NBT Testing Weekends

[VisVirific]

Currently, the area with the Vacant Office and the Holodeck (Crew Quarters Hallway according to the APC) only has 1 entrance, which is a stairway that's pretty isolated. Something that could help would be refitting the Firefighting Equipment into another entrance into Medical.

Here's the Firefighting Equipment room in question.

 

And here's the area overall. There's just not enough space to try connecting it with the maintenance tunnels, especially as the Vacant Office (towards the right) is directly blocked by Telecomms.

 

Here's something I think could work, but then again it's very much up to Map Folks.

[Butterrobber202]

I am here to do my bit of complaining, but first, I think most of the map is very good. I'm sure once it all works out that it will be uber good.

 

Spoiler

This is a lot of wasted space. I know walking up to the window is cool, but I would much prefer having departmental consoles on the Bridge, where I can easily access information to make decisions instead of having to run into the command bunker behind me for such info. I believe this could largely be solved with tossing out the office cubicle and moving it into Bridge Officer Preparation, and moving those seats to somewhere else on the Bridge. I do not need the overabundance of each specialized departmental computer on the Bridge, like the Aurora does, but having a general console for each department would do leaps and bounds for info on the Bridge. Specifically this floor plan I proposed doesn't have to be used, as long as we get the consoles.

 

The blue arrows suggest button re-arrangement. The crew armory button isn't easily accessed from the chair, and the two buttons next to the chair are in the way of my next suggestion. The air alarm gets scooted over for the sake of the buttons.

 

Spoiler

I dislike pointing directly to another server, but one feature I absolutely do not wish to live without from our ship-bound counterpart is the Navigation Screen. It is a console that sits next to the Captain's chair. It gives them absolutely no control over the controls of the ship, but merely lets them monitor sensors and the presented information. I beg that this gets added to the Horizon.

[TrainTN]

After a couple rounds on it, I don't think I'm a fan of all the decorative staircases with railings everywhere. Yeah, it's adds some variety to the ship's looks, but it also makes things more tedious to get around, and the place is already rather cramped in some areas. I forsee people getting stuck in some circumstances. Speaking of stuck, there's a glass door in the northwest corner of the Intrepid's hangar that hangar techs have no access to.

I'm also confused on some layout decisions. There's two bars, and two lounges. The bathroom with the stairwell was mentioned earlier in the thread and that's outright bizarre. The crew quarters is scattered all around the second and third decks on both sides. Getting around is really confusing with how everything is arranged, sometimes it feels like every department is haphazardly jammed together. Maybe I should look at a map to try to better understand how the ship is organized. Also, shouldn't the topmost deck be Deck 1, and the lowest deck be Deck 3? Isn't that how it's sorted on ships or am I misremembering?

[hYPERION]

I dont want to come off as mean or dis-respectful but there are some mapping choices that I find to be bad or questionable, but thats not to say the map is bad, its just that some areas are really weird and there's some weird decisions. I will provide feedback on how the problems / areas I dislike could be improved.

One of the bigger issues I see, Why are there so many railings and windoors!?!? Do areas like these stairs really need to have random glass surrounding them? And if its supposed to stop unauthorized personnel, cant they just jump over the railing? It does nothing but make areas more annoying to traverse and feel less like an actual space that could exist. The solution here is to just remove the glass around the stairs.

Another area that suffers from railings and windows is the science EVA preparation/robotics lift area. Does the table in the center really need glass walls for whatever reason? why is the elevator to robotics sealed off by flimsy glass doors while there's a full maintenance airlock and wall right next to it? Also the EVA area has shutters to close stuff down, but right next to that locked down area there's a flimsy glass wall that leads straight into the equipment area. Also why do the floorgrates in the area to the right require glass shielding and railings? Them being their would make it hell to drag push a bunch of stuff through the area and to also just makes no sense. I suggest removing the railings and glass on the room to the right, removing the two pieces of glass on the table, the window next to the shutters that lead into science EVA should either be replaced with a wall or a proper full tile window area which also includes shutters. The robotics lift should be fitted with proper elevator doors, or have the south windoors replaced with a wall and have no doors as the current windoors are just silly.

< the area to the right of science EVA. (those valves cant even be reached without having to jump over something.)

