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The state of Engineering
#1
Sad 
I wish I didn't have to make this post but after all the recent changes to Engineering, I feel that something has to be said about it's goals and gameplay loops. I was unsure if this should go in discussion or ideas but it's worth talking about, regardless.

Right now, personally, I think Engineering is in a dire state. Unfriendly mechanics, lack of beginner information, wildly varying power output to effort ratios and unrealistic expectations all combine to make a job that many refuse to play, others which do frequently disappear in the middle of the round and the engineers left which are doing their job languishing in frustration.

So, why is it so bad? What's causing these problems?

Let's go over the engine types and see the issues with each one. (As of the time of this post, I have yet to do Engineering on Nadir and so won't go into the catalyst engine )

  • The TEG


The classic engine type. How far it has fallen. Atmos changes have made what used to be a fairly player friendly set up to perform hellburns that could produce exceptionally high levels of power into a tiring, frequently hazardous and often lethal gameplay loop that can barely remain stable. The best power output you can get right now is with the pipe burn, a ludicrous set up that requires farts to remove the CO2 and, if you use the combustion chamber, is actually worse due to a heat sink effect. And then there is the pipe bursts. I don't disagree with the concept of engines needing maintenance to keep the power going up, but every burn type these days, including a simple char burn, causes pipe bursts. The solution we got? Graphene Hardening Compound. Something involving a completely different department to Engineering entirely, and not one that the majority of scientists care for, partly due to it not being their department, partly due to the fiddly nature of actually making the chem. GHC doesn't even fix pipe bursts, it just makes them take slightly longer. And what do pipe bursts do? Flood the department with deadly superheated plasma fires that, short of the heavy firesuit, engineers are often heavily endangered in fighting. 

And almost none of this is made clear for new engineers. For some reason, how to actually operate this engine beyond a simple char burn is obfuscated for no good reason. A new engineer has to rely, primarily, on hoping there is an experienced Engineer on site who is willing to teach them. How Atmos works is, otherwise, a complete mystery, even using the wiki as a guide. It is made even worse in that a setup that works on one map can produce very different results on another, so even the consistency is shot. I have seen power go up on pipe bursts with little explanation on how this is possible.

Finally, the TEG has a large resource problem. To make good power, it ideally wants the hot and cold loops to be closed loops. Yet due to pipe bursts, or buggy Atmos, or other reasons, keeping the gas input up will frequently find you running out of plasma, short of reducing the input pressure to the '1' setting, which produces a pressure so low, it is extremely easily snuffed out by CO2 build up. This tends to cause the power output of the TEG to frequently fall sharply and lose you progress you probably spent the last 20 minutes obtaining.

At its core, the TEG should reasonably be able to use the combustion chamber to produce the amount of power an engineer can be proud of without requiring maintenance nearly every minute. It is currently very far from that.

  • The Singularity



The famous Singulo. This one is the most recent to be disrupted by a change that has made the best set up for producing high amounts of power more than 10 times worse. But there are other issues that are more important.

The Singulo can be almost the opposite of the TEG in that it normally provides very little to actually do after setup. This at least makes it the most beginner friendly but I have seen comments from many experienced engineers that they find the singulo to be boring. Not ideal for gameplay. It doesn't help as well that the basic set up for the singulo produces far more power than the TEG or Oshan vents with much less effort. Why should the other Engines require so much effort to reach what you can get in 5 mins with a singulo?

While it is the most beginner friendly, how collectors are setup is not adequately explained at all. The only reason I found out how they worked at all was by using a PDA app. Otherwise you only get vague statements that controllers can support up to four arrays. It doesn't tell you that these arrays must be arranged in a cardinal direction to the controller and also must be right next to it.

Lastly there is an issue with how you grow your power output. The singulo requires feeding, and until very recently you could make a setup that used mechcomp printers to feed it automatically. Printers now have to restock and this has cut the typical power output over the course of the round by over 10 times. So now the best feeder setup probably requires using them ChemiCompiler which I'm sure the vast majority of engineers have never even touched and, like with GHC, is something entirely unrelated to engineering.

