Goonhub
12-04-2013, 06:20 PM
I'd like to disagree about the too complex part. I'd say the reason people tend not to use artlab has to do with the effort/reward ratio. You spend a couple minutes wrestling with DWAINE to analyze one of a handful of readily available artifacts, and then trying to figure out what they do. It might turn out to be totally useless. It might be moderately helpful to somebody, but not necessarily you. It might flay you alive or obliterate the entire research wing.
An artifact power cell can be very helpful to a borg doing a construction project, but other than that it's very hard to get an artifact into the hands of a person who can make good use of it. Because they're randomly generated, you can never count on them being there, so people don't ask for artifacts even if they do have a use for them. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen activated artifacts around the station that weren't essentially traitor-only (i.e. they kill people).
But this version of a particle physics lab is different, more like botany, chemistry or genetics. There's a system, a pattern to how things work, and as you learn it you can learn how to produce a variety of useful things fairly quickly and reliably. The reliability part is the important one. Also, you can use it to fire enormously powerful beams enemies outside the station. How cool is that?
An artifact power cell can be very helpful to a borg doing a construction project, but other than that it's very hard to get an artifact into the hands of a person who can make good use of it. Because they're randomly generated, you can never count on them being there, so people don't ask for artifacts even if they do have a use for them. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen activated artifacts around the station that weren't essentially traitor-only (i.e. they kill people).
But this version of a particle physics lab is different, more like botany, chemistry or genetics. There's a system, a pattern to how things work, and as you learn it you can learn how to produce a variety of useful things fairly quickly and reliably. The reliability part is the important one. Also, you can use it to fire enormously powerful beams enemies outside the station. How cool is that?