Halve all Robotics material requirements

[Guest]

Baystation did a change in the past to make it so that they couldn't churn out massive amounts of mechs or cyborgs without having to directly pay for it.

The roboticist starts with 20 sheets of glass and 200 sheets of metal.

They can barely make 3 cyborg shells with that amount. That's just crazy.

The gratuitous materials requirements needed to make anything in robotics puts off a lot of people from playing the job. Make robotics viable to play again.

[Synnono]

Supported. Please reduce instances of roboticists breaking into RnD/Ordering cyborgs to break into RnD to steal the less-than-fifty sheets from the lathes.

Having too many robots is very rarely a problem during a round, in my opinion. Let 'em build.

[Guest Complete Garbage]

I agree with halving metal/glass costs, but unless the requirements are completely insane, I'd say leave the other material costs alone. Either way, though, I'd be glad to see fewer roboticists invading R&D.

[Zundy]

Totes agree. No more sneak thief roboticists.

[witchbells]

God, please, this. I'm tired of having to harass everyone and a half just to keep working after I finish a ripley.

[canon35]

Yes, for the love of god, please. I play roboticst half the time I'm on the server, and the material costs always piss me off. Even if mining is working, you usually only get one crate of materials to share between RnD and robotics. With xenobiology barely helping either, it's a big annoyance asking mining to get more materials when they would rather ignore you and keep fucking around on station.

[Damarik]

Yes, for the love of god, please. I play roboticst half the time I'm on the server, and the material costs always piss me off. Even if mining is working, you usually only get one crate of materials to share between RnD and robotics. With xenobiology barely helping either, it's a big annoyance asking mining to get more materials when they would rather ignore you and keep fucking around on station.

 

Xeno only produces 10/5 on metal/plasteel per Metal Slime, so they're not much help anyway, especially if the Xeno is incompetent enough to die early round.

Agreeing on this wholeheartedly. Reduce bot/borg/mech costs.

[Nanako]

No.

This is what cargo is for. Cargo and robotics are best friends, its their job to supply you with materials.

Cargo has little enough reason to exist at present, i abjectly oppose anything that gives it even less utility.

Your starting material quantity is small, that's intended. You have to cooperate with others for more

The only change i'd like to see in this regard is giving cargo the ability to bulk-order metal in larger quantities, like 200 sheets. And/or spawning some materials in the cargo warehouse at roundstart

[Damarik]

No.

This is what cargo is for. Cargo and robotics are best friends, its their job to supply you with materials.

Cargo has little enough reason to exist at present, i abjectly oppose anything that gives it even less utility.

 

I would agree with you, if Cargo QM's didn't require a Head of Staff signature on the requisition sheets. Most of them will ignore your request without it, and if you're on a round where there are no heads, or they just plain don't care, you're screwed without assistance from the other departments. Again: that's hoping that Xeno is competent enough to not already be dead by the time you run out, and that mining (if there are even miners) are getting you the materials you need... which they usually aren't.

[Synnono]

The Xenobiologist tends to die in the first twenty minutes of the round (or spends the shift trying to make slime people), the mining staff (usually) don't bring the department a donking thing, and cargo staff in most cases will categorically refuse any order I try to make as a Lab Assistant, even though the need is such that a lab in a priority department will stop working if it's not filled. If we're not lucky enough to have a Head of Staff in science who is willing to go lean on cargo and stamp the orders, it just seems to degrade into people pestering each other within science. If that's what's intended, it certainly isn't all that fun.

[Guest]

Let's not act like I'm bitching about this without having a good reason, Nanako.

 

This is what cargo is for. Cargo and robotics are best friends, its their job to supply you with materials.

Well that's entirely incorrect from my experience. I was forced to get head of staff signatures as a roboticist just to get metal and glass ordered. When I finally did [with a fuckton of grumbling of the head of staff that did that thought the current procedure was absolutely stupid and way too time-consuming just for me to be able to do my job], cargo staff were already SSD 30 minutes into the round.

I was about 2% mad as it initially didn't bother me as much until I learned that the AI, who was supposed to be my helper in this regard, also went SSD and didn't even bother storing themselves.

 

Cargo has little enough reason to exist at present, i abjectly oppose anything that gives it even less utility.

