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# System prepended metadata

title: Science

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# Science

## Throw things you want to propose at the very bottom, I'd rather keep this clean and consistent.

## CURRENT, ACTIVELY WORK IN PROGRESS THINGS

### Kevinz000:

- I am working on an autolathe/protolathe lathing refactor for the new time cost system that will allow for actual print queues, however this is mostly an interface/qol refactor.
- Anomaly core production is being worked on actively on /tg/station and I will be able to port it soon
- The actual backend rewrite for servers with download/upload area limitation to replace departmental flags, as well as the actual backend techwebs system allowing for deconstruction is something I am going to be doing sooner or later, although not for a while.

## Summary 

### Perceived issues with the current implementation
Techwebs was made as a way to overhaul to research system to be more time consuming and have more involvement from the rest of the station, as well as a pseudo-timegate to have endgame gear be actually endgame and somewhat limit it.

Unfortunately, this didn't work out very well. The closest things we have to "effort being made to get tech points" is still toxins + maybe dissections, tritium in collectors is never done, tesla corona analyzers aren't relevant as we run SM, etc etc.
(someone added that we have nanites/hydro/atmos also but no, that isn't enough)

We both have a problem of endgame gear not at all being limited in certain ways (it's trivial to rush certain things with a single toxins bomb), coupled with bad node ordering (it was never majorly overhauled after initial commit, more on that later), and the nail in the coffin being that it is still a "game" of a single department trying to upgrade and enhance every other department without relying on other department, made worse by the fact that now with techwebs the interests of the science department may at times be far from the interests of other departments (not entirely an issue, more on that later).

### Goals of science overhaul

Rebuild the science system in some ways while preserving techwebs as a hybrid system. 
Add more *required* involvement from other departments while allowing science enough standalone power to advance by themselves in certain ways.

Resort techweb structure to be more in line with the original design goal of techwebs (as stated by the person who actually asked me to write it), having to pick and choose between branch progression rather than artificially locking everything behind the 4 tiers of parts being the main sequence.

Add some form of limitation for certain, specific endgame gear that isn't just material costs. /tg/station's new anomaly system is a great, great example of this, although I don't plan on using just one system or throwing it onto literally everything.

Make techwebs into more of an interdepartmental game than it already is. It is nice having more than one way to make points, yes, but at the end of the day it hasn't been enough and as shown on more than one server now this is a problem.

Introduce certain new functions for prototypes, as while all of the above is a thing, science/techwebs as a whole is terribly boring at times and having some more interactions would be nice.

Part of it will include a materials rebalance.

### Organization
The rest of this document is going to be organized sort of like how the code is because at this point my brain might as well run on typepaths. **A large part of this will be brainstorming.**

## Items

### Reliability
I'm not sure how many people remember this but way back in the day there was an item reliability system. I didn't like it much back then because of the fact that it was very, very RNG based and frankly kind of crappy, but reintroducing this in some way (prototype designs start out unreliable, from AEGs leaking radiation to other glitches and hazards being introduced, and having to be improved but not necessarily through deconstructive analyzer + remaking would be interesting)
Improving reliability would come in the form of sinking a resource to do "processing" to work out the kinks in the design, as well as in the form of (and more encouraged method of) live-testing prototypes and bringing it back to research machinery for tweaking and improvements that are then stored in the research databse for later use.
Might also bring back the critical fail system, for when an item is too broken to be live-patched in a sense by a machine and need to be entirely replaced/recycled. This is currently used in flashes and AEGs, it's just invisible to players because it really isn't part of the R&D system anymore.

### Anomaly core usage
Based off* some idea oranges had on /tg/ that I liked, either limiting endgame items by requiring anomaly cores to power them, or making more items like the reactive shells that have effects based on anomaly cores. Potentially expand the anomaly core concept and add qualities and other variables to them as a resource, but we'll see. Items that require them will drop the cores on deconstruction to keep a consistent amount of cores in play in the game, and the cores themselves would be mostly indestructible.