I do reckon that the singulo has the least wrong with it overall and it has benefit the most from two recent changes, that being the ability to mechscan the collectors and the merge of mechanics with engineers. But it was in fact the printer change that spurred me to make this post. One that should be harmless but ended up being the straw that broke the camels back.

  • The Geothermal Vents


The engine type that actually causes many players to set engineering to off when Oshan comes up. This engine type is probably the worst in terms of effort to power generation and it's largely a result of too much feature stacking, the same issue that has built up overtime with the TEG.

Right now to maximise the output of a vent you need to know how to stack, assistance from mining, straight up luck in where hotspots spawn, a large amount of time investment and willing participation from the other Engineers. Most Engineers can not be bothered to do all of this to get an engine that will probably not be able to output 150MW by the end of the shift. In fact, many absolutely hate the process of doing this. I, for one, actually don't hate this but I can't ignore the common opinion with most engineers I have talked with.

Finding hotspots is a laborious task that requires you to aimlessly place down dowsing rods until you finally get something showing up. You are provided with a way to mitigate this search but it's not a very good one. The trench map shows the location of all hotspots at the start of the round but only shows the trench level and does not get updated as the round progresses, which is a problem as hotspots move. Also not helping is the entirely random nature of where hotspots spawn. You could get a game where the only good cluster of them is under the Martian ship to the northeast, increasing the frustration of moving them by a huge amount. Moving them at all is the task that makes this way more tiresome than it needs to be. Due to the fact that each vent set up decreases the individual power generation of each vent, you ideally want to do this. It takes forever! Each hotspot has to be individually located and then moved with the stomper onto the same spot. Once again, this is heavily affected by how lucky you are with hotspot spawns and yet if two hotspots do spawn very close to eachother it makes it even more difficult because it muddles up the dowsing rods' distance estimation and trying to move one with the stomper causes the other one to move further away.

Currently my best stacking record is 7 hotspots and how much power did it produce after the trench underneath had been mined? Between 140-150MW. This was after an hour of stacking which was made worse by the damage to you are very likely to take by moving hotspots. Medbay visits are almost guaranteed and one time a faulty stomp but an inexperienced engineer turned the whole area of stacked hotspots to turn into a death zone that could not be approached, lest you be stunlocked and torn apart by the quakes.

Most Engineers, thus, don't bother. It's not that uncommon to see whoever rolled CE when starting Oshan to start cursing over the radio. The worst bit of all is none of it is necessary. Oshan will run completely fine for a whole shift under it's own power with Engineering doing nothing. Trying to explain it to new engineers is as tiresome as actually carrying out the process of setting up the vents and not the least bit glamorous.

The Extra Stuff

One point I made at the beginning of this post is that something had to be said about Engineering's goals. Okay, that's powering the station. Solars do that perfectly fine, thus why do we have the engines? Because most Engineers are satisfied by reaching extremely high power outputs. In fact I would argue that is the true satisfaction in playing Engineering. Competing to see how high you can get the output on this shift compared to other shifts. It's helpful for Traitor Engineers too, as it gives them options to turn this gameplay loop as a weapon against the station, and what's more fun than taking the skills you've learned and being given a licence to go nuts with it?

So why does it feel like the developers don't want this? Why are all the mechanics for making the amount of power that Engineers can be proud about or for antag Engineers to be able to be actually threatening with made so frustrating? It doesn't help that we have no idea what a "good power output" even is in the eyes of the Devs. Engineers currently have a task to get 1 million credits with the PTL and a multi gigawatt setup doesn't even scratch the surface of getting that number. The power gloves traitor weapon is now extremely rare because Engines no longer make enough power in the vast majority of games to up it's damage output beyond laughable. So obviously they want it to be high but everything is against you in actually obtaining this now.

There's definitely more issues but I would like to hear your current impressions with engineering. Personally, I think a huge QoL PR is needed.
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#2
extraordinarily poor documentation (dude just look on the wiki and struggle to digest paragraph after paragraph written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with how atmospherics used to work/whatever arcane task is laid out for you in the case of oshan) + how actually laborious carrying them out are enough to turn me off

compared to the other departments:

Science
usually filled with other experienced players who are typically more than willing to help you out with most stuff (telescience and bomb-making both being the more laborious tasks you can do there but overall not too tough to find someone willing to spend a round with you explaining the basics). you make the fun with science and the sky's the limit. RD, if they haven't fucked off for telesci or whatever is usually present and helpful.

