give us back our paychecks

[Super Aggro Crag]

cargo techs are either AFK or pretending to be the mafia and being retards and not shipping out bounty cubes

this economy fuckery is stupid

[remanseptim]

crag is always right
just add more shit to play with if you want a money sink

[Armhulen]

If cargo refuses to sell your bounty cube, begin the countdown. Make their life increasingly deeper levels of hell until they comply.

Job specific bounty cube gang approved methods:
Medical:
Annoying Cargo Virus
Denial of medical services
Morgue dumping cargo bodies
replacement of limbs with weaker ones while they are getting revived
Syringes of mutagen
Science:
VERY Annoying Nanites
Syringes of race changing mutagen
A friendly invitation over to the genetics machine for "powers"
Security: (watch out, admins get uppity with these ones so be careful)
A friendly detour into maintenance on the way to the brig
Always shoot for 10 minute sentences
Tack on extra crimes
Always strip search
If they're a traitor, drag into maint and beat to death
Take as loooong as possible basically
Make the arrest as needlessly painful
Service:
Snitching (PDA sec that cargo is arming up for something)
Lying (PDA sec that cargo has an uplink)
Secretly removing access if you're the HoP
Bureaucracy HoP
Removing their funds (seriously, hop can ruin their day)
Demotion
Demotion, but lie about the reason
Spike their drinks with brain damage
Spike their food with yuck reagent
Deny revival with the gibber
Assistants:
Throw floor tiles
Throw rods
Build walls in front of their doors
Steal shit
Make holes in their cargo shuttle from space
Whatever else you can make up that's annoying

[legality]

The whole bounty cube thing means that you have to stop doing your job (which is what you should be getting paid to do) in order to do random fetch quests to get fresh money, which is extremely dumb from any lens. game design, fun, lore, whatever. Departmental bounties means that sec has to steal their own department's limited roundstart supplies to sell them to the highest bidder to get paid. How does that make sense?

Who thought that this was a good idea?

[Armhulen]

The whole bounty cube thing means that you have to stop doing your job (which is what you should be getting paid to do) in order to do random fetch quests to get fresh money, which is extremely dumb from any lens. game design, fun, lore, whatever. Departmental bounties means that sec has to steal their own department's limited roundstart supplies to sell them to the highest bidder to get paid. How does that make sense?

Who thought that this was a good idea?

You get the bounty items from doing your job hello? If you're a geneticist getting a high-instability injector for a bounty is much more "doing your job" than just existing and waiting for a paycheck.

[Critawakets]

why the fuck is 75% of engi bounties "get a tank full of (x) gas"

enginer is not atmos tech

[Critawakets]

also removing the 10% from a bounty cube is literally just pressing Z on the package, why is it not innate to the cube itself

what just stops cargo techs from just pressing Z on every bounty cube they get

[Armhulen]

why the fuck is 75% of engi bounties "get a tank full of (x) gas"

enginer is not atmos tech

Some bounties are really stupid, but I guess the bigger issue is that these jobs don't actually get higher tier stuff later in the round from their jobs so it does just become a roundstart hunt

also removing the 10% from a bounty cube is literally just pressing Z on the package, why is it not innate to the cube itself

what just stops cargo techs from just pressing Z on every bounty cube they get

If cargo refuses to sell your bounty cube, begin the countdown. Make their life increasingly deeper levels of hell until they comply.

Spoiler:

Job specific bounty cube gang approved methods:
Medical:
Annoying Cargo Virus
Denial of medical services
Morgue dumping cargo bodies
replacement of limbs with weaker ones while they are getting revived
Syringes of mutagen
Science:
VERY Annoying Nanites
Syringes of race changing mutagen
A friendly invitation over to the genetics machine for "powers"
Security: (watch out, admins get uppity with these ones so be careful)
A friendly detour into maintenance on the way to the brig
Always shoot for 10 minute sentences
Tack on extra crimes
Always strip search
If they're a traitor, drag into maint and beat to death
Take as loooong as possible basically
Make the arrest as needlessly painful
Service:
Snitching (PDA sec that cargo is arming up for something)
Lying (PDA sec that cargo has an uplink)
Secretly removing access if you're the HoP
Bureaucracy HoP
Removing their funds (seriously, hop can ruin their day)
Demotion
Demotion, but lie about the reason
Spike their drinks with brain damage
Spike their food with yuck reagent
Deny revival with the gibber
Assistants:
Throw floor tiles
Throw rods
Build walls in front of their doors
Steal shit
Make holes in their cargo shuttle from space
Whatever else you can make up that's annoying

[Critawakets]

here's the thing though: if i try fucking with cargo because of them being assholes, i'll either get bwoinked by admin for "leave it security lol" when security is busy sniffing crayons. and if admins are just asleep, cargo is the job that can buy the best guns in the game and so i'll just get overly escalated from prank to kill and sell the body

edit: and dont pretend like most cargonians wouldnt kill and sell the body, cargonians are worse than tiders. Also, this is to "deal" with said cargonians.

