Had the idea to change up Robotics a tad to discourage powergaming and encourage using them as evil antagonists or for other purposes.
New Robotics
This would be a three step process.
Firstly, implants would be removed from Robotics and medbay would get the freebie implant bag so the focus area for implants is Medbay rather than Robotics.
Secondly, Robotics SOP rule 6 regarding beacons would be changed to only apply to combat mechs (Durand, Gygax, Phazon, H.O.N.K.).
And thirdly, Robotics would become a joint department like old genetics. Where mechs are part of Engineering and cyborgs are part of Science Science. Engineering and Mining may both get a starter mech able to be given to them by the Roboticist or partly preassembled.
Future
In the future after this is merged Iād want to see things which requires robotics rather than trivialize existing work to ensure they are a required department rather than being seen as a Powergaming Kioskā¢.
Additionally, I want to see a solid solution to beacons as currently a beacon makes the mech entirely irrelevant if you attempt to harm the one with the Exosuit Console control (usually Roboticist or RD). I think hacking is a solution but it should require more than basic door hacking, maybe should require a mech recharging bay?
Take it further and remove roboticist as a job. Itās already just purple scientist anyway. If robotics is a joint department, thereās no need for them anyway. Also the job sucks already!!
Implants in medical is good, i think medical should be doing all implants while robotics does augmentation and borging specifically. Itās a good answer for giving doctors things to do while no one is hurt.
We could probably use more utility implants that just offer interesting benefits, but thatās not a priority.
More than anything else, we need new, better mechs. As is, the combat mechs serve to completely trivialize three specific antagonists and not much else, while what they probably should be doing is helping out in a more reasonable way against all threats. The medical mech is broken fundamentally, as in, it just breaks game mechanics, and the mining mech is unbalanced (mining too good, combat too shit, canāt disarm gibtonite).
I distinctly recall a mech rework being mentioned a few times, and I mean a real rework, not just nerfs or removals. Thereās a lot of room for improvement and creativity beyond just a walking tank.
I donāt think a department should be made arlund for the purpose of being more used to the benefits of antagonists
While iāve seen the PR, and the argument of āmedbay have nothing to doā thatās subjective from round to round, on one round you might have the doctors doing nothing and another dynameme is giving them 50 bodies to revive in 2 minutes so if you go and ask for implants you"ll be kindly rejected since theyāre busy, iāve seen roboticists offer more implants than doctors since once they do a couple of borgs, bots and bounty mecha theyāre just in stand-by for an order of combat mecha or just pre-emptively making mining/med mechs to help both departments, if anything i could suggest moving certain augments/implants more on the "roboticsāā side to Robotics while others like organs remain in the "medbay sideāā so depending which implant you want youāll need to visit a different department
Disagree, why would you change it? To give an easier time to the antags? Doesnāt make much sense itās a protocol that only a few roboticist respect anyway(sadly), the mining mechas can be powerful since they have drills and plasmacutters and if for some reason the ion gun is gone, the most reliable way is the emp beacon, if anything said traitor would need to have a way to not get one slapped on it and thus create conflict if people are paying attention
I really donāt see why this is leaning more towards removing roboticists, instead of moving things outside of robo or not dependant of roboticist we should tackle the issue by proposing and designing a more enriched roboticist experience
As for the last part, yeah, antagonist should have a way to disable the beacon but it should not be easy, it needs to generate conflict and not just an emag away(or well, the old one that was justā¦ ejecting the beacon from the mecha gear lmao)
I think a cool addition could be what iāve mentioned in the past, building IPCās bodies from scratch(in case of gibbed ipc), giving them upgrades, more customization to augmentation(maybe more levels of depth in the system) and so on
Mechas are gonna be reworked iirc but thatās gonna be a while and if we ever go the mod-suits route or something similar Beacon mentioned Roboticists will probably be important for it(upgrade, maintenance, etc)
It certainly needs some QoL stuff and more stuff that i give you.
The EMP beacon is too easy and except combat mechs I think the crew should try to deal with a regular mech themselves.
I want to add alternative beacons which are unlocked with research with the most basic one only displaying its basic information without the option to EMP. However, this is for the further future when I learn to code.
āHey, I want a mining mech.ā
āHere you go, complete with T4 parts, plasma cutter and a beacon.ā
āShit.ā
Security then announce a rogue mech and RD, Roboticist or AI then EMP the hell out of it and the mech is irrelevant. Only time you can really get a mech without a beacon is if you make it yourself.
