Map Ideas and Suggestions

[Wintermote]

 

I'm working on a new map, not for this server specifically (it's intended for sigurd), but I'm interested in input and ideas from players here.

 

Things that are useful:

- Sketching out floorplans and layouts for jobs you are familiar with. Show me what your perfect medbay or science lab looks like.

- Suggesting additions in areas that would make it more efficient. Anti-radiation drugs on a dispenser in genetics?

- Suggestions for new design principles. APC's be in maintenance? Floor tiles on top of pipes indicating this via sprite? Pipes never run under walls? etc.

- Suggestions for combining/removing unused or rarely used areas for greater space efficiency

 

Here is Sigurd's previously worked on map:

 

I intend to take various elements from this map with a new overall design.

Something more similar to a starburst shape.

 

 

And here is the present core/center of the new station /map I am working on:

 

[Wintermote]

 

Here is a floor plan I'd like to use for departure and arrivals.

No, not down to the exact layout, but the general shape. I'd likely place a few things in the center (HoP's office/Customs, small bathroom, maintenance, chapel?, library?) before you get into the station proper.

 

 

Likely rotated 90 degrees clockwise and placed at the top of the station.

I'd like to have only one dock/undock area on the station - no more shuttles sitting at mining, engineering, science, security - if you want to leave the station on a shuttle of some kind you have to go to the docks.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

My thoughts on the big map you posted, maybe you can keep some of this in mind for the new map:

 

General:

- The walls to window ratio seems very off, it defenatly needs more windows.

- At the windows there should allways also be a window against the wall, even if it serves no purpose, but they look odd.

- I like the park, kitchen, bar thing going on, although the bartender should have a backroom.

- i love the clean pipeing and cables

- On a station this size there need to be more borg recharge stations

- I personnally like the idea of security having offices in every department that also grant them access to the departments main hallways (not the actual rooms). This could be a thing on the new station, especially if it will be as big as this one posted.

- There needs to be some kind of second hallway, the escape paths seem very limited with only one way from getting from north to south. maybe some sort of cycle that goes aroung the station?

- adding some generic rooms that serve no or little purpose to secretly do stuff or hide, like a second toilets, dorms, small supply closet with replacement lights and a oxygen canister maybe, that sort of things.

- Every rooms needs to have it's own atmos alarm, firealarm and there should be AI holopads in almost every room, to allow for some more AI RP.

 

Maintenance:

- Needs some small maintenance rooms, for gear and as a place to hide stuff or yourself.

- In general the extremly long and empty maintenance tunnels look boring. They could probably use some windows and other details.

- More airlocks in mainteance so that a breach in the SW part would not depressure the medbay if the medbay maintenance would be opened.

- There need to be more external airlocks, if i would be in the medbay and for some reason need to EVA. It would problaby be faster taking out a reinforced wall and replace it behind me, than finding an external airlock

- I do like the APCs in maintenance idea, but does the game understand that the APCs are acutally for different areas? (even if they had been destroyed and i have to replace them)?

 

Head of Staff offices:

- i assume the Offices above the AI room are all for Heads of Staff

- The security for the offices seems very very weak, especially considering that they are in a area that will have almost no traffic. With this layout the captains laser will be stolen every round.

 

HoP office:

The security seems weak considering how far away it's from the bridge and security

 

Solar Arrays:

- Need airlocks into maintance

- APCs should be hooked up to the main power grid not the SMES at the solar itself

 

Atmospherics:

- That pipeing ..

 

Engineering:

- A storage of this size with only one tile pathway, ohh hell no. Emitter tetris for experts

- There needs to be much more stuff lying around

 

Security:

- Sees fine to me, except for the windows from the Detective into maintenace, what's up with that?

 

Science:

- R&D needs to be at a window towards the hallway (swap misc. research with R&D)

- Rest seems fine

 

Medbay:

- seems good to me, most airlocks should be see through i think.

 

Bridge:

- I like it, but i miss some windows to the hallways, so you can actually catch a word with the captain once in a while, or see if it's not swarming with nukies.

 

[Wintermote]

 

 

Here's the new arrivals/departures. Customs on the middle left and right side, HoP in the middle. I wanted to keep this entire section close to the core of the station so that the HoP and so on don't feel isolated. Placing some civilian stuff (chapel, library, maybe holodeck, dancefloor and bar) in the arrivals/departures area should also keep it a little more active than it is right now. I may also include blueshield/NT reps in the area.

