Improvements to Oshan and Geothermal

[Scaltra]

Geothermal is fine if we have atleast one engineer work from it since 2-3 of it is enough to generate power to 3 smes and yes if we have other department help should be great like mining. Also Oshan is regular place that people might start singulo instead of hotspot in case they don’t like hospot.and the thing that look like solar for sea map is erh.. no one touching it so if you really want to improve thing in sea map you should start with that.

I think you may be a bit mistaken the catalytic engine  is not on Oshan. That is a Nadir exclusive thing. Oshan has no solar alternative that I am aware of.

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In addition, the design of the station leaves little for antags who are trying to make stealthy gimmicks, as compared to those based in space, it is very compact and harsh when it comes to staying out of sight and ear. This is especially harsh in RP.

The lack of the debris field and mining outposts are also quite annoying, even as a non antag. Items that could have been otherwise easily accessed now have a lot more difficulty to them, or are simply not possible to obtain, both for the detriment and benefit of the station.

I am not sure if you have checked the oshan station map but a lot of those locations are shifted to the station Z level and are rarely interacted with if you want somewhere to stealthily do dastardly deeds.

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But honestly, I want more interaction and tools with the hotspots we farm. Or ways to reroute hot spots then just "Stomping and pinning them"

But that's just me... I have not much to think off. My problem with Oshan comes that hot spots are just annoying.
And while the system is cool and all. There has to be a way for engineering and mining to work together to control the hot spots better.. like maybe engineering can install pipes in the trench to divert the hot spots to a location they want.

That would actually be so nice, some more tools to get hotspots around, even if it costs a premium would be so nice. I like stacking hotspots but you know what is actually rather boring? Sitting there moving a Hotspot. 

Hell especially station side hotspots which when hot are basically a well I guess I need to pin this on station now which never actually feels great because I would rather have access to it for more power potentially. 

Some way to teleport, super bump etc would be really cool. Or even like some sort of upgrade or thing that would let you move a Hotspot the typical way but it is pinned while doing it at least on station so you can safely move it off station. 

A temporary device you could use to cool a Hotspot for a certain amount of moves or time could also be neat.

(I didn't mean to make this all one reply but...oops)

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Lastly, a QoL that would be really nice for geothermal would be dousing rods ignoring any pinned hotspots when giving a readout and multiple hotspots are in the area. or ignoring two and always pointing to the nearest one. They become mostly useless if two are within its scan radius or require you to run around and find the edge of one and then walk it in. 

Ignoring pinned hotspots would kill most methods of hotspot stacking. I would like for them to be able to only show the nearest one, though.

In general,  im not a fan of the other suggestions. They simply dance around the issue rather than try to solve it.

The issue is too many roundstart-active hotspots on station side that overwhelm engineering.

That's why i have a simple suggestion:

Pin any hotspot on roundstart whose center is on a station tile.

This way, the only active hotspots on station will be ones that were near the station and wandered into it. Or ones delocated by antags.

This means that engineering will have to handle much fewer hotspots at a time. And neither antags nor engineers are hampered by the mechanics. Lastly, why would BT build the damn station and not pin the hotspots at the construction side???

I think the best idea for the Rods so far has been some sort of mode switch, ignoring pinned, targeting nearest Hotspot, targeting all etc. Would be really nice and intuitive. 

I think pinning the hotspots on station round start could be interesting and sometimes be better but most often would probably just make things worse when one drifts in. That basically guarantees that the hotspots are where you didn't  want them to begin with and now any additional hotspots are going to cause damage regardless of if mining boosted them or not. 

Personally if this mechanic was in place now the first thing I would do would be check my trench map to see where the station hotspots roughly are and then move them off station because I know they will eventually become a problem anyway, if a decent bit are pinned on station because that is how they decided to spawn this shift I Pity the people who didn't  know and then while trying to pin the new hotspot they now dislodge the already pinned one and created two or pin one only for the other to now become a problem that was pinned at round start. 

I think pinning them if they spawn on station is a half measure. It would probably be better to just not have them spawn on station at all if modifying hotspot round start dynamics.