Improving Jobs: Engineer

[Keroman]

 

The only suggestion I got for which job to improve on after Science was Engineering so that's what we'll go with. I'll also accept suggestions for the Chief Engineer and Mechanic jobs, however I think we should give Atmos Techs their own thread as.. well let's just say I think that thread will probably bigger than pretty much any other thread about job improvements.

 

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!

 

Station Engineer

Mechanic

Chief Engineer

 

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!

 

[NethIafin]

 

I have 1 quick request for now.

Make 5-15% chance that there is no PA this round and you cannot order new ones. Tell that we lost contract with company that makes them, announce that on round start (1-2 minutes after). That will create rounds that are fun for engineers (at least at the start, when they struggle to choose the engine that doesn't need the PA) and it shouldn't be everytime.

 

I may write more later.

 

[Keroman]

 

In my experience the most common criticism about the Engineer job is that once the main engine is set up there's literally nothing else to do until something needs fixing. The problem is that it's going to be tricky to find something for Engineers to do to fill their downtime while also giving them the ability to drop it at a moments notice to go work on higher priority stuff.

 

I definitely would like to see changes to the engine. There should be some maintenance necessary, but there should also be some sort of alarm to warn the Engineering team about the maintenance. The plasma tanks in the radiation collectors should deplete more quickly, requiring changing at least once per shift when the singulo is in use. The tesla should output much less energy at round start so that the solars/turbine/TEG/PACMAN are necessary to keep everything running until the tesla manages to "spool up" enough.

 

Necaladun had a solid idea about having department-based SMESs rather than having nearly all the power storage located in a single place. The main power lines would be beefier and more resilient against sabotage, or more likely to fry a person to ashes if they tamper with them without the proper gear, and then from the SMES tucked away inside a department the regular cables could provide power to the area APCs.

 

The Mechanic can be decently fun to play if you just want to get away from the station and faff about in space, but I still maintain that there should be a spaceworthy suit and a full-size oxy tank in the Mechanic's office at round start (or alternatively they should have EVA access without begging the HoP for it.) If we want to pretend that the Mechanic has some sort of responsibility within the Engineering department then we could assume they should be monitoring the exterior of the station for damage and fixing it or reinforcing as necessary, which means they need the appropriate gear. I've also seen Mechanics act as space-based search and rescue which, again, necessitates spaceworthy gear.

 

[Spacemanspark]

I wish we had the supermatter room + supermatter back.

[Purpose2]

 

Remove the Tesla Engine as a round-start item. If they really want it they can order it.

 

Map maintenance to have random areas breached. This'll add something to do at round start before the antags get rolling.

 

Tot rounds are usually where Engineering is busy, but Vampire and Changeling very very little happens, so we need some ideas particularly for those rounds I think.

 

[shazbot194]

 

I have 1 quick request for now.

Make 5-15% chance that there is no PA this round and you cannot order new ones. Tell that we lost contract with company that makes them, announce that on round start (1-2 minutes after). That will create rounds that are fun for engineers (at least at the start, when they struggle to choose the engine that doesn't need the PA) and it shouldn't be everytime.

 

I may write more later.

 

Why not also have it possibly give you a random engine, such as giving you only a tesla, sing, or neither so you have to order one, or even possibly have it spawn with different levels of being set up, such as having almost nothing set up but rather crates full of supplies with possibly some crates missing to where it is now where all you need to do is press a couple buttons and maybe insert some tanks, or have the normal engine room replace with a couple turbines or supermatter. I feel like this could break up some of the manontany that engineering can have round start.

 

[Rurik]

Its funny that even though I play engineer the most, I have very few ideas of how to actually improve it. However I heard the idea of too much power going through the system, much more than needed, causing wires to short out and perhaps light on fire. I like the idea of engineers monitoring how much power they are outputting, for fear of overloading the grid.

[tristan1333]

 

I have a few ideas:

1. A Nuclear Engine with cooling rods. Dipping the rods produces less power, but increases the safety/decreases the destruction due to malfunction. Raising them increases the power/increases the destruction. Furthermore, the rods would have to be checked throughout the round to ensure they are optimal, else a malfunction occur. It'd be an engine with a little bit of playing room, gives the engineers something to do over the course of the round, and can be potentially devastating if misused.

