Catering Rework Overview :D

[AwkwardDryad]

Ehhhhh. I disagree with this personally, since firstly, if this happened, literally only staffies, janitors, and the chaplain would remain as civilian roles, making the HoP even less important, and botany doesnt always do catering either, so this is grouping them with something they wont necessarily help at all with. 

It's also adding more roles than science has to what will effectively only ever have at most 2 people, and need the support of botany to even function properly. I dont think adding even more complexity and necessary cooperation to the already complex and cooperating station is a good change, especially at this size. While its neat on paper, it would be dead weight in practice, I feel. 

We dont need an entire department to give spacemen who dont even need it food and drinks. Barman and chef are good as is, because they've got no responsibilities, on 2 at least, and are an entry point job for more complicated things, barman especially, and should stay as such. 

This may be my hottest take yet, but that's my take, I guess.

It's not adding necessary cooperation, it's adding the ability to effectively cooperate with each other and content to actually use. Goon 2 hardly ever needs food, but it'll be wanted after this :P

Also I keep seeing the "It's taking content away from the HoP" argument floating around. So that's what I'm going to respond to. The HoP Has basically zero mechanical impact over any department other than being the person that lets you open doors. IMO The HoP is a flawed role on it's own and not reworking a handful of even more flawed roles doesn't make HoP any less flawed. I have a few ideas for a direction to take HoP to make them an actual head, but it doesn't completely tie in to the catering department as the head of personnel is well...the head of people, so that covers far more than JUST the civilan role. Basically my idea is to make them a support role for well...General station needs of people doing things. This includes the catering department, but they aren't the dedicated head of the catering department, because the HoP has to be other places too. In other words, adding on to the catering department and making it a semi-separate entity doesn't take away from the Head of Personnel's content.

On the barman and chef having no responsibilities:
We aren't adding obligations to catering, we're adding a level of personal interaction and actual content. As harsh as this may seem, the kitchen and bar area has gone majorly untouched for years. Hell, until today, applying condiments to food spat out a runtime error literally every time. Making food is super unengaging, unrewarding, and all in all un-useful in most cases. This rework aims to change that. It's based around players being able to play around in the sandbox that is making food as both an art form and a mechanically supported benefit to the station on a level that's beyond eating food = buffs.

On this adding complexity:
Yes there will be more complicated interactions, but it has a curve to it. The kitchen isn't going to become a chemicompiler. There will be simple things and there will be more advanced things. Having complicated mechanics mixed in doesn't make the role any less inviting to new players. In fact, it may become a role people actually stick with more because of it.