Aphelion

A solution for engineering would probably to make creating new rooms possible without directly using the station blueprint. Also having an actual need for things to be constructed. The station right now has everything it needs and then some. Outside of building a luxury spa you'd end up creating an unnecessary duplicate of something that already exists.

Honestly, having psychologists, baristers, a fitness center with a swimming pool, bartenders, agricultural centers and churches only would make sense if the station was a living space. Soo... +1 from me That said. Maybe making the residential section just another way to join/leave the round. Like put an elevator for it somewhere.

I will look again. But I'm fairly certain. Will update once I've looked.

Eeyup. Would be nicer if the backflow event was changed to come through disposals, and instead of deadly clouds of gas or funny clouds of lube you got showered with trash and random items. Some of which might actually be cool. Please note: Not my idea.

Ok So, as a roboticist, sometimes there is a bounty for a whopping 2000 credits if I can pull off producing three farmbots. Farmbots require watertanks, of which there are few of on the station unless I decide to scrounge through maint. The sensible solution here is to order the watertanks from cargo valued at about 45 credits each. For some reason Watertanks are listed under engineering items, instead of hydroponics; what's more, for some reason watertanks come in a lockbox. Presumably because it's listed under engineering, you need engineering access to unlock the water-tank box. Is water contraband? What does engineering use the water for? Is Nanotrasen anti-hydration?

Situation: Xenoarch is a fun thing to play sometimes, but it usually feels very disconnected from the round. Mostly because what you do will rarely influence people, beyond a major artifact having a cool effect from time to time. i.e. corgie cloners, teleporters, universal rechargers, transformation devices, radiation bursts, mental pain machines, etc, etc. These are great if not a bit uncommon, I like these finds. However, something that tends to irk me is just how meaningless the minor artifacts can be, and while the RP value of an interesting blade or trap is nice when people are showing interest, more often than not playing Xenoarcheologist can sometimes feel like wasting your time, because nobody seems to care. Idea/Suggestion: I think we could make Xenoarch more engaged with the station, if we tied it in more with the other departments in science, particularly R&D. I've seen it done on other servers, where some minor artifacts can be deconstructed to unlock special technology. Not illegal tech, but rather something like "Anomalous tech" or "Progenitor Tech". If we were to add a new research score for Progenitor Tech, we could introduce a whole collection of interesting items that R&D can produce in the event that specific artifacts are found, breaking up some of the monotony that happens with R&D while making Xenoarcheology actually useful mechanically. There are two ways I suppose we could introduce this feature. 1. Just allow for special artifacts to be deconstructed with the destructive analyzer 2. Make it so that successfully using the spectrometer on an artifact unlocks a tech level relevant to it. Personally, I prefer the latter, because it would demand a little more expertise and patience from players to get special technologies. So that's my idea- for tech so farr... I don't got much. I was thinking maybe like, a portal modulator for custom guns would be neat? Like, an actual portal-gun portal modulator, where you shoot to make an in-portal, then an out-portal somewhere else. Other than that... IDK, this is probably a big spooky project to come up with a handful of interesting tech that can only be unlocked from progenitor technologies, but- eh- it'd be cool.

Nt should have mandatory bone density tests for captaincy.

We could just make it so that if you can't hear General comms, you can't see it tbh.

Gonna avoid tangenting too much. But I guess I had offworlders wrong. I thought they were a subspecies evolved from generations in space. If Offworlders are as human/ as trusted by NT as any human or skrell, then sure. 100% for them being captain.

I think that's more due to NT wanting to keep up a good reputation with The Jargon Federation.

Yep. It's honestly always been weird that we don't have Offworlder CEs already enabled tbh. Like, scarabs are so into engineering that it's a cultural custom to carry a second wrench. I would maybe draw the line at captain tho. Offworlders are capable sure. But they're mutated enough for me to say that they're not quite human. Not human enough to be captain.

Instant, or a little faster. My main gripe with making it possible for an ftl drive to clear the distance from Tau Ceti to Adhomai in a month is that it then offers very little reason for the majority of the galaxy being unexplored.

