RnD Tech Tree Part 3: Xenoarchaeology Overhaul

[Marlon P.]

Overview

This is the third part of my proposed RnD overhaul. Because it’s detached from the original documents it can be accepted or rejected without harming the cohesion of the other suggestions, found here.

Spoiler

 

 

Justification.

The xenoarchaeology/anomalist job has been suffering from staffing issues for years. It is also completely detached from the operation of the station as a whole, and the more important consequence of being inconsequential to its own department. The results are also repetitive, with the jobs not being satisfying in long-term play. That is why I have split them into 2 separate, 1-slot jobs.

New Xenoarchaeologist Job Basics

These scientists’ and sociologists spawn with artifacts already present in their lab. These artifacts were discovered by field teams from “the previous shift.” Using their specialized skills and cooperating with other departments they must find out as much information as they can to uncover if the artifact is mundane or extraordinary. Artifacts, even mundane ones, can carry great importance to other cultures. How far will you go for science?

Xenoarchaeologist Mechanics

Artifacts have five aspects. The xenoarchaeologist interacts with the artifact and chooses one of the following, filling in the answer from a drop-down list. Before completion artifacts are given randomly chosen descriptors. (A weird bowl ; a grooved staff ; a bold blade; etc)

• Its origin species.
  • A list of playable species.
• Its age
  • 200,000y, 10,000,y, 5,000y, 3,000y, 2,000y, 1,000y, 500y.
• Its purpose.
  • War, recreation, ceremony, politics, religion.
• Its nature as mundane or extraordinary.
• The optional True Name.
  • Provides additional benefits to its value.

Aspects are discovered when five Evidence Fragments have been discovered. These are found in the following ways.

• Special “Old Books” in the library spawn on the shelves. They do not have text like traditional books, but when ‘read’ describes an artifact used for [purpose]. The rest of the book is illegible due to damage.
  • If a Librarian is present, the Librarian can interact with the book to “restore” it, revealing the additional [era of creation] immediately.
• Up to five crew of the relevant [species] are randomly given knowledge of the artifact when they spawn, available in their notes tab. 
  • “You have heard rumors that [descriptor] made by your people was recently brought to the Aurora. It’s of great cultural value to your people. It's possibly [age] old.”
  • If no crew of the type are available, and none spawn after 10 minutes, two Old Book Fragments spawns in maintenance with only the [age] and cannot be repaired.
• Its [nature] is determined by a chaplain or by an anomalist.
  • A chaplain can examine the object and ‘inspect’ it for 20 seconds. After this is complete the chaplain learns its [true name] and [nature].
  • The artifact can be placed on a stable rift. After 15 seconds its [age] will be revealed by its interaction with non-causality.

Mundane artifacts can be:

• Shipped to NT to be sold to the highest bidder.
  • Unnamed: 100 ~ 400 credits
  • True Named: 500 ~ 1000
• Shipped to a factional embassy chosen from a list. 
  • This provides no mechanical benefits. It is for roleplaying colonialism or anti-colonialism. 

Extraordinary artifacts can be:

• Shipped to NT to sell to the highest bidder.
  • Unnamed: 1000 ~ 2000
  • True Named 3000 ~ 4000
• Used to accelerate research by being put in the destructive analyzer. 
• Within the overhauled RnD, this would add 2 points to the Xenoarch topic. This stacks.
• Used to stabilize rifts.
• Weaponized.

Edited November 23, 2021 by Marlon P.

[NerdyVampire]

Another good suggestion thread for research, and even more delightful disruption to an otherwise dull field.

5 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

Up to five crew of the relevant [species] are randomly given knowledge of the artifact when they spawn, available in their notes tab.

This is very interesting to me. It rewards a diversity and collaboration across species, and gives both antags and non-antags a lead to interact with the xenoarcheologist in a whole new way. More than anything, I think the detachment from the rest of the station is the greatest enemy of the xenoarcheologist as it is.

