/tg/Station 13

current issue:

• no good way to get decent credits without relying on other departments
  • selling plasma is wholly reliant on miners; cargo gets no reward for doing well and no consequence for not doing their job past loading crates in the first 2 mins of round
• cargo tech is often considered the first job a player should take, but it can be boring as fuck unless they decide to do a gimmick (ie barcargo, singulocargo, guncargo) (new players need direction!)
  • techs don't really have something to actually "do" (doesn't take more than one person to man the console/take requests) other than "steal shit to make money" even though selling plasma is easier. as such, cargotechs will often fuck off and just tide around the station
  • there is nothing really worth spending money on other than guns/meme items, once you get past fulfilling any requests the station has (which in a typical round never really exceeds 10K credits worth of stuff total)
• stocks are handy, but only one person can do them, they're only good for passive point generation, they're clumsy for new players, and they're boring
• cargo has an asston of space that isn't really used
  • i mean it only ever gets used if you buy a fuckton of shit but that isn't really feasible now that techdisk exports are gone
• i could probably write more but you get it

the solution
we

• use up cargos space
• give cargotechs something to do
• give something to spend excess points on that isnt guns/meme items
• and most importantly, give cargo a decent/intuitive way to make credits that is reliant on their own ability rather than other department roles.

wiiith roblox tycoon!

fuck get to the point:
ive been coding a system that would rely pretty heavily on cargo's conveyor belts and buy-able machines that can be used to create crates that can be sold.

Cargo would be able to import tiny crates or something(from a portal or some shit) which they can then upgrade and sell at a profit

• ratios such as, say, two tiny crates -> one big crate can be used to promote big factory designs focused on efficiency
  • a cargo tech might think: "we get 1 small crate every 5 seconds, and this machine takes 3 crates and 10 seconds to combine them into a larger, more profitable crate"
• things like the input rate of tiny crates/sec could be upgraded with research or just randomized per round to prevent a single perfect factory design working every round
  • note: input rate cant be too high cus byond is ass with object creation/deletion
• crates could potentially be upgraded into department crates (eg sec crates), where demand for these specific crates changes according to stock market
  • example: stock market says ResearchCorp's prices are goin way up; that means we should combine plasma + crates (with a dedicated combiner machine) to form science crates, which will sell for much more than regular crates!

codewise, I am reasonably (naively?) confident in my abilities to make this happen, just looking at the idea it doesn't seem too hard too implement

• the major issue would probably be balance/making sure byond doesnt shit the bed with object creation

i started doing some codersprites then realized i should probably run this past the forums first to make sure this idea wasnt fucking hairbrained:


so yeah waddya think

Sounds lfun

Hail Cargonia

Instead of crates, make it something like the action figure toys that you can get from the arcade machines. The idea of Nanotrasen having top-secret research facilities producing gift shop figurines on the side for extra profit is pretty amusing.

implementing factory schemes in SS13 was whole point of circuitry.So I massively approve these ideas.But not this version of their realisation.What do I suggest:
1.Port sorting conveyors from Liberty Last Army. If it still possible.There is very powerful mechanics for crate management.
2.make industrial lathes. Machines, which gets resources (like glass/metal) from conveyor and produce some choosed big structure.Like cannisters, crates, other shit.
3.Rework slightly recyclers. Make them to be able to process logs of tower/steel caps to metal rods/planks.Also let them work like industrial gibbers for monkeys/other mobs.
4.Make ore smelter (like lavaland one) to be constructable.
5.Help me to implement NTnet interfaces into diferent machines to make them controllable by circuits.
6.Help to add hands and tool use into circuits.
7.add reagent pipes. To allow work of chemical part of factory.
8.make conveyors to be controlled with circuits/signallers.

For your information, some kind of factory could be already implemented.

2 drones to grow these logs. 2 drones to throw them at disposal bin.And these disposal pipe down there to send these logs in cargo right on conveyor into shuttle.

If you make it consume plastic to create the toys/crates/whatever we can finally have a use for that as well beyond filling central primary hallway with plastic flaps.

Selea wrote:words and images

Do we really need more ways to spam identical copies of items?

and ways to sell them as well.Or use them another way.

MrDoomBringer wrote:no consequence for not doing their job past loading crates in the first 2 mins of round

You've hit the nail on the head for every job in this game.

as somebody who's recently taken a liking to quartermaster (and plays a lot of factorio) this is the best cargo point generation idea I've ever seen

Yes please, I remember making autism belt arrays that would load/unload the shuttle without needing more input than a lever pull from me, making it be a legit thing and not a timesink for little benefit more than bragging rights would be very satisfying!

fund it

>Not making the mover a Inserter
>Not making assemblers a box that you have to put stuff in/pull out of with Inserters

SHAME.

Why not do this:

Every round has 5 contracts of varying complexity with related reward levels
Each contract is a reward for a crate containing a specific set of items inside, then tagged with appropriate documentation
Make machines that can automatically produce items in these lists, which require certain materials, which can be generated or use ores, and insert them into crates.

Boom factorio fun times

Buggy, i was thinking of that, but got worried about space requirements. Some of the machines will def need movers, though. i guess the name was temporary, yeah why not call em inserters

I will wait warmly for this PR

PM me in discord(selea#8026).I want to help you.

bumping because I can

the product should be hats

still
>no good way to get decent credits without relying on other departments
that's the way it's supposed to be

I think sticky had the best idea. That would be super fun.

I also like seleas industrial auto lathe idea because I could produce cleanbots about 2000% more efficiently if the auto lathe just popped out buckets endlessly.

If this gets implemented, would it be possible to expand what you can manufacture to include goods from other departments?

Botany: Package/Jar fruits and vegetables (value increases with potency and maybe variety), package animal produce such as milk and eggs
Science: A bunch of xeno slime cores (value increases with variety of colours), boxing finished borg shells (like a toy)
Medical: A machine that takes in plastic and chems in liquid form and outputs sellable pill bottles (value increases depending on the chem).