Increasing Relevancy of Service Department

[Hathkar]

The chef and the barkeeper are very overlooked and underutilized roles. When is the last time you played a round of SS13 when you ate more than one or two food items at the kitchen, or drank at the bar? Pretty much only during a long extended round, right?

Here's my proposal: Increase the rate at which hunger increases. This way people will actually have a reason to stop by the kitchen and grab some food, and not just starve the entire shift until their movement speed slows down. You could also possibly add a thirst meter to go along with the hunger, so visiting the bar or using the drink machines around the station see more use. Also maybe bartenders could have an increased drink-list, or could brew their own drinks from plants provided from botany.

As a side effect of increased thirst/hunger, more people will be eating/drinking, which also means that poisoning food/drink will be more common as well, leading to more interesting situations. Players also might actually RP a bit more while they're getting food or drink. Botany also becomes more relevant, and will need to make food instead of only going crazy mutating plants into weapons.

[Qbopper]

does anyone have the numbers for how quickly hunger becomes relevant?

I get what you're saying but it's a fine line between "make players interact with the service roles more" and "everyone is constantly starving because of their lightspeed metabolisation"

[cedarbridge]

Every time I've pushed for this I get the same response you're likely to get. People don't want interaction with the service departments because players are generally allergic to self-maint sorts of tasks. Even going to medbay for longer than stuffing some pills into their face is a burden so asking players to suffer hunger and thirst beyond extreme cases solved by stuffing jerky into their face is going to be a hard sell. I'm convinced these roles are just going to be trapped in the "rp roles" pidgeonhole championed by players who don't actually RP.

[AnonymousNow]

Having worked the fuck out of xenobiology recently, I have a suggestion.

Currently, silver slimes can produce every type of food under the sun (and drink? Not sure). This is great for xenobiologists, who just need to eat a couple of handfuls of whatever's lying around to keep on chuggin' - I do this all the time - but poor for chefs and bartenders, especially if I find the time to share.

Here's my proposal, in two parts;

1) Change silver slimes so that they produce smaller amounts of food or drink, and they're usually odd things such as plants with random mutations and meals with unusual chemicals (they'll include things like gatfruit and roburgers with similar frequency to now), or freaky mixed drinks and sometimes just straight up-medicines and toxins mixed together in beakers. Better have a chemical scanner ready!
2) Give every type of slime core (!) several (!!) new reactions (!!!) to various substances available from the bar in mixed drinks, and add a whole bunch of recipes (!!!!) which include slime cores and make a variety of food, relevant to a theme, burst out of the microwave once it's done.

So for example, green slimes mix well with salads, so if you microwave a green core with a salad, it'll produce a whole bunch of salads (mostly copies of the salad that was put into it in the first place, minus adulterants; this applies to any of the food that's added for a specific slime's reaction, including in the coming examples). Bluespace slimes make bluespace food. Red slimes make meat. Yellow slimes make fried things. Metal slimes make kebabs and have an outside chance to create roburgers & things with android mutation toxin, rainbow slimes produce EVERYTHING like silver slimes used to do.

Over in the bar, the barman is creating never-before heard of cocktails, and producing batches of similar alcohols at the same time (with the same system above). And now, you've got a system wherein service has a legitimate reason to talk to science and visa versa, because the chef & bartender want to experiment and make awesome food, hydroponics wants them sweet, sweet plant stats, and science can contribute to creating super-fuckin'-duper food from heaven.

I admit, it'd take a lot of work, and I am completely incapable of doing any of it (except some spriting, maybe), but if this were to ever happen, I feel as though it would greatly benefit both departments. Just imagine the possibilities.

[1g88a]

The chef and the barkeeper are very overlooked and underutilized roles. When is the last time you played a round of SS13 when you ate more than one or two food items at the kitchen, or drank at the bar? Pretty much only during a long extended round, right?

I used to do these things all the time when I first played tg back in 2015-ish; now playing bartender is less about mixing drinks and breaking up fights but more about praying a customer walks in the door.

[Dr_bee]

Introduction of "stress" along with hunger?

home cooked chef meals heal stress as well as hunger, smoking, coffee, addictive drugs, or barman drinks lower stress.

high stress having various negative effects, and is gained from dealing or taking damage, with melee causing higher stress gain then ranged.

It would give the service jobs an actual mechanical use besides the rare drink that has a buff like the mining drink or the hearty punch.

but that would require powergamers actually have to slightly roleplay, and we cant have that now can we?

[Armhulen]

I'd like there to be a lot of exotic bartender drinks that have special effects like breathing fire for a bit or giving you speed boosts. Something like that. I know it might turn into powergamer load up on stun immunity drink but I just want it for cool effects.

[D&B]

It sounded good until people started using stupid buzzwords.