2. For the mechanic, I think it'd be cool if they served more customization roles. I made the pod paint, but I think adding decals that can be colored to the mechs would be cool too. I've got sprites for them, and meant to code them in, butlazy.

3. I like the idea of circuit fires, but I think it'd be cool if knotted cables did that rather than straight up overpowering the system. I think it's BETTER that we encourage engineers meme out the power grid as much as possible, and don't punish them for achieving god tier power. Also, ontop of this, random knotted cables appear in maint, so a picky engineer might want to go into maint and fix those.

 

[Kyet]

 

In my experience the most common criticism about the Engineer job is that once the main engine is set up there's literally nothing else to do until something needs fixing.

You're right.

 

IMHO:

1) Rebalance the Tesla, so that there are pros/cons to each engine, rather than the tesla just being the objective best engine all the time.

2) Have more abandoned / partially constructed areas of the station, so Engineers have a wider choice of projects they can do throughout the round.

3) Have a VERY MINOR meteor shower be a highly probable event, so most rounds there will be some damage somewhere to fix.

 

[davidchan]

 

I have a few ideas:

1. A Nuclear Engine with cooling rods. Dipping the rods produces less power, but increases the safety/decreases the destruction due to malfunction. Raising them increases the power/increases the destruction. Furthermore, the rods would have to be checked throughout the round to ensure they are optimal, else a malfunction occur. It'd be an engine with a little bit of playing room, gives the engineers something to do over the course of the round, and can be potentially devastating if misused.

 

 

SS13 already has this. It's called the R-UST engine and baycode laid the foundation for one and /vg/ actually coded it.

 

It's a bit more babysitting but like most SS13 engines it's just scary to new players because if you fuck up the set up bad things happen. Once you learn to use it you can easily set it up to to run 2+ hours with little to no problems, but the MOAR POWA settings do require constant tweaking to prevent making space chernobyl/fukashima.

 

Ultimately it's only a more complicated Supermatter that superheats the air around it, allowing said air to be channeled into a ThermoElectricGenerator (TEG) engine that creates energy based upon the differential between its 'hot' and 'cold' inputs. The R-UST engine itself doesn't produce power that I'm aware of but creates steam for a turbine to run, much like how actual Nuclear Power Plants function today.

 

For me, the path to fixing engineering is as this:

 

1) Make power mean something. Currently the power needs about 250kW to sustain itself long term, though it's possible to do this under 150kW on less populated stations. Solars produce this much, and the Turbine can as well, with the actual engines both capable of producing up to 2-5 million with default set ups. This ultimately means that the primary job of Engineering, setting up power, is mostly meaningless because once the SMESes have been fully charged 15 minutes in you can just disable the engine and do nothing. Power needs an actual use right now since the only time you notice it is when it's not set up or a cable was cut to APCs.

 

Solution to this? Make a shield generator that needs constant power to maintain and regular meteor/asteroid waves that pound the shields and drain power. Also having thrusters on all sides of the station that can produce thrust, giving us an imaginary orbital map of the station floating somewhere between the planet and asteroid belt that miners go to mine. Changing the orbit could be done to avoid heavy meteor showers or potential events, with a risk reward of the station staying in certain altitudes could decrease cargo shuttle times and affect how quickly people could get to the miner asteroid (I've asked before how difficult it would be to RNG 300x300 small asteroid belt mining maps but never got a reply) and going the reverse could increase these times while reducing the impact of events like radiation belts or meteor showers by drifting closer to the planet's magnetic sphere to shield the station. Traitors could have objectives or options to fully de-orbit the station (sinking it into the upper atmospheres of the Gas Giant it orbits, changing space tiles into plasma tiles and ramping up the pressure outside the station till the windows and walls implode like a sinking submarine) or pushing it into the asteroid belt to ram it into a larger asteroid or just let it get shredded to pieces.

