remove acid despensers

[the_furry]

Remove acid dispensers out of robotics and research. pretty straight forward, for the sake of interdepartmental communication remove these things. there's literally three different places they can get the acid on station (chemistry, xenobotany, and science outpost). someones bound to be able to help them and it would contribute to inter-department interaction. lately science has been so Isolated because each job can fend entirely for itself that very few people actually talk to eachother.

[Mofo1995]

So, there's an issue with this that stems from New code, in that chem dispsensors no longer regenerate chemicals. The usual trick of dipping over to the outpost (which most scientists did anyways) will now just deplete all of the anomalists' chems.

All of that said, the only interaction that I've seen go away with the addition of acid dispensers is the scientist-roboticist interaction of a scientist fetching acid for a roboticist.

You're right though that research has been even more isolated lately. I try to give people breaks to go around the station, but for the most part everyone sits in science.

[Skull132]

for scientists, it doesn't matter: there's a chem dispenser on the outpost to which they have access to anyways.

For the roboticists, idno.

Will have to think.

[Nanako]

I really don't want to see any changes that will cripple small crews any farther

How about a communal chem dispenser in the middle of science somewhere, so they can meetup and chat while getting supplies

[Skull132]

I really don't want to see any changes that will cripple small crews any farther.

 

The science and robotics crew have survived without these dispensers for years. Literally. Their removal is hardly "crippling" to them.

Though, here's an interesting point. I've been observing a good amount of players actually playing roboticists. Then again, I've not seen many mechs, so I doubt they're even using the dispensers. Observations not relevant to anything forever ever!

[Nanako]

I really don't want to see any changes that will cripple small crews any farther.

 

The science and robotics crew have survived without these dispensers for years. Literally. Their removal is hardly "crippling" to them.

Though, here's an interesting point. I've been observing a good amount of players actually playing roboticists. Then again, I've not seen many mechs, so I doubt they're even using the dispensers. Observations not relevant to anything forever ever!

 

I have a theory about that.

The lack of mechs, in my experience, is due to a lack of supplies. They need a LOT of metal.

Getting supplies is often difficult, because the supply team tends to die. All kinds of hazards seem to target them first, and there's quite a few regular antagonist players *cough*pootis*cough* who continually pick quartermaster or shaft miner for the easy access to dangerous tools and weapons, then proceed to murder their own department, instead of doing the work necessary to supply the station.

As an antagonist quartermaster, you can pretty much just give yourself any tools and weapons you want, it's like playing as a miniature administrator. Extremely attractive to powergaming antag players.

In a significant chunk of games, the supply department is just non-functional, and a roboticist can't do much unless they tour around dismantling the station for materials.

[Garnascus]

The extent of inter-department communication here was "yo chemist gimme some acid" "ok here you go". it was annoying more than anything =\. I dunno if people are looking to RP during getting something to do their job but maybe im wrong.

[K0NFL1QT]

The lack of mechs, in my experience, is due to a lack of supplies. They need a LOT of metal.

 

A borg and a Ripley will use up most, if not all of your round start metal. You end up not making Ripleys because they cost so much. If you make a cyborg, you have to save the rest of your metal so you can perform potential repairs ONCE. If you are expected to maintain two borgs, that's all your metal allotted if they ever require replacement parts.

As far as I am aware, the acid dispensers only contain a limited amount of acid that requires restocking to replenish. I like that the job has access to a certain amount of acid to be able to minimally perform even when there aren't chemists or other scientists to get acid. The issue is we're not seeing that limited supply exhausted because of the other material costs extremely limiting possible builds.

Play roboticist for a couple rounds and tell us if the material cost is appropriate.

[Guest]

I don't agree. It allows R&D and robotics to be fairly self-sufficient enough to do their own research in a fair allotted amount of time so they can do other tasks such as socializing or goofing off. My R&D path got curbstomped ever since the research outposts got their PACMAN generators swapped out. It's terrible to not have Plasma 4 before pre-mining.

[Jboy2000000]

Theres still plasma in science, if you can get the RD/Xenobiologists to hand over their small stock of plasma. In my experience, you only need two crystals to get your research up to snuff.

[Guest]

i'm not of the mind to steal important starting resources from other departments.

[Butterrobber202]

Dearth Vader: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Dreviore]

As a late night player most of the time, no.

Often times when I play there are quite frankly no chemists avaliable to fulfill my need for Unstable Mutagen as the xenobotanist.

[Nanako]

Play roboticist for a couple rounds and tell us if the material cost is appropriate.

 

Were you addressing me? I agree with you, the post you quoted is largely based on my experience as playing roboticist.

I think the metal cost IS appropriate though. You are building a ~8 foot tall robot suit, it SHOULD use up a ton of metal. Supply just needs to be on the ball to supply it.

[swat43]

If we're talking about the materials consumption, yes, Robotics on this new code get less metal, in each 50 metal stack, but the consumption is still the same. All of the resource ammount is nerfed, making it so that the miners have more to do, but since the current build with resource scarce on the rock is mind boggignly pittiful, i'd rather wait for 4 minutes to recieve five crates of metal, rather wasting half an hour to find few metal stacks on the rock.

As for the topic, if people will remove acid dispensers (This is for robitics directed) then give them back the outpost access(WHICH THEY WONT HAVE STILL). But you know what? If we remove, all that will change is that Robotics (if no RnD boys are up) they can still be self sufficiant with the help of cargo. If you think that removing the dispenser will increase RP.. i can already tell it will be bare minimum improvement to what we have right now. This is a trivial idea.

(i've played now almost 3 years as a Roboticist, and i know how it is. I experienced when Robotics had outpost access, when they didn't and how it is once they have their own supply of dispenser).