The robotics lab has some very annoying design choices relating to windows and railings again, why does the mechbay need to have windoors and railings to access the charging platforms? It only serves to make the lab more awkward and annoying to traverse, why does the counter area need to be sealed in its own glass area? It just makes it even more annoying to access and in case of some atmos failure it doesn't have its own ventilation or air alarm, also why are there pieces of glass over a WALL, as for suggestions, if possible it would be nice to see some proper elevator doors for the lift, and a call button that's not on the lift itself, turning the walls with glass next to them into proper full tile windows and moving the windoors in would make the area a lot nicer and make more sense, also the counter should have its glass walls removed as well as the mechbay should have the railing and windoors removed, also the lab needs a cell charger.

The central tree area confuses me, while I myself am not the biggest fan of the tree Ive seen others like it so I'm not gonna suggest removing it, instead I would advise to remove the weird railing spiral around it, it adds nothing to the area other then making it harder to sit down in the few chairs that are already there and instead allow the space to be used to make the tree area as a whole a better lounge are or something. Also again removing the glass around the table and vending machines would look much nicer.

While im covering the central areas of the ship, I want to bring up the holodeck, the current position of the holodeck is really bad. On the Aurora it acted as a very nice gathering spot and social area due to its central location. As people were doing whatever in the holodeck people would pass by and see something interesting, Ive witnessed boxing matches that draw in new players, battlemonster games that people come in to view, and overall its just a great way to create moments for people to interact, the current central areas do not have this, the tree is a neat set piece but there's not much of a reason to actually linger around it, and the 3rd deck is a joke, the bar there is rarely used and serves almost no purpose other occasionally drawing some people away from the proper bar, so to remedy this I suggest the following. Fill in the 3rd deck and move the holodeck into the center, this way it still creates a open space while also giving people an actual reason to stay around, it also fits because the holodeck moves closer to the civilian areas like the fitness room and pools. ( and also it makes breaches on the 3rd deck less likely to turn the 2nd and even some parts of the 1st deck into vacuums! )

< Fill in and put holodeck here.

Maintence also has way too much railing, not only is it annoying for moving around, it also gets in the way if your dragging something and need to turn back or have someone pass by, I recommend stripping some alot of the railing to make it a less annoying and more traversable space. This issue is everywhere so I'm only gonna post a few pictures.

(whats with the random plating and rails? (and thats not multi-Z by the way)

What does any of this railing protect from?

I love everything about this tunnel except the railings blocking access to wires & pipes.

Another weird design choice is random Z-level overviews and holes around the ship. I recommend just removing them to make breaches between levels less likely and easier to fix, and to make the ship more consistent and less patchy.

This overview is just out of place, its not even looking over anything interesting.

And if deck 3 is breached it can spread to all the decks via this random overview.

These holes on deck 2 also serve no purpose and could lead to a multi deck de-pressurization easily.

This is another weird one, why not just fill it in and put some vendors or something? It would help with potential elevator traffic.

The last area im gonna cover is the AI core, I think its a downgrade in almost every way compared to the Aurora AI core, for some reason its spread between all 3 decks and doesn't have a backup SMES, I would suggest putting it entirely on deck 3 around where the current deck 3 part of the AI core is, theres plenty of space up there and it makes it a far easier to manage and more secure space as well as allowing AI shells and borgs to easily traverse it, Id recommend making the AI core pretty similar to the Aurora one as it was one of the better cores Ive seen on any server.

  Make the AI core all on one level to the right area between crew armory & teleporter

There's more I wanna go over such as the new sprites and the engineering break room being in some dark corner no one will visit or tech storage being far away from engi, but this post is getting to long. I really want to make it clear I want to love the Horizon, but stuff like what Ive shown just makes the Aurora feel so much better, the Aurora map is the best SS13 map I've ever played, it had a perfect blend of z-levels and flat areas as well department spacing, and areas like the offices could look spot on to real life locations, I really hope that the Horizon gets refined more and ends up having the same qualities that made the Aurora so nice and functional!

[WickedCybs]

I finally got to play some real rounds this weekend and it's been quite a bit of fun, especially on the bridge. Before, command was rather separated and had no natural area to group together but now they do and they get bridge crew to make it more lively. On bridge crew, it would seem there's a lot more trust put into them considering they have miniature disruptors, access to announcements and such. It seems to be working out as a fun role on its own, very good that it's also serving as a way to learn aspects of command assuming that's staying.

