Cargo as a redundant fallback

[Nanako]

Cargo often ends up with hundreds of points left over, and nobody wanting anything to order from it. there's a lot on their list, but not enough of it is generally useful, because the station makes a lot of things itself, if all departments are functioning properly.

But if they aren't, then the station doesn't get those necessary things, and cargo still sits ignored.

See a need, fill a need

I propose giving cargo the ability to order crates of things that are normally only produced through jobs, but with slightly unreasonable prices. The idea is not to make other departments useless, but to act as a fallback for when those departments aren't staffed or working. If you want to order tons of advanced medicine crates to compensate for chemistry not being staffed, it'd quickly burn through all your supply points

The prices should be set to a a level that would act as a slight deterrent, and make it not worth ordering if you can produce things yourself instead, most sane quartermasters would view the order suspiciously if the department that can make these things is functioning properly. But these orders would also act as something command staff could authorise to help out troubled departments that are lacking things:

For medical:

Advanced casualty crate

Contains 2x bottles each of bicaridine, dexalin plus, dermaline, 1 bottle of peridaxon, and a bottle of 10u iron pills

Genetic Medicine Crate

Contains 3x bottles of clonexadone, 2x bottles of alkysine, and a small half-sized bottle of rezadone (its the only way to treat genetic damage when power is down)

Biohazard Crate

Contains 2x bottles of spaceacillin, 2x spraybottles of sterilizine, 2x bottles of radium, 2x bottles of hyronalin, and one bottle of arithrazine. For viral ourbreaks, bacterial infections and irradiation.

Specialist Treatment Crate

Contains one bottle each of ethylredoxrazine, leporazine, lipozine, ryetalyn, and 20u carbon pills

Combat Enhancement Crate:

Contains two bottles each of hyperzine, synaptizine, inaprovaline, and four syringes. Intended for ordering by security when medical is unavailable.

Advanced Surgery Crate:

Contains a bottle of dexalin plus, a syringe, two laser scalpels and two bottles of nanopaste.

For Science:

Robotic Construction Kit

Contains all the components necessary to build a cyborg, including a positronic brain.

Robotic maintenance kit

Contains two each of the internal cyborg components, a super power cell, and four single-use cards which can unlock a cyborg's chassis

Rare Materials Crates

three seperately orderable crates (not all in one) that each contain 15 sheets of either gold, silver or uranium respectively. For science use when mining is nonfunctional

Telecrystal crate:

A crate containing two telecrystals, for telescience

Xenobiology starter crate:

Contains two baby grey slimes, held in stasis, a box of monkey cubes. Intended for restarting xenobiology after all the slimes have died

Console Circuitry Crate:

Contains one circuitboard each for a crew monitor console, security camera console, station alerts console and command and communications console. Intended for setting up a new bridge if a crisis situation demands it, or for making consoles for telescience

Farmbot Crate:

Contains a single, fully constructed farmbot, ready to go. For botany and xenobotany, when there's no roboticist

For Engineering:

SMES Construction Crate:

Same contents as the crate that starts in engineering hard storage - 2 superconducting magnetic coils, 2 superconducting transmisison coils, 2 superconducting capacitance coils, and two SMES circuitboards. For building new SMES in the event of major destruction

Phoron Sheets Crate:

Contains a stack of phoron sheets, for making heat-resistant windows. engineering only starts with one.

Plasteel Sheets Crate:

Contains a stack of 20 plasteel sheets, useful for making reinforced walls or exosuits, when the mining department isn't working

Recharger Crate:

Contains four rechargers, built but unwrenched, ready to be dragged into position. for power cells, energy guns, etc.

For Civilians:

Advanced Cleaning Crate:

Contains two bottles of ammonia, and a spraybottle of sterilizine. For janitors when chemistry is down

Kitchen Construction Crate:

Contains the circuitboards and materials necessary to build two microwaves, a grinder, and a condimaster. Plus two knives, two rolling pins, and a box of glassses.. For building a new kitchen, or rebuilding it after bombing

Emergency Generator Kit (New item!)

Contains a small, simple generator designed for use by civilians with no engineering knowledge. Really just a bunch of -pre-charged powercells inside a casing. It has no interface except an on switch, and when turned on will provide power to the nearest APC wirelessly. Runs for about half an hour. Designed for use when engineering can't seem to get the engine running and departments need power urgently

[Taintedglory]

While I am cargo geek half the time I play, I agree with some of this but not all. +1

I don't think plasteel or farmbots should be orderable

Only because I'm one of those people who actually makes cargo useful by forcing it on people . Just start sending them stuff without them asking.

"Cargo, why did you just send engineering twenty five crates filled with insulated gloves?"

"YOU'RE WELCOME"

Edited June 19, 2016 by Guest

[The Stryker]

Personally, a bit of the crates are powerful, so they should be extremely unreasonably priced.

Otherwise, I like it because it allows cargo to function well and give everyone everything and the kitchen sink during an emergency.

[Guest Complete Garbage]

SMES Construction Crate:

Same contents as the crate that starts in engineering hard storage - 2 superconducting magnetic coils, 2 superconducting transmisison coils, 2 superconducting capacitance coils, and two SMES circuitboards. For building new SMES in the event of major destruction

 

Could be wrong, but isn't this already a thing? I think it costs 200 points, but I might be thinking of something else entirely.

[Butterrobber202]

command and communications console board

 

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

[Carver]

+1

I like all of these, but you seem to have misspelt Plasma.

[Nanako]

command and communications console board

 

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

 

You're worried about shuttle recall griefing, right?

The thing is, if you have an ID that has the privileges to do that, you can already just buy a laptop with that module on it, and do shuttle calls anywhere from that laptop.

Building a new command console to do it would be an awfully less efficient method of griefing, and thus is unlikely to happen.

If a random scientist builds one of these in telescience, he still can't use it without the captain's ID. and there's a laptop vendor right outside if they were planning on stealing that and using it for a shuttle

[Bedshaped]

I know you said they'd be balanced around being very expensive, but what about them being a one time use or having a long cooldown timer?

[Arrow768]

During a average round you wont end up with more than a few 100 cargo points. (If you dont have miners that provide you with income)

So if you make the prices high enough, it´s very unlikely that you get more than one of these emergency crates per round.

I would say that setting a high enough point limit is enough to prevent these crates from being ordered too often.

All in All, I support this suggestion.

[Zundy]

As per the posts above I too agree with this suggestion. It's either that or have excess points over a certain amount pool into the stations budget but that'll come with the economy systems when/if it's done.

[MrSmooooth]

I'd just like to say I believe you're on to something, but may be taking things a little far. Some of these items already exist in crates you can order, other items here would need to be exorbitantly expensive in order to be balanced. A Well stocked cargo department is already a godsend in an emergency because a good quartermaster will try to stock the warehouse in back with useful supplies. If I've been left with nothing better to do, I'll get four optimised mulebots, a warehouse filled with emergency supplies, a Jailbroken Autolathe(Security tends to take exception to that, but do they ever check the science wing's lathe? NO!), and generally be prepared for almost anything that could happen.

Ultimately, more crate variety is always better, but I'd be careful with the exact cost of many of these crates.

Final Note, axe the Xenobiology crate. You start with two grey slimes, so you should always have a grey slime core available. Inject that with 5u Phoron to create a grey baby slime. No need to haul those dangerous godforsaken things over MY cargo deck.