TullyBBurnalot

As detailed in the later response to Fox, already swapped that to full permission, with a caveat that amounts to "Keep it off unless you absolutely have to or bad things will probably happen". Science doesn't actually need to go into any of these tunnels in order to use their department, and all their sub-Departments are protected by either walls or reinforced walls. The exception to this is the small windowed corridor to the Science Shuttle, but even then. Not to mention Security is fully capable of handling those kinds of mobs if they get off their ass. In fact, maintenance mobs are more of a danger to Engineering than anything else. It's a medium-rare occurrence that can be stopped via a single blast door button if you're fast enough. In addition, these are simple mobs, who can fall quite easily to a single weapon. Slimes can be handled with the (relatively) harmless Temperature Gun, and tame Xenos are tame. Not to mention, once again, anything created via Gold Extract + Plasma can easily be taken down with a crowbar or, failing that, a single weapon from the Protolathe (and I'm talking actual weapons, like the Saber SMG) can more than easily handle the threat. This can be easily done via the preemptive application of a tracking beacon. Not to mention, if a Combat Mech goes rogue and the person inside is half-decent, you won't have much of a chance at doing anything either. Traitors can also walk into Engineering and hotwire/release the Engine, causing a lot more damage and being much harder to take down. Traitors can also walk into the Armory and steal enough gear to effectively cripple Security and go on a much more effective rampage. Every single Department has something traitors can emag/outright use to cause massive damage to the crew. In some cases, dare I say, more damage than anything that comes from the Protolathe. I have no qualms with distributing a weapon if there's a valid reason to suspect there's danger around, but preemptively carrying guns because a traitor might try and fiddle with Science? I cannot personally agree with that. It's the same reason Security isn't allowed to just hand out guns on Code Green before anything actually happens. Not to mention, again, there's a reason the Research Director doesn't start with a Weapon Permit on their ID. So does every other Department. The Hand Tele may also be with the Chief Engineer, not to mention the Captain is also likely to have one on their person as well, in addition to an all-access ID. In fact, every Head is likely to be carrying at least one Theft Objective on their person at all times. Slimes can be killed exceedingly fast with fire extinguishers if they're properly contained, or Temperature Guns if they're not. The monsters that can't be killed via crowbar can be easily gunned down by calling Security. Not to mention, literally anyone can be a target for antagonists, and as mentioned, all the other Departments have something incredibly useful for Antagonists to get their hands on or sabotage or fiddle with. This does not mean they should preemptively arm themselves. While I do agree with this point, this is more of a matter of Security often being understaffed during low-medium pop rounds, and even then having to patrol the entire station. That said, I should also point out Security does often beeline for Science if there's a call. Most of their time is spent getting someone to open the doors. Neither does the CMO, and lord knows the amount of BS they have to put up with as well. The Chief Engineer's Advanced Hardsuit does have some decent armour values against Melee and Bomb damage, but then again, they're also supposed to be exposed to those hazards far more than the Research Director is. I have to say here that I completely agree with you. Security's performance can be inconsistent, at best, and even when they're decent, they're still spread thin covering the entire station. However, this is where our viewpoints differ. You recognize that yes, there is a problem in practical terms, and you'd rather work around it so it doesn't cause more problems. This works. I, on the other hand, would prefer to take the, uh, lengthier and harder route of trying to fix the underlying problem. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but it's something I'd like to try anyway. Here I should point out that if safety procedures are taken, the risk of this happening is minimal, and when it does happen, can easily be rectified by calling Security or getting fire extinguishers. Most monster-related problems in Science come not from the job itself, but from the people working it ignoring safety protocols. I'm not against the Research Director carrying a weapon around. I'm opposed to the idea of the Research Director carrying around multiple weapons. A single Saber SMG can quite easily handle pretty much any threat that can come out of Science and is cheap to make and maintain to boot. Not to mention you can still ask for it in Code Green. Just expect the Head of Security to raise their eyebrows a bit more than usual. Their number of use-cases is already incredibly reduced. Going around hunting antags in a combat mech doesn't work in the most common gamemodes, and what we see is Roboticists making personal death machines to either parade around, or keep in store for post-round grief. Again, my entire point here is this: just because Science can make deathmechs and death guns, doesn't necessarily mean it should be making them. Agreed. Not to mention it's a fantastic waste of time and resources, as the Officer could be doing something a hell of a lot more productive. Plus, the Armory has motion sensors every cyborg + AI can pick up on. And most AIs are paranoid about Armory motion sensor alarms. Agreed. They also get arrested and have their stuff confiscated if they get caught, not to mention probably either demoted or put on the CE's shitlist. I disagree immensely. Someone who's out to hit someone with a crowbar isn't going to politely wait until the Color Code is increased. Those things hurt. Brawls and scuffles happen on Code Green all the merry time. You severely overestimate the amount of times Omnizine and Strange Reagent is even produced at all, at least outside of Sleepers for the former. Not to mention Sedatives are useful for races that can't receive regular anaesthetics. Aside from what I already said, there is a world of difference between a syringe with sedative, or a stunprod, or body armour, and a fully armed military Exosuit. Linear Station, Quadratic Science. Much like mages, you start off small, then end up massively outclassing everyone else. While I agree that making fully armed military mechs isn't necessarily easy out the bat, it's not really complicated either. Research is ridiculously easy to complete, the Bluespace RPED makes upgrading machines literally a "click button, get upgrade", and the best parts can be mass produced with 1-2 diamonds once the Protolathe is upgraded. Thanks to TG Mining, it stopped being a matter of "if", it became a matter of "when". Also, and I'm going to be very crass here, it's not "work". Completing Research is essentially done by following a super-optimized spreadsheet at this point, and assuming Mining has at least one active person, can be completed in under 15 minutes. It's not nearly as hard as I've heard some people say it is. Assuming Mining is active, Science can be literally swimming in toys before the first hour mark. And to that I say: Literally could not have said it better myself. THAT right there is the whole point of this Project. Well, making an AI requires either a posibrain or MMI, so lockboxing it probably isn't required. That said, it's there so that Science can't go gung-ho happy with making AIs when no one in Command wants them. *nod I've seen a few myself, hence why it's there. It wasn't ripped apart, like Xenoarch was, so not taking it into consideration would leave a glaring hole in there. Couldn't agree more on the reward part. Good clown, clowns that are legitimately entertaining, have every right to be given a HONK as a reward for their service to the Honkmother, mostly because they're the kind of people who won't be dickbags about it and spam the Horn. That said, making Bananium something like a Gateway reward would be a nice idea. That was legit brainfart on my end. That said, it still baffles me that Science can make self-charging Advanced E-Guns, Decloners, X-ray Guns and bloody SMGs... but not a simple E-Gun. It boggles the mind. The point isn't to ignore other research. In fact, it's not even a rule, it's a SOP Guideline that, as I said, is malleable. It's there because, technically, it's their mechanical job objective, and the main source of "power" for Science and the rest of the Station. Gotta get 'dem sweet auto-cloners. As for what Vivalas said, basically that. SOP should not be constructed based on meta-assumptions that are themselves based on poor performance by the various Departments. It should, in fact, be a standard IC window into NanoTrasen company policy, and should read like such.