So, options are great. Malf should have lots of options on what you can actually do. To this end, I thought up a nifty idea- Give Malf the ability to project convincing holograms. What do I mean by this? Let the malf select a crew-member they want to project from a holopad, and then when being projected, actually look like them! with no blue-shift or jitteryness that would indicate they are a hologram. The point of this? Letting the AI influence the crew in more interesting ways by impersonating them. It would still be noticeable, if someone were to pass through it, or notice that the holopad is projecting. But not obviously the AI.

I agree with you to the level that cargo techs should not have the military training/skills to use weapons and armors. I still think that in the event that there are armed hostiles on the station, a cargotech or crew member might try to arm themself, or try to get access to some means of personal defense. This does not mean trying to hunt down the antag unless it is literally the only thing they can do to save themselves. Personally I lean to removing the ability to brute-force into boxes, or even just making it so that Kinetic Accelerators cannot get them. Acids/hacking is a much nicer way of getting into them, because it involves a few more people. I think that NT's hiring standards should be acknowledged. The thing is, without loyalty implanting the lot of them, NT has no real clue how someone might act when PunPun starts talking to them in their mind and the HoP shoots laser eyes at the bartender. So long as it follows a sensible set of actions and reactions I am okay with things happening in various ways. I think there's a certain amount of lee-way we can give people on their capacity to follow commands in an emergency, depending on how drastic the emergency is.

You seem to assume people follow order in a crises, that everyone will just immediately know SoP and do it. Just gonna reply by showing the fire drill from The Office.

I've had lots of shifts where all of security is dead, and there's some evil monster on the station. Expecting security to be the only department that does combat is silly. Ordering and unlocking tactical gear en'mass is just as silly yeah, but I seriously think lots of situations can come up where gearing up like that to at least defend themselves and their workplace is valid salads. Lots of different game types can reach a climax where it is pure combat, or shit is hitting the fan, and to say that the average joe won't do what they can to defend their way of life or protect people they care about is limiting RP to sitting in the corner and crying all shift.

Pickaxes are actually usable when you wield them, drills are effective at digging individual areas, digging through sand is always an option, digging with mechs seems to have lower yield than digging with a shovel, the resonator is one tile at a time, and the industrial drill seems to rely heavily on rng. Currently, mining as a job is basically built around working with KAs, unlike on other servers where after a digging for three or four tiles you'd be likely to at least come across some hematite or phoron, on this server, mineral deposits are really spread out, in some cases you can dig in a straight line and not find anything. Additionally, I've tried using a drill machine, (I probably should try it again since that was about five months ago.) when I used the big ol' mining drill most deposits were mediocre and not really worth the 2k point investment. Digging through sand works, but it seems it has A- Been nerfed and; B - Is not really any fun at all. There's another benefit of the KA that is a good meta, and that is that it encourages miners to interact with science, which honestly, is half the reason playing R&D is good, being a valued member of the station. I would be all for removing the KAs if there were actually effective and fun alternatives that kept other areas of the station involved. If that means changing the way that materials are spawned, or making using a big ol' drill a little more worth it, that's G. Otherwise, nah.

Right now. Suit Cooling Units are everywhere on the station. That's a good thing. It's wonderful that Nanotrasen as a company is so open minded to allowing synthetics to work among them. However, all the suit cooling units contain a BASIC CELL. The power in a suit cooling unit, if activated runs out in a couple of minutes? Maybe ten? I kinda get the need for making people wanna interact with science, but as it stands, you need that thing on all the time if you're wearing a hardsuit. Even if you've got the helmet off, you can't wear the hardsuit without a cooling unit active. Try being engineering, as a synth. Do it. Carp will breach the surface, and if you don't have a super capacity cell or higher, you'll get your suit on, get the cooler activated, and by the time you go up the elevator and get to the breach, you will have 30% charge left in the cooling unit. Considering this, it is quite obvious that NT is ran by sadists or something. Who creates intelligent life, gives them bodies, jobs, homes, friends, etc etc, then provides them with a piece of equipment that will literally get them to burst into flames if they don't modify it? It's just insane.

