alternative R&D

[nullbear]

R&D seems to often be a topic of concern, especially from design and balance standpoints.

With the current R&D system, some of the most frequent arguments I've heard from players, or even made myself, are:

1. Unbalanced. You have access to loot Noone else can possibly get.

2. Unbalanced. You can't do anything without competent miners.

3. Boring. It's a tedious and repetitive process: stick thing in grinder->repeat.

4. Unbalanced. Lower tier upgrades and equipment serve no purpose except as bloat. Unless you're a shitty scientist.

5. Stale. There's only so much stuff you can make. And the list hasn't changed much. In a very very long time. This makes rnd very Stale for veteran players.

6. Encourages meta. To be "good" at rnd you need to know how to get max-tier research as fast as possible. Once you know what gives what, it's just a task of remembering it, and it becomes Stale rather fast.

7. The only 'fun stuff' (according to most players) is stuff that you can't even use unless you're an antag.

8. Serves little purpose. While R&D upgrades definitely make other jobs' jobs easier, it serves little other purpose on the station. For a "research station" research doesn't play a very big role.

9. It's full of circlejerking meta friends. If you're new to science, you're likely to get booted out by a more 'veteran' player who already has their 'recipe' set up. This removes the entire discovery aspect of rnd, as most of the time new players are given a strict list of items to retrieve, and then voila they're a 'vet' now and the role is Stale after a couple of rounds.

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How do we fix this? I have no idea.

The cure-all solution that has been quite widely accepted has been to turn R&D into a more component based system. You take parts, and smash em together to make new things. Either hard-coded objects, or modular designs with different properties based on the components and the way they were put together.

While this is a great idea, and solves most of the issues above, it's a fuck load of work to code, and if done poorly, has the potential to either make R&D even more Unbalanced, more Stale and tedious, or too complex for new players to get into.

What other systems for R&D do you think would be good solutions, or at least interesting to play with for a while?

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An example of a possible system: a tag-based tech tree.
Toolbox has "tool", "weapon", "material", "storage", tags. When deconstructing it, you may receive either 1 or all of those tags as research points. Different prototypes require different tag combinations. Ie. Thermals require: "eyewear", "temperature", "imaging", and "hud" tags to be discovered.

Recipe difficulty could be configured to require minimum of 2 matching tags, to make rnd easier for example.

Extending the idea further, while unrealistic, tags could be one-use only, or have a limited number of uses. Only able to unlock 1 prototype recipe at a time.

This method doesn't really offer much over the current system, and is more just an example. If nothing else it makes R&D a bit harder as you can only unlock so many prototypes in a round, rather than all of them for a given tech level.

Keep in mind "r&d" systems don't necessarily have to have anything to do with the current rnd systems or machinery. I'm just curious to see what ideas people have had for it.

[Nabski]

I like the idea behind recipes, but feel like people would just avoid the less used recipes as a result.

I think research would be best as a department wide effort, rather than one person being stuck at the console.

Break items down into 4 categories.
Starting, Department Only, Outside Help, Special.

Starting items are the same, they have enough to get people working and maybe upgrade their equipment once.

Department only requires different parts of science to get done. Genetics, Xeno, Toxins, Robotics, Experimentor, Bluespace, NEW?

Genetics already wants to bring over a syringe with all 6 powers for materials 7, this would be the same kind of thing for the other areas.
Xeno requires them to breed two kinds of tier 3 slimes, or a rainbow.
Toxins needs to explode a maxcap in the testing area.
Robotics needs a mech, augmented person, or 5 new bots.
Experimentor needs some janky overhaul, but I'm mentally working on that and since no-one seemed to care when I said it I'm going to do it.
Bluespace needs to teleport someone to a beacon and pick something up?

I figure that's good enough to get to current tech level 5ish, in their respective areas.

Outside help means something like getting guns from cargo/security, a special plant from botany, ores from mining, (engineering having turned on power).

If these are done and the internal science part isn't, then it would just go to as science did their part, rather than overwriting like the current system does.

Special stuff would need something like cult papers, xeno guts, alien items, blob something, traitor item, and would unlock things that typically just get used for those rounds. Holy water generator, X-ray Lasers, Super facemasks for xenos.

Any of those things would be worth a research point in their category.

Special + Outside department would unlock the same gear as Science + Outside department.

[Reece]

Bring back SABRE's

[kevinz000]

goodluck.

[DemonFiren]

Bring back SABRE's

This, for the love of all that is holy.

[XDTM]

Please keep validhunting weapons out of RnD, and put in more gimmick stuff like the portal gun.

[DemonFiren]

>validhunting
I generally print this shit as traitor.

[Reece]

I just like SABRE's because of the fun ammo types.

[kevinz000]

I'd consider the SABRE the most powerful non antag gun, next to Xray Lasers, in terms of effects. Both kills most things dead very quickly.

[Davidchan]

A while back someone suggested a prototyping system that sounded like it could actually work. Can't recall who suggested it or even find the posts where they did, but the jist of the idea they pitched was as follows:

1) Most if not all the current item tech levels are removed for the Destructive Analyzer with a few notable exceptions of non-NT items such as traitor/antag gear or exceptional rare and non-reproducible items.

2) Research levels would be somewhat redone to have percentages or gaps between them, meaning that more than one item would need to be inserted per level before an upgrade can go through; i.e. a 0-100 scale or something so that research levels could be expressed in decimal figures such as level 2.4 or the like.

3) A wide series of items would have a prototype counterpart that could be created from the protolathe. Prototypes are significantly more expensive and are generally less useful than their production value counterparts (a prototype stun-revolver would have less range for example) in addition to having failure chances that could proc potentially destroying the item or backfiring and injuring the user or those around them (said prototype stun revolver might discharge all of its charges into the wielder, stunning and burning them)

Prototype items ideally would scan the ID/Initial job of the person wielding them. If the item category (where applicable) matched the person's job it would be more likely to succeed when being used, where as non-matching jobs would have higher chances of failure (A security officer firing a prototype-saber for example might only have a 5% failure chance, where an assistant or scinerd would have 25% or higher failure rates), encouraging science to give the proper jobs prototypes instead of trying to do it all themselves in their lab.

4) Prototype items would have a gauge or internal component that was like a data recorder on it, when the prototype item was used enough times it would click over to test phase item and could be broken down in the destructive analyzer for further analysis. Depending on the complexity, price and successful uses of the item before it was destroyed it would increase relevant research levels by a certain amount.

This system would obviously need many new items added to RnD relevant to the different jobs around the station, allowing multiple prototypes to be tested at once, either within the confines of science or handed out to appropriate crew members allowing the entire tech tree to be progressed at once and jobs that might benefit most from RnD being completed able to take a somewhat active part or volunteer to help with the prototypes being slightly better than what ever tech level gear they have, and completed research giving them even better items to go around. Obviously the system is imperfect, but by making what most people consider to be one of the most overpowered jobs on the station into a job that can only be done quickly with the cooperation of half a dozen people or more rather than one nerd just shoving the same items into the analyzer until they ding up to the right levels. It would also fit the Research and Development theme a lot better than our current mode as science would be a more active job with a bit more RNG playing into how the prototypes work. It would also be a good excuse to add more quality of life item upgrades and gadgets, from improved surgical tools, cleaning equipment, botany gear, kitchen utensils to e-bolas and e-cuffs. Really it would just come down to brainstorming and balancing.

It might also to make it so all gear made in the protolathe in science only be prototypes with those innate failure chances, backfires and the like and add a proper production lathe to cargo so that they would be largely in charge of handing out gear to prevent science from getting stronger with the new items being added.