Floor Designer Upgrade for Borgs.

[Kateaclysm]

Last round I played, I noticed a borg using the ABCU in order to simply place wooden floors for a little ice cream shop they were making, lamenting the fact that they had no way to use the floor designer other than to purchase one and ask someone to help them. Communicating with another person exactly how you want your little area to look can be a bit exhausting and time-consuming for someone else to do for you. I'm wondering if this is something we could roll into an upgrade, but given it's likely to be a tool, I could see it being implemented into the engineer module. 

Other than for personal projects, I think it could provide some good value for rogue borgs, or allow for laws that order a change to the look of the station or other situations of that nature.

Let me know what you think.

[stupid rat]

would absolutely love to see a floor/wall designer for borgs yeah, might encourage me to play borg a bit more often for my own projects where I don't wanna spend half of the shift gathering materials

[Kotlol]

Against.
Humans have to order floor planners to start doing it, by giving them to borgs it will result in the following outcomes:
- Borgs getting harrased to redecorate.
- Borgs forcefully redecorating (ahelpable)
- Antagonists hijacking borgs/AI to abuse this as some sort of funny gimmick (I am for this)
- Borgs/players constantly redecorating over eachother.

So while a fun idea, I fear the outcome is worst. Like much worst. I can see this becoming something of major annoyance since now we want a crewmate that's a redecorater too so borgs don't get bothered all the time or the AI.

If borgs get a floor designer. Then crew must be able to get it too without ordering one. Like the one in Donut 3.

[Lefinch]

I'm pretty ambivalent about this, because I do like people decorating and think that 90% of time borgs would use this in a really fun and delightful way but also do have reservations. I will fully admit part of my reservations is unrelated to the idea but more a personal concern about extremely pushy borg players pushing past the "assisting the crew" part of the job and acting more like the role exists as a staff assistant with a master key who is suspiciously deaf to crew requests. However, that's not really the idea's problem, not representative of the majority of borg players and very ahelpable so let's focus on the positive part of letting people do more fun stuff.

Here's set of compromise suggestions: Gate the decorator behind either cargo (just like human equivalent) as an upgrade OR A asteroid loot crate item, or a more complex robotics fabricator item requiring a little mining first. Or something else that should require a second human being/player to sort out.

Alternatively, stick it on either a job module toolkit, or if you want some scope creep: Make an interior decorator job module toolkit that is less an engineer more about dispensing things like wood tables, banners, clutter, etc.

There might be some better options, all of the ones I've put I also think don't -quite- fit: Putting it behind cargo is awkward, asteroid crates means it can't be planned for, the job module thing isn't much of a gate etc. But I really like the intent behind the idea and don't think it's a bad thing as long as like the construction kit: there's some theoretical supervision before purchase.

[Cal]

I would honestly say just make a pr and let the discussion follow, because it would be weird to give them a pared down version and do a bunch of extra code or something. maybe make it an opt in upgrade slot if you want to decorate sounds good

[Torchwick]

I would honestly love to see this, even if you limit it to, say, the civilian module or something. I don't have a huge issue with people bugging me to do things just because I have an RCD in my kit on engineering, for example, so I can't imagine this would be a major issue in terms of 'people just forcing borgs to do the floor changes' instead of doing it themselves / ordering their own. People like to design on their own, and sometimes they like to ask for help. I honestly genuinely can't see it being a major problem. Especially not behind one module (civilian would be my suggestion), and hell, make it drain some extra power to use if misuse of it is a concern. That might discourage an abuse of it like was discussed above.

[Finnalin]

i'd love to see civilian bots get a vacuum too

[Kotlol]

I would honestly say just make a pr and let the discussion follow, because it would be weird to give them a pared down version and do a bunch of extra code or something. maybe make it an opt in upgrade slot if you want to decorate sounds good

This alone would fix my main concern.

[Zamujasa]

an easy solution is to glue it into rewriting the module in the rewriter. that way a human has to enable it or w/e.

So while a fun idea, I fear the outcome is worst. Like much worst.

if you assume the worst out of everything, then why bother ever considering the positives of an option? this is a culture issue.

I can see this becoming something of major annoyance since now we want a crewmate that's a redecorater too so borgs don't get bothered all the time or the AI.

time is a flat circle. we used to have a "construction worker", which had those tools as its starting equipment, as well as a (somewhat overpowered) RCD. people were afraid of grief with the rcd, so rather than nuking the people actually abusing the role, it was completely cut, and the tools folded into the construction crate.

chaplains especially love to bling out the station's chapel with it. some people do the ancient temple stuff, some make it all overgrown, it's neat. and a lot better than boring cult crap.

[Lord_earthfire]

Borgs need less direct access to tools via their baseline modules. Especially with the floor designer being an already problematic item you need to order via cargo, i really don't want to give that to borgs round-start.

[Kotlol]

an easy solution is to glue it into rewriting the module in the rewriter. that way a human has to enable it or w/e.

So while a fun idea, I fear the outcome is worst. Like much worst.

if you assume the worst out of everything, then why bother ever considering the positives of an option? this is a culture issue.

