Make the Machinist part of Science (again)

[GeneralCamo]

Supercedes the following threads:

 

 

 

Originally, the Machinist was moved to Operations as part of an overall plan to have Operations handle the allocation of resources for expeditions. This wasn't cleanly done however, and has raised numerous questions along the way. In addition, no plans exist to finish the operations rework to justify the move.

I'm proposing we move Machinists back to Science, as they were on the Aurora. We can retcon this as well so that it has always been part of Science on the Horizon; Orion and Hephaestus machinists will have a problem here, but I'm sure we can work something out.

Edited August 19 by GeneralCamo

[Lmwevil]

Doublepost: 

I would REALLY not like them to return to science, they're fine how they are. That's my personal opinion. 

Also I'm sure there's a uh, another 3 threads about this you could have revived.

[Noble Row]

Machinist will always be in a weird middle ground and I don't believe it needs to be changed on a whim. It's going to have the same issues no matter what department it's in. Just swapping it back and forth like this is just going to cause more needless issues. It's fine where it is as an industrial machine shop where it provides industrial services with the industry related department. There's no research happening for the Machinist. They create things that are already well established in the lore with a couple of exceptions (The Anomaly Bluespace core for the mech). They don't conduct tests, nor do they do science they create and they provide. If anything they do engineering.

If machinist is going to be changed it needs to be done in a clearly thought about and concise manner, not on a whim, and not a retcon on a large amount of characters. The best case scenario is to have it be a dual department thing, but that is also unnecessary.

[Carver]

I’ll merely reiterate my earlier thoughts from my thread on the matter that Engineering fits better. Location, corp selection and so forth. Science is substantially better of a fit than Ops, though, I will concede.

[FlamingLily]

I also think engineering is the best option out of the three (and ops is the worst), though I wouldn't entirely be against doing a split department thing between engineering and research.

 

From a lore perspective, machinist being ops makes absolutely 0 sense. Sure, hephaestus does robotics and industrial equipment work, but Orion's robotics field feels like it was literally added as a justification for making machinist an ops role. In fact I would argue Orion kind of lacks anything that would make it distinct from Nanotrasen in that regard, it hits all the notes of being the low-budget, cheap option. Additionally, operations is framed as responsible for the low-level, most fundamental work that makes the ship tick. Moving supplies, mining, fueling shuttles, loading ammo. It doesn't make any sense to me that a role about constructing and maintaining ship equipment (Cyborgs, IPCs, Hardsuits and Exosuits all included) is included in that; Hangar Techs don't do maintenance on the shuttles, they only fuel the things, for instance. Thematically, it makes far more sense for engineering to have a job that literally needs an engineering degree to have ICly. Something that would make more sense in operations, I would say, would be janitorial, but that's neither here nor there.

 

Gameplay-wise, it's frankly bizzare that the job responsible for cyborgs is completely divorced from either of the jobs responsible for the AI (that being the RD and the CE according to regs; Yes I know standard procedure differs and says it requires a captain level decision). It's so bizarre because it's clear just from looking at the map which department machinist is closely related to, they're still right next to the science wing, they still get all the research tech in their room, even though apparently "By staff decision, machinists are not permitted to build tech processors or otherwise conduct research activities." Machinist does not have a clearly defined role in the gameplay loop, almost every time I see a machinist at shift-start I read "Hey engineering, do you guys want an exosuit?" (and before anyone says things about keeping departments reliant on each other, that would still be the case with Engi-Machinist, because they still need resources from ops).

 

Yes, I agree that we shouldn't do this on a whim and this should be a properly thought out process, we should absolutely not snap our fingers and invalidate a proportion of the playerbase just because we want to change things, but we also need to change this, IMO. We shouldn't hide behind the "let's think it through" to prevent the change happening at all, because I believe it needs the change.

[Dreamix]

Machinist is a weird role that does not fit perfectly in any department, but I think it fits the best in operations.

Like the other operations jobs, they provide supplies and resources to the rest of the ship:

• hangar tech - supplies, gear, equipment, etc; from the warehouse and cargo shuttle
• mining - ores and materials
• machinist - mechs, hardsuits, etc

Machinists do not fit well in science at all. They do not do any research or science. They don't invent new mech parts, or make experiments with them.

[FlamingLily]

6 minutes ago, Dreamix said:

Machinist is a weird role that does not fit perfectly in any department, but I think it fits the best in operations.

Like the other operations jobs, they provide supplies and resources to the rest of the ship:

• hangar tech - supplies, gear, equipment, etc; from the warehouse and cargo shuttle
• mining - ores and materials
• machinist - mechs, hardsuits, etc

Machinists do not fit well in science at all. They do not do any research or science. They don't invent new mech parts, or make experiments with them.

I agree that machinists don't really fit well in science, and that's because they were only in science to begin with because they work with cyborgs which are science-adjacent, but I still think engineering is a far better place for them. I don't think you can cleanly equate the fabrication of a hardsuit or a mech to hauling crates off of a shuttle or collecting ores, it's much less of a "supply" and more of an equipment maintenance. Operations' scope as a department is kind of loosely defined, but I think that's good, it's the broad underpinning roles that support the ship at its most foundational level, as opposed to the no less critical but much more clearly defined in scope departments. And, to reiterate, engineering's key role is to maintain and repair ship systems and equipment (which partially includes the AI, though RD is also involved there), so I don't see why mechs, EVA gear, IPC crew, and cyborgs are excluded from that.

[NothingNew]

At this rate, just give the Machinist their own entire department.