Night-time on a space station

[Nikov]

Look, I both want spoopy sparey mood lighting for the rule of cool, and think it makes sufficient sense given all the biological effects night-time has on our various species. We're also discussing where the hell we all sleep (stacked like cordwood in the dorm / on home planets ten thousand lightyears away, duh) and if that has any relevance. I rather hope some Dwarf Fortress style bedrooms make it into the new map, with non-functioning stairs to the "dormitory level" that incidentally is off-screen, like any berths on the Odin.

Hoooowever, Jackboot is wondering why the station would be accelerating if we're in free-fall orbit around a star.

Are we in freefall? Seems to me we're in 1 gee of acceleration toward the floor tiles. If we were in freefall, we'd be floating around all round.

Are we accelerating? How could we not be. Even if this gravity generator device only pulled loose objects to the floor, there's still hundreds of tons of crew, water, furniture, etc. all pressing against the floor tiles at a consistent 1 gee of force. In order for us to continue pressing against the floor, we have to be accelerating the floor plates. Otherwise we break Newton's laws, since force being applied to the floor plates has to have an equal and opposite reaction. And since the gravity generator takes in electricity, pushes a reaction mass of people against the floor, and continues to use the same reaction mass perpetually, we have a reaction-less drive.

Do you have any idea how entirely meaningless nuclear weapons are when you can put a reaction-less drive on an asteroid and push it at 1 gee acceleration for a decade? Reactionless drives make for dirt-cheap planet crackers, and dirt-cheap planet crackers will really, really strain interspecies diplomacy when xenocide is a simple, stealthy policy enacted and then ignored as you play nice waiting for your rock to hit Earth at .9 C.

Fortunately there is a solution to not only give us gravity but also not break physics or the cardinal rule of science fiction, "Friends don't let friends have reaction-less drives in their universe".

The NSS Exodus is on a tether with the asteroid, with the two masses rotating around a central point. This allows neat and well-understood physics to produce spin artificial gravity. It also means you'd have to hold on when on EVA to keep from flying off (you do) solar panels would need to track a star (they do) and if you fell off you have a chance of catching the other end of the tether, the asteroid, if its further from the center of mass than the point you left was (this is a bit of a stretch now, but hell, I'm trying). Furthermore the telecomms sat is now the center of mass for this asteroid-tether-tcomms-tether-station array, giving it a place in our universe.

All you have to do is change the "Gravity Generator" centcomm message from "We stopped beaming gravitons" (bahahahah, oh you) to "Sensors in the spin tether indicate the station and asteroid's mass ratios are out of tolerance, and must be corrected to prevent a failure of the tether. The station will now be brought down from spin to re-calibrate the spin ballast. You may experience weightlessness during this time."

Tah dah. No more inexplicable artificial gravity, nor its horrible consequences should we be consistent. Want to be super consistent?

http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/ will tell you how long the tether is by putting the solar panel tracking rate (how fast the star appears to move in our sky) into Angular Velocity as degrees / second.

[Guest]

I don't know or care about what's stretching this thread past 3 pages besides meaningless ranting that doesn't even remotely touch on the topic, so I'll just address the OP only.

Even during a skeleton crewed shift, it is still a workplace. It is not the ISS where crewmembers work, eat, sleep, Netflix and chill at. There are no internal clocks to adhere to. Employees that are scheduled to work during dead hour shifts are expected to be awake for the shift just as they expect prime-time scheduled workers to be awake and vigilant during their shifts.

Wake up, eat meal, go to local starport, hitch ride to Odin, check in at NTCC, get your ID authenticated, hitch shuttle from NTCC to Exodus to go to work, get dressed in work uniform, do work/research/slack off/whatever, hop on crew transfer shuttle, go home, eat another meal, brush teeth, take shower, go to bed to repeat what happens the next day.

The NSS Exodus is a work facility where people work shifts around the clock. You don't dim the lights because it's a night shift. In fact, security officers working the night shift at real jobs have the wonderful task of turning on every single light at your workplace and paying close attention for possible entrypoints into the workplace. Power draw increases the most during the night shifts at round-the-clock facilities, because darkness does not aid workplace security. It aids intruders and criminals.

It's not consistent to believe NT would suddenly dim all of their lights during low-population shifts just for the sake of making their workspaces atmospheric and spooky. That's ridiculous. It is not immersive to dim the lights because your own brain is telling you to go to fucking sleep. That's chemicals in your brain telling you that you need to turn off your computer and go bed. That's not reason, it's typical body functions influencing you.

