Nanako

We see this at least once a month. Someone has a moral panic about a feature, new or existing, and campaigns to remove it. It happened with makeshift weapons, cargo stock, science weaponry/lockboxes, mice, telescience, complaints about merc/cult modes, and that wierd campaign to remove the bar. We usually talk it out until people get bored and leave it alone, or occasionally find an agreeable compromise. This cycle repeats endlessly, i thought we might have learned to recognise it and avoid it by now. But its happening again. Couple days ago i added a big pile of new cyborg sprites. They all went through an extensive review process and several were vetoed by skull. this is normal. The rest were approved with some minor changes, and went in. No big deal. One of those sprites happened to be a maid-shaped service borg, and headmin Itzal has a problem with it. Due to a combination of frantic shouting, and skull being too busy to debate the issue, this one has actually gone through https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/1578 The maidborg sprite has been removed, citing administrative issues, and i feel the need to protest this. 1. Calm down. We do this moral panic thing constantly. People abuse every new feature thats added for a while, without fail. Every chance causes some problems until the novelty wears off. This is no different, and people need to just calm down, chill out and deal with it, let things simmer out. The reaction to a feature within its first couple days is no reason to rashly remove it. We've always displayed temperance in the past. 2. Deal with the problem, no scapegoating. The administrative issues that caused the need for removal are actions by players. A couple bad apples playing service borgs were breaking RP standards. I saw someone using emoticons in IC chat, andironically playing a sarcastic kawaii uguu personality. New content is generally not a change in the rules, certainly not in this case. the same rules still apply on IC conduct and believable RP. They should be enforced as normal and anyone breaking them dealt with. Content doesn't cause issues. People cause issues. And generally only for a coup[le days until shit calms down and the novelty wears off. 3. It fits. A maid sprite makes sense for a service borg, because its part of a set. Service borgs already include butlers, bartenders and waitresses. They have a general theme of uniformed servants going on. Station bound units are custom built to fill a role, and be good at one specific thing. An engineering borg gets massive limbs and heavy plating, because their job is industrial. they move and operate heavy equipment, they go into spaceand patch the hull. I'm definitely not condoning a maid-shaped engineer, it wouldn't fit. The heaviest thing a service borg has to lift is a bottle of vodka. Service borgs exist for one purpose and only one purpose. Crew morale. They cook fresh food, even though we have vending machines. They serve, and actually internally synthesize alcohol, which only has recreational purposes. They fabricate and dispense cigarettes, and even dispense dice and cards so they can play games with crew. They are entirely unnecessary for any core functions, and exist only to make the crew happier A pleasing exterior is simply the logical extension of that - a more identifiable body helps with morale. TL:DR. Don't give into moral panic. Punish rulebreakers. Give new content time for the novelty to wear off This removal was entirely unnecessary and should be reverted

cult is honestly a pretty good gamemode, lots of content and relatively few obvious issues. Its fairly flexible about how you RP it, ive seen some interesting cults Its not perfect, nothing is. but it certainly doesn't need disabled or rewritten from scratch

I missed this before. I think you might have some good ideas here, ill look at this when i do genetics

Look guys, Let me make this perfectly clear: 1. You can partially spend points, so you can spend everything your team has earned this shift 2. All transactions will be recorded and reversible if necessary 3. Any decisions on whether a purchase is valid will be the responsibility of the moderation/administrative team. That is the final word on that subject. No more questions on administrative issues related to this system will be entertained. The kind of feedback i want to see in this thread is about quantifying departmental rewards, or mechanical changes to areas of research that would fit better with this system

It will also check for command whitelist status before allowing the points to be spent As an antag, spending research points would be kind of a dick move. But if someone manages to do it then thats a matter for the administration. All actions and expenditures will be logged and revertible. Admins can decide whether or not to void the purchase

has been mentioned in the past, denied by administrative veto. Discussed recently among the dev team, still not happening Engineering is a department with very few jobs as is, compared to the many that are in other roles. removing atmostech would just make engineering one massive superdepartment

ill probably get to this while working on medical/genetics stuff generally On my work list, major plans This seems like a good research item. and genetics will not be defunct much longer on the agenda i think this sounds pretty dumb. i have plans to work more towards transplanting replacements for excessively damaged organs I think these two would be contingent upon a more elaborate system of brain damage. Something like an organic equivilant of the wiriing minigame, but more complex. It's a pipe dream though, no present plans to change brain damage. more elaboration on this would be interesting Ive thought about this and personally decided it was unnecessary. If people are dead for long, they often tend to log out, or play as a mouse/drone, or maybe even respawn as another human. Or, the most common of all, they idle in deadchat while they tab out to do something unrelated to SS!3 Either way, in all cases they're not available for rejoining as a clone or borg, and thus these procedures largely fail after a significant timeperiod anyways. I don't think a mechanical enforcement of that would really change anything We already have them and you damn well know it, you of all people/ I've watched you executing people on the battlefield with polytrinic acid injection Most of this is, to some degree, already planned

