Boggle08

I'm starting to think the larger issue is that most of the maps aren't designed for multidepartment teams, outside of the first or second mission. The biggest obstacles in derelict missions are usually just a bunch of turrets and hostile NPC's. There's no locks or reinforced bunkers that you need to bring an engineer to break into with, since they're either blown wide open or the doors just miraculously open for anyone. I'm already starting to see people in actual intrepid away missions optimize who they bring, because now it's just as many officers as they can pack, FR, and either a surgeon or a physician if they can be spared. We don't carefully and tentatively creep through derelicts any more. Now we just rip through them, taking out as many hostile mobs as we can, and then push all the loot into our shuttles.

Mining doesn't really consult anyone before going out onto derelicts. They just zip out, clean it out, then they're done. It's not blatant gatekeeping, because you aren't directly refusing people on your shuttle, but it's effectively the same thing because you can just fire off and do map content that was intended for cross-departmental teams before anything can be organized. Further more, generalist titles like "salvage technician" implicitly lay claim to these away sites for the shaft miner. All of our awaysites at the moment are derelicts fit for salvage operations. With an alt title like that, that's grounds to tell every engineer that wants to go check out the derelict to go fuck themselves.

I don't see the point of implementing this maximalist policy. Golems rarely come up in gameplay, and the canonicity of artifacts or their properties is usually at the reasonable discretion of the Xenarch. If there is a problem, someone can get talked to. Having to ask every time you want to have your work matter is more load on the staff than vise-versa. If memory serves, development is actually interested in working on xenarch stuff. At some point. Maybe. Eventually. You know how it is. I remember seeing the developer in question talking about wanting to tone down some of the more absurd anomaly characteristics and combinations. Until something happens, we don't need to make the Xenarch's job more Sisyphean than it already is. Captain Gecko said what needs to be said about this. Golems are another matter. If I could describe most golems I've encountered, they would all be annoying, stupid, and disruptive. We took out the random rune spawn for this reason. As they are, I wouldn't miss these things if they were straight up taken out of the repo and lore. On the other hand, I would prefer and love to see these things redesigned into a more interesting extra-dimensional entity. So much so, I might do it myself.

I see these things used by the crew all the time. The only "pet"(if it's still even here) worth removing is the hivebot locked away in the RD's office. No one messes with that guy. Maybe pun-pun too, because at least half of all barkeeps I see just seal him away or animal abuse him. He just gets in the way. The rest are way too useful to let go. The silly animals bring characters together ICly, and facilitate interaction thanks to it.

I've had a good first impression of your Dionae officer and surgeon. I think you know enough about the game for the position. Abrasive Dionae are more than possible with the lore, though whether or not this abrasiveness is enough to disqualify you from the CMO position, I honestly can't say. What I'm worried about with you is your tendency to hoard work and frontline. I didn't really mind all the times you would take the expedition vessel with a full surgical tray, because honestly, fuck having to cancel expeditions over shrapnel and shit, but I've seen firsthand how bad you can get when it comes to ignoring our model for the medbay. The round in question was the one where you packed on corporate heavy armor, grabbed a surgical tray, and took point with security, going so far as to tell the first responder to step away. I think this was two weeks or so ago, but I'm seeing others in the thread citing this as an issue as of yesterday, which doesn't give me confidence. You have to get used to the idea of delegating work when you can, not just because you're working in medical, but because that's your entire job as command. The work delegation arrangement in medical exists here because whenever someone hoards activity or becomes a super-doctor, they're denying the rest of the department engagement. As a member of command, one of your primary OOC responsibilities is to act as a facilitator for your subordinates, which entails delegation. Particularly as a CMO, since often that means it's your job to ensure no one in your department is encroaching on another person's lane. The same lanes I've seen you egregiously overstep. The CMO position has access to a lot of job knowledge, and command authority. I wouldn't want to see you use this to consolidate most of the traffic coming through our doors. I see the potential for CMO in you, but I want to see you using your co-workers more and putting your trust into them. Until then, I can't really endorse this.

Eh, we can't ignore the utilitarian function of visuals. It's best if I don't have to shift examine just to tell if it's an officer. If something comes of this thread, it's likely going to be substituting a dress code for the uniform mandate. Lol. Lmao. Maybe if it doesn't get in the way of all the body armor security has to wear on code blue onwards. I don't want to see black tango dress officers in heels.

If we do eventually relax uniform standards, I don't want it to happen for ZI units or IRU/ISU's.

As long as I can tell you're an officer before you pack on the body armor, It's fine. I have a regional officer uniform that wouldn't work with the current paradigm. The kind of work security does on green, you need people to understand just who they're talking to. Can't really do that with jeans and T shirt.