I can see this becoming something of major annoyance since now we want a crewmate that's a redecorater too so borgs don't get bothered all the time or the AI.

time is a flat circle. we used to have a "construction worker", which had those tools as its starting equipment, as well as a (somewhat overpowered) RCD. people were afraid of grief with the rcd, so rather than nuking the people actually abusing the role, it was completely cut, and the tools folded into the construction crate.

chaplains especially love to bling out the station's chapel with it. some people do the ancient temple stuff, some make it all overgrown, it's neat. and a lot better than boring cult crap.

Well I would like chapels to be more customizable too as a chaplain player. 

I believe we nuked Ghost Drones for grieving problems too with the "Cardboard Construction Thingy" 
But yes... simply locking it behind a simple "can we turn this on" button would be nice.

We lost a lot of fun options due to possible grieving like the AI core locked behind MD. Construction Worker removed to have their stuff be bought via cargo.

And thus I bring up the concern of it. It's a good idea, but not thought out how to deal with possible grief and such. Even I had ideas that were good where I forgot to overlook some aspects of the idea and was like: "Oh yea.. this kinda breaks things or can be abused."

It's more or less I do not want repeats of the past. As someone who knows the floor planner can cause some major annoyance in the wrong hands (when it fell in my hands as a clown it always ended up in shennigans like "clown road" ) There is a reason why some of these powerful tools are locked behind things that are a lil harder to come by so it won't get abused each round. And simply adding: "Borg spawns with engineering kit can now redecorate the whole station" is one of those easy hoops to go through.
But by having it be added by a robotcists (wich gives them something to do) or an upgrade module they gotta make. Suddenly it's on the same level as obtaining it as a crewmate (if not maybe slightly easier). Thus balancing borgs and crewmates and also avoiding grief abuse.

My "crewmate wants a redecorater job too" is because of the nature of accesiability. Anyway by simply having a few additional steps being added to activate this tool on borgs medigates all concerns. Cause now no one can spawn as a rogue (aka griefer) borg and start vandalizing things while crew has to buy it to undo it's damage or wait for a non rogue borg with the same tool.
That's the main concern.

[Emimiyu]

Ngl, if floor designer "is too much of a grief" while you can just law 2ed borgs to not... make things a bit too ugly looking. I have an anecdote for it that we don't remove lightbulb manufacturer over "being grief potential". As someone with eye problems, I have seen borgs being lawed into putting as much as lightbulb it is to the point the game is physically unplayable and giving me neausea and migraines. Not just me, some players also have an issues with this. Yet it happens only 2 rounds out of thousands rounds I have played, and what people do is to ahelp the players who put this law, then people learn that putting items that changes the game brightness too much is bad.

Floor designer isn't as utile as lightbulb, but if I can see lightbulb being used as a grieving tools that gives me literal physical illness (not being hyperbolic). A floor decorator shouldn't be treated as worse than it. There are better argument than what if one borg doesn't want to follow law 2 and grief.

[Kotlol]

Ngl, if floor designer "is too much of a grief" while you can just law 2ed borgs to not... make things a bit too ugly looking. I have an anecdote for it that we don't remove lightbulb manufacturer over "being grief potential". As someone with eye problems, I have seen borgs being lawed into putting as much as lightbulb it is to the point the game is physically unplayable and giving me neausea and migraines. Not just me, some players also have an issues with this. Yet it happens only 2 rounds out of thousands rounds I have played, and what people do is to ahelp the players who put this law, then people learn that putting items that changes the game brightness too much is bad.

Floor designer isn't as utile as lightbulb, but if I can see lightbulb being used as a grieving tools that gives me literal physical illness (not being hyperbolic). A floor decorator shouldn't be treated as worse than it. There are better argument than what if one borg doesn't want to follow law 2 and grief.

Unlike the floor planner. Lightbulbing takes time and isnt a '1 click and it's done' process.
So when you see a borg do it. You can just smash the lightbulbs. And yes.. I heard about this problem.

But the lightbulb generator costs power and you can just grab a crowbar and smash it.

Floor planners can only be removed by another floor planner. 
And sure it won't harm people in anyway...physically. It's hte fact to reverse it requires the same tool wich means ordering it from cargo, wich comes out of their budget. So a potential outcome is... Cargo wastes money since antag, gets into AI, makes floor planner scheme happen, cargo has to wait for other departments to give them stuff to sell so they can undo their traitorous companion's work. (Albeit mining can easily fix this fastest)

It's the fact that the suggestion says: "Starts with planner on module" So the moment the borg is rogued... they will start redecorating the everything and crew has to take extra effort into undoing it.

[freedo5]

If i have to be honest having to use an ABCU to change tiles sounds a bit like wasted effort when you can just ask a roboticist, staffie or anyone really to help you place down the pattern you want. While communicating exactly what you envision might be complicated it doesn't take much to ask for a style or even specific tiles if you know which ones you want.

[Spyritdragon]

I'd very much love to have access to it in some way as a borg - it's something I've often found I've missed - though I do agree there's some concern in it being roundstart available.

Would it make sense somehow to try and have it in the same crate? I'm not exactly sure what the options there would be, seeing as we lack the option of installable upgrades that give you things to wield on borgs, but I think having it be something that also comes in the construction cargo crate would be a nice way about it.