How long have you been playing though? It's the opinion of many veterans that R&D doesnt have longevity, its too easy to rush up the research levels. I don't have a current plan for changing that but it's quite probable i will in future If your character knew a particular scientific field before, they still will. Its just you, the plyer, who'll need to learn new stuff. Right now the main mechanical changes are in xenoarch, many of the other areas won't be altered too much. Techs, the nature of which are described in the OP. I won't be giving exact lists of techs because i want to keep them a surprise. The specifics are only discussed internally I expect after playing it a while longer, you'll change that opinion. When you have rushing to max research levels memorised and can do it in 15 minutes. Then try doing it every round for weeks. It gets very repetitive. If i do make any change to R&D, it will probably concern removing repetitiveness from the research level process

I think you've misunderstood. I'm planning on nerfing the walk speed, not the sprinting speed. sprinting will be about as good as it is now No it isn't, that's why i made this thread. Our walking speed is presently faster than run speed used to be. the intention was to make it the same. I'd like to nerf it, but not by a great deal this is not exclusive, possibly

it seems like the best idea would just be to have the meeting room somewhere else, in a place where its not necessary to go through it

I have a plan for this drug in future, may be a while

As aurora veterans will probalbly notice, things have gotten faster recently. For at least the eight months since i joined aurora, and likely a significant period before that, we had a slower movement pace. Running was fairly slow, walking was, quote: 'Suicide tier' This thread was a great example of that: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5969 And that's why i made a sprinting system. But a spanner was thrown in the works While working on movement code i discovered a setting, Tickcomp, which is now obsolete. Its supposed function was to smooth out jerky movement, but we weren't using it. Or so skull thought. What i found was that we actually WERE using it, and it was useless like goggles. it did nothing. So we removed it. I had planned to remove it during my sprinting work, where i'd compensate for it. But someone went ahead and removed it before i was done, the net result of which is that before sprinting was added, everyone got faster. This has somehow been preserved after the addition of sprinting, due to config settings Now onto the real point of this thread: I liked the slower speed. The whole reason i made a sprinting system, INSTEAD of just increasing the base speed, was to allow people to move faster sometimes when they needed to, but to keep things at the slower pace generally. This is because i believe the slower pace is better suited for roleplay. For example, when you pass someone in the hall outside medical, you might want to talk to them. You've got to say something to get their attention before they move out of your hearing range. The faster they're going, the less time you have to type. Which imo means that a faster speed is detrimental to passive RP. I believe it's also detrimental to combat. firing guns and attacking with weapons depend on precisely clicking on your target, which gets harder when they move faster, resulting in more misses. And its detrimental to sprinting. As mentioned i designed the sprinting system to allow relief from the slow movespeed when you really want to go fast. Right now though, due to the increased walking speed, there's no reason to sprint, when walking gets you everywhere fast enough Basically, the walking speeds we have right now, are not the speed the sprinting system was designed for. Things are too fast. This increase in speed has affected everyone, not just humans, but also drones, cyborgs, mice, animals, etc. Bluespace bears are faster than i designed them to be, and i get a lot of complaints about that. We had the same speed for eight months and we were fine with it. The people who complained about it were mostly newbies from lower RP servers who weren't used to aurora. Slower speed discourages action and encourages RP more, i believe it fits out server atmosphere better. Thus my proposal is to lower the base walk speed, to get it closer to how things were before the last few months. This will affect the movement speed of everything, including all animals and NPC mobs, although speeds can be adjusted on a finer/per-creature scale as necessary. We won't slow down sprinting, sprinting is intended to be short bursts of speed and i'd like to keep that fast. I'd like community thoughts please. Do you agree, or disagree with lowering the movement speed back to how it was for most of 2016 ?