I would again like to point out that none of your "dangerous recipes" are, in any way, secret. All the chemicals have instructions on how to make them. It's literally a game of proportions, which isn't nearly enough to justify effectively drawing blinds on something.

I personally never liked the Glass tables to the left of the dispensers. +1 for removing those and installing this fridge.

Bitch please, I use the Janicart and a MOP. Not sure if loudspeakers are a good idea, I can just see the Janitors abusing the hell out of it to annoy people.

Alright, it's time for my favourite activity! Going through quote walls with more quote walls, aka, the whole reason I started this thread in the first place. Do keep in mind, this is my personal opinion. It in no way reflects the totality, or partiality (that's a word?), of the Staff's opinion, and is merely my view on things. You are free to disagree and, if you do, I honestly request that you explain why so that we can reach a compromise/solution. I'll add "assuming Science is provided the materials for it" to make it clearer. That said, common logic still applies, no one can really blame Science if the Miners are getting drunk off their ass in the bar. Mostly because the Reactive Teleport Armour is a highly expensive, experimental one-of-a-kind piece of armour that shouldn't be worn unless there's a darn good reason for it. A baton, by comparison, is a stick. My logic behind it, and bear with me here, is that the Research Director is probably the last person who should packing heat. They're supposed to be on the station to help further scientific research, and arming themselves with a multitude of weapons for a multitude of possible situations falls far beyond their job description. At least from where I stand, there's no real logical reason the Research Director should have as much firepower as the entire Security Department, just because they can make the things. That's not what their job is, nor is it what they're supposed to be doing in the first place. In fact, the entire reason lockboxes were added is because Science regularly armed itself to the teeth and basically became a small military nation-state that Sec couldn't do jack shit about. TL;DR: it's not the RD's job to carry guns around. That said, I'll swap it over to a blanket "can carry weapons if permitted by the HoS" to avoid redundancy. I say HoS because, in a Code Red situation, they're most likely the ones getting stuck in there, and across all Color Codes detain the most authority over the Armory. In addition, it's not really restrictive. Code Green/Blue does not allow for any weapons, period. Code Red permits one. Not to mention, Code Red isn't necessarily "do or die". In fact, most Code Reds are called over there being confirmed antagonists, not any particularly impending doom looming over everyone. And if there is an impending doom over everyone, as I stated multiple times before, SOP is malleable if the circumstances and context so allow it. I'll repeat myself once again, and I'll keep repeating it until everyone gets it: SOP is malleable if the situation and context call for it. I've seen Wardens refuse to hand out weaponry in the face of a threat because it was still Code Green. This is stupid. I've seen HoSs do the same. Also stupid. I've seen IAAs, Reps and Magistrates flip their shit over Code Green restrictions when there are hostile changelings murdering people because no one upped to Blue yet. Also stupid. Standard Operating Procedure is not meant to be followed blindly regardless of circumstances. Again, it's STANDARD Operating Procedure, to be followed when everything is nominal. When things aren't nominal, SOP can, and should, be molded to adjust to the situation before falling back to nominal status. So if there's a Blob, there's literally no reason Robotics shouldn't be immediately making mechs just because Command is too lazy/rambo to up the Color Code. There's a freakin' Blob, protocol can be damned. That said, I'll also put my two cents into this: Roboticists should not be playing Robotics just so they can make pretty military mechs. Why? Because they have literally no reason to. The Durand, Gygax and Phazon are incredibly dangerous Exosuits that can carry incredibly dangerous equipment that should not be in the hands of whoever built it just because they had the resources to do it. Not to mention, aside from extreme emergencies, there's no reason to use those mechs anyway. You can't just go around hunting traitors with missile racks or laser cannons. There is, again,a reason why a sizeable chunk of the community was very much positive to the idea of lockboxing Exosuit weapons. As is, Science is broken. There is no argument against this. They are 15 minutes and a half-decent Cargo shipment away from getting hilariously powerful weaponry and fully-equipped military Exosuits, while the rest of the station basically has what they had from the start, plus whatever they can scrounge up from Cargo. Science is very much at an advantage when it comes to their power level, and can be very easily