DiscStation Thread: Out of Rotation for Maintence

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:38 pm #96533

UPDATED: 20/11/2015

Latest Version of the map
(ignore that random stool in the port main hall)

Changelog:
https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/13133

Fixes DiscStation Cargo

The supply shuttle is no longer airless
disposals ejectors spew trash out in correct direction now
removed a misplaced mining station intercom
swapped ore redemption input and output sides
coin added to QM office
QM office got revamped and lost it's extra door
Cargo now connects to maintence and is 2 tiles wider.
Added a few more cosmetic items to the halls like mini gardens and a snack bar
Readded disposals to medbay
Fixed a few lighting issues
Redid the rather bland and boring Cafeteria as an upscale coffee bar, Spacebucks (taking suggestions on the name)
Fixed a few minor area issues with nearspace
Added a space disposals to xeno

Design Goals:
I wanted to try a long main corridor with traffic evenly dispersed along it. I wanted to encourage space walks and give alternative play styles to traitors with access to space while also giving the crew tools to deal with them to create conflicts outside that are distinct to conflicts inside the station. I wanted new rooms like the theater backstage or a few other ideas I have for maint to provide gimmicks for traitors and players to use to spice up rounds. I'd like more things like a theater which encourage RP. I wanted open construction rooms easily accessible from main hallways with high traffic to showcase construction projects. Ideally I'd like the station to grow inward every round filling up the empty space in the middle.

Department-wise I wanted more central lobby like locations with many rooms branching off which puts a spotlight on underused rooms in Med and R&D. Basically I wanted to direct traffic towards all the cool things that go on in SS13 and to do that I needed such a long main corridor and big population pulls like Med and R&D to be spread out to make sure everything gets foot traffic. Tg doesn't really use RP to drive people to use certain rooms and mappers need to provide other incentives. Some jobs like Engineering are basically boring except for activities like creating forts so instead of giving engineers more work to do, I'd like to allow them to just do the fun parts of their job more often.

Med:

AI sat:

R&D:

Command:

Rec:

Sec:

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 1:50 pm #96539

It feels weirdly organic.

Cik · Post by **Cik** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:47 pm #96550

i really like how it's asymmetrical

mite b neato

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 6:20 pm #96587

I think there's going to be a medbay overhaul for sure to make it a little more compact. Lots of wasted space in the top. Also I think R&D is going to get at least one more lab as I move toxins storage and the server over.

Gun Hog · Post by **Gun Hog** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:33 pm #96662

Engineering and AI Sat pictures, please?

Jeb · Post by **Jeb** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:39 pm #96663

I honestly read "dickstation" at first.

does not look like a dick

Post by **lumipharon** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 1:01 am #96675

Looks very neat. Props for trying a very different design of station.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 1:47 am #96679

Here's AI and Eng as requested.

Engineering is mostly cosmetic changes because I'm not even sure what I could do to improve engineering, so suggestions welcome.

AI is actually about as inaccessible as before from space even with the catwalks but now the transport tube is one r-wall from a main hall so there should probably be a some security in the lobby. I've widened the chamber and I think I'll move the turrets around a little.

Post by **lumipharon** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 1:59 am #96682

Have you considered not using a singularity?
A supermatter engine would be neat shit, and wouldn't end the round/lag everyone to shit if someone fucks the engine.

What's the point on the exterior AI sat turrets?

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 3:11 am #96692

I wanted to give the AI a way of restricting space travel around it a bit. I might move them to the sides depending.

I'd be open to options other than the singularity but supermatter just doesn't feel "big" enough and ideally I'd like something inbetween the destruction of an overheated supermatter and a loose singularity. In any case there's a ton of room. Prehaps we could have areas for both and the crew can pick which to setup.

Post by **PKPenguin321** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 3:53 am #96701

This map would be fun as fuck to traitor on by sabotaging the transport tubes. I don't really see enough here to give it a direct rating, but I would definitely love to playtest this.

Post by **lumipharon** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 4:03 am #96705

Supermatter makes the entire station trip balls, and can be dragged around by borgs or the CE as a weapon of mass destruction.

People have also used it in neato setups that run 12+ shard stable, for MAXIMUM POWER.

You could also set it up relatively easily, that engineering could employ either or.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 4:06 am #96706

I'll certainly look into it. I'll play with a few layouts when I get the chance. I've never actually made one in game so I'll do some experimenting.

allura · Post by **allura** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:54 am #96731

The supermatter engine's port is still 100% broken. Unless you're only generating like 500kw, the supermatter will detonate within seconds of being started, and worse is that regardless of if you shoot it off the z level, it still blows up the spot it was originally spawned in on the map, because it's bad.

Post by **lumipharon** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 9:56 am #96734

Wat? I have made working and stable supermatter engines.
I have seen stable engines with more then 1 shard in them. Unless they've fucked up since then, they work.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 3:33 pm #96767

Here's the atmos setup. Let me know if there's anything missing. I'm fairly certain I got everything.

I'd love for us to get /vg/'s multiple pipes per tile PR sometime. It would seriously cut down on the complexity and size of atmos.

EDIT: Damn, just noticed I screwed up O2 and N2 to air. I'll fix that.

Septavius · Post by **Septavius** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 6:12 pm #96804

noice map, looks pretty radical

Hibbles · Post by **Hibbles** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 1:56 am #96934

Posting to express hype, and if you get this in a workable state I'll bully Sticky until we playtest it.

Post by **lumipharon** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 2:59 am #96951

What the hell is that thing above the heater/freezer?

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 4:21 am #96969

lumipharon wrote:What the hell is that thing above the heater/freezer?

It's a heater, dmmrender doesn't always play nice with /tg/ stuff.