[wesoda25]

Nice one arm

[Armhulen]

here's the thing though: if i try fucking with cargo because of them being assholes, i'll either get bwoinked by admin for "leave it security lol" when security is busy sniffing crayons. and if admins are just asleep, cargo is the job that can buy the best guns in the game and so i'll just get overly escalated from prank to kill and sell the body

edit: and dont pretend like most cargonians wouldnt kill and sell the body, cargonians are worse than tiders. Also, this is to "deal" with said cargonians.

It's what i'm gonna do until i'm banned wish me luck

[oranges]

good work arm you broke the forum

[Super Aggro Crag]

fucking armpit massacred my damn forum thread and now no one can discuss this because everyones just going to be yelling about the thread being fucked

thanks a lot you rotten log

and the "no dude DOING YOUR JOB gets bounty targets"

factually fucking wrong

if I'm playing Bartender and trying to get paid by doing bounty horseshit, it means I'm trying to make complicated drinks at the bar and then walking across the station to cargo to ship it, then hand it to cargo tech and hope they fucking sell it properly, then get another bounty and head back to the bar to mix another drink, rinse and repeat, instead of actually serving people at the fucking bar

if i'm playing medical doctor instead of doing triage and trying to keep people healthy and alive, i'm hunting for SSDs and suicides to harvest organs from

engie man? science man? instead of keeping the station powered and repairing damage or researching and upgrading shit i am carrying components and metal to the cargo bay front door and trying to assemble a machine that will never be actually utilized by the crew because i'm only building it there so i can launch it off and it will glitchily puke up all the components i used to make it leaving a fucking mess

[Armhulen]

I'll break it again

[cybersaber101]

My main issue is cargo techs bounties 99% suck, It's just stuff from other department and you have to spend so much time convincing them to help you or doing it yourself it's not worth the time.So instead you leach money from other people turning in bounties.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

why not give the tablet a way to see what bounty you have without having to walk 90 kilometers to reach the bounty console? so people can do their job and do bounties at the same time and deliver to the console when they have the things already made

[Kassori]

I'm in awe of how stupid this is. The corporation we work for just, decides to stop giving paychecks. What, so the company is just like, "We don't feel like paying you, so just take company property and sell it on SpacEbay"

[Cobby]

Since when did PRs become progressions of some sort of lore?

I'd love to hear your take on gamemode removals, did Centcomm suddenly befriend ratvar girls?

You werent paid for literal years before we even have budgets, they are just reverting that program in favor of commision-based needs

[Super Aggro Crag]

Since when did PRs become progressions of some sort of lore?

I'd love to hear your take on gamemode removals, did Centcomm suddenly befriend ratvar girls?

You werent paid for literal years before we even have budgets, they are just reverting that program in favor of commision-based needs

you can find RATVARS stupid dead corpse lying in lavaland, Nar-Sie killed him

[Kassori]

Oh, that's easy, its a lot easier to retcon the removal of a bad system than to actively play with one.

you can find RATVARS stupid dead corpse lying in lavaland, Nar-Sie killed him

Crag

[Super Aggro Crag]

what

[legality]

The whole bounty cube thing means that you have to stop doing your job (which is what you should be getting paid to do) in order to do random fetch quests to get fresh money, which is extremely dumb from any lens. game design, fun, lore, whatever. Departmental bounties means that sec has to steal their own department's limited roundstart supplies to sell them to the highest bidder to get paid. How does that make sense?

Who thought that this was a good idea?

You get the bounty items from doing your job hello?

what departmental bounty items do i get from doing my job as security

[Super Aggro Crag]

honestly legality you should just be stealing prisoner's IDs and taking all their crebits

[Kassori]

what

You right

[Armhulen]

honestly legality you should just be stealing prisoner's IDs and taking all their crebits

this, security bountys should be way better and are shit but it totally doesn't matter since you have a billion ways to fine people

[Yenwodyah]

Since when did PRs become progressions of some sort of lore?

I'd love to hear your take on gamemode removals, did Centcomm suddenly befriend ratvar girls?

You werent paid for literal years before we even have budgets, they are just reverting that program in favor of commision-based needs

ratvar died bro, don't you remember?

