Reducing Engineering Slot PR Discussion

[rrrrrr]

Made a thread for this PR: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/21376

... because I think it's a fairly major change and should potentially be discussed before being merged.

Quote

Engineering as a department is simply far too big for how little it has to actually do and this creates a lot of competition for what little gameplay there is. Round-start is a battle royale to see who can claim their preferred task faster and if you're unlucky enough to be in a full department, you won't even get anything at all.
This is symptomatic of a larger problem with engineering, but until a better solution can be found, this at least guarantees that the people who manage to roll their slot get to actually engage with the mechanics of their role.

I personally disagree with this and commented on the PR to that effect, but that doesn't matter. I am one person.

[Merlin1230]

My personal opinion is that reducing slots doesnt fix the issue. It might guarantee that everyone has something to do for roundstart setup if we ignore apprentices (1 person on SM, 1 person on INDRA, 1 person doing stuff like RCON and sheilds), but the rest of their work is reacting, and how many people can reasonably be involved in a situation and have something to do is super variable on how severe the situation is, or how many different situations there are. If theres a broken window somewhere, thats still just one person that gets something to do. Lowering the slots down to three doesnt suddenly allow for more people to be involved with that situation. Ive also experienced during more chaotic rounds times where even a decently filled engi department is stretched thin.

Also, this hurts the liveliness of the department since lobby RP is like half the fun of the role and now youd have to deal with some intense slot competition.

Realistically the best way to solve the issue is a few things, I feel. Firstly, Engineering just needs more to do. I dont have any good ideas of this, but more things to do means more people get to do things. Secondly, and this is more of a culture thing, just stress that people should communicate about what theyre doing, when they finish it, etc. If theres more communication about that, then you can avoid the situation where you end up going to fix something just to learn it was already fixed, and it opens up opportunities to takeover a tasking if you had a chance to state your interest in something before someone else dealt with it. More dialogue and talking helps keeps everyone involved and active. Granted I do think people are generally fine at this already, for the most part.

[Omicega]

I think engineering has an incredible number of slots relative to other departments as-is and has suffered from a pervasive and oppressive cultural issue for years now, which is only exacerbated by the sheer number of engineering staff you have available at any given time past lowpop. The PR author is not wrong -- as someone who played almost exclusively engineering until recently heading back into security, the combination of being massively overstaffed and the ridiculous 'prepper' culture the department has developed is totally out of balance with how trivial the gameplay itself actually is.

I would support this on a test basis, actually, just to see how it might affect the department going forwards. The one thing I think is beyond debate, though, is that engineering is the single most privileged department on the ship in terms of how many slots it enjoys as things stand.

[Comet Blaze]

I'm going to expand on my reasoning for making the PR here.

While it's true that the amount of things to do scales based on round intensity I've found that under anything but the most dire circumstances this is rarely enough to entertain the whopping 8 people (not counting the Chief Engineer or any apprentices, which would make it 12) that make up engineering. The problem is that there are only two roles in engineering and even those two roles have significant overlap between each other. Meaning that, at any given time, you are competing with 7 different people for something that could comfortably be done by one person, two at most if one of you is generous and splits the already meagre task to allow someone else to participate.

We shouldn't rely on player kindness to ensure everyone gets to engage with the mechanics of the role they picked, the reason we have limited slots is exactly so that we can say "alright, this is the most people we can have and guarantee that everyone has something to do" and if we keep that in mind then it's clear that engineering's slots don't meet that standard.

Engineering suffers, in my eyes, from a lack of specialization. The truth is that, after round start, there is almost no difference between what an atmos tech and an engineer actually do. To put this into perspective, it would be like if instead of having paramedics, physicians or surgeons we had a 6 people with the role of "medic" and every time someone got injured they'd all rush to get to them. The issue is that, unlike our very deep and complex medical mechanics, engineering's gameplay just doesn't have enough substance that it can be split and satisfy multiple people.

