engineering needs more shit to do

[Cik]

hello

i have been playing engiborg alot recently and it hit me

there is seriously fuck all to improve about the station

the only thing you can really do is like, tunnel supercooled oxygen to research, or improve cryo

it seems really weird that most machines are almost totally independent of engineering; they aren't upgradeable except via research which engineering has no part of. in fact, besides starting the engine engineers do literally nothing besides fix a broken window every now and then. in general all of engineering's responsibilities are taken care of in 2 minutes and no maintenance is required of the station at all. likewise, they have extremely little control over power allocation, station operation, etc.

at this point, the department is almost superfluous.

is this a desirable state, and if not, how can it be amended?

[Luke Cox]

I said it before, but Engineering should be responsible for building and upgrading machines.

[DemonFiren]

One fun event Bay had was wall rot, a fungus which - as the name suggested - spread across walls and gradually consumed them; it could be killed with a welder.

It's not a solution, but at least it gives engineering something to do.

[Wyzack]

We really really need a use for excess power. Right now every power generation method can completely fuel the whole station with no trouble, which makes solars objectively best because they require no upkeep outside of meteor storms. I want a reason to build a huge supermatter/singulo/testla/turbine fuck off massive quad engine of doom, and have it be useful for something other than seeing how high you can get the number to go

[Topham]

Engineering should be responsible for building and upgrading machines.

LUKE COX YOU ABSOLUTE DICK SUCKING FUCK MUNCHING BASTARD

No but like, I really think it'd be silly to, say, split RnD between science and engineering, which is part of an idea you had if I remember correctly. It might be reasonable, though, for science to be entirely in charge of RnD but for engineers to be in charge of actually grabbing the RPEDs from RnD and upgrading the machines, letting the scientists do their science uninterrupted. How would we implement something like that, though? Flavortext?

[DemonFiren]

We really really need a use for excess power. Right now every power generation method can completely fuel the whole station with no trouble, which makes solars objectively best because they require no upkeep outside of meteor storms. I want a reason to build a huge supermatter/singulo/testla/turbine fuck off massive quad engine of doom, and have it be useful for something other than seeing how high you can get the number to go

I say, give the station a mining laser, put the controls someplace secure, and let it be pointed at the mining and derelict z-levels, taking coordinates.
The more power's in the engine, the louder a bang this thing makes when it's fired.
(Yes, I recently replayed System Shock, why do you ask?)

[Cik]

oh

i made this thread so i should probably post in it

i think more machines should be made dependent on atmos / power requirements

for instance, you can improve cryo by attaching it to a spaceloop

i think many other things like cloning, sleepers and other equipment should become attachable to power/atmos machines and benefit somehow from the attachments.

it would give way more incentive for engineers to actually engineer things.

there is a self-feeding loop that goes something like

shuttle is called all the time at slightest damage to station because engineers don't know how to fix anything -------> engineers never learn to fix anything -----> goto 1

edit: most of this stuff doesn't have to be too complex i think. you could even add a % field to APCs that draws exponentially more power but supercharges the machines in the room, controllable from some machine in engineering, which would give engineering far more incentive to build mega-engines and things like that.

[Wyzack]

giant fuckoff laser gun

I like it. Maybe make it so if it is fired when the station does not have enough power to fully fuel it the SMES and APCs get drained leaving everything depowered for a little bit

[bandit]

I say, give the station a mining laser, put the controls someplace secure, and let it be pointed at the mining and derelict z-levels, taking coordinates.
The more power's in the engine, the louder a bang this thing makes when it's fired.
(Yes, I recently replayed System Shock, why do you ask?)

Or port the drill from Polaris and make it run off surplus energy somehow (will z-levels fuck this up? no idea, but replacing the battery in that thing is a fucking bitch)

[Wyzack]

Or what if engineering and science together can build some kind of massive hadron collider style machine that helps with science in a major way somehow but requires obscene amounts of power pulled from the grid to function

[Topham]

I say, give the station a mining laser, put the controls someplace secure, and let it be pointed at the mining and derelict z-levels, taking coordinates.
The more power's in the engine, the louder a bang this thing makes when it's fired.
(Yes, I recently replayed System Shock, why do you ask?)