[Super Aggro Crag]

what

You right

yes

[Cobby]

that ruin was in during CC as well iirc, maybe after joans CC but certainly during xhuis.

not that it matters i just didnt like the "PRs are a sequence of lore unless its something i agree with" argument and that was just a more recent example.

[pugie]

The gimmick of doing fetch quests to make money will wear off fast and when making money isn't fun why bother with anything but stealing off people who do do the fetch quests to make money or is that "excelling at breadwinner rp"?

[stan_albatross]

The gimmick of doing fetch quests to make money will wear off fast and when making money isn't fun why bother with anything but stealing off people who do do the fetch quests to make money or is that "excelling at breadwinner rp"?

I've been stealing money from people since economy was added. Not a new idea.

[Kassori]

You mean everyone doesn't rob their patients and the morgue as a doctor?

[Armhulen]

You mean everyone doesn't rob their patients and the morgue as a doctor?

Some people like being poor I guess LOL

It all works out in the end because all jobs are split into "your job progresses and get new items, which you can sell for $$$" and "your job has no progression, but just dumps opportunities to rob, fine, nickel and dime people"

[cybersaber101]

Sucks for the chef, I've seen people go apeshit over him asking for a single penny or in better cases avoiding him entirely.

[Armhulen]

Sucks for the chef, I've seen people go apeshit over him asking for a single penny or in better cases avoiding him entirely.

Heh, put the food in the sale machine and watch the station turn into bioshock's rapture

[cacogen]

cargo techs are either AFK or pretending to be the mafia and being retards and not shipping out bounty cubes

this economy fuckery is stupid

having to send 50,000 cubes (although of course i do it asap) is not enjoyable and the console should just give you your funds immediately

[Super Aggro Crag]

Yeah probably

[Kryson]

Sucks for the chef, I've seen people go apeshit over him asking for a single penny or in better cases avoiding him entirely.

Heh, put the food in the sale machine and watch the station turn into bioshock's rapture

You need to steal all the food vendors for this to work, they should all fit in your backroom. Another problem is chemistry distributing sugar pills, stop by with a trash bag periodically and use them to make ice cream.

[VexingRaven]

Sucks for the chef, I've seen people go apeshit over him asking for a single penny or in better cases avoiding him entirely.

Heh, put the food in the sale machine and watch the station turn into bioshock's rapture

You need to steal all the food vendors for this to work, they should all fit in your backroom. Another problem is chemistry distributing sugar pills, stop by with a trash bag periodically and use them to make ice cream.

Wasn't that removed?

[Kryson]

Sucks for the chef, I've seen people go apeshit over him asking for a single penny or in better cases avoiding him entirely.

Heh, put the food in the sale machine and watch the station turn into bioshock's rapture

You need to steal all the food vendors for this to work, they should all fit in your backroom. Another problem is chemistry distributing sugar pills, stop by with a trash bag periodically and use them to make ice cream.

Wasn't that removed?

I tried, but Cobby closed the PR. So the problem remains.

[NecromancerAnne]

It was indeed neat a first but now kind of uh...ridiculously silly? I don't know exactly why we have to go entirely through cargo to get money like that department is the only one that involves money. Service exists yet seems to have absolutely no money making methods despite being the department most thematically likely to be involved in that.

I'm more surprised we aren't just being paid out of the cargo budget if we have to be contributing to them at all, and so it isn't entirely an individuals agenda to see that they have any money delivered their way.

If cargo refuses to sell your bounty cube, begin the countdown. Make their life increasingly deeper levels of hell until they comply.

This shit doesn't work. You live in a delusion if you think your individual problems will be significant enough an entire department cares to back you up.

The only thing that players meaningfully respect is escalation and this bounty cube system is one that encourages you to escalate on a department with a cult following if you get screwed by it. It's the same idiot trap as the rules allowing you to escalate on security, and protects bad actors who know they can leverage escalation to get away with muscling out anyone else mechanically, while letting admins be as lazy as possible about dealing with dipshits who do this on repeat.

[cacogen]

Who is refusing to sell bounty cubes? I've played cargo a lot recently and all that happens is sometimes cargo techs are absent or slow and they take awhile to be sent. I try to avoid this myself but sometimes I'm busy or away. If it's not being sent most cargo people don't mind if you get the AI to let you in or just run in and send it yourself.

Me personally I think interdepartmental cooperation is an ancient meme and a case of expectation vs. reality on behalf of the coders and that the bounty cubes should not exist in a form where getting money relies on the expedience of cargo players.

