Experiment: unlock telescience to away sites

[NerdyVampire]

I used to play Victor Jenkins, who's a telescientist some may know, but I stopped playing him around the time that it became ooc'ly wrong for him to use the Intrepid on his own. It became so I only really had fun with working telescience if I was an antagonist.

So here is my suggestion: unlock Z-levels that can be accessed by general crew, so it becomes part of the telescience loop to probe these levels to find a safe point for opening a portal, recording that specific configuration, and exploring through the portal if possible. To do this, we should also ensure that integrated circuit cameras work across Z levels, as they don't (?) do now.

This way, telescientist get a direct and very powerful usecase, that can yield a buttload of interesting roleplay scenarios, departmental cooperation and save a field I love.

I'd like us to do this as an experiment and see if there are any issues with this mechanically, and I'd love to bank a good number of rounds to test it out and establish some parameters for how it can work best IC'ly.

[Fluffy]

Sure, why not, telescience is kind of useless as it is now. You have my support for this experiment.

[Jasorn]

I'd be interested in this, science right now seems to be the least played department, and from my time playing since Sept 2022, I think Victor Jenkins is one of the only characters I can remember that does telescience.

[Rabid Animal]

Tacking onto this, if we wind up keeping this, as per a suggestion in the expeditions thread, we should absolutely have some away sites only accessible via telescience. Sounds neat! Would love to see it get some use again!

[NerdyVampire]

2 hours ago, Rabid Animal said:

we should absolutely have some away sites only accessible via telescience.

Interesting, but for this particular solution I do not consider exclusive telescience sites to be a must, as I imagine it requires quite a bit of dedication to create from developers.

For this I just want some of the Z level restrictions laxed, that would be enough to implement this and maybe the integrated circuit cameras looked at

[Rabid Animal]

oh yeah absolutely, I meant a more; "for the future" type thing, but I think your suggestion as is, is a great start.

[NerdyVampire]

On 17/03/2024 at 10:13, Fluffy said:

Sure, why not, telescience is kind of useless as it is now. You have my support for this experiment.

Thanks Fluffy. Are you willing to take charge on it, as developer that is? I think it only requires a few changes where it checks for Z-levels, so it instead checks that a certain Z level isn't 'secret', like the Odin.
And if the integrated cameras don't work off-ship for research, to make them work so we can make drones (instead of teleporting poor lab assistants into rocks without a way to retrieve them) - I can't recall if they do work off-ship or not atm and can't check yet.

[Fluffy]

4 hours ago, NerdyVampire said:

I think it only requires a few changes where it checks for Z-levels, so it instead checks that a certain Z level isn't 'secret', like the Odin.

I have not looked at the science teleporter (or ever used it) but I doubt it as easy as it sounds, while technically we're on the same areas (you can think of each level, including ships, planets and whatnot as a stack of plates, one on top of each other) there's an overmap that gives the supposed distances, also you AFAIK need to calculate and use various parameters with said teleporter to aim where the portal will open, and that would need to make sense according to the overmap; it also needs to not make the pilot and the other ships (eg. spark, intrepid) completely useless, so it would likely need a more involved look than unlock a Z-level setting and call it a day

[Alberyk]

This should only work if the horizon is next to the away site in the overmap.

[NerdyVampire]

On 20/03/2024 at 22:15, Alberyk said:

This should only work if the horizon is next to the away site in the overmap.

Good point and yes that is ideal.

What would be awesome though would be to allow more artificial bluespace crystals to be inserted to increase the distance it would work at on the overmap.

Right now the console holds 4 crystals by default, and only 1 more can be slotted in to provide map-wide range for the portal. The interface however suggests that more crystals could fit. Maybe after the fifth crystal, each additional crystal extends the range by one overmap grid, allowing for a pretty cool build-up project.

The check function would probably be something like this

If Z-level less than 4, accept :: ie horizon

Else if overmap_distance_to_site(Z-level) < (slotted_crystals - 2), accept :: so by default any adjacent site

Else reject

Sorry for the ugly pseudocode, I'm on my phone and can't bother to write actual code.

Edited March 21 by NerdyVampire
Typo

[NerdyVampire]

On 20/03/2024 at 18:23, Fluffy said:

AFAIK need to calculate and use various parameters with said teleporter to aim where the portal will open, and that would need to make sense according to the overmap

That is true, but as it is currently possible to open portals back to the Horizon from other sites (since it only checks the Z levels), it turns out that the parameters are easy to deal with. If you can aim at a relative set of coordinates from your telepad, you hit the same coordinates on the other Z-level. This really shouldn't be complicated further though, as it is advanced enough for most with all the rest.

On 20/03/2024 at 18:23, Fluffy said:

it also needs to not make the pilot and the other ships

Totally agree. It isn't my intention that this should turn the telescience lab into a cargo hub, it's meant to be a different avenue of scientific exploration imo, which aims to offer the option to command staff for special situations and otherwise do it's own experimental stuff.

[Captain Gecko]

Victor Jenkins is my favorite telescientist (It's the only one still alive) and I approve of this message.

More seriously, Science is in dire need of... ANYTHING, really, any arguements to make the department more fun, or just plain useful, and this is a great idea. I remember Jenkins allowing Sezrak to pull out like 5-6 anomalies in the span of a single hour back on the Aurora, the wonders a talented teleporter player can do are fantastic, and could prove lifesaving in many expeditions and the likes... And just give science the tools to do more experiments and other sciency stuff.

We NEED this.

Edited April 17 by Captain Gecko

[NerdyVampire]

2 hours ago, Captain Gecko said:

Victor Jenkins is my favorite telescientist (It's the only one still alive) and I approve of this message.

...

We NEED this.

And you're my favorite RD. Would love to throw papers in Sez' head with potential portal locations and bother him to be Victor's remote handler on the Horizon as I explore with a lab assistant meat shield... I mean eh.. yeah you know

[Fluffy]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/18854 I forgot to link the PR here

[NerdyVampire]

Awesome Fluffy, looking very much forward to trying it out

[Fluffy]

PR merged, suggestion implemented

Locking and archiving