You know how there's a thread up complaining about how airlocks take way too long to cycle? Well that only happens when an airlock is trying to siphon air out of a pressurized airlock. Any time a ZAS device or something that works with ZAS tries to pull air out of open tiles and into closed systems, efficiency falls off a cliff. This affects portable scrubbers, PAPs set to siphon, Scrubbers, anything you can think of. We've had to deal with these unreliable devices ever since I've started playing in 2019, and it's deleteriously affected engineering gameplay by creating a situation where the only way to reset a room with heavily compromised atmos is to vent the compartment, seal it, and refill it. This is the only way of dealing with bad air that doesn't involve you staring at an air alarm for thirty minutes while your atmos devices struggle around you. If we had siphon devices we could actually rely on, people would stop fighting their airlocks, and engineers would actually use the scrubbers network. This would be convenient for all parties, and introduce variety into engineering's playstyle, especially for atmos techs.

@Caelphon@Lucaken I've updated the draft, the new material is under it's own header. Nothing else has been modified.

Besides the desire to justify the horizon's engine selection, I was also building this to be a sort of resource for the team to look back to whenever writing technology heavy pieces. This would help us be consistent about a very important technology in the setting, and to have that line up loosely with contemporary ideas about nuclear fusion for the sake of maintaining a solid suspension of disbelief. I don't want us to get into a situation where lore articles contradict each other on how compact, dangerous, or energy efficient these things are, especially when contemporary popular science pieces insist that workable models aren't even capable of melting down. The safe, boring engines are the deturium/tritium combo, the scary ones we can take more liberties on are the ones that use phoron or the cold-fusion hell seaweed. The one thing that has to remain consistent about all these variants is their cost, difficulty to manufacture, and limitations trying to scale them down. The brevity was deliberate, but there's plenty to expand on if it's necessary. I could bring up a few named Unathi/Tajaran plants I didn't include in the original document. I also was considering a segment on the cultural impact of fusion, specifically in human space and their attitudes about it. Lastly, I was considering the inclusion of an energy technology race between the SCC/Nanotransen and Elyra, regarding phoron fusion reactors. I've described miniaturization as a big obstacle for nuclear fusion, If we ever decide to port the R-UST on station, we can tie it into lore as being a consequence of this technology race; It will actually be a pioneering experimental technology that's trying to miniaturize phoron fusion reactors. These things, I can begin work on.

The part you speak of about getting out of mining on your own, there is a simple solution: On the old aurora, many of our doors were programmed to have all access flowing out of the department. The function for this still exists, but none of the doors here are mapped with it programmed in at the start. Getting this reimplemented across the map is worth it's own thread. I don't really see the point of Xenarchs and anomalists separating into their own role, when it sounds like there are so many obstructions to getting your hands onto anything substantial. These obstructions would have to be resolved in my mind. There's plenty of space on deck two, the only solution I can see as being permanent is the eventual creation of a specialized ship just for anomalists. If we map in a small hangar that is port of the science department, and give it a small shuttle with a specialized anomaly compartment. The pod gets in and out of the ship via a massive hangar bulkhead that rests above or below it. A specialized anomaly compartment on the shuttle is necessary. I've gone on one expedition with you before, and we had to leave an artifact behind because it kept EMPing the mining brick. If the shuttle had SMES units and APC equipment like they do now, it probably would have marooned us. A specialized compartment that can keep artifacts contained in a vacuum environment, and down the line eventually suppress their effects for transport, would be a godsend. Another thing that would be good is leaving enough space on the shuttle for a retextured M.U.L.E. rover that can carry one large anomaly and the anomalist's suspension field generator. The longer you're out there, the more chances you have of something going wrong. Having this MULE device will help the xenarch so they don't have to do so much slow wrangling with heavy equipment and big anomalies.

Honestly, you could get away with renaming the science voidsuit to be the new xenarch suit, give it miner damage resistance values, then have the scientists use the department unspecific voidsuits instead. No one else on the science team except really brave telescience guys have much use for these in their line of work. The voidsuit you have sprited looks great, though. If you're thinking about resistance values for it, I don't see why it can't have parallel resistances to the miner suit. You go to the same places and fight the same battles.

I think a better solution would be to create an "agent's headset", similar to how we have agent ID's. To upgrade your comms accesss, you take off your headset and swipe it against encryption keys or other headsets to bump up your access. A TC purchase that drops a captain level encryption key in your pocket needs to be expensive, or else it'll just become part of the standard kit of certain antag types.

