NBT Testing Weekends

[WickedCybs]

39 minutes ago, Boggle08 said:

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, 

True, just for the sole purpose of keeping it to a wrenchable level it'd still be a notable improvement over the pump though. The manual valve is just going full throttle and directly supplying the pipes, which can be ideal if you aren't worrying about the pressure.

39 minutes ago, Boggle08 said:

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.

I will pay more attention to how atmos seems to be on the next testing phase so I can get a better feel for this, as well as the locations. I haven't done as much tweaking around as I would have liked to last week due to little time. At least on full release, we'll have the map to ourselves to see when it comes to private testing.

I do kind of hope the regulators are a sign that the atmos sim is going to become more involved, that's an area I've always to improve on but parsing the code when it comes to atmos was a headache. As it stands, the one thing I do agree on is that Aurora atmos kind of only has two real "answers" and that would be putting a pressure regulator to slightly under where you can't remove the pipe anymore or just shoving in as much air as you can since pipe bursts are set to some sky high amount that is hard to reach in a normal round.

Will probably talk more about this on the department discord when I experiment more as it's not too useful for this thread anymore.

Edited February 2, 2022 by WickedCybs

[Lly2]

I think this is one of the areas that suffers the most from how many railings/windows/airlocks there are. It was mentioned earlier but with no pictures, so thought I'd throw one in and give my take. 

Essentially, there are like three or four ways into the same area covering different levels of access, but between the divisions of the hangar (the outer edge, the routes down the left to operations, and down the right) is only a single railing to stop people from just hopping over and making all the doors redundant. Some details below, because it's a bit hard for me to explain.

The door in blue on the right is accessible to anyone - so anyone can get on the Intrepid in the event of an away mission. The windoor in red is supposed to be accessible to operations only, but right now it's bugged so no one seems to be able to use it. Presumably, this is supposed to make it so that anyone can enter the hangar room to board the ship, but can't get around to the left hand side which leads into Operations. However, the airlock in blue on the bottom left of the screenshot is accessible to anyone, meaning someone just has to hop the railing to be able to go that way anyway.

If the windoor is supposed to be a Operations-only route from the main part of the hangar to the left section, there's also just a second way accessible through the room above that's only like five or six steps more. In my opinion, just removing this windoor entirely would make the area feel less clustered, since it doesn't really do anything. The same can also be said of the cargo-coloured airlock in the right of the screenshot above -- all they both really do right now is give access to that six square corridor that doesn't lead to anywhere exclusive.

Airlock on the right comes from the hangar, and can be opened by anyone. The one on the left opens into cargo. On its own this looks pretty cool and lets the maintenance shaft come through the middle, but if things do get trimmed back and made more open this might be a contender.

Kinda just the same thing as above here. There's two separate ways into the hangar, accessible to anyone, and two windoors at the bottom right that anyone can also open. Having none of these doors at all except the main hangar door would essentially do exactly the same thing.

tl;dr:

I understand the railings have to be there to stop people walking underneath the Intrepid and getting crushed, but the way the hangar is right now is that its separated by ~5 different airlocks/windoors into little segments that can all be bypassed just by hopping a rail anyway. It feels like things are super complicated for the sake of aesthetics.

 

[Kintsugi]

Minor suggestion, but corner sprites could stand to be used here and on the other side instead of full walls.

[Ramke]

I've taken a round to try out everything Engineering (non-atmos) related.

Engines function perfectly fine. Tesla works as it did on the Aurora, and the SM is arguably even easier than on the Aurora.

Two complaints relating to the engine:

The supermatter chamber starts with oxygen in the chamber. Oxygen activates the supermatter crystal, meaning that the crystal will eventually start delaminating on its own over the course of the round - this will happen every time if there's no engineering, or the engineers aren't aware of this and don't add gas/activate the engine as a preventative measure. The chamber needs to be 100% nitrogen in order to render the SM inert on round start, like it is on the Aurora.

I was not able to find a third SMES coil crate - this isn't necessary, but having three SMES crates means you can supercharge an engine and use that exclusively instead of relying on two. I'd like to request adding another SMES coil crate somewhere, as a backup. The third one on the Aurora is in the backup SMES room in the engineering sublevel, for reference.