The side of cargonia that is "Hahah funny clowme QM I do a meme" is kinda dumb and needs to go. Tactical armor and weapons and stuff should be buckled down on more Cargonia arming themselves up in the event of a crisis adds a layer of realism that is quite nice. Not that they should genk and validhunt, but becoming roof-koreans adds to a round more often than not, while providing another layer of conflict, in my opinion. It's also all cargo can essentially do in a crisis other than sit around with their thumbs up their ass doing nothing at all or crying for an hour and a half because they are in mortal danger and have no way at all to handle it. I think people who don't RP it well should be spoken to and consequences should be had, but aggressively disarming every department where it isn't necessary to have weapons is just silly. I'd be down with removing QM, at least. Because the QM totally adds to it all, not caring at best, actually being an asshat who shows people how to do crime at worst. If it were the HoP who was responsible for what Cargo was doing, it would also add something for the HoP to actually do instead of more often than not amounting to some fusion of Secretary and Accountant.

If you see a Guwan. Call security. They are probably up to no good. If it doesn't seem like they're doing anything wrong, lie. It is better that they are in prison than outside and up to mischief.

Slight tangent, but I entirely agree with this point. Hard to solve, probably doable if we had an actual entry level science role. (One that isn't usually populated with people who already know the role quite well). Honestly the incompetence in science is tough, since the only effective way to learn science stuff is to actually do it. Not to mention, that's the funnest part of science, learning new mechanics and shit.

Gotta say I misinterpreted your character entirely, mainly because in your exploitable information you literally says your Shaleez does porn Sorry if my OOC comment about Shaleez being 'thicc Godzilla' was weird for you ?‍♂️ After realizing your character isn't what I thought, I've avoided doing that. The small character description doesn't help unless you say that she is outright ugly, obese, and exhibiting of masculine features.

Yep All my science characters have spent a minimum of 8 years in university getting their PhDs. Also, in reality. Even after getting a PhD, scientist isn't a guaranteed job, you would need to have some experience for that. Generally a lab assistant would have anything from a bachelor's degree to a PhD, my science characters tend to have this progression of... > Getting PhD > Getting Employed as Lab Assistant for X company > A fair few jobs working with various things > Getting to be a researcher That said, for some characters I've skipped the lab assistant part, instead opting that NT university has a job-program that can have scientists who graduate from it high recommendations for the role.

I can agree with this... Accidentally getting teleportation by injecting mutagen into plants right now is so friggen easy. Literally any plant can get the teleportation/exploding/thorny mutation from this method, and usually will after five or so doses. I like the teleporting fruits, but it would be nicer if it could only be achieved by extracting the mutation from bluespace tomatoes (Which are at least somewhat less likely to mutate than the teleportation mutation, and would require the player spends time studying the plant's genome to really improve it beyond being just tele-tomatoes), instead of players seemingly always lucking out with teleporting glowshrooms it in a few seconds.

Yeah -1 I think Xenobotany could definitely use some new stuff, but removing the fun of creating a little shop of horrors ain't it. Like sure they're griefy, but the majority of the worse stuff is about as griefy as spawning a blob and can easily be handled with an order of plant be gone and a hardsuit. Plus players should be held accountable if they do anything too overboard. So far this year, as far as I know, we've only had one incident where engineering was given K'ois that grow in the tiles and release clouds of spores. This wasn't even planted by a xenobotanist, but by a Diona thrall that was given the non-descriptive order to "Kill" by their master. We're not removing the SM because if a traitor blows it up it is kinda griefy, or removing Toxins because if a player plants bombs all over the station it's kinda griefy, We're banning the players who decide it would be fun to exploit these things and kill as many people as possible without RP, as far as I know. As it stands, Xenobotany is already nerfed in a few ways, the Floral Somataray on this server cannot target and randomize specific genes (on other servers this is used as a fun exploit, where you can mutate and randomize stuff like potency to make plants that have a very large amount of chemicals.), and most of the interesting mutations are usually tied in with other important things like growth speed, not to mention with eachother which means you usually need to choose between stuff like Thorns or Spores and cannot have both unless you are extremely lucky when ordering alien seeds from cargo. Making a killer plant is already balanced. If we're gonna just talk about improvements for Xenobotany, there are a few things such as being able to name mutant plants you create would be great.