Impose Austerity On Station To Improve The Game

[ZeWaka]

cold movement has to be fixed.

holy shit it was just buffed a week ago its perfectly fine now

[Nnystyxx]

I might not have been noticing it due to my vehement avoidance of breaches and the stealth patch, I'll test it out a bit I guess

[Boa Jacque]

I'm all for making certain items more scarce.
Also all for making windows tougher. Don't remove windows though.
Electrified grilles were a pain, in a good way.

On making items more scarce:
This should not apply to crowbars. Or emergency toolboxes at all actually. I got stuck on the arrivals shuttle the other day because there were absolutely no crowbars nor means to get them. This dilemma is unfun.

However, if I had to search harder for oil cans or welding tanks (the handhelds) then that wouldn't be so bad.

Less medkits
Less belts
Less spacesuits
Less sunglasses

Less spares (yellow gloves @ mechanics, medkits, hyposprays) within departments.
Excesses should be obvious (like the -stacks- of medkits in medbay could be reduced to 1)

Don't remove any toolboxes or air bottles though, IMO.

Its the high-grade robust items that are the problem, not so much things you can find in toolboxes or make at general manufacturers.


ask yourself: Is this item fancy? does it unlock something desirable, particularly things that grant immunities or produce powerful weapons? are there 5+ on station already? If so, I should probably place this item behind a barrier of some sort.

[Superlagg]

If supplies are going to be limited, then dying will be so much easier to do. Loads of times, I would've died from something stupid and annoying if I didn't have all these fancy tools and medkits. Being dead stinks, even more so if you could've done something about it but couldn't because your department didn't have a crowbar.

But I also want this idea to work! So to get around this, make dying harder to do. Extend the amount of time you can spend crit to absurd levels (especially so you can't just shiv someone and leave them to die since bandaids don't exist outside of medbay), make it easier to revive dead people (defib the recently dead might revive them, less bombable cloners?), something where there's less Death By Bullshit via lack of stuff and more medbay having a job outside of getting robbed.

Also, if breakins are to be less doable, then the borgs and ai are going to be a lot more useful, especially if they are the only ones guaranteed to have tools, and super especially if the crew doesn't want to our can't ask a department to let them in or help them. Also means they will need to say no a lot more, which will piss people off and send them out for the ai's blood more often. Course, they won't be able to break into the upload as easily, unless they rob or come with a working ID. Maybe make law 3 more important than 2? I dunno.

Also, space age transparent walls that can't be toolboxed.

[poland spring]

I would be down with this if it were a completely separate server but good luck with that ever happening

Hardmode server will always exist in my dreams tho

[Boa Jacque]

Actually, funny thing, I posted the above and had to rush back to suggest hosting cog1 on a separate server. (as both a fix to this, and because alot of us nerds loved cog1. Even though we were excited as hell for cog2. Or even a virtualized server running on the same machine as one of the other servers. We actually have enough players now to supply enough people to have 3 servers again. Population on the non RP server is typically always over 20, and I often see 50. 70 is not totally uncommon.

[Noah Buttes]

Actually, funny thing, I posted the above and had to rush back to suggest hosting cog1 on a separate server. (as both a fix to this, and because alot of us nerds loved cog1. Even though we were excited as hell for cog2. Or even a virtualized server running on the same machine as one of the other servers. We actually have enough players now to supply enough people to have 3 servers again. Population on the non RP server is typically always over 20, and I often see 50. 70 is not totally uncommon.

If the population gets high enough on cog2, the scarcity issue might resolve itself.

Hypothetically anyway.

[Huff H Law]

Alright, so if this was all about making Cog2 less overstocked, then why was it worded as if this was intended to be about marking a massive shift in the tone and nature of the game?

Because the discussion on IRC was about the tone of the game being a problem that could be fixed by changing how systems work, mainly the station. I have tried to excise the parts that don't matter but I guess I can edit it again to make my intention really clear.

Also it was because I thought it was a novel idea portrayed in a way that can actually be implemented instead of just whining how SS13 is shit, so instead of letting the idea disappear into the ether on IRC I decided to write it down in this thread. Not that I think SS13 currently is shit.

[Nnystyxx]

Idea: for a round/day, replace all on-station windows (via Magic) into starstone windows. As of the materials rewrite, Starstone windows are nigh fucking indestructible without even being reinforced. See how that affects the crew.

[Xeram]

I think we're all kinda missing a big key point here.

Reducing the accessibility of areas and the amount of supplies for the crew drastically increases inter-department and inter-player dependence for basic functions.

I notice a lot that people always talk about that as a good thing. Anybody who's actually dealt with it in the game knows that dependence on anyone or anything on goonstation is FUCKING AWFUL.

One of the key points of having to rely on others for things is competence, something you may remember that the majority of players on goon completely lack. We all know the pain of sitting there and watching the clueless roboticist ditz around with your brain after stealing you out of genetics as someone failed to scan or clone you, left you for dead when a simple push could have saved you, let you die of suffocation and shock in medbay because you couldn't yell at them to get you the oxy medkit and they just kept slapping you with patches, or otherwise just straight up completely useless if not a hindrance.