abused. TL;DR: there's literally no reason why a Roboticist should be walking around with a military Exosuit unless there are Nukies/Blobs/Shadownerds/maybe Wizards, and playing around with Deathmechs shouldn't be the primary reason Robotics is staffed. I've heard arguments from both sides on this. As it stands, I've come to believe it's needless paperwork, and will change it so that all borg candidates just have to sign a waver saying "Yes, I want to be borged". Much easier. Nice catch, I'll change that around. First off, I'll add an exception for the Temperature Gun, seeing as it's functionally harmless unless emagged (and if it's emagged, well, the person in question could probably get a whole lot worse things from that Protolathe). That said, I would personally argue that a Sec Officer asking for something isn't a legitimate reason to give them that something if it happens to be a weapon. Officers are still under the authority of their Head of Staff. I'll modify it so that giving out weapons requires that the Scientist obtain permission from the Head of Security, alone, seeing as they're the ones in charge of the Armory in the first place. Failing that, the Captain, and failing that, the RD. This is actually a misunderstanding. I did not mean AI Lawset Boards. I meant the actual AI Core Board. Will change to make it more obvious. Falls back to my initial argument. As per Rule 3, people should not be playing Science exclusively so they have a chance of playing around with the cool guns at the end of Research line. In addition, they have a great many other things they can do, and if Security requires equipment, you can bet they'll be asking. And seeing as Science can't use the stuff anyway, there's nothing stopping them from just giving it to Security anyway. While I agree with the overarching point, that would require change the actual job description, which does not really fall under the purview of SOP. That said, again, I agree entirely. I'll swap it so that the RD has the authority to permit those modifications. I'll be absolutely honest, I was struggling to reach the 9 Guideline total for Genetics. I have to admit, I was never really content with this, and it was here purely so that everyone had the same number of Guidelines. I'll be happy to remove it. Technically speaking, Telescience isn't gone. You can still make the equipment if you get the materials for it, and it's not exactly expensive either. Hell, you can remove the ExperiMENTOR and rebuild Telescience in its old place quite quickly. As for Xenoarch, it is my firm belief we'll be getting it back. When, I don't know, but until a coder up and tells me "yeah no, this ain't happening", I'd rather this stay here. RIP in piss, Honk Mech. You won't be missed. That said, I've had situations where Command was favourable to a Honk Mech, usually when the Clown isn't being a shit. So it's not entirely impossible. I do occasionally play Science (usually as the RD). The reason I had no idea was that the Weapons tab is something I rarely visit (except during Blob rounds, and even then it's just to spam that sweet X-Ray Gun button), and I applied a bit of common logic: Advanced E-Gun > E-Gun; TRUE Science can make Advanced E-Guns, and much worse; TRUE Therefore, Science can make simple E-Guns FALSE Goddamnit, Aristotle! Moving on. Well, technically, the Science Department is there to do Science, and one of their job objectives is to literally max out Research. From a practical standpoint, Research can be done in 15 minutes with the proper materials, and a normal shift lasts two hours. Plenty of time to max stuff out, even if you're coming back to it every once in a while to increase it a bit. See above for my argument. That said, uh, I can see the "Risk V Reward" aspect of it. As far as I'm aware, the Reactive Armour can still randomly teleport you into Space if you're near/unlucky enough, so I'm guessing that if an RD is wearing it, and bad stuff happens, that's on them. Will modify and add a snarky comment. This is in fact something I also wanted to work on, namely AI Lawset authorization. I was thinking of modifying it so that it's something like "Permitted, but needs Captain+another Head of Staff approval" for any lawset changes. As for CoC, that's a whoooooooole 'nother matter entirely. Haven't touched Captain, and nothing of the sort in the HoS one. That said, see above for my "SOP is malleable" thing. If there's something like Shadowlings/Xenos/Wizards/etc. (RIP in piss, Rev), I have no problem with the RD grabbing weaponry, mostly because those kinds of threats are the "Kill them or we all die" type. This is one situation it shouldn't be enforced, as doing so would endanger everyone. ... Good point, actually. I'll swap it over to something like "No Portable Wormhole Generators without RD approval". It was mostly for Security purposes. It's harder to break into the Armory than it is to break into Toxins. That said, good catch on the Miners, I'll add that. Mostly so then you have a piece of paper clearing you of any potential allegations of murder and/or abuse.