Really, how much the station is willing to respect the idea that their comms aren't compromised depends heavily on what the gimmick is, and how things are going on the ground. It's pretty common for people to, without prompt, resort to using the PDA to send sensitive information to each other. Especially if they happen to share a commline; Security officers that would normally hold conversations over the radio meet up together and hold a pow-wow instead. As soon as people figure out OOCly that comms have been compromised, it isn't "business as usual", It's a charade where people withhold or disclose information based on how sensitive it is, and how well the antag is doing. People that "play by the rules" on this are eventually conditioned out of it, because it almost always ends with the antagonist dismantling their plans with the wordless precision granted by their omnipresence in the commlines. Compromised comms would be much more devastating and far less metagamed as a concept if they were not a given, less common, and something you had to steal or purchase with TC.

Now that the NBT's launched, are we gonna still have testing sessions on the weekends to make sure the NBT is ready for launch?

I'm fine with that as long as the number of bottles of each basic med is reduced down to three, and we limit the organ regeneratives mostly just to peridaxon and alkysine. You're a physician. If you don't have pneumalin, you can fix it yourself. If there is heart damage, you can sieve in peridaxon and put the person into the cryotube to compensate. Any chemistry package that's more thorough than that should really be something that has to be ordered through cargo.

Removing the role and redistributing the work is the most straightforward solution. The amount of time it takes to stock the fridge will probably get halved on average, since you're now more likely to get two physicians to tag team the dispensers. My only concern then would be addressing the potential powercreep that would come from this solution. For the pharmacist to stay, they need to provide some other service or utility that doesn't come from a chemical dispenser, besides putting on a belt and turning into a spare medical intern.

Advocate for removing the role instead. You by your own admission believe there's barely enough characters for the role to continue existing. Allowing the role to continue to exist when all the chems you listed in that physician list are pretty much my entire workload is a disingenuous compromise. I will never be behind this, unless you advocate for what you're actually asking for. Moreover, with the physician being able to self supply like that, while the pharmacist still exists is a disgusting overstep into their lane. You'd throw a fit if I started hoarding the GTR as my pharmacist, same here applies in concept. The difference is the only way to step back out of my lane is if you were to dump the entire fridge. I should also mention that being able to perform the surgery steps you can with the physician, in addition to being able to make that selection makes the physician extremely powerful and independent as a job role. There's very few problems you can't solve with a physician using a full chembelt. I can self supply and do GTR shit as a pharmacist, but it balances out, because I don't get surgery. I know that having no pharmacist is crippling, and I at the very least want to see physicians manufacture some rudimentary chemicals to compensate, but this interdependency we have in the department is intentional. You're not supposed to do everything, and if the medbay isn't fully staffed, it's not supposed to be this perfect machine that is 100% stocked and ready for every injury on the planet ever. If there's gaps in the roster, improvise. If you don't have a hammer, use a rock. The division and interdependency in medical is not for "realism" reasons, but because people used to hoard work and gatekeep people who didn't follow a strict, clique meta out of being able to help. We've been using this system for over a year or two now, and I've seen plenty of pharmacists. Population droughts or deficiencies come and go from departments as time wears on. Several months ago, engineering was so empty, they overcharged the master SMES to the point where no one even needed to set the engine. It turned out to be a bad decision and overturned. Now, it's bustling. The deficiencies you're seeing right now might just be a transient issue.

I chose peridaxon specifically because it can function as a less efficient stand in for the other specialized organ medicines we have. Peridaxon can fix a damaged heart, and it can fix broken lungs just as well if put into an auto-inhaler. I also put cryo chemicals up there, because you need to make them in order to make peridaxon, and because this will make using the cryo tube much more useful to a physician that doesn't have access to a surgeon or pharmacist. I'm wary about the physician being able to make the fortified versions of bicardine, kelotane, and dexalin, because this is a huge bulk of the pharmacist's work. If a pharmacist late joins with this arrangement, it can take all these medicines and quickly fortify them, instead of having to make stuff from scratch. The longer heal time might make it harder to manage pain. If so, this can be accounted for by giving the GTR another bottle of mortaphentyl pills to compensate. Coagzulog is easy. You just mix innaprovaline, dylovene, and cough syrup like you're making lean. The idea with my list is to increase the amount of people the physician can effectively treat and stabilize, at the expense of speed and needing to rely on unorthodox solutions. If there's no pharmacist, the physician can compliment a surgeon. If there's no surgeon, the pharmacist can compliment the physician. It would round out the physician as a generalist: jack of all trades, master of none. This is cool, Dexalin is extremely hard on the acetone to make.

