space-wizards
Scientific research rework
A collection of proposed changes on how scientific research is conducted.
Tried to remark some stuff that can be improved in document as it is, added diagram (hopefully it helps people who gets easily bored by large amounts of text). Now this needs numbers crunching and tables. Namely, expected cost of license should be designed, samples of license cost should be designed, list of items to be moved to 'dead list' should be designed. I'll try doing it naw. Why now? Because its easier to follow designed path and not have major discussion on eash and every PR.
my only gripe is calling them licenses will be confusing on mrp servers with armament licenses and such
These are technology licenses, totally different ;)
TBH, it doesn't really matter to me what they're called. E.g., Tech credits, research credits, etc
This massive removal of filler tech is going to leave tech disk printer too powerful, so printing tech disk should be nerfed(by rising cost very very high), removed, or changed. Mostly license disks could just replace tech disks everywhere. Ofc machine itself most likely will be very important for printing some kind of 'license disks', but still... also i need to remember that THIS machine circuit board should not require license points to be built... in case its not mapped or sm1 will destroy it.
Another brilliant question - what will emag do?
- We can make it so any techfab will get all recepies on emag, as it works with sci, but ofc it will ease access.
- We can make it so techfab uses no license for items (every crew member will kiss that traitor, or people will even welcome nukies. thats funny, but not really)
- We can make it so printing from emagged techfab DIRECTLY steals points from RD server
Another brilliant question - what will emag do?
- We can make it so any techfab will get all recepies on emag, as it works with sci, but ofc it will ease access.
- We can make it so techfab uses no license for items (every crew member will kiss that traitor, or people will even welcome nukies. thats funny, but not really)
- We can make it so printing from emagged techfab DIRECTLY steals points from RD server
The simplist thing to do is just have emagging add additional recipes. Whoever adds these recipes can determine if they should have a license cost or not
Having emagging remove license costs encourages contraband use, and being able to easily steal research points from science could cripple them. Ninjas are already gunna be a big enough headache for science to deal with
The simplist thing to do is just have emagging add additional recipes
Yes, but which recepies? Of all other techfab? Of only sec techfab?
Also interesting question - where should 'service techfab' stay... maybe somewhere in public space? O_o
The simplist thing to do is just have emagging add additional recipes
Yes, but which recepies? Of all other techfab? Of only sec techfab?
Also interesting question - where should 'service techfab' stay... maybe somewhere in public space? O_o
Which machines get emag recipes doesn't really factor into this proposal, it's up to the people who code them
Items from the service discipline are an odd mix and would be split wherever they make the most sense. Robotic equipment on the exosuit fabricator, most others on the protolathe. Again, the proposal is more concerned with describing the operation of the science department, how research is conducted, and the new licensing system for printing advanced items rather than the specifics of where they should be printed and their costing
I think that there are some interesting ideas here, and though I dont necessarily agree with the proposal as THE direction for science, I want to follow this proposal and respond to these ideas on their own terms.
Wanting to cut out the low-tier techs that are not particularly thrilling for anyone to unlock is a good motivation. There is alot of science unlocking that does little but arbitrarily restrict when players can begin engaging with a mechanic, and unlocking these techs is a series of actions that are so coincidental in their joint occurrence that it is more tolerable as a player to dismiss the protolathe entirely during a shift.
Wanting to de-emphasize unlocks as the goal is also a good motivation. By its design science as a gameplay loop is not very scalable because it is 'completable', and therefore we set a goalpost which is inevitably based on an ideal circumstance (like player count).
In my own opinion I think a few of the motivations here arent as significant design priorities as your core ones. I dont think that needing to strike a balance between furthering science's research projects and producing technology for the crew is something that will drive roleplay interactions. If either option would constitute somebody fulfilling their role-fantasy, then the decision is basically a contest between who gets to do what they want to do. It's competing for fun. It will necessitate interaction, but it wouldnt be character interaction, it would be player contention, and would be as much of a story-telling mechanic as waiting at the cargo desk for someone to wordlessly hand you the materials you need.
The dual spending of both saving up points to expend them on a large research project and consistently producing tech is rough, because it probably means that you have to stall production to do unlocks, which means refusing requests for licenses, which if i understand correctly, people need to request from science in person physically, much like cargo's material-sheet deskwork.
My feedback in-line with this proposal is that instead of saving up points for spending on research projects, that research projects are slotted in and track your point accumulation rather than your point expenditure, so the two facets of the system do not tug at each other. For example, science toggles Bags of Holding as their current project, they earn 100,000 research points and the project is complete, and they are left with those 100,00 research points for budgeting production.
I personally would advise against the licenses being physical tickets that slot into lathes, because then it only becomes an additional material sheet that comes from its own source and is very possible to be just barely lacking in. If you want budgeting, id instead suggest just using the points directly, and maybe allocating them across various discipline-budgets from some kind of central console.
Though honestly speaking, simple tech availability is the fun aspect of all of this, and it just feels like point expenditure is an extraneous additional hoop that arbitrarily hinges players' personal gameplay experiences on the success of players that they are not engaged in story-telling with, all for the purpose of validating science gameplay. It just sounds like in a circumstance where science is not performing well, making yourself tech is less possible than it is in current rounds with tech unlocked, especially considering their monopoly on a unique resource.
Hell of a long comment i know but i was in the mood to just talk about anything related to game design
Hell of a long comment i know but i was in the mood to just talk about anything related to game design
Thank you for taking the time to write out all your thoughts, I appreciate it!
