Roboticist to Science + Medical

[Mneme]

On 11/10/2022 at 07:44, Dreamix said:

Also just echoing what was said before. Machinists supply other departments with stuff, so they should stay in ops. They have no place in medical - the most medical-adjacent thing they can do, is fix mechanical organs and libs. They also have no place in science - machinists do not really do any research or development, and do not invent or discover any new things.

9 hours ago, Dreamix said:

But that's hypothetically I guess, when or if the hypothetical suggested changes actually get implemented, which might as well be never. At the moment, I do not really see science supply other departments with much. With the exception of supplying mechanists with tech levels I guess. No one really needs anything from science, and everyone has all the tools they need to do their jobs. The most common that I see lately, is science producing translators.

Research does a lot more supplying than operations at times. We upgrade machinery with better parts that add new functions and increase efficiency, provide Medical with the tools to handle more specialized injuries such as nanopaste, improve security and their equipment, help engineering out with better welding gear, circuits, and parts, and add things that make certain aspects of the game more enjoyable. A lot of what Research does concerns finding new ways to improve the ship and its crew, such as adding telecommunication equipment to the Intrepid or investigating strange anomalies. While mechanically Research is lacking, it makes up for it with roleplay and I think readding machinists to Research would allow them to be more than just a "beg for tech levels, build mech, go cryo" job and would generally increase the roleplay on our roleplay server. If we were to keep machinists in Operations I again think they should only be responsible for the fabrication of mechs and not cyborgification, limb replacements/repairs, or cyborg/AI maintenance. It doesn't really make sense in my mind as to why a machinist from Orion Express, which is a mailing company, would be relied upon to handle the artificial intelligence or cyborgs when there are issues with them instead of the research director who has all of the consoles, the access (excluding the ability to unlock cyborgs), and education.

As of recent I've also seen a lot of machinists experiment with new technologies, run tests, and generally do things that are expected of members in the Research department and not in Operations so re-adding the job to the Research department would streamline the ability for players to engage in that avenue of roleplay instead of sidelining them.

Edited October 12, 2022 by Mneme

[Montyfatcat]

40 minutes ago, Mneme said:

We upgrade machinery with better parts that add new functions and increase efficiency, provide Medical with the tools to handle more specialized injuries such as nanopaste

 

41 minutes ago, Mneme said:

, help engineering out with better welding gear, circuits, and parts, and add things that make certain aspects of the game more enjoyable

These are things that machinists are still expected to do too, and very quickly becomes the aspect that overrides since machinist is a very fucking boring role if you don't have a character that carries your experience or a particular affinity for circuits. I've said from the start that this is stepping over into the vanilla scientist's territory, and still disagree with having to feed 3 extra machines with the exact same or less amount of materials.

[Butterrobber202]

couldn't we keep them in Ops (no megacorp fuckery) and give them the research channel and some access? OM has final say over them, RD has final say in their department.

[Carver]

3 minutes ago, Butterrobber202 said:

couldn't we keep them in Ops (no megacorp fuckery) and give them the research channel and some access? OM has final say over them, RD has final say in their department.

This is the solution that I'd be happiest with. Opening up communication without taking away anything from Operations (and without taking away the fitting Megacorporate options of the role).

[Montyfatcat]

Mixing influences will frankly become a mess, we already saw this in the early days of bridge crew while Service Manager was still a thing, when they were classed as service and not command-support or whatever the term is now. If the role is having a change from ops, it needs to be a full and total move rather than a messy half solution that will only make it more confusing for newer players.

Frankly this whole issue comes from the rigid department system in the first place but since that's ingrained to ss13 what you gonna do I guess?

[Carver]

It wasn't a mess prior when Roboticists and Geneticists were Sci-Med and Med-Sci respectively, it just meant they had an avenue of clear communication with the non-dominant department. Ops-Sci would be extremely non-intrusive, but I could easily see them remaining solely Ops and just divorcing their mechanics from research levels (which is the only tie they really have left to Science).

[Butterrobber202]

I based my solution on how Geneticists previously worked, as Carver said. It was a non-issue 99% of the time. As the RD and CMO rarely had conflicting interests. Additionally, here, the RD only can order the Machinists around while in Science. This is not at all like the Service Manager, as they had authority. The Machinist is just listening to an already established command member inside their department. 

I don't see new players hitting machinist in particular either. And, again, its not a very hard concept to grasp, new or not.

[MattAtlas]

I like this conceptually but putting them in medsci takes away their biggest representation, which is Heph. Not sure how we can fix that.

[NewOriginalSchwann]

19 minutes ago, MattAtlas said:

I like this conceptually but putting them in medsci takes away their biggest representation, which is Heph. Not sure how we can fix that.

If we have to lose Hephaestus, we have to lose Hephaestus. It's a sacrifice we'll have to make to ensure the role is not miserably boring to play.

[niennab]

Why not make Hephaestus be in Science as a Robotics only role? It could even stay as Heph + Orion as well if needed, making it feel as though Robotics is loosely connected to science and operations.

Edited October 13, 2022 by niennab

[Gem]

10 minutes ago, niennab said:

Why not make Hephaestus be in Science as a Robotics only role?

afaik staff wants factions in departments to be the whole department and not just singular roles.

[Dreamix]

If machinists are to be in science, then they lose easy warehouse access to get metal and other materials that spawn in there.

[Faye <3]

always found it weird Zeng Hu didn't hire roboticists. they've created one of the frames we have in-game, and are one of the largest producers of robots in the spur. would make total sense for machinist to be in RnD or medical so that Zeng Hu roboticists could exist.

[Montyfatcat]

8 hours ago, Dreamix said:

If machinists are to be in science, then they lose easy warehouse access to get metal and other materials that spawn in there.

Lately the amount of OMs and hangar techs showing up has made this a non-issue, and I've honestly seen machinist access to the warehouse get abused a fair amount (not rulebreakingly, but machinists hogging all the gadgets inside is somewhat common).