Medical
same as science but has an entirely different gameplay flow. people come in for treatment, and during downtime you have plenty of time to ask your co-workers advice on what you should be doing, how to perform surgery, genetics, the whole shebang. can always count on the mdir to be useful and helpful

Civilian
botany is similar to the experience you will have in science. oldbies just fucking around and more than happy to teach newcomers how to grow the hybrid mutant plants of their dreams. the chef is usually alone but since you'll usually be in constant contact with the barman and 1-2 botanists, it's not too hard to figure out what to make, especially if people ask for something specific. the wiki is actually very helpful. barman is like chef, another low-mechanically complex job that makes up for it with plenty of rp potential. cargo is also much of the same, but with more mechanic complexity and maybe slightly less roleplay potential. janitor is entirely self-sufficient and its objectives and how to accomplish them are pretty cut and dry. hop doesn't really serve in a supervisory role for these jobs like rd, ce, md, and the hos do

Security
tightknit and you can hardly go wrong unless you're a lone security officer. unlike medical and technical assistants which are easily overlooked, they can have a moderate impact on the round. hos is always reliable

Command
if you've never rolled a head role before, you can almost always defer to the judgement of the people working under you for advice

Engineering
now that mechanics has been rolled into engineering, i imagine most would want to gravitate to the mechanics lab since it's also a very self-sufficient job and also easily understood. mining is also self sufficient, and i've laid out my issues with engineering here already in the above post.
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#3
very odd take on the teg, honestly

pre teg nerf, engineers (including myself) would speedrun a hellburn in the first five minutes of the round and have the hallway air too scalding to stand in at around the 30-40 minute mark, usually resulting in early calls. post nerf, reaching hellburn effectiveness can be a real challenge to fully figure out, which resulted in a lot of negative feelings when engi mains no longer got the funni number go up engine. it was sad, but the change brought a lot more to actually do with the teg. this is sort of just a preface to the point i want to get to though, which is that a new engineer doesnt even need to be worrying about these things right off the bat. burns are something that can be learned, experimented with, and improved upon over time. not understanding how to master a subject without hands on experience with it isnt a bad thing. 

the wiki is not the only resource for information on starting burns. engineers have a guide that spawns on every teg to give pointers throughout the setup process. for higher burns, players can experiment with reagent lubricants, material for a more effective semiconductor, etc. its a very learn-as-you-go department when you dont have another player to tell you the perfect hellmix pipeburn ratio to produce omegawatts of power that can really only be used for the ptl or hotwires.

a great thing about the mechanics - engineering merge is that it no longer has “hellburn” as the primary activity for engis to do until something explodes. they can set up a charburn and go work on mechcomp if they want to, or in the case of singulo, use mechcomp to make the engine more effective. engineers who are looking for something more out of the engine itself have all the tools available to them to do so
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#4
(10-24-2022, 10:50 PM)Retrino Wrote: very odd take on the teg, honestly

pre teg nerf, engineers (including myself) would speedrun a hellburn in the first five minutes of the round and have the hallway air too scalding to stand in at around the 30-40 minute mark, usually resulting in early calls. post nerf, reaching hellburn effectiveness can be a real challenge to fully figure out, which resulted in a lot of negative feelings when engi mains no longer got the funni number go up engine. it was sad, but the change brought a lot more to actually do with the teg. this is sort of just a preface to the point i want to get to though, which is that a new engineer doesnt even need to be worrying about these things right off the bat. burns are something that can be learned, experimented with, and improved upon over time. not understanding how to master a subject without hands on experience with it isnt a bad thing. 

the wiki is not the only resource for information on starting burns. engineers have a guide that spawns on every teg to give pointers throughout the setup process. for higher burns, players can experiment with reagent lubricants, material for a more effective semiconductor, etc. its a very learn-as-you-go department when you dont have another player to tell you the perfect hellmix pipeburn ratio to produce omegawatts of power that can really only be used for the ptl or hotwires.

