Robustin Suicide Watch - A way forward on the Engineering PR

[christ110]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Wait, robustin. One very, very important feature.
Please, for the love of God. PLEASE, let your new system still enable us to buy tendies.

[Cobby]

My hopes are to replace crates and exports with purchasing of individual items and giving it a pseudo supply and demand, along with Oranges idea of giving departments their own "bank account" to work with.

[Oldman Robustin]

I can't help but laugh if each dept. gets its own account, own way to add to that accounts, and pretty soon oran "fuck points" ges has every dept. operating on a points system.

And by laugh, I mean sob deeply.


And of course there will be tendies.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I'll support departmental budgets if the HOP can revoke everyone's budgets, print out a money throne, and hide behind a barricade of other people's space cash when security burst down the door to beat him to death for grand larceny

[Lazengann]

Instead of points being a "set up power and go afk" thing, give points for dealing with the random events. Powernet shut off? Points for every APC reset. Anomaly? Points for getting rid of it.

[Haevacht]

Instead of points being a "set up power and go afk" thing, give points for dealing with the random events. Powernet shut off? Points for every APC reset. Anomaly? Points for getting rid of it.

Anomalies are science's concern. And you could farm them with the SM.

[Slignerd]

And you could farm them with the SM.

Not without the risk of everything blowing up.

[Haevacht]

And you could farm them with the SM.

Not without the risk of everything blowing up.

Which is a good thing.

[Slignerd]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. If Engineering was sent out to hunt anomalies in exchange of points, anything that can be gained by farming the SM would be mitigated by the huge risk involved in even trying to do so.

[Oldman Robustin]

My plan has 3 main objectives but there were several unwritten ones like:

- Don't incentivize engineers to blow up the station

- Make the tasks either useful for the station or independently interesting, anything that isn't either should be changed (I use genetics as a minimum threshold here, at the very least it may not be super fun but there's enough critical thinking involved in planning/adapting that it's not mind numbing)

- The system should utilize existing mechanics: disposal piping, air mixing, engine and power optimization are all good examples - farming anomalies is not

Also with the proper equipment farming SM anomalies is not difficult, or challenging, or even interesting

[cedarbridge]

My hopes are to replace crates and exports with purchasing of individual items and giving it a pseudo supply and demand, along with Oranges idea of giving departments their own "bank account" to work with.

We strongly considered something like this a long time ago but it got met with the usual "economy reeeeee" response. I fully support budgets and adding money in a useful way, especially with some useful interaction with cargo, but I don't know that you'll get it past the players.

[Reviire]

Well, thread was a wild ride. I just want to put my own idea in on the whole engineering incentives. Why not give them expensive, complex machines that benefit everyone in some way? i.e, station wide bonuses, or something anyone can come and pick up. It could tie in with atmos too, some power hog that connects to the atmos system and injects whatever buff into the air. I think it'd be better than some point system for items, at least.

Would modular constructions be practical? Put different pieces together in different ways, with different materials giving different bonuses/special affects.

[oranges]

I don't really want to help Robustin drive his pr's after the freeze so I'm recusing myself from this discussion and his pr's

He can hopefully find some other maintainer to help him finish this work

[Cobby]

My hopes are to replace crates and exports with purchasing of individual items and giving it a pseudo supply and demand, along with Oranges idea of giving departments their own "bank account" to work with.

We strongly considered something like this a long time ago but it got met with the usual "economy reeeeee" response. I fully support budgets and adding money in a useful way, especially with some useful interaction with cargo, but I don't know that you'll get it past the players.

I won't hype this up until I have something tangible but it won't be a personal economy like people are scared of.

[Oldman Robustin]

Reviire I have contemplated that before but its ridiculously hard to make it work.

We already have complex/expensive machines that the crew can build and they've all been failures because they require 3+ departments to work together and put in a lot of elbow grease for a modest benefit. If I try to make the benefit more than "modest" then people complain about it being used to powergame or whatever.

[Reviire]

Reviire I have contemplated that before but its ridiculously hard to make it work.

We already have complex/expensive machines that the crew can build and they've all been failures because they require 3+ departments to work together and put in a lot of elbow grease for a modest benefit. If I try to make the benefit more than "modest" then people complain about it being used to powergame or whatever.

I may have been unclear by saying complex. What I meant was, machines you can put together in different ways to get different affects out of them, so modular. At the very least, different components that can be made out of materials, and some parts give different bonuses based on material, other parts increase the strength based on material. The only other department required should be mining, possibly R&D but just for Engineering research items.

It wouldn't be difficult or terribly hard to setup, but there's some experimentation to be had of different combinations of parts, and there's an incentive to actually work on making even more power if you want more of these thing to exist.

I think that could actually work, and would give engineers something to do. Imagine, after turning the singularity into turbo mode, the engineers have setup something that injects hyperzine into the atmosphere, and there's some cool machine in the bar that does... something. Maybe it grants xray vision for a few minutes when you interact with it, or a PSI ability dispenser, electron cascade or a psycho reflective aura, you know?