The Engineering vendor does not have a lot of resources in stock - not usually an issue, but prevents having to dig into the toolboxes in the lockers for extra cable coils and tools if needed - this is the only source of duct tape and hammers in Engineering:

Moving on, the shields are not completely covering the ship due to not detecting the turf next to the window as a "border" to the station. Please see screenshots below - note that the sensors suite outside the window has shields active, if that's of any indicator on how to fix the detection mechanism.

Lastly, wiring. The following issues were causing power alarms or power issues, and I've also drawn a red line on how I've fixed them:

Cargo - area outside the Cargo lobby window is not wired to any SMES, this is fixed by wiring to Cargo's network:

The security checkpoint next to Operations/robotics, lower level - room does not have an APC, no wiring. Added APC and wired to hallway:

Port and starboard SMES units do not have a cable connecting it to the network it's meant to be distributing it to, causing the entire area to not have power. Fixed by adding a cable as shown:

I'll probably be adding these to a bug report if I bother to create a github account but it's here for now at least.

[Melariara]

Hi there.

So, I managed to explore the vents today during a round as a dionae. Sent a nymph through and explored, and I found a huge issue on it. All of the vents per area are controlled by pressure regulators.

 

This one controls all of medical. Upper level, main level and lower level all come through that one vent.

 

This one here is one of the main service ones.

 

Now, aside from the fact that if someone knew what they were doing, they could seriously mess with atmospherics and/or the connected departments like this, it raises a huge issue for creatures that use the vents.

Borers, Greimorian Larva, Changeling Crawling Form, and Nymphs, (maybe others as well) all of these cannot easily get between department to department, which is kind of needed for a lot of the gameplay they bring to the round.

[Ramke]

Oh, another thing - the holodeck was moved and it's now blocking the tree from the upper z level. While that's probably acceptable, I still want to moan about it because the mini bar on the upper deck overlooking the tree was extremely cozy. That, and people will end up falling down and that's hilarious.

Perhaps you could remap it slightly and use this "dead/unused" area instead?:

[WickedCybs]

The regulators killing mobs was something I didn't consider. That's probably quite the issue then.

[Sbeve]

Very small thing but I think the CoffeeMaster in the bar should be moved to the same place the other dispensers are in the bar. Also, the sink should be where everything else is. Just so everything is in its own little zone. And now the shutters in the back area don't have a button either.

 

ALSO bring back Orion Trail, please. It's the best arcade game, just put it in the lounge somewhere.

[Faye <3]

give security's armory an emergency access button on the inside, and give the warden access to it. the only emergency access button is in the commander's office, which isn't a big-deal on the aurora b/c the commander's office is right nextt to the armory. however, on the NBT it's on the other end of tthe departmentt.

[Kintsugi]

Some thoughts:
Due to the importance of holding the bridge on the NBT (for multiple reasons: it actually controls the ship now, and it is also the only way to open the crew armory) I think it would be fair to add a locker to the BC prep room that can be opened only by real command, which contains armor and helmets for the BCs. Just an extra little something to help them hold the bridge - because if push comes to shove and the mercs are breaking down the door, they need to fight!

An alternative would be to add a second way to open the crew armory somewhere on the ship.

Speaking of the crew armory: There aren't enough helmets and armor to go around. If that's intentional, I don't mind - I do think that there should be some clothing item within that the regulations require anyone in the crew militia wear. An armband, or something - what I personally always thought would be cool was hardhats and hazard vests with a specific color scheme instead of armor. I also think the armor within should be the generic grey armor and helmets instead of the navy blue corporate armor and helmets - just a small thought.

The addition of diagonal walls here is good, but I also think that this wall should also be made into diagonal ones.

Kind of a nitpick, but I think the pods still look too blocky.

[Butterrobber202]

 

There is a camera in the Consular's office. These should be removed from both the Rep and Consular's offices so we can get away with underhanded things. The Offices do have immunity.

[greenjoe]

The Aurora offices used to not have cameras, they were added after some IC event chain (sol I think?)