## Machinery

### Autolathe/Protolathe divide
Autolathes should remain able to print most common items in-house, as lightweight fabrication units. Protolathes would be required for more advanced designs, regardless of metal/glass usage, or not, potentially you can have cases where you can individually export perfected designs with full reliability data for import onto autolathes, or sync autolathes with a server to grant them access to simple designs.
Autolathes however should also be improved with a tgui-next interface with build times/build queues (see protolathes - print times) to make them not as obnoxious to use (for example it would take you an order of magnitude more time to make micro manipulators in autolathes than protolathes.)

### Requiring interfaces
The current R&D console vs no R&D console system is fine, in my opinion anyways.

### Protolathes

#### Department locking
A new system needs to be devised for the protolathe departmental lock system. The original/currently used implementation is lazy and just something I did to make work at the moment.
**Now, if all else fails, I have to admit it's worked, so if whatever rewrite I or someone else come up with doesn't make it works, we can always fall back to it.**
However, I'd rather have a system where lathes are networked and designs can default to being locked to certain lathes as part of a lathe or area based design download restriction system, much like how old R&D had the servers able to be used to control this. If we did this it'd probably have the controls start in the vault or something. *This will probably not get off the ground because I don't know if there's going to be anything that'll stop the average RD from just breaking in to give themselves everything, and I do not particularly want another hard access lock system, but we'll see.*

#### Print times (or rather, introducing them plus a queue system)
I do not particularly *enjoy* having to wait god knows how many minutes to print some simple things, but now that we have tgui-next and I don't have to suffer crashes from sending too much data, if we can get a system to refresh static data when necessary and implement a build queue-build time system, it would make mass producing things able to have a time factor to it as well.

### Deconstructive Analyzer

#### Item reliability
If the reliability system is readded and expanded upon, deconstructive analyzers should be able to analyze unreliable items with sufficient wear-testing and incorporate upgrades to their designs into some form of storage, whether it's the learning matrix (read below) or the global station techweb. It should also be able to live-tweak said items without having to have them be remade to "perfect" them if they are under the level of reliability data that is stored in the system.

## Research/Systems
I'd like to try an experimental change to change research into two sections.

### Servers
Potential introduction of departmental servers, synced to the primary R&D server, so that there is not a single point of failure given that we are going to be making sabotage more impactful, meaning it wouldn't be really fun to have a single screwdriver and crowbar immediately invalidate everything, right?
**As part of this, some forms of data would be considered volatile and made to be unable to be stored in consoles or disks, at least not able to be stored *well*/able to be easily restored from a hard backup.** 

### Deconstruction/Learning Matrix
**This would be the "short term" old R&D-esque improvement system.**
The idea is that the station's protolathe fabricators are advanced all-in-one machines that are able to print experimental prototypes orders of magnitudes faster than a traditional prototyping system. However, they are inherently unstable and require frequent retraining to stay "calibrated", lest their products come out unreliable and unstable or outright unusable.
**This should be easy to advance**, be mainly done by deconstruction or another easy to do method, and take around 5-15 minutes (if not faster) to get up to speed. The level this is developed to can then have effects on either designs printed (sort of like reliability system, or built into it entirely), and/or the designs you can print (old R&D style).
**This should be easy to sabotage and disrupt.** This would be stored in either a stationwide server room aka the current science server system or in departmental servers. They would be very easy to sabotage due to being volatile data, through either remote wiping/network sabtoage (sure wish we had a real goon-like network system right) or physical damage or destruction (on old R&D for example, not cooling the servers properly resulted in levels degrading)

### Techwebs
**Techwebs would stay as the long-term research-node system that serves to gate lategame tech behind time and effort.**

#### Initial designs
All basic designs (I'm looking at you, basic tools and sec equipment, and more!) would be moved to be very early in the tree or entirely based on the short-term deconstruction system. Some common designs like certain tools would be made available for all protolathes.

