Add Salvage game area design document #561
Conversation
Errant-4
left a comment
Errant-4
left a comment
There was a problem hiding this comment.
I generally like it. I do have some wording/layout suggestions
|
Here's some points I think should be re-iterated as a salvage main:
No salvage content currently fits these criteria. Salvage sucks because stuff just kept getting added without actually adhering to any coherent design. |
I feel like the big issue with logistics for salvage is that a lot of the potentially fun logistical systems are still built around the concept of salvage having a shuttle or getting a shuttle. Ore Crates can't be fulton'd, and dragging anything large through space is a difficult task, for example. |
|
Hiya! I main Salvage on a WizDen downstream that aims to be near 1:1 to Wizden / aims to be WizDen+
Agree on most fronts, with caveats that I delve into further down in this comment.
I think this should say Primary way, with some materials being exclusively obtained by salvage. I think its also worth noting somewhere that the generation of Spesos for salvage should be far lower than a Cargo Techs.
I personally think "A meaningful sense of progression that synergizes with intended responsibilities" should be a part of this list. Its important to note that this can be done without negating the chance for upgrades from other departments, as there are many aspects of salvage equipment that can be upgraded.
More or less agree, with minor caveats.
I think Cargo Techs and Salvagers should have different niches under the umbrella of Supply/Cargo so that they don't tread on each others toes & make each other feel like their effort has been useless/wasted.
More or less agree, Salvage is a job that I enjoy because I get to
I think Salvage can benefit from having some innate upgrade paths too. Less impactful perhaps, or in areas that would be unwise to potentially allow other departments to hand out. Maybe tied to salvage doing their job (scrapping, mining, and getting those materials to other depts)?
I think I'd also put here "Gameplay that puts salvagers in places where they can't be followed". I think "a big place that takes multiple trips to explore, has good materials, and good items for other depts, & dangerous mobs" is a fantastic thing for salv.
Agreed here, Salvage should be PvE focused and have weapons that flourish in PvE but struggle in PvP.
I think there should be resources that are locked behind salvage doing their job. I don't think this is a flaw, I think it is a feature of meaningful interdepartmental connections. Having read the overall Cargo document, I think there are definitely ways to square this circle. Perhaps material types that are unique to salvage (gold, silver, uranium), and then material types unique to cargo (plasma & plastic perhaps?), and then material types with major overlap, but where financially it is difficult to obtain so Salvage is leant on for that (steel, glass). Ultimately, if there are no Salvagers the thought process shouldn't be "just spend money instead", but instead "get someone to fill the empty slot", as it is with practically every other mechanical job on station. As for the point on "Steamrolling Resources", my main thought in that concept is, as a salvager it is kinda boring that I can get enough steel to last the round by doing two debris. To me Salvage is the "gets materials" job Primarily, whereas cargo techs are the "get items" job (well, more the "do bounties" job really). -- Also, on Harmony (the fork I main salvage on), we wrote up a large document about what Harmony Salvagers ultimately wanted from Salvage. |
|
Hold on, I just read the Cargo design doc, and I feel like I am looking at duplicate codepaths... |
|
Just wanna say I appreciate all the feedback so far 👍 I'll do another pass over it sometime soon to tighten up the text. |
This is a sentiment I want to mirror. Every single time I play salvage I bring back enough materials to make a 2nd station but Cargo still opts to buy them. This issue is exasperated by the fact that departments make their own orders now. How is Security supposed to know Salvage gathered 1000 steel? They're going to default to using the ordering console, and Cargo will likely default to allowing the other departments to spend their budget however they like. I play Salvage to fight mobs in PVE, provide the station with valuable resources, and feel like a badass. If number 2 is out of the question due to confusion/incompetence then I guess I just get gamerloot and fuck off with current Salvage gameplay. That's an issue I hope to see fixed with any new developments. |
|
I agree that a lot of things have been added to salvage with literally no actual thought for design, the job bounty boards and buyable gold/silver comes to mind. But, a lot of the “issues” i see are inherent to the core concept of a group of people whose job it is to gather things outside the station. Especially on LRP if there is not a mechanical reason for salv to come to the station, why would they? There needs to be actual serious consideration to the loot found in space, for example I don’t think mass handheld scanner should be discovered in space at all, period. It’s basically the largest single “upgrade” a salv can get since it bypasses any real need for transport past a jetpack. If you want salvage to be on the station and interact with others, you gotta give them a reason to be there. |