Overall I am already dreaming of the delicious roleplay that this can create, even if it seems a complicated affair to program. It does seem strange to me that

5 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

A list of playable species.

needs to be playable, isn't it conceivable that many of the artifacts we find stem from non-playable species?

[OffRoad99]

If this gets a pass I may just make a Science Main.

9 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

Aspects are discovered when five Evidence Fragments have been discovered. These are found in the following ways.

• Special “Old Books” in the library spawn on the shelves. They do not have text like traditional books, but when ‘read’ describes an artifact used for [purpose]. The rest of the book is illegible due to damage.
  • If a Librarian is present, the Librarian can interact with the book to “restore” it, revealing the additional [era of creation] immediately.
• Up to five crew of the relevant [species] are randomly given knowledge of the artifact when they spawn, available in their notes tab. 
  • “You have heard rumors that [descriptor] made by your people was recently brought to the Aurora. It’s of great cultural value to your people. It's possibly [age] old.”
  • If no crew of the type are available, and none spawn after 10 minutes, two Old Book Fragments spawns in maintenance with only the [age] and cannot be repaired.
• Its [nature] is determined by a chaplain or by an anomalist.
  • A chaplain can examine the object and ‘inspect’ it for 20 seconds. After this is complete the chaplain learns its [true name] and [nature].
  • The artifact can be placed on a stable rift. After 15 seconds its [age] will be revealed by its interaction with non-causality.

 

This, is what sold me. This is a bleeding-edge idea that allows Science to collaborate with two of the most niche jobs of the server that are often ignored.
I absolutely adore this. And with the NBT coming up, a chunk of Science being overhauled is going to be massive improvement.
A thousand of +1.

[Myphicbowser]

As someone who used to just sit in the Anomalist lab with nothing but whispering random items and old bowls of never ending cyanide for some reason

 

I'd very much find this appreciated, the better ideas have already been outlined above so I'm not adding anything else except how much I'd appreciate something like this. All your ideas have been pretty stellar so far and would probably fit into the NBT really well!

[Marlon P.]

8 hours ago, Myphicbowser said:

As someone who used to just sit in the Anomalist lab with nothing but whispering random items and old bowls of never ending cyanide for some reason

While that's extraordinarily funny, the novelty drains pretty fast. 

15 hours ago, NerdyVampire said:

needs to be playable, isn't it conceivable that many of the artifacts we find stem from non-playable species?

It's possible. What are your thoughts on how a non-playable race's evidence fragments could be gathered in the case that the race is established as being the ones needed to identify it? Do we call them, or is it a mcguffin? If it's a mcguffin, how can we ensure Xenoarch cannot also use the mcguffin on playable races' artifacts and automating out some of the collaboration?

These are the questions I asked myself, and I personally couldn't find an answer to them so I compromised on having artifacts come exclusively from alien races.

However, thinking about it literally as I'm writing this sentence, I suppose existing artifacts don't have to be deleted and can keep being dredged up?

[NerdyVampire]

On 24/11/2021 at 01:55, Marlon P. said:

These are the questions I asked myself, and I personally couldn't find an answer to them so I compromised on having artifacts come exclusively from alien races.

I don't have an answer, but it just seems strange that we'll likely be going into unknown space in NBT and we don't find something from other civilizations? Maybe it could simply have a unified category called 'unknown'.

[Marlon P.]

 Maybe having SOMETHING done fully by themselves wont be the end of the world... i will workshop some things and come back to you with the best iteration.

[Captain Gecko]

Interesting like the previous ones, and like the previous ones, I GOT QUESTIONS!

- Alright, so firstly, we spawn with already extracted artifacts, which is good, because working outside, depending of where the closest site is, can be a bit long. But will there still be the possibility to find artifacts and anomalies outside, say, once we're done dealing with the first five?