a great thing about the mechanics - engineering merge is that it no longer has “hellburn” as the primary activity for engis to do until something explodes. they can set up a charburn and go work on mechcomp if they want to, or in the case of singulo, use mechcomp to make the engine more effective. engineers who are looking for something more out of the engine itself have all the tools available to them to do so

i didn't say anything about becoming a master at making hellburns to produce infinity power within minutes, but i think the problem is that there is a massive gulf between not knowing and having somewhat of an idea of what to do. as a barman you can just fuck around with your drink dispensers for like 15 minutes and mix random things together and learn a bunch of recipes really fast. as a doctor you can look around and find first aid kits which teaches you subtle things (like styptic and silver sulf being for topical use by there only being patches, whereas epinephrine, potassium iodide and salbutomal are in pill form and are meant to be ingested) or  you can quite literally roll your face across your keyboard as a scientist and at least get 1 or 2 chem recipes out of it. that's what i think the teg is missing. there's no real hands-on part of it aside from connecting the gas tanks and then once you get a burn going just babysitting pipes in the highly likely event one of them bursts. 

years later i'm still scratching my head about why they removed atmospheric technican and essentially rolled it into engineering
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#5
(10-24-2022, 10:50 PM)Retrino Wrote: very odd take on the teg, honestly

pre teg nerf, engineers (including myself) would speedrun a hellburn in the first five minutes of the round and have the hallway air too scalding to stand in at around the 30-40 minute mark, usually resulting in early calls. post nerf, reaching hellburn effectiveness can be a real challenge to fully figure out, which resulted in a lot of negative feelings when engi mains no longer got the funni number go up engine. it was sad, but the change brought a lot more to actually do with the teg. this is sort of just a preface to the point i want to get to though, which is that a new engineer doesnt even need to be worrying about these things right off the bat. burns are something that can be learned, experimented with, and improved upon over time. not understanding how to master a subject without hands on experience with it isnt a bad thing. 

the wiki is not the only resource for information on starting burns. engineers have a guide that spawns on every teg to give pointers throughout the setup process. for higher burns, players can experiment with reagent lubricants, material for a more effective semiconductor, etc. its a very learn-as-you-go department when you dont have another player to tell you the perfect hellmix pipeburn ratio to produce omegawatts of power that can really only be used for the ptl or hotwires.

a great thing about the mechanics - engineering merge is that it no longer has “hellburn” as the primary activity for engis to do until something explodes. they can set up a charburn and go work on mechcomp if they want to, or in the case of singulo, use mechcomp to make the engine more effective. engineers who are looking for something more out of the engine itself have all the tools available to them to do so

I don't think it's a bad thing that the TEG is more involved but, unlike some other departments, experimenting with the engine is much more likely to wreck the set up for the whole round and there is only one. A player trying to learn the engine isn't going the want to experiment if the result is so likely to draw the ire of the other engineers.

Not only that, high level Engineering now with the TEG had turned into pipe fixing simulator. It feels like the engine is constantly on the verge of breaking and, indeed, frequently does. I can't ever leave the department if I play CE because most Engineers don't want to take up the task of fixing the constantly breaking pipes so I can't go to mining to help get some MolB or go to genetics to see if there's fire/thermal resist available.
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#6
(10-25-2022, 01:29 AM)Passive Engie Wrote: A player trying to learn the engine isn't going the want to experiment if the result is so likely to draw the ire of the other engineers.

I can't comment on the current state of engineering due to being very out of practice with the game currently, but this specific statement resonates a lot with my experience when I was playing frequently. The jobs that frequently involve experimentation seem to have a gradient in how hazardous a fuck up is. For something like chef/botany, it's incredibly low risk because the worst that could happen is you waste your own time. Mechanics could theoretically break something, but it's also very low risk. Chemistry and artlab are a bit higher risk because they could set the room on fire / cause an explosion/poison themselves, etc. And then way, way off in the distance is TEG engineering, which has the potential to ruin a one-of-a-kind, unrepairable machine necessary for the station to function and ALSO potentially flood a department/the hallways/etc with scalding toxic fumes. Not the most encouraging environment for winging it!
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#7
Quote:Printers now have to restock and this has cut the typical power output over the course of the round by over 10 times. So now the best feeder setup probably requires using them ChemiCompiler 
Gods, no.  Just, no. 