I guess there's some interest so I'll go through with it and wire the whole thing up. It'll be a few weeks at the rate I'm going. I'll keep updating as I crawl through the process.

allura · Post by **allura** » Fri Jun 19, 2015 4:01 pm #97138

DISCLAIMER: This isn't to keep you from mapping, but to give you feedback and advice. Read to the end, I have a nice speech there to help you out and everything. I really do care, don't be upset.

Since I saw this map I've been wanting to write a long post tearing it up, and finally I'm going to do it, mostly in the form of a chat log I had with Nienhaus. I'll include their asides as well, since they gave good feedback too.

quiltyquilty: hideous transit tube system, ai core being copy and pasted and still made ugly, incredibly weird maintenance passages, poorly thought out department placement and layout

This was my first criticism. There's a massive amount of ugly transit tubes running across the map. They're hideous and very easily damageable, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the time the station is surrounded by useless, ugly, broken tubes from meteor showers. Also, none of them use the pass tube, so they can't be walked over.
A big problem you repeat over and over is copy and pasting from other maps, and then messing it up by trying to shove it into your map. This is a bad practice, and it's very very ugly. The AI core's empty room on the bottom right is a good example, so I brought it up.
The maintenance is fucking hideous in the map. It looks like an mspaint doodle on top of the map. Hallways should be shaped like hallways, boxed and square. Not just tumorous lumps all over the station. Half of them are useless and just there to fill space.
I'll comment on bad departments individually.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuITE/bfc1b35a01.png
quiltyquilty: play botany and you know
quiltyquilty: this is absolute shit

That botany room is amazingly, fantastically fucking puny. That will be hell to move through when there's more than 1 botanist. Please.

quiltyquilty: atmos, a department that's easily capable of destroying approx EVERYTHING, is smack dab in the middle of a hallway
quiltyquilty: and can be effortlessly broken into

Atmos is on the edge of the station that way damaging the air supply is a feat. Here, it's effortless because it's surrounded on all sides by simple hallway. Breaking into the plasma room from space and obtaining a free canister is easy.

quiltyquilty: there's 1 good thing
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuIW2/2877663a60.png
quiltyquilty: that's not a bad theatre
quiltyquilty: especially with utilizing the ancient carpet sprites
quiltyquilty: no one uses those anymore except goon
quiltyquilty: i like that

This is a positive thing. I'm glad you found those carpet sprites, I enjoy them a lot when they're used on Goon. Good on you for using them.

quiltyquilty: 60% of dorms is covered by laundry room, and it cant be entered through the hall
quiltyquilty: you HAVE to go through the bathroom
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuIYP/d6d626f6ef.png
quiltyquilty: no choice
Nienhaus: What the fuck
quiltyquilty: also the bathroom is copy pasted from another map lmao

This is pretty clear. A lot of the map is tiny, cramped areas with completely horrible use of space. Why is the laundry area so big while the full dorms is so tiny? Why is the door to get in missing?
Also, you copied and pasted again. Stop that.

quiltyquilty: librarian doesnt have a backroom

Just saying.

quiltyquilty: THE FUCKING SAUCER BRIDGE
quiltyquilty: LITERALLY WHY

If this is a gimmick to spice the map up, it's completely useless and ugly as a gimmick. It limits the space of the bridge and makes it hideous for the sake of being different. Why not just try a different shape, instead of making it a whole damn saucer?

quiltyquilty: gravity gen is in all access maint that has no protection except 3 space tiles
quiltyquilty: which have cat walk on them anyway

Yep.

quiltyquilty: also medbay and rnd are across the station from each other
quiltyquilty: wanna get acid for rnd?
quiltyquilty: GOOD LUCK KID

Medbay and Science are supposed to be close for a good reason. Look at this work of mapping genius.

You can throw a beaker across, PDA chemistry "acid", and get your acid thrown back effortlessly. That's efficiency, and it's a great layout.

Nienhaus: Well now all you have to do is copy+paste this chat :p

Thanks Nienhaus.

quiltyquilty: theres a solar that requires command access to enter

Yep!

Nienhaus: Also don't be too mean to the point he'd stop mapping
quiltyquilty: if you dont be mean to mappers to make them stop, you get people like steelpoint
quiltyquilty: who consistently churn out shitty content
quiltyquilty: and due to the fact that he's the only real commonly contributing mapper
quiltyquilty: it's usually accepted

If you think I'm being too mean, I included this to show you why it's for your own good. I'm just trying to help.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJ8m/463801e591.png
quiltyquilty: 1 bomb
quiltyquilty: mining, cargo, arrivals, and eva
quiltyquilty: all gone
quiltyquilty: and thus
quiltyquilty: NO more space travel

Putting useful things together results in stuff like this, and that's why it shouldn't be done. Space it out and keep bombs from crippling a massive part of the game.

quiltyquilty: also the eva has NO supplies, but they decided 7 space suits was needed
quiltyquilty: ???
quiltyquilty: wait
quiltyquilty: THERES 2 EVAS
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJbq/421b00501e.png
Nienhaus: What
quiltyquilty: THE SECOND ALSO IS FULL OF SPACE SUITS
...
Nienhaus: Well that's new :p

Did you run out of space in the first EVA? Was it an accident? Splitting the EVA is a bad idea, it makes it harder to get certain supplies. If you want to prevent the EVA from being easily bombable, why not make 2 FULL EVAS, instead of 2 half EVAS?

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJc0/c4479f3347.png this escape wing can not be entered
...
quiltyquilty: a massive area that will probably have no one in it unless it's the end of the round
quiltyquilty: and it's directly exposed to cells
quiltyquilty: hm.....