The ideal solution would obviously be to add deeper mechanics that would allow for better differentiation between engineering's roles, but this is hardly the first time this issue has been brought up and no concrete solution has arrived yet. As it stands, engineering has enough gameplay to reasonably entertain 4-5 people and I think the available slots should reflect that.

[rrrrrr]

Quote

The one thing I think is beyond debate, though, is that engineering is the single most privileged department on the ship in terms of how many slots it enjoys as things stand.

Comparing and contrasting other departments to Engineering, excluding Head roles, the numbers currently stand at this ---

Engineering - 11 (if PR goes through, 7)
Medical - 11
Security - 9 (!!! no wonder slots are so coveted...)
Science - 10
Operations - 9

As you can see, Engineering is currently on-par with Medical (although Medical's eleven roles all exist in fairly distinct niches, i.e, 2 Physicians, 2 Surgeons, 2 Paramedics, 2 Pharmacists, 1 Psych, 2 Trainer roles.) Overall, I don't think this part of your reply is true.

Regarding the cultural issues you mention, I think this has been discussed in the past and I agree that it's "real." I don't personally think the solution involves reducing the number of slots available.

[Omicega]

1 minute ago, Comet Blaze said:

the whopping 8 people (not counting the Chief Engineer or any apprentices, which would make it 12) that make up engineering.

This is not even accounting for the fact that the Technical Assistant alt-title has at least a couple of regular players now. I think engineering as a department hit 13 or 14 players in the some of the event rounds. I don't mean for this to come off as sniping at or complaining about those players -- I think that's pretty clearly what that specific alt title is meant to enable, people to dip into engineering as the assistant role, and they're not doing anything wrong by using it that way -- but just to point out to anyone else in the thread that there are a ridiculous number of engineers available for a tiny pool of potential gameplay at higher server pops.

4 minutes ago, Comet Blaze said:

To put this into perspective, it would be like if instead of having paramedics, physicians or surgeons we had a 6 people with the role of "medic" and every time someone got injured they'd all rush to get to them.

This is also true, to the point where almost the entire department's supplies tend to end up in 'grab bags' left lying around after being hand labelled because the culture has reached that point. I wound up burning out on engineering very quickly after my return due to realising just how much I kind of hate feeling like I'm actively competing with other people for even the tiniest scrap of gameplay.

[maniacalFowl]

24 minutes ago, Comet Blaze said:

I've found that under anything but the most dire circumstances this is rarely enough to entertain the whopping 8 people

I think this take is a bit Luke-warm in that this same belief can be applied to pretty much any department that we have. Under the same idea, we don't need 4 hangar-tech slots, we don't need 4 Security officer slots, and we don't need 3 Bridge crew slots. If this PR goes out, you're essentially gimping engineering in those dire circumstances because you don't believe it necessary to have those extra hands to mitigate whatever disaster plagues the ship. We also have to remember that Engineering is, for the most part, the only reason why most rounds can continue after Antags decide to do anything more than shoot at security. Breaches spread, fires are started, and people end up trapped in hostile environments. Cutting slots would mean there are less hands to allow the general crew to continue to engage with the round, leaving them trapped behind shutters. As a longtime engineering player, I shouldn't have to talk about general player/character behavior when it comes to dealing with DC, because I've seen it first hand. It's abysmal. People do everything in their power to escape scenarios that make the little green doll change a different shade. 
 

33 minutes ago, Comet Blaze said:

The ideal solution would obviously be to add deeper mechanics that would allow for better differentiation between engineering's roles

You're right in that this would be the ideal solution, and I'm sure there are plenty of engineering players that would agree. Hell, I'd bankroll coders to create a more realistic electrical system or port over my beloved Nuclear Reactor from Beestation . Or even an engineering salvager role, but we're not going to talk about my wishlist right now.  If the PR goes through, we're going to gut the booming engineering population to give rise to even more competitive behavior. If making a PR like this is what it takes to push us into specializing engineering than I'm all for it, but as it stands now I only see this as a negative.

