New Job: Tailor

[Glamurio]

This is coming straight from a discussion that was had on Discord.

Clothing is a big aspect of the game. So is fabric, wool and leather. But the use-cases for a lot of the latter are rather limited outside of MatSci and Fabricators. Simply said, the idea came up to introduce a tailor job. A very simple breakdown of functions:

• Makes clothing out of fabric / wool / cotton / leather
  
• Close ties to botany and ranch for produce
  
• Maybe puts clothes inside clothing booth
  
• Clothing booth relocated to tailor
  
• Customizes clothing, changes color, maybe allows custom decals?
  
• Creates processed cloth which could get shipped to QM and sold for profit, perhaps akin to a Rockbox, but for Cloth. A Clothbox.
  

The general idea is to introduce a tailor profession that, perhaps via training and tools, gains access to more advanced customization for outfits. This would allow a more normalized acquiring of fancy clothing items outside of azones, and would give an excuse for more elaborate clothing that might be department-specific, but not standard-issue.

Clothing booth seems to many people like a band-aid fix to a bigger issue. It comes from a clash of identity of "NT is cheap and only allows basic uniforms" and "people want to wear cool, fancy clothes to RP". Tailor could be the middle ground for this. Items could be crafted on demand, placed inside the clothing booth, and then be sort of "infinitely printed". In a manner of speaking, if a tailor produces a clothing item, then the clothing booth would be basically able to 3D print that item. 

This would allow a tailor to produce clothing that many people would want to wear, but they wouldn't need to produce the same few items over and over again, instead doing different items each time and slowly building a selection of clothes throughout the round. It repurposes the clothing booth to be something more player-driven and would serve as a means to RP and ask for specific items, perhaps many items not currently available in the booth. The booth could, for the bare minimum at least, contain a few select basic outfits and costumes so that there'll be something to choose from even if there's no tailor present, but the fancier the costume, the more likely it would require someone actually making it.

Tailors would likely be in close communication with Botany and Ranch to actually have materials to use, else perhaps we can introduce basic packs to be ordered via QM, though limited, I want to avoid a scenario where people would ignore Botany in favor of QM.

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This is the basic pitch. Concerns, thoughts, ideas etc. welcome.

[Waffleloffle]

a fun concept, but I'm not really a fan of the strain this puts on the clothing booth before a tailor arrives (though this may just be the Lowpop Enjoyer in me), nor am I huge on there being a job whose Deal it is to dye clothes. the pursuit of Any Color You Can Dream Of in clothes is admirable, but in practice the main way this is accomplished is color overlays, and unless the sprite of the clothing involved is specifically made for this purpose, it ends up looking Pretty Uggo more often than not. not to mention there just... isn't a whole lot of sprite real estate for clothes in general. something like a custom decal would either eat up all the detail space on the garment, or be so small you'd barely notice it. this is just a reality of working with sprites at this size, unfortunately

[Frolicsome Flufficorn]

Lovely Idea, Great for all around interconnectivity around the station. giving botany and ranch a purpose beyond their own personal goals is always a nice step. a job however always needs a way to sustain itself ineffectively so it isnt entirely reliant on others. for example, chef can make alot of dishes without botany but with their help can make alot more interesting and in-depth meals. Therefore it would be good if the tailor could work without botany/ranch/QM but be extremely limited.

In terms of the clothing booth. it would be nice if the clothing booth still spawned with alot of the prefabs but just got enhanced by the tailor since I think alot of people get their "drip" from the vender.

Overall. I love this, more content around fashion and profit for QM (especially considering the changes) is a lovely idea and im all for it. more content the better as long as it doesnt take away from whats already there. Love the idea, hope to see this go somewhere!

[Snowy :D]

I like this idea, but the clothing booth should definitely keep the clothes it currently has by default.

Do you need to have the tailor role to make clothes on your own?

[Kotlol]

Since we got ways to draw things on paper, I see no problem with a custom tailor mechanic and job.

But for now.. against...since ti just adds a lot of things to do and I rather have development power else where.
But if you make it yourself.. I am 100% for it.

[Glamurio]

a fun concept, but I'm not really a fan of the strain this puts on the clothing booth before a tailor arrives (though this may just be the Lowpop Enjoyer in me), nor am I huge on there being a job whose Deal it is to dye clothes. the pursuit of Any Color You Can Dream Of in clothes is admirable, but in practice the main way this is accomplished is color overlays, and unless the sprite of the clothing involved is specifically made for this purpose, it ends up looking Pretty Uggo more often than not. not to mention there just... isn't a whole lot of sprite real estate for clothes in general. something like a custom decal would either eat up all the detail space on the garment, or be so small you'd barely notice it. this is just a reality of working with sprites at this size, unfortunately

If custom colors on clothing don't look good unless the clothes in question are suitable for it, perhaps free-coloring could be tailor-specific and the crafted clothing would be made suitable for it so it looks good in pretty much all colors.

As for decals, I see the concern, but ultimately it's a player-driven design-space, and people more often than not prefer having good looking clothing. Perhaps choosing from a list of pre-made decals that are all designed to work on the given item would be a better way to go about it, so it's more about choosing a customization variant.

I like this idea, but the clothing booth should definitely keep the clothes it currently has by default.

Do you need to have the tailor role to make clothes on your own?

Reading the feedback, I can see it being beneficial to simply keep the clothing booth as is.

I'm torn on whether or not to make "tailoring" a training thing or not. On one hand, it's just generally cool for people to customize their clothes, but on the other hand, if anyone can do it, people will likely just tailor things themselves instead of requesting things, removing both gameplay and roleplay from the job. Perhaps there can be a basic variant anyone has access to, but for more fine-tuned aspects, they would have to resort to a tailor?

Since we got ways to draw things on paper, I see no problem with a custom tailor mechanic and job.

But for now.. against...since ti just adds a lot of things to do and I rather have development power else where.
But if you make it yourself.. I am 100% for it.

I'm always ready to code any suggestions I make myself, the only reason I make threads like these is to fine-tune the details and ensure it's actually a wanted addition before putting in the time to program it (as I have unfortunately done in the past)

[Kotlol]

Since we got ways to draw things on paper, I see no problem with a custom tailor mechanic and job.

But for now.. against...since ti just adds a lot of things to do and I rather have development power else where.
But if you make it yourself.. I am 100% for it.

I'm always ready to code any suggestions I make myself, the only reason I make threads like these is to fine-tune the details and ensure it's actually a wanted addition before putting in the time to program it (as I have unfortunately done in the past)

Then I recommend the following things myself.

A: Weed can be make into Hemp bags and jackets.
B: Wool can be made into custom sweaters.
C: There is a padding mechanic for wool, why not add this as a tailor for other things like sheets? Making armor parts and have the tailor put them in. (wich gives defensive buffs but also makes you slower and such)
D: Have some way to get "Fibers" to make other clothing.
E: Clothing dyes cause why not? We can plate clothing to change their color, just have that become a dye thing.
F: Add item "NT's New Clothes" ...You guessed what it is.. only tailors can make these.

And... that's it.

[Cal]

We can barely get science and medical to communicate with each other even with magic machines that send stuff into a vending machine and computers that let you ask for chemicals remotely, I really don't think anyone will engage with this often after the initial interest.

The mountain of work it will take to implement this is not comparable to the amount of use it will get in-game as a core mechanic (Medical, Security, Engineering etc.) would use.