Don't make security a block of swiss cheese, full of holes and shit. Make it at least mildly secure.

quiltyquilty: he copy and pasted the smes room. of all things youcould copy and paste you choose the worst
quiltyquilty: even worse is that engineering's tool room is far enough from the singulo that smes could work fine there

The SMES room is awful, ugly, etc. A fourth SMES was added to ease someone's OCD over the asymmetry, even though 1 or 2 SMES is already enough to store all of the power in the world. Also, stop copy and pasting.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJhH/37be40b3bb.png good luck rnd
quiltyquilty: if anything more than a toddler-sized scientist works there
quiltyquilty: everything is cramped

Same as botany. You need to manage space better.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJjj/3d0d11d49e.png this is the firing range

That's a joke, a literal honest to god joke. Certain guns that RND can make will kill you if they hit a target that close to you. Why is it so small?!

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJkM/d3672b65cc.png i actually like this experimentor room
Nienhaus: :p

Good on you, it's kind of neat.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJlq/84d30e7c7c.png rnd is so small but robots has all this space?????
quiltyquilty: also more weirdly placed wires, copy and paste

More shitty distribution of space. RnD shouldn't be puny but Robotics rather happy and spacious.

quiltyquilty: xeno doesnt have a big pen, the big pen is 100% separate from the rest of the room

Why? This map is full of stuff that's different for the sake of difference, with no time put into considering if it's good or annoying.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJnP/7f6bd6357a.png in order to access too. storage
quiltyquilty: you must go through space

Fix this.

Nienhaus: I really hope that this is a matter of just a floor placement
Nienhaus: And not that he forgot so many doors.

I'm sure it's floor placement, right? Right?

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJoY/a0abcaf6eb.png 1/2 of captains office is exposed to the hallway, the last wall is touching maintenance
quiltyquilty: all access maintenance

On Metastation, a single side of the captain's office is exposed to maintenance. This SINGLE tunnel is responsible for 99% of shitty assistants who snatch up the spare and make rounds god fucking awful, never calling the shuttle. Fix this.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJqB/824ff2d0aa.png if touched up, this hop office would look nice
quiltyquilty: but still copy and pasted from meta
Nienhaus: It's a little bit open
Nienhaus: For a HoP's office
quiltyquilty: im sure he'll fill it in

There's a positive.

THE SECURITY SECTION
fuck this security layout, fuck it

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJsC/9b79fbeb7c.png
quiltyquilty: this entire department is wrong
quiltyquilty: all of it
quiltyquilty: 100%
Nienhaus: At least the warden can see all the cells
Nienhaus: Unlike some set ups
quiltyquilty: every map has that im pretty sure
Nienhaus: Isn't there normally 5
quiltyquilty: meta only has 4 to be fair
quiltyquilty: it can be flexible

The walls outside of security are ridged and ugly, again, different to be different.
There's 3 empty boxes.
The cells are exposed to escape.
Equipment is exposed to the hallway.
Perma is a small space walk away from escape.
The armory is understocked.
There's a WHOLE SHIT TON of copy and pasting.
Warden is way too fucking small.
The HoS office isn't even an office, it's just a room with tables in it.
The placement of the medical facilities is ugly as hell.
Everything is circuitous and hard to see and hard to use. You have to go to the end of a hallway and through a nearly hidden door to enter armory , which shouldn't even be a thing.
2 doors to the armory should NOT be a thing.
Execution is ugly as fuck.
Perma is incredibly puny, and is almost completely taken up by its botany. In fact, that's the largest prison garden of any /tg/ map, and it still has less trays than Box! Ha!

The asylum on Box is the equivalent to the medical center on Meta. Having both is redundant, because the asylum can work as a medical center and the medical center can work as an asylum.

That's bolded, because it shows one of the biggest issues with this map. It has no direction, nothing special to it, no purpose, no substance. It copies and pastes from other maps excessively, everything unique about it is unique in a bad way, it's so ugly and poorly laid out, like you had no idea what you were doing and just laid shit down hoping it would look good.
The asylum and medical center being shamelessly taken and used at the same time, it tells me you really don't understand a big part of mapping. And that big part is knowing if your map works or not. You aren't supposed to just build whatever and then hope it plays well. You're supposed to put thought into making a map, you need to lay it out in a way that you KNOW will be fun, and you need to make sure that you don't fucking copy and paste so shamelessly that you end up having two variations of the same god damn room.

I'm sorry if this was too brutal or rough for you, but shit. I just wanted to get this out of the way. I'm not doing this to discourage you from mapping, I'm doing this to teach you one of the biggest things you need to know when mapping, knowing how to create a map that will work. You can't just swing and miss over and over until you find something that works, you have to learn and understand what makes a map good and what doesn't. Because from what I can tell, all of the changes you made to this map aren't changes you made to improve the playing experience. You did them just to seem different. And a massive part of the map is just copy and pasted, so maybe if you can't make any worthwhile changes, you don't have any reason to be making a map at this point in time? Clearly, if you copy and paste from Box and Meta so much, you like those maps. Why make your own?
That isn't to keep you from mapping, but instead, you should take a break. Steam over mapping, practice more, and find out what you would like to see in a map. Just come up with an actual idea. Not a Frankensteined, stitched together piece of garbage like this. Remember the positive things I pointed out. There's potential, you just need to learn more before you tackle something as huge as this.

Also...

Hibbles wrote:Posting to express hype, and if you get this in a workable state I'll bully Sticky until we playtest it.

No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!

Not-Dorsidarf · Fri Jun 19, 2015 5:10 pm

This map has the worst fucking case of space allocating I've ever fucking seen. ALL THE DEPARTMENTS ARE TINY, BUT ALL THE HALLS ARE FIVE TILES WIDE

WHY ARE YOUR CORRIDORS WIDER THAN HALF THE ROOMS

RAWR

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:41 am #97352

4/5 Rant, that was solid. Thanks for all the feedback!

I'll work on this tomorrow but for now how does this botany look?

I was kinda confused given how small box's botany but there's plenty of room so if bigger is better so be it.

Here's command

Gravity Gen, Tele and AI all in one place though. At least one of them will need to move, ideally two. Then again Comm is a little secluded so we'll see. The saucer was a gimmick and it didn't turn out how I liked it.

