Give Xenoarchaeology One Single Anomaly At Roundstart

[La Villa Strangiato]

This is within my power to implement on my own, but I just wanted to throw it out there and see if the other two xenoarchaeology players (and the other five science players) want it.

I play a lot of xenoarch, and it's my favourite science job. I like doing little expeditions, going out to weird places, dragging the rest of the science team along to see what's on the planets, and generally having the opportunity to run away from the Horizon manifest if I so desire. However, sometimes I want to play my character and do a little bit of on-ship roleplay while also being able to engage with the general mechanics and soft-duties expected of my department.

Essentially what I'm saying is: sometimes I wanna play my xenoarch characters and hang out with the rest of my department, and I don't wanna go through the whole song and dance of organizing an expedition, loading the Intrepid, dragging the volunteers on the Intrepid, etc. To that end, I want to put a single random anomaly into the xenoarchaeology department in a containment cell for xenoarchaeology to study at their leisure.

Pros:

• Don't have to feel like you're forced to do all of the very time-intensive mechanics/roleplay of your job every round
• Allows you to potentially involve more of the science team into figuring out what the anomaly is and why it does what it does
• Have a potential backup "fun mechanical thing" in case the expedition planning goes awry/it's mega-lowpop/away sites suck/anomaly sucks/antag hijacks the Intrepid 5 minutes into the round?

Cons:

• Could discourage using the Intrepid to go find more away sites
• Encourages "complacent gaming syndrome"
• Walk into xenoarchaeology atrium, immediately get zapped outside by teleportation anomaly that activated by being in oxygen atmosphere

Please share your thoughts! Note that if you preface your post with "I don't play science, BUT" you will not escape Samsara.

[Sparky_hotdog]

So I'm not sure how I feel on this. From my experience playing a Xenoarch assistant over the last few weeks, I've found that the anomaly gameplay is probably my least favourite part.

Part of that is the feeling that doing analysis is removing from my ability to go RP with other crew, and this would solve that; I'm not going to be choosing between talking to other characters and analysing an anomaly if there's 2 hours to do them both in. But it doesn't solve the fundamental part of the anomaly analysis I'm just not engaged with: Shooting a machine with the same 7 tests to find that it does one of the same 10 things isn't particularly fun imo. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy analysis. I like coming up with a cool improv story as to what the hell we dug up. But that's just it: It's a story about what we dug up. The minor artifacts and the planet we found them on all contribute to that as much, and sometimes more, than just the anomaly itself. It's what turns an anomaly from "a shield generator" or "a cooler" to "armoury security " or "a malfunctioning terraforming device".

On the other hand, this doesn't stop you doing an expedition still and it provides something xenoarch-y to do if you late join at 1:50, so I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I just am not 100% certain it'd be super engaging. To me the issue is how long expeditions take relative to your average round not leaving much lee-way for doing anything else, rather than necessarily having to go on an expedition in the first place.

59 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

Walk into xenoarchaeology atrium, immediately get zapped outside by teleportation anomaly that activated by being in oxygen atmosphere

Final note: The solution to this would be to have the anomaly spawn inside a containment device. If you don't put on the suit before opening it, that's on you.

Edited May 22, 2024 by Sparky_hotdog

[Rabid Animal]

I worry this will make people less prone to go on expeditions. If something like this was implemented I would strongly push for all of science to have access to the intrepid because there is a myriad of reasons other crew would want to go explore unrelated to anomalies, and if xenoarch always spawns with toys they get less opportunities.

 

That said xenoarch can suck sometimes just because it's basically impossible for them to have a ship side project if they don't feel like taking off for one reason or another. 

 

Maybe a suitable middle ground would be 'regular' artefacts 'left over' from another shift to RP around. The anomolies are more or less an endgame for xenoarch, so spawning with them is a debuff to the role in that it makes the gameplay loop pointless to pursue.