Or port the drill from Polaris and make it run off surplus energy somehow (will z-levels fuck this up? no idea, but replacing the battery in that thing is a fucking bitch)

Are you suggesting that the whole fucking station is essentially a giant drill? Fucking genius, fund he

[Luke Cox]

Things that require a massive power drain seem to be the most realistic way to buff engineering without changing any other departments too much

[lumipharon]

The 'hadron collider' idea is honestly the best.
It kills two greyshirts with one stone.

1) Engineers need validation for the 235834598kW of power they can generate
2) R&D doesn't need any outside help for anything except minerals

R&D still needs a general overhaul, but this would be a great tie in.
It would also be a great execution method if you use it as a spessman atom smasher to gib nerds.

[DemonFiren]

giant fuckoff laser gun

I like it. Maybe make it so if it is fired when the station does not have enough power to fully fuel it the SMES and APCs get drained leaving everything depowered for a little bit

Of course, it must be in a very secure area or possess safeguards built in so you can't nuke the mining station for the lulz.
Traitor objective to fire it at CentCom when?

[Wyzack]

For the collider idea i was thinking what if you could run different reactions in it, prehaps some required rarer materials, had a chance of catastrophic failure or massive powerdrain. When you ran these you would get a data disk with special particle research levels that you can not get from the destructive analysers, but gave you access to all types of wicked cool shit. In fact if the machine needed stuff from more departments than just engi and sci (chemical coolant and lubricant, parts from cargo, ect) it could be an end game of sorts for crew co operation, and one that would not even be possible to make ever round given the chaotic and short nature of the game.

Or maybe i am dreaming a bit too big

[DemonFiren]

For the collider idea i was thinking what if you could run different reactions in it, prehaps some required rarer materials, had a chance of catastrophic failure or massive powerdrain. When you ran these you would get a data disk with special particle research levels that you can not get from the destructive analysers, but gave you access to all types of wicked cool shit. In fact if the machine needed stuff from more departments than just engi and sci (chemical coolant and lubricant, parts from cargo, ect) it could be an end game of sorts for crew co operation, and one that would not even be possible to make ever round given the chaotic and short nature of the game.

Or maybe i am dreaming a bit too big

You're right over there with Kor and his design ideas.

[Wyzack]

hell, maybe if we had enough of these megaproject style things with different risks and rewards it could be part of the captain's job to decide what the crew will be focusing on for that particular shift

[DemonFiren]

hell, maybe if we had enough of these megaproject style things with different risks and rewards it could be part of the captain's job to decide what the crew will be focusing on for that particular shift

>captain
>deciding

[lumipharon]

hell, maybe if we had enough of these megaproject style things with different risks and rewards it could be part of the captain's job to decide what the crew will be focusing on for that particular shift

Neat idea. It would be amusing if each department had atleast one megaproject which they would be the main part of. ie: Botany aiming to make some kind of gigantic sentient super plant, or some shit.

[Cik]

here's an idea

bring back telescience and tie it into exploration

then require enormous power input to power teleporter system

anyway power in general needs a rebalance it's way too fucking easy to get like infinite amounts of it in like 2 minutes

[Anonmare]

The problem with telesci at roundstart is that it becomes a matter of reading from a sheet on how to steal the armoury, the AI, Ian, every high-risk item etc.
Plus you can just TP bombs everywhere and made scientists nea untouchable gods.

[Lumbermancer]

Build shit. Use that empty space below cargo. Make singulo engine there. I seen it done once.

[Cik]

i build shit every round

it doesn't change the fact that there's no actual reason to do so

why build extra singulo engines when one provides enough power for 4 stations

why supercool cryo when it doesn't actually achieve much

most engineering projects are objectively pointless

[Wyzack]

hence the whole point of this thread

[Cik]

hence the whole point of this thread

yes

The problem with telesci at roundstart is that it becomes a matter of reading from a sheet on how to steal the armoury, the AI, Ian, every high-risk item etc.
Plus you can just TP bombs everywhere and made scientists nea untouchable gods.

until you have to collaborate with engineering and it zaps like 50% of the station's power reserve per activation

in fact when are we getting a power cutoff console that allows dynamic power allocation from engineering anyway

don't we have minimaps and shit now or something

it'd be neat as hell

[Atlanta-Ned]

Maybe reduce engine power output so that it's barely enough to power the station but not much else? So if there's any sudden increases in power demand, things go tits up?

