Cozy/Fluff Research/Expedition Equipment Ideas Wanted

[Sparky_hotdog]

Blatantly stealing LVS' medical thread idea, so go give ideas there too. Then come back and give me ideas for research.

Research as a department is largely roleplay and fluff anyway, and imho expeditions could always use more optional things to do to add some variety. And I will move the ends of the earth for cozy RP stuff. The idea here isn't to add a bunch of new mechanics for research & expeditions, but rather to add some things to use to stimulate that sweet sweet RP. Personally I think technobabble is cool too, if you can think of instruments and appropriately sci-fi-y names.

Ideas I've got so far:

• Tents, of varying sizes. They can be set up to provide some shelter on planets with poor weather.
• A telescope. Not sure exactly what this would do, but maybe it could generate some fluff description about the constellations when used.
• A hull-analyser. For expeditions to wrecks, this could work sort of like radio spectroscopy, but for the wreck's hull rather than rock samples.

[pocheto]

If we're adding tents, can we add a temporary xenofauna holding chamber? Give us that premium hamster cage RP.

[Rabid Animal]

There are cages, the medium trap works! I thought they were all broken but it seems like it's just the large one.

 

I want stuff for the bio lab man, let me look at cells under a microscope or something

[La Villa Strangiato]

On 16/05/2024 at 08:42, pocheto said:

If we're adding tents, can we add a temporary xenofauna holding chamber? Give us that premium hamster cage RP.

i have been begging geeves to port bay's xenofauna cages for months now

The fossils that can be dug up from artifact sites can be assembled into a fossil display, but only the ones that have a bone piece/skull on them. If possible, make the other ammonite-looking fossils able to be assembled into a display, like a big shell or something.

More animal models in general! Currently we just have the shantak, samak, tindalos, diyaab, etc. Classic Baystation critters, but we could always use more that could be recoloured.

[Sparky_hotdog]

Working on implementing all of these. Only thing I want to comment on is

56 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

More animal models in general! Currently we just have the shantak, samak, tindalos, diyaab, etc. Classic Baystation critters, but we could always use more that could be recoloured.

I have... plans, regarding this, and regarding xenobio. But they're much grander scale than just more models, so will probably be separate to this. Whether anything comes of those plans is anyone's guess though.

[Shimmer]

I think some stuff for BCs to do would be neat- and what I like is dreamy's probes that give you fluffy stuff about a planet's general vibe. What if you could include stuff like taking soil samples, rock samples, etc etc etc to bring back to the Horizon for either display or study? Perhaps some way to enhance probing planets that isn't exclusive to xenoarcheology but can be done by scientists and or BCs as well?

[Sparky_hotdog]

51 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

What if you could include stuff like taking soil samples, rock samples, etc etc etc to bring back to the Horizon for either display or study?

Technically the probes do most of this already.

Quote

"It has different devices, samplers, and drill bits, as well as internal processing computers, to inspect the atmosphere, ground, soil, crust, and many other properties and qualities of planetary bodies. Commonly used by surveyors, explorers, pioneers, all over the Spur, looking for planets that are actually worth settling or exploiting for resources. "

I would like it if there were more probe-like devices, but I'm not sure if it should come at the cost of splitting the probe into multiple devices, or just other things that I can't think of right now. But I agree more non-xenoarch things are good.

Edited May 22 by Sparky_hotdog

[Rabid Animal]

RE: the whole animals thing, I recall there were plans at some point to make 'modular' aliens so different planets could have randomized fauna and be unique very much in a similar way to xenobotany

While that's very cool and I would love to see it, in the meantime having some predefined stuff would do no harm and be much easier to implement. I am an artist and I enjoy sprite work so if you're doing the coding please get in contact with me because I will 100% make some dudes.

 

I would actually really like more "prop" stuff that's not just, earth plants? Like for example the ice exo planet can have pine trees, which always felt a little lazy to me. Sure, tree like is cool, but we can go so much deeper.....

 

LAST THING idk if this is a pain, but applied to aforementioned prop plants and xenofauna in general, but extended descriptions with some science fluff might be cool.

 

(Last last thing, more biomes. Give me swamps and marshes and dense forests and--)

[Sparky_hotdog]

On 22/05/2024 at 18:01, Rabid Animal said:

While that's very cool and I would love to see it, in the meantime having some predefined stuff would do no harm and be much easier to implement. I am an artist and I enjoy sprite work so if you're doing the coding please get in contact with me because I will 100% make some dudes.

Apologies for the late reply regarding this, but I'm slowly working my way through this thread. If you're still interested in adding some new mobs/plants, feel free to reach out via discord ( _sparky. )

[Desven]

A way to take soil samples, water samples, or just things in general to check under a microscope. Doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, you just pick up some dirt or water and put it in a petri dish, the rest is fluff. 

[NerdyVampire]

Great that you are doing this

I think it could be cool if wall fungi samples could be put into glass spheres or jars, and grow in size over a set amount of time.

Just to add a little mechanic, if the glass jar is dropped or shattered, the fungi could  potentially release its chemicals in a small cloud. And if dealt with properly, maybe it is possibly to harvest a few samples from a grown jar for chemical processing?

 

[Sniblet]

An integrated circuit function that simply takes custom emotes, so you can build your own tricorder and emote it making cool blue scanning-like light waves at the antagonist/anomaly/bugged object and then going craaaazy because it’s so weird!!

Integrated circuit functions for sparking and self-deleting because of how weird the changeling is.

Customizable descriptions for circuit assemblies, because we can already set their names.

Edited June 3 by Sniblet