tl;dr a while ago the idea of a budget station was tossed around, where departments start with worse versions of what they usually get on other maps. The idea was to encourage cooperative play and give people who struggle with making their own fun some more goals to work towards, and hopefully to create more interesting situations thanks to the relative scarcity of items/common crutches
The game has changed a fair bit since the original idea, though (they beat me to removing sleepers smh) - I lost motivation at the time because it seemed like something that only a handful of people would like, but the recent popularity of manuel and support of how the game there is played makes me think there's a legitimate audience for this sort of map again
I'll edit this more when I get home but some examples include
- cryo being replaced with showers + a wrench (a shower can be wrenched to make it hot or cold and lying under cold water is enough to make cryoxadone work, or at least it used to. would have to double check)
- botany doesn't get their nice trays, just piles of dirt
- minor stuff like spread out lights, messy areas, space to build, etc.
The main problems right now are
- I need to actually sit my stupid ass down and start again because the previous revision was so old it used the old wiring and stuff
- I need people who are well versed in departments I don't play (eg. science) to give me advice on what should and should not be included
- I need to find the sweetspot between "another usual station layout" and "absolute slog where it's impossible to do anything and the game sucks"