Do engineers/atmos want more busywork? Because I've enjoyed Mousecuts™ immensely. I'd add even more. Disposal pipes that randomly burst and tear up a section of hallway/maint. APCs with defective batteries that have to be replaced. Leaky floor tiles that slowly drain the air and their cousins: leaky atmos pipes that over-pressurize a room. Scrubbers and vents that get jammed open or closed.

EDIT: Shuttle engines could break, preventing them from flying until they're fixed (Cargo, gulag, mining, NOT escape). Add a random event for a Centcom shuttle to dock at the station for emergency repairs with some fun loot as a reward. Add an external communications array that would delay the emergency shuttle by five minutes if it gets damaged. Make it so that tcomms can be manually restored if it gets knocked out by an ion storm. Where's that plasma in the engine collectors going? Why not make it have to get piped into atmos for reclamation?

[TheNightingale]

Stuff

All of this would make Engineering much more fun than it is right now. At the moment, it's either "nothing is going on"... or "oh god meteors RCD things" and then "nothing is going on".

[Atlanta-Ned]

Network Access. Something's gotta make all those doodads talk to each other. Why not add a computer network that needs upkeep? One of the other codebases has a neat DOS-like thing that would be neat to port over. People keep begging for a way to remotely manage APCs and atmos alarms, why not add it but make it a pain in the butt so it's not overpowered?

Fire alarms are serious business IRL. Make them more serious by requiring an atmostech or engineering ID to fully disable.

[IcePacks]

engineering has a metric fuckton of shit to do

what needs to be changed is how they do it because that system has received little more than a few tweaks since, i dunno, the game was first conceived

[Zilenan91]

Why don't we do the Goon thing and make it so excess power gives the station some benefits. It's money on Goon but since we don't have that how about supply warp-ins in the bar/engineering?

[Luke Cox]

Hadron collider thingy would go perfect in the old telescience room. All we need to do now is come up with some function for it.

[firecage]

For those who suggested it. No, taking away the shit one job does and giving it to another job to give them more to do, is both a bad idea and bad design. Give Engineering new stuff instead.

[Cik]

except many things should be done by engineering instead

upgrading machines is not science, it's engineering

doing the research is science

edit: i don't actually mean to spark a responsibility war and it's not my intention

[Wyzack]

My vision for the hadron collider would be that it was really big and would be most feasible to put in a new room attached to the station that the crew would have to build. That might be a bit much though

[Sestren]

If Engineering is responsible for building and maintaining machines, step one is giving them a way to manufacture parts. R&D is de facto in charge of that because nobody else has the tools necessary to construct machines.

To incentivise Engineering to actually perform the upgrade work, it would be necessary to remove that capacity from R&D nigh entirely otherwise player inertia means everyone will doggedly do it the old way. But those machines are vital to the current R&D cycle, so this change needs to coincide with an R&D upgrade... and now you've got a change even bigger than goofchem on your hands. Bad move.

Random part failures (leaky pipes, defective apc's, etc.) are probably the easiest way to make engineering something other than "the guys what patch up holes to keep the air in until the shuttle makes it". You would need to add a method of finding some of the failures, else they never get fixed and just add to the pile of things that get the shuttle called at the first opportunity, although that's coming from the assumption that lengthening the round is somehow a good thing which most of the time it isn't. (RE: Kor's pile of design notes)

More mousecut-esque random things are probably the best that can be done without either making longer survival a goal unto itself, or a combined Science/Engineering pass, starting with a more interesting core R&D loop. Power-gated telescience would be a nice addition to a hypothetical combined pass though.

[Topham]

If Engineering is responsible for building and maintaining machines, step one is giving them a way to manufacture parts. R&D is de facto in charge of that because nobody else has the tools necessary to construct machines.

