Consolidation Station

[Nnystyxx]

I dunno, I use maintenance for travel if I can.

@Breaches: the breaches thing is pretty much a problem of the game itself, too-- breaches are super crippling due to the way atmos, cold slowdown, deoxygenation and the like work. You basically have to lug around a hi-cap oxygen tank everywhere to fix a breach and there will still be spots that have no air.

Personally I'd like some kind of goggles that let you see oxygen, as much sense as that doesn't make, so you could tell which areas were actually not sufficiently pressurized (air alarms don't tell the whole story).

@Merchant shuttles: they attach to Catering and Research. For. . some reason? I don't know why? Admittedly if you get the organ seller, that's nice for the proximity to Medsci (if it lands there), but it's still Research's dock and I don't think doctors have access to that.

@Windows: sure, more windows. I think the issue with several departments is that they're structured in a way that people are hard to see at work in them. It was especially acute after having come from playing on Destiny, where everyone was snug as a bug in a rug (and Robotics was legit attached to Medical, deep inside it, rather than this weird robot-producing tumor nearby).

I still like Cog2, but the complaints of the space having personality, while not allowing players to make their own, are very understandable.

[The Grim Sleeper]

I dunno, I use maintenance for travel if I can.

I do too, mostly from engineering to QM. But the point is you don't have too.

You basically have to lug around a hi-cap oxygen tank everywhere(...)

Pro-tip: if you get a small emergency Ox tank, you can fill it up to full from a canister with either pure O2 or Air-mix. This tiny tank will last for over 45 minutes non-stop. Just remember to adjust the output pressure to match the composition (85 psi for Air).

Personally I'd like some kind of goggles that let you see oxygen, as much sense as that doesn't make, so you could tell which areas were actually not sufficiently pressurized (air alarms don't tell the whole story).

I support this idea. Spectro googles, Reagent Scanners and PDA atmosphere scan would benefit from ranged use.

[Nnystyxx]

I meant in terms of repressurizing the station. I've found that the standard white cans drain really fast but hi-cap ones last a long-ass time and let you fix a lot of airless areas.

[Vitatroll]

I think you need 81 kpa worth of air to make it breathable vs 17 of oxygen. That's a lot of air per tile. The 'can method' of re-pressurization is just too slow and clunky.

In order to 'fix' it we'd have go the 'science is magic' route of infinite oxygen/air producers. The station itself isn't the problem unless people want to have indestructible vents connected to indestructible pipes connected to indestructible infinite-supply atmos machines. I think that would be even more clunky. I personally prefer the oxy-plant method, but I'm getting really OT here.

One odd problem I have with cog2 is the dire lack of wires running the hallways. How am I supposed to get fried by power gloves if the dork has to stay in the same spot and wait for people to walk by? Hmph.

[Superlagg]

I'd there a way to figure out the volume of gas in those tanks? Pressure isnt exactly intuitive to know if the tank holds enough air to fill an area at room temperature, so maybe showing how many liters or tiles worth of air is in the tank might help a bit, granted that something like that is modeled in the system.

[TheOnlyRyan]

I used to think the station was too big, and while certain departments could do with a resize, in terms of howmuch size the department needs I wont argue over because I'm not as robust as some.

I will say I dont find the station too big anymore now that the servers lag has been fixed and we're getting much larger amounts of people on the server.

[Sundance]

I agree that there's too much map on cogmap, but like others you learn to love it after a while.
My main complaints about the station is
A) Wide open areas are near impossible to refill with air: See medbay foyer; hallway outside PTL, the bar, foyer outside bridge (extends through to security front desk + bridge front desk). This down to two issues:
- How oxygen is spread (it moves about as much as a thrown brick on Jupiter)
- Tables/flaps which lack windows/doors respectively

The latter is easily fixable via mapping. A large complaint against fixing the latter is that it'd make it places harder to break into. But that's only depending on how you implement it. You could simply make the slide-able windows all access, it simply makes it harder to table (which is a good thing, too easy to table people into secure areas) and most importantly: Stops gas.

B) Too many damn items.
There's just too many fucking items on the station. There, I said it. I was doing some calculations there just to see how many crowbars one could amass on the station and combined with manufacturers you're looking at the region of 300+. Remember back on mushroom when there was race to get that multitool in sec maint because there weren't any other readily available ones on the station? I miss that. The station is overstocked, and yet understocked in places. There needs to be more materials, but less prepacked items like healthpacks, tools, clothing. I also feel more items should be locked behind in-game credit paywall, because $$ is king, and there's plenty of ways of making/stealing money but nothing to spend it on.

The crux of my point on B) is that that giving everyone their toys at the beginning is that it limits interaction and stifles progression. It also more importantly makes the game too easy.

[The Grim Sleeper]

B) Too many damn items.

I think this might be a valid point, and I hate it; I love to hoard all teh toyz!
But yes, making it so you actually have make make an effort to get stuff would increase security, and might even make the QM job popular again.

