# Space station 13 - Science

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## Overview

The core focus of this document goes on the idea that the entire station is focused on the research and management of anomalies which are present in the sector.

## How this will be achieved

Phase 1:
- Create initial design ideas, giving overviews on the main ideas that the design direction will focus on.
- Published pages on github discussions for discussions about each element.
- Collaberation is publicly available to anyone on the github discussions.

Phase 2:
- Create more specific design documents, outlying each new addition, what it will do, how it will act etc. Implementation is decided by whoever is coding it.
- Focus will be on one specific part of the design at once, once that area is complete the next area will be moved on to.
- Create areas in discord so that development discussions can take place, free for anyone who is willing to join the team.
- Collaberation is open to anyone who is willing, they can get a role on discord for access to the created channels.

Phase 3:
- Implementation phase, create PRs coding the created design documents.
- Have some place where people can say what they are working on implementing.
- Mostly modularised, so that each person can work on something in parallel.
- PRs will be merged to a seperate branch on the repo, with testing regularly performed and the designs adapted in order to facilite design changes that happen on the fly.
- When ready, the side development branch will be periodically merged into main. (How do we have it so that all changes merge with main and the branch though?)
- Opinions will be gathered during tests to find out opinions on what needs to be done.

## Design ideas / rules / focuses?

- Mechanics shoulds be accessible, requiring external guides or constantly having the wiki open is a sign of bad design and may tend towards becoming something only accessible to a select few players. Virology is an example of something that should be avoided, very few players can fully utilize virology which results in it being only effectively useable by virology power users, people with knowledge innaccessible through the game or with saved spreadsheets for viruse combinations. We shouldn't try to make it so there is no complexity to mechanics and no thought required, however this thought process should be accessible and achievable in game without a guide. Having too much shallow content can result in this (clockcult also suffers from this a lot). A good example of deep emergency mechanics originating from simple and accessible mechanics is Ultrakill's weapon system and how those weapons interact with each other to create new ways to deal damage.
- Isolation should be heavilly discouraged. Mechanics that focus on a single person working by themselves should be avoided. (Genetics is an example of this, having a console be used for >5 minutes is a pretty good indicator that something is wrong.)
- We should avoid creating things that can bring an end to an interaction chain in a very short span of time. For example an antagonist spending 30 minutes gathering items across the station and prepring to attack can be instantly defeated with a flash if they didn't have flash protection which immediately brings an end to any interesting events that could have arose. Antagonists specifically should be difficult to capture in a way that feels fair and creates interestings scenarios (Having the power of teleportation allowing you to teleport out of brig cells 10 times in a row bad, as well as having the power to instantly stop an antagonist force and bring them in, immediately ending anything they had going on (A good way to avoid this would be to encourage situations that continue to happen even after an antagonist is captured)).

## Departmental Breakdowns

### The station

The main focus of the station should be about researching anomalies, and the space the station with in, in order to understand what makes this region of space have these anomalies and how these can be utilized.

**Station vs anomalies?** (The idea that triggered this design idea)

### Science

Research into what the anomalies are and how to better manage them.

**What do anomalies provide for the station? Why would you actually keep them?**

Over time some internal value builds up. This results in more anomalies appearing and causing damage to the station. If not managed, this will get out of control and result in large scale destructive events.
Each anomalies affect the flux density of the space around them. By keeping them, you increase the flux density of the space which reduces the changes that further dangerous anomaly causing events will occur. More dangerous and volatile anomalies have a significantly higher flux density.
High flux density is extremely valuable for research purposes. Flux can be harvested, (which reduces the flux density rating, resulting in the potential for more danger) and can then be sold for supply value at cargo or can be used to discover insights about the anomalies you are attempting to control (This gives you definitive explanations of what they do for a cost, you have to first interact with them).
The more active an anomaly is, the more flux it produces, which encourages interacting with these anomalies despite knowing nothing about them.