[MrLenny]

I feel like limiting the slots for engineering would honestly kill a lot of the RP. I myself honestly just come to Aurora mainly for RP and not for the gameplay, of course gameplay should be a factor in it but it's not my main goal when I'm playing. My favourite rounds in engineering is when we either build some funny bar in maint and RP in there or just sit in the lobby and shoot the shit or hell even maint RP where you lock down an area for ''maintence'' that's very fun. Engineering gameplay is pretty much roundstart setup and then just waiting until antags or a broken window happens, or fixing electrical storms etc etc so mid round engineering is very reactive. Wouldn't it be better to give us more gameplay then limiting the slots? I can understand why a department like security is limited due to it being antag vs sec and you don't want security to steam roll over the antags but I honestly don't see why engineering should be limited to 7 people when it doesn't really effect anyone other then engineers wanting stuff to do (which I agree and understand). But again wouldn't it be simply better to expand engineering gameplay via giving us maybe reactor upkeep or something else? 

 

Also I feel like engineering only gets maxed out anyways on event rounds and not regular rounds. At max we get 5 engineers and maybe 1 or 2 atmos techs (rare atmos tech sightings) plus maybe an apprentice but those apprentices are there to learn. There’s barely any CE players anyway with the only one I currently see a lot of is Schawns CE. Also the technical assistants shouldn’t do much of the engineering work anyways, mainly just keep an eye on RCON. 

 

TLDR: Don’t agree with the PR because it limits the RP and a good way to counter not having anything to do is to give engineering more things to do.

 

 

[ASmallCuteCat]

Generalizing a little bit here, but I feel like the best answer to "There's not enough to go around" is to add more to what's offered, rather than to allow fewer people to join.

Those little panels that you can tinker with are a great example of this. 

Engineering's in that weird sort of spot where it definitely needs as many slots as it does when things go wrong, but only when things go wrong. Last night, for example, there was a round where the Supermatter was at risk of delaminating, the SM reactor room and a couple adjacent hallways were at a few thousand Kelvin, the INDRA was having trouble starting up and was hovering around 50-60% instability, the machinist's office couldn't get any power, and Telecomms went down. That's five separate issues, at least two of which could possibly have disabled the ship or killed half the crew, without counting what the antagonists were doing. Imagine if there had been a hull breach or a blob spawn.

My personal opinion here is that it's better to have more downtime, rather than increase competition over a smaller pool of job slots.

Edited yesterday at 18:49 by ASmallCuteCat

[Merlin1230]

1 hour ago, Omicega said:

This is also true, to the point where almost the entire department's supplies tend to end up in 'grab bags' left lying around after being hand labelled because the culture has reached that point. I wound up burning out on engineering very quickly after my return due to realising just how much I kind of hate feeling like I'm actively competing with other people for even the tiniest scrap of gameplay.

This probably wouldnt change if you lowered engineers down to three IMO. There'd still be the competition because there just isnt that much gameplay to go around, while the hectic and chaotic rounds get more hectic and chaotic because engineering wouldnt have less manpower to spare. I personally dont feel it really solves the underlying issues, and itll most likely just maybe mitigate it a slight bit.. If it isnt a good fix, I dont really see the need to implement it before changes that expand the department can be added, since I feel like having less people and a more competitive slot wont feel better as a inbetween.

For the grab bag thing Id like to say the cart helps this a bit by having a unified store of resources, and while I make a effort to be the person bringing the cart to the scene, people still just tend to use grab bags over me bringing the cart, especially since its one cart and if theres ever more then one thing going on, youd have to wait for one situation to be resolved for the cart to come over. The duffelbag is still just more convenient then the cart for a lot of people and its probably gonna be hard to change that without upsetting people.

a test could be interesting but im not super confident about it feeling better in theory. Maybe Im wrong, though.