[69andahalf]

I have been thinking about some of the suggestions left here about cargo and mining, and how I find the pod bay just kinda seems to be shoved off near engineering. I haven't looked into it too much, but what would people think of switching mining and QM with the podbay? I think if podbay replaced QM it would open up that area to be more civilian focused, and the drone factory could take the place of mining. I'm hesitant about putting the drone factory as I don't know what wire intended with it.

I'm not sure about removing a lot of the items from the station, I'd leave that up to an actual coder, but I too have found that there's a ton of stuff around the station. I don't see it as a bad thing as it means that the crew really isn't limited too much in what they can do, but it probably could be toned down a bit.

[Noah Buttes]

My issue isn't so much with the plethora of items so much as the plethora of pre-made items, especially medicines.

Seriously, now that the MD starts with a bottle of all the more exotic medicines, what job does Chemistry even have now besides blowing up the station?

[Frank_Stein]

I have been thinking about some of the suggestions left here about cargo and mining, and how I find the pod bay just kinda seems to be shoved off near engineering. I haven't looked into it too much, but what would people think of switching mining and QM with the podbay? I think if podbay replaced QM it would open up that area to be more civilian focused, and the drone factory could take the place of mining. I'm hesitant about putting the drone factory as I don't know what wire intended with it.

I'm not sure about removing a lot of the items from the station, I'd leave that up to an actual coder, but I too have found that there's a ton of stuff around the station. I don't see it as a bad thing as it means that the crew really isn't limited too much in what they can do, but it probably could be toned down a bit.

I think that makes a lot of sense, seeing as the PTL would then be firing out the same area as the shipping crates go, though it would kinda stack activity to the right hand side of the station.

[misto]

the ptl plays nice with the podbay because its a double-podbay, either side offers essentially the same services. you put mining and qm up there and an active ptl becomes an even greater transport headache

[Prichard]

About the depressurization issue: If we put a machine near the arc-smelter that constantly generated atmosphere (from nothing) and pumped it all around the ship, this could solve the problem. It would need a lot of power to run, which would encourage engineering to actually start the engine. This also means that all one needs to do to re-pressurize an area is to repair the hull and wait. If you can't wait, that's what the limited supply of high cap tanks are for.

About the space issue: The station is both cramped and way too large. Almost all of the activity occurs in the southwest wing of the station and at security because those are the centers of power. The combination of chemistry/toxins/telesci/medbay/robotics/pathogen/genetics in a small little square far outweighs everything else except security. This is why it gets bombed the most, and this is why nobody actually does their job past minute 10. The solution is to either spread out the power departments or make other departments better and more robust. For example, put research somewhere besides medbay, because they can't even go in medbay so there's no reason to stay right next to it.

An example of the second option: Revamp the cooking system so that the chef doesn't straight up suck. Make secret cooking recipes, make more interesting and reactive ingredients. Maybe eating an excellent secret food could give someone temporary stimmed up effects but without the drawback of drug addiction. How would this help?

Well, more people would play as a chef because of his newfound robustness. When chef becomes more popular and there is consistently a chef every round, those new chefs will need high quality ingredients for their food. What does this mean for the northwest quadrant? It means that the new chefnerds will place higher demand on botany to give them ingredients. At the current moment, 90% of the botany plants are just straight up useless, and botanists are never held accountable or expected to contribute to anything on the station. A reworked cooking system will encourage chefs to start demanding previously useless produce from botany, which will restore botany to its full potential. In return, maybe chefs could cook botany a type of plant food that insta-grows a plant by one stage or something, who knows, be creative. Botany and the chef already have their own shared space that only they can access, so this type of interaction was clearly intended. Where else on the station can two separate departments meet exclusively? Nowhere. Botany and the kitchen have a special interaction that isn't being used right now because cooking is trash-tier. Once the chef and the botanists mutually drag each other out of their respective slumps, the bar area will actually garner some respect, rather than being the station's resident shithole.
To sum it up: Revamp cooking and make it chemistry level robust. This will make both botany and cooking respected jobs and bring honor to the bar.

Once either of those two things happens, it will cause a shift in the tide of the station. Once the centers of power are broken up, or new centers of power form (it doesn't have to be botany/cooking, get creative), we won't see the station turn to chaos after a single medbay bombing. It will encourage people to spread out, and for people to play the job they signed up for instead of playing the station. This will make the empty desolate space less useless, and it will make the cramped spaces less cramped.

[poland spring]

That and put stuff in the north and southeast parts of the station that people can be drawn to

[atomic1fire]

If it wasn't unlikely to happen, I kinda think it would be cool if there was a map that could be expanded with enough credits.

Basically real estate station 13. You get a tiny but expandable station and you can buy additions to each department.

Brig feeling kinda tight? Buy some extra cells.

Research needs more elbow room? Buy an extra research wing.

Probably won't happen, but I think it would be neat.