|
Maybe the idea that salvagers need to come back on station is backwards, and that the actual goal is that the station can reach the salvagers. And the easiest way to do that is making salvage come back, because any other solution would need more work. |
|
I dabble in salvage a little, a huge problem I'd like to see solved is having station time feel meaningful. Every moment I'm on station is not time spent doing my job. Right now the job is extraordinarily high yield so it feels really bad that I'm not off station and actually gaining the materials the station is so hungry for. Any trip to medical is a severe punishment in work efficiency, I feel this is extra impactful when it happens to Salvage as opposed to other departments due to the size of salvage being at most 4 people on any given high pop station. So 1 person being out is 1/4th of your productivity gone! Any time I bring a ton of materials back to the station, I'm also the one delivering them to make sure they're actually obtained by the departments that desperately want them (science mostly, sometimes sec since they have tech that utilizes the salv precious ores) If I'm not delivering then it's a toss up to if they actually meet their destinations since a clown or passenger can choose to hoard it to use on some super expensive nigh-unobtainable goal. With no mechanically enforced method to track who took what from cargo (other than those players who play bureaucracy supreme, god bless them) tons of precious materials get consumed without any way to track where they went! As much as I'd like to leave the materials at cargo for them to deliver on their own. I'm unsure if they could be trusted, or if they were to be trusted and misused their responsibility to hand-out resources, how could we hold them accountable? There's also the issue that departments would sooner order materials on their consoles than to walk up to cargo which risks them not even having the materials to begin with, making it a waste of time to have even went. It's a safer gambit to order and wait, which guarantees you will obtain it, but the trade-off being patience and time. Since there isn't a way to know if salvage just hauled in a massive boon or not, unless the QM announces it out loud on the radio. Right now all of these systems are logistically lacking, and could be resolved with methods employed by the players but they should be resolved mechanically. Right now we only have proper order slips for deliveries. But if you want to order 10 pieces of uranium, you have to walk to cargo, ask if they have uranium, wait for the technician to check their stock, and then find out if you get your order fulfilled or not. If you obtain those 10 pieces, then the only person who will know is the person who handed it to you. It's so innocuous that it wouldn't even be worth documenting on most cases. To anyone not in the interaction, it would be virtually invisible. Salvage doesn't know that the amount of their uranium stock has diminished, QM might not know unless the person notified them, science won't know and sec won't know. Later that person builds a disposals trap that launches 10 uranium spears at someone unsuspecting. Or they use the uranium found in it to make EMP mixtures. Or they are kitted out in sci tech that uses uranium. Or they emag a protolathe and get an X-ray cannon to round remove someone. I mean murderous intents aside, I think it would be neat if cargo had some sort of inventory system that showed their stock of materials and items like an analytics screen! Or something like a mini vault that held their precious stock on display for everyone to view, but not to touch whereas the steel/glass/plastic can be moved freely. But not gold, silver, plasma, uranium, or diamonds, anything that the QM or supply decrees really. Ideas Guy tangent over, there's a lot of information that could be documented station side to make salvage's job easier. Mindlessly mining and scrapping can only get you so far, salvage is never mining bananium unless they're asked for it. But they should be trying to fulfill the demand for casual uses of bananium before it even becomes a request as the supply document points out. Right now there's a lot of communication that needs to be done on radio for orders to be fulfilled, which is time spent not salvaging (terrible). |
I am seconding this; there are some engine problems that Salvage runs up against all the time (e.g. salvage grids intersecting the station) and it might be worth taking a look at working on grid joins, fixtures, and interactions so that salvage can be done closer to the station. |
RemFexxel
left a comment
RemFexxel
left a comment
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Suggestions and grammar improvements.