I'll post a more full response in the morning to see if I can't address some of the issues or at least clarify my train of thought.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Sat Jun 20, 2015 6:09 pm #97448

I'm going to walk through some of the post because this is really good stuff.

Maint is not a thing really right now. It's the space left over and once I've gotten the postions of everything locked down, I can work on improving it and ensuring it works gameplay wise and aesthetically.

This was my first criticism. There's a massive amount of ugly transit tubes running across the map. They're hideous and very easily damageable, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the time the station is surrounded by useless, ugly, broken tubes from meteor showers. Also, none of them use the pass tube, so they can't be walked over.

I've cut the far right one because it was constraining the map and it was too slow to be practical. All the tube already use cross-overs every 5-10 units but since the sprite changes it's easy to miss them. I've put lattice crossings under them to make space travel easier. I do not think that the tubes are any more vulnerable than any other part of the station with respect to meteors. Atmos will have a much easier time replacing a tube than fixing, heating and re-pressurizing a section of the station. That being said I'm thinking of putting a few tube dispensers in easy to access places near the airlocks for repairs, upgrades or traitor activities. I'd like to see how it plays out in an actual round before making a choice to remove them.

quiltyquilty: atmos, a department that's easily capable of destroying approx EVERYTHING, is smack dab in the middle of a hallway
quiltyquilty: and can be effortlessly broken into

Atmos is on the edge of the station that way damaging the air supply is a feat. Here, it's effortless because it's surrounded on all sides by simple hallway. Breaking into the plasma room from space and obtaining a free canister is easy.

Honestly I find hallways, especially main ones harder targets when I play traitor. C4ing through an r-wall isn't subtle and there's always foot traffic. That being said I've moved atmos 4 tiles in and put a two tile maint around it. Perhaps double r-walls would be a better solution?

I'll figure out where to put canister storage once I know what I'm doing with sec.

quiltyquilty: 60% of dorms is covered by laundry room, and it cant be entered through the hall
quiltyquilty: you HAVE to go through the bathroom
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuIYP/d6d626f6ef.png
quiltyquilty: no choice
Nienhaus: What the fuck
quiltyquilty: also the bathroom is copy pasted from another map lmao

This is pretty clear. A lot of the map is tiny, cramped areas with completely horrible use of space. Why is the laundry area so big while the full dorms is so tiny? Why is the door to get in missing?
Also, you copied and pasted again. Stop that.

Totally agree with the awkward dorms. I'm reworking the recreation block and I think I have something workable. I'll post those when I get it looking okay.

quiltyquilty: librarian doesnt have a backroom

Just saying.

Yeah, easy fix. Probably a good thing to add. I don't normally play librarian

quiltyquilty: gravity gen is in all access maint that has no protection except 3 space tiles
quiltyquilty: which have cat walk on them anyway

Yep.

Gravity Gen probably will move to where tech storage was. It's out of the way and fairly secure.

quiltyquilty: also medbay and rnd are across the station from each other
quiltyquilty: wanna get acid for rnd?
quiltyquilty: GOOD LUCK KID

Medbay and Science are supposed to be close for a good reason. Look at this work of mapping genius.

You can throw a beaker across, PDA chemistry "acid", and get your acid thrown back effortlessly. That's efficiency, and it's a great layout.

This I don't understand entirely. Medbay and research have some synergy but they're often not actually doing much together. I almost never see scientists in med or vice versa and having to leave your department once to go get some acid isn't that big of a deal and honestly encourages better play than being so efficient you never see scientists out of their department. This is the dynamic the efficiency stations struggled with. Ultimately making the station too efficient (just like making it too secure) leads to stiffness and repetitive rounds. It also doesn't encourage improving your department as the round goes on because everything already works so well. You got to balance that by avoiding making certain tasks feel like a chore. Right now chem is 30 tiles -transit tube -32 tiles away. It's not that bad of a walk. Having to chill waiting for your transport tube isn't the worst thing either. It encourages RP and creates a vulnerability that scientists otherwise don't have since they tend to be pretty tied down in their department. But hey, it's up for debate and I'd like to hear more input on this.

quiltyquilty: theres a solar that requires command access to enter

Yep!

Fixed. Originally it was for space access to the AI. The sat now looks like

Nienhaus: Also don't be too mean to the point he'd stop mapping
quiltyquilty: if you dont be mean to mappers to make them stop, you get people like steelpoint
quiltyquilty: who consistently churn out shitty content
quiltyquilty: and due to the fact that he's the only real commonly contributing mapper
quiltyquilty: it's usually accepted

If you think I'm being too mean, I included this to show you why it's for your own good. I'm just trying to help.

Hahaha, poor steelpoint. And no, this is totally okay. I've got tons of time on my commute to goof off and I'd like to not half ass something. I showed I highly unfinished product so it makes sense that there's a list 50 miles long of stuff to fix. It's all good and thanks for taking the time to type out and itemize everything.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJ8m/463801e591.png
quiltyquilty: 1 bomb
quiltyquilty: mining, cargo, arrivals, and eva
quiltyquilty: all gone
quiltyquilty: and thus
quiltyquilty: NO more space travel

Putting useful things together results in stuff like this, and that's why it shouldn't be done. Space it out and keep bombs from crippling a massive part of the game.

Cargo got moved up 5 tiles as part of the RD revamp. It'll help alleviate that. At the same time I can think of a lot of places on box or meta where a good bomb will ruin a lot of stuff. In some ways that's a traitors reward for being smart with their bomb placement.

quiltyquilty: also the eva has NO supplies, but they decided 7 space suits was needed
quiltyquilty: ???
quiltyquilty: wait
quiltyquilty: THERES 2 EVAS
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJbq/421b00501e.png
Nienhaus: What
quiltyquilty: THE SECOND ALSO IS FULL OF SPACE SUITS
...
Nienhaus: Well that's new :p

Did you run out of space in the first EVA? Was it an accident? Splitting the EVA is a bad idea, it makes it harder to get certain supplies. If you want to prevent the EVA from being easily bombable, why not make 2 FULL EVAS, instead of 2 half EVAS?