Thatās a vague srqtement, elaborate and then code it. Iām just giving some suggestions of what I think I can implement. I aināt redesigning Robotics from the ground up. And I love Robotics so unless you pay me I aināt making a PR to remove it (not that I can). lol
I mean, thatās whatās gonna happen if youāre gonna build a combat mech, done in the middle of robotics within RD, the department guard, your co-worker and the AI sight youāll most likely be forced to put the tracking beacon, hence why itās more interesting to, idk, use the random robotics maintenance room to build the mecha there, itās all about preparing and thinking ahead, antags shouldnāt be handheld to antagonize to the point where itās extremely easy or free, some things have high stakes for high rewards the combat mechas being one of them so of course donāt be surprised security comes running down to sci the moment they hear an unoauthorized combat mecha is being built after all that thing can kill people so of course theyāre gonna be keeping an eye on it and care as it makes perfect IC sense, as for mining mech from your example you can always RP with the robo with bribes and similar stuff to avoid putting a beacon though againā¦ Not many roboticists even care to follow the SOP to put one on the first place, thereās different approachs to it
Iām just discussing your suggestion and also sharing an alternative that i had in mind since iāve been noticing those stuff for the roboticist job as well and weāre wellā¦ suggesting stuff though i do disagree wth your original sentence, while itās true it shouldnāt be a powergame bait job it shouldnāt be a job only abused by antagonist players hence why you and i also suggested other stuff.
Robotics has four things to do, implants/augments, cyborgs, bots, and mechs. Why are we taking things away from them to give to a department which already has more than enough on their plate?
The cool implants are power game bait so people donāt ask for them, cyborgs take all of five seconds to repair/upgrade/create, bots steal jobs from other players, and cool mechs are locked behind SOP & power gaming rules.
What do roboticists get to do after this? They can make a Ripley for cargo and mining thatāll get ignored, spam larrys or cleanbots and fuck over the janitor player, spam medbots and annoy the hell out of medbay and chemists, wait around for a cyborg to come, and thatās about it.
Oh god no Robotics in engineering. Powergaming implants are already removed long ago and youāre better off nerfing full cybernetics instead and buff antags directly instead.
Someone post the planndemic, robotics department on wildflower is largely empty and the only one thing I seriously ever did for days was borg one criminal.
You forgot two things
Robotics is the fallback surgery/IPC room when medical gets bombed during full pop and holodeck is on fire. As well as setting up comms because they are the few people with tech storage access outside of engineering. If anything the roboticist is the most demanding job and you should instead report player who donāt do their job.
Are you saying mechs, cyborgs and bots wonāt keep you busy for 2 hours minimum? Medical Doctors has tending and reviving andā¦ then what? Not to mention, usually they have nothing to do on round start.
No they are not. Unless you are talking about combat mechs, yes they are for good reason. All mechs are cool in their own way. Both as an antagonist and non-antagonist. Combat mechs arenāt always viable as an antagonist, Iāve used generic Ripley MK2 to do my evil deeds. Hell, Iāve used two Odysseus a few times with a buddy to double beam people. Usually ends up with one of our mechs being blown up in the second explosion. lol
I made a guide for different mechs Roboticists can make. This assumes I were to spend an entire round almost only doing mechs and it was a full round with no resources issues or other obstacles.
One Ripley MK3 for Mining and spam all Minersā PDAs to take it and use it or else Iāll keep yelling at the lack of resources. Meanwhile I will verify this via the exosuit console so I can see they are actually using it and not just parking it on Lavaland or Cargo.
Two Ripley MK2 for Engineering with an RCD, Diamond drill, thrusters, and hydraulic clamp. These are amazing for cleaning up explosions and whatever else trouble you might have.
Odysseus for Medbay and one for the Brig Phys if the Brig Phys wants one.
Ripley MK1 for Cargo to use to carry crates or as a backup Mining mech.
One Ripley MK3 for Atmospherics with more or less the same setup at the Engineering one.
One Ripley MK2 for Exploration with Hydraulic Clamp, Diamond Drill, Plasma Cutter, and Thrusters. This is absolutely amazing to have as an Explorer and will save your ass 1000 times over. I tend to take ALL abandoned crates with this and throw it at whoever will buy them for a very low price.
You can do a lot with mechs alone as a Roboticist. You just havenāt dared to try it. Most of these I donāt even ask if someone wants it. Iām just like āHey, take this fucking mech. Itās for you, thank me later. Actually donāt.ā.
Janitors can do more than clean up blood and if you think thatās all they do then you are severely mistaken. Who replace all the lights? Despite being part of Engineers job they never fucking do it. You could also argue that they are part of the team to maintain maintenance along with Engineering such as plating it, killing rats, cleaning it up overall. Medibots arenāt that OP when spammed so itsā¦ whatever if you make 100 of them, I thought it was a fun challenge to bug as many people as possible to bring me Medkits (mainly Exploration and Medbay) and it may still be fun even though they are useless more or less. Medbay may just recall the bots to them and destroy them. lol
And there is more than Medibots and cleaning bots! You also got floorbots which while currently bugged are amazing for preventing pesky rat bites on cables. Then you got the one of many superior Officer Beepsky! Or their bigger brothers counter part. Then you got atmospherics bots which Engineering could get good use of in case accidents happen.
