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.