Edited yesterday at 19:20 by Merlin1230
rewording cause I felt a lilll mean with how I worded stuff before

[Merlin1230]

second reply because I just thought of it, the specialization thing is a good point, but youd need to really expand the department first before you could really have specializations I think, since everything engineering does would be kinda boring if split into individual roles. Like say, if you split up engineer into a reactor tech and damage control roles,  the reactor is very much "set up and youre done", so theyd have nothing to do after the first ten minutes or so of the round, and damage control is entirely reactive (although medical and sec are both also pretty reactive, so maybe theres a place for that?). Maybe if you add a reason to look at the reactors after setup and stuff, a reactor tech role could be somewhat fun, but I feel like the inherent role of it kinda means theyre just cooped up in the reactors not really interacting with the rest of the crew, which is definitely not the best design. Really, its kinda hard to split up engineer in a way that keeps them from not being cooped up while still being fun.

[rrrrrr]

Just got back from the doctor's office. Wow, this thread sort of blew up.

I think that my post about the actual department size (11) is relevant. I also think that a lot of the discussion going on and seemingly driving this PR is culture-based. I'm going to try and piece-meal give my two-cents on this whole thing, so forgive me if this reply is sort of scattered.

1 hour ago, Comet Blaze said:

cut for brevity

First of all, thank you for your reply. I think that this PR is a little premature, personally. I had a thread up about a year ago with a few ideas on how to get more gameplay into engineering and while I'm fairly busy at the moment, life-wise, I'm trying to make some steps into getting those ideas into the game this weekend; Engineering as a department thrives when it has a lot of work to do but, sadly, given the way the game is, a lot of that work comes from non-canon antagonist rounds. Filling this out by adding more random events and making repairs less trivial to do would be a huge first-step.

I agree that Engineering suffers from a lack of specialization. This is why I support the return of alt-titles to, specifically, Engineering.

2 hours ago, Omicega said:

cut for brevity

While I overall sympathize with what you're saying, having played Engineering very consistently for two years now, essentially exclusively, I don't know if I fully agree that Engineering has a "pervasive and oppressive cultural issue." I agree that there are mild problems present --- for instance, I've had two rounds in the past six months on highpop where there was simply no steel or plasteel present in the equipment room. Other people took it all! I had to ask them for some!

What Engineering is currently suffering from is "popularity." There's a lot of vibes-based arguments going on, here, so I'm going to similarly argue based on vibe. Not so long ago, Engineering was not so vibrant and full of warm bodies. Oft would I join a round and there would only be one or two other engineers. Glorious were the few times one, let alone two, atmospheric technicians would be present. This is not the case anymore. Over the past two months or so, I've missed out playing on high-pop rounds because the department was full twice. There are a lot of apprentice characters and, I think, two characters who consistently play tech assistant.

I really do not think that reducing the number of slots will solve anything. As a solo engineer, you can get everything on the ship up and running in around thirteen to fifteen minutes. The solution is not to reduce the number of engineer slots (which, I think, would negatively impact roleplay) but to make engineering harder and to give the department more to do.

[Omicega]

I can't tell if your tone is just landing badly or you're intentionally being facetious with me, so I'll make this my last post and keep it pretty short.

If any other department prepared for things to go wrong the way engineering routinely prepares for things to go wrong, people would be getting bwoinked en masse for powergaming. You can't move for tripping over 'grab bag' duffels in the department on occasion, and in general the playerbase in engineering (in my humble opinion) has an extremely binary approach to the average round flow -- you're either doing nothing at all mechanically and full-on roleplaying in the lobby because there's nothing to do, or the slightest bit of content (blob, something breaches, what-have-you) is treated as a first-come first-served emergency response scenario and everyone jets off to sort it out as quickly as they mechanically can. Medical can put effort into blending roleplay and mechanics when a patient comes in for treatment, but engineering struggles to manage that inside the department itself in my experience. I would call that a pervasive cultural issue with the role and a portion of its playerbase.

Saying that things should be made harder and people should be given more to do is a fantastic solution, but unless you plan on coding new mechanics, features etc. yourself or otherwise motivating someone to do so there is no point in making that argument. It's a total non-starter and could be applied to literally any of Aurora's departments at present, at least one of which (science) is in far greater need of it.