I'm actually not that attached to the role, if it means I can just move my character into physician and do what they normally do + surgery steps. If you opened this thread asking for them to be removed and have their responsibilities merged with physician, I wouldn't mind. I don't like the wishy-washy idea of the pharmacist still existing, but the physician being able to completely step in and make everything medical needs to function optimally. Cut out the middleman. Ask for the pharmacist to be removed. If we're going to keep the pharmacist like what your initial post implies, I want there to be a solid reason to have it besides "flavor" or "delegation." When medical is just me and first responders, there's obvious gaps in what we can heal with our roster, and what we're able to achieve is a consequence of our mutual cooperation and skillsets. There's limitations to how well a lone surgeon can stabilize or dress wounds of the patients they receive. Physicians are generalists, and while I'm fine with the idea of them being able to make the chemicals I listed, I don't want them to be able to completely replace a pharmacist. This is equivalent to surgeons behaving like superdoctors and hogging GTR patients. TL;DR: It makes no logical sense to have the pharmacist exist if you're going to make them 100% replaceable with the physician. Either go all in and advocate for their removal, or have a plan for these guys to still be useful to medical.

Then advocate for that instead. I don't mind upgrading my pharmacist to physician at all, and the alt titles you're describing would allow people to grandfather characters that don't want to do that. Your proposal is going to make the pharmacist as an individual role obsolescent either way, draping it in half measures isn't going to change that. If you aren't going to do that, then I have a counter proposal in the form of a list of compounds that would be reasonable for physicians to produce without making the pharmacist totally worthless: Bicardine Kelotane Peridaxon Cryoxadone and Cloneaxadone Innaprovaline Dexalin(Normal dexalin) Dylovene Alkysine Thetamyacin This selection will be able to mostly cover gaps in medical when there's only physicians, and the access to peridaxon and cryochemicals means that you'll be using that as an alternative to organ surgery you can't cover with your surgery chart. No more than this. Interdependence is a crucial element of medical's design, and this will facilitate it without making the pharmacist unnecessary. ADDENDUM: No prescriptions either. That's strictly pharmacist turf.

Hi, I exclusively play Pharmacist. I don't see why there should be a place for the pharmacist in your plan, due to the nature of your proposal. Quantitative restrictions are going to be thrown out the window when medical gets pressured. The ones that you need to make in order to fulfill deficiencies in a physician/FR roster don't need to be made in bulk. Putting restrictions on these would completely defeat the purpose of this thread. Apidemencia, Pneumalin, Dexalin+, Adrenaline, Peridaxon, Mortaphentyl, and Alkysine. These are the important stabilizers medical is naked without, and this is half of my work as a pharmacist. One bottle of Adrenaline and Pneumalin completely fills every autoinhaler and autoinjector that's provided in the pharmacist locker. You're never going to need more than two or three bottles of most of these chemicals, with the exception of Dexalin and Mortaphentyl. Unless we make another Giga-chungus permission chart for what you can and can't make as a physician, Making the restriction tied to plausibility and records is not a restriction. I can, and will, make whatever I want because I'll just make a character that can feasibly do whatever I want. Lastly, the pharmacist's work on paper is just to stock the shelves. That's it. There is some tolerance for us to do GTR work, but you have to defer as much work as you can to the physicians or else you're going to get dirty looks, escalating up to intervention from the moderation. Unless I start the round as a pharmacist, most of the important work is going to be done before I join in; if medical has a beefy roster, I'm going to spend a lot of it sitting on my hands. More than I already do. The biggest reason why I like playing digital chemistry line cook is because my work matters. This proposal is just going to make the pharmacist into a vague utility if they don't join close to the start of the round. Why not remove them, and defer their old responsibilities to the Physician?

That looks really good. The U or square shape of the counter top was one of the best design elements of the previous kitchen, I always felt it had a round-table effect on conversations and socialization.

The reasons why I liked Goldman are the same reasons why someone else would despise him as a character, and argue for his incompatibility as a whitelisted command character. Many of the rounds involving him end up revolving around him, whether because the people who rolled antag decided to fuck with him on their own or if Goldman himself decided to make a command decision so absurd, incompetent, or unfair that it dramatically shifted the narrative of the round. He was unpredictable, antagonistic, and dangerous. His command decisions often blew up in his face, and he was often the architect of his own undoing. He was, and will continue to be, the only command character that actually embodied the hostile, inhumane nature that a corporate setting entails. I liked him as a character, and the effect he had on rounds, but he tested or violated nearly every precedent we have for command whitelist expectations in the process. @SleepyWolf If Goldman were to return as a Liaison, what would that look like? What would be some typical interactions between command and crew we could expect? How would Goldman as a "suggestive antagonistic force" manifest?