Goonhub
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 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 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 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.
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.
