So, I check the wiki, and the article is completely unaltered from what I remember pre Experi-Sci. I check the page history, and there are a total of 14 edits since June of 2020, all of them either removing, rearranging, or rewording shit. WELL. I guess I might as well check the HackMD- sure, it's not meant to be a reference on the game in its current state, but I can at least get a feel for things from the roadmap and what the intended gameplay is, right?
Nah. HackMD Science design doc unchanged since 2 years(!!!) ago, and what is there is totally anemic. A little under half of the body of the page is taken up explaining the economy around anomaly cores, despite the fact that anomaly cores have been a requirement for certain endgame techs like Phazon and Bags of Holding since before I first played SS13, meaning that expanding their usage is hardly the most controversial thing in the world to feel the need to justify ad nauseam. Then after that section there's a 404 error caused by god knows what, nice, and then finally the section on Research and Development. 159 words of oranges signature, wit(less) snark, short enough to fit in a tweet. Since it's so short, I might as well beat this horse to death and then some by picking it apart, line by line.
First of all, where are your subheadings and clearly defined goals and milestones? I mean, it's 159 words so obviously that was never in the cards, but still. Also, flat rate point generation is a thing now and has been for as long as I've been playing, so this section should really be marked as "done" or something.So active points generation hasn’t worked, techwebs is a total mess, points generation is massive one round, and nothing the next.
I want techwebs overhauled.
Flat rate point generation, from start of round and ticking upwards.
This is experi-sci, done, this section should probably be linked to the Experi-Sci design doc (which, while informative, focuses almost entirely to the technical details of the system and has a brief "what not to do" section at the end, not very useful for my purposes.) as this sentence isn't very informative to the current state of the game, or even really what the goal in making such a system is.Sub chains of research should be gated by a scientific experiment, what that looks like for each part of the web is up to users implementation choice, it might be redeeming something like a slime, or building a specific nanite/virus, it should be related to the technologies in question
Done, should probably be scratched out or marked as completed.The techweb console should be moved to the bridge and added to Head of staff PDA’s, so they can oversee research for their depts and techwebs is no longer seen as a “science” job.
Theoretically done, although last I played a solid majority of sci players still couldn't figure out how to make a bomb to achieve mid-level techs; toxins is finnicky as fuck, and you really can't rely on the wiki for it, I only managed to learn by requesting the aid of a far more intelligent spaceman than I on discord. Basically, if you're relying on people knowing how to do toxins, then you are SORELY mistaken on how many people are even capable of making a glorified flashbang.The core research techs should be achievable in 60 minutes, with extension trees being possible but only a selection of them, I.e you have to choose some focuses.
This being as opposed to the veritable BOUNTY of github pull requests that oranges is known to accept, of course. Because as we all know, oranges is very detailed and communicative in regards to constructing feedback for his slaves fellow programmers. That's it- there's a 404 under the Non-Maintainer design flows heading, and then a whole lotta shit about cytology that warrants (and probably already has) its own design doc. Out of one last desperate effort, I am venturing into the vast, horrifying hellscape that is known as the tgstation github to see what merges have been made regarding science, although I'm gonna post this before I make such an attempt in the likely eventuality that I do not survive the experience.I will not accept PR’s that do not conform to this design.