Screwdriver/modify solar panels to research. This makes more sense then tesla coils turning into “corona anaylzers” when a tesla ball doesn’t have a corona, a star does
make it easier to switch rad collector boards to research, making an oxy/trit mix for research is 9/10 way too difficult for what it is worth and in all of my years of engineering I don’t think I’ve seen it done once.
this is especially important because the tesla is no longer used and if it is, it almost always results in tesloose.
tempted to pay for this as a pr.
anyone else have ideas on how we could generate more research points outside of toxins?
problem isn’t the trit/oxy mix, problem is how even a topped off tank won’t last for even 10 minutes. trit/oxy mix should last for hours, not minutes. if anything, power mode should be the one that eats up plasma quickly. you should have to change the tanks every hour for those.
ahem
as i’ve said 90 times before, although it would be hard to make, a circuit holodeck that gives huge amount of points in exchange for a gud tested circuit.
Oh yes, that is broken
I have given up completely on ever mentioning that rad collectors can run out of plasma when I teach new engineers cause rounds don’t last even remotely close to that.
Whoever was deciding on time it lasts was a person of extremes-from very short research time, short enough to make it completely impractical to basically infinity from perspective of players in round when it comes to power generation.
I wouldn’t mind if research would last a bit longer while plasma tank conversion to trit during power generation should last much shorter, hour you mentioned sounds quite reasonable
Solars idea is not that bad. I assume they would lower their efficiency with movement of station in relation to sun like solars do when generating power and they would be more vulnerable to damage. But its still pretty much same as RnD servers, you would just set them up and forget, they wouldn’t really require future maintenance.
Personally I would got rid of RnD servers since they are broken passive way of getting science points, ever since people started putting them in every cold place of station they can find there’s really no ‘strategy’ to unlocking technology, there are no real choices to be made. Maybe you had to make some decisions in first minutes of the round, focus on mining or something but then…by the end of average shift we have all technologies unlocked.
I would get rid of servers (maybe leave the 2 that are mapped to have this one limited source of points) and try to figure out more ways we can earn points by doing things that are not one-time-set-up but need at least some kind of maintenance, have more departments involved like Botany
I would also like to see some rework to technology tree, more technologies should be unlocked not only by points but also by objects-as far as I know there is only illegal tech and alien tech that require that. Have engineering deliver tank of some advanced gas, have botany bring some plant, have chemistry deliver some complex compound, maybe xeno could bring some extract and other scientist circuit of certain complexity, plop them into the analyzer and only then you could unlock certain technologies.
I’m not saying all technologies, don’t want the return to old science or being cucked by one department not delivering but somewhere far along the research tree so we wouldn’t be able to just unlock all as we go without giving it any though or effort. Would love to see that not every round ends with us unlocking everything and what we got unlocked is actually shaped by actions of players on the station
Issue again is that once fusion is up it doesn’t really require any maintenance
Not long ago I was discussing fusion on discord and I expressed my disappointment that particles are not doing anything.
We could probably have something like rad collectors just for particles but I don’t think it would be that interesting since there’s already similar thing in game and limiting it again by gases in tanks doesn’t seem that fun
But I had this other idea
In real life there are things like neutron doping, maybe we could take an inspiration from it and make it so if you get iron or plasteel hit by enough particles they would change their properties and get us something that could be used to unlock some late tier technology, be analysed for points, maybe even produce a material that could be used to make late game items and things like mechs (Probably reworking mechs so they would require or optionally accept that new doped plasteel or something for slightly better properties would be the easiest and best solution).
We have proper fusion, we should make it useful for us. There’s this whole environment of radiation and highly energized particles and we’re not utilizing it in any way