Automatic feeder setups are laggy as hell and are honestly incredibly inefficient.  The time spent setting them up would be better spent doing anything else, like setting up more radiation collectors (be sure to top off the plasma tanks!) or just feeding it 10000 weed leaves and seeds from a borrowed botany plant

Or if you're feeling really adventurous, monkeys and chickens are worth way, way more than thermal paper ever could be. 

Not that there's any reason to do any of this; increasing power is boring and doesn't do much for the station
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#8
(10-27-2022, 06:14 AM)UrsulaMejor Wrote:
Quote:Printers now have to restock and this has cut the typical power output over the course of the round by over 10 times. So now the best feeder setup probably requires using them ChemiCompiler 
Gods, no.  Just, no. 


Automatic feeder setups are laggy as hell and are honestly incredibly inefficient.  The time spent setting them up would be better spent doing anything else, like setting up more radiation collectors (be sure to top off the plasma tanks!) or just feeding it 10000 weed leaves and seeds from a borrowed botany plant

Or if you're feeling really adventurous, monkeys and chickens are worth way, way more than thermal paper ever could be. 

Not that there's any reason to do any of this; increasing power is boring and doesn't do much for the station

Except hot wiring.. but otherwise it does nothing but "Sell it via the PTL"

In my opinion... it would be MORE INTERRESTING if giving more power gives suitable rewards.
Like you could setup that the APC can now put out more power, thus speeding up alot of things in other departments.
Faster charging batteries/borg chargers.
Faster heating/cooling of chemicals/artifacts.
Faster growing of plants due to stronger lighting.
Lights get a bigger light cone.
Food and drinks give slighty more stats from the bar/kitchen.

You know things that BENEFIT the station but with the RISK of Hot wiring and such.

Maybe add if done wrong in balance, it causes "explosions" of APCs, thus forcing engineers and mechanics to fix their mistakes.
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#9
(10-27-2022, 07:37 AM)Kotlol Wrote:
(10-27-2022, 06:14 AM)UrsulaMejor Wrote:
Quote:Printers now have to restock and this has cut the typical power output over the course of the round by over 10 times. So now the best feeder setup probably requires using them ChemiCompiler 
Gods, no.  Just, no. 


Automatic feeder setups are laggy as hell and are honestly incredibly inefficient.  The time spent setting them up would be better spent doing anything else, like setting up more radiation collectors (be sure to top off the plasma tanks!) or just feeding it 10000 weed leaves and seeds from a borrowed botany plant

Or if you're feeling really adventurous, monkeys and chickens are worth way, way more than thermal paper ever could be. 

Not that there's any reason to do any of this; increasing power is boring and doesn't do much for the station

Except hot wiring.. but otherwise it does nothing but "Sell it via the PTL"

In my opinion... it would be MORE INTERRESTING if giving more power gives suitable rewards.
Like you could setup that the APC can now put out more power, thus speeding up alot of things in other departments.
Faster charging batteries/borg chargers.
Faster heating/cooling of chemicals/artifacts.
Faster growing of plants due to stronger lighting.
Lights get a bigger light cone.
Food and drinks give slighty more stats from the bar/kitchen.

You know things that BENEFIT the station but with the RISK of Hot wiring and such.

Maybe add if done wrong in balance, it causes "explosions" of APCs, thus forcing engineers and mechanics to fix their mistakes.

This seems a good idea. Making it so that not only can engineers power the station but improve it. I can see more people wanting to play Engineer with that concept.
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#10
Quote:but every burn type these days, including a simple char burn, causes pipe bursts.

