It's been over 900 days since Experi-sci was merged and it still kind of sucks

[TheSmallBlue]

I love the idea of experi-sci, it's such a smart way to make research more than just waiting for points to add up then clicking buttons. But, my god, are the experiments we have right now really, really bad.

Experiments fall onto five categories:
- Craft a random assortment of chairs toilets and tables
- The "Not worth the effort"s (meat wall, growing a plant)
- The Toxins One you have to beg that one guy that gets toxins to do
- The "You wont upgrade the fucking station by yourself so we made this experiment just to get you to do it" ones
- Make a ripley, destroy a ripley, make a ripley, destroy a ripley

None of these, absolutley none, are fun. None of them are really engaging, and none of them actually follow Experi-Sci's original goal of

"having experiments that are designed to be elements to encourage players to interact with all facets of the station and game, which we hope will reducre burnout and increase cooperation with the crew"

I'm not encouraged to interact with the rest of the crew with these, at max all I get to do is go "hey i need to upgrade the thing" to which the response is "*nod". I'm not encouraged to interact with all facets of the station, like, at all, unless "all facets" are upgrading, breaking mechs, growing plants, and crafting random shit.

Science is, in general, millenia behind every single other department, and a rework of it is something that has been talked about before but in the meantime experi-sci is the perfect tool to bring some ounce of fun into the currently existing mess and it just. doesn't.

Here's the original hackmd page for Experi-Sci, though it sure feels outdated in some bits

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Literally, the make and break a ripley experiments are the only thing that makes me not want to play Roboticist, because I don't want to have to do those 2 experiments AGAIN FOR THE 9999TH TIME.

I absolutely despise the fact advanced mechs are locked behind that experiment.

My +1 to whoever removes that experiment.

[bobbahbrown]

...
- Craft a random assortment of chairs toilets and tables
...

good afternoon,

this one was originally added by floyd when expersci was coming together and was one i never really agreed with; it was a tech-demo of what was possible and in my opinion should not have been included in the final [initial] release. it's not really a compelling experiment and has always been a pain-point for players.

to this extent it should be removed and (hopefully?) replaced with something more gameplay friendly.

seasons greetings,
bobbah 'bee' brown

[Jacquerel]

never include placeholders in your project if you can avoid it because they won't be placeholders

[DaydreamIQ]

I'd rather the mech tech be locked behind the mech destruction experiment than what it used to be (Which if I recall correctly, was yet another toxins experiment nobody did for 90% of rounds). Since you can just buy a ripley kit from cargo and then yoink the one they never use and in most rounds just hand over because literally would you use it over the modsuit.

The problem with the materials ones, is that if you make it harder to do but more engaging. People are gonna get bored of doing it every round. The real issue with experisci is that it just isn't fun to engage with after multiple rounds. The first couple its kinda cool that you can make a meat machine which lets you turn flesh into chairs but after the novelty wears off its just busywork for the sake of it, I personally think ones like the plant growing and jani experiments are at least easy enough to do and often involve stuff related to their job that'd happen in most shifts though. But as soon as you have X tech locked behind a department doing their job AND researching it. You end up with rounds where an incompetent department bottlenecks research (I.e. The old Xenobio experiment locking medical tech)

[kinnebian]

the mech destruction is like the least fun thing can we at the least brainstorm a solution

[Redrover1760]

the mech destruction is like the least fun thing can we at the least brainstorm a solution

Surely an easy fix would be just removing mech destruction and replacing it with scanning active mechs, to ideally encourage robo to make mechs for people to use, rather than for themselves to destroy immediately afterwards against the principles of their job of literally making mechs.

