Remapping Cargo

[Warriorstar]

I decided to try my hand at remapping Cargonia based on a bunch of things that bother me.

UPDATED MAP BELOW

Starting clockwise from the top, the most important features and changes:

1. The area that contains "Mail" and Sorting is now just Sorting. Instead of a conveyor to Disposals that's open and well lit, Sorting takes on an appearance similar to Disposals, much more maint-feeling in appearance. Disposals is used in various strategies and as a convenient escape but from the perspective of the crew it should be treated as just another unsightly aspect of maintenance, at least in my mind.

2. South of Sorting is the new Cargo Break Room, because as it stands CTs don't have anywhere to rest away from the main Cargo lobby. CT lockers are moved into here.

3. The QM's office is now north of the lobby, largely unchanged, to make room for other things.

4. The warehouse remains the same size, but gets an extra rolling door for convenience.

5. The lobby is larger, from 19 empty floor tiles to 39 (without normal clutter added). This helps spread out people who are making requests, people using the vending machines, normal traffic in and out, and people using the supply console, although it's not in a great place just yet here.

6. The main cargo office is larger, from 31 empty floor tiles to 42. The Mailroom chute is now located here.

7. The ORM is a bit further into the cargo lobby, but as a consequence miners can reach it without having to navigate most of the traffic they pass through on the current map.

8. There's a large central hallway leading between the lobby, the main office, and the cargo bay, to give Cargo a more "large department" feel, and to make it easier to get people in and out when dealing with events that need people in cargo (getting weapons for terrors etc). I also imagine this has some interesting properties for doing combat in cargo, by providing a chokepoint.

9. Mining dock is slightly less cramped, from 28 to 32 tiles. Extra lockers are added (although someone on Discord pointed out there are lockers on Lavaland, so maybe what need to be here are extra hardsuits for the inevitable replacements to whatever miners died. I also meant to add a mech docking station here. I always felt that Mining deserved an on-station "changing room" style setup, with stools and lockers lined up neatly.

10. Nothing special to the mining shuttle, it's just pushed a bit further out from the station.

11. The cargo bay is relatively the same size, so people can still take advantage of the large area for whatever.

12. The outgoing conveyor is now accessible from the primary cargo office for rapid returning of crates and to prevent confusion by leaving them around in the office.

13. The two delivery methods, chute and mule, are now located directly next to the incoming conveyor. Mail has a dedicated chute, and Mules have a dedicated exit to maints, to reduce the instances of them bumping into everyone on their way out of Cargo.

Someone on Discord suggested that this layout was "easier to bomb" than the current one, but I'm not sure how. It has basically the same number of entrances/exits in roughly the same places. Someone else pointed out it was perhaps a good layout for cult bases, which I can totally see.

Curious about people's thoughts.

 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Warriorstar

[MarsMond]

For the request desk, i do see a few problems/disadvantages: It is good bit further away from the cargobay, less able to juggle between orders and unloading. Don't think anyone unloading could check on the line without moving at least to the ORM. The QM is also unable to watch it from his office, the desk or even just the area where people will stand is too far away. Lastly, anyone manning the desk will need to run from the desk to the console back and forth to be able to check the points, approve the orders there, and getting the paperwork.
The return belt is a bit weird for me, why the small curve, instead of a straight line? Could also make another door above it then, for a quicker switch between the office and the bay.
As for the sorting area and break room, they feel a bit crammed in. The way to the break room is only one tile wide, and ending in a single extrusion of the room. The sorting room will also kinda fail it's purpose: How do you want to sort, and where to put the sorted stuff? There is no break in the conveyors, so you either need to start and stop the conveyor to sort the items that were flushed down, or you stand on the conveyor when searching through. And when you have found an item to be recovered, where do you put it? There would be only 1 tile that could have a table for it in that room, so would need to use the break room for it. Given how you need to use the room to get to sorting and the QMs office, should probably not be designated as a break room. Would make it okay to use it as the lost and found storage, though.
The warehouse does kinda have a weird placement, it only has one entrance, yet it is fully surrounded by other cargo rooms. Usually, important rooms get placed central, and the things you only need access to from a few specific points get placed there.
I do like quick access for the mules and mailing chute, although the later should probably have flaps to avoid accidentally stumbling into one. The space for the office is also nice, it can get a bit tight sometimes, especially in situations with miners bringing back an ore box and a tech bringing out a crate or similar.

