Within the science department there are 5 sub departments available.
Nanites (I still believe they are actually robo)
Xenobiology
Xenoarchology
R&D desk
Toxins
Scientist is generally a highly picker role with most mid-high pop rounds having 3-5 active.
There are also talks about xenobiology being removed bring it down to 4.
With all this there is a large issue of a lack of roles for a scientist to do.
Toxins is a one and done which is usually completed in 5-15 minutes of shift start, manning the R&D desk is monotonous and clicking tech buttons. Nanites are a solo project which has at least some depth, but its always a race to who reserves it first as sharing servers is counterintuative (Wait!, switch back to my program. You took my disk! Etc.).
Xenoarch while i like the concept is in it current form severely lacking in Risk-reward. Wow i can get a whole 200 credits and 500 general research to be mauled by bears. The artifacts themselves are too dangerous to given out due to malfunction chance making it a largely redundant department.
Departments should provide a functional use to the station which xenobiology can do but due to reclusive layouts of xenobio on most stations they rarely take requests from crew.
Good news- They’re getting reworked by the guy who originally made the PR!
I don’t think the layout is the issue. Xenobiology actively encourages you to stay where you are because otherwise slimes go hungry, so you need to spend all your time tending to them. A full science rework (like bacon’s proposed anomaly science) would be great, but that’s still a long time away. For the removal of xenobio I do agree there should be a replacement first.
Don’t forget about circuitry. Something that is really fun and complex, that rarely helps the crew out and mostly aids tots or borde sci playing pranks on people.
I wish we had modern TG circuitry here, it so much fun…
While i like circuitry, it dosnt have enough of a station wide benifit to be considered full role. If anything it should be made more public for crew members to experiment with it.
If Xenobiology was pushed to the front and had a public window, people probably wouldnt complain as much… but they dont and are usually in some reclusive corner of the station, see old meta station.
I personally dislike the BS-RPED. your job as a scientist is to ensure the top of the line parts and equipment are available to every department on station, why not make this interesting and reduce sheer function of the BS-RPED.
At the very least, you shouldn’t be able to pop open a camera console and upgrade almost everything on station, the BS-RPED should be quicker than the the RPED, but in it’s current state it gives the Eggheads no reason to leave pocket protector land.
I actually kinda like seeing and using the standard RPED, even if it can be a hassle to run prod other departments into letting you in so you can upgrade their stuff, it’s an aspect of player interaction that the BSRPED totally negates.
It kinda already is, all the lathes are able to print circuitry shells and you can get a circuit imprinter from any autolathe, it’s not uncommon to see engies fiddling with circuitry.
Forgot to say this but,
just one maxcap that can be made pretty regularly under 7 minutes has enough disco points and normal points to get all the way to tier 5, you also will be able to get all the useful tech with that ttv, the rest of the research is usually done by roboticists or explorers who just happen to look at the console.
All of sci needs to be redesigned, preferably to something similar to what TG has, were you have to put thought and effort behind each research by actually scanning stuff. Honestly the TG system is pretty perfect, it only falls flat on its stomach over there because you often have to interact and coordinate with other players to progress, something that would be a positive for us. Having mining tech locked behind you having to upgrade the orm would at least give sic’s a reminder to do that.
This is such a weird thing to get hooked up over, i don’t understand what makes it more interesting to be forced to walk up to machinery with a screw driver and just spend more time on something, sometimes even having to turn stuff off so you upgrade it. Worse is having to run back to your department to get more parts because the standard RPED doesn’t hold that many parts. Honestly it’s not even a meaningful player interaction, having to get someone who works there or the AI to open a door for you is more of an annoyance on both sides.
Though I agree that the use of a cam console is kinda ass and seems like a bit of an oversight, but you can just change the Bsrped to have a max range of like 7 tiles and you’ve fixed the problem.
Or get the miners to scan X thing to be able to unlock mining tech, puts some effort on them too to get better gear
NGL having miners scan goliaths, watchers and legions for upgrades like upgraded drills, upgraded energy based mining tools and maybe other stuff by returning stabilized legion cores to sci so the eggheads can poke at the ruinous energies of the necropolis would be neat in a sort of bio-mimicry sense with the first two and kind of funny with the the idea of some egghead winding up with a legion mouse due to experiments.
Roboticists has Implants, Bots, Cyborgs, and Mechs. Any Roboticist who does Nanites with 3+ Scientists should be job banned from Robotics and go do Science instead.
Roboticists got a ton of down time, building a mech doesn’t take more than 3 minutes and you rarely build more than 6 in a shift. Bots are even more pathetic since they are basically crafted instantly, the only real work you gotta do is borgs and the odd implant you have to do. A roboticist who does nanites isn’t that strange, also since there’s two roboticist job slots.
I tend to have three people asking me of things but I also tend to tell people what I have to offer. If I’m focusing on implants I will spam a department like Medbay “You want implante? We got this and that!” amd then get like three replies back or so.
I think bots would benefit from having tiered components like mechs and cyborg batteries.
It’d Incentivise Robos to recall bots from around the station to upgrade them aswell, before co-ordinating with the places they recalled them from to ensure optimal utilization.
depends on what it is, machines such as department lathes and such aren’t chessable. I just want a system that forces you to actually upgrade things.
