Ways for more departments to make money

[QP Evergrande]

I've always thought that more departments should have ways to contribute to the station budget, or their own fortunes, beyond winning the lottery and playing slots, and two recent posts on the SA thread made me think a bit on how this might be done. I'm gonna throw a lot of stuff out there, so please consider each part separately.

Why do this? Well, I think if the station had more of an economy, with every division having its own budget, it would give department heads more specific duties. They would oversee sales of products using a departmental barcode machine that returns 100% of the profit to that department's budget (It would have to be usable separately from the regular barcode machines. And speaking of which, as I mentioned in other threads I still wish it were possible to NOT put a person's banking information on a barcode after anyone's card has been scanned. The current computer always puts that on, and it sometimes interferes with trader sales. Splitting the current barcode machine from the banking label function would be a very good idea.). It would also add to the HoP's job if the station budget were more complex. Very useful employees would could come to them arguing for raises and bonuses, which they could use to buy a variety of interesting things.

Of course, to really be useful, this would have to be implemented along with reintroducing scarcity to the station. As things stand, medbay has all the medicine it needs, chemistry has all the chemicals it needs, engineering has all the gas it needs, electronics has all the parts it needs, botany has all the seeds it needs. Instead of that, how about using departmental supply machines to send pre-paid requests to the cargo bay? Also, give department heads the ability to make purchases in person using their ID cards (or a departmental debit card?), including the QM, with that job split up between a single sub-department head QM and Cargo Techs. It would be nice from the QM to be able to make in-person purchases on behalf of the station using the shipping budget in this way, if nothing else.

QMs, miners, and botanists (in theory) all have the ability to make money as things stand.

Engineering: Make a microwave emitter to transmit and sell energy to NT. Totally "safe", especially for space pods that might be flying around. Although balancing this one could be interesting, considering someone recently achieved a power output of 10,644,000,000,000,000 W, 665.25 times more power than is consumed by all of human civilization.

Medbay: Harvest and sell organs -liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, butt- from donors (""). Don't forget to put them in a cold container, or inject them with cryostylane, or something. Maybe make them both buyable from and sellable to a merchant (It would make sense to have just one do both). Also, be able to transplant lots of different things would give a reason for having two surgical tables in the surgical theater. You can already do this with brains- Vurdalak sometimes asks for them.

Genetics (and also Pathology if it ever returns): Once all the information on a mutation or pathogen is researched, load it onto a disk, load the disk into a communication terminal and sell it to NT. Or to black market merchants.

Chemistry: Let merchants/traders sometimes ask for supplies of rare chemicals, with more difficult recipes being worth more.

Artifact lab: Sell artifacts. Big prizes for specific ones from traders/merchants, and add "small artifact" and "large artifact" to the shipping market, but only if identified. Give artlab a special labeler that lists all the possible artifact effects, including "nothing." Get it right, and you get a big payday. Or, as a traitor, deliberately mislabel something. Oops, did my full-healing artifact accidentally render you into gibs? I'm sure that was a complete mistake.

Security: NT bounty on traitors. Give security a mind-reading apparatus. A person, alive or dead, is put into it, their mind is scanned, and if they're alive useful information about the Syndicate is extracted (though only useful for NT, for gameplay purposes it does nothing). If they're dead, it only determines if the person was a traitor or not, and the reward is much less. But, if the person is not a traitor, the station gets hit with a big fine instead, because you've just invaded the mental privacy of a person/killed them (And opened NT up to a possible lawsuit, which is unforgivable). This will both incentivize live capture, and doing actual detective work to make sure you have the right guy, two incentives I think the station badly needs. Also, a bonus for turning in a PDA with unspent telecrystals to the machine. The detective doesn't see any reward, because what kind of gritty detective isn't constantly in massive debt?

Well, that's what I've come up with. Anyone else think the station could benefit from any of these things, or have other ideas for departments I didn't mention?

[atomic1fire]

A traitor could be really terrible with this.

Start kidnapping people, take out as many organs as possible, sell them on the black market (or some kind of gross chef food).


Also geneticists and roboticists could take the bodies they no longer need and harvest organs and limbs.

Also it would be really cool if you could turn the microwave emitter into a weapon somehow, maybe a traitor version that sets things on fire wirelessly, or perhaps the wrongest settings cause people to cook from the inside out. The frequencies for radar and microwaves are kinda sorta simular, so perhaps there's a special suit the engineers have to wear in order to get close to the emitter so they don't baconify.

