Why does space dust exist

[Zilenan91]

It literally makes rounds worse because it fills up spots where more interesting events can happen. We need to either remove it or drastically reduce the chances for it happening, because currently it just harmlessly smacks into perma or breaks a single solar panel which is fucking lame.

[LiamLime]

Space dust was added by mport and then fixed by ne0phyte in 2011 to make meteors (the laggy bastards that they were/are) viable again in the form of space dust.

Its purpose was to give engineers stuff to do, to generally change the layout of the station (by making random border areas unreachable in some rounds), etc. At the time, atmos worked much much much slower than it does today though, and "space wind" was something completely different (meaning the pull you get towards a breech in the station's hull was nowhere near as strong, it barely existed.) Long story short, it meant breaches in the station's hull were much less devastating.

The long term impact of space dust however was that all maps now have an outer layer of maintenance shafts nearly everywhere. Plus all the "I got random crit in space because space dust" threads. All in all, space dust could continue to exist as a triggered event (like the meteor shower). The event would spawn, say, 20 pieces of space dust which showered the station from one side. I think this would make it much more interesting than random space dust flying around the place.

[Zilenan91]

My problem with it is that it's just so boring. It breaks solar panels. Great. Doesn't break walls of windows. Great. It doesn't affect anyone or give any notice as to how it's happening. It's shit.

[Saegrimr]

It does smash windows though, if it hits a window.

[Incomptinence]

Is it using up event rolls if so remove it wondered why so many good rng events were rare.

[Zilenan91]

Yeah it occurs like 40-50% of the time. Good events just don't happen because lol sand

[Saegrimr]

You guys really want more random bullshit exploding just because?

[DemonFiren]

Remove space dust, watch the whining as worse events take over.

[firecage]

Sure, remove space dust from events. Then make it a generic thing which can naturally occur without events, and make it more likely. Since a station definitely wouldn't fair well with wide open windows in space.

[Anonmare]

Swap Space wind conditions for Space Ninja Event conditions and enjoy the salt fun

[invisty]

Why is space dust even back in the game?

It was removed for ages because it was fucking shit or a bug or whatever and the game was better for it. It also used to hit you until you died, instead of just hitting you once.

The only "good" thing it achieves is discouraging space-traitors.

[ABearInTheWoods]

I think the better solution would be to raise the event fire rate, now that we have significantly more events than before.

[Zilenan91]

You mean lower the chance of this happening, right?

[ABearInTheWoods]

no.

I mean make the event subsystem, fire off an event more often.

[Screemonster]

Steal Bay's event manager.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

You mean lower the chance of this happening, right?

Just a note

Space dust is currently weighted at ten times higher than every other event. Something like 70% of event calls are space dust, which exists as an event specifically to stop the station from being depressurises, locked down, covered in acid and blown up, then overrun by nuke ninja blob aliens by the 50 minute mark.

[Zilenan91]

I wouldn't mind this.

But yeah 70% is way too high, at 40% it'd be pretty nice.

[Incomptinence]

If you want low impact events up the chance of abductors, it gets people back into the round actually does something a heaven knows people need to practice with it.

[Zilenan91]

But ayys are shit in prime time because if you abduct someone they don't even try to do their objectives, they just go on killing sprees and that's awful because lol antag.

[Incomptinence]

Eh not the aliens fault players are shit.

[LiamLime]

You can change the game, you can't change the players. "Players are shit" may be correct, but it's not a fixable problem. If players abuse a system and don't use it in the way it was meant to be used, then the only thing you can really do is to change the system.

I mean sure, you can also make extra policies and enforce them with strongly worded reminders for casual abusers and bans for the persistent "MUH FREEDUMBS REMOVED ;_;" abusers, but there are only so many policies you can reasonable have, so you really need to pick and choose which things are worth a policy of their own, and which need a mechanical solution (which includes the abused feature being removed or nerfed). Greytiding is an example. At first it was a joke, then it grew out of proportions, then there was a policy and crack-down and then it died down to 'acceptable' levels, which is where it remains today.

Unfortunately the abusive minority means the rest can't have nice things, but there is often basically nothing you can do about it except be disappointed.