I wanted to encourage space play in the center of the station so I figured more suits would be the way to do it. That being said the EVAs are small, crappy and totally unfinished. I'd lean towards two full EVAs with maybe 6 suits each. Then this begs the question of to double the RCD and magboots as they are traitor objectives. I'd like feedback on this. Perhaps a public access EVA with only the bare minimum and a more secure full one. I wonder how that would fare.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJc0/c4479f3347.png this escape wing can not be entered
...
quiltyquilty: a massive area that will probably have no one in it unless it's the end of the round
quiltyquilty: and it's directly exposed to cells
quiltyquilty: hm.....

Unfinished and currently waiting in case I need the room to fix security.

quiltyquilty: he copy and pasted the smes room. of all things youcould copy and paste you choose the worst
quiltyquilty: even worse is that engineering's tool room is far enough from the singulo that smes could work fine there

The SMES room is awful, ugly, etc. A fourth SMES was added to ease someone's OCD over the asymmetry, even though 1 or 2 SMES is already enough to store all of the power in the world. Also, stop copy and pasting.

What is wrong with the SMES room? It's part of the station you will spend 30 seconds in at most. Is it too big? Not efficent? I'll cut it down to three side by side in a rectangle but I haven't gotten around to that yet.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJhH/37be40b3bb.png good luck rnd
quiltyquilty: if anything more than a toddler-sized scientist works there
quiltyquilty: everything is cramped

Same as botany. You need to manage space better.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJjj/3d0d11d49e.png this is the firing range

That's a joke, a literal honest to god joke. Certain guns that RND can make will kill you if they hit a target that close to you. Why is it so small?!

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJkM/d3672b65cc.png i actually like this experimentor room
Nienhaus: :p

Good on you, it's kind of neat.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJlq/84d30e7c7c.png rnd is so small but robots has all this space?????
quiltyquilty: also more weirdly placed wires, copy and paste

More shitty distribution of space. RnD shouldn't be puny but Robotics rather happy and spacious.

quiltyquilty: xeno doesnt have a big pen, the big pen is 100% separate from the rest of the room

Here's RD now

I didn't actually know the firing range thing was a problem. Box's must be useless then.

Nienhaus: I really hope that this is a matter of just a floor placement
Nienhaus: And not that he forgot so many doors.

I'm sure it's floor placement, right? Right?

Eh. Little of both. Mostly I don't bother sticking doors into rooms until I know what's going in them. It'll get better as the station fills in.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJoY/a0abcaf6eb.png 1/2 of captains office is exposed to the hallway, the last wall is touching maintenance
quiltyquilty: all access maintenance

On Metastation, a single side of the captain's office is exposed to maintenance. This SINGLE tunnel is responsible for 99% of shitty assistants who snatch up the spare and make rounds god fucking awful, never calling the shuttle. Fix this.

Hmm. Okay. I'll either double r-wall, up the access on that maintenance or remove it all together. Whatever looks nicer in the end.

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJqB/824ff2d0aa.png if touched up, this hop office would look nice
quiltyquilty: but still copy and pasted from meta
Nienhaus: It's a little bit open
Nienhaus: For a HoP's office
quiltyquilty: im sure he'll fill it in

Yeah, it getting filled in eventually.

THE SECURITY SECTION
fuck this security layout, fuck it

quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJsC/9b79fbeb7c.png
quiltyquilty: this entire department is wrong
quiltyquilty: all of it
quiltyquilty: 100%
Nienhaus: At least the warden can see all the cells
Nienhaus: Unlike some set ups
quiltyquilty: every map has that im pretty sure
Nienhaus: Isn't there normally 5
quiltyquilty: meta only has 4 to be fair
quiltyquilty: it can be flexible

Okay, I'd love elaboration here. In general security needs to be more secure and there needs to be fewer points on ingress from maint or space. Space moat around more of it and the rest of it backing onto atmos should help.

Do we really need more cells? I guess maybe. Or even maybe a holding tank for minor crimes. Would that work? Box usually gets along fine with 3.

The walls outside of security are ridged and ugly, again, different to be different.
There's 3 empty boxes.
The cells are exposed to escape.
Equipment is exposed to the hallway.
Perma is a small space walk away from escape.
The armory is understocked.
There's a WHOLE SHIT TON of copy and pasting.
Warden is way too fucking small.
The HoS office isn't even an office, it's just a room with tables in it.
The placement of the medical facilities is ugly as hell.
Everything is circuitous and hard to see and hard to use. You have to go to the end of a hallway and through a nearly hidden door to enter armory , which shouldn't even be a thing.
2 doors to the armory should NOT be a thing.
Execution is ugly as fuck.
Perma is incredibly puny, and is almost completely taken up by its botany. In fact, that's the largest prison garden of any /tg/ map, and it still has less trays than Box! Ha!

Walls are straight again. Cells are exposed to maint now but if the warden don't catch that, shame on you. Or is that too unsecure? Armory has the same equipment as usual. What is it missing? Warden will get an extra column of space. HoS is going to be rearranged. I agree with the medical facilities point. I'll try and make them more useful and remove one of them. The only people entering armory should be warden and HoS and both have easy access, what do you mean by hard to get to? The original intention was to seperate armory into low use high risk and common use low risk items. The armory antechamber is supposed to be there to provide access to things like barricades that are not high risk items. I tried to give the warden a good field of view for everything as well as keep the equipment and officer only segments apart from the prisoner segments. Perma is going to be fixed.

