Change machinist to be a single person slot

[Montyfatcat]

Machinist as a role is one of those ones that has little to do as is. Very often machinists have a single preferred way they organise their workshop compared to other machinists, and very often this can bring conflict. There already isn't enough for them to do, why risk having two on shift for little to no benefit? The only time roboticists really needed to be in pairs in the old days was back when IPCs made up half of security, as at least then they'd possibly have more than one patient to deal with. Nowadays with balance changes and a general attitude shift in security, a double machinist isn't really needed.

The workshop itself is also not very well structured for two people, being very tight and having only one real area to do any work, it's difficult to even work on different projects at the same time.

[Carver]

Given some machinists enjoy the IPC side of things and some moreso enjoy the Exosuit/Hardsuit side of things, I don't think I can really support this. Presently they have the manpower to have one person fixing IPCs while the other fills out crew orders for heavy duty equipment, or for one to do the more tedious fixing while the other relaxes and converses with them. Change this and it becomes a much lonelier, much busier job as Chef used to be before it had received a second slot.

[EJJ]

I think machinists work best in pairs because generally I can throw out "hey set up this and that please" while I go run to hound Ops for extra glass and steel or whatever. I have had rounds with annoying Machinists or people who just want to hang out and not do too much, which I can fully respect. I could possibly see this working out if we had some way to split a Machinist in Ops and a Roboticist in Sci and have them both have access to one another's departments and such but that's pretty unprecedented in Aurora's job stuff.

I think alt titles would help with a lot of this, honestly. Having people be able to pick a title and have that as their skillset would help a lot for making RP more interesting and needing to make sure a machinist duo has to cover each other's weaknesses.

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by EJJ

[Gem]

1 hour ago, EJJ said:

Having people be able to pick a title and have that as their skillset would help a lot for making RP more interesting and needing to make sure a machinist duo has to cover each other's weaknesses.

we used to have this, but it ended up with, for example, roboticists taking the biomechanical engineer role and refusing to repair or work on robots, and vice versa.
if the foundation and their duties differ, it should be a different job. if the foundation is the same but the duties differ, it should be an alt title.
machinists, whether they would be "specialized" in robots or biomechanics, both work with the same thing, thus there is no need for an alt-title imo.

 

[Montyfatcat]

On 08/11/2022 at 06:22, Carver said:

Presently they have the manpower to have one person fixing IPCs while the other fills out crew orders for heavy duty equipment

In my experience any situation where IPCs are damaged enough to delay a mech is a situation where someone would have to be waiting for their mech in the first place anyway. Even an IPC that gets eel'd usually only has one or two fucked limbs, and mechs take so long that the time it takes to repair an IPC first is honestly nothing in comparison.

On 08/11/2022 at 06:22, Carver said:

Change this and it becomes a much lonelier, much busier job as Chef used to be before it had received a second slot.

The job is already incredibly non-busy, I think I do more than setup maybe once every 3rd round I play machinist, could just be my timezone though. You have to really get on with the other machinist to be willing to share the workshop with them for 2 hours with nobody else swinging by, and honestly idk what it is about the job but it attracts a lot of very abrasive and hard to get along with characters for some reason.

On 08/11/2022 at 08:27, EJJ said:

I think machinists work best in pairs because generally I can throw out "hey set up this and that please" while I go run to hound Ops for extra glass and steel or whatever.

Honestly this has never been an issue for me, machinists being in ops already makes for some very easy hounding since you're on their radio channel already. In the old days miners would bring resources by default so even then you didn't really have an issue back when the title was roboticist.

On 08/11/2022 at 08:27, EJJ said:

I could possibly see this working out if we had some way to split a Machinist in Ops and a Roboticist in Sci and have them both have access to one another's departments and such but that's pretty unprecedented in Aurora's job stuff.

This would end horribly imo, machinist already has a massive issue with stepping on people's toes in science, having a job then step on the machinist's toes at the same time would just lead to so much overlap that you might as well move the job back to science (something I'm not opposed to but have been told isn't happening).

On 08/11/2022 at 08:27, EJJ said:

I think alt titles would help with a lot of this, honestly. Having people be able to pick a title and have that as their skillset would help a lot for making RP more interesting and needing to make sure a machinist duo has to cover each other's weaknesses.

Alt titles only work when you're doing the same job anyway. Otherwise you get the issues Gem mentioned of having people refuse to do shit because of their alt title, which is just a giant pain in the ass. Since machinist is such a niche role already, having the role be split up and reliant on one another in such a clumsy way wouldn't really help.