Execution is illegal under biesel law. Any execution squad can never be 'legitimate' regardless of how much NT backing they have, they're still criminals. Realistically speaking, any on-duty deaths as a result of personnel actions would need to be evaluated and defended in a subsequent legal enquiry. And shoot to kill orders would only really be defensible in extreme cases Its theoretically possible that NT could get away with murdering a group of pirates and burning their bodies. But not anyone who is an actual citizen of somewhere and would be noticed missing. Executing your employees is definitely an absurd idea, that would result in the people of biesel storming NT headquarters and lynching executives

the languages in sol common are intentionally chosen as the most spoken languages on earth, and represent the most likely cultures to be a major part of the sol alliance. The old languages still exist, nobody ever said they were abolished, there are plenty of german speakers on the station. Sol Common exists to be a COMMON language. Splitting it up defeats that purpose. Maybe it evolved, maybe it was designed. but it fills a purpose either way, a purpose which is not served by three different languages. It also fills a gameplay purpose, being a 'common human thing' that humans can reliably use when they want to be racist and exclude aliens. Thats something lore staff have strongly wanted to encourage in the past. I'm not sure what you mean by "filling the void of pure European characters we have right now.". I can't tell whether you're saying we have too many european characters, or not enough. But both are false and the statement has a wierd air of forced diversity. On any typical day, the manifest tends to contain a variety of anglophonic, french, german, russian, hispanic and japanese names as the most common. Arabic, chinese and african names are less common, but far from unheard of. Our station is naturally full of caucasians due to the primary demographics of the playerbase, that's not something language options are going to change. Lore generally entertains the sol alliance as a singular entity, not really colonies of isolated nationalities. The implication up til now has been that humanity sort of works together on the interstellar stage, ui'm not really seeing the benefit of changing it. And i think my original, quoted point, still stands. Sol Common as it is gets very infrequent use. When the probability of other humans speaking it drops from 100% to 33%, thats just going to get worse. Languages exist to communicate and are only used as long as you have someone to communicate with.

This is good, i may do this Hmm, i;m not quite seeing the purpose of this, allowing things to stretch beyond the current cycle just seems to undermine the principles Even if a certain tech is deemed so awesome that it must be gotten every time, theres still a period where they'll have to do without it, and that is contrast. techs that are repeatedly taken early may also see rebalancing to make them more expensive is it difficult to reach other zlevels? i didnt think there was an issue with that? this and virology i'm not sure about, because they are closely linked, i'm sure we'll have them back at some point and ill include them, but that may be after asteroid map is done already planned

Regarding Reports I'm not against the idea of a system for research reports, per se. but right now i remain unconvinced that its a good idea either. And as the girl who's gonna have to code it, thats not so good. My experience with paperwork in general, is that its often just viewed as a burden, most people ive observed filling in forms only do so when someone else forces them to, ive never heard anyone talk delightedly about the intense paperwork gameplay. If the feature didnt exist now and someone wanted to add it, i wouldn't personally support adding corporate forms Creative Writing in research reports is a bit more enjoyable, but i'm not convinced it'd really be used that much or be worth the effort, even with incentive. And right now we have a hard enough time getting people to contribute to the library, i'm not sure a database of reports would see much action. Farther to that theres also the issue of resetting. Do we wipe reports every month too? if so why even save them, the chance of anyone reading them is miniscule. Heck, most REAL scientific publications are read by less than ten people in the world. I can only envision that number being worse for fictional reports in a limited community. Even if they're not wiped And if they arent wiped there would be an eventual problem of repetition. How many times can someone write a report on the chemical properties of phoron? This isnt a flat no, but i'm very skeptical of this idea, and right now my cuirrent belief is that a persistent database of research reports would not be worth the effort. My effort specifically, which is whats required here. I have more exciting aspects of this massive project to work on

dont worryyy, partial spending is in. if you want X and don't have enough, you can throw everything you have so far at it and pay the rest at a later time i think they ment if one RD shows up, and then spends all RMP at once. MY position is thus: Spending RMP is the sole privilege of whoever is the research director, and they may spend any remaining RMP at any time, regardless of where it came from. functionality will be provided to spend any remaining RMP on partially purchasing a tech, allowing you to end a shift with 0 RMP remaining. If you don't do this, any RMP left at the end of the shift is fair game for whoever comes after you, you don't own it, or have any claim to it, and you wont have a say in how its spent if you're not RD next round. Unless you feel clueless about what to buy and would rather leave the choice to someone else, it would be most prudent to spend your leftover RMP at the end of a shift, and finish with zero remaining

