/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

I am not fully up to date on slimes, but yeah then it sounds like no one really has any right to complain about science needing acid or metal at this point, or outside resources. You can now officially build a self contained station from within science regardless of if you have engiener or miner participation.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think they are that Op save for mechs. It just is that research and production jobs like botany, scientist really do not add much to the station and don't interact with the round much at all, which sucks.

I agree completely with dezzmont's post. Science isn't lacking in things to give out to other departments, it's that they have absolutely no incentive to give their toys out to other departments. If I had a nickel for every time I got turned away asking for a pair of NVGs as an engineer, I'd be a godamn millionaire. The only people science currently gives the time of day are the miners, and that's because RnD is essentially non-functional without minerals. I'm not of the opinion that science needs stuff taken away from them, but rather that other departments should get some cool high tech toys so that Science has a reason to deal with, say, Engineering, instead of turning them away at the door. Stuff like Cargo getting a clothing fabricator is a good start, but not nearly enough.

Complaining that you wouldn't be able to do all this stuff yourself, on a server with only 20 people, isn't a problem.

In fact that's kind of the point, the solution is that you shouldn't be able to sit in one room by yourself and come out 20 minutes later decked out in the most fabulous shit the game has to offer.

If there aren't people on the station and resources aren't available to you...tough shit. Such is life. There are likely many other things you can make with the stuff you have on hand anyway.

I mean, it's a roleplaying game...complaining that you can't do everything all by yourself is practically a feature.

More importantly if you know what you are doing you can do almost everything by yourself to the point you can make the scientists, security team, geneticists, virologists, engineers, and medics obsolete. So science can, without any aid, replace all of the station save for the special materials of mining.

Use mechs to go into EVA, use immobilizers, use slimes for food power and metal, use chemicals to make super medicine, create autocloners. I literally have played games where someone did all of this in 15 minutes as a matter of course watching as the RD. It was hypnotic. It isn't hard to do at all and can be done with starting scientific resources.

Claiming science is in any way dependent on anyone in a low pop round is highly disingenuous. At worst you can replace everyone, at best you are a strict upgrade.

My big beef with Science in the way that it currently functions and the potential therein, is that it's totally disconnected from everything going on in the rest of the game. It needs a couple things from mining and that's really it.

The whole station could be swiss cheese and most people dead or dying in the halls, and its everyone else's problem but Science. On a good day its an arms race for Science to trot out their hot new shit and be the heroes the station needs (despite that not being their job either) or on a bad day, the station is so fucked because Scientists are the ones running amok in the halls with their advanced weaponry.

To put this in terms of a strategy game: If Science as a department was a race in an RTS, they would be the kind of faction you need to attack early and often to prevent them from rushing to their late-game and then utterly fucking everything else over.

The problem with that, in our spessmens game, is that short of a traitor purposely running in there to nuke them, or mining stonewalling them on resources, that never happens. There is nothing to distract them. Everything they do is linear and formulaic. There is more uncertainty in how a geneticist isolates superpowers or a virologist makes a disease than there is in anything Science does.

That should not work that way.

We need more traitor objectives and things that target Science to get them back in the game, to distract them from rushing straight through research and Exo construction. As is, there is only one object you might ever need to steal as a traitor that would direct you to Science: the RD's armor. For everything else that might be there (a plasma tank, a hand teleporter) there is a much more easily accessed and "public" area to get that same thing. It's possible I'm missing some things but it just seems like everyone ignores them unless they're a traitor already working in that department or their assassination target is in there.

You forgot slime extract.

Why doesn't science have a public protolathe outside RND that has a list of basic generic items it can make that's connected to the research database. Like night vision goggles and stuff. Then we can just tie it to a currency system and people can buy gear from RnD without ever having to talk to scientists and scientists can research in peace. Obviously, it would work on access too so you could only buy things if you have proper access and assistants aren't walking around with NVGs. This is literally the only way I could see money working and being useful, also, if it meant we could cut the interaction from scientists out of the equation for procuring protolathe stuff. CMOs could just buy their own parts to upgrade their machines if scientists aren't around or busy.

If you want to remove a little bit of science's exclusivity, add a way to get machine materials from cargo or something. It's currently frustrating how even if I stole something from tech storage, I would nonetheless require use of RnD, even if I'm trying to set up my own personal protolathe. There's no way around it.

The problem isn't just getting stuff from science.

Like an0n3 said, science is linear and utterly non-interactive. Every other department in fact save for supply is based around leaving their workspace to help or honk other people, and supply is based around their work spaces being congregation areas.

Science is, if you think about it, literally a cancer growing off of medical, eating into it's tissue with chemistry, virology, and genetics depending on patch, but ultimately unconnected to the rest of the body save for maybe festering and growing so much it kills the body.

It is a damn research station. Science should be the department getting shit done without eating other departments, but instead they are like a minigame station designed to be isolated.

