Goonhub
05-27-2025, 01:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-27-2025, 01:58 PM by Danger Noodle. Edited 1 time in total.)
So! This sure is a topic isn't it? Before I put forth my own thoughts and suggestions I'd like to just point out some flaws I've seen with other suggestions. A good amount of people in the thread have put forward ideas that make other roles more annoying or tedious to play such as making borgs needing maintenance, that does not make being a roboticist more interesting, it just makes being a borg less fun. Giving them access to robuddies is probably a good idea and does give them *something* but it isn't a panacea, robuddies are already underused and just throwing them at a different department isn't really going to dispell that. They still require decent dwaine knowledge and also let's not forget to mention that this would very likely require a pretty decent rework of every map in rotation.
The main body of the problem is that robotics simply lacks content. They have at most three things to do. The first one is interact with the cyborgs then after they're done with that and the roundstart borgs have their preferred parts they might get to install a cyber organ or two. Then finally they kind of vaguely are supposed to make the -bots but that one isn't exactly engaging to say the least. Then what? Go build shells in the exact same way 10 times? I mean it's nifty the first few times but it gets repetitive fast.
I do think going with some form of progression is a decent step forward, a research system isn't unheard of, ideally it'd be slightly less "engaging" than geneticists so they're not glued to it 24/7 though it comes with the possibility of power creep. This might come with the ability to further tinker with parts, maybe a few variants of existing ones or simply a way to open them up and tweak, add or remove things. I think an interesting concept is giving cyber organs and limbs "socket slots" like gems in an arpg, you print out your Thingymabob and it could have a basic advanced and high tier one with different material costs and then slot it into the Robotics Research Machine (name pending), transfer whatever function you want into it and then put it in and then graft it into a monkey and watch it suffer like the dr. frankenstein you are.
So! You might be thinking, Celine, what the fuck are you on about this sounds weird. Well my thinking here is that we're killing multiple birds with one stone here, robotics gets a round long progression system they keep track of and press buttons on, organs become more interesting for them, crew and antags alike by offering neat and importantly weird/unique options, pesky doctors can still give a very basic organ to a patient if they barge in but unless someone weirdo that broke in has been nolifing the console/other system it's going to be a basic one.
Also by giving the organs/body/whatever a limit of slots for the upgrades it helps with the genetics problem of having 5 trillion genes active at once and gives you a choice to make. Additionally, yes I do apologize for giving a weird out there and likely really annoying to make feature that sounds cool on paper while having zero coding skills, I know the feeling.
Quick addendum as I realized I missed a few things. First of all this is a horrible missed opportunity to make the forum name "can robotics be salvaged" but so be it. Furthermore I never actually expanded upon what the research may look like, it's a hard thing to pin down. In my mind you'd have a few tiers of projects and could select them decently freely as long as the previous related ones were completed, after selecting your project it'd (very slowly) accumulate points and you could either get Research Points from sacrificing/scanning related items or by setting up lil research nodes that collect data and want as many varied inputs as possible. (Sound familiar, anyone?) Using specific items might unlock unique previously hidden options like some more nefarious ones for the more cybernetically inclined traitors. I also forgot to mention that in my vision the quirky organs would obviously be carbon exclusive but the limbs could have cyborg functionality (upgrades would likely be marked as only silicon, only carbon or as usable by both on the research screen).
The main body of the problem is that robotics simply lacks content. They have at most three things to do. The first one is interact with the cyborgs then after they're done with that and the roundstart borgs have their preferred parts they might get to install a cyber organ or two. Then finally they kind of vaguely are supposed to make the -bots but that one isn't exactly engaging to say the least. Then what? Go build shells in the exact same way 10 times? I mean it's nifty the first few times but it gets repetitive fast.
I do think going with some form of progression is a decent step forward, a research system isn't unheard of, ideally it'd be slightly less "engaging" than geneticists so they're not glued to it 24/7 though it comes with the possibility of power creep. This might come with the ability to further tinker with parts, maybe a few variants of existing ones or simply a way to open them up and tweak, add or remove things. I think an interesting concept is giving cyber organs and limbs "socket slots" like gems in an arpg, you print out your Thingymabob and it could have a basic advanced and high tier one with different material costs and then slot it into the Robotics Research Machine (name pending), transfer whatever function you want into it and then put it in and then graft it into a monkey and watch it suffer like the dr. frankenstein you are.
So! You might be thinking, Celine, what the fuck are you on about this sounds weird. Well my thinking here is that we're killing multiple birds with one stone here, robotics gets a round long progression system they keep track of and press buttons on, organs become more interesting for them, crew and antags alike by offering neat and importantly weird/unique options, pesky doctors can still give a very basic organ to a patient if they barge in but unless someone weirdo that broke in has been nolifing the console/other system it's going to be a basic one.
Also by giving the organs/body/whatever a limit of slots for the upgrades it helps with the genetics problem of having 5 trillion genes active at once and gives you a choice to make. Additionally, yes I do apologize for giving a weird out there and likely really annoying to make feature that sounds cool on paper while having zero coding skills, I know the feeling.
Quick addendum as I realized I missed a few things. First of all this is a horrible missed opportunity to make the forum name "can robotics be salvaged" but so be it. Furthermore I never actually expanded upon what the research may look like, it's a hard thing to pin down. In my mind you'd have a few tiers of projects and could select them decently freely as long as the previous related ones were completed, after selecting your project it'd (very slowly) accumulate points and you could either get Research Points from sacrificing/scanning related items or by setting up lil research nodes that collect data and want as many varied inputs as possible. (Sound familiar, anyone?) Using specific items might unlock unique previously hidden options like some more nefarious ones for the more cybernetically inclined traitors. I also forgot to mention that in my vision the quirky organs would obviously be carbon exclusive but the limbs could have cyborg functionality (upgrades would likely be marked as only silicon, only carbon or as usable by both on the research screen).