You want to simulate night-time on a space station? Turn off all of the APC lighting one by one. Say it's for power preservation purposes. Whatever. You can build RP off that if you want and do it for a couple of rounds as a gimmick.

Don't auto force it and make it tedious.

[Zundy]

I don't know or care about what's stretching this thread past 3 pages besides meaningless ranting that doesn't even remotely touch on the topic, so I'll just address the OP only.

Even during a skeleton crewed shift, it is still a workplace. It is not the ISS where crewmembers work, eat, sleep, Netflix and chill at. There are no internal clocks to adhere to. Employees that are scheduled to work during dead hour shifts are expected to be awake for the shift just as they expect prime-time scheduled workers to be awake and vigilant during their shifts.

Wake up, eat meal, go to local starport, hitch ride to Odin, check in at NTCC, get your ID authenticated, hitch shuttle from NTCC to Exodus to go to work, get dressed in work uniform, do work/research/slack off/whatever, hop on crew transfer shuttle, go home, eat another meal, brush teeth, take shower, go to bed to repeat what happens the next day.

The NSS Exodus is a work facility where people work shifts around the clock. You don't dim the lights because it's a night shift. In fact, security officers working the night shift at real jobs have the wonderful task of turning on every single light at your workplace and paying close attention for possible entrypoints into the workplace. Power draw increases the most during the night shifts at round-the-clock facilities, because darkness does not aid workplace security. It aids intruders and criminals.

It's not consistent to believe NT would suddenly dim all of their lights during low-population shifts just for the sake of making their workspaces atmospheric and spooky. That's ridiculous. It is not immersive to dim the lights because your own brain is telling you to go to fucking sleep. That's chemicals in your brain telling you that you need to turn off your computer and go bed. That's not reason, it's typical body functions influencing you.

You want to simulate night-time on a space station? Turn off all of the APC lighting one by one. Say it's for power preservation purposes. Whatever. You can build RP off that if you want and do it for a couple of rounds as a gimmick.

Don't auto force it and make it tedious.

 

Appeal to realism isn't an argument, only an appeal to consistency in games. This game is fantastically unrealistic and the "but it's not realistic" can be instantly BTFO so why use it?

The only worthy point is that you personally don't like it and imagine it'd quickly become tedious. Fair enough.

I personally like the idea of auto dimming lights literally as a spooky mechanic which aids antags because this is a game and not real life. It brings a new dimension to the table and allows for spooky vamp/cult/murderer/etc shit to be used in rounds.

I guess we can have a 'power save function' which could be activated by the AI or some console (engineering?) to trigger it and have it off by default?

[Nikov]

I looked into how civilian jobs at truly far-flung places work, and its not like what's being described at all.

Is there a soul alive on Earth today who gets up, has breakfast, gets in his car, goes to an airport, gets on a jet, flies to another airport, goes through a customs line for his passport, gets on a helicopter, flies to his workplace, punches in, mops the floor for two or four hours or eight hours hours, gets back on a helicopter, flies back to the airport, turns in his passport at another customs line, gets back on a jet, flies back to the airport, goes out to his car, drives home, and goes to sleep?

Aren't about... ALL of these steps ridiculous? Sure, space travel in our setting is as common as air travel today. That doesn't mean its as easy as driving your car to the office from the suburb. A much more reasonable model is ships and ship crews. Not the navy, but inland freight shipping on rivers. You live, work, and sleep on the ship. You get 'shore leave' every weekend or two weeks or four months or whatever your ship's schedule dictates. Maybe you sign for a one-month posting, then at the end of that month, go through the rigmarole to return to your home proper, where you spend the next two weeks off before returning to the airport for another month on station.

In this model, you wake up, step out of the dorms, grab breakfast in the cafeteria, go to your post, and swipe your ID at 8:00 or 16:00 or whenever the shift starts. Normal shifts see us swiping out in eight hours, having dinner, socializing around the station's off-duty socializing facilities (why else is there a library, bar, chapel, garden...) and then go back to our dorm bunks, sling a hammock in one of the firefighting closets, whatever. Maybe you pay for a hotel room on the Odin if you're a real high roller.

Our crew transfer shuttle is just the "TGIF Bus" for everyone who's multi-shift stint on the Exodus is over. They go back to the Odin, get a passenger ship to their various homes, and hang out there for a week or a month until their contract calls them back out. Or the Odin has all the fine dining, dance clubs and hotels the local Nanotrasen employees blow money in during "weekends" or "liberties" before returning to their ongoing shift. Maybe officers and career types really do live on the Odin.