[oranges]

reality will confirm to my expectations, or it will die trying

[Lacran]

For some reason coders thought that people would enjoy random fetch quests, many that actually take things relevant to DOING their job, and to send it off station.The benefits of the passive income system was that you could be creative and do whatever you feel like and still have money to play with. This bounty system is a series of hoops, these hoops are randomized, and many of these hoops are straight up tedious, and the easiest way to complete them can actually negatively impact a department's ability to do their job on station.

If you want players to do their jobs in exchange for money have it be production based and have paychecks based on this production. Why do security staff, Paramedics, Medical Doctors, lawyers, engineers, janitors, psychologists even have bounty systems? they don't make products, that's not even remotely what their jobs are about. Many, many roles on the station don't themselves produce things for export, they facilitate other departments on station to do so.

This is childishly bad economic design, and its not even enjoyable for many, especially not when it becomes the primary way to make money due to the removal of other systems.

[Arcanemusic]

I feel like there's a clear disconnect here, because many opinions in this thread are confusing multiple systems, misinformed about how things work mechanically, or what the intent and effect of some of these changes were, so I'll break this down:

First off, Bounty Cubes:
Bounty cubes are intended as a supplemental form of income. You start off with enough money at the beginning of the shift to cover what is effectively 35 standard costed purchases within your own department, or even more if you're buying something from a lower paying department. This is due to reworking all station vending and costs to build off of the specific value of departmental vending machines, which now use paycheck defines to do so. Unless you SPECIFICIALLY need more cash, which isn't something you're mechanically enforced to do, you shouldn't need more cash unless you want to make higher value purchases, like through cargo or for premium items, which are typically within the range that doing things for money from other players (Yes, that includes just straight up mugging them), leaves all the base, on-station purchases obtainable. Nobody is kicking you out of chemistry or engineering saying you MUST do bounties for your department to survive.

Bounty cubes specifically are a way to implement 2 features that has been mechanically impossible with the old bounty system, which is:
A) Giving cargo infinitely replenishing bounties.
B) Giving non-cargo crew a way to actually profit from completing a bounty.
The only interaction required by cargo is to literally ship them out. On metastation, you don't even need to get it past the desk, as you can ship it off to the cargo shuttle belt with a destination tagger.

Once shipped, the crew member gets 10% of the profit of the bounty, and cargo gets the remaining 90%. Cargo has no reason NOT to ship them, since it's literally free work. Its the equivalent of not hitting the claim button on the bounty UI.

But lets' be clear here, I am aware that bounties don't cover the full range of jobs onstation well. Most jobs outside of service don't fit neatly into having things that work as being exportable. I have been asking for feedback on how to improve bounties within these systems since literally the first PR I made adjusting economy. It needs work. I am aware. Anyone with decent ideas on how to expand or replace bounties within these departments, I am all ears. All that bounties need to do is have some level of difficulty on acquisition, or, have some level of processing on the product itself. If all you're doing is running back and forth from the autolathe to the bounty pad to make money I will shut that shit down.

Tl;DR 1: It's basically no different than random bounties before the change, you just get paid as crew members, and can ignore them unless you actually need the cash. It's optional. Some department's bounties still suck, I know, and I want people to help add new bounties to replace the shittier ones.

Why get rid of passive income then:
I've explained this about half a dozen times now, so I'm going to just hit you with the bullet points.
In the old system, You get paid every 5 minutes. You get 1 paycheck, and that paycheck is taken out of your department's budget.
Departments made so much money per paycheck that unless everyone on station is a captain, everyone will always collect a full paycheck. However, when you collect that paycheck, there are 2 distinct camps people have fallen into in terms of what that means.

Camp A) My department has enough resources lying around that I don't need to purchase anything all shift. My cash keeps going up, but because I don't have anything I either NEED or WANT to spend it on, all money is worthless, and I only keep getting more of it. Throwing money at a problem is as worthless as doing nothing.
Camp B) I start with so little cash, that I can afford to basically buy a single thing, and past that nothing else. Because my paycheck is small enough, there's no value in trying to wait on anything, so I just go out of my way to outright ignore buying anything, instead stealing or making anything I need instead of interaction with economy.

The issue here was 2 fold and I solved it for both camps in what I believe is the most fair method possible. As prices have been brought in-line with that of the actual job level, the balance of economy can be assessed in an actually constructive way, because before, everything on-station could be bought by everyone, given time, and considering how important wasting someone's time is, it made purchasing almost anything feel like you're either "saving" or "wasting" time. If you make money through bounties or mugging someone or selling something, and it takes too long, you feel like it's either worth it not, and then you either fall into camp A or B. Getting another 50 credits in another 5 minutes isn't engaging, what's engaging is having to do Something for that money. By not handing out income, suddenly you have to engage with the other players in some basic level to overcome scarcity. Maybe it's asking your co-worker for 100 credits to buy something, maybe it's mugging someone for their cash, or maybe it's doing a bounty for cargo.

