Thomase

Hi, This mainly applies to NSS Cyberaid map but it also applicable to all maps. Background: I've played a bit of engineer lately and begun to play around with power and I noticed a glaring problem in how the station is powered. At the beginning of the game it draws around 160 kW by default and unless major changes changes happens to the station, it rarely draws more than an average of 160 kW. Meanwhile the supermatter engine on nitrogen cooling easily provides around 360 kW and 1 set of 60 solar panels produce around 90 kW. All of the solar panels of course doesn't provide 90 kW at the same time, but around 2 sets can be assumed to be able to face the sun at any given moment. Now the benefit of solars is supposedly that they're safe and this is true. But a nitrogen powered supermatter engine is also very safe. Even a carbondioxide powered engine is quite safe (at least as long as you set it up correctly). This has the consequence that there's little benefit of solar panels compared to the SM engine since they're both quite safe. The overhanging threat of admin bans for antags who mess with the engine without ahelping also makes people not bother messing with it (or so I assume since sabotage of the SM engine has never happened once over the 100s of hours I've spent on engineering), leaving most power concepts pretty redundant and leaving the SM as a perfectly safe option on the same level as solar panels in practice. But solar panels take a lot longer to set up. The wiring mechanic is error prone and because they need to not be obstructed, they're set up in different corners of the station. In addition the use of hardsuit means it takes up inventory space and slows down the engineer who's sent out to fix them up. But most notably, the solar panels are very redundant! The SM is equally as safe to them, requires often no oversight whatsoever and produces like double the power of all the solar panels combined. Setting up solars is often just a waste of time and at best they act as a power reserve in case some engineer manages to blow the SM engine at some point or a meteor hits the SM engine somehow. In addition the SM engine itself often has no reason to be revisited in the round because of changing circumstances because it produces so much power. You could for instance add more emitters, but why would you when one emitter is basically enough to power the station on its own? You could in theory build another SM engine or some other power-producing object, but once again there's little reason to do so since the power requirements of the station is by default way too low for such to be necessary. Suggestion: There's multiple ways of balancing this issue. In my opinion, a SM engine which is powered by nitrogen should generate just short of enough power for the station by default (somewhere around maybe 140 kW), so it actually has a significant drawback to being a super safe cooling solution and it would require the assembly of solar panels for the station to remain power positive. This would still make power easy but it would also make it less brain dead. There would be incentive to revisit power throughout the round as well or to even upgrade the SM engine or use alternate sources, build more solar panels, make a backup SMES battery for important departments, you know useful stuff for engineering to spend time on... The other is a simple revision to the rule to allow the SM engine to be fair game without ahelping for antags to target. This is of course not super ideal since it can feel like an overbearingly vulnerable target and have far too great consequences should they suceeed but that is also the fault of the design of the SM engine. Maybe a SM engine fault shouldn't be so dramatic, maybe it should be easier to correct faults or sabotage? The current meta of ahelping is a bandaid in of itself because of a lackluster design from the start (no offense meant). The third option (which means more work), is to oversee the objects that draw power. Maybe certain objects should have a much greater power draw. Maybe cryo tubes draw too little or maybe the cooler does which cools the cryo fluid? Maybe the kitchen should draw more power somehow when objects are used? Maybe the chem dispensers should draw some power to regain components? I'd really like some sort of overhaul of the power system because it just seems to depressing that one engineer dabs off to fix solars every round and spends like half the shift doing so and in the end it's entirely pointless.