Don't make it even more a pain in the ass to simply navigate the station, whether shit has hit the fan or not and reduce people's ability to save themselves whether it be knowing where to get tools, how to navigate past treacherous areas, or knowing where life saving chems can be found or made far from medbay. It'll make everything more an exercise in tedium than it already can be.

[Admiral jimbob]

I only started playing Cogmap 2 relatively recently but I actually feel like it's way less stocked than Cogmap 1 was. Definitely feels like there's less in the way of medkits, blue toolboxes, insulated gloves and so on in most areas - for example, sec no longer has any medkits and there are no insulated gloves on the bridge. I might just need to get used to where to get stuff now though.

[Arborinus]

I'm sorry if this is goes off the main goal, feel free to call me dumb or whatever.

Cogmap2 introduced random item spawns, but I don't think those have been adjusted since initial release. I believe the initial intent was "If you're lucky there might be something rare here!" but instead they're used as a kind of lazy mapping tool. Things aren't placed with thought into balance anymore - just look at podbay or the maintenance pockets outside medbay during any given round: there's hundreds of each basic material sheet, 4 defibs and piles of pills and patch boxes. If these spawn points were reduced or adjusted to make these resources more scarce the value of them would increase and the assumed original intent would be reached.

I think a shift in player attitude needs to be made as well. Death. The first thing we tell new players is "You're going to die. A lot". There have been so many things added to ghosts and even a way to revive without relying on others. I'm not sure how to convince people that dying can be funny, a spectator sport, a good way to learn to improve or inspire your own murder methods. Maybe I'll edit this out because I may be overstepping by a lot now.

[Superlagg]

Something needs to be done about how interdepartmental requests are handled. As the MD, every time I've asked someone in Chemistry to whip up a tall glass of medicine, they'd either completely ignore my requests, give me a tiny beaker filled with garbage and maybe a few units of what I asked for, or just take ages to figure out which buttons were plasma, radium, or chlorine, no matter how many spraybottles I try to bribe them with. I find it easier just to break into Chemistry and get what I want before the nerds have a chance to blow themselves up kicking me out.

Maybe something like a ticket system? Fill out a note of exactly what you want and have it show up in the target department's PDAs and chemdispensers? Make it so that at the very least the AI can fulfill requests when that department either cant or wont?

Apathy toward doing your job for *other* people is one of the big annoying hurdles to hurdle if we're going to have to rely on each other for our jobs to work.

[Nnystyxx]

More emphasis on cargo and the mail chute system would probably be very good since both Belt Hell and the mail can send things. People usually are afraid to leave their departments/can't be arsed, due to traitors and breaches, especially the chemnerds.

Relying on other people seriously can fucking suck. Sometimes you get a helpful angel, other times you go ignored all round. Some people are vocal, some are silent. Some are competent, some are not. Austerity & dependence only works if people are even slightly reliable.

Maybe a way to make requests and promise money in return somehow, PDA-to-PDA cash transfer without the rarely-used credit machines. I dunno. PDAs could do with some overhauling sometime, they'd be a really good place to focus on communication & coordination since they've been the same for a long time it feels like

[Dions]

I think we're all kinda missing a big key point here.

Reducing the accessibility of areas and the amount of supplies for the crew drastically increases inter-department and inter-player dependence for basic functions.

I notice a lot that people always talk about that as a good thing. Anybody who's actually dealt with it in the game knows that dependence on anyone or anything on goonstation is FUCKING AWFUL.

One of the key points of having to rely on others for things is competence, something you may remember that the majority of players on goon completely lack. We all know the pain of sitting there and watching the clueless roboticist ditz around with your brain after stealing you out of genetics as someone failed to scan or clone you, left you for dead when a simple push could have saved you, let you die of suffocation and shock in medbay because you couldn't yell at them to get you the oxy medkit and they just kept slapping you with patches, or otherwise just straight up completely useless if not a hindrance.

Don't make it even more a pain in the ass to simply navigate the station, whether shit has hit the fan or not and reduce people's ability to save themselves whether it be knowing where to get tools, how to navigate past treacherous areas, or knowing where life saving chems can be found or made far from medbay. It'll make everything more an exercise in tedium than it already can be.

What I'm gathering is that youre too stuck in the way things are and so are everyone else, so we shouldn't try to change what we see as a big problem with our server in specific because you are so much better than everyone at everything.

Maybe if people were expected/allowed to do their job they'd be good at it and not just sitting there dying a little inside when they watch a server regular bomb their way into whatever department they want so they can do that job for themselves, completely ignoring and cutting you out of the equation to the point where you wonder why you even bother.

It just makes the server regulars this big horrible monster that does everything and pushes new players around to the point where they have to be just like the old players, relying on nobody but themselves. By the time a new player has learned how to be useful, theyre using the knowledge to perpetuate the cycle once more.


In short suck it up you don't need fuckin sunglasses at round start as a staff assistant you big babies.