Let's make the station more maintenance intensive!

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Nobody fixes anything unless someone who cares enough to go and get wires or some shit halfway across the station goes and gets them, this wouldn't work out and would get annoying.

People very often will fix things. If you think that people are going to just up and log off because the power went out in chem you're dead wrong. They'll yell at the engineers, who are hopefully doing the single task they're responsible for (fixing things) and if they're not they'll try to fix it themselves.

The reason the solars start auto-hotwired is precisely because this doesn't actually happen, though. Reality has proven that if no engineers join a round, then all medsci will do when power starts dying is yell at the engineers to start up the engine, and when that proves ineffective, they call the shuttle and come on the forums to whine about how unfair it is that their round was ruined because someone else had the nerve to not do their job. In case you can't tell from my tone here, I'm of the opinion that they were whiny babies who need to suck it up, grab a blue toolbox, and jury-rig their own power - yes, even in small games, it's not that hard. Obviously some people disagreed though, since the solars were changed to render the engine entirely pointless in response to those kinds of complaints.

In any case, it's not like engineering was really that interesting before. Even when the engine was necessary, you spent five minutes setting it up and then you didn't really have anything to do for the rest of the round. Even if a mad bomber runs around blowing things up, fixing the holes was generally left to a construction borg, who can fix them far faster without needing to juggle nearly as many supplies, and minor holes are usually patched by anyone who wants to use that department badly enough to scrounge up a bit of metal. Personally, I like the holes lately - people are a lot less likely to bother you or interfere with your work in a depressurized room.

Besides, let's be honest. People don't play scientist to cook up more medical chems for the doctors. People don't play genetics to clone people or distribute cool mutations to the crew. People don't play mechanic to help safeguard critical station infrastructure. No one plays miner to supply the station with ores. They play those jobs for the fun toys that they make for themselves personally. And nobody bitches at those jobs if they don't do those things. The only toys engineers have are spacesuits and yellow gloves, and they get those right at the start so there's really no benefit to them for doing their job. So why should they?