 

These thrusters and shields would both require a lot of power, overloads to equipment could damage or destroy them requiring repairs or replacements while the station is vulnerable. Station equipment in general could just be ramped up in power usage, particularly science who are the most reliant on their machines, but places like Security or Engineering too could use more QOL machines to increase their power usage. A Security Lathe that creates and prints security specific items, for example, or an 'Interrogation Chair' that can be used to zap prisoners to help encourage them to speak, or even the Station/Prison VR network that was talked about. Engineers could use something similar to the bluespace shelters on tg lavaland that allows them to design or set up basic station structures and toss the capsules onto catwalks or space to rapidly create rooms for station expansion. There are dozens of other ideas that could be put to the test as high power consumption items like Orbital Mining Lasers to Power Transmission Beam. We'd ultimately just have to find what the server would get the most use out of and what would be the easiest to implement. Keeping with the current limit to the powernet there could be overlapping power nets to each wing and Engineering would have to determine every round how much power each department/wing was using and adjust from there if we did manage to make it so the station was using 5+ million power every round.

 

Also Carp should ATTACK solar panels on sight, as proper solar panels would be a mirror almost and they should see their reflection and go apeshit like a Betaifsh trying to destroy them, makings even Solar Panels requiring SOME checking from time to time.

 

TL;DR Part 1 decrease the efficiency of power production by making the station consume more power and make more ways to use power.

 

2) Preventative Maintenance. Currently the only things that fall under this category are the green Space Fungus random events that are generally ignored because it takes for ever for a fungus infected wall to crumble and that rarely does anything because the girder is still in place. Constantly used machines across the station from APCs and Air Alarms to medbay equipment, science or even vending machines should require regular checking up on them to ensure they are operating at 100% and won't break down. Engineers would have to move about the station inspecting and scanning the various objects throughout the shift. Mice and other station rodents chewing on cables or even stress points and cracks showing up on T-Ray scanners that the engineers would have to address quickly or else the station might breach itself without an explosion. Not only would this give engineers shit do like their Science/Medical/Security counterparts on the station, but it would also give most traitor engineers a very good excuse to get into departments and areas they'd otherwise be turned away from to inspect for damage or problems on a regular basis, and if players are more used to seeing engineering in their departments they might actually remember they exist and even go as far to ask for upgrades or layout changes to their work areas (adding/removing walls and doors to create/remove rooms, new machines, ect...)

 

Further more, I feel the equipment in Atmosia should require some babysitting, maybe some ACTUAL filters that require replacing or even various methods of doing this (rapid heating and cooling to kill bacteria/changing gas states, bombarding with radiation, or the current classic filters) with each method having a con/pro compared to the others in terms of power efficiency, change of removing or preventing viral agents from spreading to just what really does happen if a swarmer or mouse crawls through all that radiation?

 

3)More engineering related events. Shorts or overloads in the powernet, metal stress causing parts of the station to shift, fluctuations in the gravity generator, ect... Currently the only real engineering events are not something engineers can do much about. The Power Outage, while a good event for traitors and a slowdown in the shift doesn't really have anything the engineers can do aside from crowbar open doors to save trapped people before the SMESes finally turn back online. Meteors on the other hand is almost always an instant shuttle because the waves have no lull in them to allow for repairs, they either do minimal damage to part of the station no one cares about (maint or arrivals) or damage someplace vital and instantly get the shuttle called because if an engineer does try to go out and repair while the meteors are still coming they will die and by the time the event passes its unreasonable to assume they'd fix the area before the shuttle comes anyways. The vending machine event is the closest engineers get to being useful on the station since they have the tools to shut down rogue vending machines before they animate but even then, so does pretty much any prepared station crew member.

 

4)Stop making perpetual energy engines/change the ones we have Currently, the PA is a cool design, admittedly, but its also just spending power to make more power. Tesla and Singularity can both be wired to directly pour energy into the emitters and PA so the power they expend naturally is a pitance compared to what they will continually produced. Engineering barely burns any plasma as is in radiation collectors, and while the PACMANs were once a good and balanced trade of Plasma for power, they serve no point and engineering doesn't use up any resources they can't easily get more of doing their basic job, and the only major limiting factor is how much time they want to spend on set up. Repairs similarly are mostly just dependant on how much metal and glass Cargo is willing to order/miners have collected and if Science didn't steal everything in the ORM before they got there.