[blackdav123]

the worst experiments are things that people would never normally do
smashing a mech benefits nobody, upgrading lathes benefits nobody, building 5 meat toilets benefits nobody
dissection is also a bad experiment, because it just gatekeeps medical tech and serves no other benefit

good experiments would involve doing things that naturally benefit people, like experiments to make beneficial chems or the above mentioned make a useful mech

ideally our experiments should have multiple ways of completing them, so an experiment to "fix a compound fracture" would be good because it could be solved by medical waiting for the tram to break some bones, or by making a baseball bat to use on an assistant

[zxaber]

The sub-point of the mech destruction experiments was to serve as a way for players to get a good working example of how much damage you can deal to a mech while on foot. Toolboxes are surprisingly effective in a relatively short time if you don't get hit in the meantime.

I do think the part 2, where you actually destroy the mech, was a mistake. It encourages wasting mats and it'd be a lot cooler if robotics was instead encouraged to give away the research mechs after damaging, scanning, and optionally repairing them.

[MooCow12]

I hate autopsy , so many jobs , so MUCH of the tech tree is locked behind bio tech its actually absurd that we moved it from just walking into xenobio to scan a round start available extract (even a borg can retrieve it and do it) to requiring a special scanner that you have to pay a ton of money to get (not even medical borg can do it anymore and anyone that wants to do it has to fork up a ton of their personal funds)


The reason we took it out of xenobio was to make it more accessible and now its less accessible than ever lol.







People also keep trying to justify experisci saying that the alternative would just be "standing at a console and waiting for points" when that is literally what experisci is designed to force you to do.


If there is a specific tech you want you can only pursue the discounts for it you can never actually do more than what the discounts offer which means when you have alot of people wanting techs you dont get the advantage of having however many pieces of paper you earned from dissections or xenobio or the experimentor to give you a jump in points that you can instantly spend. (not every tech has a discount and adding discounts to the game takes work, meanwhile earning points helps everything and provides a safetynet/ensures you can always do something even if its inefficient compared to discounts)


Instead experisci turned research into a toxic relationship between the crew, people camping consoles hoping to click on the tech they want first, nothing they can do to productively work towards getting the tech they want, just camp the console stop others from spending points if you have to.



Its turned a system where anyone can pitch in to earn something they want into something that inspires conflict, and not a good form of conflict, actual toxic attitudes and wasted time, hurt feelings as people realize that they probably wont get to be able to do what they were gonna do this round because someone else spent the points already and they cant do anything to unlock the tech they need faster, wasting the last 30 minutes of their lives working towards that moment.

[iwishforducks]

its just not fun to do every round. any interesting experiment means that you have to do said interesting experiment every round. therefore no experiment is good. the system is broken at its core. its unfortunate because theres potential for interesting experiments, but the bottomline is that you will have to do them every round

[kinnebian]

PLEASE BUILD 5 MEAT TOILETS AND 3 URANIUM WALLS
i despise experisci in its tedium

[8bot]

frankly just remove it, replace it with something else
give all science ways to contribute if you want an alternative: assign slime extracts a number of research points when turned in, keep toxins as the way to get a big-ass boost, each mutation in genetics can give a sum of points when it's discovered, with certain mutations randomly getting bounties at roundstart to give extra points.
just make it streamlined and actually integrated into job mechanics.

[TheSmallBlue]

"Remove it and replace it" doesnt really work when you dont propose an appropiate replacement, besdies that a entirely new system takes time and i doubt the headcoders will allow a somewhat new system to just be outright replaced when it could be worked into a better version, so instead lets think of ways that we could adapt experisci into something decent

my idea is this,
replace the scanners with pins you can wear on your jumpsuit. want experisci to show players what they can do in the game? then make em do that stuff!
instead of having to scan things, detect when a player does an action and count that, for example "fire a makeshift flamethrower" "send a signal to open a valve" "revive someone without using a defibrilator"
experienced players can just wear the pin and go about their day and automatically gather up points, promoting players to exit their departmental cubbyholes and interact with the station around them
unexperienced players will go "holy shit this makeshift flamethrower is very useful" and will now remember that next time the station has a xeno infestation

