chaotic_idealism

Well... have we tried that?

What about a bigger, better, more well-equipped shuttle? Basically, a microcosm of the ship itself. Full chemistry lab, full kitchen, full science and engineering area, working medbay with all the trimmings, dispenser for EVA suits and oxygen tanks--if only softsuits. A small armory and a brig cell, too. And a lounge/cafeteria/bar, to serve as a meeting point and briefing area. The reason I say this is that the Intrepid itself is simply not meant to transport most of the crew to an away site, and it doesn't have enough resources to be used as a base once you do land. An entire base has to be built--which is fine if you have engineers coming out your nose, but not in a typical round, where you... don't. (Plus, engineers building a base takes the entire round and then there's no time to use it.) Engineering could still build things, naturally. A lot of the stuff can be built--machinery, wiring, solar panels so you don't have to feed a generator. But put the kits on the mega-Intrepid itself. Dragging things to the shuttle is utterly boring; they should already be there at round start. And my earlier idea about teleporting so we could use the Horizon itself as a base--okay, fine, it's a bit much. But we should still have a publicly-accessible teleporter between the Horizon and the mega-Intrepid, if we decide to go that way. The special event shuttle is a start. But it needs to be more than that. It needs to be a home away from home, including places to hang out and talk in. Because one of the main drawbacks of this sort of gamemode seems to be that there are no home bases, no places to gather and talk, gossip, tease one another, and worry about what Command's up to. We need that.

Teleporters instead of shuttles would be nice. And multiple teleporter locations all over the Horizon. People carry their own beacons, so they can teleport themselves back... That would make it possible to work out of the Horizon and still experience the away site. Would solve a lot of problems. And probably create more, but man, if I have to try to drag an entire medbay to the Intrepid and to an away site one more time, I'm gonna tear my pixellated speessman hair out.

I would say this is basically on-site Mercenary. Now, I do enjoy a good round of Merc, so that's okay. IMO, we can add this to the rotation once some rough edges get filed off. Some things that need improving: Lighting. We're doing everything in the dark, or else carrying light sources with limited batteries in a place where there are few or no power sources to recharge them. Quality of life issue. Daytime, please. Otherwise it's just not feasible. Maps. Unless one is posted at the beginning of every round, there's no map. It needs to be available on the PDAs. (And the PDA charges need to last all round, even if it's extended several times.) Setup time. The first two hours were essentially just setting up the round, which is going to get hella boring if this becomes a regular gamemode. On-ship setup time is about fifteen minutes. It needs to be about that long in this gamemode, too. Having to drag basically the entire ship's worth of equipment and supplies, manually, to the away site takes a LONG time, and it's boring as heck. This needs a solution. Complete lack of home base. Working out of the Intrepid was annoying and frustrating. You couldn't take a coffee break and chat with your friends over lunch; you couldn't hang out around the Medbay entryway, smoking and gossiping. There was a sense of being lost, constantly, even when you knew where everything was, because there were no established meeting places and no landmarks that everyone knew. No on-ship resources. Medical is doing surgery with anesthesia tanks and by flashlight. Forget xenobotany, xenobiology, hydroponics... No offices, no workshops, not even any vending machines. Can't get a coffee. Sure, you could stay on the Horizon to do those things, but you have to choose between them and having any active part in the round whatsoever. And of course the "if you mine a rock, you let all the air out of the planet" bug. We gotta solve that one. The way I see it, this could be a "ready-made event" sort of gamemode. Use it every once in a while when someone has a good idea. Maybe have an array of maps to use. But yeah, a lot of problems need solving before this is workable.

Well, it would make more work for the psychologist, anyway.

When there's no CMO to let Crusher out of the office, a sculpture will do.

Last round, one crew member saved another's life by doing CPR. Medical wanted to conduct CPR training sessions, but we realised we don't have a CPR dummy. We tried to make do with a monkey, but who wants to put their lips on a cube monkey? And besides, it's animal cruelty, because you have to stop its heart to make CPR possible (which matters to Medical and the friends of Pun Pun even if it doesn't matter to Xenobiology). We thought protohuman... but that'd also be a dead or dying protohuman, which is expensive, and again, you're putting your lips on an unconscious brainless clone. Yuk. Even if Medical isn't squeamish about it, the civilian crew sure might be. So... I'm begging you, kind coders, can you make us a CPR dummy? Just a human mannequin without a heartbeat (or without organs entirely), one that we could use to hold CPR training sessions. Make it something we could order, or dial up on the holodeck, or maybe just have it stored in the back rooms of medbay somewhere to be taken out during an Extended round. What do you think? Workable?

Have we considered adding things that would be useful not just to Mining, but to other departments? I often get a Lazarus injector and deliver it to Medical, in case Crusher or Ian dies. And I've certainly ordered a half dozen pizzas and served them in the mess hall; frozen pizza is better than vendors and there isn't always a chef. Mining interacts with other departments plenty, while delivering materials and after they get back from a run. But it would be cool if they could provide more than just materials. For example: That autochisel. Ops asks for a statue, you make one, aided by the AI in your autochisel, Ops gets points, you get to flatter somebody by sclupting them. Very nice. More like that would be neat.