- Secondly, would the artifacts have the possibility to be anomalous? By this I mean artifacts taht exhibit unusual effects, kind of like we have right now when RNGeesus smiles or shits on us... Items that speak, containers that spawn liquids/gas, or even more violently anomalous finds like the infamous statuette or the Cult sword? Back in the Anomalist thread, you did say "An extraordinary artifact, which would have strange abilities and powers, would definitely be something the anomalist could play around with..." What do you envision as abilities and powers? Various effects akin to what we have now (with RNG choosing something among Funny atmospheric business, teleportations, EMPs, healing or harming waves, psionics, etc. etc.) or perhaps something different?

- Thirdly, this goes pretty much hand-in-hand with the second question, I get that these artifacts that you describe are the smaller items that we generally get, currently, in most sites. Do you intend on having larger artifacts, something akin to what some of us call the "anomalies" (the big finds that you can only push and pull, and that generally work in a on/off way), even thought they might not nescessarily work the same as they do currently?

- Lastly... Alright, this is not really a question, but while I appreciate like the idea of having a player species knowing about the find, and having said finds basically tied to the setting, I'm not extremely fond of including only playable species. Basically what NerdyVampire said. One of the good things with what we have currently is absolute freedom to interpret. It might seem dumb, but as you get more find, you might start to class them, even though said finds are all the fruits of RNG, you start putting things in this or that box, depending on the species, nation, etc. And then you'd have one, or more, categories of "unknown" species or even phenomena, and there you could go crazy. What if there is out there a species, a civilization, a culture, or even multiple, living stricly in Bluespace? What there were civilizations even before the current species? After all, when your spectronomical analysis tells you that your space death-engine is 2.6 billion years old (yes it's extremely rare but it happens), it can hardly be Human, Skrell, nor anyone else. I think we should, as Nerdy said, include a possibly "unknown" option among all of these species, this would allow us to keep a possibility to go all out on creativity and interpretation when the occasion presents itself...

[Marlon P.]

2 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

- Secondly, would the artifacts have the possibility to be anomalous? By this I mean artifacts taht exhibit unusual effects, kind of like we have right now when RNGeesus smiles or shits on us... Items that speak, containers that spawn liquids/gas, or even more violently anomalous finds like the infamous statuette or the Cult sword? Back in the Anomalist thread, you did say "An extraordinary artifact, which would have strange abilities and powers, would definitely be something the anomalist could play around with..." What do you envision as abilities and powers? Various effects akin to what we have now (with RNG choosing something among Funny atmospheric business, teleportations, EMPs, healing or harming waves, psionics, etc. etc.) or perhaps something different?

Extraordinary artifacts are both anomalous as we understand it and not anomalous as we understand it. That was extremely unhelpful, but I follow it up with this:

Quote

A poster above: As someone who used to just sit in the Anomalist lab with nothing but whispering random items and old bowls of never ending cyanide for some reason

Me: While that's extraordinarily funny, the novelty drains pretty fast. 

It actually stopped being funny. Our anomalous effects are meant for slapstick comedy and it's not conducive to roleplay as we have it currently. Anomalous effects from extraordinary artifacts need to follow three paradigms:

1. Be worthy of the title "extraordinary"
2. Be something that is presumed to be and remains canon from round-start to round-end.
3. Be something that "science" (generalizing) would want to destroy to learn more about, but which the crew of the affected culture would not.

What those effects would be is a conversation to be had with developers and administration for what we want to see in-round and for that reason I didn't elaborate on it. "An ancient Skrellian staff that (when identified) can miraculously mend broken bones" personally satisfies me, but making an exhaustive list of effects is not something I can do on my own.

Quote

Thirdly, this goes pretty much hand-in-hand with the second question, I get that these artifacts that you describe are the smaller items that we generally get, currently, in most sites. Do you intend on having larger artifacts, something akin to what some of us call the "anomalies" (the big finds that you can only push and pull, and that generally work in a on/off way), even thought they might not nescessarily work the same as they do currently?

That would work. The artifacts could be of any size. The only concern is that science can somehow vaporize it in order to improve their research or gain some other material benefit. Currently the deconstruction machine can only fit objects held in the hand, I think.