Anyhow, if you want to make the kitchen and bar more dependable you should add a small price to pay for using vending machines and also make food crates from cargo more expensive.

[cedarbridge]

It sounded good until people started using stupid buzzwords.

Anyhow, if you want to make the kitchen and bar more dependable you should add a small price to pay for using vending machines and also make food crates from cargo more expensive.

Did somebody say e c o n o m y?

[Lazengann]

Nah just make vending machines punch people that use them

[Dr_bee]

It sounded good until people started using stupid buzzwords.

Anyhow, if you want to make the kitchen and bar more dependable you should add a small price to pay for using vending machines and also make food crates from cargo more expensive.

Did somebody say e c o n o m y?

So many interesting incentives can be created in game if the coders would just not be so dead set against adding money. Hell miners already get what is basically money.

[Qbmax32]

Beesting alt is right

[Qbopper]

out of curiosity what are the reasons for not making money a thing

[BeeSting12]

Making money to pay for shit in vending machines would be nice

[Qbmax32]

Inb4 coderbus aut shutdown

[RandomMarine]

If service jobs become important, powergamers won't rely on them, they'll just hop over the table and take what they want after disposaling the bartender/chef for not doing the job at maximum efficiency according to a guide.

[Qbopper]

If service jobs become important, powergamers won't rely on them, they'll just hop over the table and take what they want after disposaling the bartender/chef for not doing the job at maximum efficiency according to a guide.

unfortunately this is probably the case, you see it a lot, even in non powergamers - people just try to break in instead of asking people for stuff

[Gigapuddi420]

Increase the rate at which hunger increases. This way people will actually have a reason to stop by the kitchen and grab some food, and not just starve the entire shift until their movement speed slows down.

Hunger seems fine. Outside of the shortest rounds, every crew member will get hungry at least once before the shuttle is called. It's not enough to be annoying, but it's enough that if you have been working all shift you'll want to eat around the twenty minute mark to make sure you don't go into starving when it really matters later. Chef seems to be at the right place, cooking is interesting and people usually appreciate good food when put out.

You could also possibly add a thirst meter to go along with the hunger.

Might be cool. Though if we're being slightly realistic about it the bar isn't a good place to really handle dehydration. By it's nature the bar is a place you don't need to go, but would want to go to hang out and relax. If they need a drink we have plenty of vending machines with more suitable beverages for a employee working heavy machinery. Not everything needs to be abstracted down to mechanics, but I would like to see more people use the bar if only to be sociable.

In pure OOC terms, the bar is a place you go to roleplay or just socialize. That is also sort of how it works IC as no one needs to visit a bar but choose to do so for social reasons.

[Togopal]

Give spacemen The Sims 3 needs

[Gigapuddi420]

Give spacemen The Sims 3 needs

Bladder

Yeah, no one is going to bring back poo. RIP Poo.

Heard people talking about moods the other day (and I suppose in this thread a little) those sound interesting, assuming the mechanic isn't intrusive.

[Cobby]

out of curiosity what are the reasons for not making money a thing

Game dynamics would be based around making money

See: I can heal you but it'll cost you 500 bucks.

[Dr_bee]

out of curiosity what are the reasons for not making money a thing

Game dynamics would be based around making money

See: I can heal you but it'll cost you 500 bucks.

So? Sounds like that "emergent gameplay" buzzword that gets thrown around. It would be a source of conflict on the station, leading to more interesting rounds.

Adding an economy would give coders the ability to create incentives with something as simple as a money reward, This was put to good use to solve the issue of miners just fucking off to the asteroid and never bringing back ore by adding mining points, why not extend it to everyone else via wages that can be removed by other players for being a shit.

Also it would give the HoP more relevance outside of ID changes, considering they would be controlling payroll.

Goon is a good example of a money system done well, considering you can survive without it, but it makes for a neat roleplaying and traitor objective, and if you do spend time getting it you can buy from the public nanomeds to save your life, or buy hats and bees!

[Qbopper]

out of curiosity what are the reasons for not making money a thing

Game dynamics would be based around making money

See: I can heal you but it'll cost you 500 bucks.

that seems like a dick move but not like a game breaking thing

you might end up with static names being more relevant - [x] is known for being super stingy but [y] is a cool dude who will help you out for free

I dunno

[cedarbridge]

you might end up with static names being more relevant - [x] is known for being super stingy but [y] is a cool dude who will help you out for free

This already happens. Its a character trait.

[Qbopper]

you might end up with static names being more relevant - [x] is known for being super stingy but [y] is a cool dude who will help you out for free

This already happens. Its a character trait.

yeah that's why I said "more" relevant, it's another thing on top of "that guy is usually helpful" or "that guy is usually really harsh with brig timers" or whatever

[BeeSting12]

An economy is probably the best way to make the service department relevant. Vending machines will cost money to use, meaning people will use them less. This allows the cook/bartender to make money by selling food at cheaper prices or for free and still collecting their five minutely paycheck.