I'm sorry if this was too brutal or rough for you, but shit. I just wanted to get this out of the way. I'm not doing this to discourage you from mapping, I'm doing this to teach you one of the biggest things you need to know when mapping, knowing how to create a map that will work. You can't just swing and miss over and over until you find something that works, you have to learn and understand what makes a map good and what doesn't. Because from what I can tell, all of the changes you made to this map aren't changes you made to improve the playing experience. You did them just to seem different. And a massive part of the map is just copy and pasted, so maybe if you can't make any worthwhile changes, you don't have any reason to be making a map at this point in time? Clearly, if you copy and paste from Box and Meta so much, you like those maps. Why make your own?
That isn't to keep you from mapping, but instead, you should take a break. Steam over mapping, practice more, and find out what you would like to see in a map. Just come up with an actual idea. Not a Frankensteined, stitched together piece of garbage like this. Remember the positive things I pointed out. There's potential, you just need to learn more before you tackle something as huge as this.

Well I hope it was a cathartic experience since we only get new map attempts round here every few months.

I should try to be more clear with what I was trying to do. I wanted a long main corridor with traffic evenly dispersed along it. I wanted to encourage space walks and give alternative play styles to traitors with access to space while also giving the crew tools to deal with them to create conflicts that are distinct to conflicts inside the station. I wanted new rooms like the theater backstage or a few other ideas I have for maint to provide gimmicks for traitors and players to use to spice up rounds. I'd like more things like a theater which encourage RP. I wanted open construction rooms easily accessible from main hallways with high traffic to allow atmos and engineers who are bored as anything most rounds to create and showcase construction projects. Ideally I'd like the station to grow inward every round filling up the empty space in the middle Department-wise I wanted more central lobby like locations with many rooms branching off which puts a spotlight on underused rooms in med and R&D. Basically I wanted to direct traffic towards all the cool things that go on in SS13 and to do that I needed such a long main corridor and big population pulls like Med and R&D to be spread out to make sure everything gets foot traffic. Tg doesn't really use RP to drive people to use certain rooms and mappers need to provide other incentives.

allura · Post by **allura** » Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:38 pm #97641

I don't have the time or patience to type up a super long post in reply, but I can make a few small points.
- RD is an improvement, albeit still a bit ugly.
- The bridge still reeks of "different to be different", but there's still some improving there.
- Double r-walls don't really do much to resolve security issues. Efficiency 1 tried to double-rwall all secure things and it was a mess.
- Atmospherics should just be bordering space, even lethal turrets in space wouldn't protect it in its current state.
- I wish Paprika was here, he went off on an enormous rant about medbay/science synergy. I'll explain it myself later.
- I'm glad you've said all of your ideas, it makes it easier for people to direct you into making a better map.

I'll go further into detail later, sorry.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Tue Jun 23, 2015 7:58 pm #98316

Recreation:

The Dorms are a little bohemian right now. I'm not sure if it's ideal but I kind of like the idea of an assistant alleyway filled with dorms, shops and other little things so spacemen can go play house. I can make it all spartan and orderly if that's what people want from their dorms.

Not-Dorsidarf · Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:06 pm

I don't like al those rwalls. The only rwalls I should be able to see in that shot are SecTech storage (not regular) and maybe the Engineering access.

Maybe also whatever the left bit is.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Wed Jun 24, 2015 3:50 am #98455

Hmm. They do look out of place on the whole and aren't ultimately protecting anything. They'll go I think. Sometimes I wish we had other cosmetic wall styles.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Jun 24, 2015 2:35 pm

We have wooden walls, if you feel like respecting them to not be awful.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Fri Jun 26, 2015 8:05 pm #99149

I just used the regular walls. Like holy shit though, we have 300 wall icons and we use maybe like 10 of them? There's so much stuff buried in the .dmi files. I actually kinda like the material shuttle walls for something since I think they look cool but I dunno what. We use the bananium for the clown shuttle and that's pretty much it.

I'm kinda reaching an impass. I want to make a call on med and research before I start wiring things because I'd like to avoid rewiring and piping huge sections of the station.

Should I swap research and security? And then maybe put cargo in between med and research? Or should I try something else?

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 11:45 pm #101164

Lots of minor tweaks. Maintenance and wiring has been started. I've given a sec remake a shot. I've widened the wardens office, removed the spare med room and increased the size of the other, I've repositioned the gulag shuttle and I like how that looks and works now. Prisoner education is now properly next door to perma. The space moat has been exteneded but I think I'd like to have one maint access to sec just to even out the difficulty in accessing sec now and to help ease the lack of options for escape should the entrance be bombed.

Maint is in a state of flux now. Areas I think won't change like north of med or the southeast corner have been started. Rec gets a nice terrarium now that's all climate controlled so that'll be fun I think.

In working out how deliveries will work I'm leaning towards something closer to Goon's Belt hell. I like the idea of many conveyors going everywhere and I certainly have enough room for something like that. I think that will be my next project as long as there aren't any big department wide changes to do.

I'm still torn on swapping R&D and Sec so Med and R&D can be close.

Current version of the station can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cs7ip5ty0n221 ... 8.png?dl=0

Septavius · Post by **Septavius** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 8:47 am #101248

i really like how this is turning out, keep it up.

EmGee · Post by **EmGee** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:26 am #101283

I like it, but it's still heavily WIP, right? RIGHT?

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 3:33 pm #101347

Oh yeah, for sure. There's shit everywhere lying around unfinished. Random space tiles, missing doors, vast swaths of empty maintenance. I haven't even tried to compile and run it yet.

That being said I prefer to update often rather than sporadically because it keeps me involved in the project. Every day I try to do something little, even if it's just a section of maint or whatever. I've put maybe 50 hours into this and it probably needs 200+ so it'll be a long while. I'll keep the OP updated and post images whenever something big gets finished.