Other than that, the map is quite cool and the speed of the changes and fixes even on the this single testing weekend was pretty impressive, I think every single one of my issue reports was fixed basically. I hope more people remember to use issue reports. My earlier concern of there being a lot of 2 tile hallways ended up I think not being very applicable. Having time to wander around I've found there's quite a bit of space. I think the walkways on the top level are the only thing I think could be extended to three.

Also, very cool use of the single tile windows and windoors when making the EVA areas. I think while some might want full walls and windows, it does kind of give it a unique look. I just like it a lot for some reason.

At the moment, I can think of a few suggestions as well. EVA lacks inflatable boxes and more would be nice. Since the Horizon is a ship setting, I think it'd also be fair to finally up the voidsuit amounts for other departments. Security and medical shouldn't need to get by on two anymore since the likelihood of needing EVA protection is far greater now. Command having its own style of voidsuit would also be ideal for the bridge crew at the least too, else they need to borrow or use the basic spacesuits.

For the Intrepid, the main airlock is rather small. Space constraints are probably an issue, though a 3x3 box would help in moving most teams since the 2x22 is going to be a roadblock on any expedition with more than four members unless they lay down. It would also allow more vents to be fit in. Cycling is currently really slow, that could also be due to Aurora vents not draining as much in general.

Edited January 31, 2022 by WickedCybs

[niennab]

What I love most about NBT is how there feels like more opportunities for departments to engage with one another. A lot of the roles just generally feel 'cooler' as well, if that makes any sense. Incredible work, really.

I meant to post this eons ago but I wanted to ask if cargo could have buttons on the walls to call their elevator up/down. As it stands, you can only move the elevator if you're on the floor that it's on. I can see about getting screenshots during another week just for visual clarity.

[Sparky_hotdog]

18 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

The best solution, by far, seems to be, simply, to give the science department its own little shuttle/pod to do its job, one that can easily be accessed and lead quickly to the Xenoarcheology department, the same way the mining pods can lead to the smelting room. Until then, giving scientists access to the Operations Department can be a temporary solution, so that a mining pod can be borrowed for their work, if no miner is willing/able to work/share if they are present at all.

This is a solution I'm not sure about. On the one hand, I did play a round the other day as xenoarch with no bridge crew, and yeah, it kinda sucked. The actual round was alright because of antag shenanigans, but not being able to do my actual job wasn't great.

On the other hand, last night I hopped onto Bridge Crew for the first time and had a blast leading an archaeology expedition. Did it go smoothly? Not at all. Was it fun? Absolutely. For LOOC discussions with the others, one of the best parts of NBT archaeology is that it's no longer a lonely journey onto the asteroid to dig up some artefacts. Now you have friends to talk to while EVA, RP being a clever scientist to, etc. And I'd be really cautious about giving research a pod for fear the expectation would shift and we'd lose this. Sure some players might stick with using the Intrepid on higher pop rounds, but I worry not all.

There was a suggestion on the forums a while back about an xenoarch rework (as part of a larger R&D rework iirc), and while that whole project may have been quite ambitious and might not see the light of day for a while, if ever, the idea of giving xenoarch something to do on the ship seems like the happy medium to me. That way you have bridge crew and you still get fun expeditions, but if you don't you aren't stuck with nothing to do.

As a very quick side note, one thing I'd like to see is a name for the Mining Pod (and I guess if we get a research shuttle, that too), because right now the fact one of the shuttles is and the others aren't is weird to me.

[OffRoad99]

14 minutes ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

This is a solution I'm not sure about. On the one hand, I did play a round the other day as xenoarch with no bridge crew, and yeah, it kinda sucked. The actual round was alright because of antag shenanigans, but not being able to do my actual job wasn't great.

On the other hand, last night I hopped onto Bridge Crew for the first time and had a blast leading an archaeology expedition. Did it go smoothly? Not at all. Was it fun? Absolutely. For LOOC discussions with the others, one of the best parts of NBT archaeology is that it's no longer a lonely journey onto the asteroid to dig up some artefacts. Now you have friends to talk to while EVA, RP being a clever scientist to, etc. And I'd be really cautious about giving research a pod for fear the expectation would shift and we'd lose this. Sure some players might stick with using the Intrepid on higher pop rounds, but I worry not all.

