So, we all know the problem here, and I think the latest Liltenfeld video showing how cloning has always been available and never actually arrives on station kind of sums it up. In my entire time playing this game, I have never once seen cloning set up.
Salvage doesn’t do their job on any rounds. Not only do they rarely bring back mining resources, they don’t even bother grabbing things for other departments. They solely run around on expeditions looking for gamer loot first, and things they can sell for cargo so they can gamble or buy shotguns or whatever second.
So my proposal is this.
Remove gambling from cargo, remove mining from salvage, and remove gamer loot (This is the contraband stuff salvage tries to get every round) from expeditions.
Player economy (Having to buy things from vending machines) should be added back to the game.
A mining hub where passengers can take a ship and mine for resources, and then plunk them into a pipe which goes to cargo and gives them spesos for everything they mined should be added. Alternatively they can keep the resources for themselves and not plunk them in the pipe (If they are science, for instance).
Slots and other gambling activities should be added to take the place of the grand lottery, and a small lottery should also be added for players. This would have an incredibly rare chance of stuff like gamer loot and the beloved throngler (Which would also mean that whoever inevitably self-antags with it, which should absolutely be legal if you get a throngler because of its rarity and how impossible avoiding the temptation is, is at least not the QM). Most of the time it should just contain drip and useless toys and stuff. Slots would maybe have more consistent rewards for lining up all the reels, like a reel for combat gloves for instance. These gaming areas should probably be hidden in maintenance, with the idea being they are a way for the syndicate to siphon off spesos from nanotrasen’s employees.
There are lots of issues this solves.
Salvage not doing their job. Their job is now more narrow, and they get to do the fun thing (clicking space carp) and don’t have to do the boring thing (clicking rocks).
Cargo getting sidetracked by gambling.
Cargo not having a reserve of funds because they bought nonsense and so they can’t deal with whatever the threat they need to is (They can ask passengers).
Passengers not having anything fun to do and not being helpful to the station. Now they can gamble and help the station by clicking rocks to earn their ability to do so. I have a feeling this will occupy a lot of passengers who would otherwise be spending their time thinking about how to make security’s life miserable.
Science never having any materials because salvage doesn’t do their job.
Salvage being the “powergaming” role that gets gamer loot even though they also end up getting meds, insuls, tools, and their own unique role equipment. Now gamer loot goes to passengers, the role that has the least round-start equipment.
Player economy not having a use yet and therefore not being able to be added even though its a feature most players like.
Gamer loot needing to be mapped to maintenance to keep security from metagaming (Now its something that can come up organically at any time during a round and requires more for the player to get it than just remembering the mapped position).
Yes, lets send the tide and roboticists(fuck you guys for hogging ALL resouces shift start while doing ZERO logistics and research) to mines today.
If mining rocks could cause ore crabs to spawn, it could also even improve engineering gameplay as they will now have a source of radiation energy generators - our beloved radcrabs! And of course it would give medical more things to do when tiders inevitably get eachother killed with friendly fire.
As long as it doesn’t devolve into Frontier-like economy, that does actually sound like a fine change.
As long as the mining hub can actually get reasonable amounts of resources, since the asteroids are kinda bad for that last I checked.
Though I do feel like some may find it quite disruptive to the overall game structure.
I mean, you could, but I think its good for cargo to have a reserve to depend on so they don’t become an absolute point of failure for the station. Like, there are times where antags have come on the scene and cargo has spent their money stupidly and that is just kind of it for the station. Sometimes it would be nice to have QM beg passengers for money and pull a bad situation away from being bad.
Can you put forward what you consider to be a “Frontier-like” economy, what you don’t like about Frontier’s economy, ect, so I can have that feedback? I don’t really play Frontier.
Right, so, on Frontier Station every player (or was it every character, one of the two) has a persistent account where they keep their money. The goal of any given shift there is to use that money wisely to get back your investment or at least not loose too much. So pretty much any interaction between two players is gonna be coloured by both players acting as economic actors - you only get food and gear by buying it for money and the main point of most jobs is to get paid for it.
I feel it introduces a particular friction, a sort of quid-pro-quo incentive system. Cool for people who want to play that kind of game, but I much prefer a station built on cooperation between crew members and departments where trying to get money out of others and trying not to get scammed aren’t concerns.
So any sort of push towards player economy bring to me thoughts of “I don’t wanna have to manage money when dealing with people”. Like, I’d rather not need to pay for kitchen food or science gear, etc.
I think all those criticisms absolutely make sense. That isn’t what I envision this system being like.
Money wouldn’t be persistent. Generally, passengers would spawn on station with zero spesos. It might be fun if they spawned with other things, like a credit card (That may just have debt on it and thus need to be paid off rather than used), some small amount of spesos (Like 100 at most), or the other kind of random stuff and toys you might expect them to bring with themselves.
I think there should be a difference between vending machines (What is out in the lobbies and such) and dispensers (The vending machines that currently give job related items like the secvend). Only vending machines would cost money. Spesos would mainly be a cargo and passenger only mechanic.
I’m not really opposed to be there being quid-pro-quo between passengers and cargo (Bringing in an item they got gambling for instance to share in some of the money that cargo sells it for). It should be exactly as you say it is though, something for the people who want to play that game (The people who queue up as passengers and cargo). Economy shouldn’t be the focus of the rest of the station, and science can just forgo economy entirely and mine directly with the system. That being said though, it does open up some interesting RP (Like captain giving spesos to passengers who do nice things for the station, passengers venmo-ing each other using an app on their PDAs, tipping the bartender or other service employees, ect.). But most departments will not use spesos for anything.