Some accumulated features from other servers that may benefit Aurora

[Lmwevil]

So I have been exploring other servers in recent months to see what would be good to steal for aurora. 

On /tg/ they have a thing called Translation Gloves. It's essentially something that mute characters can take, allowing their gloves to turn hand symbols into basic, and able to radio albiet with sometimes some letters li*e thi*. For mute characters who use sign here? It'd be neat, it'd also give them more options job-wise and give them a question on what gloves ot wear if it's their translation pair or insulated for example. As another funny feature, which doesn't need to be ported, signing over there actually takes a little time as you do the handsigns, with a little symbol appearing to show that you're making them.

On Goonstation there is a thing called the asteroid magnet: https://wiki.ss13.co/Guide_to_Mining#The_Quantum_Telescope.  In short what it does is allow you to use a computer minigame to find asteroids with a specific composition, or just pull in asteroids with random compositions. On Eris there is a similar device called the Scrap Magnet that summons piles of trash to rifle though. I think on Aurora we could benefit from an asteroid magnet of some variety. As it is mining is a hyper lethal role with massive transit times, who will realistically never benefit from better mining gear for anything other than murking antags since after landing back, to go out again would basically be the end of the round. As someone who mained mining on the station, I think we do need a 'vibe' variant while also keeping the overmap. The magnet is a good solution, while lessening the 'miners are turbo killing badasses' instead of overworked labourers angle.

 On Deadspace13 they have RIGs for everyone, because of course they do, RIGs are cool. As they are on Aurora also pretty neat. On /tg/ in recent years they have added MODSUITS, essentially their own version of RIGs, think alternative backpacks over there that anyone can have, cargo has like exoskeletons to lift crates and stuff, and smaller than a satchel carrying capacity. I think it'd be pretty cool to phase out the exosuits to load the guns, and instead use a 'loader' RIG that lets you lift ammo. RIGs in general I think need more love here, as the only variants are: Offworlder rig, which is sick and we need more 'non sealing' ones like it, EVA for basic suit, Industrial for looking like a brick, used by nobody besides mining at best, Advanced and AMI, both requiring phoron and mining, never used outside of the usual ones that spawn, and then hazard/combat which are exclusively for combat or mining. 

On Baystation they use 'shield breachers' on their airlocks so engineers can EVA when the shields are up. As it is right now, if the shield is on, there is no way to leave the Horizon at all other than a shuttle, all airlocks are covered by the shield, and it's a kinda weird thing to remove entire shipwide defensive covering just to pick up some carp for the kitchen.

On /tg/ station they have a unique spin on how xenobiology is done, which would remove 'your character needs to be a literal psychopath' from being as bad to doing the department. TL;DR xenobiology on /tg/ has you sit at a console, you warp slimes out using an interface and kill them in a cold room, you can warp monkeys out to a recycler, it's all done through a bluespace console, speeding up workflow and making it less "I am cremating hundreds of monkeys by hand just so I can get some gold from a slime". They also do some really cool stuff with slime cores which is worth looking into with crossbreeding https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Guide_to_xenobiology#Crossbreeding but that's besides the point. 


On /tg/station they have a unique form of bounties, in short any crew member can slot their ID into a machine and pick up an objective, if they cash in the objects to the machine, it ejects a bounty box worth a certain amount of credits, cargo is given a bonus for shipping it in a short period of time, and once shipped the person who cashed it also gets given a portion for contributing. Giving a way for anyone to pick up a bounty to earn some credits in round is neat as a concept. 

On /vg/ /tg/ and I think most other codebases, there's a thing called atmos resin that can be projected from a backpack using water as a fuel. In short when you shoot from the atmos backpack tank, it shoots a ball that becomes foam, then a blue resin that is translucent. This feels pretty important to have for atmos techs here given that phoron contamination is just *that* bad when it gets on any object, that quickly sealing it in resin to slowly deal with gives atmos something unique against phoron fires or leaks compared to engineers. As an unrelated note high power pumps cannot be vended at the moment and instead give 3 way manifolds for some reason, weird bug.

[Lmwevil]

oh also viewport flooring from /tg/ and other codebases, which could be used for an observation bubble area so we can enjoy the beautiful backdrop under the Horizon could be cool, example: 

[Cnaym]

2 hours ago, Lmwevil said:

oh also viewport flooring from /tg/ and other codebases, which could be used for an observation bubble area so we can enjoy the beautiful backdrop under the Horizon could be cool,

We had the same idea this morning lmao, i just asked some folks if it was able to use something like this to make orbital station away sites or Eridani skyscrapers with planets or cityscapes as backround images as a first step for us to visit places that do not appear to be dead.

[KingOfThePing]

7 hours ago, Lmwevil said:

oh also viewport flooring from /tg/ and other codebases, which could be used for an observation bubble area so we can enjoy the beautiful backdrop under the Horizon could be cool, example: 

Holy shit I have been looking for something like that for weeks now. I didnt know /tg/ has it. You are doing god's work

[wowzewow]

Actually, was thinking of making a pinned thread for port requests. Could give amateur coders things to do.

[Lmwevil]

38 minutes ago, wowzewow said:

Actually, was thinking of making a pinned thread for port requests. Could give amateur coders things to do.

that's a really good idea, i'd support the heck outta that

[ElizabethDame]

As someone who played on Sojourn, the whacky spinoff server using modified Eris code - The magnet pulls in trash, yes, but our current trash system sucks ass in comparison to what they have. That pretty much means any value it would add would ultimately be rather meh. 

[Lmwevil]

32 minutes ago, ElizabethDame said:

As someone who played on Sojourn, the whacky spinoff server using modified Eris code - The magnet pulls in trash, yes, but our current trash system sucks ass in comparison to what they have. That pretty much means any value it would add would ultimately be rather meh. 

I was more just saying that it was a variant of the ore magnet in a fashion and how it was done differently on another codebase. we don't need a trash magnet, we need an ore magnet imho

[NerdyVampire]

On 07/01/2023 at 09:39, Lmwevil said:

On Goonstation there is a thing called the asteroid magnet

I actually pushed almost this same idea to a developer prior to the Horizon, for a massive machine to work as a pet-project between science, engineering and mining for the same purpose. I think it would be a great addition to the Horizon as well honestly.

The other solutions also seem pretty good.

[Lmwevil]

I have another feature from other servers, again this is /tg/. 

Filters. Gasmask filters are a physical object that stop you inhaling certain unsafe gasses in the atmosphere but are damaged by the existence of that gas in the atmosphere, they are removed and placed in a gas mask with alt click, think of it like a bit worse internals but you never need to turn on or have a tank for. 

For phoron flooding it won't help much, you're dead if it washed over all your clothes without aid anyway, but with unsafe gasses like n2o or whatever, maybe might matter? It's mostly a cool fluff thing to make gas masks actually do something different to breath masks

[greenjoe]

TG has a feature where the HOP can set a 'requested job' or something, this will show that job is one that is wanted on the station to people who are joining from the lobby, this could be useful here.

[Gem]

On 10/01/2023 at 06:36, Lmwevil said:

It's mostly a cool fluff thing to make gas masks actually do something different to breath masks

this is already the case.

 

21 hours ago, greenjoe said:

[...]

that'd need a XO to be on and actively set it vs just asking in OOC if someone can join as engineer, or people looking at the manifest and seeing what's missing.