[Noble Row]

Isn't Matt making a whole skills thing that's going to solve all of these issues by making everyone not good at everything? So why not wait for that, so it won't matter how many engineers there are?

 

Right now I can't play an entire character because engineering is constantly full. Cutting down the slots seems like backwards thinking when dev time could be put into something like more systems or just waiting for Matt to make the skills system.

[rrrrrr]

10 minutes ago, Omicega said:

cut for brevity

I think my tone is just landing badly; I have zero intention of being facetious with you, considering that I respect you, your opinion and also enjoy playing this game with you. It probably reflects poorly on me that my responses make you want to stop posting and I apologize for that.

I think we may have seen different things because while I fully believe that what you're describing is real, I don't think I've seen it to the extent that you have. My experience as of this year is that people are generally communicative and sort themselves into solving problems based on what's necessary; for example, during a recent round, there was a firefight in starboard-side maintenance on deck two. How this was handled by a mostly-full department involved staging, preparing materials, using the new cart to move sheet metal, and working with Security to fix what we could while negotiations were ongoing. The roleplay in the lead-up to this was fun and the roleplay that occurred during the aftermath was also fun. It was an ideal situation --- but those don't always happen. I agree that there's something of an issue with over-preparedness and people full-tilt sprinting to fix, say, a broken APC, but many of the situations that Engineering as a department deals with are emergencies and sort of require acting quickly.

I am also actively planning on adding more content to Engineering to the best of my ability and will be taking time this weekend to do so. I am mostly hampered by a lack of experience with DM and Git but working to understand things better. Engineering, in general, has received a lot of TLC lately from specific developers (Batra, Fabian, both of whom have great stuff in the works, from what I understand!)

[Mr.Popper]

I agree that some engineering players take the job too seriously (this goes for every job tbf). And reducing the slots would mean more gameplay per engineer, but to what end? Do we want engineers to be even more locked in, since the job would be more coveted and challenging? Harder gameplay would only encourage the hoarding prepper culture, so the next logical question is do you care more about the preppers not roleplaying enough, or that they're doing things you want to be doing? My issue is with the former, hence why I want a more lax engineering culture, but the latter is also valid, we simply fall into different engineer archetypes. I've narrowed them down to two, with some overlap and fluidity:

1. The Soldier. Or "preppers". They want to work (gameplay) first and foremost, probably because they find it fun. Usually either new players or returning players checking out something new that's been added; I turn into a soldier when the comet expulsion event pops for example because I've yet to explore its effects. This creates tension when more than one soldier want to explore the same thing, since there's relatively little engineering content on Horizon. Good soldiers communicate with each other to divvy up what they want to do, but that's not always possible, hence the frustration in this thread.
2. The Reservist. They've been there, done that, or maybe they just don't find the gameplay fun; either way, they're more interested in roleplaying and aren't too fussed if someone else does all the work. This describes me for the most part. I've done most of what there is to do and I'm content letting newer players get their fix while I roleplay domestic disputes. A good reservist is a mentor, preparing soldiers for when/if they're content with engineering and move on to reservist themselves or another job.

This is not a binary good and bad, but a life cycle. New players turn into experienced players, experienced players teach the new players, the experienced players revert back to new players when they return from a break/something new gets added, the new experienced players teach them the new thing, etc. Yet it's only able to exist because of how many slots there are, and reducing them would disproportionately hit reservists, seeing as we can "just play off-duty". Should I be banished to the grey jumpsuit hell or play a new job? Maybe, it might give a newer player a fun round, but I don't find the "gameplay-first" mindset particularly conducive to roleplay and leaving room for mentors encourages character retention—imagine if every time someone got bored of a department their character vanished. Medical's already in a similar state to what the PR is aiming for and it's one of the most stressful, competitive, homogenous departments which only serves to breed a roleplay-second, occasionally even elitist player culture.

More departments should be like engineering, not vice versa.

Edited 23 hours ago by Mr.Popper
typo

[MattAtlas]

Keep it normal here. Nobody is after your slots specifically, so let's avoid taking things personally.