All widespread equipment will be available at roundstart (Computer boards and consoles that are fundamental to the station will not require research).

Research nodes will be based on improving existing functionality rather than unlocking the function of something in the first place. For example, a basic screwdriver shouldn't require research but a power screwdriver will.

Advanced fabrication units require flux power cores in order to function. Many other departments use these flux power cores for a variety of functions.

All currently existing aspects of research will be removed, including:
- Techweb
- Toxins
- Xenobiology
- Maintenance devices
- Exploration crew
- Nanites
- Research servers

They are too disconnected as mechanics to exist in a way that has a strong binding relationship between them all, and as such I believe it is better to remove them and focus on improving and designing the core focus of science.
Trying to keep these will likely result in botched implementations and conflicting/isolated departmental areas.

### Cargo

Purchase equipment that can manage the anomalies, as well as equipment for other departments.

Things produced by other departments can be sold for supply points.
Manage the distribution of resources around the station.

### Security

Deal with any actual threats produced by anomalies (including the crew becoming threats or being threats from the beginning).

Likely that few changes will be made here, however it would be nice to encourage specialisation, security officers specialised in a specific field and each reinforcing/providing for others (For an example of a game that does this kind of balancing extremely well, see nebulous fleet command).

If would also be nice to add more flavour style roles to security, with different levels of authority, slowly having more and more weaknesses but less trust (Up to non-protected members?). This is not the main focus of the design however.

### Engineering

Provide power to the station, as containment requires power to be online.
Manage the distribution of power around the station, increase reactor outputs to maintain power demand.
Redistribute power around the station, reducing power in some sectors when others are in a state of emergency.

Engine options:
- Low maintenance, low risk, low power generation. Useful for when you need low amounts of power to just about get by. (Supermatter?)
- Higher power generation results in higher risks, as well as injuries or failures even if ran perfectly.

### Medical

Heal anyone who has become injured or impaired as a result of an anomaly.

They should be encouraged to leave the department to interact with other areas of the crew when they are not needed for healing purposes.

The main focus of changes to medical are:
- Give medical members something to do when nobody is injured.
- Encourage leaving the medical wing regularly.

#### Medical Research

Medical research are the parts of medical that encourage medical roles to leave medbay and go out into the field.
Virology and genetics as specific roles have been removed. We could probably find ways to add more medical based roles for minor flavour, even if they don't have huge mechanical differences.

### Service

- !! I don't really know why many service jobs should exist apart from adding flavour and reinforcing the environment. !!

Currently this design doesn't propose any changes to service, however this doesn't mean I think they are in a good position, it is just currently out of the scope of this.

### Mining

Much like service, I recognise there is a problem here but am not covering ways to resolve this in this current iteration of design.

### Antagonists

Antagonists should exist as the straw that breaks the camel's back. They are the starting points for station crisis and the trigger. They are not the sole reason any crisis or disaster should be taking place, but are required to get the ball rolling.
Their goals should primarilly focus on something related to the anomalies lore wise.

The syndicate remain as a large collection of smaller corporations that dislike nanotrasen for a variety of reasons.

Nuclear operatives a group of highly trained and highly professional combatants that believe that the research being performed on anomalies is extremely harmful to the fate of humanity and wish to destroy Space Station 13 with nuclear weapons. They believe that the end justifies the means and civillian sacrafice is necessary in order to spread their message and protect the rest of humanity. They are strongly tradition oriented and are generally distrusting towards non-human species, genetic experiments and extensive body modifications.

Other syndicate operatives prefer more infiltrative techniques and are not afraid to utilize anomalies in order to achieve their goals or make a point.

## Lore

A larger emphasis will be placed on the lore surrounding the immediate state of the galaxy and the station and content should generally adhere to it. (We won't cover stuff like the origin of species, but more the present situation, technologies available, the motivations of nanotrasen and the syndicate are particularly important for RP scenarios)

Lore is important for encouraging roleplay and should be game accessible in some way.