Well, that's a pickle. Lemme work on this, I'll have something ready and waiting in about, uh... an hour or so. Maybe.

My main concern, for once in my life, is balance. Anything that's objectively "better" than what we have now would probably break the game beyond reason. Alternatively, you could have it so that "real" max tech allowed you to produce these "exotic materials" for a high cost.

Once again, after this is done (which will still take a bit, because I know there are people who want to take a look at this), we're having another vote. I'm thinking Engineering VS Medical. Job SOP, as I'm sure you've noticed, isn't really anything new. It's either stuff that people were already doing, stuff that most people wanted everyone to be doing because lol common sense, or clarifications on contentious matters. And Roboticist prohibitions, because fuck personal deathmechs. Most of Job SOP will basically be this. Stuff that is already happening, but is now formalized into actual guidelines so people can crosscheck and not BS their way out of punishment. Also, remember, SOP is still not meant to be a Demotion Checklist. As always, context applies. I'm seeing a lot of Sec personnel not hand out weapons before going to Blue, even with a confirmed threat. This is ridiculous. The name is Standard Operating Procedure. IE, what should be happening when everything is functional and nominal. SOP is, and always should be, malleable, if the situation so calls for it. That, however, will be clarified in Command SOP.

Personally, I wouldn't be averse to the Paramedic just having basic access to all Departments. Not the more sensitive areas, just enough to show up, have someone from the Department drag the wounded/dead person a few feet, then run off. Kinda like what happens with Sec.

It's a bit iffy. To be perfectly honest, I can see more abuse than RP potential. Identifying facial features basically boil down to hair/fur colour and style. Eye colour is essentially fluff due to the fact that you can barely see the damned things 99% of the time. What I would suggest, rather than allowing for faces to change, was to add a requirement to Facial Reconstruction Surgery: you'd need to "use" a photo printed from the person's records, then proceed with the surgery, or else it has a chance of simply not working.

