Lowpop Rounds without Power

[Myphicbowser]

Honestly, I'm biased here, so I'm starting by disclosing that.
Give us enough charge in APCs for rounds without engineers

I think it's removal was a bad decision, and I really think that the few lazy engineers is better then people spending rounds in darkness
Maybe have the Solar panels be in an all access location already wired up, something to just give us power without requiring someone to bite the bullet so we have power

Also, I don't believe "It takes away from the engineers" is a good defense since that is a single department and the rest of the station is powerless without them, which is a bit more then one department

Anyway this is more me looking for what others think and seeing if maybe needing the engine setup is good

[Arrow768]

16 minutes ago, Myphicbowser said:

I think it's removal was a bad decision, and I really think that the few lazy engineers is better then people spending rounds in darkness

Afaik we never had the capability to go for an entire round on the current map purely on SMES/APC charge without a powersource being set up.

Therefore I would be interested in the source that you based this claim on.

[geeves]

27 minutes ago, Arrow768 said:

Afaik we never had the capability to go for an entire round on the current map purely on SMES/APC charge without a powersource being set up.

Therefore I would be interested in the source that you based this claim on.

this PR of mine gave it enough charge to last 3-ish hours (don't remember exactly) https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/12230, it was nerfed later https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/12477

[Faye <3]

I would very much like to see more options to get power going when there are no engineers, as lacking them on lowpop can obstruct the entire round. Maybe solars can be accessible by more people, and able to be wired by more occupations?

[MattAtlas]

6 minutes ago, Faye &lt;3 said:

Maybe solars can be accessible by more people, and able to be wired by more occupations?

I can foresee this slippery sloping into people doing shit they shouldn't be able to, so I'm not a fan of it.

In general, this thread just proves how unsustainable lowpop is and why it's not really ever considered for balance. The game hardly works on lowpop - adding solutions to fix a problem on lowpop pretty much always ends up causing more issues for high pop (see engineers complaining about having no roundstart setup) later on, without snowflake code. Considering we've already reverted the SMES change, I don't also want to revert the revert, otherwise we'll keep doing this forever and ever.

[Marlon P.]

How about an emergency biofuel generator intended for lowpop? Pop one on the main level. Throw it in a closet somewhere. Growing trees in the garden to toss logs in is accessible by even lowpop. Maybe throw some already in there. It also has a small utility in normal rounds.

That or giving some way to manage power consumption. A power saving mode where lights are dimmed and equipment is shut off when not in use?

Lowpop shouldn't just be written off. That just further discourages anyone from playing lowpop, leading to a negative feedback spiral and itll be lowpop forever. 

[Captain Gecko]

I'm actually having fun in dedapop rounds in the dark for the unique scenarios it poses, but I play in the science department, with many tools at my disposal, and I get that the same scenario for a visitor or a chef might not be as fun at all. Also I main an Anomalist, obviously I don't mind spending rounds alone from time to time as much as some other players.

 

I get that the idea would be "located" power generation. I barely ever played engineering, so my knowledge of the intricacies of the powergrid and such aren't quite there, so maybe that's not possible, but as stated before, a way for non-engineers, non-scientists (because scientists can also build a PACMAN and steal from chemistry acquire Phoron for emergency, quick and short power supply) to generate power.

HOWEVER, it must not be something engineering related because:

- These peeps probably don't have the (IC) knowledge to operate actual engineering-grade machines

- Making it too powerfulmakes it redundant to engie work

 

What I mean by a "located and limited" source of power, IE, being only able to power a precise area of the station and nothing more, thanks to biomass, light, even some guy on a bike, I don't know! But the idea is that it doesn't power the entire station and has to be fed with some kind of easy-to-get-fuel constantly. This means that the few crew on board gets in survival mode as they have to constantly monitor this tiny generator and all gather around it, protect it from god knows what space might throw their way, and perhaps even have to move it to wherever they need to go ("We need biomass, let us move the generator to the garden", "We'll need to print something in science, let's move the generator to RnD") etc. etc.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Captain Gecko

[Tadpolesrcold]

If the solars were set at the start of the round to provide minimum power output that would solve the problem. Solars can still be upgraded with more panels to improve output and most of the time solars are never touched besides teaching apprentices how to do them.

[Marlon P.]

I don't know why I'm over here suggesting whole new powerplants when we have the solars.

Letting people route solars' power into their departments would be nice. Like as a button on an APC. It starts off, so only departments that need it draw from the solars.

[Myphicbowser]

This entire conversation happened without me while I was playing Banjo Kazooie nuts and bolts, so I have nothing to add except an idea for a possible fix here.

The ideas presented above were great, the Biofuel thing or the Solars thing, but I had another idea for an "Emergency Power" button, can only be used once per round (obviously) and it just jams a load of energy into the main area of your department, maybe accessible near your head's office

A small contained burst of power would be enough to
1. Keep a low pop round entertained since they'd at least have lights even if they couldn't use machines or charge a lot of things
2. Have a way for late joining engineers to easily jam juice into the SM machines so they can set up the engine easily

Just something to sustain low pop rounds more, please
That negative feedback loop mentioned by Marlon is very true, I sometimes just see a shift that started off with like eight people roll secret extended and an hour in everyone cryos since there are just no lights and meteors are coming in or gremorians popped up, the round stands no chance after that

[Peppermint]

Agree with Matt. Lowpop is a mess all in all, and shouldn't be used as a template for sweeping changes like this. We could continue with the 'no power means people don't have fun' to add in:

- No medical, so minor wounds kill. So let's add a magic healing pill.
- No command so people get stuck in maint. Let's give everyone more acccess.
- No security, so bugs run rampant. Let's give the crew an easily accessible rifle. 