| # Salvage Department Design Document | ||
|
|
||
| ## Concept | ||
| The Salvage sub-department is a substantial part of the Supply department's resource generation, acting as the most economic way to provide large quantities of raw materials to the station that would otherwise be costly or difficult to acquire. It draws heavily from the traditional "sci-fi industrial materials-handling" aesthetics; mining valuable asteroids, breaking down structures into scrap, and dangerous zero-g work in space. Salvage should appeal to players who seek to min-max efficiency in their work, challenging players on how to generate as much value for the station as possible with the time and resources they have. While Salvage's theming and duties necessitate not working inside of the station proper, this should not translate into Salvage being fully independent or disappearing from the station (and therefore the round) for extended periods of time. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| The Salvage sub-department is a substantial part of the Supply department's resource generation, acting as the most economic way to provide large quantities of raw materials to the station that would otherwise be costly or difficult to acquire. It draws heavily from the traditional "sci-fi industrial materials-handling" aesthetics; mining valuable asteroids, breaking down structures into scrap, and dangerous zero-g work in space. Salvage should appeal to players who seek to min-max efficiency in their work, challenging players on how to generate as much value for the station as possible with the time and resources they have. While Salvage's theming and duties necessitate not working inside of the station proper, this should not translate into Salvage being fully independent or disappearing from the station (and therefore the round) for extended periods of time. | |
| The Salvage sub-department is a substantial part of the Supply department's resource generation, acting as the most economical way to provide large quantities of raw materials to the station that would otherwise be costly or difficult to acquire. It draws heavily from the traditional "sci-fi industrial materials-handling" aesthetics: mining valuable asteroids, breaking down structures into scrap, and dangerous zero-g work in space. Salvage should appeal to players who seek to min-max efficiency in their work, challenging players on how to generate as much value for the station as possible with the time and resources they have. While Salvage's theming and duties necessitate not working inside of the station proper, this should not translate into Salvage being fully independent or disappearing from the station (and therefore the round) for extended periods of time. |
| - Good for medium-and-up ranges of player experience. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Responsibilities | ||
| - Salvage is very efficient at providing resources other departments can make use of. While Cargo should be able to function somewhat without Salvage, if Salvage does its job Cargo should feel free to spend their resources elsewhere. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - Salvage is very efficient at providing resources other departments can make use of. While Cargo should be able to function somewhat without Salvage, if Salvage does its job Cargo should feel free to spend their resources elsewhere. | |
| - Salvage is very efficient at providing resources that other departments can make use of. While Cargo should be able to function somewhat without Salvage, if Salvage does its job, Cargo should feel free to spend its resources elsewhere. |
| ## Responsibilities | ||
| - Salvage is very efficient at providing resources other departments can make use of. While Cargo should be able to function somewhat without Salvage, if Salvage does its job Cargo should feel free to spend their resources elsewhere. | ||
| - Salvage is a source of rare and unique equipment not available elsewhere, both to enhance their own job and for the station. | ||
| - Salvage is given the equipment and opportunities to deal with situtations on the outside of the station and in nearby surrounding space. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - Salvage is given the equipment and opportunities to deal with situtations on the outside of the station and in nearby surrounding space. | |
| - Salvage is given the equipment and opportunities to deal with situations outside the station and in the nearby surrounding space. |
| - While Salvage may have equipment that lets them handle harsh conditions and PvE elements, this equipment should not become too strong when brought onto the station or if Salvage is attacked by other players. | ||
| - Similarly, Salvagers should not feel the need to use their Cargo connections to get strong PvP-viable weapons to perform their work efficiently. | ||
| - Steamrolling resource generation. | ||
| - The amount of resources Salvage is able to generate shouldn't be so massive as to completely invalidate resource management and regular Cargo gameplay tasks. At the same time, poor Salvage performance shouldn't be so debilitating that the rest of the station is unable to function. Salvage's impact should primarily be felt within Cargo; a great Salvage teams lets Cargo feel like it is flourishing, while a bad/non-existent Salvage team forces Cargo to allocate resources to getting materials via other means. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - The amount of resources Salvage is able to generate shouldn't be so massive as to completely invalidate resource management and regular Cargo gameplay tasks. At the same time, poor Salvage performance shouldn't be so debilitating that the rest of the station is unable to function. Salvage's impact should primarily be felt within Cargo; a great Salvage teams lets Cargo feel like it is flourishing, while a bad/non-existent Salvage team forces Cargo to allocate resources to getting materials via other means. | |
| - The amount of resources Salvage can generate shouldn't be so massive as to invalidate resource management and regular Cargo gameplay tasks completely. At the same time, poor Salvage performance shouldn't be so debilitating that the rest of the station is unable to function. Salvage's impact should primarily be felt within Cargo; a great Salvage team lets Cargo feel like it is flourishing, while an inadequate/non-existent Salvage team forces Cargo to allocate resources to getting materials via other means. |