But to assume all fifty or sixty crew are going to hop aboard fifty or sixty passenger ships and fly back to our front doors by dinnertime on planets across hundreds of light years... I'm sorry, that's nonsense. There'd be no way to pay the commuter flight fees. There's not enough hours in the day.

Now, regarding hours in the day, Nanotrasen can set the clock however they wish on every vessel or posting they own. Their space stations can all be on one time or another, twenty-four or twenty hours, synchronized or rotating with one another.

All that really need be done, however, is watch-standing for the engine's machinery and Security's vigil for outside threats. For a research team of a few dozen scientists, shift work doesn't make sense. Information in the head of one scientist may need to link up with information in another scientist, but being on different shift schedules, they'll never talk. Instead the research facility model supports having the station on one primary watch, in which the research team is active, and then two other watches; one graveyard shift with engineers and officers to keep the engine running, and one evening shift to perform clean-up, provide off-hours services and the start of large engineering projects like overhauls and replacement jobs which may need sixteen hours to complete before Research goes back to their desks.

If the research team is kept to one shift, night-owls and after-hours scientific fervor spilling into the evening and graveyard shifts, then maintaining the circadian rhythm and rest of the science team is a priority that station-wide lighting control can be slaved to, as is all the meal planning, shore leave, engineering scheduling slaved to the comfort and convenience of the Science team's primary schedule. Unless you want three shifts worth of scientists going in and out constantly, messing with each other's shared office spaces, breaking things because they couldn't be maintained because they were always in use... this is why having a primary watch is practiced on ships, and should be practiced here as well.

And now you see why realism is useful when advocating for cool stuff. There's a thing you want, there's justifications for it, they reinforce one another, and we have a case for the thing you want beyond "its cool".

[Guest]

Is there a soul alive on Earth today who gets up, has breakfast, gets in his car, goes to an airport, gets on a jet, flies to another airport, goes through a customs line for his passport, gets on a helicopter, flies to his workplace, punches in, mops the floor for two or four hours or eight hours hours, gets back on a helicopter, flies back to the airport, turns in his passport at another customs line, gets back on a jet, flies back to the airport, goes out to his car, drives home, and goes to sleep?

 

Strawman, but strangely enough you still seemed to reinforce my point about circadian rhythm-based work shifts.

Methods of transportation and the ease of transportation are radically different in the current setting than it is for real life.

What does this suggestion add that an AI/antag can't do for themselves in blowing light circuitry?

Atmosphere is on you to create. Not on the game itself. Expecting it to just freely give you the experience without you or someone else sacrificing a little and putting some effort into making that a reality defeats the purpose of an immersive RP experience.

Light systems remain the same at every 24/7 workplace because a workplace is supposed to be lit. It's not practical to leave lights off in the hallways just because it's a dead shift. If someone is working there, keep them on anyway.

Can't believe people are still arguing to keep the lights on/off.

[Nikov]

Then what is your point. My point is that it makes sense to put the whole research team on one shift for collaboration, allowing the whole station's efforts to revolve around supporting that primary shift. Your point appears to be that the station needs to be at full manpower 24/7 even though research labs don't perform around the clock like an assembly line might.

Sure, its radically different. But getting up and walking two miles into town to work in the mill and walk two miles back out takes the same amount of time as getting in a car today and driving from Jersey to New York and back home. Human behavior remains fairly consistent as technology pushes how much we are capable of. A starport might be the same as an airport, but you'll find the same lines, customs, delays and other crap boarding these mystical 'commuter spaceships' that we had boarding trains a hundred years ago. Maybe the distance is greater once we get going, but standing in line every day for an airport/spaceport ticket and an hour in landing/orbiting delays isn't something anyone's going to do as a nine to five.

Its not on or off, its dimmed. It creates atmosphere by changing the setting. This is a graveyard shift. This is a normal shift. People's attitudes change and we get more material to roleplay around. As opposed to "who turned out the lights, they're supposed to be on twenty-four-seven because someone thinks this is a factory floor and not a research lab."

Who said this is a 24/7 workplace. You did. Who's saying it might not be? We are, based on the fact it relies on a creative research team and not replaceable cog people working factory production. It seems we could save all the dicking about flying from the Exodus to homes a hundred light years away and back, and the god-awful range of foreign influenza bugs and other diseases we'll trawl back, by just having one research staff that sleeps on site and takes off for the weekend like Tokyo office workers. Ever notice the office towers turn many of their lights out at night?

