Improve the civilian station significantly

[Aphelion]

On basically every shift, the off-map rotation brings up the 'civilian station' which is a 100% RP driven station that can run independantly from the rest of the game. It is a very very cool concept, but it is not very well executed because of a handful of things.

1. There does not seem to be any sensor console. So you're basically blind until someone else finds the station.

2. Everything the civilian station can sell is strictly RP based materials. This would be cool, if we could be found. But having some stuff that is mechanically useful would incite people to actually want to interact with the station.  - Edit: I found a warehouse with lots of random-spawn crates, which at least solves this problem.

3. They have no away shuttle of any kind. You're basically just stuck on the station, and without even seeing anything around you,

4. Nobody bothers contacting the civilian station, because it's normally empty.

Because of all these reasons, the concept falls a little flat. It could be a fair bit cooler if the civilian station had some functional significance that made it interesting, but for now you're blind, and alone, and clueless, and the station basically is treated as 'not worth visiting' by anyone.

Like I said, I really like the concept, but in it's current state, there are precious few situations where playing it is actually fun, unless you like wandering cluelessly. It's bad enough that I would honestly ask for it to be removed from the rotation, if it can't be made interesting, since the concept for having an actual civilian presence on the map is really cool, but in it's current state, unless you are ghosting and see someone boarding, or manage to rally a group of people to play on it, it doesn't provide any improvement to the game.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Aphelion

[Aphelion]

This is a big suggestion, I know. Though if the civilian station also had an Indra, or some kind of fun engine to experiment with, it might at least attract the learning engineer crowd, who want to try stuff, but don't want to blow up the Horizon.

[Fluffy]

As of https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17704 the civilian station no longer exist, I take this suggestion about it is good to be archived/implemented?

[NerdyVampire]

On 21/10/2023 at 05:33, Aphelion said:

This is a big suggestion, I know. Though if the civilian station also had an Indra, or some kind of fun engine to experiment with, it might at least attract the learning engineer crowd, who want to try stuff, but don't want to blow up the Horizon.

How cool would it the Horizon sees that the Civilian Station on their sensors suddenly changed name to Obliterated Station.

[NerdyVampire]

I feel like one solution might be for the station to get a way to advertise itself. Like a 1-time fire station announcement that has a fixed title tying it to the station.

[Gem]

19 hours ago, Fluffy said:

As of https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/17704 the civilian station no longer exist, I take this suggestion about it is good to be archived/implemented?

as quoted.

locking and archiving.