This area is off limits to most people, so you’ll typically pass right on by down the staircase to:
The second floor (-2) is where the majority of people will be, medbay, science, and the bar at the ahead.
The bottom floor is mainly for cargo, dorms and engi. you may be surprised to see a lack of SM in the engi room. but hopefully you’ll enjoy the singularity gen in it’s place!
As i said this is also a underground map, you can visit the (semi) randomly generated surface, see the local wildlife, and use the evac shuttle to get the hell out when the singularity looses!
There will be a reduced crew, consisting only of the vital staff; sorry NT cutbacks, hopefully leading to a more tightly nit interactive RP experience.
Ah, please don’t do this…
Lowpop explo is very valuable as it provides discovery research, asteroid mining and rich gameplay if you’re the only person on the server.
Sorry, no can do. explo is terrible for RP on low pop as they are just not there to interact at all. the pop count may as well not count explo!
If Echo is added and you want to play explo, i’d recommend playing on Acadia instead.
This list may look scary but hear me out first. the roles crossed out will not be given rooms or equipment on Echo, with some exceptions like genie who will not be a playable role, but will have their equipment on the station for MD to use. Botanist and the cook will be combined into one role, likely just the cook growing their own plants. may of the roles will only be 1 open slot.
Assistants and gimmicks will still be playable and have dorms, the crossed out is just for me
you can currently buy mats, but people rarely do and just yell at miners instead. it’s a bit out of scope for a map PR, but if you want to add buyable/cheaper ore to cargo i could remove miners too.
I suppose if people really want to they can take the mining shuttle asteroid mining.
It just seems a little silly to remove exploration, a commonly multi-crew endeavor, especially when it’s what a lot of people find to be the most unique and exciting mechanical experience on bee, whilst leaving the historically single player mining intact with what could be an extremely minor change. I mean I’ll code it if you want, adding a crate of misc ores seems simple enough, but I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be in the scope of this project as-is.
As an aside; on lowpop I often see the exploration department being the only source of disco research when there’s no-one with toxins experience on-shift. Will there be a lot of animals on the island to scan to offset this?
Exploration and mining arn’t good for lowpop RP, but only mining is needed in the sense that the station needs ores. the station does not need faster RP, especially on lowpop when the rounds traditionally last much longer. yes mining could be replaced with cargo, but that could cause issues with money then. regardless; explo is a nice to have, mining is a needed currently.
Adding ore to cargo would be easy yes, but it’s just not something im interested in doing or fighting for.
There are a lot of animals on the surface yes, i’d also remind you that you can get points easily by giving a scanner to a botanist and asking them to scan plants,
True, or xenobio and slimes, I’m just trying to think of the awkward skill gap situations that can happen with lowpop; people tend to know that discovery scanning gets research sorted, even if they aren’t aware of the best ways of implementing that knowledge.
That being said a noob heading out onto the desert island to scan local fauna sounds like such a lovely comfy experience I think I might actually do that myself when this next banger beestation map is released, haha.
Will Echo not need EVA, since the outside is on a habitable planet?
It looks like a really lovely map and anything that lets me play less kilo is something i wholeheartedly look forward to, even if it means I don’t get to play my lowpop explo
Exploration is there for you when you want to play SS13, but can’t or don’t want to deal with whatever is happening on the station. It is a low-effort commitment to the round.
If you’re playing exploration specifically to avoid dealing with the Station (the other players), then you might as well just hop on a local server at that point.
Exploration isn’t just low-commitment, it’s not contributing anything either in a lot of cases.
Janitor (and pretty much every Service role) is extremely low commitment and yet it’s in a much better position to interact with other players and contribute to the overall round because they aren’t off on their own in the middle of nowhere.
Sometimes you’re tired of the extreme chaos and whatnot of the station but you don’t quite want that singleplayer experience. Exploration offers something no other role has and adds to the variety of the game.