Takeguru · Post by **Takeguru** » Fri Jul 03, 2015 7:38 pm #101424

The assistant alleyway section is nice.

Love that theater.

Secure tech storage should probably have a space moat, replace the r-walls with reinforced windows.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:32 pm #102234

I got a bunch done this weekend but not much noticeable. Mostly I put APCs in every area and figured out which areas go where. Next will be lighting for every area and then wiring the APCs to the SMESs. I'm leaning towards keeping my current layout, at least for the purposes of getting the map done in the next few months. If I need to gut it to swap departments, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. In the meantime I've put a medical research room in in the secure pod opposite research. It can be accessed by both scientists and doctors and has enough equipment to be interesting. It can also heal you decently so as long as you don't need cryo or genetics. This way you don't have to walk cross station to get some brute healed.

Not-Dorsidarf · Sun Jul 30, 2023 1:33 am

I assume the unguarded chemist station is chemist access?

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Wed Jul 08, 2015 1:46 am #102430

Indeed. And it'll be getting shutters for when it's not in use so you can't just break down the grate. It's only a portable dispenser however and the only entry and exit from that room is right onto a main hall or into space.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 3:27 pm #103196

Got the vast majority of the wiring out of the way. Almost every area has an APC and power running to it. Areas were revamped so this makes sense with what gets power from where.

Current State of the Station

: thumbnail05.png (100.4 KiB) Viewed 19853 times

Maintenance is still very much WIP as most areas have at least some detail but I think a lot more needs to be done. While in general maintenance is pretty linear running through it feel much more like a chase, ducking round corners and the like. It almost feels like cornering in a game of pacman which for me at least, isn't a bad thing.

I've also compiled the map for the first time. Only 200 active tiles at the start

. Tons of stuff needs fixing and most areas still need proper lighting. That's going to be next on the todo list.

For reference I took times for a few of the common routes on station

Running:
Sec to Med 16s
Sec to Cargo 20s
Sec to R&D 28s
Med to R&D 48s

Taking the Tubes:
Sec to R&D best case (Pod just arrives) 12s
Sec to R&D worst case (Pod just left) 32s
Med to R&D best case 16s
Med to R&D worst case 50s

I'm pretty happy with how the timing works out.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 4:07 pm #103206

Well, that chapel massdriver is gonna be a pain in the ass, because >drag a coffin through a 1-tile corridor

Also, a crematorium that can be entered through the main chapel? Heresy.

Not-Dorsidarf · Fri Jul 10, 2015 4:46 pm

Teleporter and conference room should be swapped with the captain's suite of rooms, because the cap's bedroom is too exposed and the teleporter isn't exposed enough.

Courtroom needs a narrow-window divider and windoor down the middle to stop shitheads messing with the trials
Court maint should be a little more extensive, perhaps behind the HOP's office (so the caps office can be access from maint if it's swapped like above)

Detective's office needs another window on the front, one on either side of the door.
Labour shuttle dock needs a few windows looking in at it from maint, to reduce claustrophobia and also so you can tell if it's gone to let you bust into sec
Transfer room is poorly thought out.
Spaced sections in the main maint ring below sec are a bad idea if they block the route.
The maint ring cuts off sec from space with two layers of rwalls, this is not nukeboi friendly
Brig solar umbilical is pretty swag

Garden is out of the way and also fuckheug empty, fill it up with trees or flowers or bushes or pot plants or something

Cargo's cool disposals setup needs seperate conveyors for all the belts, so you can hang onto things sec flushes but not med,
Cargo lobby should be indented by another tile
QM should be indented towards space 2 tiles, so you dont have a 1-wide wall corridor leading into a 2-wide nicely arranged one.
Left wall of mining tunnel should have 2 windows in it.

The little cramped maint corridor leading to the maint vault should be made bigger, either an ante-room or just opened into the tunnels entirely.
Gravgen's doors/lobby should be visible from main halls

Neither of the two toxins labs have maint access or a blast range
There are two toxins labs.

AI lobby defense turrets have too little firing range to protect from melee jackintheboxing, move them up or the teleporter room and side doors down
AI walkway uses fullwindows instead of directionalwindows
AI walkway has a solid inner wall
AI core has only 1 rwall

Surgery is surrounded by rwalls and has no maint access.
Chem has a test-lab which can dump to space, but anything mixed in there which needs venting to space (also they should just ask science to use theirs instead of having one in their back yard) will blow up the windows and expose the lab.
Chemistry has entirely regular walls, exposed to public maint, but the morgue has 100% rwalls
The (really cool btw) cryo tank holding room is too cramped, move maint out 1 tile there and make it 3 wide
You can't see into genetics from the main medbay supercorridor

Coffin storage's interior walls should be glass, to make inserting coffin into massdriver less hell (and also to make it less fugly)

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 4:55 pm #103231

I agree with Allura that both the Command section of the station seems off, and that I'm a terrible mapper.

Fortunately my contributions are small touches to the station, not complete remakes.

Good luck with the map however, it'll take days to finish and years to polish.

Tornadium · Post by **Tornadium** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 5:03 pm #103232

This is cool, want.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 5:37 pm #103235

Confession: I've played Chaplain a grand total of once. I have no idea what they need. How does this look?

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:02 pm #103237

Chaplain needs are very simple: A semi-private office with a handful of escape routes, a crematorium with maint and office access that becomes a blackbox as soon as cameras are cut (very exciting for last-second ling resurrections) and a mass driver with a view so grieving crew can watch their loved ones get launched into space.

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Fri Jul 10, 2015 7:18 pm #103257

what 2 heck is happening in that armory

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 1:04 am #103328

What's wrong with it? It has all the usual equipment, the suits are in an EVA closet further up. Barricades are lower risk and are up in the antechamber.

Septavius · Post by **Septavius** » Sat Jul 11, 2015 1:27 am #103333

yeah it looks fine to me.

