Bauser

I would be very excited if something like this were to come to pass. Food and cooking have a lot of charm to me, and so it would be a great joy if our system reflected the love and nuance and personality that food can evoke. The potential here for deep, intricate cooking mechanics calls to mind (for me) the warm satisfaction and simple feeling of accomplishment from food in JRPGs (E.G. Final Fantasy XV) and other games inspired by that genre (E.G. Breath Of The Wild). These are works where culinary arts are treated as just that: an art. It's elevated and lets you really feel invested in the value of what you're creating. If executed effectively, this could be such a breath of fresh air for chef players. And quite honestly might make me play one. Mechanically speaking, I have only a few words of caution regarding any potential implementation. 1) Don't remove any existing recipes. What we have now is already a pretty diverse palate of interesting foods; it would be a shame if that were demolished to pave way for any possible replacement. 2) I am going to suggest exactly the opposite of what Kaed suggested. He says you need to make food more mechanically important in order for it to be valuable as a complex craft; I say the optional nature of high-quality foods is exactly what makes them creatively valuable. If the only way to perfectly sate hunger is to create perfectly executed & elaborate dishes, they cease to be special. It becomes formulaic. It is my hope that the benefit of creating great foods will be the joy of having great foods to eat. I think "the roleplays," as he puts it, really are quite enough.

If one of the primary purposes of defaulting your suit sensors to off is to prepare a character that you intend for antaggery, won't people begin to naturally suspect that those who spawn with sensors off are more likely to be antagonists?

I put the freezer box over the vent and the ice cream machine to its right. Because it didn't feel right to have some creature exsanguinating all over the ice cream. https://i.imgur.com/ZVq3P0u.png

There should definitely be a sink somewhere in the kitchen though... There's one in the freezer, but there should be one in the kitchen proper. So I hope that gets thrown in, too.

Okay, how about this for the freezer? I've rearranged everything so you get full access around the gibber... https://i.imgur.com/nDW4DSh.png And most importantly... by putting it right above the scrubber, WE CAN FINALLY EXPLAIN IN-CHARACTER WHY OUR SCRUBBER SYSTEM IS FULL OF BLOOD AND GORE

I am confused by how you interpret THIS kitchen as "cramped," but not our current one. Anyway, here's a version of that same image with the corn oil and gibber in swapped places: https://i.imgur.com/vsrSdBn.png EDIT: another benefit of this kitchen is that it stops people who hop the hallway counter from immediately having access to everything in the kitchen. Now there's a door in the way.

I bastardized your map in PDN to give a quick and dirty example of some possible alterations In the process, of course, I fucked up all the utilities, so just forget all the pipes and wires ._." EDIT: I don't know what bartenders like, so I left the extra space in the bartender's personal area empty. Imagine whatever you want!

My fix to the problem of the chef not being able to serve food directly is this: Let the chef walk behind the bar to deliver stuff in case the bartender isn't there or won't do it. Obviously, don't give the chef access to the bartender's personal area. I don't anticipate any logical reason for bartenders to be so territorial about their counterspace that they would disallow a chef from stepping in to drop off some food, anyway.

Pulling refrigerators and freezer boxes around in the kitchen is very common. And, in my case, the janicart example is, too.

A way to bring this design up to the current standard in terms of table space would be to connect the two tables with another big 2x2 slab of workspace in the middle - resulting in a huge 1x(6x2) counter space. This leaves 2 tiles of walking space around the whole thing, and it would look really cool. And we can just nudge the holopad somewhere else. It's not my goal to nitpick, but if either of you isn't on help intent, or you're pulling something, you literally do need a two square wide area to pass each other. Because you have to maneuver around. I'm really tired of playing Pacman.

Is it my fault if someone can't treat a robot like a robot instead of like a meme, just because it appeared somewhere else? Some people are waging this war on referential content, but it's completely ignorant of the question of whether or not that content is valuable. Yes, it was in Fallout; why should we leave it there if the design is solid?