[Warriorstar]

Thanks, MarsMond! These are a lot of great points. I'm going to make some adjustments. Some specific replies:

1. I gave the return belt the curve to give it a bit of character. A straight line would work as well.

2. You're absolutely right the sorting room needs an area to drop out stuff and an extra conveyor strip to allow people to sort.

3. I want the break room to feel uncomfortable and cramped; it feels right for a crummy Nanotrasen ship. But it definitely needs to be larger.

[Warriorstar]

A new draft based on comments from here and Discord. This isn't fully decorated, but the main structure is there (I've hidden cables, atmos, and disposals chutes).

I allowed myself to take a bit more space, adding a bit more maint areas to balance things out. Because of this, there's now room for a Cargo Security Checkpoint, near the entrance and lobby. The warehouse is no longer the center of the department; instead it's been moved closer to Disposals. The breakroom at the top right is much larger and more comfortable. The disposals maint area is now larger and has some tables so if someone wants to do some sorting, they can.

The quartermaster's office is now along the main hallway. The main hallway is now much more practical, since it offers airlocks to everywhere in cargo.

The main entrance is now further north in the central hallway, to ease congestion with the HOP line on the opposite side of the hall.

The lobby is now even larger, about 45 free tiles, with a small conveyor for returning crates.

[AffectedArc07]

Im really not keen on this remap. Here are just a few of my gripes.

[Kyet]

I agree with AA. There are lots of issues with that map in that screenshot.

[Abydos]

I'd also like to point out a few things I have noticed with the others in Staff chat.

 

What's the purpose of this room? It's so far an empty room that has no rhyme or purpose. Sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

Adding onto AA's point about the warehouse, this thing also bugs me here. You got 3 reinforced walls where the mining ship docks.. but every other wall is normal. If it's to stop cargo from breaking into the mining shuttle, it's rather pointless if they can just cut away one wall to the side, remove the window and then hack in. Or just remove the windows. More steps? Yes. But still doable.

 

Why does Cargo need a delivery chute? Barely anyone uses the chutes other than cargo, so unless you plan on giving every department a room full of wrapping paper + label, it's a waste of space. Cargo is the one who uses it to send crates out. Do they plan on sending it to themselves?

 

This feels entirely large for absolutely no reason. I've never seen cargo needing more than what they've already got.. it's not like they ever get more than 3-4 people waiting in the area. Why does this need to be so large? It's needlessly so.

 

The same applies here, mining starting area is NEVER used since miners are always down at lavaland, got a mining vendor down there, and only really come up to give resources or grab food. Enlarging it is the same as I stated, needlessly so. 

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Abydos

[Warriorstar]

Thanks for all the feedback!

3 hours ago, AffectedArc07 said:

Im really not keen on this remap. Here are just a few of my gripes.

From clockwise: 

1. The trash hitting the wall is a good point, that can be fixed.

2. I separated the "mailing" part of the mailing room and placed it next to the MULEbots, in order to eliminate people dragging crates from the cargo bay, through the supply office, to sorting. I'm not sure I'd call mailing the most important room in Cargo; it mostly has meta importance because people use disposals as a gameplay mechanic for escaping resistance. Disposals itself is an out of the way, run down maintenance room, so to me it makes sense that both parts of disposals are represented the same way.

3. Is the lack of department sec checkpoints a policy that's set in stone?

4. The corridor is a little long-winded, I agree. I'll make some adjustments. However, two points: a) if I want the ORM to both be available to mining without having to go through the supply office, *and* be available for public access, having a hallway that leads to the mining dock is necessary. And b) since the QM isn't Command, I'm okay with his office being a bit more accessible than the offices of Command members.

5. The reinforcement here is part of the original map (the area in front of the cargo shuttle normally), not something I intended to keep. Will fix that.

