Telesalvage Proposal

[SolventMercury]

I'm not sure what the current state of discussion is on salvage, but it's clear that it's fucked and anything similar to it as it is currently would be Bad. This is my proposal for a salvage-esque role that meshes better with the game as it exists. The gist of it is basically salvage via telescience, salvagers getting a portal opened to a dungeon instead of flying out to something in space. Would love feedback!

[YoungThugSS14]

Good doc though

[ArtisticRoomba]

from a short read this very much feels like a "draw the rest of the horse" design in some areas. it's good to put salvies on-station and get general players to interact with this content (a big problem of the previous 4 iterations) but you're still stuck with the problem of "how are you going to get the janitor to interact with rimworld".

the document also identifies salvage's off-station problem as contributing to the lack of resources problem, however this design document doesn't even dive into how that problem is solved with this proposal:

Salvagers are incentivized to spend as little time on-station as possible, especially because of how long it takes to set up a shuttle and start playing the role. This leads to them often failing to distribute resources; conversely, cargo often buys resources like steel even if salvage has already procured large amounts of it.

with the only design point i could find that attempts to somewhat address this being:

Many items should be useful to departments unrelated to salvage, or useless outside of RP/fun value, like rare wines, undiscovered alien plant seeds, wearable jewelery, or particularly cushy furniture. These items work as an implicit encouragement for salvage to either return to the station and show off their loot, or invite the crew down to admire the haul.

jewelry and other department specific equipment like RTGs exists, and in both of the iterations those rewards existed in, it didn't really motivate salvagers to show it off to the station. sometimes you'd get it, sometimes you didn't, more often though it was either ignored and sold. this doesn't strike as a good solution to me

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in general salvage is pretty antithetical to the game's core design principle of player interaction and i don't really see any iteration where the crew can meaningfully interact with salvage and their mechanics in a way that benefits the station as a whole without doing something horrible to station roundflow at the same time.

i'm starting to push SS14 towards system-based design where in-depth mechanics are available to everyone in some degree, with departments having jobs and gameloops that revolve around those mechanics (see chemistry refactor). i don't really see salvage accomplishing this in any iteration that I see.

the department was fun but i'm ready to see it on its way out.

[EthanQix]

I feel that this document has several core design flaws.

First, what's keeping Science from just making the weaponry, armor and equipment they need and going into the portal themselves, making Salvagers redundant?

Second, the doc posits that the current mining gameplay is bad ; it then describes the new dungeon exploration as being "more tightly packed" and needing "removing of kudzu/rock slides and resin walls" and taking more time to dig through. Which, gameplay wise, sounds a lot like mining with a different coat of paint. Mine through rock walls and get stuff back to station to process recycle, except slower and with the occasional directly useful trinket.

Last, and most importantly, this document points out (correctly) that salv spending most of their time off-station and unreachable to other crew is a problem; but it then says that exploration should stay a core pillar of salvaging. Unless we're talking about maints scavenging or some form of Space Pokemon Go, "exploration" and "staying on station" are design principles that oppose each other. This contradiction is illustrated perfectly by the portal mechanic : instead of having salvage play on a totally different map in space, this doc proposes to have them play on a different map anyway, with only the transportation method changed. Heck, the proposition even introduces mechanics, such as camping and the drop-off box, that help salvagers spend more time in the dungeon, aka off-station.

Salvage gameplay needs a fundamental redesign of its core pillars, especially getting rid of its "exploration" pillar, if it is to mesh well with the rest of the game. This is, unfortunately, not it.

[SolventMercury]

from a short read this very much feels like a "draw the rest of the horse" design in some areas. it's good to put salvies on-station and get general players to interact with this content (a big problem of the previous 4 iterations) but you're still stuck with the problem of "how are you going to get the janitor to interact with rimworld".

I can't exactly disagree. I mean, I didn't even outline what science would actually be doing at a mechanical level in this proposal.

the document also identifies salvage's off-station problem as contributing to the lack of resources problem, however this design document doesn't even dive into how that problem is solved with this proposal:

The idea I had at the time was that the little disk or whatever to unlock the next dungeon would be, you know, at the end of the dungeon, so that by the time salvage gets to it, it's mostly already cleared. Salvage has to physically transport the disk back to the station and wait for it to get decoded, creating a downtime for them to spend back on the station. They already have to be back at the station more or less to make the hand-off. Because the teledungeon is the only salvage source, they don't get to just go fly off to something else when this loot source dries up.

First, what's keeping Science from just making the weaponry, armor and equipment they need and going into the portal themselves, making Salvagers redundant?

I don't really think this would happen. Outside of some vaguely defined service jobs like the clown and mime, players usually don't just abandon their role to go do a completely different game loop. If a player wants to salvage as their job, they would queue to be salvagers. There are ways to mechanically enforce this if necessary, like restricting roundstart access to gear and tools.

This contradiction is illustrated perfectly by the portal mechanic : instead of having salvage play on a totally different map in space, this doc proposes to have them play on a different map anyway, with only the transportation method changed.

I do think the change of method is a meaningful one - firstly, the move back and forth between the two maps would be instantaneous. Previously, if you wanted to go to VGRoid, you would need a space ship - already a total no-go for anyone not in the Cargo department. You'd also need a space suit, preferably a hardsuit, you'd need a weapon in case of the many ever-present space mobs, etc. Even then, you'd have to actually know where the salvagers are. They don't tend to be a talkative bunch, and there's a lot of different places they could be. Space is infinitely wide and infinitely tall, and they might not even be in space if they start doing expeditions.

By making it so salvagers have only one place to really go, everyone now basically knows where they'll be. By making this place accessible from a portal, any crew can now instantly go to them without a spaceship, a hardsuit, or a jetpack, and with no travel time. Not only can they be visited, but it can be done without the visiting party using up a load of time screwing around, and I think that reduction in opportunity cost could really help.

That all said, that's really more of an explanation than a defense. If salvage must die, so be it. I think any rework that could possibly "fix" salvage, be it mine or someone else's, would take at minimum months to do, so removing salvage and not re-adding it unless it passes rigorous testing on Vulture, if anything even can, makes perfect sense to me.