Make mining its own department.

[Championfire]

It is always so annoying trying to coordinate with miners on the station with ENGINEERS blabbing time to fuck up the engine and such, it bothers me, and bothers probably others. It would make more sense. QM would have power over them, of course. But yeah, this is just my idea, i dont know if it has been posted before.

[Anticheese]

Mining was on its own separate z-level, and it sucked.

[Dauntasa]

Mining was on its own separate z-level, and it sucked.

actually it owned and they should be on their own z-level again

[atomic1fire]

If we're gonna put Mining back in it's own Zlevel I kinda think QM and Mining should be the same department, just use the mining shuttle or a teleporter to move between the two places. The only complaint I could think of is if QM wanted to unlock gun crates they could just bomb them open at mining probably, but they could probably already do that.

[Championfire]

Why is mining and QM not even its own department anyway?

[Vunterslaush]

I rather miss the old mining z-level, it gave the miners a reason at all to even use the largely unused engineering channel.

[Erev]

Mining was on its own separate z-level, and it sucked.

This.

[Vitatroll]

I think the main purpose of the thread was to create a new channel for mining and QMs. This wouldn't make sense in lore. The reasoning for the engineering channel is probably:

Engineers use char, plasmastone, and other things to power the engine. They are also in charge of fixing a broken station.
Mechanics fix and build machines and need a ton of materials to do so.
Quartermasters can sell materials to make the station money.
Miners are the main supply of materials.

How it actually works:
Engineers use no char to hellburn which often makes escape hallway an escape hellway.
Mechanics break machines and build deathtraps and need a ton of materials to field the hallways with hacked zoldorfs.
Quartermasters can sell materials to make the station monkeys. Or gear themselves up with indysuits, shock gloves, and weapons with a stolen sec/head card.
Miners are the main supply of materials to make themselves a sparkling, rainbow smoking room between the escape arms.

I have no point to make with that second list. It's just there.

Now, on topic. There's a resistance to making new radio channels or even changing the old ones. If things were to change, my personal preference would be like this:

Every headset is aligned with it's owner's job. When you speak into a special channel, your headset's Job title is prepended to your statement in fashion of "Manne Love [135.7][Miner] says, "Farte"" or something easier. Taters would have to be sneakier, I guess. The channels list would go:

Command(h): Heads
Security(s): HoS, Captain, HoP, Security, Detective
Medical(m): HoS, Captain, MD, Doctors, Geneticists, Roboticists, Security, Janitor, Quartermasters, Detective
Research®: HoS, Captain, RD, MD, Scientists, Quartermasters, Detective
Engineering(e): HoS, Captain, CE, Engineers, Mechanics, Miners, Quartermasters, Detective
Civilian Services©: HoS, Captain, HoP, Chef, Barman, Botanists, Janitor, Chaplain, Clown, Quartermasters, Detective
(iffy)Artificials/Borgs/SIlicons(a): HoS, Captain, Roboticists, AI, Borgs

Some highlights of this system:

• The prepending of a headset's job title would lessen confusion in special channels about who's talking.
  
• Civilian Services would have their own channel. I searched for this on the forums and it's been brought up at least once by Redbeard and has some support.
  
• Security is often first responders to medical emergencies, so them having access to the medical channel makes sense.
  
• The detective can be more detective-y.
  
• Quartermasters serve as a relay to shuffle resources around the station. Science wants botany to grow some black venne? Get the QMs on it. Medical wants to throw a taco party for the recently deceased? QM is happy handle the logistics. People also have a direct channel to ask for benign things like medical crates or lasers. Orders from computers get missed often.

Some strange bits that need explaining:

• I don't really like machine translation implants. This has been brought up a few times from others. I don't even roll borg, either. I just think it's silly. My thoughts on this would be to give the HoS, Captain, and Roboticists (or maybe just roboticists) access to the channel. The only way anyone else could get access to it is to either copy one of those headsets or buy an implant from DOC for something like 20k. The DOC bit was brought up in an earlier topic.
  
• Janitor having access to medical. Any time the medical channel is used it usually means there is a nice mess involved. They get access, anyways, so meh.

If this topic was about moving mining back out to the derelict, then I'm sorry for this large, out of topic post. If it was indeed about moving mining out there then I would disagree. The only reason they would interact with the station then is to either murder or become a vigilante. At least now they build fancy stuff with their ores for all to see, or wave at the QM as they sell their excess ores by going through the cargo hangar.

[Dabir]

Why would a potato need to be sneakier?? I don't understand.

[Silvercloud29]

Mining was on its own separate z-level, and it sucked.

You suck. I miss the mining Z level. I actually got a lot of mining done. With the magnet I gotta wait for other miners to move out of the way with their power picks so I can use a pod to drill the ore out.

In the old mining Z I was able to fly off with a mining pod with some crates and a few ore collection bags. And just mine for 30 min straight. Come back, and make bank.

[Anticheese]

With the new system, mining actually interacts with the station once in a blue moon. If you're waiting for people to get out of the way, actually talk to them and tell them to get out of the way.

[Dauntasa]

With the new system, mining actually interacts with the station once in a blue moon.

it interacts exactly as often as it used to but is now extremely boring to actually do. Now instead of getting their own cool station they get a shitty space platform. They're still in space, away from everyone else, and never ever help out the rest of the station. But instead of having a whole Z-level to play around in, they have a shitty space platform. Also they're all cramped together in one asteroid and it sucks.

my ideal mining department is just slapping like 3-4 magnets onto the mining outpost station and having them start there again

[Erev]

I disagree Dauntasa. You see miners in medical and QM and messing with pods. And on the other side of the coin they are now reasonable to kill should they pop up as a murder objective.

If you don't want such a large multiplayer experience, perhaps server two would be more well suited. Anyways, if you want to visit old mining there is nothing stopping you.

[BaneOfGiygas]

You see miners in medical and QM and messing with pods.

Well, yes, but is going around and messing with stuff really "interacting"? It's only interaction if you're actually doing shit with the other people involved, and "existing slightly closer" doesn't really fall under that category.

Also, medical? Pods? What do you mean, there are no pods in medical.

[Dauntasa]

Anyways, if you want to visit old mining there is nothing stopping you.

except for the fact that there are no minerals out there, so you can't actually mine

And yeah, you see miners fucking around with other stuff on the station, in much the same way that you see literally any job fucking around with stuff on the station. I don't consider that "miners interacting with the station" I consider it "miners completely ignoring their job and running around like assistants with industrial armour". Miners interacting with the station, to me, means miners mining and then sending the things they mine to the station, something that I see no more now than I ever have.

Plus killing a miner if he was your objective was the easiest thing in the universe back when they were on their own station. Literally all you had to do was get to the mining station and then wait. Either he would die on his own exploring space or he'd pop back to the mining station and you could immediately shoot him in the face while he was fucking around with the fabricator. Being a miner required you to be wary because you were on your own, with no one else to help you but your fellow miners. Finding a husk out in the asteroid field was one of the tensest and most interesting things that ever happened to me in this game.