I might have miscommunicated there, oops! I listed the tech categories to give a frsamework for tech ideas, i was looking for ideas on researchable techs to fit within them, not for new tech fields. The categories will be used to visually divide the tech tree so can't have too many of them, i used to have seven but rolled security into other areas I'd say these suggestions are somewhat redundant given the listed categories: Data Theory: Information Technology. Industrial tech: Engineering (though that might be a better name for it) Kinetics: Physics Sociodynamics: Things in that area will generally be divided among several categories more ideas are always welcome though Right now, i am especially interested in ideas for the Biomedical and Information Technology fields. These two are the ones most lacking in viable things Ill respond to the rest of your post soon, its great and full of awesome things, ive not forgotten it!

dont worryyy, partial spending is in. if you want X and don't have enough, you can throw everything you have so far at it and pay the rest at a later time

i dont quite understand this. You dont like the cycle, you dont like persistence, research is/is not annoying? I cant decipher that Then you complain about rounds ending before much science can be done. doesnt that mean you'd prefer persistence? I really have no idea what this is trying to say That ios roughly how i imagiend it yes. each new loop is a fresh start to rewrite history and a chance to be the discoverer of a thing. Its really not much diffferent to what we have now, but a longer period (a month vs two hours) makes 'discovering' things seem a lot less disingenuous What is canon/carried over/etc, will probably be at administrative discretion The full implementation of machines and devides is intended as a representation of advanced development. The advanced health scanners you've dicovered arent just a theoretical discovery, your work and testing has made it possible to move into full production and distribution, you've created mature technology that is ready to be issued to employees to improve station productivity As for how to explain the loss, i think other posters covered that quite well. Retcon, it never happened, wasn't canon, butiness as usual. Selectively writing things out of history is something we already do every round anyway, doesnt really represent a change in policy

Energy is energy Do we have actual applications for supercooling though? I can't think of any in current mechanics Management of atmospherics is more the domain of the engineering branch. I have no current plans or applications for advanced cooling systems, let me know if you do and can explain reasoninng Directed energy weapons are the domain of physics and be assured i have some plans for that. Lasers? hah

I agree with repealing. My thoughts on this issue: 1. Captain, much like imo EVERY promotion on the station, is a clearance level, not a specific job. We have an environment where people job hop frequently, and often don't turn up at work for weeks at a time (often while their player plays a different character). That's just how people like to play the game, i don't see the sense in fighting it. I believe being promoted to captain doesn't mean you command the station constantly, that creates cognitive dissonance - how can anyone else ever be captain? No, it means that you're simply a high ranked NT employee, entrusted with captain level clearance. You are still a human (or cat or lizard or whatever) with limited skills, you shouldn't be hopping between captain, chief engineer, head of security and research director, all on the same character. But it's entirely possible, reasonable, and imo even desireable, for a captain to have a specialty. Ive worked with captains who graduated up through the medical branch, and in times of crisis they weren't above coming down to personally assist a poor nurse with healing the wounded. 2. Loyalty implants. This is an important issue for me. I like loyalty implants, they fit the scifi setting quite well. They are a requirement for captain/HoS clearance. And if you do those jobs, they are something that you should have. The IC justification we have right now, that your implants are deactivated or removed at the end of a shift, is imo retarded. It exists only for the simple reason of justifying mechanics, and nobody has bothered fixing the mechanics instead. I could do that if general opinion supported it. My personal opinion is that, if your character serves as captain/HOS ever, they must be loyalty implanted. And that, as much as the security clearance, is something that goes with you. Meaning that if you officially serve those positions once, you are implanted, for life. You should have that implant forevermore, wherever you go, unless you leave NT employment permanantly and get it removed. To reflect that, i'd support making Loyalty Implants an option in character creation (for command-whitelisted players only). If you take it, your character cannot be most types of antagonists, and will always spawn with the implant regardless of which role they're playing. You can always switch to another character slot if you want to play antags. But that specific character, canonically, is implanted and can't be traitor. In addition, you will also be subject to the usual RP restrictions on implanted roles. IE, willingly doing things that harm NT or its image (like stealing, torturing/executing prisoners, assaulting people, getting drunk on duty, etc) is something your character should be physically unable to do, and become an OOC/administrative issue rather than an IC one. If you don't take an implant, and/or remove it, you cannot join as Captain, Head of Security, or Internal Affairs Agent on that character. Attempting to join as these roles will give an error and kick you back to the lobby