While I do agree that Science needs to be turned into more than just a "Follow spreadsheet, get toys" Department, I'm not sure this is the way to go. Randomizing Research Levels would just make people follow the checklist anyway, then filling the gaps with whatever they can find lying around or can make in the Protolathe. If anything, it'd just make the process take a bit longer, not actually make it more complex.

It'll get worked on when we get to General SOP. There's a lot of internal inconsistency and bad wording going around with SOP and in-game alerts (ie, the whole holstered debate), not to mention the fact that even when Code levels are decreased, everyone acts as if it still was the original one. It's a long process, but once we get there, oh we're gonna have fun.

Fully in support of this as well, for purely bureaucratic reasons. Tidy tidy tidy.

The stuff that "max" research provides already breaks the game beyond the point of hilarity. The Kitchen can literally swim in food from half a dozen ingredients, one miner can create tons upon tons of materials and Medbay becomes a "poosh buton, git healz" department. Not to mention the sheer amount of other stuff you can make, from advanced machinery to bloody Decloners. I'm not saying it can't be done, just saying that it'll be hard to top what we already have!

Coming from someone who plays Medbay a lot, I'm going to have to say no. First off, it would mean that a lot of players would basically be stuck in a literal "GG no re" situation unless Science upgrades the cloners (flip a coin). A great many people play Vox and Slime, primarily, so removing the ability to bring them back after death, or making it even harder, is just unnecessarily unfair. Secondly, the procedure to bring back one of these species is hard enough. You need: A competent Surgeon; Competent Geneticists that aren't just sitting their ass looking for Hulk; Biomass in the cloner Then you need to perform one and a half brain transplant surgeries, hope the person is still in there, drag them off to Cloning, clone them, give them all their stuff back, and make sure everyone involved knows who that person is. Even with a competent Medical team, it can take upwards of 10 minutes between a dead Vox/Slime showing up in Medbay and them leaving in a humanized monkey/farwa. Compare that with the minute amount of time it takes to shove any other species in a cloner and get a perfect copy. Leave it as is. It's an amazing procedure as well, and serves to break the monotony that is Surgery.

In purely practical terms: We do not make a secret of any recipe. Deathchems are freely available to anyone who looks at the wiki and, as has been said here before, most "hellmixes" are just a mixture of harmful chemicals, whose effects are clearly detailed in the wiki; Learning by mimicking is a thing. Someone can very well observe a Chemist/Scientist produce chemicals, then cross-check them with the wiki to see what they do. In fact, this way, they can learn how to effectively make medication without wasting a bunch of energy (seeing as it takes bloody forever for the MedChem Dispensers to recharge); They can't really do anything with deathchems. Seriously, why is this even an issue? If they're an antag and use them properly, that's fine. If they aren't, they get BWOINK'd and/or fired and/or jobbanned and/or banned; Experimentation is also a thing. I already make a point of reminding Chemists who randomly experiment to take Scientist instead (which, I'm happy to say, they then do). The entire point of adding a Chem Lab to Science was to allow people to randomly mix Chemicals somewhere that won't be missed when it blows up. Like Toxins; People can literally just ask. I learned Toxins on my first shift working it by just asking the RD how it worked. Boom, instantly knew how to do Toxins, always. Ask around Science, and people will gladly tell you how to do stuff. So if that's happening anyway, why not just let people watch and see what happens? As mentioned in my first point, literally every recipe is available on the wiki All in all, I fail to see why chemistry machinery should be unviewable. The possible negative effects stated in this thread seem to massively overinflate what actually happens in-game. MedChem rarely blows up nowadays, and most useless chem mixing goes on in Science anyway.

THE PLOT THICKENS!

This'll be up for about 2 weeks, at least, before we move onto the next one, there are some people I know are still looking at it.

That'll be included in Command SOP.

Changed the SMES bit in the Singularity Engine page, because there's literally no reason NOT to max out Input and Output if you properly set up the Engine.

Added the following to the Equipment Guidelines:

First off, thanks for the extra stuff. I tried uploading a picture of the new UI, but it always failed to upload, so, here ya go, see if it works for you: http://puu.sh/mGZ0v/2c7f22c0a8.png

Actually completely missed this. Will work on something when I get home later.

Rewrote the Sleepers page to make it up-to-date.