Inter-Departmental Cooperation (co-op)

[Superlagg]

Cross-round persistence would have to be limited somehow. Otherwise, if you have a solid PTL firing and a merchant selling gold bars, you would have a ridiculous stockpile of cash. Additionally, if the miners can just save some ores between rounds, then they could practically always have industrial armour in the first few minutes.

Worst-case scenario I can think of is someone storing armour materials, spear parts, starstone, etc. in a round, and then popping a token in the next round, saving themselves 40 minutes of setup for their stimulants (or whatever chem does work) infused gloves, iridium spear, indy suit, mechboots, etc.

I like the idea, but there would need to be some way of preventing abuse. (Though I guess just making it illegal to do so would be a viable, if somewhat ham-fisted solution)

Of course it would need to be limited. Stockpiling millions of rare or valuable items would be nuts! Certain, if not most stashed goods would have a cap on how much would fit in there, or how much persists to the next round. Maybe even that would decay, encouraging those jobs to be played more often.

The goal is to get people to want to play these dumb roles more often, as well as let other roles more reliably benefit from them doing their job. As currently, interdepartmental cooperation can only happen when both departments are staffed and with people who have the best interests of someone other than themselves in mind.

By having a sizable portion of the stuff they made carry over to later rounds, not only does their hour of work not feel like it went to waste once the shuttle leaves, but everyone interested can benefit for them doing their job. That, and it could allow the self-interested to inadvertently help others through making what they do benefit "future them".

With the effort they put in through the previous rounds, the Miners, for instance, would have a boost for the current round. This'd be one of the rewards for playing these resource-support jobs. As they'd get a boost, so would the other roles that (should) rely on them doing their job to reach it's best potential.

The QM would start with more things to sell to get more fun crates, Roboticists would get more interesting materials to build more borgs and fancier modules, material nerds would be able to play with alloys when they get the inspiration and not whenever Mining feels like showing up and sharing their stuff.

And this brings me to the whole thing about people stashing high-end resources for future antag rounds. I don't see much of an issue with that. Since they still spent that 40 minutes grinding out a bunch of cool stuff, they didn't exactly skip that setup time, just that it happens earlier into the round.

Also, whatever they stashed could just as easily be swiped by someone else who wanted to play with the pretty metals and plants, or by someone who opted to gear up and fight the unstoppable Space Nerd. And, once it's used, they'll have to grind it out again; just like how it is now, only that here there's more of a guarantee that someone will enjoy it.

That, and it also allows for some longer projects without lengthening the round. Spend a round or two grinding out a bunch of cool shit, then spend the next round building cool shit with that shit. And get into arguments and interdepartmental feuds over who gets the cool shit, whichever ends up happening.

I get the feeling that cross-round persistance would end up with a lot of "well theres a shit ton of everything my department can produce this round so theres no point in even doing my job" and "Botany makes tons of medicine in a fraction of the time it takes us to make a few beakers, theres no point to making helpful reagents with chemistry" etc.

If that shit ton of stuff isn't going to use, that might be a problem with the use for the stuff. If the lettuce stocks are consistently stuffed, that tells me that something needs to be done to make lettuce useful. Or it could indicate that it's too easy/quick/etc to create lettuce for the current demand. Ideally, everything would be used, either gradually over time or in large bursts. Resources are there to be used; no use in having a useless resource!

And even if nobody wants your lettuce, someone's gonna want your w33d, life or otherwise. That's one of the big functions of the persistent resources, that it lets future rounds use and benefit from the more advanced, labor-intensive stuff that you spent all round pouring your heart and soul into. For something like this, you'll still have something to work for even if lettuce stays as a side dish that nobody eats.

Botany and Chemistry share somewhat different niches, but their differences allow them both to be useful and competitive interdepartmental coops to Medbay. Botany can create shitloads of good medicine, but it takes a while to grow and mutate, needs processing and (in most cases) purification (filtering out the poisons and w33d from the medicine), and can't create nearly as diverse a range of cool and specialized stuff that Chemistry can.

While Botany can make thousands of units of charcoal and aspirin in the time it'd take Chemistry to make a lousy beaker's worth, I don't think Botany can serve up a piping hot glass of perfluorodecalin or cryoxadone, either on demand or at all.

And again, even if it doesn't work out this way, it can be changed to be that way. It'll have its shortcomings, and it'll need a loooot of work to get running, both for this mechanic and everything that interacts with it, but I feel like it would go a long way to supporting interdepartmental cooperation and/or interaction.