Design flaw. Also sounds like your problem to deal with in that case.

 

Your starting material quantity is small, that's intended. You have to cooperate with others for more

Ah yes, which leads to awesome roleplay opportunities such as being forced to beg other departments for them to give you their metal, and then being told no because

1.) R&D needs their metal

2.) engineering needs their metal too

3.) engineering keeps mats in EVA for the sole purpose of picking them up on the other end of the station if need be

Which then leads to being forced to steal in order to do your job legitimately, which leads to security being involved, which leads to the roboticist being unable to do their job because they're being charged with grand theft over metal.

 

The only change i'd like to see in this regard is giving cargo the ability to bulk-order metal in larger quantities, like 200 sheets. And/or spawning some materials in the cargo warehouse at roundstart

 

Cool. I'd like to see that be as equally helpful and useful either during dead hour rounds or rounds just like I've described without cargo staff.

Departments need to be independent enough within a certain extent so that they are able to freely do their jobs.

Xenobiology has this in that you can mass monkey cubes. Self-sufficient.

Toxins is self-sufficient if you conserve resources.

Telescience is fun to experiment with and uses no actual resources to do your job with.

Xenoarch uses no resources in order to do your job, and you can find a ton of stuff.

Xenobotany also uses very little resources and you could probably grow something beneficial for the station given if you're lucky enough.

R&D doesn't need to seize assets outside of its own department and access-level to maximize R&D levels for pre-mining.

Robotics is the only odd one out that's forced to grovel for resources, especially considering they get close to absolutely nothing in order to do it.

[canon35]

Delta hit the nail on the head. You hardly see decent cargo nowadays, and even then miners are much rarer (Maybe because shitty bay mining?). This change would relieve a lot of headaches for roboticists players, and make things less of a stress for cargo.

[Guest Menown]

Cargo isn't viable. I had an order for replacement lights denied and I was told to go get them from emergency storage.

Departments are being forced to scavenge due to shitty cargo, so I'm pretty much in support of the requirements being changed.

[Synnono]

An alternative to the cargo part of the supply chain being a 'problem' might be to spread and enforce the idea that only certain orders need Command approval, like supermatter cores and machine guns and bees and other such nonsense.

The rest can be ordered at Cargo's discretion? Put a little asterisk next to the dangerous ones on the console, for the regulation-impaired?

[Guest]

Again, not the point of this thread. Please make another thread for separate suggestions please.

[Guest Menown]

Cargo sucks.

[Guest]

I know.

[Nanako]

i agree that mining and xenobiology are not great sources of metal, the former should be looked at.

But cargo is, they can order lots of metal for you quite rapidly. And they should for a roboticist on demand, without requiring head of staff signature.

If someone in cargo is going to repeatedly deny requests for basic materials, thats kind of a violation of the 'don't be a dick' rule, and should be ahelped, IRed, or be the subject of a player complaint, depending on severity

If they're not going to do their job, they shouldn't be playing that job, and repeated abuse of it is having a negative effect on the game. Deal with the people who are problems imo.

You need supplies, cargo is supply, that's where you go for supply. You go to security when you're threatened, you go to medical when you'ren hurt, you go to engineering when something is broken.

I won't support circumventing and cutting out a major part of gameplay just because the people playing it aren't doing it right for some reason. I don't speak with absolute authority here, but i'd say we should focus more on figuring out why cargo isn't doing their job, and how to fix it.

Building three full cyborgs is more than i remember actually, that's quite enough for most rounds unless you're building exosuits or many mechanical limbs.

[Guest]

Building three full cyborgs is more than i remember actually, that's quite enough for most rounds unless you're building exosuits or many mechanical limbs.

 

Only bad roboticists don't:

1.) Build 3 medibots for xenobio, the brig and the medbay lobby (and arms cost a fuckton for no reason)

2.) Build at least a cyborg chassis roundstart for

3.) Halfway build a RIPLEY and then realize you just wasted metal because there's nothing to mine out anyway

4.) Cry because you're out of metal and can't do anything useful with your shitty job

I would rather see more mechs than the station can handle than deal with constant supply shortages that create more periods of utter boredom than they solve.