I first read the title as, "Explosive Armor from Protolathe."
After realizing what it actually said, I got an idea. What about armor that has shield/charge which is very robust armor, but when the value of the prior reaches zero, the armor explodes, making it tricky and difficult to use.

Silavite wrote:I first read the title as, "Explosive Armor from Protolathe."
After realizing what it actually said, I got an idea. What about armor that has shield/charge which is very robust armor, but when the value of the prior reaches zero, the armor explodes, making it tricky and difficult to use.

So explosive alabative armor?

Sure makes sense for science. Have it be under 100 HP, and make it so the explosion is less of a "Haha suicide vest" explosion and more a "I am personally dead and no one else can hear for a few seocnds" explosion and it works.

Cipher3 wrote:If you want to remove a little bit of science's exclusivity, add a way to get machine materials from cargo or something. It's currently frustrating how even if I stole something from tech storage, I would nonetheless require use of RnD, even if I'm trying to set up my own personal protolathe. There's no way around it.

I wonder if there are any machines in publicly accessible areas that you can take apart to give you the bits needed to put together a protolathe?
I know the autolathe uses a number of the same parts.

Arcade consoles used to be machines and gave you some parts, but I think last time I tried I found someone made them computers for some reason.

I just thought of a crazy idea. Create a personal shield that is similar to how shields operate in the Dune universe.

Essentially, in the Dune universe personal shields protect against virtually any form of attack, however very slow moving melee attacks can still bypass shields. However it has one flaw, if the shield is struck by a laser weapon it will generate a nuclear explosion.

In this case if a laser weapon strikes the shield it will blow up the shields user and blow up the laser gun. Killing the shield user and severaly hurting the laser gun user (or kill them as well, mutually assured destruction).

Funfact: It IS entirely possible to build a protolathe as a Cargo tech, without science's involvement.

Steelpoint wrote:I just thought of a crazy idea. Create a personal shield that is similar to how shields operate in the Dune universe.

Essentially, in the Dune universe personal shields protect against virtually any form of attack, however very slow moving melee attacks can still bypass shields. However it has one flaw, if the shield is struck by a laser weapon it will generate a nuclear explosion.

In this case if a laser weapon strikes the shield it will blow up the shields user and blow up the laser gun. Killing the shield user and severaly hurting the laser gun user (or kill them as well, mutually assured destruction).

That is an ok idea in the sense its a high cost effect to become immune to stuns. I just have one massive problem.

Why does the laser explode too? Why on earth would you be punished for using the counter to an item. Especially because lasers are already trashy except as a counter.

You could stand to just make it so lasers will be a 2-3 hit crit and not have any downside for the shooter.

paprika wrote:Why doesn't science have a public protolathe outside RND that has a list of basic generic items it can make that's connected to the research database. Like night vision goggles and stuff. Then we can just tie it to a currency system and people can buy gear from RnD without ever having to talk to scientists and scientists can research in peace. Obviously, it would work on access too so you could only buy things if you have proper access and assistants aren't walking around with NVGs. This is literally the only way I could see money working and being useful, also, if it meant we could cut the interaction from scientists out of the equation for procuring protolathe stuff. CMOs could just buy their own parts to upgrade their machines if scientists aren't around or busy.

Genetics wants an autocloner, but no scientists available?
Go to the Prototype Vendor and get upgrade parts.

Reports of armblade ling shrieking up and down the halls, busting lights?
Sec can go buy some NV-secHUDs.

Mining wants better tools for having to serve an ungrateful research department?
A free diamond drill because they are mining personnel.

Great idea. The access it takes for R&D to get these items should remain the same, but will require access once placed inside this vendor.

I don't think a public lathe will ultimately solve the problem, but anything to help get the toys out is a good thing.

Fragnostic wrote:

paprika wrote:Why doesn't science have a public protolathe outside RND that has a list of basic generic items it can make that's connected to the research database. Like night vision goggles and stuff. Then we can just tie it to a currency system and people can buy gear from RnD without ever having to talk to scientists and scientists can research in peace. Obviously, it would work on access too so you could only buy things if you have proper access and assistants aren't walking around with NVGs. This is literally the only way I could see money working and being useful, also, if it meant we could cut the interaction from scientists out of the equation for procuring protolathe stuff. CMOs could just buy their own parts to upgrade their machines if scientists aren't around or busy.

Genetics wants an autocloner, but no scientists available?
Go to the Prototype Vendor and get upgrade parts.

Reports of armblade ling shrieking up and down the halls, busting lights?
Sec can go buy some NV-secHUDs.

Mining wants better tools for having to serve an ungrateful research department?
A free diamond drill because they are mining personnel.

Great idea. The access it takes for R&D to get these items should remain the same, but will require access once placed inside this vendor.

Or...or... put a protolathe in cargo

Cargo always moans they don't have enough to do, make the supplies department actually be in charge of supplying the station with things.