There was a suggestion on the forums a while back about an xenoarch rework (as part of a larger R&D rework iirc), and while that whole project may have been quite ambitious and might not see the light of day for a while, if ever, the idea of giving xenoarch something to do on the ship seems like the happy medium to me. That way you have bridge crew and you still get fun expeditions, but if you don't you aren't stuck with nothing to do.

As a very quick side note, one thing I'd like to see is a name for the Mining Pod (and I guess if we get a research shuttle, that too), because right now the fact one of the shuttles is and the others aren't is weird to me.

The difference is that the Intrepid could still be utilized as a multi-role vessel, in some post above this I've mentioned four examples of how and why the Intrepid could be used. Xenoarchelogist needs to be independent and have some sort of Mining pod of its own. Leave the Intrepid for longer, multi-departmental explorations.

2 hours ago, WickedCybs said:

 

At the moment, I can think of a few suggestions as well. EVA lacks inflatable boxes and more would be nice. Since the Horizon is a ship setting, I think it'd also be fair to finally up the voidsuit amounts for other departments. Security and medical shouldn't need to get by on two anymore since the likelihood of needing EVA protection is far greater now. Command having its own style of voidsuit would also be ideal for the bridge crew at the least too, else they need to borrow or use the basic spacesuits.

 

Also this.

Edited January 31, 2022 by OffRoad99

[Sparky_hotdog]

Putting my general feedback in a separate comment.

First up, the design decision to actually use all of the z-levels is amazing. I do think the lack of a publicly accessible way down to deck 1 other than a lift is odd, especially given that floor is where all of the escape pods are. Right now, if power goes out and the ship needs evacuating, anyone without maintenance access is stuck without someone putting a ladder up into one of the holes.

Speaking of the holes, I love them. It might be a little odd, especially given the Horizon was supposedly designed for space efficiency, but I guess call it airflow or something. It really works with the amount of usage the z-levels all see now, not to mention it can provide some interesting navigation options.

Of a similar strain are the railings, and again I don't see the problem with them. Even the ones not over holes, as these are usually in maint and help to give it a more 'bones of the ship' vibe imho. One railing that annoys me is the one on the Intrepid, near the stairs leading up to the cockpit. This might be okay once the faster vault times PR is in, but right now there's just no easy way in and out of the cockpit.

Leading us onto the Intrepid. I like it generally, though putting less on the ship to start with might be a good idea. Right now it starts with a field generator and a floodlight, meaning there isn't much of a reason for research to bring their own. Also, the empty crates/tanks on the starboard side being off the ship would be nice, even if they're near to the hangar. Reason being that having also played a tiny (and I mean tiny) amount of Hangar Tech, they don't feel like they interact with anything in hangars a whole lot, considering its in their job title. They can't even reach the mining pod to help fuel that, and the Intrepid can in theory just go without any set up. I know it would be busy work for the sake of busy work, but I think it would be fun to help load stuff onto the shuttle to prepare for an expedition. Also, relating to the crates on the starboard side, due to the strange extra seat by the cargohold buttons, you can't put these crates back at the moment once they're out. Finally relating to the Intrepid, the bridge crew don't have access to the small airlock on the port side. I don't know what that's for, but it's odd the folk flying the ship can't access it.

Only other critique would be how strange access can be sometimes. There's a windoor in the Intrepid hangar that hangar tech's can't open, yet they can get around to the other side through the cargo corridor. And as I've already mentioned they can't access the mining pod. The chef seems to be able to get into botany through the maint garden, yet cannot use the counter windoor between the kitchen and hydroponics. That might be intentional, but it feels weird.

That said, as much as this was quite a bit of criticism, I really enjoyed all the rounds I played this weekend. Keep up the good work.

[Sparky_hotdog]

8 minutes ago, OffRoad99 said:

The difference is that the Intrepid could still be utilized as a multi-role vessel, in some post above this I've mentioned four examples of how and why the Intrepid could be used. Xenoarchelogist needs to be independent and have some sort of Mining pod of its own. Leave the Intrepid for longer, multi-departmental explorations.

Also this.

