I’m gonna keep this relatively short.
Artifacts being able to singuloose and tesloose is horrible for gameplay and roleplay in every way. This is because it is relatively random, unstoppable and immediately ends the round. The chances of this happening are relatively rare but it just shouldn’t happen at all in my opinion. Its not fun for ANYONE when an artifact singulooses and the round is over at 30 minutes. It has very little room for roleplay and completely stops any roleplay that was going on before. Considering the fact that engineering singulooses and teslooses already happen its extremely annoying to me that artifacts can also singuloose or tesloose.
If your argument to this is that science should know the risks of going that deep and should avoid it to avoid the singuloose or tesloose. What is the point of having it at all. If science is going to avoid it on purpose to not get a loose it basically doesn’t exist and when they DON’T avoid it on purpose to avoid a loose and it looses it literally sucks for everyone in the round.
IN SHORT: Artifacts being able to singuloose and tesloose stops roleplay and kills rounds, they aren’t fun for anyone.
My solution: Remove the singuloose and tesloose effects.
I disagree with many of your key notes here. While it is indeed random and if activated unstoppable that still means it needs to be activated. when you scan an artifact it tells you both the thing to move up or down depth and what it’ll do when that happens.
Singloose and Telsa Loose both have the same result ‘Station wide destruction’ If your a scienist and you see station wide destuction as an effect its entirely on you if you activate it the same way you COULD as an engineer turn off Singlo or telsa containment, but you shouldn’t do so unless you have a very good reason to.
So its less a matter of “science should know” and more a case of “science should look at both the next trigger and the line below it where it very clearly says this is gonna blow up the station.” and yes that means it doesn’t exist for most people however it could be used as an antag tool like killer tomatoes for botany.
As for lack of RP I think thats not true either, your rp is just changed no matter what shift you was having your now a character in a disaster movie and how your character reacts is the roleplay, weather thats getting grounding rods or rad suits to evac to help protect people or looting and pillaging during the chaos, to trying to keep folks alive while the station dies around you.
You have a point, but there are several ways an artifact might cause a loose without a scientist ignoring or disregarding the effect. Say the node with Station-wode destruction has a trigger like contact with oxygen, or low pressure, or looking at the artifact. Or even a node that just activstes automatically after a few seconds. None of those scenarios would allow a scan to even complete, let alone be read, understood, and ignored.
Not to mention sentient artifacts activating themselves.
if antagonists want to loose they can use the actual singularity or tesla provided to nearly every station. I think we should prevent science from completely ending the round the same way engineering can. (as i also think that engineering being able to completely end the round is bad as well).
Im unsure if this is coded in, but If timer and station wide destruction can both roll I would fully agree that a fail-safe for that where if SWD is the reaction it blocks Timer as the triggure effect as that is kinda BS no game play stuff.
I agree. Especially because research assistants can’t find out about it unless they specifically ask, and you can’t ask about what you don’t know. A hotfix for this would be having a BIG, BOLDED warning in the Xenoarcheology section of the guidebook about how after X depth there’s a chance of Stationwide Destruction, including an unavoidable trigger (mentioning sapient artifacts), and that care should be taken to not descend to that level without Security Measures being put in place (especially since Tesla cannot be eliminated.). I am additionally in favor of removing it from the pool, making it not work for sapient artifacts, or making it only be triggerable by so called Deliberate triggers, like therapeutic chems, blood, magnetism, music, and maybe life essence.
That’s my idea, because it’s not only terrible for roundflow, but also scared some players off of sci.
This makes no sense.
No one should be allowed to make the call of risking station wide destruction. If you do that as engineer you get job banned at best (and it only ever happens due to incompetence, not as a risk-reward choice).
There is NEVER a reason to shut down containment with a singulo/tesla unless you are an antag. And an antag should not get a singuloose button, rarity has no bearing on wether that is ok or not.
A singularity takes time to setup and is blatantly visible. An artifact is unpredictable and is confined to a single console. Which is not even clear that it will actually result in a singulo to a player that has never seen it happen before. Hell, i did not know that was possible until now, if i saw that it said “Singularity” i would not assume it is actually a full blown one, because i’d assume no one would make such a bad design decision in the first place.
And this ignores the sentient artifacts that cannot even check their own effects.
the one that makes a telsaloose or singloose is labeled “Station wide destruction” and you’d only ever make the mistake once and if something says “station wide destruction” and you dont know what i means I’d hope you’d at least stop and ask or just see “Station wide destruction” and go… maybe we should sell this now. the number of consoles isn’t relevent.
I would say I entirely agree that Sentient artifacts should never have station wide destruction in their logic tree’s as thats SUPER dangerous. same as I think SWD should never have automatic activation on a timer and I Hope that the code blocks this making them exclusive.
If it comes with a timer and warning like all other station ending events. It should be fine imo.
“An unknown piece of alien technology is emanating extreme amounts of energy. Get rid of it at all costs.”
It would also be ok to make it less rare in that case. Research presenting a true station wide threat due to messing with alien tech is both on brand with the nature of the job AND engi’s ability to do so.
I think they want it so eg: if a artifact was about to tes/singuloose it would send a central command announcement “Based on our long range scanners. we have determined a artifact is emanating extreme ammounts of energy. get rid of it before it releases its energy”
and that would start like a 10 minute timer before it spawns it. so you have 10 minutes to yeet it out the nearest airlock.
I wanted the bold warnings to help newbs. A 6 minute timer with Delta alert is a great idea and I support it, but only if removal as I defined it was not implemented.