Char burn doesn't cause pipe bursts, putting in too much plasma does. I've never seen a pipe burst after only putting in single tank on char. In game textbooks says that pipes are rated for something like 16MPa.
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#11
(10-27-2022, 06:14 AM)UrsulaMejor Wrote:
Quote:Printers now have to restock and this has cut the typical power output over the course of the round by over 10 times. So now the best feeder setup probably requires using them ChemiCompiler 
Gods, no.  Just, no. 


Automatic feeder setups are laggy as hell and are honestly incredibly inefficient.  The time spent setting them up would be better spent doing anything else, like setting up more radiation collectors (be sure to top off the plasma tanks!) or just feeding it 10000 weed leaves and seeds from a borrowed botany plant

Or if you're feeling really adventurous, monkeys and chickens are worth way, way more than thermal paper ever could be. 

Not that there's any reason to do any of this; increasing power is boring and doesn't do much for the station

This is just incorrect though? The lag part is accurate (if you mess up the flusher and let items pile up), but the rest is wrong. The benefit of setting up an automatic feeder is that its a passive system. Once you do that, singularity energy is increasing while you do the rest of the setup. So, if you have printers or a chemicompiler or something else that spits out items feeding the singularity, then all the time you spend printing and wiring collectors and cooling and packing plasma in tox lab is not "wasted" time. When you finally set up those collectors, they'll benefit from the singularity energy being higher due to being passively increasing in mass. Making an autofeeder is the most efficient use of time someone looking to boost singularity output can make, since it performs mundane work while you do things that reasonably require human attention.

Growing botany plants for items is an active system, since the plant doesnt do anything helpful unless someone is actively paying attention to it. In theory, having multiple active systems that need maintained would solve the problem of the engine being a mostly one-man job. In practice, in my experience playing mostly CE it is rare to have engineers who are willing to do anything with the engine, even moreso now with the mechanic merge. Thus, multiple active systems just means a lot of work that never gets done, since you can only attend to one at a time. You could make more collectors, but that means you arent supercooling plasma tanks. You could supercool plasma tanks, but that means you arent feeding the singularity. You could feed the singularity, but that means you arent wiring more collectors. Not getting all three done means your output is not going to be a whole ton higher than just filling the normal collectors, making a 13x13 containment, and calling it a day. (And no, nobody from another department wants to spend their shift helping grow your singularity. If they did, they would have picked engineer.)

Also, non player mobs (monkeys, chickens, etc.) are worth 10 items to the singularity. They are in no way even remotely close to approaching viable. That's like, half a printer flush, or one second from a chemicompiler.

And finally on the statement that "increasing power is boring and doesn't do much for the station," I disagree? People including myself play engineer because they like optimizing a system. Thats the whole gameplay loop of engineer. Maybe you prefer making novelties in botany or ranching or the kitchen, fighting other players in a security/antagonists conflict, or doing whatever nerd bullshit science does, but I like that engineering presents a quantifiable system to optimize, and allows for that optimization through constructing things (which is within engineering's domain and makes thematic sense). The concept that the core gameplay objective of engineer is supposed to be boring and pointless seems like a very unhealthy way to go about designing an experience that people voluntarily sign up for.

Specifically about the singularity, in order to fix the "optimal trat" being basically a lag machine, it would make sense to officialize the exploit into an actual feature. So instead of having to exploit things that make items from nothing, have some special item thats sole purpose is making mass for the singularity. Maybe something that takes excess rock, ice, or whatever else it's set to (within reason, so it doesnt become optimal to just grief the miners for all their ore) and makes that into a sort of "mass payload" that shoots into the singularity and has a singularity mass boost based on the amount of material used to make it. For traitor usage, damage this object does to people could directly scale with mass.

This way, it reduces reliance on lag machines and other unstable mechanics for engineering to do its job, and also involves another department in a way that makes sense. Mining and Engineering being under the same command means that cooperation is likely to actually happen. I'll flesh this out in a suggestion forum post if I remember to, but the general idea is to try to make "optimal" strategies for power generation that dont just grief the station (infinite temp TEG, singulo lag machine, everything about hotspots, etc.) without just removing the ability to optimize power output entirely.
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#12
(11-04-2022, 08:19 AM)Cherman0 Wrote: Growing botany plants for items is an active system, since the plant doesnt do anything helpful unless someone is actively paying attention to it

Now, independing on the situation, botany got certain wicked plants that can spit out rooms of produce without input. Ask some botanists of they can grow you a cheese rafflesia.