The thing here is that having played old xenoarch, the independence wasn't always a good thing imo. I obviously can't speak for everyone, especially those who continue to play it on Aurora to this day, but a role that revolves around a) Going EVA looking for stuff on an asteroid on your own, then b) Sitting in a lab and analysing the stuff you brought back, usually on your own too, doesn't lend itself too well to decent roleplay. Also, at what point does something become a multidepartment expedition? As far as I can tell, there's no way of knowing what is on an asteroid without exploring it, so there would be no way of saying "Oh, we need to send the Intrepid to this one" or "Okay, this one we can just drop off the xenoarch".

[OffRoad99]

1 hour ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

The thing here is that having played old xenoarch, the independence wasn't always a good thing imo. I obviously can't speak for everyone, especially those who continue to play it on Aurora to this day, but a role that revolves around a) Going EVA looking for stuff on an asteroid on your own, then b) Sitting in a lab and analysing the stuff you brought back, usually on your own too, doesn't lend itself too well to decent roleplay. Also, at what point does something become a multidepartment expedition? As far as I can tell, there's no way of knowing what is on an asteroid without exploring it, so there would be no way of saying "Oh, we need to send the Intrepid to this one" or "Okay, this one we can just drop off the xenoarch".

Because if we're going to "be inspired" by some other server, chances are that some of our away-site will be packed with dangers and you'll be having to fly down Sec and Medical. That's a quick example of a multidepartmental expedition. The only difference here is that the xenoarcheologist can have an opportunity to run his gig alone if he wants to fly undisturbed in a nearby asteroid, or join the others on the Intrepid unless he doesn't mind getting attacked on the away-site.

[Captain Gecko]

2 hours ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

This is a solution I'm not sure about. On the one hand, I did play a round the other day as xenoarch with no bridge crew, and yeah, it kinda sucked. The actual round was alright because of antag shenanigans, but not being able to do my actual job wasn't great.

On the other hand, last night I hopped onto Bridge Crew for the first time and had a blast leading an archaeology expedition. Did it go smoothly? Not at all. Was it fun? Absolutely. For LOOC discussions with the others, one of the best parts of NBT archaeology is that it's no longer a lonely journey onto the asteroid to dig up some artefacts. Now you have friends to talk to while EVA, RP being a clever scientist to, etc. And I'd be really cautious about giving research a pod for fear the expectation would shift and we'd lose this. Sure some players might stick with using the Intrepid on higher pop rounds, but I worry not all.

There was a suggestion on the forums a while back about an xenoarch rework (as part of a larger R&D rework iirc), and while that whole project may have been quite ambitious and might not see the light of day for a while, if ever, the idea of giving xenoarch something to do on the ship seems like the happy medium to me. That way you have bridge crew and you still get fun expeditions, but if you don't you aren't stuck with nothing to do.

As a very quick side note, one thing I'd like to see is a name for the Mining Pod (and I guess if we get a research shuttle, that too), because right now the fact one of the shuttles is and the others aren't is weird to me.

14 hours ago, TrainTN said:

Question: if this was done, what would be the purpose of the Intrepid, then? The two departments most focused on leaving the ship would not need to use the Intrepid to leave the ship. What uses would it still have that justify its existence?

My idea is to add a shuttle/pod, just like the one used by mining, not an actual ship (no matter how small it may be) like the Intrepid. As far as I know, miners need to wait for the Horizon to actually fly next to a rock, before heading to it themselves, due to the pod's limited range. In the meantime, the Intredpid seems to be able to travel around mostly independantly.

This way, we would have the Xenoarch, without bridge crew, limited to handling smaller sites just like mining, giving them freedom, and a way to do their job (without nescessarily endengering half of Deck 1) without ruining the fun of joining an expedition.

[Sparky_hotdog]

8 minutes ago, Captain Gecko said:

My idea is to add a shuttle/pod, just like the one used by mining, not an actual ship (no matter how small it may be) like the Intrepid. As far as I know, miners need to wait for the Horizon to actually fly next to a rock, before heading to it themselves, due to the pod's limited range. In the meantime, the Intredpid seems to be able to travel around mostly independantly.

