Improving Jobs: Scientist/Roboticist/Research Director

[Keroman]

 

The only suggestion I got for which job to improve on after Cargo Tech was Scientist so that's what we'll go with. Since there's only three jobs in the whole department (I guess 2 technically, since RD is basically both jobs combined) we'll do both at once.

 

Before we begin I want to stress that posting an idea in this thread in no way guarantees that it will be added to the game. I don't want that to discourage you, however! If you've got an idea that you think would be fun, please, please post and we'll discuss it!

 

Scientist

Roboticist

Research Director

 

Consider the following questions when posting your ideas:

- What are the responsibilities of the job?

- What capabilities do they already have? (i.e. access, equipment available, etc.)

- Potential for Antagonists

- How much does this job affect the round? (i.e. is the station crippled without it or do people barely notice when it's unmanned?)

 

Note: In 1 week (or when the thread has died out) we'll move on to the next job. Don't be afraid to suggest what job the next thread should focus on!

 

[davidchan]

 

Scientist: RnD needs to be more proactive. Actual prototyping and use of a various items that can be distributed to the crew/departments. Prototypes have built in 'Data' stats that raise every time they are used/active. Data rises randomly by 1-25% for each use or minute of continuous use for items are always on. Once Data reaches 100%, it can be turned into RnD for analysis and raise research levels (And this might ACTUALLY give the firing range a use to RnD weapons). Making SciChem and Toxins more than just a tator's workshop would be nice as well.

 

Robotics: Not much to add here as a Roboticist can usually keep themselves busy over the course of most rounds, particularly if they have active miners and someone did enough RnD to let them make mechs. The only expansion or improvement I can think of would be to bots. Give Robotics a terminal that allows them to summon bots on the station for maintenance, give bots internal power supplies and micro chargers in mech bay or positioned on the walls throughout the station that bots (and drones) can use to recharge, and add more bots to help in other jobs, like a litter bot that goes about collecting trash items and dumping them in cargo/disposals for sorting and recycling, a gardening bot that automatically checks flowers for weeds and could be upgraded to water plants at regular intervals.

 

RD: Not much to add here, particularly if above methods go through. That said the ability for the RD to have a way to program or upgrade the AI and Cyborgs through ease-of-use/quality-of-life methods such being able to give the borgs night vision, upgrading the AI's tracking and ability to recognize requests, auto scripts that could recognize commands and execute orders based off those commands (If Captain says lockdown, AI could program all doors to bridge and Caps office to shut, bolt and electrify, for example. If Doctor says emergency all doors in 3 tile radius go to emergency access for 15 seconds, ect...)

 

[Kyet]

 

Scientist:

- Change R&D. Instead of certain tech levels requiring the EXPERIMENTOR, delete the EXPERIMENTOR entirely, and have those levels attained by Science doing experiments on weird objects ordered from CentCom through Cargo. This drives interaction with Cargo, and eliminates the god-awful EXPERIMENTOR which is nothing but an annoyance. If we absolutely must keep the experimentor, then divorce it from R&D. Make it able to alter the properties of items in a semi-random way. So you could use it to get super-powerful lights, dull swords, etc.

- Slightly reinforce the scichem lab. Quite regularly, someone screws up, blowing the whole thing up and effectively ending all of scichem for that round. A single decently-sized grenade destroys the test lab. It isn't big or tough enough.

- Better integrate xenobio with the rest of the station. Currently, xenobio is only useful for creating pet monsters. It should have more uses then that. Additionally, having pet xenomorphs/etc should not be as common. It takes a lot of the magic out of these monsters when you're more likely to see them as a scientist's pet than you are to see them as a legitimate threat. Make a potion that allows players inside pet mobs (e.g: Runtime, Ian) to speak English. Make slime-based ingredients which the chef can use to cook interesting food. RP things like that.

- Stop xenobio from breeding 9,999 spiders and flooding ghosts with "do you want to be a spider?" prompts constantly for the whole shift. I put an end to this when I see it as an admin, but I shouldn't have to. At minimum, there should be a "NEVER" option for player-controlled spiders which silences all spider-relates join prompts for that player for the rest of the round.

- Increase the damage of the decloner, and reduce the cost of the plasma pistol. Currently, they are not worth their cost. Similarly, perhaps increase the cost of the ion rifle a bit (they're so powerful, e.g: being a one-hit kill on swarmers).

- Reduce the number of tier 1 parts strewn throughout R&D at roundstart. They are never used.