 

Embassies aren't being included as they are essentially never used, take up a huge amount of space, and don't really make sense when the station isn't politically important. It makes sense for a capital city to have embassies, it doesn't make much sense for a small research station owned by a private corporation to have embassie; thus I'm excluding them from a lore and gameplay perspective.

 

Library is on the left - only concern here is that you have to go through the arrivals checkpoint to get into the library. This'll probably make it more secluded and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

 

Arrivals and departures will likely be separated from each other; this means people on the left arrivals section will not be able to cross over to the right-side departures section without passing through customs first. I'll likely keep all the station shuttles (science, security, mining, etc.) on the right side docks.

 

[Wintermote]

 

My thoughts on the big map you posted, maybe you can keep some of this in mind for the new map:

 

General:

- The walls to window ratio seems very off, it defenatly needs more windows.

- I like the park, kitchen, bar thing going on, although the bartender should have a backroom.

- On a station this size there need to be more borg recharge stations

- There needs to be some kind of second hallway, the escape paths seem very limited with only one way from getting from north to south. maybe some sort of cycle that goes aroung the station?

- Needs some small maintenance rooms, for gear and as a place to hide stuff or yourself.

- In general the extremly long and empty maintenance tunnels look boring. They could probably use some windows and other details.

- More airlocks in mainteance so that a breach in the SW part would not depressure the medbay if the medbay maintenance would be opened.

- i assume the Offices above the AI room are all for Heads of Staff

- The security for the offices seems very very weak, especially considering that they are in a area that will have almost no traffic. With this layout the captains laser will be stolen every round.

- A storage of this size with only one tile pathway, ohh hell no. Emitter tetris for experts

- There needs to be much more stuff lying around

- R&D needs to be at a window towards the hallway (swap misc. research with R&D)

 

I'm not using that map anymore, so the amount of windows, the park and kitchen and bar, borg stations etc. are irrelephant. There are no airlocks in maintenance or medbay because I hadn't placed any airlocks anywhere.

 

- At the windows there should allways also be a window against the wall, even if it serves no purpose, but they look odd.

 

There's no reason to have windows against the wall except for aesthetic reasons, and aesthetically I prefer them without glass against the wall.

 

- i love the clean pipeing and cables

 

It's entirely placeholder in atmos. Primary concerns with piping is to ensure it's fairly easy to reach and covers each room properly. Vents and scrubbers always placed at opposite sides of the room.

 

- Every rooms needs to have it's own atmos alarm, firealarm and there should be AI holopads in almost every room, to allow for some more AI RP.

 

These are some of the last things I add to a room. Most important are layouts for movement. Players need to be able to move around and interact with things without feeling claustrophobic or trapped. Atmos alarms, fire alarms, holopads, cameras, lights, etc. are extraneous details when the concern is to get the layout working. I usually keep mental track of where I want to place these things while designing the room.

 

- There need to be more external airlocks, if i would be in the medbay and for some reason need to EVA. It would problaby be faster taking out a reinforced wall and replace it behind me, than finding an external airlock

 

There are only two ways into space on that station: The docks and EVA in engineering. There are no airlocks into space anywhere else. This was a conscious design decision to make random people getting into space significantly more difficult. I might revise that with the new map. I had some worry that nuke ops would have a difficult time breaking in - but they've got c4 and bombs, they could break in anywhere they like.

 

- I do like the APCs in maintenance idea, but does the game understand that the APCs are acutally for different areas? (even if they had been destroyed and i have to replace them)?

 

Yes, they work perfectly. APC's need to be placed on the defined area for that section. All I do is define the tile the APC sits on in maintenance as whatever room it's supposed to be for. I have some concern that atmos changes may be applied to all the area tiles in a room, and that could include area tiles on the other side of the map. It's something I haven't tested yet.

 

[Streaky Haddock]

maaan, this is really well thought out.

[Fj45]

 

^

Map design basics there kids.

 

 

Right, this sounds like a great idea, as long as you are able to finish it. Thanks for your work, very good bit of inspiration. There is a list of a few maps here that may help with seeing what works:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SS13/comments/2ku1h4/maps/

 

 

That arrivals and escape area seems like a very good idea, double so with the customs+hop area, now security can properly search people about to head for the shuttle!