TECHNOLOGIES: Until this post i've not said much about the details of upcoming technologies. If you hoped for more info here, then you'll be a little disappointed. The exact details of the technologies i'm adding will not be revealed here, largely to maintain the surprise and novelty value. You can find out about all the nice stuff once it's released. What i will talk about though is the design principles involved. Research projects is, ultimately, a mechanism for getting more mileage out of content, and a balancing framework that allows for more significant content. In essence, the whole thing is designed to give you nice things, and nice things shall come. All of the researchable things will change how the game is played in some way, so that at any particular point in a research cycle, gameplay will be somewhat different, depending on what techs have been researched. It is also a way to advance things, and to introduce fancy and obscure scifi concepts, without the risk of normalising them and losing the specialness. Technologies are intendeded, overall, to benefit everyone, not just research. So technologies that only add new protolathe recipes will generally not be happening. Most of the results from a researched tech will be present at roundstart from the rest of the cycle, and in general will work themselves into broader gameplay organically. At its base level, research projects means more content. Lots more. I'm hard at work coding and spriting tons of new features and mechanics to be unlockable through this system. Upgrades that just change numbers are boring, uninteresting, and not often worth the effort unless particularly inspired. A new machine to learn, with fancy new sprites and a function you never knew you needed, is far more interesting. Technologies are loosely divided into six categories. These categories are of origin, not of application. they are generally intended to represent the field of science which spawned the idea. Note that these categories do not necessarily/at all correlate with station departments of similar names. The categories are: Physics The study of high energy mechanics, energy fields, bluespace, teleportation, shielding, directed energy weapons, and basically just about anything to do with energy. Chemistry: The study of (non-medical) chemicals, new elements and compounds, materials, metallurgy and alloys, explosives, phoron, armour and ballistic weaponry, interesting reactions and properties of matter. A broad category that can encompass most things concerned with inorganic matter. Biomedical: The study of life, and lifeforms. Plants, animals, humans, cellular biology, viruses, and in general just about anything to do with organic matter. Any advances related to healing, medicine and generally preserving life go here, as do many kinds of poisons and toxins. Robotics: By far the most specific category, but allowed because the things in it are such a big part of gameplay. The robotics category is for any technology concerned with robots, androids, cyborgs, bots, positronic brains, artificial limbs and organs. Possibly also hardsuits. This is a limited scope in theory, but these things offer a LOT of potential for expansion and upgrading Information Technology: A broad category which is largely concerned with software, though some hardware upgrades are in it too. Techs in this category concern upgrades to AIs, pAIs, computers/laptops/tablets, apcs, consoles, PDAs, and in general behavioural and logical aspects of station systems Engineering: The last and most general category. The engineering area is concerned with power, atmospherics, exosuits, vehicles, voidsuits, doors, lights, APCs, pipes, and in general most physical, structural and hardware-related aspects of station systems. It tends to serve as a gathering point for techs that just don't quite fit anywhere else Got a tech idea in mind? I'm open to it. The research system will be a good way to add new content. Just bear in mind that it has to be suitable. You must be able to ask, 'Why would NT devote research efforts to this? How does it improve peoples lives, and how does it improve gameplay?" If you have ideas that Once this project is released, i intend to continue working on it. This is not something ill finish and move on from. This will be a framework for future content. And over the next year or so, i'd like to add a lot more unlockable stuff in various smaller updates, which will often include revamping and altering existing mechanics to make room for expansion. Your contributions are welcome, and i have recently done a major audit of the suggestions forum, going back at least a couple years, to dig up potential ideas for this