And on topic, i agree that optimizing for big number is the engineer's gameplay loop. I just don't think a lagg creating machine should be the optimal solution to the puzzle. Like chemistry is about puzzle solving and not about making the chems (which is why i disagree with most ideas for chemistry rework people bring up. Don't make it more tedious, make it interestingly complex).
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#13
(11-04-2022, 11:52 AM)Lord_earthfire Wrote:
(11-04-2022, 08:19 AM)Cherman0 Wrote: Growing botany plants for items is an active system, since the plant doesnt do anything helpful unless someone is actively paying attention to it

Now, independing on the situation, botany got certain wicked plants that can spit out rooms of produce without input. Ask some botanists of they can grow you a cheese rafflesia.

And on topic, i agree that optimizing for big number is the engineer's gameplay loop. I just don't think a lagg creating machine should be the optimal solution to the puzzle. Like chemistry is about puzzle solving and not about making the chems (which is why i disagree with most ideas for chemistry rework people bring up. Don't make it more tedious, make it interestingly complex).
Yeah, that was my point. I agree that we should try to remove lag machines from the intended gameplay, but I feel that the concept of feeding mass to the singularity is still interesting. Thats why I suggested an "official" way to go about it instead of weird exploits involving infinite items.

And since chem smokes dont work on a space turfs and the singularity makes most of its chamber into space turfs, using raffles wont be tremendously effective. I suppose you could make a big room that uses mechcomp teleporters to collect all the cheese onto a flusher, but thats the same lag machine that we're trying to avoid.
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#14
(11-05-2022, 06:11 AM)Cherman0 Wrote: Yeah, that was my point. I agree that we should try to remove lag machines from the intended gameplay, but I feel that the concept of feeding mass to the singularity is still interesting. Thats why I suggested an "official" way to go about it instead of weird exploits involving infinite items.

Well mining has this funny little doodad called a mineral accumulator. Its hardly ever used for standard mining because its not needed at all. But what it does is drag ore and teleport it to a selected pad. So in theory you could build a telepad in a corner of the singulo enclosure and send mining's useless byproduct (mainly rocks) automatically via the accumulators.

The problem is that accumulators only drag actual ores and ignore rocks. Also they are kinda slow.

You could in theory set up an entire magnet (built, or just the outpost one) in auto mode with accumulators and digbots. But this would be quite the time consuming task and you'd have to adress the issue of power cells running out in the bots and accumulators.

So anyway, long story short. A small change to allow accumulators to drag rocks would enable some nice inter-department way of feeding the singulo without making it a manual tedious task. Being able to connect accumulators to a wire to keep them from running out of power and speed them up would also be a nice touch.

Botany could also easily contribute to such a system if they had an accumulator working on seed and produce, as lot of botany's stuff is just thrown away.
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#15
This is all well and good, and the mineral accumulator does need some love or at least a resprite, but we're getting off-track. The main topic here is that recently engineering has been changed to be significantly more work in exchange for significantly less benefit. The main way to make engineering fun again is to try to conceptualize a series of "intended strategies" in writing for the different engine types, and then design systems so that working towards those intended strategies is:

* Not mostly repetative busywork (emptying/filling tanks, welding pipes, farting, etc.), as this tends to be boring.

* Gives returns that scale appreciably with the amount of work and skill put in.

* Can be done to some effect by one person, but is more effective with multiple.

* Doesnt cause major lag or station destruction in non-antagonist gameplay.

* Preferably involves other systems in under the engineering department's domain (cargo, mining, mechcomp, DWAINE, ruckingenur, etc.)

A dedicated mass-feeder machine instead of jank item duplicators is one aspect of how this might look for the singularity. Designing other systems to these criteria will require considerable thought and community discussion, but should hopefully make engineering more fun as a whole. Designing for the TEG may be especially challenging, both due to historical perceptions of its infinite power that will likely have to be dispelled and that the underlying systems of it (atmospherics) are rather...... arcane.
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