 

 

Robotocist:

- Stop securitrons/ED209s tasing/cuffing robotocists who hold a stunbaton for 0.5 seconds while assembling them. It is annoying and pointless, both for Robotocists, and Security.

- Fix the phazon, which (last I checked), is currently broken, and not able to phase through anything.

- Display the material efficiency rating of the mech constructors in their menus. I am so tired of robotocists using ALL the materials to make one mech, because they never learned to wait until upgrades are done.

- Place a bucket in Robotics by default. There is really no excuse not to make cleanerbots as robotocist. They're tireless, amazing miracle-workers.

- Make sure it is easy for robotics to construct a bot that picks up trash. Often, nobody bothers picking up the trash on station.

 

RD:

- Revisit Lamarr's display case. Last time I tried to open it as RD, I couldn't. Maybe a bug, maybe me being dumb, but regardless, take a look at it and verify it can be opened. More generally, perhaps we should replace Lamarr as the RD's pet. Lamarr is a blatent half-life reference that is quite old at this point. Lamarr never really gets out of their case, either. The fun factor of Lamarr is quite low. I'm sure there are better ideas for a RD pet out there.

- Consider giving the RD basic medbay access. Much of the time, the RD does R&D, and thus needs to get into medbay to upgrade it. They can already get in via genetics, or morgue. Not having medbay access doesn't stop them getting in - it just makes it more cumbersome than it has to be for no benefit. By the same token, the CMO should probably get basic science access because someone ALWAYS dies in science, and the RD should not be the only person with the required access to get them all the way to medbay. This would reduce hassle for both heads, and encourage them to work together more often.

- Move the PDA password paper out of their office, and into the server room. It is way easier to break into the server room than the RD's office, and doing so should let you use the console there - unless the RD takes the paper or changes the code. The PDA monitoring console never gets used by antags, and the reason why is that the paper is too hard to get when placed in the RD's office.

 

 

Genetecist (I consider this to be part of Science):

- Do something to make it easier for them to handle bodies / discourage them always flushing badly-irradiated farwas down disposals. The amount of times this generates a false security alert, wasting everyones' time, is annoying.

- Make them exclusively part of Science, have MDs handle cloning, and have a dedicated Coroner RP job to handle time-consuming dead body processing, like doing autopsies. Genetecists already spend 90%+ of their time doing powers research, calling them a "split department" is a lie. They're part of science, and the only reason people pretend otherwise is that they want someone to take responsibility for cloning - something that doctors, who are currently often idle, could benefit from the additional responsibility of.

- Back off on some of the nerfs to genetics that were implemented. Nobody likes xray/TK/hulks everywhere, but in its current state, genetics barely has reason to exist. I no longer expect Genetics to do anything useful in most rounds.

- Consider adding a fridge, like the medbay medicine fridge, which only stores SE syringes. Genetics could stock it with clean SE syringes. That would be something helpful they could produce for the station. Similarly, they could put useful but harmless power syringes in it for the crew to use.

- Remove or alter the 'fade out until you are invisible' power. Catching an antag that has it is very hard. It allows people to set up almost undetectable ambushes. Having it isn't always a benefit as, last I heard, you can't hear anything while you're invisible. It seems rather gimmicky overall.

- Also, stop hulks being able to completely disguise the fact they have hulk by wearing a suit and mask. Hulk should alter your body shape such that it is impossible to hide you have it. Or give you a permanent green glow. Hulks are so strong already - being able to keep their power secret until they choose to use it makes them unstoppable in many combat situations. They are capable of meleeing xenomorphs and winning, a fact that the xeno doesn't find out until they're downed by a punch. Hulk status should be more obvious.

 

[NethIafin]

 

Make levels of tech be actual science. This can be achieved in two VERY complicated steps

1) all items on decon return lower science levels than needed to create in the first place

2) make research also based on stuff. Tachyon detector got explosion 3? give em weapons 3 (or 2 or 4, whatever). Sci-Chemist just made SR? Well if he puts it in this device (insert devicename here), you get biology 3 (or 2 or 4, you get the point). You were able to create energy pulse of power 600kW (by smes, or load of PACMANs)? Use in with this device and get power level 3 (do I have to repeat that numbers are optional?=) ). Heck... the cargo can have Hadron Collider package that will allow you to get dank levels in power and other stuff.

 

Make research ACTUALLY research. Allow them to take stuff from botany or get help from engineering. Make some stuff complicated and other stuff easy but requiring help from other divisions.

 

You may say, that this will make science even more memefest than it is, and you might be right. BUT that can be trimmed, and right now it is already just remembering a list of stuffs, and if you don't know the list, you will be yelled at.