Now onto the main meat of this thread, the reason I'm talking to the community now. As mentioned, the plan is to reward each department with RMP for various research oriented actions. I have some great insights on this design process, but i would like to open it up a little to community input. RMP is a reward mechanism, and it stands to reason that it should reward good behaviour. As we are a heavy roleplay server, it should ideally reward good science roleplay, rather than powergaming. And it should strive to ensure that the most enjoyable way to play the game, is also the best one. This system is being built from the ground up, with full accounting and reversibility of everything. Call me paranoid, but people just love to exploit and cheat, especially when there's something to gain, however tangible. The system is being designed to ensure people cannot simply farm or grind RMP with boring behaviours. I would like to share my design insights, and ask for feedback, particularly about the areas i don't yet have a plan for. RMP Gains will be segregated by department. Currently, the following are planned departments for contribution to research: Robotics R&D Toxins Telescience Xenoarchaeology Xenobotany (and botany in general) Xenobiology Virology Library I would like to discuss each of these departments. Specifically, i am interested in your opinions of what is a good way to roleplay these jobs. What should such a person be doing, and how can their efforts be measured and rewarded by the system Note that not all areas are made equal. the library for instance, has a role in propagating knowledge, but it's fairly minor. This will be correspondingly represented with very minor RMP gains from library activities, generally much less than the 'real' science areas. Lets start with the order that i'm working in: Library: As mentioned, the library is a very small contribution to research. generally all the other areas will contribute about 10x as much, each, as the library does. perhaps even more. Nevertheless, a little bit still helps The library is currently awarded RMP for two things: 1. Keeping the shelves stocked. Every unique book in a bookshelf within the library gives a very tiny amount of RMP periodically. A good librarian should therefore ensure that all the shelves are kept stocked up with things. Unique is important, multiple copies of the same book only reward once. This reward is only given if there is an active (alive, not-ssd, not-afk) librarian on staff. If they just fill the library and go cryo, they wont gain any rewards. They should remain active, and roam around the station encouraging people to read stuff 2. Reading. A tiny amount of RMP is gained whenever anyone, anywhere, reads a book. This is intentionally vague. It will be a small trickle from reading reference manuals if nobody is pushing it, but it presents an opportunity for a librarian player to contribute by actively encouraging reading, and delivering interesting books to people. This does come with built in anti spam measures, so a librarian that sits in a corner just reading will not gain as much as one that encourages reading by others. Xenoarchaeology: Xenoarch is, more than most, an RP-heavy area of science. I have put great effort into improving and tweaking its mechanics, including improvements to geosample scanning and find distribution. It's also a department full of arcane complexity and confusing mechanics, that's something i like and have tried to preserve, while ironing out bugs. I've also significantly improved interactions with rocky debris and strange rocks, as well as making debris far less common, and far more interesting when it does appear In general, i believe the following things in xenoarch should be rewarded: 1. Careful Excavation Digging up rocky tiles, rocky debris, and strange rocks, in a precise manner that allows unearthing the things hidden within, without damaging them. And making good use of your fine picks, suspension generator, depth scanner, etc. Important here is that this is rewarded whether or not you find anything, good scientific practise deserve 2. Finding things. Artifacts and finds are rewarded just for digging them up, although that's only a part of it. 3. Analysing finds. There's a variety of tools for analysing anomalies, and for radiocarbon spectrometry of finds. I've been working on improving and rewarding these mechanics. A spectrometer analysys of any find or core sample (only one reward per unique item) and an analysis of alien artifact will yield rewards. 4. Anomaly batteries. A little known feature, you can capture the energy from an alien artifact into a portable device that allows reuse of it . making these will be rewarded too R&D: The main department, concerned with research levels and protolathes. This will probably be the largest RMP contributor on average, but we'll see how things balance out. R&D also acts as an umbrella for other departments. To that end, the following things will be rewarded: 1. Active science staff. Scientists, Lab assistants, and research directors, will generate small amounts of RMP over time just for existing. Of course, they have to be alive, conscious, not-SSD and not afk. In essence, they need to have players actively playing them. The assumption here is that a scientist who's actively playing, is probably doing science. Maybe he's writing reports or testing weapons or discussing theories. Some things aren't really possible to measure, and so this exists as a flexible reward for an assumption of good science behaviour. 2. Research levels: The Research Projects system is largely seperate from the research levels thing, but there is a link here. RMP is awarded over time based on the state of the research levels. This is something of a stopgap, the research levels sytem may need a bit of overhauling itself, but i've yet to see any good ideas for how. i have some big ideas of my own, but they may not make it into this first iteration. For now, research levels will be rewarded as they are. Note that this is intrinsically linked with reward 1. In order for rewards to be given for research levels, there has to be at least one active scientist/LA/RD. So no rushing the levels and then cryoing. 