TL;DR 2: Sitting in a dorms bathroom stall for 10 minutes to buy a new hat is counterintuitive, unfun, and has literally zero engagement with the rest of the round. You should be playing the game instead of waiting for a paycheck, and if playing the game to make money is your goal, there's more fun ways to do so than just waiting 5 minutes.

Other misconceptions I'm seeing in this thread:
Bounty Cubes have a built in pricetag component. Selling it will always grant 10% of the value of the bounty. Cargo cannot cut you out of the profit of a bounty cube like they can with regular pricetags. If they can, that is a bug, and should be reported first.

Doing your job doesn't get you bounty targets. It's 100% a secondary task that you have to go out of your way to do. The whole bounty system is a way to help another department, and benefit in kind.

As I recall, literally every departmental lathe can build a new bounty pad and bounty computer.

You can examine closely (Shift Click twice on an object, AKA Examine 2 times in a row) to see what your currently active civilian bounty is. You do NOT need to walk all the way back to the bounty computer to see what your bounty is.

Feel free to ping me on discord at Arcane#4170 on discord if you have any specific concerns. Please don't ping hugbug, he gets enough of my shit as is.

Spoiler:

Crag is not correct for once.

[Critawakets]

Maybe a better idea would be getting pay from something that is your own job instead of cargo's job but the issue is cargo doesnt even really have a job anymore because cargo bounties were removed so all they can do is steal roundstart crates and... Just wait for others to get the cargo techs money for gamer gear.

Getting money from bounties is a terrible way of getting service jobs to actually offer services. And by service jobs, i mean jobs that dont produce anything but offer a service. There's straight up no way for a medical doctor to get anything that wouldnt just be "run from protolathe to bounty pad" or "make a limb grower". Engineers can pretty much only produce machines and that is easy. The janitor is entirely service with no items. Security has no items to give besides roundstart guns, which would be used to get the money to buy... Less of the same guns. Science bounties leave out Nanites and R&D. The psychologist, lawyer, curator and chaplain have nothing at all.

And please do not say "oh just mug people" or "oh just charge for services". If you charge for repairs as an engineer or charge for medical services, that is going to get you executed rather rapidly.

[cacogen]

The only interaction required by cargo is to literally ship them out. On metastation, you don't even need to get it past the desk, as you can ship it off to the cargo shuttle belt with a destination tagger.

I have played a lot of cargo recently and I can tell you that after reaching the belt they often sit there waiting for the shuttle to be called for an unreasonable length of time, or end up sitting in the shuttle waiting for it to be sent for for an unreasonable length of time. I don't see why they're necessary in the first place. Just give cargo and the bounty holder the money when the bounty is completed.

As I recall, literally every departmental lathe can build a new bounty pad and bounty computer.

Most rounds not enough will be built for it to matter. Most people don't know this and don't build things. Construction is tedious, unintuitive and requires tools which are stupidly hard to get nowadays. Extra ones would have to be part of the station.

You can examine closely (Shift Click twice on an object, AKA Examine 2 times in a row) to see what your currently active civilian bounty is. You do NOT need to walk all the way back to the bounty computer to see what your bounty is.

Closely examine what though? You need to make this obvious.

[nianjiilical]

would it be improved if the bounty cubes didnt use the shuttle

like, if cargo had a teleport pad specifically for bounty cubes to send them away

on one hand itd remove a reason for the shuttle to be used but on the other hand it means people getting paid wouldnt be tied to the slow shuttle transit times

[SkeletalElite]

would it be improved if the bounty cubes didnt use the shuttle

like, if cargo had a teleport pad specifically for bounty cubes to send them away

on one hand itd remove a reason for the shuttle to be used but on the other hand it means people getting paid wouldnt be tied to the slow shuttle transit times

Do away with bounty cubes, but still tie the money to the shuttle. So you get the money when the shuttle is sent to centcomm but it's like the bounty cube is automatically loaded onto the shuttle whenever you complete the bounty.

[cacogen]

So you cut out the problem of it sitting on the counter, or sitting on the belt outside the shuttle, but not it sitting on the shuttle. Can anyone explain why they're desirable to begin with?

[remanseptim]

charging people for services is an excellent way to get lynched and have your shit stolen because anybody can do anything provided they have the tools