Problems with persistence

[Superlagg]

Man, a persistent station would be so cool! All that cool stuff I made wouldn't disappear between rounds, people might actually visit the gun shop I built in the middle of medbay, and maybe someone would bother to restock a vending machine for once!

But, right now, much of SS13 is built to work best in a timeframe of about an hour, maybe a bit more if everyone's on their best behaviors. Most interesting things finish up being interesting around the time the shuttle usually shows up. So before we can go full on with an endless shift, there are several issues with a persistent station that'd need addressing.

So here're a few I came up with offhand!

- Supply availability
- - Irreplaceable supplies run out eventually
- - Replaceable stuff piles up in the millions
- - Chemistry might have to actually do their job
- The engine
- - Makes the station uninhabitable after an hour or so
- - Also makes infinite money and power
- - Imagine if it went for ~ages~
- Station gets FUCKED
- - Bombed parts of the station becoming too damn annoying to fix
- - Especially if someone blows up EVERYTHING
- - Especially especially if its a pain in the ass to get TO the repair stuff
- - Someone is going to flood the station with tomatoes. Now what???
- So I built something nice and then some bonehead blew it up
- - I put like 10 hours into that carefully made meido bar
- - As opposed to the 30 minutes I would in a normal round
- - I'm getting pissy just thinking about it!
- - Server crashes, everything's lost, everyone's pissed.
- Atmos... stuff?
- Dead people who can't be cloned or whatevs.
- - How are antags handled?
- - Especially when they gib people
- Coding maybe???
- Solarium.
- What's the point?
- - Why are we still here, to suffer?
- - Also why should I care to stick around for several hours
- - Or come back to the same round but later?
- - Too little antag stuff or admemery and it's just RP minus the RP.
- - Too much and it's just a normal round with more downtime.
- - - Having to rebuild that sandcastle instead of just buying a new one.
- - - Knowing its sole purpose is to be kicked over.

[Frank_Stein]

I think persistence between rounds is something that could exist to some degree. It already does, in a way, considering spacebux and consistent player behaviors and playstyles.

However, the nature of this game demands a clean slate at round start. We need to know where things are and what we can do.

We could try a mixture of things. For instance, maybe a section of the map that does have consistency, like a room on the station that was constantly going through renovation?

You could even make it a monthly contest to submit a room design that carries through the next month

[KikiMofo]

I could see this working on the RP server but I dunno about the REAL server.

[Kak0phony]

Yeah, I think RP server would be the best environment to test any persistence features.

[Haprenti]

How about something like this :

- An area on the station is designed for some set-size shuttles to dock to
- During a round, a player can order a blank shuttle for a small fee (spacebux) or for free
- The player that ordered the shuttle can save it for later rounds, with spacebux. The amount required depends on what is in inside, and it keeps only whitelisted (or non-blacklisted, whatever is best) items and turfs. The shuttle is tied to the player.
- The player can order back the same shuttle, whose price once again depends on the amount of stuff inside. If the shuttle content gets destroyed or altered, it will only be saved if the player wishes so and saves it again, with spacebux.
- The player also can start from scratch if they wish so, replacing the former shuttle if they save the new one.

Maybe with more saves per player, like three, depending on how much space it would take.