Science could be incentivized to give out their goodies by putting them in a sci-vendor similar to chemistry and setting a price for each item, which is divided evenly amongst the department. (sort of a commission.) Same for chem/viro- they can set prices on their products in the chem vendor. ATMs would be scattered throughout the station so people can get cash, but mostly the economy would work off your ID card, similar to a credit card system.

The station would get a budget based off the cargo points, which is probably the best measure of the station's money productivity. 20% of cargo's credits is added to the paycheck budget, but it doesn't take from the cargo budget- lorewise NT gives stations that sell more stuff more money in their paychecks. The station would also get a default amount, which is pretty small, probably 5000 or less, with assistants getting very little cash every five minutes and heads getting the most. Middle level jobs such as chemistry, medical, science, engineers would all be paid roughly the same, service would be more than assistants but less than other jobs. Security would probably be just below heads.

All of this is to provide a disadvantage to using vendors so people will actually eat the chef's food, although I think it would create interesting conflict. (The HoP has taken our paycheck, lynch he!)

[Arianya]

The biggest difficulty with economy is that you need to incentivize everyone to use it, which means if the economy is just "buy snacks and tools from vending machines" that no one will really care for it.

On the other hand, having money be the gate to power incentivizes problematic behavior too. Why pay the doctor to heal you when you can disarm him and steal his meds/break into medstorage and steal a medkit?

Sure, this might be "interesting IC conflict", but bear in mind that security is a generally underplayed role and that depending on the round they already have difficulty dealing with greytiders/minor IC crime.

With regard to service roles, the difficulty with making them more necessary is the same difficulty thats presented by a more involved medical system: Their absence becomes too much of an issue. If you get hungry every 15~ minutes instead of every 40~ minutes then the vending machines will rapidly get empty and the boxes of donk pockets will empty, and either someone will have to ad-hoc do the Chef's job in order to not starve (not ideal from a gameplay flow point of view) or they'll just go hungry until they find another source of food.

[Nilons]

If service jobs become important, powergamers won't rely on them, they'll just hop over the table and take what they want after disposaling the bartender/chef for not doing the job at maximum efficiency according to a guide.

Barkeep has a shotgun, chef has a knife/shutters. Whenever I play either the second I see someone on the counter I shoot and disposal them or shutter slam them so I dont think this will be that much of a problem

[Dr_bee]

With regard to service roles, the difficulty with making them more necessary is the same difficulty thats presented by a more involved medical system: Their absence becomes too much of an issue. If you get hungry every 15~ minutes instead of every 40~ minutes then the vending machines will rapidly get empty and the boxes of donk pockets will empty, and either someone will have to ad-hoc do the Chef's job in order to not starve (not ideal from a gameplay flow point of view) or they'll just go hungry until they find another source of food.

That is kind of what this topic is about though. It appears that people want having no chef or barman be as bad as having no medical doctors. You can survive without them but it is inconvenient. It would make the jobs actually needed and maybe more played.

[Gun Hog]

I know four methods of dealing with a missing chef, bartender, and botanist(s), in order of effectiveness:

1. Break in and make your own food. If no one is defending the kitchen, it is a simple matter of climbing over the table, and hacking open the cold room.
2. Build (or ask to have built) a public gibber + microwave combination! You can easily make steaks from corpse meat. VERY SS13!
3. Get a weight-even virus from the Virologist. A competent, non-antagonist virologist is uncommon, but if one exists, the virus can serve most of the crew.
4. Nutriment pump implants. This is the least likely way to handle it, as surgery is a pain to do along with making players vulnerable, and few even think to ask for one.

I imagine you would only get to this point during low-pop times, as Botany is a popular role. A botanist alone can meet the food needs of even a 90+ player station.

I supported Goof's kitchen overhaul until he attempted to remove the weight symptoms and nutriment pump implants. If we are to make hunger have a stronger effect, we will also need to preserve these alternate methods. This is how you avoid getting a shuttle called if the kitchen gets blown up.

We have alternative for at least two other critical 'Call-the-shuttle-if-this-is-gone' situations: Power and Medical. If Medbay is destroyed, the machines can be replaced by Science or Engineering, and Botany can pick up the slack for cloning and healing. Medibots are also life-savers. If the Supermatter explodes (and does not form a singulo or tesla), power to the station can be restored through the solars, Atmospherics turbine, buying a new engine from Cargo, or an upgraded turbine assembly installed in Toxins / several generators connected in series from Science. (Security is another critical department, but there is no viable replacement for it.)

TL;DR: Buffing hunger is fine as long as the Service department can be replaced in an emergency.

