The cargo bay I wish I could have

[QP Evergrande]

So, it turns out that a new version of the station is in the works, and its cargo bay is going to be on the south side. A whole new station opens up the possibility of a wide variety of new features, so I'd like to humbly submit my vision of the next gen cargo bay. Well, it started out as just a cargo bay, but then I ended up drafting an electronics bay, and then a pod area, and here's how it ended up.





Yeah. Okay, so here's what I've got. There's a big ole lobby in front, filled with vending machines from various public places around the station. Nothing restricted.

In the center is the Quartermanster's office, the QM being the sub-department head of the supply division, which commands the Cargo Techs and Electricians. It's a pretty posh office, because we all know who the big money maker on the station is. The outlet for undeliverable mail is in there. It also has a general alert computer, and a banking terminal (which I imagine all department heads could have if the idea to give all departments their own budgets gets implemented. The head could control their subordinates' salaries and bonuses from here, and make transfers from their budgets to others, though the HoP would have overriding authority).

The electronics bay has pretty much everything the current one has, but also comes standard with several places where objects that need to be connected to the network can be, for convenience. It also has a direct belt connection to the cargo bay. I also put tech storage right across a maintenance corridor from it. That maintenance corridor should go all the way to the escape arm.

To the far left, you have the south pod bay, pod bay lobby, the warehouse, and in the middle a separate pod construction area, so you can make pods without having to worry about low atmosphere. There's also a large number of miniputts, so they can be used like fightercraft and the station won't be quite so helpless against enemies with powerful pods.

And finally, the cargo bay. I have a few efficiency-increasing innovations in mind here. In the third image, I set up a system where crates would be received into the external belt system before being catapulted into the station. This is to take advantage of being able to add a barcode to a crate when you order it. You can send it to its destination without dealing with the hassle of moving the crate yourself, and there's less chance of a jam with this system. The side-loading configuration of the mass launchers is so you don't have to worry about stuff getting knocked around by all the crates moving about.

Once a crate has been shot into the station, naturally the blast doors open to let it in, but in case of a jam at the doors, those two objects on either side of the receiving belt are infrared sensors that will open the door if they detect anything there. Under those blast doors is a cargo router which moves a crate through and then triggers the door closed. Rather than adding something similar to the outgoing lines, I figure it would be better just to have those doors remain open for as long as there is something loaded on the mass launchers, rather than having them on a timer. The current system, which does use timers, is horrifically unrobust. Crates are always getting caught up on them, so you're forced to slow yourself way down, which is annoying.

There are three air vents in the belt chamber. These are not to maintain the atmosphere as it leaks out, but to make sure the atmosphere remains removed at all times so there is little to no lost air when the doors open. Probably unnecessary, but I figure air should constantly be leaking through the plastic flaps, or at least through the airlock doors when they open if nothing else.

Inside the cargo bay, the first cargo router will send a crate labeled "Resell" to the right onto the sell belt, and anything else to the left. The second router will load a crate labelled "Front" into the chute (though I think those can't take crate-sized objects right now) and send it to that other belt out in the lobby where customers can pick up their orders. Both chutes marked with a red "A" go out to the front. Both chutes labelled "B" go to the warehouse. There's also one labeled "D" in the cargo bay and warehouse which are just your regular disposal chutes.

Here, I've separated the barcode computers into three, to solve the problem of once you've scanned a person's ID card into the computer, you can't then print a barcode without adding that person's banking information to it. The one by the left belt is for labels that send a crate to the various docks around the station. Of the two next to the selling belt, one is for barcodes that will let you sell to traders, the other lets you store various people's banking information. A barcode from this computer will let you transfer half your profits into your personal account, or full profits into any given department's budget. As discussed in the "Ways for more departments to make money" thread, every department capable of producing something to sell in the cargo bay should have one of these machines. Perhaps they could be made hackable so people could give full profit to their personal account? And also to extract people's banking information from them so you could steal from their account if you get their ID cards?

The button next to the front door labelled "1" is the lockdown button, to seal the cargo bay in case the admins decide to spawn a hundred zombies in the belt system. As they do.

Next to the front desk, there's a DWAINE terminal, though that's just a graphical stand-in. To be able to do what I'd like to be doable with that, you'd almost certainly need a GUI, though those functions should be accessible from the rest of the station through the network in some way. What I'd like is to use that terminal to make all the functions of the belt system accessible from within the game. For starters, those side belts that connect the outgoing belts to the receiving belt? Those are so you can issue a Recall command that will return the next crate those routers get back to the cargo bay, in case someone sends out the wrong one. Also, the router in the front only works if controlled in this way. It can be used to put an unclaimed crate into the chute to the left, which sends it to the warehouse, or it could be moved off the belt and into the lobby.

This terminal can also be used in other ways. It can control the force with which mass launchers fire, either individually or universally. Setting it higher would send crates around the station more quickly, but be careful! The front desk is directly in front of the line of fire from the receiving line. Also, setting it too high could have other consequences. Perhaps a crate full of Erebite might explode if it hits something too fast, treating all the contents of the crate like the contents of a bomb's components. Perhaps crates themselves could damage pods flying through space. A third function would be to control the routing system within the belts. A hoodlum could delete them all (with the correct authorization for access, that is, and only by going through router by router), rendering the belt system unusable and sending everything to the cargo bay. Alternately, if you wanted to create a hazard for pods you could set up a loop where crates get shot back and forth across a busy spaceway. Another use for this would be to design a loop that sends objects around and around a routing station, and use that as a fairly safe hiding spot for sensitive objects until you retrieve the object by altering the routing pattern.

There, I think that's everything I dreamed up.