department budgets are criminally underused

[TrumpetPlaya]

My experience playing cargo has taught me that budget cards are only used in incredibly niche situations. When it's nukies maybe half the time everyone will throw their budget card at you to buy guns. Rev and cult rounds might get you the security or service cards to get mindshields. It's a completely untapped resource, and makes me think that the whole economy aspect of the game is half-baked. Even when it's a nuke ops shift i'll rarely see the engineering budget because every single shift there's absolutely no use for it other than collecting dust in the CE's locker. From what i see, the major upheaval in the current meta is medbay's dependence on chemistry. If you've ever gotten your hands on the medbay budget, you can see that they're playing with astronomical amounts of cash. I know oranges is engrossed in his plumbing idea, but perhaps a more elegant solution is to invent a large output for various departments to use their budgets on. This is why i'm excited to see the ancap "gamemode" being worked on. I don't want it to be a regular aspect of the game, but it was cool to see medbay using their budget. There's also the addition of fines being issued from sec. The amount of money a tider would pay for shitty vandalism charges is pennies compared to the money sec already has at their disposal. Fine's are not a fleshed out idea because sec doesn't give a shit about the 20 credits an offender could owe, it's of absolutely no use to them and only serves as an inferior punishment to jail-time. Engineering could benefit the most from having an outlet for the 30,000 credits they have at their disposal. Engineer is potentially the most creative job in the game, they could build a second station if they really wanted to. The way i would fix this issue is reworking the list of crates that cargo can order. The current list is pretty bloated with crates that will be ordered once every 100 shifts. That's only my proposed fix though, please use this thread to brainstorm your own fixes and creative outlets for specific department's swollen wallets.

Didn't mean for this to be an essay
tl;dr current budget system bad, ITT: come up with outlets for departments to spend their untapped funds on

[Swagile]

Cargo being able to order more crates to solve certain issues that require department budgets is a pretty solid idea.

For example, radiation crates that contain advanced chemicals (in the case of chemistry not doing their job / mass radiation that chemistry cannot keep up with), maybe even replacements of circuits if science isn't doing their job and cloning got bombed.

[gallowsCalibrator]

The economy is something I've been thinking about myself. At a base level, maybe coming up with some extra things for regular crewmen to buy? Ideally things that are fun without being super intrusive or I guess powerful, though I'm not sure about that myself.

Also, as a base, maybe making money easier to work with and transfer, like adding functions to the PDA and modular computers or something?

[CPTANT]

Cargo just doesn't have that much interesting stuff to order.

[TrumpetPlaya]

im thinking a vending machine buff could help, we need more things like the advanced medkit. just something a department member can buy midround off their personal salary. i think whole departments need something more clever to blow their budget on. probably multiple things they can choose to buy so you have to actually make a choice and it's not an automatic decision.

[gallowsCalibrator]

That makes sense. Though, for stuff that's actually pretty powerful like that, maybe they could go through cargo first? Giving them more to do would be nice.

You mention the advanced medkit as an example; what would some other departments' equivalents be?

[TrumpetPlaya]

I've got my eye on that vending machine in sec, maybe some kind of sechud upgrade? Im hesitant to say some kind of weapon because sec will get pushed over in the halls when theyre trying to arrest someone. For science you could buy strange objects for a steepish price, but the experimentor is kinda unpopular right now.

[gallowsCalibrator]

Oh man, buying strange objects is a great idea! Though that's something I'd want to see in cargo, and yeah, the EXPERIMENTOR and science in general could be improved. That's another topic though!

I think avoiding a weapon for sec is a good idea. Maybe more defensive things, or something like... I dunno, a "field medic" kit that has gear aimed at stabilizing critical people outside of medbay? That'd be a fitting one for medbay too, if it's a good idea.

[TrumpetPlaya]

I'm thinking that medbay could have a 10k credits crate full of medkits for a specific damage type and a 20k crate full of advanced medkits. It would ease medbay's dependence off of chemistry, but I think medkits are meant to be scarce. I like the idea of having expensive crates full of gear for specific damage types though, it could be something new instead of medkits. I like the radiation crate idea it would fit in nicely. Imagine a big event happens like radiation leak from the SM because engineering fucked up, or a syndicate bomb goes off/theres a meteor strike. Medbay can use their big budget to buy either a radiation damage crate, or get an oxy damage crate because there's a huge breach.