To incentivise Engineering to actually perform the upgrade work, it would be necessary to remove that capacity from R&D nigh entirely otherwise player inertia means everyone will doggedly do it the old way. But those machines are vital to the current R&D cycle, so this change needs to coincide with an R&D upgrade... and now you've got a change even bigger than goofchem on your hands. Bad move.

Random part failures (leaky pipes, defective apc's, etc.) are probably the easiest way to make engineering something other than "the guys what patch up holes to keep the air in until the shuttle makes it". You would need to add a method of finding some of the failures, else they never get fixed and just add to the pile of things that get the shuttle called at the first opportunity, although that's coming from the assumption that lengthening the round is somehow a good thing which most of the time it isn't. (RE: Kor's pile of design notes)

More mousecut-esque random things are probably the best that can be done without either making longer survival a goal unto itself, or a combined Science/Engineering pass, starting with a more interesting core R&D loop. Power-gated telescience would be a nice addition to a hypothetical combined pass though.

Hm. What about having a new machine that links to the RnD network for research levels and only prints machine upgrade parts or something? Throw that in Engineering, then they'd have something else to do, no?
Also, while mousecut is hella annoying, it does make sense. What about a water distribution system? I know it'd be a big addition, but those toilets and showers and sinks gotta get water from/send water to somewhere, no? And leaky water pipes seems much more likely than disposals randomly breaking, I feel like.

[Sestren]

Hm. What about having a new machine that links to the RnD network for research levels and only prints machine upgrade parts or something? Throw that in Engineering, then they'd have something else to do, no?
Also, while mousecut is hella annoying, it does make sense. What about a water distribution system? I know it'd be a big addition, but those toilets and showers and sinks gotta get water from/send water to somewhere, no? And leaky water pipes seems much more likely than disposals randomly breaking, I feel like.

Water generation would be kinda bullshit. There isn't a proper liquid simulation so it would either have to be a very large reagent container of some variety (hello atmos and your gas tanks) or a 'give me power and I magically give you water' type contraption. Also the penalty for the system failing (aside from making floors slippery near a pipe break) would be very minor. Worst case scenario one of the cold showers is out and you can't ghetto cryotube. Maybe if there were a way to tie it into the magical reagent dispensers it could be more interesting. Unfair to chemistry if they're out of a job because somebody installed a hole where engineering was, but its not that dissimilar from losing power.

[Cik]

generally i don't support adding more pipes going every which way, as most stations feel almost at the limit as long as the current limitations on pipes per tile isn't changed.

give power a purpose and engineers will almost always have something to do. make some basic machines benefit from being attached to an atmos loop and the possibilities magnify even further. we should focus on making things that give a great benefit for the least amount of effort, and having every mapper forced to remap everything for waterpipes is on the opposite end of the scale TBH.

edit: i should say that my priority isn't to "just give engineers more shit to do"

if you add more busy work it doesn't really give the engineers the ability to improve the station for the crew, or to interact much. they just walk around in maintenance wordlessly fixing stuff that's so small that nobody notices it's much less fun than "engineering team descends on medbay to modify everything to make it better, faster, cooler"

[Topham]

Hm. What about having a new machine that links to the RnD network for research levels and only prints machine upgrade parts or something? Throw that in Engineering, then they'd have something else to do, no?
Also, while mousecut is hella annoying, it does make sense. What about a water distribution system? I know it'd be a big addition, but those toilets and showers and sinks gotta get water from/send water to somewhere, no? And leaky water pipes seems much more likely than disposals randomly breaking, I feel like.

Water generation would be kinda bullshit. There isn't a proper liquid simulation so it would either have to be a very large reagent container of some variety (hello atmos and your gas tanks) or a 'give me power and I magically give you water' type contraption. Also the penalty for the system failing (aside from making floors slippery near a pipe break) would be very minor. Worst case scenario one of the cold showers is out and you can't ghetto cryotube. Maybe if there were a way to tie it into the magical reagent dispensers it could be more interesting. Unfair to chemistry if they're out of a job because somebody installed a hole where engineering was, but its not that dissimilar from losing power.

