[MERGED PR] Merges mechanics with engineer

[github_bot]

PULL REQUEST DETAILS





About the PR
This pr merges the mechanics job with engineer job, giving engineers 8 job slots and the access of mechanics. This also adds all the apps that mechanics pdas had into the engineer pda and gives them additional file_amount. This pr doesnt effect the mechanics locker, meaning you can still find the mechanics jumpsuits in them.

To avoid merge conflicts, the spawners for mechanics arent swapped with engineer spawners in this pr, and this is planned to be pred after this is merged.
Why's this needed?

Mechanics are a job with a lot of content but suffer from a lack of aim, whereas engineer are a job with a lot of aim but suffer from lack of content. Not to mention these jobs have a lot of negative overlap. Both jobs are required for repairs, however they cant meaningfully occur at the same time, and the act of just adding back machines on its own or repairing the structure doesnt tend to be super interesting on its own. This means that what happens is one job tends to dominate in doing the repairs (mostly engineers) and the other job sticks mostly to the side. Merging these jobs should help a lot with both jobs.


Challenges

These are issues I think merging this pr will bring about, however this will also include potiental solutions to these issues. I think this pr would be worth more then these issues, however Im willing to pr many of these solutions before/after this pr goes through if its viewed as needed.

Problem: People will steal materials from engineering storage to use for the mechanics office.
Potiental solution: Making engineers spawn with some base amount of construction materials (Like #9201) would fix this issue.

Problem: The surplus of people with access to the rkit will make it much harder for security to track people who print out batons and other bad stuff.
Potiental solution: Adding some logging information to the rkit thats only visible to security (Such as what fingerprint/glove id uploaded what blueprint) should fix this issue.

Problem: The increase of people who can roll the syndicate scanner will make a lot of the strategies with the item (such as crusher spam) dull.
Potiental solution: The material cost for many of the items involved in these spammed strategies can be upped, making the spammability and impact of these things lessened in a round.


Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)Ikea
(*)The Mechanic job and their traitor items have been merged into the Engineer job, and the Engineer job has been upped to 8 slots. The contents of the mechanics locker remains the same.

PULL REQUEST DETAILS

[nefarious6th]

Maybe it will finally work

[Roddy]

Reading over the last attempt to do this (mentioned in the pull request), there’s some valid concerns and comments there. Still, I’d like this to at least be given a chance, if nothing else.

As someone who really enjoys repairing the station, and enjoys making copies of items for medbay/botany/whatever gimmick I’m doing, I like this. Often times when I roll engineer I wish I was mechanic to be able to scan things for my room I inevitably want to build. When I roll mechanic, I usually do end up repairing the station, but less efficiently.

But!! The major concerns were already spoken for the last time this apparently was tried, so I’d focus on those

[Ikea]

The challenges section of this pr is me addressing most of the points against that I thought were legitimate and ways that I think these problems could be addressed. The other main concern people had was "Youll just get 8 mechanics who are just now yellow staffies instead of blue ones", however I believe the main reason why mechanics tend to play like blue staffies is due to the fact that the job has basically no aim, and the aim that the engineer job provides should give it a lot of backbone to that aspect and lead to this playstyle for the job becoming less relevant.

[Glamurio]

You do raise some valid points with this, my initial response was a negative one when reading the title, as someone who genuinely enjoys the slow pace of a Mechanic as opposed to the oftentimes frantic nature of an Engineer during initial set up, I think it's more complex than simply merging the two of them, however there's a definite case to be made. Additionally, there's an additional workload coming with this change that sees merging both Mechanic's Lab and Engineering, as on a couple of maps, those two are really far apart (Cogmap 2 for instance).

The second issue I have is that... 8 is a ludicrously large number, Mechanics were already a job that simply had far too many people. I'd be much more comfortable in a range of 5-6 instead. Security Officer is currently the largest job with 5, though if you count the Detective who does basically the same you land at 6, so there's a precedence for that sizing, but 8 is obscene, because that will lead to the same problems as before. Not to mention, many maps don't nearly have enough equipment for even 5 Engineers, let alone 8.

Personally, I'd prefer to diversify both Mechanics and Engineers as their own unique jobs, adding new goals and aims to Mechanics while giving Engineers new tools, but I'd also like to hear what other people are saying.

[Ikea]

I agree that 8 is a large number (Id personally be more comfortable with 7), main reason its so high is because with these pops and no pop scaling I do not feel comfortable significantly reducing the job counts as I dont want even more staffies. I do agree that theres not enough equipment for 8 engineers in storage, but my preferred fix for that is spawn engineers with a decent amount of baseline equipment that way there's natural item scaling, though that change is outside of scope for this pr. I think remapping some of the stations to more integrate mechanics with engineering would be neat if this pr went through, however ultimately I dont consider it to be an urgent thing, Im more then willing to do these map changes.

[Munien]

Personally, I'd prefer to diversify both Mechanics and Engineers as their own unique jobs, adding new goals and aims to Mechanics while giving Engineers new tools, but I'd also like to hear what other people are saying.

While I do think this is the ideal solution, the reasoning behind this PR is solid with the current state of both of these jobs. The overlap is really strange and often (in my experience) serves to confuse people, especially new players as to what, other than starting the engine or scanning every piece of equipment possible, these roles are actually supposed to do. Frequently I see people of both jobs dealing with breaches and repairs with no meaningful distinction between who is a mech or engi or if any, that mechanics are generally sidelined until a specific piece of equipment needs rebuilding, which at least on the RP servers doesn't really make for fun gameplay since things tend to explode/be stolen less. I don't see any problems with this until such a thing as Glamurio said is achieved.