Lets create more atmosphere by having STATION TIME MATTER. We'll all sacrifice perfect visibility in the halls for in-character bitching about it being the graveyard shift.

I worked in retail stores into the wee hours of the morning; it may be a 24/7 workplace, but the lights go to half power outside of normal business hours. And, again, office towers have a lot of dark offices when I look around the city.

Not off, dimmable. I can't believe you're ignoring the suggestion you keep responding to.

[Guest]

Lets create more atmosphere by having STATION TIME MATTER.

 

You're in space. It doesn't matter.

 

We'll all sacrifice perfect visibility in the halls for in-character bitching about it being the graveyard shift.

 

You have interesting standards for RP, then.

[Nikov]

I just detailed why it does matter.

My standard appears to be shared with the thread.

As always, 1138, I prefer when we agree, but at least our disagreement is lively.

[Nanako]

I have a middleground to offer:

1. Make dimmed lights only apply to public areas by default, not to departments.

2. Make it a configurable thing via a control panel in the head of personnel's quarters

3. In general, make all lightswitches able to work as dimmer switches for any room

[Guest Complete Garbage]

I have a middleground to offer:

2. Make it a configurable thing via a control panel in the head of personnel's quarters

Considering station lighting at a given time may fall under the purview of the HoS, HoP, and CE(those are the ones that come to mind,) I'd say this should be integrated into either the command & communications console(like the status display) or the power network monitor(which already has listings for every APC,) both of which are on the bridge. But I believe points 1 & 2 have been stated already, and I do agree with them.

[VileFault]

Nanako, since I don't think that all rooms have light switches (though I could be wrong), it might be better to add the functionality to APCs. But the rest of it all seems good to me.

As for making it a centralized thing, I think that is kind of weird. I think heads of staff probably have better things to do than micromanage lighting, generally, but if you want this it seems like it should be integrated into the power network thing as just another button. That wouldn't be super hard, and would allow for the CE to put us in "low power mode" or whatever.

[LordFowl]

Nanako, since I don't think that all rooms have light switches (though I could be wrong), it might be better to add the functionality to APCs. But the rest of it all seems good to me.

As for making it a centralized thing, I think that is kind of weird. I think heads of staff probably have better things to do than micromanage lighting, generally, but if you want this it seems like it should be integrated into the power network thing as just another button. That wouldn't be super hard, and would allow for the CE to put us in "low power mode" or whatever.

 

By design, all office spaces should have light switches, while corridors and workshops should not.

As for light micromanaging, such things should be the AI's responsibility. AI's are literally designed to micromanage bullshit while important people do important things.

[Nikov]

Micromanaging is one thing, but telling the AI to go around adjusting fifty odd dialogue boxes is downright jerkish. I'd rather have a central control on the bridge or in the CE's office to adjust the lighting power setting for halls in one swoop.

[AgentWhatever]

Micromanaging is one thing, but telling the AI to go around adjusting fifty odd dialogue boxes is downright jerkish. I'd rather have a central control on the bridge or in the CE's office to adjust the lighting power setting for halls in one swoop.

Devide the light controls into logical groups. A group for everything, then department specific groups and hallways, yadda yadda

[Nikov]

Sounds like a nice console window, much as our RCON is. We can get rolling blackout random events, too.

[Guest]

its called powernet reset

just tell the AI to shut off some lights during dead hour. its not that hard.

[Bedshaped]

 

This is what a hallway would look like with the night-lighting/power-saver setting on.

[Serveris]

Love it.

[whiterabit]

Oh my god its beautiful.

[UnknownMurder]

With this, I can kill someone stealthily.

[Nikov]

Should make for some moody rounds as people roleplay being the graveyard shift, and everyone has this great visual theme to support it.

[Bedshaped]

Controlling the night lighting setting can be done from a locked or unlocked APC (eventually it might be a "lighting level" dimmer you can set):

 

And here's the list of areas that are automatically set:

 

The automated feature is config based and easy to switch on/off.

[Guest]

Yes. Because on a station with heavy machinery, research experiments and the assortment of lethal goodies we have, light-dimming station-wide to simulate 'night' is the best idea!

Yeah no. I work night shifts and the lights are still on full blast.

[Zundy]

Wew it's that appeal to real life again when actual gameplay reasons for why this would be a good idea have been given.

[Bedshaped]

Feature implemented. Stick any feedback here. Night hours are currently 6pm to 7am.