Also if the radar antenna from that observatory room is ever added completely, you could require dudes figure out which frequencies are which to prevent interference from the wave emitter from screwing with telescience's wireless beeps and boops.

[babayetu83]

i like all of these

especially as someone who plays geneticist i will no longer have to repeatedly ask the AI for more cash

[QP Evergrande]

Also it would be really cool if you could turn the microwave emitter into a weapon somehow, maybe a traitor version that sets things on fire wirelessly, or perhaps the wrongest settings cause people to cook from the inside out. The frequencies for radar and microwaves are kinda sorta simular, so perhaps there's a special suit the engineers have to wear in order to get close to the emitter so they don't baconify.

I don't think it would matter in terms of radio communication. This isn't microwave radiation; it has to be a beam or else it would become too diffuse before it reached its destination. In my conception, the microwave emitter would be a piece of machinery on the station. It would be controlled from a computer, and connected to a series of capacitors. You'd set it up to build up a certain amount of energy (For ease, I think measuring this amount in orders of magnitude instead of straight numbers would be best), and once it has it fires a bolt into space, towards a "sell point" just like the one used by the cargo bay. A safety concern would be that the bolt could hit a pod, so you wouldn't want to set it up so that it would fire too often. Also, these capacitors couldn't be SMES units, they'd have to be specialized. Output on an SMES is limited to 200,000. For this, that would be way too low.

So, lets say this setup starts with four special capacitors. You have an engine burning at a reasonable 2 MW, and you want to sell half of that. You set each of the special capacitors to an input of 250,000. They'd be connected directly to the engine, of course, and not to the SMES units, so they wouldn't drain the station. Then you set the emitter to fire a charge of level 7, and it fires when it's build up the correct amount of energy, which is drained instantly from the capacitors. In this case, it would be 10^7 = 10,000,000 joules, so the beam would fire every 10 cycles. But another safety concern is that the capacitors could send off arcs if you get too close while they're charged to a very high degree. For safety, you could build more units and connect them to the system, and maybe make some kind of upgrades a la phasers.

As for using it as a weapon, that occurred to me too. In my Particle Physics lab concept I proposed that one possible use for the particle accelerators would be to build up a weapon beam that would be fired outside the station. This would be relayed around the station at several beam relay points, until being fired at an enemy target, such as a pod, using a targeting control on the bridge. The microwave emitter could be set up so that by default it fires at one of these relays, which then fires at the energy sell point. Then, it could alternately be fired using the same bridge control. But, it should be much less energy efficient compared to the particle lab weapon, because it'd be so much easier to set up. In this case, it would have an additional use. If part of the station became cut off from the power grid, the microwave emitter could be used to transmit energy to a relay there, which would absorb it and store it in a local battery. Potential for traitor abuse: delivering an energy bolt that's too strong overloads the local power cells, and causes arcs. After all, even if the energy in the bolt is low, its wattage would be extremely high. That's a situation where you'd want many weak bolts instead of strong ones.

[david2222121]

There's already something of a limb black market if you can ever be assed to fly out to the medical shuttle(which people never do except to loot).

Could we move the trader D.O.C. over to the station attached to the faint signal beacon? It'd be easier for docs and geneticists to drag their limb crates over to sell that way, and actually maybe give them a little incentive to do so.

[Cogwerks]

There's already something of a limb black market if you can ever be assed to fly out to the medical shuttle(which people never do except to loot).

Could we move the trader D.O.C. over to the station attached to the faint signal beacon? It'd be easier for docs and geneticists to drag their limb crates over to sell that way, and actually maybe give them a little incentive to do so.

Done.

[mozi]

i think we need more stuff worth buying before adding in more sources of money or we end up with hyperspaceinflation. imho

[Sundance]

i think we need more stuff worth buying before adding in more sources of money or we end up with hyperspaceinflation. imho

qm right now is pretty much golden, it's one of the most functional jobs on the station. The only issue is that there's no real reason to buy a large majority of the stuff. No need to buy an alcohol crate, medical crate, engineering crate, w/e because the station is stocked to the brim with whatevers In the crate.