 

PA should probably consume Uranium or maybe have lenses that can be fashioned out of Diamonds that wear out over time, emitters needing to be recalibrated or replaced after over use and so on. Just adding an operational cost and regular maintenance intervals would go a long way from making this a non-job into something that engages the player and makes their presence actually useful. Chief Engineer should be one of the hardest jobs on the station requiring them to manage who goes where and guess how much time that job will take, juggling which tasks are most important and pressing at the moment and hoping the crew as a whole doesn't realize how close to imploding on itself the station really is. Presently its a job that facilitated up to 9 people and can be entirely run and managed by one person barring saboteurs or terrible RNG luck with meteors.

 

[Rurik]

 

Presently its a job that facilitated up to 9 people and can be entirely run and managed by one person barring saboteurs or terrible RNG luck with meteors.

 

This is completely true. Unless it turns into a hectic round, which most do not, one or two can manage everything completely fine. This is what I find worrisome about people suggesting to increase engineer job slots, as there is not enough that needs doing for the current amount of slots.

 

As far as the other suggestions davidchan mentioned, they all sound like a good improvement to me.

 

[Purpose2]

 

snip

 

Can we do basically all of this?

 

 

Also I hadn't really thought about it, but holy shit this should be true but isn't:

 

Chief Engineer should be one of the hardest jobs on the station

 

[BiberDark]

+1 for davidchans ideas

[Splgrk]

 

On the subject of scary engines, a nuclear engine could actually be considerably less scary than a tesla or singularity escape event, which kill everyone.

 

What would a nuclear meltdown do? I'd imagine first an explosion in the reactor area, then radiation. I'd model it similar to the radiation cloud area, where people outside maint take a considerable dose of radiation. But unlike the tesla or singulo, it wouldn't kill everyone. It could even be temporary, with the radiation dying down after a few minutes.

 

That would balance the engine a bit: more maintenance with fuel rods and carbon control rods, or heavy water cycles, but considerably less scary in case things go wrong. It could even give a warning quite some time before it goes wrong, via a control panel or the AI.

 

[alexpkeaton]

 

+1 for davidchans ideas

 

Preventative maintenance is especially brilliant, including the part in section 3 about the PA and emitters needing diamond/uranium part replacement. Imagine a station where there isn't power to spare, an emitter dies due to breakdown and there are no replacements in secure storage, you are moments away from engine containment failure and mining has been shit this shift. An engi is dragging an emitter around containment to try and keep charge up until mining gets its act together, when it dies too...

 

Yeah, let's do all of this.

 

P.S. Keroman, this may not be a popular suggestion, but I'd like to Make Captain Great Again in a future thread. Right now they are a babysitter for the disk and that's pretty much their usefulness. From game-changing decisions like davidchan's orbital mechanics suggestion to other things the Captain can/needs to do, surely the job can be made more than it is right now.

 

[Purpose2]

 

What would a nuclear meltdown do? I'd imagine first an explosion in the reactor area, then radiation. I'd model it similar to the radiation cloud area, where people outside maint take a considerable dose of radiation. But unlike the tesla or singulo, it wouldn't kill everyone. It could even be temporary, with the radiation dying down after a few minutes.

 

Thats what Supermatter does

 

 

How about this for an idea... Batteries in APCs / stun prods and everywhere else a battery can be found, have a chance to burn out during the shift and have to be replaced.. and on the preventative maintenance bit, they'll spark sporadically for 120 seconds before burning out.

 

Engineers having to get the latest battery upgrades from R&D and upgrade the APCs around the station makes a lot of sense. It'll also make things more interesting for antags etc, if areas batteries can pop.

 

[GelatinousGlob]

 

Honestly if engineering had just a large reinforced walled area with air (but not covered in vents) you wouldn't need extra built in engine sor changing engines.