47 minutes ago, Abydos said:

I'd also like to point out a few things I have noticed with the others in Staff chat.

 

What's the purpose of this room? It's so far an empty room that has no rhyme or purpose. Sticks out like a sore thumb.

Instead of being a maint area, I want to put two hardsuit closets in here, locked by the QM's access. It's frequently the case that miners that join midround (or crew helping on lavaland, like security) go down to the mining station and all of the hardsuits are already gone. That's one idea. I think in ordinary gameplay this wouldn't stick out, since you don't really see it this way when playing in-game. To cargo it will just look like another wall, and to people in maints, it will just seem like another out-of-the-way maintenance room. Either way it can probably go away entirely.

47 minutes ago, Abydos said:

Adding onto AA's point about the warehouse, this thing also bugs me here. You got 3 reinforced walls where the mining ship docks.. but every other wall is normal. If it's to stop cargo from breaking into the mining shuttle, it's rather pointless if they can just cut away one wall to the side, remove the window and then hack in. Or just remove the windows. More steps? Yes. But still doable.

This is the same reinforced walls that exist north of the cargo shuttle on the original map. I just did this for consistency. It seems more decorative than anything so I can remove it.

47 minutes ago, Abydos said:

 

Why does Cargo need a delivery chute? Barely anyone uses the chutes other than cargo, so unless you plan on giving every department a room full of wrapping paper + label, it's a waste of space. Cargo is the one who uses it to send crates out. Do they plan on sending it to themselves?

I'm not sure what you mean; Cargo's always had this chute. It connects directly to recycling.

47 minutes ago, Abydos said:

 

This feels entirely large for absolutely no reason. I've never seen cargo needing more than what they've already got.. it's not like they ever get more than 3-4 people waiting in the area. Why does this need to be so large? It's needlessly so.

I play late nights EST, and I can say pretty confidently that the cargo lobby gets packed a lot of the time for a lot of reasons. People waiting for crates, people returning crates, people lined up making requests, people standing at the supply console, and other various shenanigans. I also wanted a viable area for placing down supplies for public access (such as when cargo orders weapons for the crew). I'm happy to reduce the size of this a little.

47 minutes ago, Abydos said:

 

The same applies here, mining starting area is NEVER used since miners are always down at lavaland, got a mining vendor down there, and only really come up to give resources or grab food. Enlarging it is the same as I stated, needlessly so. 

 

The reasons I wanted this larger are: 1, to allow room for a mech bay (although it's not in this screenshot) so a Ripley can charge station-side; 2, since the ORM is here there will be maneuvering of ore boxes so I wanted a bit more space for that; and 3, to provide a security-room style locker room atmosphere, where people can leave equipment, "sit down" at the stools, and suit up before getting on the shuttle. But I agree, this is probably too large to be useful.

[AffectedArc07]

47 minutes ago, Warriorstar said:

2. I separated the "mailing" part of the mailing room and placed it next to the MULEbots, in order to eliminate people dragging crates from the cargo bay, through the supply office, to sorting. I'm not sure I'd call mailing the most important room in Cargo; it mostly has meta importance because people use disposals as a gameplay mechanic for escaping resistance. Disposals itself is an out of the way, run down maintenance room, so to me it makes sense that both parts of disposals are represented the same way.

This is the mailing chute? Something thats just randomly in the middle of a room that you can not only easily walk into, but with nothing to denote the fact its the mailing chute? This looks more like an accidental placement than the actual mailing chute, and I guarantee no one playing would realise, and would end up dragging crates off to the maintenance room

[Abydos]

1 hour ago, Warriorstar said:

Instead of being a maint area, I want to put two hardsuit closets in here, locked by the QM's access.

I honestly do not see why Cargo needs hardsuits.

Security needs hardsuits incase antags or people they are chasing have gone to space.

Medical needs it, incase a breach happens or someone they need to grab is dead within space.

Engineering is self-obvious.

Why would cargo need two hardsuits? To grab crates in space? Lavaland doesn't use hardsuits, they use soft-suits that are designed for it. Furthermore, if cargo does need hardsuits, any miner with a lot of points can buy a new one from the vendor.