So you're carrying the satchel in your hand while using your KA, which takes both hands to use. Where'd you get the extra hand? Or did you leave your satchel at the end of your strip-mining row? So your ore bag is back wherever you dropped your satchel; what are you doing, picking up the ore one by one and dropping it into your crate? Dropping your KA and running back over your row with the ore bag? Now you're defenseless and a carp has bitten you; your bandages are back there with your satchel, sucks to be you, say goodbye to your blood volume. This is just not workable. A pickaxe is not a useful mining tool; where a KA takes out six tiles in one shot, a pick takes three swings to take a single tile. That's more than 18 times slower. And without an ore detector, you're going to be using that pickaxe on a lot of empty rock. I don't know about you, but I like to get back with a good haul in time to sit around in the bar and chat with my buddies. If you like poking along with a pickaxe and no ore detector, more power to you, but that's not how mining is done nowadays. Sure, you CAN mine that way, but you're gimping yourself so hard that you might as well not be playing a miner at all. As for using a hand scanner as a miner: Yes, you can use one. There's one in the Spark for you to use; why would it be there if miners couldn't have basic first-aid training? It's not like I'm doing brain surgery. Using a hand scanner is on the same level as taking someone's temperature. I usually play it as not really knowing how to read the finer details or infer what may be happening; but I can identify where they need to be bandaged or what color first-aid pouch they need. Miners without first-aid training are just looking to get killed--or watch their injured buddies die needlessly, which honestly is even worse.

Ruptured artery, then. But that's a bug anyway; having a ruptured artery SHOULD cause you to bleed internally, that's what's relevant.

Do you play miner a lot? I ask because you mention a pickaxe as though it's a normal thing to carry... which it hasn't been for ages. Carrying that much equipment hasn't got anything to do with hoarding, and every bit of preparation is absolutely necessary--you die without it, or simply can't do your job. And as I've said, you do need both your hands to manage a KA. Mining equipment, bare minimum: Harness (Loadout item): Radio, GPS, bandages. Pockets: Mining satchel, ore scanner. Belt slot: Lantern. (Your voidsuit/hardsuit only casts light forward, and enemies attack from all sides.) Hands: KA. Requires both hands. Backpack: Wrench, crowbar, screwdriver, inaprovaline autoinjector. Optional extras: Medical scanner, the rest of the toolbox, autoinjectors from the Spark vendor, extra batteries, metal rods to build lattices. We're getting to the point where a medical scanner (which can tell you if you are bleeding internally) is an "optional extra". Seriously. And yes, you can put that inaprovaline autoinjector behind your ear, but isn't it unrealistic to reach behind your ear when you have a voidsuit on? It shouldn't even be possible. A mining belt isn't the solution either, because your mining satchel, ore detector, and lantern will not work if they are in a mining belt. Miners really do need that much room. Mining really is that equipment-focused. I find it a lot of fun, especially with a buddy, but the mining vendor is quite outdated (it even has ladders; we haven't had z-level mining in ages!). It needs to be updated, plain and simple.

The issue with hardsuits is that inventory space is really at a premium for miners. You choose between a hardsuit and a backpack, and your backpack carries things like your bandages and autoinjector, which can save your life, and your tools--wrench, crowbar, and so on--which you will use for salvaging or managing drills. Hardsuits can be made with space for three small items, but that's really no compensation for a proper backpack. Your webbing, belt slot, and pockets are already taken up by radio, GPS, lantern, ore satchel, and ore detector. Hardsuits are simply not useful for anyone who has to carry a lot of stuff. And no, you can't carry a duffel in your hand the way medics do; you need both hands to pump your KA. Plus, the more you're juggling inventory, the more time it takes you to respond to the odd reaver. So yeah. Hardsuits are not the solution, unless they are re-made to fit into the suit slot and allow the use of a backpack. And I'm sure everyone would yell about that being overpowered immediately.

I'd like some quality of life stuff to be added to the mining vendors. Bottled water. Big ol' bottles of it, for the thirsty miner. Maybe a big thermos of coffee, too, so we can stop stealing the carafes from the cafe. Night-vision goggles. Lighting is hard to code, night vision is not. And night vision goggles save lives. Splints. Those broken hands and feet from fighting carp with your KA are annoying. Batteries, fully charged. Emergency autoinjectors. Coagzolug is particularly useful for slowing bleeding when you can't bandage yourself through your suit. Maybe one of those thirty-unit autoinjectors, filled with a mix of chemicals meant to keep you alive in an emergency? A selection of KA parts, beyond what we have now. It'd also be nice to be able to hack them and get stuff like hyperzine and machetes, but that'd probably take some extra coding.

Yes please. We would like to be able to go in as a matriarch and set up the engines on lowpop.

Xenobotany needs a bucket! There used to be a farmbot, and there isn't now; watering has to be done manually. There's a backpack water tank, which is nice, but a simple bucket doesn't have to be worn on one's back. Plus, in a bucket, you can mix fertilizer, water, and mutagen together and add them all in one go. The sprayer won't let you do that; put anything but water in the tank and it'll spray stuff into the air instead of adding it to trays. A couple more big beakers would be nice too, and another box of smaller beakers. Getting interesting chemicals out of your plants is half the point of xenobotany (the other half, of course, involves teleporting yourself into a table and yelling for Medical to fix your mangled limb).