 

 

Moving the HoP office to arrivals/escape means you now have a good space to add something to the bridge, you could possibly move the NT rep in there. The command area here has very nice asthetics and layout:

 

Although the bridge itself is maybe a little small for proper fire fights, or maybe the extra cover would improve them.

 

 

I would recommend you combine the bar with the dance club and make more of a nightclub. Kitchen freezer could do with an extension and proper cooling system:

 

 

Security could use a perma overhaul and its current layout of most of the rooms could use an overhaul, but the meeting room, wardens office/amoury and HoS/vault are all pretty good.

 

 

For cargo, keep it mostly the same but add duel/a larger warehouse, shorten the cargo bay slightly so it isn't so crazy long and turn the lobby into some kind of store area: (although that may need some custom sprites for the shelves and whatnot)

 

The blast doors for where the supply shuttle docks at cargo are perfect, make sure to use them with your new map.

 

The robotics on your old map is really nice, split system and being part of hallway seems fun. Upper area of research also looks good.

 

 

Podbays are the biggest thing you could do well, (I have a few plans for them if you need help)

it depends on how the layout goes exactly but you would probably need podbays for:

Cargo/mining

Research

Security

Arrivals/escape

Engineering

Mechanics

Service (maybe)

 

The mechanics workshop should be pretty large, maybe around the size of the current SM room, with two podbays, (one private, one public) a workshop, storage area, waiting room and office. Pretty much a IRL mechanics workshop.

Cargo podbay should maybe be conected to the warehouse? Or it atleast needs some way to easy to use a delivery route.

 

 

Now, for atmos, I have been planning a major overhaul of it for some time but I need a large amount of time and I currently do not have enough knowledge of the variables system to properly do it. Biggest changes:

 

Proper storage area. (think a litttle like the secure storage you have in your old map)

Far longer area of atmos (extends down)

All of the gas tanks on the right side.

Opening up the atmos floor space with a much cleaner pipe layout. (Big loop that goes down, across and up for the waste/filtering loop, distro is mostly just a single long line.)

Several rows of coolers along the floor space.

Multiple large space loops.

A proper area (like toxins but less explodey) for atmos techs to mix gasses (no more choosing between mixing gasses or having a waste loop that doesn't clog)

Vents into space to dump gas. (Do it for anything but a major plasma fire and the ghosts of atmos past will kill you in your sleep)

Several smaller tanks INSIDE atmos itself. (So you can mess around with relief tanks and crazy things like that.

 

 

 

 

Departmental layout is always complex, main thing is I need to know a little more of how you plan for the layout to work. I would say that with for engineering/medbay the layout inside should be kept pretty close to what we currently have as they work so well. I would change the fire gear storage/grav gen area though. And medbay isolation/viro could use work.

 

 

With the airlocks, THEY ARE VITAL, having only two ways to get into space would be a nightmare for atmos techs and engies!

 

 

I am very happy to help you with all this, double so for atmos. I would recommend you hop onto the IRC, I am almost always active on there.

 

[Rumiluntti]

Needs more windows leading into space.

[Wintermote]

 

Design changes/proposals:

 

Keep players out of maintenance

- Low-levels of ambient radiation in all maintenance tunnels

- Engineering jumpsuits fully protect against this radiation

- Maintenance tunnels are still the go-to place for safety during radiation storms

 

Better lighting

- Make certain objects, like APC's or computers, give off a soft glow.

 

[Streaky Haddock]

 

the Detective, Paramedic and Janitor all have valid reasons for going in maint, so I'd hate to give them rads for doing their jobs.

 

Although what do I care, I'm an IPC.

 

[Wintermote]

 

Design change/proposal:

- Give Janitor all-access, like the captain.

 

[Wintermote]

 

Some updates to engineering.

 

Needs more work still, might be issues with the design I'm not aware of. Will probably put Engineering EVA to the right of the supermatter.

 

[Eldrin-Kanthos]

 

Design change/proposal:

- Give Janitor all-access, like the captain.

BREAKING NEWS! Janitor becomes griefiest job ever!

 

[Fj45]

No, I don't think thats the best idea, kinda makes maint horrible and useless, if you fill it full of goodies nobody will ever be able to use them!