Celdur · Post by **Celdur** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 4:15 am #103517

The thing that bothers me the most about this station is the huge fucking hallways.
Take some time to load up your map and walk around in it, it will feel huge and empty and awful.
3 wide really is wide enough, 4 at best.

Other than that you have some neat ideas for some places.
But some other places look kinda off to me.
I think its because you made the station a particular shape and then tried to fit the departments into them, rather than just putting all the rooms where they'd fit naturally.
But I guess you could chalk that up to personal taste, who knows.

JackHunt · Post by **JackHunt** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:37 pm #104629

Started to work on atmos but I had to revert my changes due to poor planning. Goddamn would it be nice to have a dual purpose scrubber/supply pipe. Alas. Instead I did a bunch of miscellaneous things

Teleporter and conference room should be swapped with the captain's suite of rooms, because the cap's bedroom is too exposed and the teleporter isn't exposed enough.

Done, although I am unsure how secure to make caps room. Right now you're one rwall from the bedroom but all the goodies are in the office so then you have either another rwall or a door.

Courtroom needs a narrow-window divider and windoor down the middle to stop shitheads messing with the trials
Court maint should be a little more extensive, perhaps behind the HOP's office (so the caps office can be access from maint if it's swapped like above)

I've put the window in. Maint goes behind. I am now debating putting a bar above and naming it some sort of legal pun. I'm taking suggestions on that. I might also extend that maint and put a brief spacewalk over the tube and connect that with the interior port maint.

Detective's office needs another window on the front, one on either side of the door.
Labour shuttle dock needs a few windows looking in at it from maint, to reduce claustrophobia and also so you can tell if it's gone to let you bust into sec
Transfer room is poorly thought out.
Spaced sections in the main maint ring below sec are a bad idea if they block the route.
The maint ring cuts off sec from space with two layers of rwalls, this is not nukeboi friendly
Brig solar umbilical is pretty swag

Detective is done, Labour is rearranged and transfer room has an extra tile of breathing space which seems to look okay. I've removed the rwalls from the inner ring of the sec space moat and put a few windows in. Nukeops can't do it instantly but it's certainly doable to bomb the armory and go in loud.

Garden is out of the way and also fuckheug empty, fill it up with trees or flowers or bushes or pot plants or something

Agreed. Put in a few bushes. We have no good tree sprites unfortunately. I also made a sprite request so hopefully I can get something.

Cargo's cool disposals setup needs seperate conveyors for all the belts, so you can hang onto things sec flushes but not med,
Cargo lobby should be indented by another tile
QM should be indented towards space 2 tiles, so you dont have a 1-wide wall corridor leading into a 2-wide nicely arranged one.
Left wall of mining tunnel should have 2 windows in it.

Already done so that each of the three disposals (from port, starboard or central) is run by a separate lever. Bottom conveyor is separate as well. Cargo got moved out and it alleviates some of the cramps. Forgot about windows, I'll put those in.

The little cramped maint corridor leading to the maint vault should be made bigger, either an ante-room or just opened into the tunnels entirely.
Gravgen's doors/lobby should be visible from main halls

Neither of the two toxins labs have maint access or a blast range
There are two toxins labs.

Gravgen was prehaps a little too secure. I've rearranged the vault as well. There are not two toxins labs. One is a mixing lab like on box and meta. It has a vent but no igniter as well as a volume pump. The rest of the equipment is to make it feature complete compared to box or meta. It's put next to toxins to encourage people to use it. There's a couple new options for gas mixes that people can experiment now. Blast range is difficult to fit so it's going in at a later date. I have not forgot about it though.

AI lobby defense turrets have too little firing range to protect from melee jackintheboxing, move them up or the teleporter room and side doors down
AI walkway uses fullwindows instead of directionalwindows
AI walkway has a solid inner wall
AI core has only 1 rwall

AI stuff and space stuff (along with maint) are getting an overhaul next instead of atmos so this should be fixed by next update.

Surgery is surrounded by rwalls and has no maint access.
Chem has a test-lab which can dump to space, but anything mixed in there which needs venting to space (also they should just ask science to use theirs instead of having one in their back yard) will blow up the windows and expose the lab.
Chemistry has entirely regular walls, exposed to public maint, but the morgue has 100% rwalls
The (really cool btw) cryo tank holding room is too cramped, move maint out 1 tile there and make it 3 wide
You can't see into genetics from the main medbay supercorridor

Surgury rwalls are gone. Why does it need maint access? Chem has a test lab mainly for grenades. They usually don't cause damage to floors and walls. I've put a box of monkey cubes so they have some targets. It gives chem a legit reason to build all those horrifying mixtures they've always wanted to but couldn't justify being non-antag. Rwalls fixed on chem and morgue. Cryo tank room will get fixed when I redo maint. Windows were forgotten, going on the list of stuff to do.

The thing that bothers me the most about this station is the huge fucking hallways.
Take some time to load up your map and walk around in it, it will feel huge and empty and awful.
3 wide really is wide enough, 4 at best.

I have loaded it up and it doesn't feel so bad. An extra tile really does make it feel like a main throughfare and it makes gunplay much more fun in chases down the halls. But the most consistent criticism of the map is the space allocation so I tried to justify the use of 5 wide. First I made a mock-up of a 4w section of the station.

But it really didn't solve anything in my opinion. If you thought 5 was too wide 4 really isn't that much of an improvement. Instead what I settled to do is sprinkle more cosmetics through the halls, vending, disposals, chairs, ect. I also put in some glass covered space tiles. One of the worst things about sections of box is the complete lack of awareness that you are in space. Hopefully these windows or floordows or whatever help allievate that. They also break up the corridors (not too much I hope) and actually have the unexpected benefit of damping plasma fires in the main halls. So that's nice. I am unsure as to the spacing of them so I'd like feed back.

Sorry about the wall of text, without further ado,
Current State of the Station