I might be wrong (I've only seen the mining pod from observing) but it looks to me like it is just a smaller Intrepid. Sure, it only has one tank of hydrogen (though I don't know if its smaller size makes that last longer) but I think it fly on the overmap to asteroids, just like the Intrepid. Otherwise miners could easily get stuck if the Horizon flies away, with no comms to call them to come back.

35 minutes ago, OffRoad99 said:

Because if we're going to "be inspired" by some other server, chances are that some of our away-site will be packed with dangers and you'll be having to fly down Sec and Medical. That's a quick example of a multidepartmental expedition. The only difference here is that the xenoarcheologist can have an opportunity to run his gig alone if he wants to fly undisturbed in a nearby asteroid, or join the others on the Intrepid unless he doesn't mind getting attacked on the away-site.

My question was more to do with how we tell before we land. Scanning an asteroid with sensors gives you an atmospherics readout, but nothing else, so the xenoarch might take their pod down alone, discover that it's a dangerous one, and then need to come back.

Also, even if we could tell I worry the Intrepid would become a high-pop trinket thing, as it would require: a) At least two bridge crew (I think a solo bridge crew is supposed to stay on the Horizon), b) Enough security, medical, etc. to justify sending one or two folk from each department away, and c) The overmap to randomly generate a multidepartmental away site, which I doubt would be guaranteed.

Also also, harking back to my original point, from what I gathered from talking with the anomalist I took down yesterday in LOOC, it was more fun for them as well to go down with a pilot, RD and two officers than to just go outside an airlock (or take a pod down). If the Intrepid became a dangerous site only thing, there's a reasonable likelihood the xenoarch ends up alone all round if they just want to dig up some stuff and analyse it.

[OffRoad99]

27 minutes ago, Captain Gecko said:

My idea is to add a shuttle/pod, just like the one used by mining, not an actual ship (no matter how small it may be) like the Intrepid. As far as I know, miners need to wait for the Horizon to actually fly next to a rock, before heading to it themselves, due to the pod's limited range. In the meantime, the Intredpid seems to be able to travel around mostly independantly.

This way, we would have the Xenoarch, without bridge crew, limited to handling smaller sites just like mining, giving them freedom, and a way to do their job (without nescessarily endengering half of Deck 1) without ruining the fun of joining an expedition.

No, you can fly in the Overmap with the pod if you know what you're doing. During the last weekend I flexed and crossed half the sector and chased the Horizon all on my lonesome, but it's a slow process. The Pod still remains a short-range vehicle, at best. Long-range flight is possible but it's tedious.

[Captain Gecko]

My bad, then. The problem still stands for Xenoarcheology, though. Currently there's no way for them to do anything without either someone to drive the Intrepid for them, or a miner to guide them... Which means that they can very easily end up useless on the ship. I'll add that as someone who plays on deadhours, I can tell that this is something that's going to happen a lot to many players.

That's my main problem.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Captain Gecko

[Sparky_hotdog]

2 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

My bad, then. The problem still stands for Xenoarcheology, though. Currently there's no way for them to do anything without either someone to drive the Intrepid for them, or a miner to guide them... Which means that they can very easily end up useless on the ship. I'll add that as someone who plays on deadhours, I can tell that this is something that's going to happen a lot to many players.

That's my main problem.

I totally get this, and while having something to do is infinitely better than nothing, I'd rather that something was in addition to Intrepid expeditions, rather than a way around them (Again though, I'm looking at this mostly from a Bridge Crew perspective, so your point probably holds more value).

[greenjoe]

from the tests this weekend, I saw the antag shuttles, compared to the Aurora ones they look.. well, there's no other way to put it but they look bad.
the Aurora ones look all nice with the custom tiles and stuff on it, but these ones are made of parts that don't look nice together. Is this a temporary thing? Will they be getting the custom tiles the antag shuttles on the Aurora have?

[Alberyk]

25 minutes ago, greenjoe said:

from the tests this weekend, I saw the antag shuttles, compared to the Aurora ones they look.. well, there's no other way to put it but they look bad.
the Aurora ones look all nice with the custom tiles and stuff on it, but these ones are made of parts that don't look nice together. Is this a temporary thing? Will they be getting the custom tiles the antag shuttles on the Aurora have?

We won't be able to keep up with having the old shuttles, since we will have way more of them with third party ships.

