A Future for the Science Department - Reworking Research Points

[StonebayKyle]

I believe the science department should be able to do actual science and research to gain tech.

DISCLAIMER:
My opinions are my own, and the problems I present DO NOT ruin the game for me. I simply believe that a change could be made that would dramatically increase the interest of science. Also, I have only made a few PRs, so I am relatively inexperienced and cannot do this on my own.
Many of the ideas here are from Orange's antag freeze PR and the corresponding idea post (https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/46293). This post is a compilation of many ideas regarding science and how it could fairly easily be implemented WITHOUT needing to make entirely new systems.

The Problem:

Spoiler:

Space Station 13, at its core, is a research station, equipped with high-end, secret technology meant to discover new possibilities and make money for Nanotrasen.
Right now, science can do stuff with alien slimes, genetic engineering (kinda), robots and mechs, bombs, machinery and tool improvement, and brain implants. They successfully focus on what 'hasn't been done before.' But I believe there's one core issue surrounding this entire concept: The unlocking of the tech-webs.
It is a glorified time-gate to balance each round so crazy things cannot be done at roundstart. Having research magically be done for the department at a set rate takes away a lot of potential fun. TO BE CLEAR: I am not trying to remove this balance; I am merely trying to make it more interesting.

Robotics often has to compete with R&D for research points to get to some of the fun stuff before the shuttle is called. Nanites usually cannot be utilized on shorter rounds due to the extremely high research point cost they incur. Toxins is a side job for the prospecting atmos-tech or a very dedicated antagonist. R&D is comprised of pressing a few buttons every few minutes to keep the tech-web moving (and going around the station a few times in the round to distribute upgrades). Xenobiology doesn't have many of these issues, but suffers the issue of being a bit too isolated from the rest of the station.

The Solution:

Spoiler:

How could you possibly try to fix these issues without totally dismantling everything science has to offer?

The solution would be simple:

• Remove the magical, passive research
• Provide opportunities for scientists to do active research by doing various tasks (elaborated upon later)

Category Definitions:

• Passive (no prior setup required, gradual increase in research points)
• Hybrid (gradual increase in research points, but requires prior setup)
• Active (sudden gain of research points after completion of some task)

Current systems:

• Passive:
• R&D Console Magic Points
  Hybrid:
• Radiation Collectors (never seen them used, but the wiki references them)
  Active:
• Toxins & Test Bomb Site

What I propose: **In order of lowest payout to highest payout of research points (for each category)**

• Passive:
• Nanotrasen Outsourced Research (expensive & slow research using science budget. Would be hybrid if there was a more robust economy in place; outsourcing console/button accessible in RD Office; Option for short-term high-speed, long-term low-speed, and medium-term/speed)
  Hybrid:
• Radiation Collectors
• Nanite Bitcoin Mining (something like this PR: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/47098)
• Automated setups for some of the active tasks
  Active:
• Actual EXPERIMENTOR experimentation
• Discovering a new genetic mutation
• Strange Object Discovery (and usage?) (PR: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/47259)
• Artifact dissolving in destructive analyzer (slime cores, unique lavaland items (explorer role?), discovered strange objects; upgradable for speed/efficiency/production)
• Experimental Gas Processor (takes player-created gases such as tritium or the lavaland atmosphere and burns it; upgradable for speed/efficiency/production)
• Dissection of alien and non-alien creatures (kind of like abductor dissections) (PR: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/44821&#41)
• Alien Tech Unlocking
• Toxins & Test Bomb Site
• Completing station objective(s)

These ideas are undeniably more interesting than the magic passive point gain system we have now and can mostly be summed up with: "FOR SCIENCE!" ("Let's blow stuff up, burn dangerous gas, touch weird things... FOR SCIENCE!"), which I believe should be a goal in the science department.

More ideas like these could easily be thought of, and for some of these, we already have a system *almost* in place. I haven't even touched multi-department opportunities!
Also, if this kind of idea is expanded upon as much as it could be, we could add a score on the end-screen for how many research points the station was able to generate by round end.

The Execution:

Spoiler:

No idea is worth anything without a PR to back it up.

As previously stated, I am not skilled in the development of SS13. This would be a huge project for somebody doing it alone, too.
Fortunately, the integration of these ideas could be extremely modular as each method of gaining research points would not rely on any other method of production.
Many of these methods could even be implemented using a single of code or two (snagged from XDTM's research nanites PR https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/47098/):

Code: Select all

SSresearch.science_tech.add_point_list(list(TECHWEB_POINT_TYPE_GENERIC = points))

For a smooth transition...
DO NOT:
Immediately remove magic research point gain and replace it with the outsource system. This would overburden the current economy and annoy many players, especially if there are no other sustainable sources of research points implemented yet.
DO:
Provide new opportunities of gaining research points one PR at a time, with each gradually decreasing magic passive point generation until science can fully sustain itself without relying on magic research points. Somewhere in this process, slowly increase potential passive research via outsourcing to counterbalance the decrease in magic research points.

Conclusion
By the end of the process, I believe there could be a well balanced and far more engaging/interesting science department that emphasizes skill, roleplay, and teamwork over arbitrary time-gates and patience.

TL,DR: Magic research point gain is uninteresting and non-immersive. Implement various opportunities for players to generate research by doing various science-y tasks.

Please feel free to suggest any further ideas or provide specific criticism. This change would be a pretty big deal if perused, so the more critique resolved here or on github the better.

Edit: If a PR comes up related to this thread or its ideas and hasn't been posted yet here, link it in the thread. If significant progress is being made, feel free to make a summary post of what has happened or is happening.

[Sandshark808]

Just be careful to balance these new additions.