3. Protolathing. A good scientist's job often includes making things for the station. new manipulators for upgrades, laser scalpels, bluespace beakers, advanced energy weapons, hyper power cells,, etc,. R&D will be rewarded small amounts of RMP for making anything in the protolathe. The exact reward is based on the materials involved - bags of holding, which require rare elements, are worth a lot more than making tiny PDA cartridges that only require common things. In addition, there is a small one-off reward for the first time any unique thing is produced. This is intended to encourage scientists to make one of everything and experiment with all the strange oddities in there. Conversely, there are diminishing returns for spamming. Every copy of something after the first is worth less and less and less. So even if you make bags of holding all day you won't get much research, best to diversify THE LINE --------------------------------------------- This line right here marks the difference between work, and proposed work. Everything above this line is stuff ive already coded. Everything below this line, is simply things i plan to code. This is where i'm at now. I'll try to move this line as i progress with this project ------------------------------------------------ Toxins Telescience Virology These three are a big questionmark. I'm not sure yet how to reward them, or what behaviours in these departments represent good science RP and deserve to be rewarded. I am very especially interested in input on how to reward these three departments. Please post any input you have I'm aware that virology is not in science, but its primary function is nevertheless scientific and developmentally oriented. Robotics The red headed stepchild, robotics is that bastard lovechild of science and engineering, but science won the custody battle after their bitter divorce Robotics is by far the most commonly played part of science, and it serves as much of a maintenance/service role as it does a research one. It is therefore important to note that, not being a 'pure' scientific department, rewards from robotics will be less. It will earn roughly half of the RMP that other areas of science do, to compensate for the fact that its always occupied. Nevertheless it shall be rewarded, here's my plans of what for: 1. Making bots! Medibots, cleanbots, floorbots. etc. All robots built will give a small RMP reward. The rarer ones, like ED 209, will give a far larger reward, due to the difficulty and interdepartmental cooperation involved in making them. 2. Cyborgs! All station-bound synthetics will generate small periodic RMP awards, as long as there is an active roboticist. It's assumed that there is scientific value in operating, maintaining and observing them 3, Exosuits Constructing an exosuit is a major investment of time, energy, and resources. It deserves to be rewarded, and it shall be. Any exosuit made will be rewarded with RMP. The ripley and odysseus, being more common, will generate a much smaller reward than the much-rarer exosuits like durand, gygax, etc. 4. Fabrication: Much like the protolathe, building stuff in the robotics fabricators will be rewarded. Similar rules apply: Rewards based on materials used, bonus for unique things, penalty for repetition. Xenobiology I have some big plans for this. Currently, xenobio is siime farming simulator 2012 There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, and i certainly won't get rid of the slimes, although there are some bugs and improvements that can be worked on. However, i believe xenobio should have a broader role, and RP ive seen over the past year seems to agree. Xenobio is the premier authority on wierd shit. People drag something there when they don't know where else to put it. Changelings, borers, geiger-xenos, etc. I like that element and plan to expand upon it, giving it the additional role of general 'place to study wierd creatures'. To that end, i have a smaller project planned to add to it, which was unveiled earlier to a mixed reception http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7354 http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7349 This project is still on the books, and the creature scanner is intended to be one of the primary ways that Xenobiology will earn RMP. 1. Analysing creatures. As mentioned this would involve the creature scanner which i'd like to add. Analysing the same type of creature up to three times will yield research points. (Note, that's up to three creatures of the same species, not the same creature 3x) 2. Slimes! Removing and activating slime cores has plenty of research value. especially if you use them to create golems or turn a colleague into a slime creature. Rewards from slime cores will likely follow the establioshed principle - additional reward for uniqueness, less reward for repeating the same thing. 3. Captivity I certainly intend to add some means to capture creatures alive, and possibly tame them. An overhaul of animal AI is long overdue. Keeping creatures captive - alive and fed- in xenobiology for study, should probably be rewarded] Xenobotany This one is a little vague at the moment, but there's a lot to work with here. our plant growing systems are pretty robust and well made, there are some improvements that could be added, particularly when it comes to mutated/modified plants, but i think not too much needs to change. Xenobotany just needs some purpose. Rewards should probably be for growing stuff, mutating plants, modifying seeds, and, quite importantly, for correctly deducing and recording plant genes. I'll need to write a system for documenting that. I expect most of the things for xenobotany could apply to normal (non xeno) botany in the garden too, and civilians could earn RMP for experimenting with mutating their rice plants.

