Warriorstar

During a discussion on why cargo shouldn't be able to order more varied kinds of weapons: Can confirm.

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.

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. 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

Thanks for all the feedback! 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. 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. 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. I'm not sure what you mean; Cargo's always had this chute. It connects directly to recycling. 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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

I spend a lot of time in cargo, and especially in highpop rounds, it can get pretty messy and crowded. There's also a bunch of things I think are unnecessarily inefficient. I've thought about improvements that could be made without a major redesign of the map or station. 1. The autolathe conveyor. I make it nearly every shift and it's such a better layout than the default. 2. Move the shuttle console to the docking hatches. I think the supply shuttle is the only one that can't be controlled from the same place it docks. 3. A new, separate maint lane for the MULEs. Anything that would keep them from going out the two sets of front airlocks and getting in the way. 4. The QM's office is open to the cargo lobby and a bit of the hallway, and it has no shutters to block things out. I'd at least add shutters, and maybe move the office further back into cargo to get it away from a fairly high traffic hallway. 5. No one ever uses the "mailing room" and its front desk for anything, so I'd move the package delivery stuff into the bay, with an exclusive disposals chute. I'd use the space to crate an exclusive area for picking up and dropping off crates. 6. Give the disposals chute a direct and one-way airlock into the hallway, so people who go down disposals don't hang around in cargo and get stuck. 7. Make the warehouse clean and well lit by default. 8. Move the ORM closer to the mining bay so miners don't have to drag their ore boxes through the rest of the department. What would you do with your favorite department?

Crew with cargo access ignoring the lobby line—and the person manning the requests desk—to print things from the autolathe themselves. It drives me up a fucking wall. Just fucking ask! The worst offenders are BS, Command, and borgs.