[Lord_earthfire]

My problem is the engine. I don't think a job that provides creative commodities for the whole station should have a mandatory upkeep on work (like the generator). They should be avaible at the beginning of the shift and they should be able to concentrate on their projects other people bind them in.

And that is exactly what mechanics currently provide. Someone with building supplies that got nothing better to do that to help you build your rage cage in the bar.

I never get my hands on an engineer because they work on the engine and don't care for anything else.

And that is the difference between science/chemistry and engineering/mechanics: engineering got a proper and important task

So I think at least we need the 8 slots of engineers after the change, because the station simply needs the blue or yellow staffies with building equipment.

Overall, i disagree with the whole motion that mechanics need an aim.

[Ikea]

Personally, I'd prefer to diversify both Mechanics and Engineers as their own unique jobs, adding new goals and aims to Mechanics while giving Engineers new tools, but I'd also like to hear what other people are saying.

While I do think this is the ideal solution, the reasoning behind this PR is solid with the current state of both of these jobs. The overlap is really strange and often (in my experience) serves to confuse people, especially new players as to what, other than starting the engine or scanning every piece of equipment possible, these roles are actually supposed to do.

I don't think you can meaningfully diversify these jobs, as at the core these jobs have lots of overlap. You can expand these jobs sure, but without fundamental changes you cannot remove this overlap without making them fundamentally a different job. Mechanics primary job is the ruckt kit, install and replace machinery, and engineers job is to do repairs/construction (alongside engine work). These fundamental functions are the source of the overlap, and while you can complicate it as much you want, as long as these functions remain they'll have this overlap, and Id rather not remove the rkit from mechanics considering thats the core of there job.

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My problem is the engine. I don't think a job that provides creative commodities for the whole station should have a mandatory upkeep on work (like the generator). They should be avaible at the beginning of the shift and they should be able to concentrate on their projects other people bind them in.

I never get my hands on an engineer because they work on the engine and don't care for anything else.

I think the main reason why engineers tend to focus so much on the engine is just because they dont have much else. They have construction, but without the rkit theyre heavily impeded for doing it. While I dont think this change will happen overnight, I think this pr will cause a cultural shift to make some engineers less focused. You're free to just fuck off and go work on mechcomp stuff at the beginning of the shift, there's multiple of you and you can coordinate with your team.

[Decarcassor]

All I can say is that having access to mech scanners and the ruckingenur kit would make a lot of engineering work more interesting and flexible. You could do more in but also out of the engine room.

And if you end up being the only engineer, you can just boot the engine is a very basic mode and go do mechstuff.

[MomoBerry]

As ikea said, engineers really only have the engine. Even that is usually capped out at 2-3 players operating at its peak, and it's usually only a single individual. I think this is a great change and one i've wanted. Decar also encapsulates my feelings pretty well.

[Cherman0]

I've got mixed feelings on this. I feel like a big issue with it is that lots of people dont play engineer because they're scared of the engine. Its this big complex weird thing that most people dont want any expectation of it being their job to figure out. And I feel like merging mechanics and engineering would lead to fewer people playing mechanic because they dont want to play engineering.

On the other hand, If that doesnt happen then it would be a good way to teach more people how to run the engine. If I'm the CE and I have three engineers who just want to be mechanics, it would be a lot easier to convince them to help out in the engine (since it is nominally their job) and learn something than if they were just mechanics (or any other job with no affiliation with the engine).

Since more people play mechanic than engineer, I also fear for the shift where there are five engineers who are all DWAINE nerds and none of them know to set an engine at all, and the station runs out of power despite having an ostensibly full engineering department. But hopefully that's pretty rare, and there's usually at least the silicons who are willing to set the engine if nobody else does.

[Frank_Stein]

I'd like to see engineers have more to do with the station's infrastructure. Give them some reason to go around and tinker with the APC's. Get them tearing up the floors and fiddling with the wires. Things they can patch up, hack up, and restructure to make things more efficient.

[Conchuckter]

I personally think work should be focused on making playing engineer more enjoyable without interfering with another job, seeing as there are clear distinctions between the two.

For example giving engineers more things to do like what Frank_Stein mentioned, and at the same time emphasizing their role in station repair would help greatly. Giving them more options for how to power the station would be nice. Also electrical faults do not happen nearly enough, giving them a lack of purpose beyond initially getting the power running.

For mechanics I think it'd be a good idea to give them more ways they can use Packets/MechComp to aid the station, as currently most of their uses are gimmicky or outright harmful. This would also help emphasize their role as the more computer focused counter part to engineers.

As well as making both having a clear distinction between the two jobs I think it would be important to also give them ways to collaborate, for example connecting power machinery to the packet network and giving a valid reason to use it.

The RKIT is a definite overlap between the two jobs, so moving it to something like a shared construction room wouldn't be a horrible idea. The ABC-U could also be included here along with other building supplies.

To be clear I don't think anything about the goal of this PR is wrong, I just think it can be accomplished without removing another job and I'd be more than happy to help with it. 

[Glamurio]

Giving them more options for how to power the station would be nice. Also electrical faults do not happen nearly enough, giving them a lack of purpose beyond initially getting the power running.

This is something I agree with as well. There needs to be more events or things that can go wrong with the electrical system / engine to actually warrant a repair role as a primary occupation. As it stands, the majority of the time, Engineers don't really have to repair anything unless there's an arcfiend around or a meteor hits the station, both which is highly variable by not happening at all.

What if there was a general base chance for engines to go haywire? What instead of trying to overload the engine like is attempted every shift, you have to prevent the engine from going critical? Try to keep the engine at a specific level by venting extra pressure rather than to just jank it by removing floor tiles, that kind of stuff.