#### Overall structure and node placement
This is a part of techwebs that I consider myself to have failed at in that the system is still based around things like "Advanced Bluespace Research" as being the end-all of progression and absolutely requiring it before getting other nodes.

**This is not all a bad thing** - Often times the nodes set as the linear progression cornerstones like parts are a good way to gate tiers, however this can be replicated by simply doing something along the lines of giving each node a tier placement and requiring x nodes of y tier before unlocking nodes of y + 1 tier.

However, I'd like at least an attempt to be made to separate the different areas of techwebs into specializations. For example, having to go down a specific progression for cybernetics that gives you partial progress towards nanites, having to go down a different one for high efficiency engineering and advanced machine upgrades. **It would be interesting to force the dynamic of choice, rather than have a no-brainer linear path to science.** 

#### Techweb points
Need to move forwards on making nanites into their own tech points and requiring that to unlock new nanite programs.
I kind of want to make prerequisites a part of the tier system without making said prerequisites actually unlock high tier parts as opposed to the actual part nodes being the prerequisites as in right now but we'll see. It's more natural to me than entirely separating (as opposed to what I said in node placement section above) but we'll see.
More kinds of tech points would be interesting at the very least but unfortunately outside of niche things like genetics and nanites I'm struggling to think of a sensical way to apply this. 

#### Departmental collaboration


#### New unlock systems
Emphasizing 

## A note on materials and upgrades

Materials have long been on the radar for me.
**I am absolutely not having something akin to "economy money required per print". The station should be using economy/money for outside sources of gear in most situations, and raw materials for production/printing in house, with a good balance of gear producible by each system as to not make the other irrelevant.**
However I've became increasingly bothered by the fact that, in specific, upgrade parts just completely skew and make "material economy" a joke.
You can fix this in three ways, and I'm planning to touch up on all three.
- Scarcity in mining - This I think is more or less fine, even if plasma rates are a little wack as of now.
- Design materials cost - Will require a rebalance to be more uniform with the kind of item and its effects, but will do nothing without
- Uniform scaling factor for materials cost vs upgrade tier. Without this, nothing else will matter when you have things requiring a ridiculous amount of materials to make at tier 1 but suddenly becoming cheap as sin at tier 4.

Upgrade scaling is sort of an issue everywhere else too, but they're not too relevant to R&D itself while material economy is one of the backbones so let's focus on that.
I will be writing a uniform scaling system for upgrades, with 100% cost being at tier 1 and each tier decreasing at around 100%-92.5%-85%-75% cost at tier 4. I'm open to value changes and this would be put in the `__DEFINES` folder in code for easy modification, but this will be something that is more or less enforced for all material-lathing production machines, from imprinters to protolathes to autolathes and more.

# Scratch space below for ideas

## Trilby:

Addtive way to limit printing - Eris based printing blueprints that have limited use before being depleted. This would mean deconing things would allow you to get move blueprint unlocks in that node costing, points/items to refill each "node blueprint count" were later nodes - Weapons, adv tools, illegal based tech will need more then one item to unlock them permitedly. (This could also factor into a station or department-based economy in a pretty interesting way - Putnam). To add onto Putnams idea, maybe you could temp buy a few more prints but I.G it should be item based refill and money should be seen as a <span style="color:red">***last***</span> option to print off limited things. 

Deleting or limiting nodes via access, unlike at the moment were once unlocked anyone anyware can print the item as long as its synced - Allow you to WITH PROPER ACCESS sync the console or turn off printing of a node i.e RD shutting off a node that prints out xray guns do to traitors stealing a sec-prolathen board.

Grater chem use in some items, atm their only 2~ things that use chemicals when made, Illegal ammo, Hydro plant gun. This makes the easy of printing off 400 of x/y/z from the ore linked silo really easy and gives no reall feel of mats used after miners get plasma cutters.

Printer-Over-Use or POS, a system that as you print more and more of the same item the more time it takes to print from it, this in theory helps limits end game gear from mass printing at once - See Markguns Boh and AI based gear - In a way to make more of the mid-round events seem more fair. - Note things like parts and simple things can have a much lower POS timer and even lower POS adder.