[Kintsugi]

5 hours ago, greenjoe said:

from the tests this weekend, I saw the antag shuttles, compared to the Aurora ones they look.. well, there's no other way to put it but they look bad.
the Aurora ones look all nice with the custom tiles and stuff on it, but these ones are made of parts that don't look nice together. Is this a temporary thing? Will they be getting the custom tiles the antag shuttles on the Aurora have?

It's very labor-intensive to do one of those sprites, as you are essentially spriting an entire ship from scratch while also having that work with the ingame shape, and that sprite will only ever be used in one place. The new plan, to my knowledge, is to make faction-specific walls and parts that can be put together to make new shuttles. That is how the Intrepid works, for example - the antag shuttles I imagine have placeholder walls instead.

[Boggle08]

Most of my thoughts are on the engineering side of things, particularly atmos

The first immediate concern are the pressure regulators interspersed throughout the station's distribution network. These things have their default pressure targets set to 200 kPa. This kills any attempts for atmos to overpressurize the networks in order to get vents to fill rooms faster. They don't need to be removed, they just need to start the round either maxed out, or with their settings at input 0. I don't know if the regulators are going to be important later in development, but right now they are an obstruction that limits gameplay.

About the propulsion modules, it would be nice to have other pipelines or even a separate mixing line at round start to play around with. I've heard conflicting things about the engine: that it can accept hydrogen, or other gasses as a form of fuel. The bottom line is that the only fuel line that feeds it continuously comes from the precious phoron tank, and we are constantly bleeding it every time we move. At the very least, we would benefit from an additional line from the hydrogen tank output going into the propulsion rooms.

The work areas for atmos are fine, but we could use another locker for the third technician. We only have two.

Kind of weird that the shields are a command only thing, but I'm cool with it. Telecomms being more accessible makes up for it.

My last critiques are with maintenance, and they are very miniscule. The first thing is that there are far less common areas to walk into and out of maintenance from. Unless you start hacking open doors, there's usually only one or two ways to get out of the tunnels in certain areas, particularly left hand side maintenance. It's probably a tradeoff from everything being so clumped up together, more ways to exit the tunnels into common areas could be devised over time.

The other thing about the tunnels is that the loot is shit and there's no abandoned locations. It doesn't feel right unless there's an abandoned bar crammed somewhere in the back. We have all this glorious space for maint goblinry, but the things that sustain the hobo economy are not here. It's obviously not a priority of development right now, but I hope maintenance eventually gets some love.

 

Overall though, the new ship is going to do amazing things for engineering. It's like life and activity is breathed into the department when we do testing rounds. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by Boggle08

[SleepyWolf]

Something to consider might be moving the tree up one deck, and having the holodeck on that main center ring. What if instead of walls of the holodeck, you used railings? You don't NEED windows in the sides of the holodeck, right?

This also brings up the possibility of having a 2 Z-Level holodeck, with a staircase and an open level above. This would give reason to 'disable gravity' in the holodeck, to get maneuverability in that 3d space.

 

OH, YOU COULD PUT THE TREE AS THE DEFAULT HOLODECK OPTION!

[WickedCybs]

11 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

The first immediate concern are the pressure regulators interspersed throughout the station's distribution network. These things have their default pressure targets set to 200 kPa. This kills any attempts for atmos to overpressurize the networks in order to get vents to fill rooms faster. They don't need to be removed, they just need to start the round either maxed out, or with their settings at input 0. I don't know if the regulators are going to be important later in development, but right now they are an obstruction that limits gameplay.

One thing that's good to note I think is that in the end, vents only cap out at a certain amount of liters of air per second (that's two hundred I think) no matter what's in the distro. Over-pressurizing just ensures a buffer where the supply is going to be more than enough to meet the demand and it'll still be streaming in, though slower (but the amount of pipes still means a lot of space for the gas to be in). The real bottleneck to filling up rooms is always the amount of vents when it comes to supply.

I wouldn't say that's much of an obstruction personally, but it's more useful if we ever have to worry about pipe bursts and the atmos simulation becoming more important than it is now if that ever becomes a thing later in development. I think it'd be best to keep them in for now and see if the regulators actually end up making a negative difference or not with Aurora's current style of atmospherics.