[WickedCybs]

I'd say it'd be nice if the bridge had a fax machine by the area with the photocopier, as well as some more command consoles if possible for general use.

Other than that, it would be good if the tech storage recieved new circuit boards for the helm, sensors and engine control consoles. The bridge is vulnerable to getting destroyed easy along with its equipment if an accident happens. Spares for engineering would be useful if replacements are needed.

[Sparky_hotdog]

22 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

Kind of a nitpick, but I think the pods still look too blocky.

This might be because currently those walls are smoothing with the hull of the Horizon. This is my fault, as in fixing how normal and reinforced walls smooth, I messed with how that whole process works, and the new NBT exclusive walls won't have been set up for that properly. If I'm misreading, ignore me, but if this issue persists when NBT fully releases, I'll try to be fast on the fix.

[WickedCybs]

I was thinking back to the faction selection of the NBT. During the testing, I noted a few comments of confusion from people used to having every role available on the job menu. I think it may not be too intuitive to make it so you only see the jobs available to the megacorporation you have selected. So I thought, what if every job was on the menu but it has a faction tag you can change if applicable?

The direct comparison will be to Bay here, so I will show they handle their menu. I put a red outline over the area in which they have players decide the faction of a character.

It's a lot more simple than the press faction button, select faction, confirm faction selection we have going on. The benefit of Aurora's is it gives an informational readout on your chosen faction, though I'd think it could be possible to still retain that if this seems like a good idea at all.

[MattAtlas]

Nevermind, what I posted here makes no sense, but porting that job menu would be a lot of work, if anyone would want to do it.

[WickedCybs]

19 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

The issue is that the way Bay handles it is job-specific, which isn't ideal for us because our characters are persistent and their jobs and faction are character-specific. Implementing something like this would imply that people can in fact swap factions for their character, and we'd definitely get people doing it.

At the moment new players see every job in Aurora and can easily switch on the fly. We handle them though because that's not allowed. Corp switching on a whim would be handled much the same I'd think.

That said even if its seen as a good idea it would take a lot of effort to implement I'd think, so bit of a pipe dream.

[MattAtlas]

26 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

At the moment new players see every job in Aurora and can easily switch on the fly. We handle them though because that's not allowed. Corp switching on a whim would be handled much the same I'd think.

That said even if its seen as a good idea it would take a lot of effort to implement I'd think, so bit of a pipe dream.

I guess we could just show the other jobs as crossed out instead of hiding them? But that'd crowd the job menu pretty hard, I think. Maybe add a disclaimer at the bottom that this list doesn't contain every job.

[WickedCybs]

12 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

I guess we could just show the other jobs as crossed out instead of hiding them? But that'd crowd the job menu pretty hard, I think. Maybe add a disclaimer at the bottom that this list doesn't contain every job.

That might get crowded yeah though it could work imo. I think the disclaimer at the very least is a pretty good idea though.

Edited February 10, 2022 by WickedCybs

[Boggle08]

Hello, I am once again posting about the pressure regulators interspersed throughout the station's scrubber and distro networks. Specifically the ones attached to the disposals network: They need to be get rid of. The regulators on the redlines are all capped at 200 kPa at round start, along side their distro counterparts. This means that if the receiving end is pressurized above that point, they will refuse to open.

That's bad enough, but because of the way regulators work, if the receiving end of the regulator exceeds the pressure of the sending end, regulator flow will be pretty much nonexistent. What this means is that if atmos receives scrubber waste or engine exhaust, the scrubber networks locked behind the regulators are liable to spend most of their time shut down.

 

As a side note, I'm currently gathering data on the efficacy of over-pressurizing the distro network, and so far, the findings suggest that it actually has a very real, substantial effect on fill rates. Once I have enough data, I'm going to fully articulate my findings and ideas for distribution in a separate thread. I'll say at the very least that the regulators as they're implemented now have very deleterious effects on how atmos is played, and their upsides are insubstantial in comparison to what we lose from having them here.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Boggle08

[Arrow768]

On 08/02/2022 at 04:35, WickedCybs said:

It's a lot more simple than the press faction button, select faction, confirm faction selection we have going on. The benefit of Aurora's is it gives an informational readout on your chosen faction, though I'd think it could be possible to still retain that if this seems like a good idea at all.