Silo being a upgrade RATHER then endless mat holding - As it is, the ore silo was a massive misstake making sci and other departments not want to interact with cargo at all, and helping people be less at risk, such as robotic being able to bunker down shift start and make endless mechs and implants. Best way to fix this is two fold - 1) Make it have limit space, only holding lets say 100 of each type of mat but per bin upgrade gets a added 100 mats, over flow being placed evenly in orms. 2) Limited linking, maybe it links rather then prolathens/printers it links to ore-storage were people can pull out from their to add to each prolathen. Ideally both being added and liked but this will not happen.

More ways to slow/delay RnD as Cult/Nukies/Ect. As simple as it sounds atm its hard to as any of these threats deal with RnD, as killing miners is hard to do, no way to remove tech, and sci being self-running anyware they really wish. Maybe cults/nukes can buy something to over tax the miners and make nodes for a time cost more meaning people will have for a time less points/buying power of nodes. Or maybe a lockdown of all pri nting of items from prolathen for a short time - like AI lockdown drills

More item based hidden nodes for more notable things - Like illegal/alien tech, their should be more hidden nodes that hold items that are not as well needed or used, such as a node for hydro to make "Hydroponic Cryo Beds" or "Adv Surgery Table Design" QoL based gear that can be unlocked via needing items from that department and or cargo* - Maybe just maybe a node that lets you print off more anti-cult based stuff that helps you detect the arcan arts or defened against them but thats*

More types of upgrades, atm its just stock parts and for medical if Rnd gets illegal tech a better sleeper bed. This could be grately exspanded on via more omni based gear for Rnd to get and build for the departments, like perhaps rather then the chem heater both heating AND cooling their can be a chem freezer as well but Rnd can make the "Chem Pryo/Cryo" allowing both. Or i.g locking away more adv buildings away. - Few suggested upgraded buildings - Duel Charger holds more cells at once, Industery charger charges at double the speed, Critcal Care Sleeper has more adv chems but only injects well someone is in crit, Preium Miner Vender makes more of the exspence items buyable. (This could be a good way to also balance other department power creep such as cargo bounty console round start or medicals chem storage ect ect)

Dencer Data Dectection - DDD, basiclly allows RD Robotics and RnD/Heads access to the print logs of each of their printers via tablet/PDA cart and other modular gear. This is usefull for seeing when what was printed for what and can help RP out more detective based crimes. Ore silos to an exstend do this but its rare/hard to use...

Slower progress i.g - Rounds are 2-3 hours, meaning when Rnd learns the way around the new system it should still take around that time to get all nodes not as it is now around 20 mins to get all the good nodes and afterwords just cleaning up the filler nodes that are QoL based.

Rarer Parts - Unlike the more mass-print and BS in 5~ parts their should be more parts i.g that are akin to making the printer/object just more sturdy or easyer to interface with, such as glass sheets* Atm it takes just normal glass. Something like R-glass makes it more strong against damage well plasma glass can make the object/device in question have more fire-resistats, This would force people mainly rnd to completely take apart something like a sleeper and remake it with better parts rather then just teleport them in and out.

More usefull Modular Consoles linking and helping with more of the ideas above, such as rather then seeing how much fabs have you use a tablet that tells you the amout of mats inside, maybe even remote printing* or a way to remotely lock printers/consoles and get live updates on when its unlocked/used if you have your modular tablet/console set to do that.

Downgrading parts - Prob at first going to get a lot of flack for this but it should be a thing, parts like manips/lasers and the like slowly getting less and less affect as they are used, maybe their bounces lower untill they are a detriment, like rather then speeding up the recharging it slows it down do to being melted a bit or a laser that just is burning out.

None-Rechargable Cell - Again likely going to a flack from borg mains and people that use inducers a lot (maybe just really cheap cells that are trash that recharge but the higher end cells being non) Chem based cells that print full but cant be charged, Later on Rnd should be able to print rechargable ones ect ect.