What was suggested was that all departments now have limited amount of stuff in dispensers, which I agree. I'd also be inclined to reduce the amount of medipacks (holy fucking shit they are everywhere now) So that already means more stuff in qm:
1x chemistry dispenser refill
1x alcohol dispenser refill
1x soda dispenser refill
1x seed dispenser refill
1x medical dispenser refill
1x electric parts dispenser refill.. Etc
The buying section of the qm computer could do with being sorted into departments for ease.
Market section also should be organised into departments, now that more stuff can be sold bar mining ores.

That said, more stuff could be added bar the refills. artifacts should be able to be bought (for the same price they are sold at) rcd cartridges, high capicity batteries, schematics for electronics, assorted clothing crate (fuck novelty crate forever, there's stuff like bee and monkey suits)... Surely there's more.
I know what I suggested is only 1/3rd of what is suggested in the op, but that would be a big start.
I think the next step would be a bonus system. The hop/captain should have the alert system that qm gets, and he can give entire departments bonuses (from the finance computer) when they see certain sectors making moolah

[QP Evergrande]

That said, more stuff could be added bar the refills. artifacts should be able to be bought (for the same price they are sold at) rcd cartridges, high capicity batteries, schematics for electronics, assorted clothing crate (fuck novelty crate forever, there's stuff like bee and monkey suits)... Surely there's more.
I know what I suggested is only 1/3rd of what is suggested in the op, but that would be a big start.
I think the next step would be a bonus system. The hop/captain should have the alert system that qm gets, and he can give entire departments bonuses (from the finance computer) when they see certain sectors making moolah

Glad to see someone agrees about the overabundance of pre-placed materials. But I should say, artifacts are already buyable, as are rcd cartridges. High capacity batteries can be made without too much difficulty, and we have a uniform manufacturer which could be expanded. All useful stuff, people just never ask. Come on guys, you just have to ask. But schematics, definitely yes. Especially since it looks like the current draft of cogstation 2 will have the cargo bay and electronics bay next to each other.

[CrackBauer]

i think we need more stuff worth buying before adding in more sources of money or we end up with hyperspaceinflation. imho

qm right now is pretty much golden, it's one of the most functional jobs on the station. The only issue is that there's no real reason to buy a large majority of the stuff. No need to buy...because the station is stocked to the brim with whatever's In the crate.

So that already means more stuff in qm: 1x chemistry dispenser refill

The hop/captain should have the alert system that qm gets, and he can give entire departments bonuses (from the finance computer) when they see certain sectors making moolah

Yeah, the chem dispenser might need to be scaled back a bit. Unless you deliberately dump it out, you'll never run out in a regular round. And even if you do, scientists can just go to the bar and work there. (the bar stops functioning 10 minutes in with most barmen, it's not like they're going to miss anything)

[Sundance]

From reading another thread, here's a super awesome idea that I improved/stole
Currently the budget is made up of 3 things:
1. Payment: Where your wage comes into play. Not entirely important just yet, but getting there
2. Shipping: Probably the most important, as it's the one that's responsable for buying/selling
3. Research: Genetics. That's it.

We should completely change this, departmentalise it, and merge the payment with each department. Each department is in charge of it's own budget, and wages are calculated as standard wage + % profit. This way if a department is making serious moolah, their wages will be pretty kickass, possibly making 20k by actually doing their job. On the flipside if a department goes bankrupt, nobodys wages are effected bar that department
So what the new budget computer would look like:
1. Civillian
2. Maintainence
3. Research
4. Medical
5. Personelle
Maintainence is the new shipping budget, but also is responsable for qm/miner/engineers wage.

Add more budget computers in every head room. Make it so each head can only access his own budget (rd accesses research, hos/captain personelle, etc) but the hop has his own in his room, with full access to everything, which he can pin lock with 4-digits. The 4 digits are stored in each head budget computer, so if the code is 2364, rd can see 2, while the md can see 3, etc
now a traitor who wants the station budget needs to work for the money, he has to crack the code. He can always mindslave the hop, but where's the fun in that?

[Lavastage]

From reading another thread, here's a super awesome idea that I improved/stole
Currently the budget is made up of 3 things:
1. Payment: Where your wage comes into play. Not entirely important just yet, but getting there
2. Shipping: Probably the most important, as it's the one that's responsable for buying/selling
3. Research: Genetics. That's it.