[Warriorstar]

26 minutes ago, AffectedArc07 said:

This is the mailing chute? Something thats just randomly in the middle of a room that you can not only easily walk into, but with nothing to denote the fact its the mailing chute? This looks more like an accidental placement than the actual mailing chute, and I guarantee no one playing would realise, and would end up dragging crates off to the maintenance room

It's not intended to be just randomly in the middle of a room. I just didn't finish up furnishing it. In the previous image (I shouldn't have removed it tbh) this was furnished in a better way:

But yes, I very much want to make it clear this is this is the part of the bay where crates are brought to distribute to the station.

7 minutes ago, Abydos said:

I honestly do not see why Cargo needs hardsuits.

Security needs hardsuits incase antags or people they are chasing have gone to space.

Medical needs it, incase a breach happens or someone they need to grab is dead within space.

Engineering is self-obvious.

Why would cargo need two hardsuits? To grab crates in space? Lavaland doesn't use hardsuits, they use soft-suits that are designed for it. Furthermore, if cargo does need hardsuits, any miner with a lot of points can buy a new one from the vendor.

Sorry, I didn't mean hardsuits. I meant the mining softsuits. But like I said, that's just one idea of what to put here. There are tons of small rooms in maints that serve no specific purpose, like the various rooms in aft port maints. Why are there two bedrooms in maints next to the mining shuttle? You could remove the door here and just make it another maint dead-end. I wouldn't focus too much on this; I'm happy to give it some other purpose or remove it entirely.

EDIT: I just want to say that this is not a finished product; that I'm looking for feedback like this to improve my own mapping skills and to maybe-eventually polish it to the point I'm comfortable making a PR. All of this has been really useful so far! I have to redo it from scratch anyway because I used StrongDMM as my map editor, and it automatically alphabetizes key-value pairs in instances, which means the resulting diff had thousands of unrelated changes: https://github.com/SpaiR/StrongDMM/issues/67

Edited July 22, 2020 by Warriorstar

[AffectedArc07]

Mapmerge will sort those issues out if you do it properly

[Gaty]

I am also not really sure if cargo really needs a remapping.

The current map is pretty much perfect in my opinion, compact, easily traveled, maybe mining area could use some work but the entirety of cargo?.

Why do you think cargo needs a remap?

[FreeStylaLT]

This is an interesting approach to solving a few practical problems Cargo has! However, it's a flawed one and would not get merged in its current state, just due to the layout alone.

DISCLAIMER:

I AM NOT A MAINTAINER OR A HEAD ADMIN. I DO NOT HOLD ANY DIRECT AUTHORITY OVER THE MERGING OF A PR. THIS IS MERELY MY OPINION.

The short list would be:

• The new closed-off lobby area (due to the solid walls and a tight entrance) makes the hallway feel more cramped and claustrophobic. The lobby itself may be larger, but no one can see that. This is non-desirable given our pop levels, we want the station's public areas to look, feel and be roomier.
  • Adding windows, perhaps even exposing the entire area with a giant entrance rather than 2-tile one might help solve this.
• The 'hallway'. Its sole purpose from what I understood was to make the ore reclaimer publicly accessible while also making it easier to get to for Miners. The result is.. a hallway that Cargo itself does not need or actually utilize. Quartermaster does not need to be attached to the public, nor does the warehouse, or even the "mailing" room. This is unacceptable design.
  • A hallway should be as straight as possible and serve a function for the entire department. Your version is neither straight nor integral to Cargo, it does not flow well or connect anything conveniently, if anything it separates the warehouse from the 'mailing' room, it does not allow smooth, straight pathing from one location to another in cargo, nor does it make the intended ore reclaimer convenient to access, after all, it's all the way at the end of the hallway / dock for both intended parties.
    • If you choose to solve the ore reclaimer issue this way, you should consider moving the entire mining dock and attaching it to the lobby, rather than forcibly morphing the entire department around a single object.
• Larger rooms. You chose to increase the size of a lot of the rooms, yet filled the space with nothing.
  • The Quartermaster's office currently has no need for an expansion -- no equipment is sorely missing or is too cramped in there. It seems you agree with that, as you did add anything to the office, yet expanded it anyway, leaving it with 6 additional tiles and nothing to do with them.
  • Likewise, the "mailing" room has been greatly expanded for.. no conceivable reason. There is literally nothing on the left side of the wall, in fact, you shrunk all the tables in the original room to be fit around a single chair.
  • The mining dock has the same issue. It was expanded, yet nothing was used to fill the space. In fact, I struggle to see the purpose of enlarging the dock -- it does not need to be bigger to serve its primary function of giving a quick setup for miners and for them to go in-and-out of the mining station.
• Security checkpoint. It seems like your new layout left a large amount of space, which is odd considering every room received a size increase by themselves. You chose to fill this space with a security checkpoint, which is problematic on two fronts:
  • A) Cargo is unlikely to warrant a dedicated security checkpoint when you have exposed the entire department to the public already, the checkpoint is not there to give them access to cargo, or to restrict access for others, it seems to be filling.
  • B) We do not have security checkpoints as they were all removed due to, well, taking up unnecessary and unused space for the most part. If we were to add them back, Cargo would be very unlikely to get one, considering, again, its general public nature in a central hallway and lack of dedicated / private rooms.

Overall, the remap's layout as-presented (that is the walls, and solid objects, I do not care for missing pipes, utilities or other wall-accessories.) does not seem to fit the expectations the Maintainers / Heads might have for merging a map change. I highly suggest reconsidering your priorities for what should be compromised on when re-doing a layout. As much as an increase in pure tile-numbers can be seen as a positive thing, if those new tiles are filled with nothing or serve no purpose, the rooms quickly start looking and feeling desolate, which is a problem with this current version.

My suggestions on priorities:

• Reconsider a hallway. Cargo has barely enough rooms as it is. On top of this, you chose to remove a room from Cargo, meaning a hallway connecting all rooms is less meaningful or necessary to begin with, if you choose to keep maintenance disposals.
  • If you do end up using a hallway, keep it as straight as possible as as convenient to access from the lobby area to whatever its endpoint is. When you turn to access a department's lobby, you shouldn't need to make any additional turns to actually get in.
• Optimize space. If you decide a room needs expansion, then that new space needs to be refurbished and utilized properly, either through an internal room's flow, through additional items placed in the room or simply through aesthetic flooring.
• Do not have a security checkpoint. This will most definitely complicate your PR and weigh it down unnecessarily. The point is a cargo remap for convenience, not an addition of a security checkpoint.

 

 

 

[Warriorstar]

10 minutes ago, Gaty said:

I am also not really sure if cargo really needs a remapping.

The current map is pretty much perfect in my opinion, compact, easily traveled, maybe mining area could use some work but the entirety of cargo?.

Why do you think cargo needs a remap?

 

The primary issue I'm trying to solve here is congestion: the main supply office is also the entrance to the cargo bay, disposals, the ORM, and the mailing room. This means that at any given time: a miner could be dragging an ore box to the ORM, someone could be walking back and forth between the lathe and the front desk to handle requests, crates are being dragged out of cargo to give to crew in the lobby, crates are being brought in from the lobby, either empty or with things that people are shipping, crates are being pulled from the cargo bay to disposals to mail, and MULEbots are moving in and out of the department. In situations that require cargo to distribute things such as weapons to the crew, they either have to hold all the internal airlocks open, or bash open the grates, or just have people climb through the front desk window. So the reason why things in my design are moved about so drastically is to group related job components together. The MULEbot and mail room are next to each other, and close to the cargo bay, *and* have a dedicated maintenance flap so MULEbots don't try and get through the lobby. The ORM and the mining dock are right next to each other, so that they don't have to crisscross other crew in the supply office.

There are other pet peeves I'm trying to address here. I think it's silly the QM's office is only accessible through mining. I think Cargo Techs need a dedicated break room. I like the look and feel of med and sci having one primary corridor that's more separate from the public areas. And so on.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Warriorstar