I'll mostly be quoting the areas where I think there's discussion to be had. Since personal preference is just that, personal. So for the likes of how we view and enjoy Lavaland, we just differ.
datorangebottle wrote:
This is very true, but how rare are the other gamer moments compared to mining's? I feel like I see bombs, fusion, and cargo engine shenanigans happen far more often than mining downs even a single megafauna. Granted, this is just that, a feeling. I have no statistics to back this up. But it's not something you can teach people- it's something people just have to understand and figure out for themselves, and that makes it inherently more rare than every other gamer moment you've mentioned.
Personally I think fusion and bombs need some tweaking to be a little harder to do. That aside, the reason for megafauna being rarer is that unlike making bombs or fusion, it carries the risk of permadeath. Less people are likely to try it. Also yes, as you said, it's not something that can be taught.
I wouldn't be opposed to some of the megafauna being made more accessible. It's the main reason I liked VR, since it let miners practice and / or learn.
But the balance is making them too common. I think that this change would swing it too hard in the other direction.
datorangebottle wrote:
This isn't wrong. Any change of this scope will have a serious effect on the station. We're talking halving the numbers of a very regularly visited z-level that can have a lot of cool things that make it worth going to. But a lot of the nerfs are pretty necessary and the numbers for PKA damage can't be decreased without having a domino effect on other numbers like fauna health, and the damage of the crusher as an example.
Very true, but which is why we have the inflated numbers we currently have (Except for the armor. That's weird).
This is also one of the reasons that I think that changing the numbers, while a direct and simple solution, isn't the best one. I'm honestly concerned as to what the knock-on effect of this change would be, in a similar vein to the knock-on effect of medical's absurd budget + mining vendors being credits-based making all the medical changes for naught (currently).
Essentially, it's become whack-a-mole with problems. This change will do what you want it to, yes, but I can't see that happening without a new problem arising.
datorangebottle wrote:This is already happens to many jobs. It's akin to atmos techs making bombs and blowing up the station before toxins can. Or another department stealing research points. Or someone making their own mech fab area, making a mech, and going on a rampage with it. Mining is perhaps the only place where it doesn't happen with much regularity, which is an unfortunate downside to these changes. I feel like the real issue here is that lavaland was made accessible to the public. These number changes wouldn't really have this effect if most of those people had to go through the HOP/QM to get access to the planet and become a miner instead of just rushing down there on the public shuttle and grabbing the gear.
Frankly, single tanks need to go. Like, that needs to be done ASAP. I know it's not common, but even as an atmos main there's something... Wrong about it. It feels inherently cheap and unfair to just ignore all the restrictions placed on bombing.
For research point theft, usually the RD will go beat roboticists upside the head for that. If it's engineering that's another problem entirely. As for the mechs, that often takes longer to do when not a roboticist, whereas this change would be the opposite; a bit like if that second party started with a fully upgraded exosuit fab and tech and the roboticist did not. Lavaland's accessibility to the public didn't do much with regards to Megafauna, thankfully, since it takes a while to mine what you need or you need to break into cargo and get the tech later on. Essentially, it gives miners a nice buffer period before people run in for the megafauna specifically. But even that's mildly problematic, since it does still happen. Making it notably easier isn't ideal. As for rushing HoP, that's with regards to the public mining change, but this is different from my point of view.
As a side note, shouldn't some of that be an issue instead of accepted? Stealing research points, making bombs before toxins, etc. When another department does a job better that the department that's meant to do it, or can skip to the fun stuff without any of the work, isn't that in it of itself problematic? Imagine if Cargo could simply order nitryl / stimulum instead of the arduous and length process of making it as an atmos tech.
datorangebottle wrote:Which leads to some variety in mining's weaponry, which is kinda desperately needed. It's currently PKA or bust. The crusher is too high risk and too low reward to bother considering. That said, again, this is less a problem with mining and more a problem with those particular weapons being overtuned. A combat mech should be useful on lavaland, in my opinion. It probably won't be useful against the big creatures, but it should be able to toss the little ones around like sacks of flour. But they can't, because the HP values are so inflated that they can kill maybe three smaller creatures without having to stop for repairs. Shotguns in their current state are powerful, especially the combat shotgun. As far as I'm aware, it's the current meta weapon to take down space dragons with- the most powerful creature that can regularly show up on the station and is capable of not only holding off, but destroying four combat mechs at once.
Honestly, the issue here is kinda clear. The PKA is ranged, the other options are not. The drake has a
40 damage armor piercing attack at close range. No megafauna has an attack less than 25. Getting into melee is suicide, because megafauna are meant to be more dangerous the closer you are. Frankly, if you did go through with this change, I'd leave the crusher totally untouched (a slightly weaker fireaxe on station for miners isn't the worst thing) because it's just bad and risky, and is a purely cheese weapon where you abuse the heiro trophy and hope you get lucky. Honestly, part of me believes it'd still be bad. It's not that the PKA is overtuned, it's that megafauna are too dangerous to get close to, which ties into what I said earlier about the safety of weapons and the PKAs range limit.
As for combat mechs, it would be very hard to balance them being good against standard fauna but bad against megafauna, especially if you made this change. You'd need to snowflake something in, in honesty. Now, arguably you could say "Mining should use mechs more, give roboticists something else to do". But the issue is that mechs aren't fun. Not on lavaland, at least. The fun in lavaland comes from the megafauna's balance around player movement. If you did make this change with the idea in mind that mechs should see more use, it would simply end with roboticists getting a Gygax and going to lavaland themselves, and having (again) a much easier time than miners. In the rare case a miner got one, it would be one of those things in games where you do something that isn't fun because it's more efficient. Like grinding mobs in an MMO.