 

I hope I am understood=)

PLS security next

 

[Dinarzad]

 

Display the material efficiency rating of the mech constructors in their menus. I am so tired of robotocists using ALL the materials to make one mech, because they never learned to wait until upgrades are done.

 

To be fair, in my personal experience, The rest of Science treats robotics like a red-headed step-child. The amount of times RnD actually bothers to come upgrade anything in my lab, I can count on one hand. Hell, they don't even ask me for mech parts to speed research along anymore.

 

They just kinda do their thing, and I happen to unlock blueprints in the process.

 

[Da Dman234]

 

Ayyy, something I've researched extensively. I have no idea if you're aware or not but I've looked into this quite a bit, if you feel like reading up on some input as to what's wrong with science check out my old thread, feel free to steal any ideas you like.

 

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7661

 

That being said, at the end of that very long journey I came to the conclusion that science can't really be changed/broken up unless you tackle the core component of RnD and circuit printing. So, do something with that. I had neither the creativity nor the coding knowledge to tackle the problem, here's hoping you have better luck! Cheers.

 

[Keroman]

 

Ayyy, something I've researched extensively. I have no idea if you're aware or not but I've looked into this quite a bit, if you feel like reading up on some input as to what's wrong with science check out my old thread, feel free to steal any ideas you like.

 

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7661

 

That being said, at the end of that very long journey I came to the conclusion that science can't really be changed/broken up unless you tackle the core component of RnD and circuit printing. So, do something with that. I had neither the creativity nor the coding knowledge to tackle the problem, here's hoping you have better luck! Cheers.

 

I definitely had that thread in mind when I posted this. I'm going to include that in the list of ideas when I post a staff thread for us to discuss what's posted here. I'm definitely a big proponent of a lot of your ideas there.

 

Davidchan: I really like your idea of having players utilize prototypes in order to increase their tech levels. That would make any department that benefits from R&D way more involved in the process.

 

Bot control consoles in Robotics would be neat, especially if it gave them the same kind of control over bots that the AI has. Having a larger variety of bots as well as necessitating the need for them to charge also adds a little more for Robotics to do.

 

The ideas for the RD are intriguing but I feel like that might also give a lot more power to antag-RDs which are already pretty damn powerful.

 

tzo: Fuck the EXPERIMENTOR for sure. Scichem lab should definitely be better reinforced. Xenobio does need a bit of a rework but I think you're forgetting about other things it can produce, like bluespace tiles and self-charging power cells. Remove the hostile-mob gold slime core reaction and make it so ANY mob spawned with a gold slime core has a chance to be hostile so people can still get their pets but with some risk involved. I would move the low-tier parts from R&D to Tech Storage.

 

Yes, fix Security-bots and the Phazon. Buckets? Why not, or at least make them easier to get (see previous thread about putting autolathe in a publicly accessible area). More bot types = yes.

 

I thought Lamarr's display case was based off the Captain's display case, and that one doesn't work particularly well either so we should definitely look into getting them both fixed. I'm iffy on the idea of RDs having medbay access. It's not difficult to get into Medbay in the first place, and all the things that need upgrading are within line of sight from the main medbay loop. Messenger console password should spawn in several different places = RD's office, Server Room, Captain's Office, Vault. There should be a way for antags to access the PDA message console functionality without having to go into the Server Room - possibly a module they could plug into a laptop to get that functionality.

 

Geneticist will get its own thread as for now it is still kind of in a weird state of being between Medbay and RD.

 

Neth: Your first point is a very good one. There shouldn't be any item that can be made at the protolathe that can be analyzed for the same or higher tech level than was required to make it. That's one of the main reasons people are able to complete R&D so quickly. Your second point is intriguing but seems like it could be difficult to implement. I do like the idea of having R&D use items produced by the other Science subdepartments to improve tech levels. Slime cores of various colors could improve biotech (with a rainbow core being the highest level), grenades from the chemlab could improve things like combat tech or biotech depending on what's in them, hell deconstruct a maxcap toxin bomb for some levels. Miners should be able to bring things like hivelord cores, goliath plates, or even some of cult/wiz/traitor items that are regularly found on the asteroid.

 

[BadApple797]

 

The only suggestion I got for which job to improve on after Cargo Tech was Scientist so that's what we'll go with.

 

Personally I think engineering needs improvements. Its mostly obsolete with the new atmos(there is no need for any atmos techs). I used to play Engineer exclusively, but it is hard to muster the will to fix window number 15859 when no one cares about it in the first place, and the only really special gear you get access to are hardsuits and pipe dispensers.