[CatsinHD]

My 2-cents. Engineering fills up pretty quick. Considering it can consistently get nearly all of its slots filled most high-pop rounds is a pretty good indicator that the department is doing good. Plus, during expeditions the extra manpower helps a lot. Or crazy rounds where major damage might occur. I think it's fine the way it is. (We should add more fluff RP stuff similar to those maintenance panels but that's not for this thread)

[evandorf]

You have two stated issues to address: The engineering department's workload is too light per engineer and the current department culture is not conducive to each engineer getting their share of work. IMO, this PR doesn't address these issues properly.

Workload is Too Light Per Engineer - As others have stated, this isn't always true. The workload is highly variable and while this assumption might be true with low to medium intensity, reducing the number of engineers will cause issues during higher intensity rounds. Large scale repairs require a lot of hands. The work can also be extremely dangerous and dead engineers can't have their slot refilled. Some ideas have been floated for additional work, e.g., preventative maintenance. I would rather see PRs that add content than restrict slots.

7 hours ago, Comet Blaze said:

We shouldn't rely on player kindness to ensure everyone gets to engage with the mechanics of the role they picked

Department Culture and Allotment of Work - This isn't something we should try to fix with mechanics. If you find that you are constantly fighting with others for work or that others are hoarding supplies then a conversation needs to happen. If the issue is OOC and you've tried to resolve it without success then it needs to be handled by the moderation team. Neither engineering, nor medical, security, or any department is shielded from power-gaming rules by the needs or urgency of their work. If the issue is IC (the conflict is between characters) and you're unable to resolve it, then it needs to be handled by command or, at worst, CCIA. Changing mechanics in an attempt to influence departmental culture is inexact and clumsy and likely to have unintended consequences.

[dessysalta]

To repost what I said with a more visibly-casual tone, I think I'd be very upset if someone tried to lower the slots of my most-played departments. Gameplay goes hand in hand with roleplay (hence this being a video game you can play and not a server you only write in), obviously, but this wouldn't accomplish anything worthwhile. I echo what was said about it really just pulling the fun out of things; bluntly it'd just reduce role availability in an environment where roles to play can already be hard to get, not factoring in things like time of day and general availability on an individual basis (jobs etc). 

Personally, I've found it more difficult to engage with Aurora as of late because of the increase in population. I like the increase in population, it's nice to see the thing filled, but I also dislike losing rolls and then having to play in a wholly different department or a role where you have absolutely no authority and can't be given any. It's a hard sell just by virtue of reducing the player count.

One thing I will say again is that I do think this change is very anti-roleplay. From the points mentioned above to what Mr. Popper said about medical's environment and associated playerbase, this is at best a band-aid fix and more likely a change that will exacerbate a recurring if not growing issue. I think there are better departments to focus on than engineering. I personally have found that engineering is pretty much a perfect split between roleplay and gameplay. I think sec is also pretty good, though more dependent on gameplay. Operations on the other hand, or the more substantially spoken about science could use more content well before we start cutting into the rest—as much as a plan for them might be out of scope of this thread.

Generally, I don't think any slot in any department should be cut down. As others have said, if the problem is the content, then add more content. If it's the players, then correct the players. Maybe do both in one go, I dunno how development works but I have an idea of how some things could work, but this is a huge change even without getting into all of the niche aspects of it. Worst case scenario, I don't want this to turn engineering into an extremely gameplay-first-roleplay-second environment, nor do I think job selection should be more competitive in any department than it already is.

[Faye <3]

i think that reducing slots would definitely solve the work issue, but i also think it would be quite damaging to every other aspect of the dept. engineering population is only growing and there are increasingly fewer positions on aurora where you can reliably get a slot. even engineering with it's massive size is beginning to feel a bit constrained. there's a lot of social RP in engineering rn and reducing the engineer slots to three would absolutely stymie growth, frustrate players and introduce a higher degree of competitiveness for a small gain imo. 

Edited 50 minutes ago by Faye <3