Conversely, I am a big fan of this redesign, though it's not without its own weaknesses. To start with things I really like: 1) Giving the chefs two tiles of walking space around each table would be a godsend for anyone who has actually spent time trying to maneuver around the current kitchen with more than one person in it. God help you if you're dragging a crate (like a freezer box) or locker (like a refrigerator) as well - and get ready to play Pacman if someone asks you to run the janicart through it like I am occasionally. Simply put, we have a strong enough presence of chef players that I am regularly annoyed by the unnecessarily restricted space. Two tiles' width keeps things accessible without losing the cozy, efficient feeling. This makes it mechanically like a lab (chemistry, telescience, virology...) - and that's what it should be. 2) The window between the kitchen and bar serves the double purpose of working as a serving window, allowing the bartender to be involved with the people who are there to eat, and allowing the chef to be right up close to the people at the bar, allowing him to be involved in the bartender's conversations and RP. Our current bar is large enough that if you're sitting at the bar, you probably can't see the chefs, and if you're sitting at the chefs' counter, you probably can't see the bartender. In contrast, this design concentrates people geographically by putting the two functions of the bar (food + drink) in the same spot, without interfering in the ability of either. And bringing people closer together will make it feel more public and let more people engage in whatever roleplay takes place. 3) Having 3x 4-person tables instead of our current 2x 6-person tables is more useful, because the most common use of those tables is for small gatherings anyway - you don't ever really see more than 4 people sitting at one unless someone's organized an actual event... So the extra table just means there's potential for an extra group. 4) The addition of a proper stage makes the whole place very classy and suitable for an entertainer, and we do have a couple players who occupy this role occasionally. Now Wynter won't have to make me drag the piano out of maintenance every time he wants to play for people. 5) In general, I think this horizontal orientation of the bar (wider than it is tall) is much more aesthetically appealing than our current one (taller than it is wide). Perhaps this is because it is attached to a vertical hallway, so the contrast here is satisfying. To address or build from some of Asheram's concerns: 6) The bartender's personal area does seem a bit too small. A possible remedy for this would be to get rid of the upper set of doors that enter into the bar and then use the extra space to stretch the bartender's room down to the remaining set of doors. To prevent this from causing congestion by pushing against one of the tables, the leftmost table could be scooted down a bit (in line with a suggestion I make in point #10, below). 7) The chef won't miss people at the counters because there is a ringer at the primary hall counter. This is suitable for people who want to take their food to go. Currently, people who want to eat from the kitchen have to choose between the hallway counter and the bar counter, and this pointlessly segregates people. De-emphasizing the hallway counter means the people who want to stick around and chat are better incentivized to go into the bar and hang out with everyone else. As said before, it brings people together. 8) I THINK this design only has two fewer tables than the current kitchen, they're just spread apart more. To bring it completely in line with the current kitchen in terms of table-space, it would be easy to simply add another 1x2 table flushed to the right-side wall of this design (in front of the intercom) To add some of my own concerns: 9) There is no door into the theater area. I assume this is an accidental omission, because this design makes it impossible to get in without cutting down a wall. 10) Having the three main tables lined up feels pretty cold, sterile, or stagnant to me... Maybe it would look nicer if their alignment was staggered (one tile up, one tile down, one staying in the middle)? 11) If someone is playing on either of the arcade machines, they are blocking both the stairs to the stage and the exit to the maintenance tunnels. I recommend getting rid of one arcade machine so whoever's playing can always slide themselves into its little alcove, out of the way. 12) There should be a bar sign displayed in the primary hallway, right at the entrance like our current bar, though I do also like the one actually in the bar here.

I do appreciate that this design incorporates an ERP room, because why else would smut books need to be in their own isolated chamber with no windows and a vent for when things get hot In seriousness, this layout would certainly make me miss the armchair-tables that are in our current library. Desk chairs just don't feel like they cut it if you want to just kick back and hit the books for a while.

While I appreciate your vote of confidence in the quality of the sprite, it bears mentioning that the Fallout eyebot is, itself, based on the design of the satellite Sputnik. So it's really not referencing a science fiction series any more than it is referencing actual iconic human history. It's a circle with some antennas. In a universe where things can be made to float, there's no other design that's more intuitive or suitable.

Why should the bar not have a light switch near the door? The person who works in a room does not get to play God and arbiter of everything within that room. It's just a light switch. The bartender (or librarian) is not uniquely qualified to determine if it's appropriate to turn the lights on or off. They just work there. They are public spaces.

I don't subscribe to the theory that a floating spherical robot is anything other than basic sci-fi fare, even if it did appear in a popular series. That's the thing about being basic sci-fi: it... basically... is in sci-fi. Maybe I'll spice up the sprite. Maybe. Even if only because I haven't touched it in a while.

