing its job.

I kind of agree with this.

Maybe you should make departmental decisions about where you want to prioritize your research and accept that you can't do everything, every round, in 30 minutes.

Could we put nanites behind Adv BS in the web or something like that? It's frustrating to try and save up for T4 but everyone keeps spamming shitty early nanite research.

Anuv wrote:Could we put nanites behind Adv BS in the web or something like that? It's frustrating to try and save up for T4 but everyone keeps spamming shitty early nanite research.

Go RD and enforce some SCIENCE LAW if you want to control where research points are spent.

Make bombs.

Or, alternatively, accept that like in any RPG, you can't use all your skill branches in the same game. Some rounds will have nanites. Some won't. No big deal

While making trit bombs is a valid solution to all R&Ds problems, it isn't always an option that's available. My knowledge of bombs went out the gutter with the atmos handling change, as many others did. I'm aware of maybe five people who know how to do proper trit bombs.

On the topic of this being R&D's purpose, I'm somewhat unable to decide where I stand on this. While yes, you do have a limited economy and have to make the best of it depending on the round type, and have to accept that you won't be able to research everything every time, I would like things to go from grant-money-competition simulator to something less punishing to the players that rely on Science to upgrade their machinery and provide them with experimental technology. (Especially Medical, given that their equipment NEEDS to be upgraded in order to have good efficiency).

On the topic of Research Directors having the power to mandate a research tech progression, I strongly disagree with the points contended. There have been many rounds I've played this week where the RD or the R&D-specialized Scientist has been attempting to rush Adv. Mining and parts, but are constantly impeded by nanite researchers constantly entering the lab, researching the tech and then leaving without saying a word despite any warnings given about spending tech trees on anything that wasn't the intended progression.

The bottom line is that, as a Scientist, I'd like R&D and techwebs to be a little less direct at satisfying one group of players and leaving the others aside to wait. It really is a crushing feeling when you're a Shaft Miner who's mining with a proto kinetic accelerator 20 minutes into the round because R&D decided to go full nanites, and only serves to the detriment of the whole station's supply to research technology after that.

angelstarri wrote:On the topic of Research Directors having the power to mandate a research tech progression, I strongly disagree with the points contended. There have been many rounds I've played this week where the RD or the R&D-specialized Scientist has been attempting to rush Adv. Mining and parts, but are constantly impeded by nanite researchers constantly entering the lab, researching the tech and then leaving without saying a word despite any warnings given about spending tech trees on anything that wasn't the intended progression.

One of the reasons why i think R&D should be done in the bridge instead.

That said, i believe that departments in general should have an upgrade path independent from R&D while also being able to benefit from R&D. An example being xenobiology, which has options to boost monkey cube and core production outside of R&D upgrades, which are however a timesaver when done early. Mining in theory should have this through relics and mining points, so if R&D is extremely vital either the tech given by R&D is too strong or the mining rewards are too weak.

Baton them and throw them out if they aren't following your orders.

Be the research-nazi you want to see in the world.

The issue is that techwebs are making you have to make hard choices between what technology you have to research? Sounds like that's the point of techwebs to me.

(also God forbid my meta way of doing techwebs is disrupted by new changes)

If Toxins isn't braindead they'll get you all the tech you need in about 5-10 minutes. In other words:

Obtain skill
Acquire proficiency
Procure talent
G I T G U D

Other people have summed it up but essentially this is intended.

You should not be able to complete the entire techweb, we want there to be a decision each around about what gets unlocked.

Looking at you toxin bomb points scoring. Be seeing you real soon.