let's start with the description on the wiki
the important bits:Space Station 13 is a paranoia-laden roleplaying game set against the backdrop of a nonsensical, metal death trap masquerading as a space station.
- paranoia laden
- roleplaying (uh oh buzzword time - let's change this to ' meaningful crew interaction')
- setting of a nonsensical space station
so in no particular order here's my thoughts on how things can be changed to better fit this vague vision, starting with the part that's probably going to make at least 3 people who didn't read the disclaimer get upset and think this post is somehow an official stance of the codebase
MINING/AWAY MISSIONS/SPACE EXPLORATION
lavaland is a fan favorite with a ton of really smart and talented people putting in the time and effort to make it as fun as possible - it's also practically a completely different game off the station's z level where you fuck off from the round to gather minerals and kill things and get funny loot
I genuinely can't think of a good way to include mining as a concept and have it really mesh with the overall design goals - even old mining was a problem, and short of having the station z level be really big with a ton of asteroids on it or something, the job by nature revolves around people leaving the station, which is something that isn't exactly great for causing more paranoia/interaction between crew members. there are pros to the way the system works, but imo they don't outweigh the issues
this goes for most things that involve leaving the station, the biggest examples I can think of being away missions via the gateway and space exploration
the gateway is fun, but I have some changes I would make to it that I'll detail in a second
space exploration is fine on paper but in practice it's even worse than mining - you grab a space suit and some shit and then you leave to go look for cool shit, except you're honestly probably even more detached from the round than a miner is, since you don't have a simple way back like the mining shuttle. you also aren't even contributing in a minor way during your looting, the way people delivering minerals to the station do. I should clarify that the existence of these mechanics and stuff isn't, like, killing the game and I hate them and anyone involved with them; I just don't think they fit with this hypothetical design document thingy
the changes i'd make (and this is the part where you should realize that I definitely don't mean this as an actual list of changes I'll be making):
- Remove mining as it currently exists; I'm not entirely sure what would replace it. I was thinking an offscreen mining outpost would just automatically ship minerals to cargo, meaning the station can explicitly be more for 'research'
- Remove space exploration as is
- Remove the gateway, and
- Take the removed content and make new away missions.
Hopefully this would strike a nice balance between people getting to do off station content and voluntarily disappearing from the round
MAP DESIGN
layouts are, for the most part, irrelevant and down to personal preference
item density was an issue in the past but I think it's improved - I was always a big fan of box over meta, because box's scarcity of desirable items created conflict that could spill over into the rest of the round (eg. assistant busts into engineering to steal shit and is spotted by an engineer, later in the round the engineer doesn't help the assistant because he recognizes its the same shitter, etc. - little stuff like that). meta, meanwhile, had the issue of too much good loot in maint too easily accessible. I remember brawls over the one toolbelt in tool storage on box, but on maint you could absolutely just go grab one from maint anyways, without even having to trade with another crew member/break in anywhere
that being said, there should be more opportunities to use ghetto alternatives to stuff
a more recent unfortunate trend i've seen is implementing gimmicks as actual rooms in the map, eg. the shop room. This is well intentioned, but honestly, I think it makes players who might build a crappy ghetto black market in an empty room, or their own mini bar, LESS likely to do so - why would you, when the work is all done for you? Adding gimmicks like these as pre existing rooms removed chances for players to engage with the construction and crafting mechanics, which some players enjoy a lot
some of the new maps are EGREGIOUS for this - deltastation in particular has the worst maint i've ever seen where almost every common building project already exists in some form isolated from anywhere where people would actually use it. I'm genuinely unsure why delta has so much fucking stuff in maint THERE'S EVEN A FUCKING ARCADE DUDE
proposed changes:
- I'm insane and would honestly probably advocate for a bit more desirable item scarcity
- If the above happened, ensure there are viable (if shitty) ghetto alternatives to things that require rare items, or make them optional time savers like the way you don't really need ins gloves to break into airlocks
- Tweak maps so that you can still obtain things like bar dispensers or the credit machine things (I forget the name, it's the thing that you can transfer money to people with) for people who want to build their own projects, but
- Remove things like the shop room, empty rooms/ones that can be cleaned out for use by people making their own projects are better
- Remove the egregious "ruined" rooms from maps like delta, or at the very least make them have less stuff