Is there a reason other than the referential nature because clearly we do not broadly have a problem with references []

1) Is the fact that anyone can turn off the lights really a "bug?" It's a light switch There's no reason only the librarian be allowed to turn off the lights 2) Why should a librarian be able to access maintenance tunnels? Maintenance tunnels are for housing the station's utilities and access to them is solely for the purpose of maintaining those utilities. A librarian has no business in them, even if they are adjacent to the library. 3) Randomly spawned books and the addition of ventilation both sound great though 4) Could you define what the intended purposes are for the isolated room in the bottom-left and the corner table closed by a windoor in the top-left? 5) Additional librarian suggestion while I'm here because it's a small thing that doesn't warrant it's own thread: librarians should be able to choose what genre is labeled on a bookcase, instead of having them be static

It would be interesting if there was a way to make it so that actually talking to the psychiatrist cured some traumas (or phobias at least). Mechanically enforcing roleplay. As an aside, an opinion that has been expressed many times in this thread and should be repeated until consensus is reached: ECT and isolation therapy are dumb and shouldn't be part of psych's arsenal. It would be easy to come up with a new treatment that is mechanically similar to ECT without any of the real-world connotations (specifically, the one where it doesn't work and is basically just torture). Personally, I would love to see the implementation of a psych test like the one shown in Blade Runner 2049.. A battery of challenge phrases where the patient responds and the psychiatrist finds their trauma by analzing those responses. Bonus points if it gets its own testing room with shiny white floors and a high-tech camera that tracks their eye and lip movements to read their subconscious. Though since traumas aren't actually hard to diagnose in-game, this could be a curative process instead of a diagnostic one. EDIT:

That's what makes the presence of alchemists on the payroll so silly. At round-start (or in any round type other than wizard), it's widely presumed that the designs of their practice are fantasy nonsense. The specific names of the chemicals don't bother me for the reason you just pointed out: In the event that they can become relevant at all, the (magic) cat's already out of the bag. I'm just bothered by alchemist-flavored scientists. Which is tangential to the subject of this thread.

The "changing chemicals is actually possible!!" defense is weak and tired, because the way you (Lance) justify it runs contrary to the explanations offered by the alchemy itself. Yes, it is possible to use great amounts of energy and complex technology to actually rearrange matter so that it is molded into something entirely different. But that's not what the alchemists do, that's not how alchemists explain their work, and so it is pseudoscientific. When they are in-game trying to make the philosopher's stone, you can bet they aren't talking about using exotic materials and powerful EM fields to force molecules into new configurations; they're talking about thaumaturgy (magic) and the theory of 5 elements (magic) and astrology (magic). You can't lean on the scientific aspect of alchemy when it's under attack (here) and then allow it to be abandoned in practice (in-game). It's disingenuous.

Right, but alchemy is based on claims that have already explicitly been proven false It's not like it has any merit as some advanced future science, like it's going to come back and we're all going to find out gasp!! It was true all along!

Okay, and why would NanoTrasen hire someone who's entire discipline of research is provably founded upon making untrue claims? At best, it's a lot of unnecessary and obfuscating decoration.

The only reason it's just "uneducated chemistry" is because it didn't work. The parts about turning lead into gold and making themselves immortal are the magical aspects. Historically, alchemy has been full of magic. And during the times when it wasn't full of magic, it was full of spirituality at least. --- ---

While there is some feeling that this is an in-character issue, it is logically irrefutable that the employment of literal *alchemists* in the research department legitimizes (and even broadcasts) the existence of magic in-universe and, as a consequence, forces other players to respect it. The proof is like this: NanoTrasen would not hire someone onto their prestigious research facility if it was widely believed that the discipline they practiced was only a pseudoscience. Therefore, if NanoTrasen hires alchemists, they must believe that alchemy is a legitimate field of scientific study. The fact that the only magic-themed reagents require magical compounds does not fix that issue. Having alchemists in science or chemistry means that the whole crew has to acknowledge at the very least that their employer regards alchemy as science. And THAT means, whenever they create or seriously discuss the magic-themed reagents/compounds, then the whole crew knows magic is real. Legitimizing the magical aspects of alchemy by elevating it to a science breaks the barrier between science and fantasy. This isn't necessarily a problem, but it does force us to clarify which side of the issue our lore/setting falls on. I prefer hard sci-fi, but science fantasy can be great fun too (see: Shadowrun). The only thing that's definitely not fun is having a disjointed canon where no one knows if magic is 1) so rare as to be thought completely fake, or 2) a serious and highly accredited field of research. Our setting is incoherent until it's decided one way or the other.