Well, I'm sure we could come up with something. You wouldn't necessarily need to generate water, just filter it. And tying it to the magical chem dispensers would make sense, I suppose. But water wouldn't be used often enough to harass coders, spriters, and mappers to all put that much effort into implementing it, I don't think. It's just an idea.

[Cik]

ye personally i think we should make the resources we have meaningful before we add new ones though. as it is power and plasma/air/whatever are essentially infinite nonresources. making them into more interesting, more finite, more important resources is way easier because they are already implemented. all that has to be done is juggle some numbers in most cases.

[Topham]

I certainly agree, I was just entertaining the idea. I think power would be the easiest and most sensible thing to add some value to. Something that uses up the extra energy makes the most sense. Maybe have cargo be able to order empty power units that leech shit tons of power, charge them using extra power off the grid, and then send them back for hella cargo points? It'd make it more reasonable to order party crates and shit and would encourage interdepartmental interaction while giving incentive to build Tesla 200-ball mega engines or super efficient supermatter engines.

[Screemonster]

New gamemode wherein the crew are required to build/charge/activate some sort of machine requiring construction/research from science, materials from mining, power from engineering, and naturally watching like a hawk by security 'cause someone is out to sabotage it.

Then again that might be my hardon for "traitors trying to stop the crew instead of the other way round" ideas.

[Sestren]

if you add more busy work it doesn't really give the engineers the ability to improve the station for the crew, or to interact much. they just walk around in maintenance wordlessly fixing stuff that's so small that nobody notices it's much less fun than "engineering team descends on medbay to modify everything to make it better, faster, cooler"

This would be fun but most maps would get in the way. Look at boxstation and metastation medbay for instance. They have very little free space to put stuff in. The one time I saw a borg put in a space cooling loop on the cryotube it took up half the hallway.

"Crew has to accomplish something before antags can sabotage them" roundtypes could potentially be fun. Balancing would be a bitch but then when isn't it?

[lumipharon]

Related/semi-related/possible impractical, but I thought it would be neat that since it's a spacestation, when there's a lack of power environmental power, just like on the ISS, everything starts to cooldown, as heat is lost to space.

This would be irrelevent most of the time, but would be interesting if things like shipstation13 ever happened.

[Cik]

that is actually a thing afaik, but like many environmental hazards it needs to be much faster and more dangerous.

environmental power loss should be an almost immediate concern, not just a trifling annoyance.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think it would ever even become lethal if the round ran for 2+ hours, which it never does.

people always complain that the station is too safe, which is great. engineer's first job is making sure the space stays out of the station, so if we buff the lethality we can give engis something to do!

[Luke Cox]

I still feel like the hadron collider type thing is the most realistic approach because it can be easily stuffed into the experimentor room, which means minimal mapping effort.

[DemonFiren]

I still feel like the hadron collider type thing is the most realistic approach because it can be easily stuffed into the experimentor room, which means minimal mapping effort.

Yeah, but I kinda imagine a collider to be fuckhuge.

[Luke Cox]

I still feel like the hadron collider type thing is the most realistic approach because it can be easily stuffed into the experimentor room, which means minimal mapping effort.

Yeah, but I kinda imagine a collider to be fuckhuge.

You're thinking of Earth colliders, spess colliders could fit in a single room. It should still be this massive sprawling machine that occupies most of the room, and it should be incredibly dangerous if sabotaged (I'm talking singularity dangerous). It would have multiple pieces that are assembled just like the particle accelerator, and it would suck up an ungodly amount of power (enough to cause blackouts if not properly prepared, another traitor opportunity) to do something useful. Perhaps it could create some new material to be used with the protolathe, and the more advanced items could be rebalanced to require them. CNS Rebooter implants should take a little more than a little R&D and a mining trip.

[Screemonster]

Damaging/sabotaging the beam guides while it's running at full power should cause a gigantic fuckoff particle stream to come off at a tangent and vaporise anything and everything in its path. Crew might be lucky and hear the burning, sizzling, melting noises in the next room and clear out of the way before it punches through the wall.

[Luke Cox]

Now how do we get coderbus on this?