All the above are IC issues and entirely crippling a part of a department's role for this is not something I agree with at all. Doubly so with characters magically knowing how to wire solars or set up generators and whatever. A lack of light can be a headache, but it's an easily fixable heacache. Engineering often struggles for players, and minimising its impact further is just not the way forward. 

[Pratepresidenten]

Be the change you want to see and play engineer. You like chair RP? Engineer is just the role for you! Barely anything to do aside from the 10 minute engine and shield setup, then you have hours on hours of roleplaying in bright, fluorescent lights without issue.

 

[Marlon P.]

3 hours ago, Peppermint said:

Agree with Matt. Lowpop is a mess all in all, and shouldn't be used as a template for sweeping changes like this. We could continue with the 'no power means people don't have fun' to add in:

This thread is not calling for any of the changes you listed.

What do you think we should do to help people play the game with low population rounds enjoy the game?

1 hour ago, Pratepresidenten said:

Be the change you want to see and play engineer.

People like to play jobs other than engineer. At no other point is it expected to cryo and rejoin as an engineer just to make the round playable. As I said previously it's not good to be dismissive of the concerns of lowpop people. If lowpop is sustainable enough, then it could see more players.

Power is the most basic thing that a round needs, at minimum, for our game to be playable. Is there nothing at all that you think could help lowpop?

[Colfer]

I find this issue easily repairable and unnecessary of change, anytime that I see there is no engineer on duty, I join as a maintenance drone, fill 2 portable air scrubbers with 8000kPa of hydrogen, stick them on the supermatter injection ports and turn the engine on with 20 shots, fix up the SMES with 2 transfer coils and the engine runs the entire round. As a bonus, once you ghost as a maintenance drone (Assuming you joined in as a ghost, instead of joined in from the lobby.) your respawn timer ticks down as you play, instead of ticks down when you ghost. Meaning the setup time of around 10-15 minutes you'll only require 5 minutes to respawn and can immediately rejoin the round with a minimal loss of time and a guarantee of power for the entire round.
Im not saying that people have to do this, im just saying that fixing the engine doesnt even require you to join as any station roles, you can do it as a maintenance drone fairly easily.

To make up for lost time, while the supermatter SMES discharges, you could run to R&D and grab a few new parts to spice up the machines to your department. Though this may be considered rule breaking.

[Peppermint]

1 hour ago, Marlon P. said:

This thread is not calling for any of the changes you listed.

What do you think we should do to help people play the game with low population rounds enjoy the game?

People like to play jobs other than engineer. At no other point is it expected to cryo and rejoin as an engineer just to make the round playable. As I said previously it's not good to be dismissive of the concerns of lowpop people. If lowpop is sustainable enough, then it could see more players.

Power is the most basic thing that a round needs, at minimum, for our game to be playable. Is there nothing at all that you think could help lowpop?

At no point did I suggest any of these things in a serious manner - they are things that suck on lowpop, but are fine with a balanced department and following this argument, should therefor be implented. It's a comparison.

And I do not think any new mechanics should be brought in for it. It's not unplayable by any means, but you cannot go into a lowpop round and expect all too much to my mind. 

[Marlon P.]

28 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

At no point did I suggest any of these things in a serious manner - they are things that suck on lowpop, but are fine with a balanced department and following this argument, should therefor be implented. It's a comparison.

And I do not think any new mechanics should be brought in for it. It's not unplayable by any means, but you cannot go into a lowpop round and expect all too much to my mind. 

Is it harmful to server health and longevity to give players on lowpop any means at all by which to play the game without an engineer on shift?

[Triogenix]

For me this is slightly confusing, as we already have a solution to not having engineers, borgs/AI. You can ready up as borg, or AI, setup the engine in 10 minutes, cyro and start playing again at the 30 minute mark(30 min if you can't get an admin to remove your respawn timer, which would make this 10x easier). RCON and other engineering stuff isn't required when there's 2 other people on the station.

Mechanics aren't an issue as the guide on the wiki is pretty solid at explaining how to setup the SM, and you can literally just follow that. And borgs have all the IC knowledge in the world, and(in my opinion) and designed for and only work well in Lowpop rounds, where slots desperately need to be filled for a short amount of time.

 

So yea, play borgs for the first quarter of a lowpop round for power, or just make an engineering character

[Lly2]

I don't have any comments on this specific suggestion, but it really doesn't have to be a fact of life that low pop is 16 hours of the day of complete server death; it exists as a thing because everyone knows its a thing, so nobody logs on during those hours - myself included. At this point, it's self-fulfilling. There's often groups of people on relay or discord or just generally hanging around, but nobody comes on because they know it's low pop hours. There'll always be downtime, but I'm a huge believer those "low pop hours" can be minimised by making the game more fun with small tweaks for smaller groups.

I feel like low-pop suggestions are important and should actually be considered and thought about and not just sidelined because "low pop is low pop, who cares". The amount of replies in this thread feels like evidence enough that people are interested in _some_ solution.

[MattAtlas]

25 minutes ago, Lly2 said:

There'll always be downtime, but I'm a huge believer those "low pop hours" can be minimised by making the game more fun with small tweaks for smaller groups.

Lowpop did not improve in player count when the station started with a full SMES.

People don't join rounds because of the lack of population, and it's a self-feeding cycle that you can't actually break.

[Lly2]

10 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

Lowpop did not improve in player count when the station started with a full SMES.

People don't join rounds because of the lack of population, and it's a self-feeding cycle that you can't actually break.

 

Like I said, no comments on this specific one. I wasn't there at the time, but can definitely believe that one change like that wouldn't change much.

"It's a self-feeding cycle that you can't actually break" feels like an extremely pessimistic view of the issue though. There is always room for improvement; we have plenty of European players who would be able to play 5-6 hours earlier than currently becomes high pop, so it's not like the playerbase isn't there.