Hello i am nanako, developer. You might know me from such things as The Diona Overhaul, a four month epic. Random Cargo Stock, or how cargotechs can get free booze and cigs, and Exosuit Crashing, a hearty 'fuck you' to firelocks and windows. I'm here today to talk with you about my Next Big Thing. The new Aurora Research Projects system. An Overview: This will be my largest project yet, it is intended to entirely overhaul the science department and give it more reason to exist. But more significantly, this project intends to give us ALL a reason to exist. Aurora is, theoretically at least, a research station. Although many rounds are just medical and security waiting for antags to happen. This project is intended to give the station a purpose, something people can do, and a common goal to work towards during peaceful times. And as a foreword, i should note that this is a longterm project. based on my track record, a rough ETA is three months from now, New research system coming Q1-2, 2017 So what is it? Here are the three tenets of this project. These three statements are, as far as i'm concerned, non negotiable, they form the core of the design. 1. The Research Projects system is first and foremost, about persistence. All areas of the science department (and a couple outside of it) will generate Research Meta Points (RMP) from their research oriented activities. These points are stored in an external database and will last beyond the current shift. They are not lost at the end of the round, and they will persist between rounds, as will the things they unlock 2. The research projects system is about change and variety RMP which are saved up, can be spent at any time, by a Research Director, to unlock technologies. These technologies will be presented in a tech tree, somewhat akin to strategy games like the civilisation series. Each tech comes with a fancy name and interesting lore blurb, but more importantly, all techs create a meaningful and permanant* change to some aspect of gameplay. Techs will not just benefit the science department, but are for everyone. And will result in new machines appearing in departments, new equipment in job lockers, new behaviours for existing things, and new items added to random spawning pools (like the armoury.) Most techs, once researched, will have an effect that does not depend on farther effort from the science people to use it. If a new machine for medical is researched, then that machine will appear in medical at the start of every round from then on. All of these techs are designed to alter how the game is played. Sometimes to get rid of mechanics that are boring or undesireable, sometimes to throw a roadblock in the way of tactics and methods that are overused, sometimes to add viable alternatives to favourite tools and weapons that everyone usually sticks to. 3. The research projects system is cyclical Now this is an important point to understand, and a bitter pill for some people to swallow. The research projects system will work on a cyclical system: At the end of each research cycle, all RMP and researched techs will be wiped. All that is unlocked will be taken away, and everything reverts back to normal, ready for a new cycle where you'll start over and unlock things again. The system will be tuned over time so that it won't generally be possible to unlock everything within one cycle, encouraging the community to try different paths in each new cycle, and set different goals. A research cycle will last for one month. Roughly 30 days. Hence, there will be twelve resets per year. This is happening because it's the best choice, and also because it's necessary. Why is it necessary? The aurora development team is small. Admittedly we are actually larger than certain major game companies, we have 6-8 coders, 6+ writers, and 1-3 artists. However we are all part time volunteers with varying levels of commitment. Without a regular reset, this system would require rapid ongoing development to remain meaningful. A large company like valve could do such a thing, churning out new features and shiny things every week. We cannot, and the fact that i'm largely working alone on this project (for now at least) only compounds that. Without regular resets, neither I, nor the dev team, can keep up with the community. You guys would quickly unlock everything, and stop caring about research. Why is it a good idea? The key idea here, is efficient use of content. Say for example, a new tech is introduced to create Advanced health scanners. You research that, you get fancy new health scanners with new functions and a new icon. You'll have fun with the novelty for a week, maybe two. And then, much like the 'advanced' mass spectrometer, the novelty wears off, and your shiny new thing just becomes the new normal. In time, you'd forget that the old health scanners even existed, or what they looked like. Their sprites would rot in the archive for all eternity and in a year or two, people would demand even more advanced scanners with even more features. A regular reset, provides a contrast, and that's important. Under this system, you'll get your fancy new health scanners, you'll love them, and then a couple weeks later they will be taken away. You'll get the old, less-powerful versions back. You'll miss them and perhaps want the advanced ones again, and thus interaction is created in you pestering science to research them. In the meantime, your health scanners will look differerent depending on whether or not the upgrade has been researched, you'll have one sprite half the time, and one the other half, more variety means less chance of getting bored. But more significantly, the gameplay effects of them become more pronounced. Maybe your new health scanner has a lifeform scan in it, that makes it easy to find corpses hidden in dark corners, and that makes an antag's life harder, that might mean they can't hide corpses in an unflushed disposal anymore. If you had that all the time, that tactic would simply vanish. But when you only have that advanced scan sometimes, it means that there's a new factor to consider. sometimes, like at the start of a cycle, you'll have to struggle without it. And that contrast creates variety in gameplay, which is a good thing. All of that aside, i believe the monthlong cycle period is a good length, and it is unlikely to change. As new content is added to this system in future, i will likely increase the density- rather than the length of the cycle. That is, as i add more stuff ill gradually either lower tech costs or increase research gains, so you can get more stuff in the same time. -Continued in next post-