 

I think science is one of the better off jobs. It is extremely powerful, for both antags (Those damn Traitor RDs always cause trouble) both also for the crew (guns, fast hardsuits, chems, artifacts)

 

But some cool ideas (imo) that I had to add to science were:

Change strange objects and the experiementor. Or expand, really. Currently strange objects are basically button press things, and they don't do anything until they are experimented on. Add it so that the objects can be armor, weapons, medical devices, and can work from the getgo (but without giving away what they do). They could have properties such as:

 

• Inject a chem into the wielder / victim

• protect from certain kind of damage over certain body areas

mutate the wielder / victim

RP effects. Some of the older players may remember a cult that formed around an xeno-arch artifact that simply made people who touched it "feel good"

Deal certain kind of damage / heal certain kind of damage

Require charge (like tasers)

Charge other items (eg armor that charges your taser while you hold it)

Cause a non-transmissible virus (spider eggs, nanites, ect)

Spell Effects

Grenade Effects

Self Destruction of the object

Scan things (detective, atmos, medical, ect)

Heal / Deal organ damage

 

 

Then change the experimentor system to work a bit more like botany with genes. Scientists can identify attributes of the device, and then apply them (with some kind of limiting factor, botany uses "gene corruption" or such, maybe an overall strength that gets divided among all the attributes) to new objects (probably make them cost minerals)

 

This would make science more interesting each round, more powerful given time ( in botany it typically takes me about 45mins to produce genetically weaponized tomatoes) and would make artifacts in maint fun but dangerous to use - maybe you find a thing that injects you with omnizine, but secretly does brain damage as well

 

[alexpkeaton]

 

First of all, I think scientist is low on the list of jobs that need more fun features. They have access to slimes, R&D, secret antag clubhouse and a ton of goodies. More features are fine, but in my opinion, scientist needs to be sliced up and more developed as useful job(s) to the station.

 

I think the best way to do this is to split up the position into several roles. This has been suggested by Ping and others. Their ideas are far more finished than mine.

 

Second, I agree that supply and science should have more of a relationship, something more than "WHY U NO MATERIALS CARGO?" The notion of doing research on items shipped from CC is a great idea.

 

Next, location of toxins. Not. On. Cyberiad. What is the only practical use for bombs on the station? Miners. Put toxins on the mining asteroid. Not on the science outpost. Honestly, scrap that place. Make one, larger outpost for toxins research and mining to share. A common room in the middle, plenty of reinforced walls and plasma glass, and mining on one side, science on the other. Perhaps even a conveyor belt from the toxins lab so science can send their bombs to miners without dangerous handoffs inside. Obviously there is plenty of possibilities for bomb testing in an asteroid belt. I'd envision a wing of the science portion of the outpost looking like the current test range: a diamond of reinforced steel, with a long, narrow hallway of plasma glass leading from one point of the diamond to the rest of the outpost. This new toxins test lab would have three mass drivers on the other cardinal points of the test lab, each facing a sizeable asteroid in space. That way, you can get more than one (destructive) test.

 

More later, I think. But my lunch is ending...

 

[tristan1333]

I think science needs to be made dangerous, especially if we're going to keep the current "copy X from database" type stuff with how it currently runs. Basing certain destructive reactions according to the reliability of a component perhaps. Hell, just so long as there is something that throws a spanner in the works would be great. Maybe needing to go and do a certain scientific thing to advance to a certain level. Maybe it causes anomalies to appear on the station rather than them being completely random events. Bluespace anomalies from sciences would be hilarious, albeit, would need to be kept in line.

[pazneria12]

For Robotosist, First of all I agree with the person above who said let them start with a bucket, for gods sake yes, secondly, I think that Robotosists should be able to build a sort of remote controlled robot/vehicle that can do simple tasks to keep the robotosist busy, like fetching the robototist something from tool storage so that people stop breaking in whenever the robotisist steps out for five seconds, I dont have that fleshed out, I just think something along those lines would be neat to keep the robotosist occupied, and the people wanting your toolbelt happy-ish.

[Fox McCloud]

 

Allow roboticists to utilize R&D again, now that the phazon isn't really an issue anymore.

 

I really don't like the idea of expanding more off-station sites or pushing more things off station, regardless of how much IC sense it makes.

 

It just encourages risk-free antaggy behavior and further entrenches science as being the department that has "everything".

