/tg/Station 13

I posted a list of new busywork ideas in another thread but it got lost in the shuffle. I'm mostly focusing on engineering and atmospherics, since (I think) every other department can stay relatively busy for the duration of a round.

Engineering

• APCs with defective batteries that need to be replaced
• Shuttle engines could break, preventing them from flying until repaired (excepting the escape shuttle/pods)
• (maybe) A Centcom shuttle with broken engines could dock with the station and get repaired in exchange for some goodies
• (maybe) A communications array that, if broken, would delay the shuttle by five minutes

Atmospherics

• Leaky pipes that slowly over-pressurize a room until replaced
• Leaky floors that slowly depressurize a room until replaced
• Disposal pipes that burst and tear up floor tiles, walls, and glass (or make this a side effect of the current overpressure random event)
• Scrubbers and vents could get jammed open or closed

Any other ideas?

i don't like most of these, but personally i would like if there was a "leak" state for walls in response to damage or a random event, where air would be lost and there would be a rather obvious outgassing sprite or something.

if we're going to reform engineering we should make them have to cooperate with other departments and involve them more in station operation, the mice are fine because there's a little interaction in talking to engineering and arranging to fix it but in general i don't like busywork.

the real flaw with engineering in the first place is that it's just not necessary because there's nothing for them to do. the station runs itself. really we should be looking to give them high level control over

-power distribution
-remote atmos control
-local gravity on/off (with corresponding effects)

and add in things like
-power is actually a finite resource that's kind of useful for something, what it is doesn't matter too much
-air actually having a source besides magic, infinite capacity atmosspawn tanks (really there should be machines that create air that require power and if they get fucked over it should be a BIG PROBLEM)
-more gas types for extra fun

But consider how often no one even bothers to properly configure atmos, or even set up the engine.

Lumbermancer wrote:But consider how often no one even bothers to properly configure atmos, or even set up the engine.

consider that setting up atmos is mostly pointless because co2 isn't even ever a problem ever and the shuttle will always be called by the time a high pressure in distro is ever even useful anyway

nobody with any experience in engineering ever even plays engineering because engineering does fuck all and all of the veterans know it. as soon as they get any experience in the game they pretty much stop playing tbh, at least, that's what happened to me.

like, look at the CE: what does this fucking guy even do

>set up the engine for like 2 minutes

what the fuck is that, the guy in charge of powering the station and extremely vital air recycling operations has like no power whatsofuckingever aboard an enormous metal contraption flying through space when realistically him and his guys are like the only thing keeping the thing from fucking depressurizing/blowing up/de-orbiting/burning out/choking everyone to death with co2 etc

engineering is a joke tbh

The gravity generator could malfunction and produce twice or even triple normal gravity until repaired. This would make people move slower and thrown items wouldn't go as far as they would normally.

Those are some pretty interesting ideas, I particularly like the leaky pipes and damaged centcom shuttle parts. Atmos having more maintenance stuff would be great, and I think that small stuff like that would be nice

I really don't think that this station should fall apart and break and malfunction that often. Leaky pipes maybe, but walls and floors? Come on, this is a funded research station, not a hobo hut. I think that some of those busywork ideas would just be unnecessary, boring, and a bit of a pain in the ass.

The things that should be breaking down or malfunctioning, in my opinion, are the things that are questionably realistic or physically unstable. Gravity generator, overpowered SMES's, the gateway, shuttles, stuff like that. Not walls or floors that we, in 2016, have little to no problem with.

What's the point in adding problems for engineering to fix, if the shuttle gets called at the slightest hint of power failures/ explosions?
Too many engineering players (even some CEs) don't know that they can check the alert consoles to see that the entire Fore wing of the station is without power.