A lot of what other people have added re: medicine/cobbychem/surgery, mining tech, robotics, etc., are based on a high passive research point gain. Miners will riot if they can't get mining tech early, and medical is handicapped by not having good surgery ups.

[Anonmare]

Significantly reduce the passive production of points from the R&D servers, a fully upgraded server should still only be below current server production. Make R&D servers actually produce heat with options for releasing the safeties to allow for overclocking to double point gain at the cost of making the servers produce more heat. If servers get too hot they'll shut-off if the safeties are on, if there's no safeties enabled, they'll not shut-off and keep going until they heat to a critical threshold and explode violently..

Expand the amount of space the server room has to allow for easier expansion.

Give the firing ranges, both science's and security's a training dummy that produces points when shot at, the more novel the projectile - the greater the gain.

Give virology a machine that infected people can be hooked up to, as the disease runs its course, the machine produces points at a decreasing gain. The machine is biased to grade more dangerous viruses higher.

Dissecting corpses with mutant powers increases their point value. Dissection creates less points if you've already dissected that species with those combination of powers (it can be abusable with emty cloning+experimental dissection otherwise).

The nanite lab starts off with the neural network and distributed computing disks ready to go.

[StonebayKyle]

I like those ideas, although the heating one seems pretty difficult to implement. +1 for uniqueness, though! Hopefully somebody competent would look into that one.

Edit: zxaber posted specifics on a potential system. Very well a possibility! (It's better than my outsourcing idea)

[knacker48]

I think xenobio should be able to make points by donating different colours of slimes to the RnD console, maybe with higher tiers of slimes giving more points. It would make xeno less of an autism fort and more of a productive autism fort

[StonebayKyle]

make points by donating different colours of slimes

That's exactly what I was thinking when I included this:

Artifact dissolving in destructive analyzer (slime cores,

...unless you meant whole slimes, and not slime cores... May be interesting if xenobio had to figure out a way to get a living, very hungry slime to the destructive analyzer for a greater reward payout.

[zxaber]

Significantly reduce the passive production of points from the R&D servers, a fully upgraded server should still only be below current server production. Make R&D servers actually produce heat with options for releasing the safeties to allow for overclocking to double point gain at the cost of making the servers produce more heat. If servers get too hot they'll shut-off if the safeties are on, if there's no safeties enabled, they'll not shut-off and keep going until they heat to a critical threshold and explode violently..

Some thoughts on this;

The code for heat generation still exists in the server code, IIRC, it's just never called anymore. It probably wouldn't be too hard to fix it up, and make it work again (I have been meaning to do so, which is why I added a temp readout of each server to the RD server console).

The RD console would probably be a good spot for the overclock settings.

Servers simply popping if they get too hot is a good downside, but also a bit bland. It means that there will be a known "meta" overclock setting to use, to balance the freezer and maximize point gen, which just puts us back to the same spot. We could help with this with randomized heat spikes, that would mean higher overclocking carries higher risk. Alongside that, we could also have the RD servers use the computer parts (CPU, RAM, and so on) that were added recently instead of generic R&D parts, and overclocking would carry a scaling risk of damage to these parts. That way at the very least, someone would need to occasionally replace damaged components. I don't remember if there's any way to get these parts outside the vendor in the Science lobby. With fail-possible parts, I don't think exploding servers is necessary; just having a scaling chance of part burnout, with a cap at some temp that guarantees a part dies, would be enough.

Allowing for multiple servers to increase point gen is dangerous. Making new servers isn't particularly hard, and even if we add in diminishing returns, it'll just roll into the standard "meta" round-start setup of "always make X servers". Instead, I think point gen should just take from the existing server that runs the fastest (based on temp and OC), which leaves the second server as a good backup if the first one fails. If I were to implement this, I'd have it set so that the backup server idles unless the primary server fails (so that you don't risk the second-best server randomly failing due to a high OC even if it's not doing the point gen).

[Dr_bee]

Adding methods of research to the techwebs themselves would also be interesting, similar to how the dissection surgeries are. It makes for an actual interesting choice between getting more methods of research up for faster point gain or just buying parts and mining first like the meta is.

[Nebulacrity]

Sounds good to me. Science needs a bit more love either way.

[MisterPerson]

I like the idea, but make sure not to create busywork. The science points should be a reward for doing something you're already doing and not be a reward in and of themselves. Everything that gives science points should be fun to do even if it didn't give any science points at all.

[StonebayKyle]

make sure not to create busywork.

That's the tricky part. Most systems are already pretty fun to do, so incorporating research points into those, as long as not overdone, is an nice place to start. Once we try adding new systems, we'll need to make sure that a "most effective research point generator" is not totally clear-cut and without its risks/decisions to be made/time investment (think SM vs solars).

Once a new system is well on its way (or even as a PR), much of making sure busywork doesn't happen is going to be pretty reliant on specific feedback from the community. Same goes for balancing issues.

[Cobby]

I would like to see most passive gens out and active gens in.

Both for RND and Econ.

[PKPenguin321]

I would like to see most passive gens out and active gens in.

Both for RND and Econ.

what do you think of passive gen scaling to how many active crew members there are, rather than it being outright removed

[Sandshark808]

I like the idea, but make sure not to create busywork. The science points should be a reward for doing something you're already doing and not be a reward in and of themselves. Everything that gives science points should be fun to do even if it didn't give any science points at all.

What if science points were generated by scientists using devices or putting together objects? For example, a big bonus for every mech you make, and a small bonus for every slime you grind, scaling with slime rarity. Nanites might have a scaling bonus based on how many people have them. Then the average functioning of a department would increase the efficiency of research, and it would scale by how many people are working and how quickly they work.