# Tools.

Penned by ArcaneMusic, accept no substitutes.

## Problem Statement:
Tools as they exist in game are extremely common, obtainable by nearly all crew at all times to some respect, and nearly every job needs access to some level of construction equipment to properly do their job.

Engineers, obviously, need tools to set up power, repair explosions, or to build things out of raw materials.
Scientists and chemists need tools as their job necessitates the construction of extra machinery, as well as working with/around robots.
Medical doctors have their own custom tools, that they use at all times for operating on patients.
Cargo technicians don't actually need tools to do their job exactly, but with full lathe access and bounties to complete, nearly every cargo technician has a full set of tools.
Most assistants, for the same reasons as cargo techs, have a full set of tools, but that's mostly because it is convienant for powergaming, and tools are outright required for efficient gameplay.
And for that same reason, most *security officers* have a full set of tools, in case a crewmate is using their tools to commit crimes or be difficult.

If a player is caught without any tools, than more often than not they're at a severe disadventage. However, the issue is **not** that players shouldn't need to use tools as much as they do, no.
The issue is that players **need** to get tools *every single shift*, and then they don't need to make any further decisions regarding those tools going forward.

The most fulfilling way to make tool-use more interesting is to change the tools themselves, as opposed to changing the usage of tools. This is, of course, my opinion, and I am not a maintainer, but the proposal is where I'm trying to get permission to do so.

## Proposed Solutions

I have on this document 3 proposed directions that tools could be taken going forward, to better balance their usage, and to make having tools more impactful, while not making them a binary goal for every player to have a toolbox.

### Solution A: Tools are **Cheap**, but **Degrade**.
Tools, as they stand can be obtained nearly everywhere on all existing maps. Whether this is a product of roundstart-item creep, the increased impact that having vs not having tools over time has, or some other reason, doesn't really matter. Currently, there are usually anywhere between 4-5 sets of public tools, as well as dozens of extra toolboxes and pieces of equipment between all departments.

With this solution, we keep this dynamic. You can have dozens of tools, wrenches, saws, whatever, across the station. However, the more that you use a specific tool in-gameplay, that tool would wear down. Once the tool has lost half of it's durability, it's speed would halve, and once it's down out, it's speed would drop to 10%. The tools themselves would not break, but if your job requires you to operate tools for a long time, then getting replacement tools would be important.

Determining what situations would result in tool wear is going to be the tricky part, **because I can sense players are going to feel like this unnecessarily screws over medical or engineers.** However, they are easily the biggest proponent of getting a set of "roundstart" equipment and then never getting new gear throughout an average shift. So, sorry in advance.

The specifics of the system at least mean that adding in a system to repair or replace tools could be worked with if this is the decision the team wants to take.

**ALRIGHT NEXT**

### Solution B: Tools are **Durable**, but **Expensive**.
The seemingly opposite option is to allow tools to keep their unlimited usage in the round, while instead balacing their cost to the station or to the player by making them more expensive to produce.

Currently, to make a full toolbox of equipment, with zero upgrades to produce these items, it costs 475 iron and 80 glass. You can also add an extra 500 iron if you'd like it in a toolbox, but very few players actively use a toolbox to carry their tools by design of them being bulky.

By comparison, buying the same toolbox of tools (sans a multitool) costs 250 credits with no inflation. I set this number by design as a set of tools is a powerful upgrade for the average player to get, and it should be expensive given a player's starting paycheck.

So, the change would need to be made to make the mineral costs to tools more expensive to compensate for the fact that they are powerful pieces of equipment with value that lasts the whole shift.
> *Authors note: I do think, however, that the costs of advanced tools, and medical tools, would not need to be adjusted nearly as much as a result. These tools already come at a particular premium, and wouldn't need such extreme adjustments.*

At the bare minimum, basic construction tools and simiilar equipment would need to cost a floor of 1 iron sheet to produce each, so that if everyone on the station gets a full set of tools, it would come at a particular detriment to the department and would only be possible if the crew is very well off in regards to minerals.

Yes, I know, mining is all kinds of unbalanced and predicating this argument on making tools more expensive in **iron** of all things is ridiculous, but it stands to reason that it will not **always** be hilariously unbalanced.

**Yeah yeah NEXT**

## Solution C: Tools are **Durable**, but **Unique**.
This is kind of a nuclear third option but I want to offer it as a potential direction to take it from a design perspective, because **lathes seem to constantly cause little problems like this, don't they?**

With this resolution, we would be removing basic tool designs from both the autolathe, and protolathe. As such, the only tools on the station would come from cargo, vending, mapped-in resources, but not from mineral resources. A single player having a whole set of tools would become significantly more of a resource in this case, and places the impetus to use the department's tools, or work together if something needs to be built.

Advanced tools would be replaced with upgrade kits to existing tools, to prevent them from still being printable. Similarly, it would open discussion for ghetto anologues to existing tool methods, like using a pickaxe to pry open a door like a crowbar, or a bobby pin in the place of a screwdriver, but at reduced speed or success rate.

More than anything, I'm kind of curious to see if this would even have a positive impact (as I'm certain players would have an intensely negative reception to the idea). But reducing lathe creep starts somewhere, and I have elected to make my stance here.