Barnes is holding me at gunpoint and demanding from me to post this here, so here goes.
What this does
Doc, comments welcome:
This will largely address 2 major points I’ve seen:
The lack of scarcity in ship resources.
The shitty Ore Silo.
It will turn cargo into a hub of activity, with people placing large orders in regular intervals.
Once GQ is called, cargo will turn into a military dispensary, distributing resources(and standing orders) to the squaddies that need it, including firearms if command wants them given out.
Why that’s a good thing.
Cargo is one of those leftover civilian-station vibes we got going on, it ruins my immersion a bit to see literal postmen walking around.
The ore silo should never have been a thing.
Nobody even knows that there are different rifles for sec and squads, no one ever gives those out.
Sec’s busy being the police, they cannot be bothered with tending to the masses.
Squads are a strictly Sub-command institution and should not be dependant on any departments, especially security. Since cargo is already touching every other department, having them deliver to squads is the natural choice.
Having Separate armories helps in cases where there is not enough sec and you want the armory open, it adds granularity to the decision. Want the sec armory open, with all their fancy toys? Or do you really just need a quick hit of lethal weaponry to deal with a dragon.
Making weapons more common is a terrible idea until something is done about antags. NSV13 antags are already underpowered compared to station antags (For example: ballistics making desword way less useful, tasers being… tasers or hell even the fact squads already get guns, even if they’re quite weak guns). Before making it even easier for the crew to arm themselves with lethals something needs to be done so playing antag is still fair and not like this: “oh, I’m just going to hope and pray the chef doesn’t actually have a rifle with lethals in the kitchen” or “oh, yet again I will break into the armory to get gear on par with the crew”
Chef should not generally have a rifle laying around in the kitchen. This only happens when everything goes to shit after the ship got boarded and Warden (currently, if this goes through Supply Operations Manager) doesn’t care to get the weapons back into the armory. In my opinion, someone who doesn’t need to also pull sec duty being responsible for getting the gear back would mean that more time will be spent on actually getting it back. Would at least be worth testing, I think.
Here’s an idea… add GPS tracking to every rifle to help in getting it back. Lethals should be kept out of the hands of the crew for as much time as possible.
Also this doesn’t account for incompetence, a SOM who doesn’t get the rifles back will probably cause 0 consequences to him, but ruin an antags round.
I like that idea. Let’s put GPS into boarding firing pins if lethals being around when they’re no longer needed stays prevalent.
Also, SOM not caring about weapons not being returned (like it currently tends to happen with Wardens) is something that will need addressing if it happens continuously. Imo we should test whether SOP is enough for it to happen or whether loosing track of lethals should be a explicitly stated to be Severe Negligence under Space Law.
EDIT: Honestly, probably could be added to Requisitions SOP from the beginning that’s it’s Severe Negligence.
That’s because wardens also get 0 consequences for doing that and it’s quite a big problem because the crew having as many guns as antags makes playing antag feel unfair. This is a problem with NSV because of how it’s okay to give away guns to the crew here, compared to other codebases where you see this kind of stuff happening far more rarely (only during big station wide events like nuke ops).
I like this so much it’s gonna get added to the PR.
I will replace boarding pins into squad pins, which are normal firing pins except they can be tracked via the “squad armory console”, which gives read-only information on the current status of every squad, orders and such, and a list of all squad-firepinned weapons. Hell, maybe i’ll make a log of every time a squad firepin is fired.
It’ll need some way to subvert it of course, I’m thinking emagging it disables the tracking entirely and effectively renders it into a normal firing pin.
Its hard to get them back, most people ditch pagers and disregard PDA messages because Muh Valid Slammer
I’ve tried circumventing it by handing at most, 1 mag with each squaddie, so when they return for more bullet, i can easily get the gun back, legally or by deception.
A potential baby-proofing feature could be bolted on magazines, making reloads a lengthier affair.
That reminds me, while I already suggested making the SOM legally liable for guns, we should probably also add a clause for weapon possession without authorisation. (Tho with squad weapons it could also be counted as (probably minor) theft)
Bolted on mags sounds terrible. Squad guns need to be usable against KNPCs and human enemies, both on ship and during a boarding mission. I think a lengthy reload would be too much of a nerf in many situations.
I do not see how this adresses the resource scarcity and ore silos? From what I see this only adds interactions betweens squads and cargo, unless I’m missing something.
Something that struck me during a conversation about research in the discord, when j3ff suggested to get rid of it completely and purely gate tech by its mineral cost:
That would work really well with requisitions cargo, since it would probably best be balanced by increasing the cost of some high tier items, requiring scarcity management.