We should completely change this, departmentalise it, and merge the payment with each department. Each department is in charge of it's own budget, and wages are calculated as standard wage + % profit. This way if a department is making serious moolah, their wages will be pretty kickass, possibly making 20k by actually doing their job. On the flipside if a department goes bankrupt, nobodys wages are effected bar that department
So what the new budget computer would look like:
1. Civillian
2. Maintainence
3. Research
4. Medical
5. Personelle
Maintainence is the new shipping budget, but also is responsable for qm/miner/engineers wage.

Add more budget computers in every head room. Make it so each head can only access his own budget (rd accesses research, hos/captain personelle, etc) but the hop has his own in his room, with full access to everything, which he can pin lock with 4-digits. The 4 digits are stored in each head budget computer, so if the code is 2364, rd can see 2, while the md can see 3, etc
now a traitor who wants the station budget needs to work for the money, he has to crack the code. He can always mindslave the hop, but where's the fun in that?

yes please

[Shoddy]

uh... how would research generate a profit? their research is based solely on spending money for genetics research.

QM could use more stuff to buy, and perhaps having fluctuation of regular market prices would be good? like if mauxite is in high demand then ordering packs of 200 metal sheets becomes more expensive etc.

there's also the oft suggested idea of a stock market, which would be cool I guess.

actually more on that idea, the stock market would be a good way for spacemen to spend their precious credits by investing in Nanotrasen or something, I dunno.

Allow QM's to invest shipping budget up to a point into stock market? it might be cool if you got tiers of authorized investments, like first tier allowing 5k into the market, if you happen to make like a 10k profit then you are allowed the next tier, so on and so forth.

An idea I just came up with, what If QM could take illegal jobs from various traders with a shady rep (like buford or vurdulak) where they ask you to move some space heroin or something and give you a hefty payout for it?

Imagine this happens and the HoP looks at the budget, "hey QM where did you get that 15K again?" for fun it should also be illegal so security can bust QM for hardcore border drug smuggling into space Iraq.

If QM's could have either a PDA program or a tablet that lets them interact with the shipping computer on the fly that would be really cool, you'd still have to manually sell and deliver items, but it would be cool if I could walk up to the chef and be like "oh hey need some fresh produce?" whip out the PDA and order some of that shit and have it delivered.

Frivolous pods were a good start to things people wanted to buy, but most people want to buy ease of life things. allowing people to order stuff on the personal computers would be cool, or have QM handle that too. like ordering a brand new spacesuit or toolbelt for like 1500 credits.

---------
On research making money.

People have often suggested genetics being able to sell their research to NT for a hefty profit, a good idea.
Artifact research is still counter intuitive and clunky, I don't even know if the chemically activated ones need a base element or need a combination like thermite.

Allow research to sell research on artifacts and sell the artifacts themselves once activated.

[Captain_Bravo]

I also like the idea of being able to sell genetic mutations back to Nanotransen.

In fact.... why don't we add a computer uplink to the mainframe? It connects to a terminal in each department, and can be used to sell research to nanotransen. Science can sell artifact research or chemistry recipes. Genetics sells mutations, medical sells scans taken of pathology viruses, or medical scans of people who've been poisoned with things. The engine needs to be running, because the transmission takes a ton of power. Savvy traitors can cut the uplink to the Comm dish, and piss everyone off by making their departments go broke. Give every department (Scans of prisoners! Scans of genetic mutations! Chef gets rich by scanning a lightly-fried Pubbie Jr. Sandwich!) a way to beam information back to Centcom for a price.

[QP Evergrande]

Selling data taken from medical scans is a good idea. You could add it to a pathology report for a bonus, just dump a scan of a sick person from a health analyzer or a PDA into the computer. After all, what's a medical paper without a few case studies?

The stock market idea sounds cool. Companies could be associated with the various ways the station could make money, so as people do their jobs it could affect the market. Like, you send data on a mutation to NT, NT sells it to a medical company, the medical company instantly makes a profit, and if you've invested in that company, you can make a profit too. This would also give people a reason to pay attention to which departments are being particularly active, so different groups would be at least slightly more aware of each other some of the time.

As for the Chef/Barman, what about takeout orders? Give the kitchen a terminal where NPCs outside the station send in random orders. The Chef makes whatever they want, then deliversit via a teleporter pad, and gets paid just like selling an item to a merchant, with a tip for using high-quality ingredients.