[nianjiilical]

i feel like one good way to rework experisci would be to poll very experienced players who love certain roles and ask them what they think are cool advanced tricks, and encourage that

like, round up all the crazy good botanist players and ask them what they think cool challenges are, or things they think are good/optimal botany strats, and make some experiments based on that

i think in an ideal world every job would have a pool of experiments that a) explore the general depth and possibilities of the role and b) reward players for doing the job well c) have enough variance that its not just the same thing every round

[mrmelbert]

instead of having to scan things, detect when a player does an action and count that, for example "fire a makeshift flamethrower" "send a signal to open a valve" "revive someone without using a defibrilator"
experienced players can just wear the pin and go about their day and automatically gather up points, promoting players to exit their departmental cubbyholes and interact with the station around them
unexperienced players will go "holy shit this makeshift flamethrower is very useful" and will now remember that next time the station has a xeno infestation

I don't think is is any fundamentally different to experi-sci, you're just replacing "do an autopsy" with "do revival surgery on a monkey".
Any list of tasks will eventually become tedium, especially since players have a tendency to optimize the fun out of things.

(Also, old science was also a list of tasks, which was very tedious.)

[TheSmallBlue]

I don't think is is any fundamentally different to experi-sci, you're just replacing "do an autopsy" with "do revival surgery on a monkey".
Any list of tasks will eventually become tedium, especially since players have a tendency to optimize the fun out of things.

(Also, old science was also a list of tasks, which was very tedious.)

The difference is that you don't go out of your way to do them.
Someone got ran over by the tram and died and you have to revive them, fuck it just dont use a defib for this one and done, experiment complete person revived.
If you want the tech the node unlocks and you don't know how to revive someone without a defib, the experiment that locks that node is what teaches you this.

[mrmelbert]

The difference is that you don't go out of your way to do them.
Someone got ran over by the tram and died and you have to revive them, fuck it just dont use a defib for this one and done, experiment complete person revived.
If you want the tech the node unlocks and you don't know how to revive someone without a defib, the experiment that locks that node is what teaches you this.

(Ignoring the fact that one of your suggested experiments requires you go out of your way to do ("make a flamethrower"), and the hypothetical situation you posited also requires you go out of your way to do it)

We have an entire job dedicated to doing experiments - you can't just dangle a bunch of "passive" experiments over their heads and expect them to do nothing until the opportunity to complete them arises*.
They will go out of their way to revival surgery a monkey, because they have nothing better to do. In fact, that's what they signed up to do.

I will say that the passive experiment approach is not a bad idea, the Botanist experiments we have currently are excellent passive experiments that most botanists can do on their own while working on their own projects.
However making them all this doesn't solve any of the problems of Experisci.



*Remember surgery skill?

[Rageguy505]

It'd be more bearable if the experi-scanner worked via range. It's annoying trying to get to all 6 lathes for that one scan

[TheSmallBlue]

(Ignoring the fact that one of your suggested experiments requires you go out of your way to do ("make a flamethrower"), and the hypothetical situation you posited also requires you go out of your way to do it)

yeah ok really bad examples sorry i just needed a way to convey the idea

We have an entire job dedicated to doing experiments - you can't just dangle a bunch of "passive" experiments over their heads and expect them to do nothing until the opportunity to complete them arises*.
They will go out of their way to revival surgery a monkey, because they have nothing better to do. In fact, that's what they signed up to do.

True yeah, maybe a way to counteract this is to not make science the experiment job and instead do what cargo did with bounties but with research, add a console outside of science which will give you a pin and let you scan the completed experiments on your pin to upload them to the web, maybe in that same console show what the experiment would help unlock so that say, if there were a janitor browsing through it they'd find out "oh shit, i can get an upgrade for my wagon to make it clean the floor??"

the job of ACTUALLY researching the things would be left to science but it would involve the entire science department a bit more in the day to day lives of each other player

[8bot]

coming back in to say just remove it and increase passive point gen

[MooCow12]

remove dont improve