 

Currently if you want to build a supermatter engine or TEG you either have to build a large area that isn't going to be radiation or intruder safe due to lack of plasteel which still takes half the shift to build, you have to empty out some place like secure storage and modify a micro engine design to fit which takes twice as long to cram in such a tiny place, or you can take over an empty maintenance area and get arrested when your creation gets fucked by greytide and starts killing people.

 

Im talking about atleast a 10x10 area with reinforced walls, likely a bit bigger. It should have power and start with air but have little to no vents (otherwise you gotta rip up the pressurized pipes anyways), and it wouldn't hurt to start with either extra plasteel or even just a small bit of plasma glass.

 

This would give engineers space to build things safely and not immediately irradiate the crew or burn them to their deaths (hopefully since reinforced walls no longer are fireproof).

 

[Keroman]

 

Here's the list of suggestions that have been gathered for Engineer/Chief Engineer/Mechanic. I'll post the next thread shortly.

 

- Small chance at round start that there is no Particle Accelerator (one can still be ordered from cargo)

- Add necessary maintenance to engine/power network, plus some alarm that warns Engineers when maintenance is needed.

- Plasma tanks should deplete more quickly in radiation collectors, requiring changing at least once per round.

- Tesla should output less energy than stage 3 singularity at round start, but gradually grow in power output throughout the round.

- Rework power network to add department-based SMESs and appropriate wiring.

- Add spaceworthy suit and full-size oxy tank to Mechanic workshop AND/OR give Mechanic EVA access by default.

- Re-add supermatter room and have round-start supermatter crate in secure storage. (Possibly 10x10 or 12x12 with air and power but no piping or vents.)

- Remove energy ball generator (tesla engine) from round-start engine selection, but still allow it to be ordered from cargo.

- Random breaches in maint on round start.

- Randomize how much the engine is set up on round start. Some rounds have it nearly completely set up (as it is now) and other rounds require engineering to set up field generators, emitters, cabling and all manually.

- Chance to replace engine containment with a turbine or supermatter setup at round start.

- Overloading the power grid can cause wires to burn out and/or start fires.

- Add nuclear engine with cooling rods to affect stability/power output.

- Add decals for decorating spacepods.

- Knotted cables cause sparks/fires, randomize cabling in maint to sometimes have knotted cables at round start.

- Rebalance Tesla (and all engines really) to have pros and cons rather than having one hassle-free engine.

- Add more abandoned/partially constructed areas to the station.

- Add minor meteor shower event (even more minor than the current weakest meteor event.)

- Rebalance power usage vs. output, either by adding more equipment to draw power from the SMESs or events that require power usage to prevent/mitigate

= Add shield generators around the station and regular meteor strikes that damage the shield and drain power.

= Add thrusters that can "move" the station along it's orbit between the gas giant and the asteroid belt. Station can move to avoidor mitigate meteor showers/radiation belts/etc., change cargo shuttle arrival/departure time, access new mining asteroids at the cost of lots of power. Potential traitor objective to force station to fall from orbit and crash into the planet or to accelerate out into the asteroid belt to get shredded.

- Add more machines throughout the station to ramp up power usage (i.e. security lathe to produce sec gear, VR network, orbital mining laser, power transmission beam.)

- Add portable bluespace shelters that can rapidly expand when placed on catwalk to create new structures around the station.

- Change departmental power networks to be separate but possibly overlapping in some areas?

- Make space carp hostile to solar panels.

- Add potential "breakdown" to machines across the station (air alarms, APCs, vendors, etc.) so that engineers must maintain them.

- Add mice chewing wires.

- Add hull fractures that must be fixed or else risk a full-on breach.

- Add engineering-related events like power fluctuation, gravity shifts, pieces of the station shifting position, etc.

- Nerf power output so engines cannot power their own emitters/field generators AND the whole station at the same time.

- Make PA require resources to set up/run/repair, like uranium or diamond.

- Add small chance for power cells to randomly burn out, including on stunprods, in APCs, etc.

- Add more plasteel for engineers at roundstart, as well as some plasma glass.