2 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

Lastly... Alright, this is not really a question, but while I appreciate like the idea of having a player species knowing about the find, and having said finds basically tied to the setting, I'm not extremely fond of including only playable species.

It's on my list to workshop a way to do this that does not gut the socialization meant to be inherent to research, and the ethical dilemma. Without crew running around who care about these objects who can persuade the xenoarch to put it in a museum or give it to an embassy... I don't know. I am working it out. I probably just need to corner someone(s) and talk it out.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Marlon P.

[Zer0Winds]

So Xenoarchaeologist is my favorite job. My problem with Xenoarchaeologist isn't the effects of Anomalies however, which are subpar and pretty boring, honestly. Its why I don't play Anomalist, but more on that in a second. Its that the crew doesn't care nine times out of ten, when the Xenoarch finds some random artifact even if they do find a way to tie it into lore. Mundane artifacts meant solely for flavor and RP, are ignored, because they aren't some atomizing crystal of death or something. Or- a whispering gas mask.

I want to keep mundane artifacts that exist solely for flavor and RP, and I want to keep some "not related to playable species" things that they can have at times. Sometimes you can tie it into a playable species yourself. Ancient urn with depictions of a reptilian humanoid race? That sure as hell sounds like a Unathi artifact to me. Statuettes with depictions of small mamallian humanoids? Sounds like Tajara probably. I want more descriptors though, more on that later. Xenoarchaeologist and Anomalist are two different jobs and I prefer it that way because when I play a Xenoarch I don't even care about anomalous objects half the time, unless I can tie together some story about it with the artifacts. The thing about Xenoarchaeology, with how I try to play it at least, is weaving together a story based on what you find. Coming up with history behind these seemingly boring objects. Trying to make them interesting with random BS a story. The freedom for Xenoarch is amazing.

Anomalist on the other hand, is more about the mechanical things, with anomalies. I always like to compare it to SCP. Anomalist doesn't really care for the history behind the object, or anything like that, they want to find out what the anomalous property is, and determine whether they can use it, contain it, or destroy it. History behind it can be beneficial, but not at the forefront of their study.

Problems with both of them honestly is the variety absolutely sucks. Artifacts: There's statuettes, bear traps, knives, forks, urns, one metal stick, spoons... And the statuette is sometimes more likely to be classified as an anomaly and is probably the most dangerous item they can ever find outside unearthing an SM Crystal. You can only do so much with "Statuette made of duranium. It is low quality." and "Strange Object. You have no idea what this is" and its just a spoon. It helps to come up with a story behind them, but honestly, again, I think there just needs to be more objects you can find. Not only the types of artifacts, more descriptors. Right now, you'll find... aluminum artifacts with nothing on them sometimes. Okay, whatever, not everything is a grand discovery. But you also find basically the same things over and over. I want more animal depictions for example, not always humanoids either. Blobs exist sometimes as depictions but that's not a common one. Why not small chitinous creatures, or large birds, sea creatures, or vague scaled beasts that could be interpreted various ways. More descriptions helps you come up with a story.

Fossils are cool. Found out recently you can sometimes assemble them, but it doesn't always seem to work, so I'm not sure how it actually works.

Anomalies suffer from even worse variety. Nine times out of ten it doesn't even do anything but glow menacingly. Sometimes it causes hallucinations, or it just talks... I think the most interesting thing I'd ever found was a crystal that supercooled a room to absolute zero. But it wears off really quickly and you're back to finding glowing balls.

In between both of those is finding antag items sometimes, like a cult sword. But those things are... eh? "Its a glowing sword that makes me scared to hold" No one cares. Everyone's seen it a hundred and one times before.

If Anomalies get more variety I'd be down for that. Same with artifacts. Hell, if I knew how to code I'd help with coming up with artifact descriptions. Might look into that actually.

Now, relating to what you said about destroying the artifacts for research- I'm on board with the idea, but only from an OOC standpoint, as I would absolutely refuse to do so IC, most times, because of the idea of "That belongs in a museum" mentality but that's an IC Conflict and I like that from OOC so good idea.