The long term plan is to restrict the faction selection similar to the char names (You can only change it in the first N days after creating a character)

Outside of that admin intervention is needed to change the corporation.

This will most likely be implemented a few months after the launch of the NBT.

(By then the active players should have moved their chars to the appropriate factions)

[WickedCybs]

Another suggestion that comes to mind to me, is that I think the Intrepid would benefit from a sleeper. These aren't too powerful and I'd say they're pretty perfect in the less equipped shuttle that is the Intrepid. There's just a stasis factor if needed (eats a lot of power, which would be a tradeoff if the Intrepid ever gets a SMES) and basic chemicals that might see use. But that's quite enough for what it does. Ideally I think bridge crew could benefit from being icly able to operate these at the least as well.

On the Aurora at the moment, they don't tend to see much use outside of the diyal/stomach pump function because you already have everything you need at hand.

14 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

The long term plan is to restrict the faction selection similar to the char names (You can only change it in the first N days after creating a character)

Outside of that admin intervention is needed to change the corporation.

This will most likely be implemented a few months after the launch of the NBT.

(By then the active players should have moved their chars to the appropriate factions)

That's cool to hear then!

Edited February 12, 2022 by WickedCybs

[Ramke]

It has once again occurred to me that this is a ship and this poses another engineering problem. The hull shields have multi-level shielding, which is good for things like carp and protects all levels.

The bubble shield, however, does not. It is the bubble shield that stops meteors, and it will only stop them if they spawn and come in from the level that the shields are on. The others will, to my awareness, not be caught by the bubble because they'll spawn under the shield, and smash into the hull shield, damaging and exposing the ship's interior to vacuum through the blast AoE.

I believe one of the recent shield bugfixes that stopped meteors from dealing stupid damage to shields altered the behaviour of the meteor impacts, but I'm not sure if it turned off the AoE blast entirely if it hit the shields, or whether it was exclusive to just the shield and everything else will still receive damage.

In other words, it is likely that 66% of the ship is currently unprotected if the AoE from the meteors knocks out windows/hull even if it hits the hull shield. The bubble shield needs to get the same multi-level treatment as the hull shield if meteors spawn on other z-levels too. I don't know if they do, though.

EDIT:

Greywolf confirmed that meteors pretty much disintegrate without explosion on impact to shields, meaning there's no AoE damage other than to the shields. This means it's basically a non-issue in terms of meteors. Ship debris may still potentially be a problem though, but that's a lot less frequent.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Ramke

[Star Dust]

I personally find the lack of a proper isolation/high-risk holding cell for security is abit of a oversight. It would make no sense for security to not have a cell for super dangerous prisoners, or those that are to crafty/cleaver to be left alone in a normal cell without causing problem or risking escape. I also think that if there is a high risk prisoner cell, it should have something what real prisons have, a food shoot to put food through without risking the officer, and to allow them to throw flash bangs, tear gas, or concussion grenades inside if need be.

[DisreputableSquid]

Xenobotanist here. I've been submitting numerous bug reports on the git, and am very glad to see the dev's have been dealing with them quickly!

My suggestions/recommendations will be mostly focused on the xenoflora area, but a few for science in general.

1) The Xenofloral blisters should be made of something stronger than just reinforced single glass panes. I think it would be wise to either set them up with that reinforced pink glass (can't remember the name of it off the top of my head) or change them to be the usual full tile sized windows so you can put emergency shutters in them, both to close in case of carp, and to close in case you wanted to grow plants that need dark environments.  (I definitely prefer the Shutters option, even if the windows are technically weaker because of it. )

2) Make the walls of the Dangerous Xenoflora Area Reinforced Plasteel. That area is supposed to contain the VERY DANGEROUS plants, such as ones with potent acid or dangerous reactions, and steel walls can be destroyed by such plants very easily. 

3) There is a small room that separates the R&D lab from the science hallway, and it currently serves no purpose, other than being a blindspot for the AI.