Also, this isn't even touching on the first point with regards to an expanded arsenal for miners. I would be all for that, honestly. Or at least a rebalancing of the current one. The issue is that this wouldn't be an expanded arsenal for miners. It'd be an objectively better way to fight megafauna which everyone has equal access to.
datorangebottle wrote:If an assistant tides the spare roundstart, they've made themselves valid for the sake of hunting fauna. If the hop is giving them access to order combat shotguns or loot the armory, the hop is being a fuckwit and is either a traitor or should be facing some sort of serious consequence. I feel like returning the PKA to sane damage values is a necessary thing, even if it causes a handful of other nerfs, because in its current ideal situation(which is one loophole you need to circumvent, more on that later), it's an infinite ammo handheld heavy laser with a shorter range but a faster firing rate.
The spare is stolen every other round, and no one valids the person that steals it. I mean, if anything people just ask for their own AA. Sure, sec may try and hunt them down but that rarely works out. And HoP giving out shotguns for that purpose is... Honestly more reasonable than that. Megafauna are a threat to mining, which lowers the station's efficieny. It's a risk. If an assistant wants to kill one, it's actually a very reasonable request, I feel. Assuming the gun is given on the shuttle, and returned immediately after.
This also ignores the HoP / Cap just looting the armory themselves and headed down because they're bored and their jobs have a lot of free time, and HoP specifically has next to 0 responsibility.
datorangebottle wrote:I mean, the main issues I've tried to voice in this thread have been that survival pens are so overpowered they get in the way of the maintainers' current efforts to change medbay, PKAs are stupid overpowered in a vacuum, and explorer's gear has an unjustifiable amount of armor when the largest creatures just shred right through it anyway, along with some goofy armor values(bullet armor? really? why on earth does it have as much bio resist? 50 radiation armor? Psycho mantis?).
This we're agreed on fully, but the changes you're suggesting, again, have severe knock-on effects. Nerfing survival pens and making safer weapons like shotguns and assault rifles better than the risky PKAs, without making alterations elsewhere to offset this significant drawback, will just mean that miners lose out on a popular and fun part of their job.
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Since the rest of it is pretty small, I'll just expand and extrapolate here.
Normal lavaland mobs do not pierce armour, but the watcher cryo beam basically bypasses your 'defenses'. Otherwise yes, only megafauna have it. And they have it in spades.
As for its efficacy as a round-start weapon against the blob being an issue, yes. On one hand, it's much much riskier than the alternative. On the other, it's a round start weapon which is easy to get access to. So yes, I can understand this being an issue. While I'd not suggest it myself cause... I don't really mind enough, I understand why and support it.
The pressure and heat issue could be fix by simply lowering the number of mols of gas in lavaland, similar to how it has the current pressure, I believe. That or it's snowflaked. I'm not actually 100% sure how lavaland atmos works anymore.
I feel the best way to fix this without causing more issues is to change functionality, not just numbers.
Example, let's say you nerfed the survival pens by 66% of their efficacy. In return, I'd expect lavaland mobs to do 66% less damage. But the issue now is that lavaland mob damage is kind of a joke and they can be assaulted roundstart, and then mining is kinda useless. So instead, remove the armour piercing on the megafauna attacks and let armour values work against them, then add scaling with watcher wings which increases heat resistance.
This does the following: Mining suits aren't obscenely broken right out the bat, but still are strong later on (even with your current suggested changes they would be, keep in mind). It promotes miners to kill fauna which assist the station somehow, such as bones for cargo and diamonds for the station. It restricts the speed at which robust miners can run down megafauna (which is an issue), and makes entering lavaland without getting suited up very dangerous. Allows the nerfing of survival pens by a significant amount while still maintaining a miner's ability to fight them. Promotes departmental cooperation to improve defenses in other ways, such as asking sec for a jumpsuit, which is more reasonably achievable than a shotgun, or adamantine armour from xenobio.
Note: Ensure that the mining suit doesn't protect from spess damage to stop miners space walking with pens.
Potential issues:
Miners are still very hard to kill on station. Personally, I don't see this as an issue. It's kind of the miner's niche, in my opinion. They're the guys that go out and do the dangerous stuff, so them being tough to kill is fitting.
As a knock on to healing nerfs needing burn resistance buffs, miner's are now harder to kill with burn damage. Overall, traditional methods of killing are less useful. Again, I don't think this is an issue if Steve Murderbone has a harder time killing someone whose job it is to go out into a dangerous environment and fight deadly creatures while collecting resources.
Megafauna getting lured to the station is still a massive problem, which your suggested change would alleviate. (potential fix if this is an issue: Lavaland creatures are more used to the heat of lavaland {which is in the suggested change} and take cold damage while in cooler areas).
Mechs may become problematic due to armour changes.
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There's an alternate solution, however, and that's overhauling miner weapons.
Cobby seems to not like the snowflakiness of the PKA. Considering that the PKA is the best mining weapon as mentioned earlier, and knowing the reasons as to why it is, there's an alternative: Just nerf it. Nerf it to ignore pressure entirely.
Then rebalance all of lavaland around that idea. Even if it's just changing armour values and removing piercing, increasing megafauna attack and ability delay, then lowering health by 20-25%.
Now, that's a much bigger project to work. Much bigger with a lot of tweaks that would be needed, and lots of balance testing. But that would solve the issues of: Snowflake PKA, miner weapon imbalance, station weapons being too good, survival pens being busted (as they'd be nerfed, since this change is on top of my other non-PKA suggestions), and making miners have to go the extra mile before fighting fauna while still benefiting the station and making the entirety of lavaland overall more intuitive.