Centralized Research but Distributed Benefits

[Scott]

In relation to the rest of the crew, currently R&D works like this:

Scientists do enough science in R&D and can produce equipment that is useful to the crew, but there is no distribution of this equipment to the crew. Each crew member individually has to walk to the R&D desk and politely ask for guns, implants and whatnot.

I suggest a different approach. R&D is kept in Science as it is now, but a specialized lathe is placed in each department that needs one, and these specialized lathes connect to the R&D server to download Research Levels.

A specialized lathe would only use designs that make sense to the department they are serving. For example, Security department's lathe would make guns, armor, security consumables and accessories, but not other hardware such as construction tools, or robotic parts.

This would increase the demand for minerals, because the crew is going to be making use of the convenient department lathes without having to wait for someone else to print things for them, so more things are printed and more minerals are demanded.

This would also let us have more R&D based toys that are not printable by the protolathe. If Research Levels are used to unlock designs and these Research Levels are distributed to each department lathes, we can have more toys without worrying about R&D power creep, since the toys are printed by the people that actually need them for their job role.

Specialized lathes would be in: Security, Medbay, Engineering, Mining (not Cargo), Science, Robotics (already exist as the exosuit fabricators) and one general purpose lathe for everything else that doesn't justify it's own lathe to serve the other departments or assistant crew.


Discuss.

PS - Yes, this would mean Security gets to have even more guns.

[Reece]

Not to sound rude or selfish, but as a science player I gotta ask why should I bother? If I don't get the new toys as well then I'm gonnapiss off to xenobio and not bother with R&D.

[Scott]

Not to sound rude but did you read the entire thing.

[Reece]

Not to sound rude but did you read the entire thing.

Yeah.
This part is what stands out.

we can have more toys without worrying about R&D power creep, since the toys are printed by the people that actually need them for their job role.

So why bother? Unless you mean that R&D still gets the same as before,but that the department lathes get them also? In which case I'd say it might be better to give protolathed gear a chance to malfunction, give each department a decon machine that adds a 'finalised' design to be printed by their department lathe, otherwise science is going to still powercreep via more effecient machines and mineral use.