Cyborgs can take a lot of work to mantain. I tend to make up to 3 shells along with positronic brains and a spare BIOS module so I donāt need to keep any ghost or AI waiting. Speaking of Cyborgs! I should change the recipe so that you have to put in a Positronic brain first (either active or not) before you can assemble the other parts. Would be neat.
Yes I do this too (and the even more on lowpop when I have to triple as doctor to run surgeries on dead players, engineer to start the SM because apparently the majority still do not know how to operate air pumps and scientist because people will break into sci if research isnāt getting done), where is the powergaming part in this?
I would rather have prosthetics removed from med so people donāt flood the department because some antag bit their limbs off. And limit SOP Mechs to be only be printable in their respective departments (Durand Gygax and phazon Frames in sec lathe and HONK in Service lathe) and then you bring the frame over for assembly like you would with ED-209s. If you want something in favor for antags implement Dark Ripley module.
Robotics is one of the best departments in this server in its variety of things that it enables you to do.
As William pointed out they are capable of helping medbay , engineering and but also mining , security.
A responsible roboticist can fill in the gaps across the (practically) entire station , thatās what gives the job so much replayability. Itās not just about the mechs, borgs , implants or augments but the incredible freedom that the job provides.
Combat mechs are a hot topic , as PerishedFraud pointed out they do trivialise a certain few antags (all of the ones that donāt have emps lol). They suffer from beestationās habit of using hard counters to justify some powerful ability (mind you they are also shitcode). I am all for reworks or updates but a complete removal of combat mechs would break my heart , they are awesome ā¦ too awesome to remove.
Iām sorry but printing mech āframesā from lathes is a horrible idea. Printing the boards there, sure , why not. But the entire mech frame, not only is that a logistical inaesthetic nightmare but trivialises the use of the exofab printer.
But to expand on your point, forcing roboticists to need to interact for combat mech parts wouldnāt be so much of a bad change.
You also do make a good point about prosthetics, they dont exactly need a stock pile of robotic limbs when they have access to alternatives and just asking robotics.
I love Robotics, but even I admit that they have too much capability in-character wise and it should be reduced. Implants is not just easy to remove, but is also an outlier in robotics as they are the only thing not entirely mechanical. Implants in Robotics are mostly done on humans and while they would probably be able to do it on IPCs (very rare) they can be handled in Medbay. IPCs could have their parts printed in Medbay and then implanted in Robotics, no issues there. Perhaps Robotics may request the implants from Medbay.
As Robotics currently stands, they are importer of R&D, Mining and almost absolutely nothing else. Hell, R&D they can and do do it themselves. They need a dependancy on more than just Mining. I donāt think it should be a heavy dependancy like Mining, but similar to Bartenders or Kitchens dependancy on Chemistry.
It is not medbayās job to make implants, it should be the other way around. A person who studies medicine would not understand how an IPC works because it is not an android (which is probably going to be deprecated sooner or later).Letting medbay have implants is already contrary to all the recent attempts at nerfing med.
Bartenders and Kitchens almost never need anything from chemistry unless there are specific orders like doctorās delight. Service department relies on either botany or cargo for materials. Mining dependency actually gives reason for Miners to actually dig and not go fight monsters because other departments are more self-sustaining when thereās minimal materials. Putting robotics in engineering means you can say goodbye to all the roundstart materials that would normally be used for construction/repairs spent on robots instead.
Yes, the doctors have few stuff to do but those āāfew stuffāā (Healing, Reviving, Cloning, doing surgeries, curing viruses, being in chemistry if thereās no chemist, being in gene if thereās no geneticists, recovering bodies if thereās no paramedics, redecorating medbay if you want, etc) are stuff that constantly happen, on a high-op dynameme rounds you have bodies coming quite frequently for different reasons and if a high hostile midround kicks in you might have the entire medbay busy.
When thereās no engineers they set up computers, they roam maints, they roleplay with each other, they work on the medical bounties, etcetera i have seen cases where the doctor is just standing there staring at the computers but iāve also seen cases that are the opposite, a lot of things are very anecdotical and itās different every shift, depending on pops and threats
And i donāt think the solution is to just add a duffelbag with a couple of implants that are almost power-gaming bait, if anything if i follow your suggestions i would separate both āāmedical-typeāā implants for medbay and the more āārobo-likeāā go to robotics, so depending on what you want, you go to a different department.
I love that in 2024 we still have people who believe its engineeringās job still to replace lights instead of the fact that janitors yoinked that responsibility.