I quite like your suggestion of having a threshold of points that once you reach, the target technology is unlocked, rather than sharing points between research and production. You're right, points sharing could potentially stall research, and the back and forth on its progress maybe more oppressive than an interesting choice that players have to make. It could also make balancing easier, as you don't need to worry about licensed items being so cheap that it doesn't impact research progress vs being so expensive that it impacts progress disproportionately. I'll update the proposal accordingly
I'm not convinced on switching out the licensing for a departmental science points budget though, as the licenses have a few advantages. First we already have systems in place that can be used to generate licenses and have the lathes consume them as materials, so there's little code overhead, and players are already familiar with them. If we already had a station enconomy and departmental budgeting I'd be more inclined to adopt it. Second, as a physical resource, there are more possible player interactions. Players can find them (e.g. through salvage), trade them (e.g. bounties), and steal them for their own purposes (e.g. Syndicate activity) more easily than if they were an abstract currency assigned to a department
As for validating science gameplay, well, the purpose that I envision for science is that they make life better for the crew. Players should always have the tools they need to do their job and maintain a basic level of comfort; this is part of the reason why all the currently low tech researchable items would be available at round start without the need for any science points. But through research, scientists can offer new ways to do those jobs, which are more efficient/faster, as well as a bunch of fun/cool toys
To be clear, avoiding coding new systems is not what is meant by reducing code overhead. Also, I have some responding comments about the physical license tickets. I really do not think that physical tickets as an additional printing cost would positively affect production or roleplay interactions.
Firstly, with our set of research disciplines, it would be a bit of a simon-says which tickets go to which lathes on the station. All arsenal tickets would go to security because thats the only place where weapons are printed. Most medical tickets wold go to med because thats where alot of medical-technology is fabricated. I intend to highlight that this 'distribution of permission', as a license might imply, is already achieved in a sense by the placement of capable lathes. As a result, the system would most likely not be as dynamic as suggested, because even assuming a roleplay scenario where a syndicate stole arsenal tickets for their purposes, the only weapon printing lathe on the station is the secfab.
Secondly, it imposes a new responsibility on the science staff that is not conducive to their role fantasy. Needing to distribute what is akin to material sheets as you describe it would make them Cargo Lite, and the problem with cargo and its material distribution responsibility is that there are no mechanics that educate the player that their responsibility is to move materials to other departments rather than hoard them and wait for requests. To be clear, I am not referring to mechanics that incentivize them to do so because it is part of a reward pattern, I am saying that there is not even a mechanic that would teach a player what a positive cargo routine looks like. That being said, scientists would have a worse time with that. As a general philosophy I do not think that social jumping hoops are interesting roleplay interactions.
Thirdly, the rework in the use of research points affects all non-science players as an attempt of enhancing science gameplay. Its kind of backwards conceptually that non-science departments would need to seek to spend research points more than science does. Its not intuitive to a new player, and we should generally reduce instances where any departments gameplay requires knowledge of another departments internal workings. Non-science departments is the wrong place to put research points spending.
To be brief, I generally have a negative opinion of research points as a resource, but this is my feedback to the concepts proposed instead of a more radical counter proposal because I appreciate the core motivations here of putting less emphasis on unlocking and more emphasis on an involvement in production. A better place for my full thoughts would be my own contribution to the design doc repo, which I am considering.
It's always struck me as a bit weird that science is supposed to be in charge of building stuff for the rest of the crew. For me, the goal of playing science is to earn research points (preferably through dangerous activities) and use those points to unlock as many fun things as possible.
Far too often I'll be passing through the science lobby on my way to get something needed to trigger an artifact or coming back from dealing with an anomaly, and some random crew member will demand that I print them an advanced telecommunications board or something. Now I have to make a decision, but:
- I don't know if that's something the station needs.
- I don't know if the station has the surplus materials needed to print it.
- If not, I don't know if the station has the money needed to buy more materials.
- I'm not in a good position to track the progress of resolving all of that and report it to the crew member asking me.
- I would really like to get back to playing with that fun monkey-spawning artifact and making sure the intern hasn't blown himself up.
You know who does know what materials are available, how much money the station has, and should be pretty familiar with the idea of tracking orders? Cargo.
Whether it's done by permits as suggested here, or by just moving the lathes to cargo, I think the idea of shifting the production side of research to a different department makes a lot of sense.
Cargo is essentially the requisitions department, and it would simplify things for the average crew member too, since they would have one place to go to ask for an item, instead of asking cargo for it only to be told "we can't order that" and having to go over to science and ask them. It could even give more value to the less exciting unlockable items, since cargo could choose to order or print them based on available materials vs money.
Pardon the rant. I'm just throwing this out here to see how others feel about it.
Pardon the rant. I'm just throwing this out here to see how others feel about it.
I think your fairly valid, but there are some things that could be done in round to elevate this.
- Take all your bullet points, and write them down/have a copy pasteable copy asking questions that would fit said points.
- Pin or place said in-round sheet of questions on the front desk or near by cork board, and point at it when someone asks for something.
- Build upgraded lathes in cargo or deliver flat packs to them when you got time, allowing you to redirect people to cargo instead.
Not everyone will do it, but also another idea might help:
Department lathes, that are tied to some kind of resource silo system, so the Janni can go print their own advanced mop, and engineering can print their own boards for engi related machines.
