Marathon Station is one of the few stations that lack any prebuilt singulo/tesla setup, instead requiring the engineering department to have to put in work to get one running if they want it.
Currently it provides a number of crates, circuit boards, and materials mapped in that simply need to be assembled.
The problem here has two key points:
All of the PA boards are provided except for the PA computer console board
The PA computer board can only be obtained from cargo, in a crate that contains the rest of the boards anyway
I have a few suggestions to solve this issue:
Map in the PA computer board so the PA can be made from the start
Remove all the mapped PA boards so that the cargo bundle is not wasteful
Allow science to print the PA boards so any specific one can be obtained
Suggestions 1 and 2 conflict with each other of course, but my main concern is to prevent the confusion of “where’s the last board?” from those who don’t realize they weren’t given everything they needed. I would prefer 1 over 2, as the board can be mapped into CE’s office for security. Separately, I think suggestion 3 should be implemented regardless as a means of replacing boards that go missing or get sabotaged (though this also may want to be done for other means of power generation without recipes). This is at most, a simple mapping addition and new recipes for the circuit imprinter.
I’ve always wondered why that station had no board. My best guess is that because it has no set up containment zone for it, they did not want to risk people setting off the singulo with a bad setup. I defiantly agree with one, but instead of just mapping it you can just add a spare computer board the ce’s locker. It gives traitors a guaranteed spot to find one if the computer is missing while fixing this issue for this and every other situation like this that may come up.
I think 3 is a terrible idea, a sci being able to set up a whole pa by themself in maints pointed at a storage closet is a terrifying prospect. I know cargo can buy a crate and just break it open, but it’s a lot more sus for a cargo tech to be setting up a machine over a sci.
I understand that it is another thing for a traitor sci to use, but I don’t believe it would be quite as effective as you say. The PA takes up effectively a 3x4 tile space, can be immediately broken by any passerby with a wrench, and makes a lot of noise. Not to mention that it has a set firing path that crew can simply avoid after the first volley. If a traitor wants to work with all that then I would applaud the creativity.
I think that traitors should be allowed to abuse the perks of their job in malicious and interactive ways, and I don’t see why replacements for power generation should be kept solely to cargo.
Sci use to be able to make power, I think they can still make normal generators. Either way sci abused it so hard they lost their ability to make APU. Either way you still need cargo to get a singulo generator. It would absolutely be a terrible idea to let sci make one of those.
Tried doing it as an engineer in an actual round. The sheer level of setup it took to drag the existing PA to a secure location and get it hooked up again was a huge time investment (drag revert caused a lot of this but it would’ve been slow anyway). The result? One radio message complaining about it. The radiation damage is not effective at all when there are suits littered about everywhere, and you have to choose where to place it very carefully or it wont have much of an impact at all.
Allowing the station, and thus traitors, to print pa boards poses very little threat. The only strategy I can think of would be remotely activating a singulo/tesla generator which would require you to know precisely where its being held.