[Boggle08]

59 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

One thing that's good to note I think is that in the end, vents only cap out at a certain amount of liters of air per second (that's two hundred I think) no matter what's in the distro. Over-pressurizing just ensures a buffer where the supply is going to be more than enough to meet the demand and it'll still be streaming in, though slower (but the amount of pipes still means a lot of space for the gas to be in). The real bottleneck to filling up rooms is always the amount of vents when it comes to supply.

I wouldn't say that's much of an obstruction personally, but it's more useful if we ever have to worry about pipe bursts and the atmos simulation becoming more important than it is now if that ever becomes a thing later in development. I think it'd be best to keep them in for now and see if the regulators actually end up making a negative difference or not with Aurora's current style of atmospherics.

I would have to see conclusive testing before believing that. The efficiency or rate of nearly all of our pipe devices is dramatically improved when the pressure difference from the giving side is significantly larger than that of the receiving side. From my anecdotal experience, it does make a difference between a room filling up in a minute versus a few seconds.

The other thing is that if people just want to keep the network at 200 kPa, they can just not fuck with the pumps. Same isn't true for people who want to go over the threshold.

To be frank, I don't look forward to any kind of pipe bursting or leaking simulation, just because it doesn't add anything. Just places an arbitrary restriction on what you can achieve with pipes. There is only one way to set up atmos on bay, and that is to put in a pressure regulator, and set it to a pressure you can still remove the pipes at. It's horrible for gameplay variety.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Boggle08

[WickedCybs]

29 minutes ago, Boggle08 said:

I would have to see conclusive testing before believing that. The efficiency or rate of nearly all of our pipe devices is dramatically improved when the pressure difference from the giving side is significantly larger than that of the receiving side. From my anecdotal experience, it does make a difference between a room filling up in a minute versus a few seconds.

The other thing is that if people just want to keep the network at 200 kPa, they can just not fuck with the pumps. Same isn't true for people who want to go over the threshold.

It's the game mechanics as we have it now. You just need to examine any vent after a breach while it is active and you'll see where it caps out at. The reason there's going to be a notable improvement is because the vent is going to be consistently pushing 200 liters due to the air surplus. It will never go above this. So going over the threshold stops doing anything other than ensuring the pipes aren't getting drained anytime soon and stops the pipe from being taken out normally (which could be ideal if you don't want the pipes messed with). I've done a lot of atmos myself, I've never really felt the need to go above 310 normally. More was fine when a really large volume of air absolutely needed to be pushed through and we had vents being placed to take advantage of it. 

That's speaking purely when it comes to air vents here. If you do things like adding air pump filling stations then gigacharging the supply pipes does become a lot more practical.

Other than that, a pressure regulator and pump also serve different functions. The pump is pushing a set level of gas into the piping, the pressure regulator is just letting the gas through but tapering it off. The latter is going to be faster at letting gas in should a breach happen compared to the former. I wasn't able to see exactly how many pressure regulators are on the ship, but so long as they're in easy to reach "key" areas of maintenance it should be easy enough to run and configure them for anyone that'd like to boost things up. If that's not the case, I think that should be a change.

Edited February 2, 2022 by WickedCybs

[Boggle08]

52 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

It's the game mechanics as we have it now. You just need to examine any vent after a breach while it is active and you'll see where it caps out at. The reason there's going to be a notable improvement is because the vent is going to be consistently pushing 200 liters due to the air surplus. It will never go above this.

This is one of those long standing skubtastic mechanics of engineering, like how people think they can fix power nets with bad RCON by replacing power cells. I could be totally wrong on this, but I still feel like I have to repo dive and test to confirm things. 

52 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

A pressure regulator and pump also serve different functions. The pump is pushing a set level of gas into the piping, the pressure regulator is just letting the gas through but tapering it off. The latter is going to be faster at letting gas in should a breach happen compared to the former. I wasn't able to see exactly how many pressure regulators are on the ship, but so long as they're in easy to reach "key" areas of maintenance it should be easy enough to run and configure them for anyone that'd like to boost things up. If that's not the case, I think that should be a change.

I know how these devices function. You could get even better flow if you knocked out the regulators and replaced them with manual valves. Or got rid of them entirely. They do need power to stay open, after all. Many of the regulators are situated under grilles that have to be welded off, and I wouldn't say there's a precise order to their arrangement. They look cool, but I don't really see their utility.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Boggle08