 

Getting rid of the experimentor's level-altering ability and forcing the ultra-high end research to require things from other departments, I think, is the best option we have for making science more dependent on other departments. Just making science "experimental" is likely to involve RNG and still ultimately lead to the same problem anyway; science will still have all the toys and still will be the isolated department that doesn't have to interact with anyone, ever.

 

Also, the framework for establishing such a system would be extremely difficult and extremely time-consuming, especially when we can address some of the changes present in current versions of R&D without tossing out all that it currently brings to the table.

 

[Wheatley29]

I believe if we make the Research Director a more vital aspect beyond "I am a scientist with special goggles and suspected to be a traitor more". I feel as if any experiments that do involve danger such as explosions MUST go through the Research Director first. That way the science comms channel will end up seeing more use and as will the Research Director role as a whole

[pazneria12]

 

I believe if we make the Research Director a more vital aspect beyond "I am a scientist with special goggles and suspected to be a traitor more". I feel as if any experiments that do involve danger such as explosions MUST go through the Research Director first. That way the science comms channel will end up seeing more use and as will the Research Director role as a whole

The problem with that is that anyone who wants to expiriment with things will have to wait an ungodly amount of time in some cases, and some RD's seem like they dont want to watch what everyone else is doing.

 

[Keroman]

 

Here's the list of suggestions gathered from this thread. I'll post this list in the Admin section so we can discuss them and try to figure out which ones, if any, would work best.

 

- R&D makes "prototype" equipment which has a data stat that increases with use of the equipment, then can be DA'd for a higher tech level.

- Add bot (not borg!) control terminal to robotics

- Make bots require power/have internal batteries and need to recharge in borg chargers or small wall-mounted chargers throughout the station.

- More variety of bots: trash-bot, botany-bot, etc.

- Night vision module for borgs

- Add scripting/QoL stuff for RD, i.e. upgrades for AI, voice recognition ability that can trigger actions, etc.

- Experimentor GTFO

- R&D can experiment on objects ordered from cargo

- If keeping Experimentor change how it works so that it alters properties of items. (See list of potential effects here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9429#p77481 )

- Further reinforce chemlab test range.

- Better integrate xenobio with the rest of the station, lower rate of (or eliminate) xenomorph spawns from gold slime cores.

- Add xenobio potions that grants speech to animals.

- Allow xenobio to provide further stuff for other depts. like ingredients for food.

- Remove "Do you want to be a spider?" notification for the rest of the round after clicking "no" the first time. <-- Clearly a mistake/oversight and PLEASE FIX ASAP AAAA THE SPIDERS AAAAAAAAA

- Adjust damage/cost of certain weapons made in the protolathe to be more consistent.

- Remove/reduce/move tier 1 parts from R&D (possibly move them to tech storage?)

- Fix security bots (ED209s and Beepskies) cuffing roboticists with tasers/stun batons while constructing more sec bots.

- Fix Phazon because it cannot into phase!

- Display material efficiency rating in mech fabricators/autolathe/protolathe

- GIB ROBOTICS BUCKETS PLZ

- Fix Lamarr's display case (and by extension probably the Captain's display case too)

- Give RD basic medbay access

- Move encryption key paper out of RD's office and into Server Room (or, alternatively, place several in various places: RD office, Captain's office, Vault, etc.)

- Ensure items printed from the protolathe can't be deconstructed for higher tech levels than were needed to print them.

- Give tech levels for experiments within the Research department (for instance, the Tachyon Detector giving level in Weapons tech if it detects an explosion of a large enough size)

- Gold slime core reactions changed so that any time creatures are spawned they have a chance to be hostile.

- Add antag item that allows them to monitor PDA message traffic.

- Split Science up into several subdepartments without access to each others' labs. See this thread for more info: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=7661 )

- Move toxins testing off-station to the mining asteroid or it's own small station.

- Add uncertainty to Destructive Analyzer based on the tier of parts. Give it a chance to generate anomalies on the station if it fails to analyze something properly.

- Give Roboticists access to the R&D console again.

- Encourage R&D to work with other departments to acquire the highest tier tech items.

- Require RD to approve of any "dangerous" experiments (SOP change?)

 

Genetics (which we'll revisit once we move on to Medbay jobs)

- Give Genetics a better way to handle bodies of the creatures they experiment on. Possibly dedicate Coroner job to handle dead bodies?

- Have doctors handle cloning, make Genetics fully part of Research.

- Ease up on some of the recent nerfs to Genetics.

- Add smartfridge for genetics syringes

- Remove or change "chameleon" power so it's more useful.

- Make it impossible for someone with the Hulk gene to hide the fact they have it.

 

Thanks for all the input, folks!