[cedarbridge]

If you get hungry every 15~ minutes instead of every 40~ minutes then the vending machines will rapidly get empty and the boxes of donk pockets will empty, and either someone will have to ad-hoc do the Chef's job in order to not starve (not ideal from a gameplay flow point of view) or they'll just go hungry until they find another source of food.

That's called "relevancy" and its kinda the point of the thread. Think of it this way, if nobody does the X's job then, Y bad things happen to the station as a whole and all falls into darkness and despair."

If nobody does the engineer's job and maintains the engine then the station loses power and nothing works until somebody ad hocs the job with power cell swaps.
If nobody does the miner's job and brings the materials then R&D and robotics grind to a halt because there's nothing to build beyond mere metal and glass construction.
If nobody does the scientist's job and upgrades the station then the increasing demands of the other departments can't be met because the roundstart machines are too slow/weak for the sort of strain late round demand requires.

This is an important part of gameplay. Each department should be important and a job that literally feeds you while you're living in space should be pretty important even in concept. Instead the same role is replaceable by a vending machine. To continue the comparison, I wouldn't be ok with replacing medbay with a medical supply closet with public access or making the mining shuttle public access. Players should depend on other players and departments should depend on other departments. Part of the reason silent murder works so often is that many players never interact with others and thus never notice when other players disappear. Its a lot easier to realize that Bob the Baker has gone missing if you were depending on Bob to have your burger ready. Its a lot easier to realize that there's something off about the chemist being missing when he was supposed to have your medication ready. When you depend on people, you form relationships. If money creates a dynamic where players actually interact over things other than combat then good, lets do it. If making hunger matter gets people to talk to the chef and bartender more and spend more time doing things that isn't antag hunting or wordlessly staring at a console, good.

[Qbopper]

copied from the food thread

Just have the buffs from food be pretty significant, but reduce their impact every time you eat the same food.

That way eating good AND diverse food is promoted.

this would be a pain to balance nicely but yeah

also maybe encourage "fresh" food so you don't powergame it by taking the entire counter of food - food is "fresh" for a short time after being made and will retain freshness while in a fridge or something (chefs can still load food into vending machines, right? that would work as well) but will lose it if you just keep it in your bag

basically, if you want to make food relevant, this is the list of what to do

-make it so you don't get fat after eating like one or two slices of pizza
-make it so that food gives buffs
-don't make the buffs absurdly good but don't make them completely irrelevant, there needs to be a balance between 0.001% buffs and stun resist carrots
-make it so that rarer/more complex food provides better buffs than easier food
-make it so that a variety of food works better than loading up with an entire pizza or something
-make it so that the buffs become weaker/nonexistent if you carry food around with you for fear of a fight or something

this would mean that vending machine junkfood wouldn't be irrelevant because if you just want to not be starving, you can eat that, but if you want to be as good as possible you need to interact with the bartender/chef

this would hopefully encourage organic interaction with the food producers

[Dr_bee]

copied from the food thread

*snip*
-make it so you don't get fat after eating like one or two slices of pizza
-make it so that food gives buffs
-don't make the buffs absurdly good but don't make them completely irrelevant, there needs to be a balance between 0.001% buffs and stun resist carrots
-make it so that rarer/more complex food provides better buffs than easier food
-make it so that a variety of food works better than loading up with an entire pizza or something
-make it so that the buffs become weaker/nonexistent if you carry food around with you for fear of a fight or something

this would mean that vending machine junkfood wouldn't be irrelevant because if you just want to not be starving, you can eat that, but if you want to be as good as possible you need to interact with the bartender/chef

this would hopefully encourage organic interaction with the food producers

maybe have the general food buff be increased HP? It is very similar to what food does in other games, and instead of intensity of the buff have more complex food give the buff for longer. Junk food and non-prepared produce wouldnt give the buff but would feed you. It would make staying well fed valuable to everyone but wouldnt be too horrible without a chef. Hell just microwaving an egg or donk pocket would be enough to give you the buff for a short while.

[Nilons]

Cedar is right, "but people might actually need the chef/bartender" is not a good reason to keep them useless

Make them ghost roles at that point

[AnonymousNow]

(Security is another critical department, but there is no viable replacement for it.)

Objection - science can, with adequate time, effort and resources, create ghostroles to suit the purpose. Either powerful monsters or variations on the theme of "tough humanoid". Even humans. Even things better than human.

[Cobby]

Counter: people will begin to play sec and give you shitty sentences with the option of bails a la darkrp

[Togopal]

Counter: people will begin to play sec and give you shitty sentences with the option of bails a la darkrp

If only there were a baton that sent people to the permabrig handcuffed, legcuffed, and stripped of anything except prisoner clothing for 300 seconds before teleporting them back