[Shaps-cloud]

Honestly I usually just embezzle my departmental budget as head of staff

[knacker48]

There's really not that much buy from cargo. Most of the things available are just replacements for stuff on the station. They also can't sell stuff that's too good or cargo will just buy it themselves for themselves. The only thing I could think of that might be balanced would be abandoned crates because 1) they hold random items so sometimes you get combustible lemon seeds and other times you get... shorts. And 2) They require solving to open. Trying to emitter them open will just make them explode

[TrumpetPlaya]

from what ive seen, everyone wants abandoned crates gone from the game because they cant solve the lock lol

[TrumpetPlaya]

There's really not that much buy from cargo. Most of the things available are just replacements for stuff on the station. They also can't sell stuff that's too good or cargo will just buy it themselves for themselves.

access restrictions are reasonable enough, and even if they get an emitter cargo would not be interested in buying medicine

[knacker48]

from what ive seen, everyone wants abandoned crates gone from the game because they cant solve the lock lol

Seriously? I solve them all the time whenever I go space exploring and they only take a minute or two to crack. Are people that bad at codebreaking?

[TrumpetPlaya]

check it out: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/issues/20487

people are braindead

[cedarbridge]

Department budgets were a dumb idea that were demanded by players who didn't want their department roundstart plans slowed or frustrated by the addition of an economy system. All they've done is inflate the already underused currency system to a trivial degree of need or want. Either remove them or tie department paychecks to them. If department budgets are going to mean anything they should be a percentage share of the station general budget (probably set from the captain/HoP's office) and should feed from whatever intakes the station has.

As is right now they're just a whole mess of free creds.

[TrumpetPlaya]

tying the paychecks to budget cards doesnt fix anything because there isnt anything to spend money on. even if the economy system is stupid i doubt itll ever get removed. there simply needs to be better things to buy.

[cedarbridge]

tying the paychecks to budget cards doesnt fix anything because there isnt anything to spend money on. even if the economy system is stupid i doubt itll ever get removed. there simply needs to be better things to buy.

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 8&p=497046

Crosslinking my thread here again.

We need to have a real conversation about incentives and how departments are meant to interact with money. Everyone else's work seems to give cargo money with which cargo buys cargo toys and tools. What we need is a more atomized setup that motivates cargo to order and stock things spessmen want or order and then take a cut with which to buy cargo things for cargo. this would make cargo into more of a commissary and less of a 3rd world banana republic fed by outside funds. This would mean that departmental work paying departmental salaries would be valid as well since departments would be paid from a bigger pot when they produce more whatever with which to be paid. Assistants still get peanuts because they're unemployed peasants. Might actually convince more than cargo to give a shit about pirates raiding the budget too.

Adding "more and better things to buy" is a moderately big ask for something that sounds so simple. This means either 1) creating a bunch of new content and assets that people want and then locking them behind cargo crates which cargo will then continue to buy for themselves and refuse to share or never bother ordering them at all meaning they're never seen by people who do want them or 2) revisiting the scarcity argument again where we stop QoL creeping mass quantities of free stuff all over the station and instead make people buy their tools from NT Brand vending machines or order their things through cargo. Right now its entirely possible for every department on the station to function at almost 100% capacity without having to interact with cargo at all with just the shift-start materials on the maps we have. 3) a trader role that brings in "exotic" goods for purchase with credits in competition with cargo's more practical (and pedestrian) offerings.

[deedubya]

The only things I ever see money spent on are insuls for someone tiding into engineering, cleaver for a chef, and advanced medkits from the CMO. We really do need more things to spend money on that can't be made through normal means.

[knacker48]

What about department coloured space suits would that be something worth putting in vendors? I know space suits are suppose to be scarce so you could just make them expensive to compensate.

[PKPenguin321]

What about department coloured space suits would that be something worth putting in vendors? I know space suits are suppose to be scarce so you could just make them expensive to compensate.

You can break vendors and get their items for free

[terranaut]

Change the department head ID console / HOP console to be able to adjust salaries rather than having them be static based on the job title and also generally make it higher an assistant can barely afford to keep himself fed on snacks with his base wage, how's he supposed to influence the economy on the station?

What about department coloured space suits would that be something worth putting in vendors? I know space suits are suppose to be scarce so you could just make them expensive to compensate.

You can break vendors and get their items for free

doesn't that only drop some of them

[knacker48]

What about department coloured space suits would that be something worth putting in vendors? I know space suits are suppose to be scarce so you could just make them expensive to compensate.

You can break vendors and get their items for free

Doesn't that apply to the medbay vendors aswell? Maybe its just me but I never see people breaking them. Or are the stuff from medbay not worth stealing?

[TrumpetPlaya]

Change the department head ID console / HOP console to be able to adjust salaries rather than having them be static based on the job title and also generally make it higher an assistant can barely afford to keep himself fed on snacks with his base wage, how's he supposed to influence the economy on the station?

Why would assistants ever influence the economy/not be paid dirt, they dont actually perform a service like everyone else