| - Related to the point above. As a resource generator Salvage will be in a natural position to utilize the resources, and Cargo provides further avenues to get equipment. Salvage should not be able to make efficient use of the materials they have when compared to other jobs. | ||
| - When possible, harness the desire for progression to encourage interacting with complementary systems and induce collaborative gameplay with other departments. Implement feedback loops that encourage Salvage to collaborate with the station and not constantly hover on the outside. | ||
| - Tools and equipment that translate to high PvP potential. | ||
| - While Salvage may have equipment that lets them handle harsh conditions and PvE elements, this equipment should not become too strong when brought onto the station or if Salvage is attacked by other players. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - While Salvage may have equipment that lets them handle harsh conditions and PvE elements, this equipment should not become too strong when brought onto the station or if Salvage is attacked by other players. | |
| - While Salvage may have equipment that lets them handle harsh conditions and PvE elements, this equipment should not become too strong when brought onto the station or if other players attack Salvage. |
|
|
||
| ## Undesired Gameplay | ||
| - Gameplay that encourage being away from the station for long periods of time. | ||
| - This is not to say that Salvage can't make trips away from the station grid, but any such excursions should have the goal to return back to the station within a timely manner. I.e. a Salvager shouldn't feel encouraged to hop from off-station to off-station grid with activities to do at each location, but making Salvage retrieve resources from a single timed grid to the station could be a more viable gameplay loop. If Salvage is away from the station for too long they are failing to contribute to the station ecosystem and through a lack of interaction provide little impact to the overall round. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - This is not to say that Salvage can't make trips away from the station grid, but any such excursions should have the goal to return back to the station within a timely manner. I.e. a Salvager shouldn't feel encouraged to hop from off-station to off-station grid with activities to do at each location, but making Salvage retrieve resources from a single timed grid to the station could be a more viable gameplay loop. If Salvage is away from the station for too long they are failing to contribute to the station ecosystem and through a lack of interaction provide little impact to the overall round. | |
| - This is not to say that Salvage can't make trips away from the station grid, but any such excursions should have the goal to return to the station within a timely manner. i.e., a Salvager shouldn't feel encouraged to hop from off-station to off-station grid with activities to do at each location, but making Salvage retrieve resources from a single timed grid to the station could be a more viable gameplay loop. If Salvage is away from the station for too long, they are failing to contribute to the station ecosystem and, through limited interaction, have little impact on the overall round. |
| - Salvage base mechanics should hold up on its own, but when utilizing the output from other jobs Salvage should find itself enhanced even further. Note that this should not be in the form of Salvage gathering things from other jobs round-start to optimize its gameplay, but as a result of other jobs' progression paths. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Undesired Gameplay | ||
| - Gameplay that encourage being away from the station for long periods of time. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - Gameplay that encourage being away from the station for long periods of time. | |
| - Gameplay that encourages being away from the station for long periods of time. |
| - The core gameplay loops are engaging. | ||
| - By virtue of being on the edge of the station, Salvage has a lot of room to expand into various areas and mechanics. Care should be taken to not make mechanics redundant. | ||
| - Becomes stronger via upgrades from other jobs. | ||
| - Salvage base mechanics should hold up on its own, but when utilizing the output from other jobs Salvage should find itself enhanced even further. Note that this should not be in the form of Salvage gathering things from other jobs round-start to optimize its gameplay, but as a result of other jobs' progression paths. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - Salvage base mechanics should hold up on its own, but when utilizing the output from other jobs Salvage should find itself enhanced even further. Note that this should not be in the form of Salvage gathering things from other jobs round-start to optimize its gameplay, but as a result of other jobs' progression paths. | |
| - Salvage base mechanics should hold up on its own, but when utilizing the output from other jobs, Salvage should find itself enhanced even further. Note that this should not be in the form of Salvage gathering things from other jobs round-start to optimize its gameplay, but as a result of other jobs' progression paths. |
|
|
||
| ## Desired Gameplay | ||
| - Effecting gathering of resources. | ||
| - Salvage should have tools and mechanics that allows them to efficiently turn labor into resources; every single sheet of steel is the result of Salvage putting in manual effort, but the mechanics provide greater yield than other jobs. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - Salvage should have tools and mechanics that allows them to efficiently turn labor into resources; every single sheet of steel is the result of Salvage putting in manual effort, but the mechanics provide greater yield than other jobs. | |
| - Salvage should have tools and mechanics that allow them to turn labor into resources efficiently; every single sheet of steel is the result of Salvage putting in manual effort, but the mechanics provide a greater yield than other jobs. |
| - Hard work is cool work; Salvage feels dangerous and has cool tools to show for it. | ||
| - *The* space-facing job; work is conducted on the outer rim of the station, in a hazardous environment. | ||
| - Hard work pays off; doing Salvage tasks takes weight off Cargo's shoulders, with a visible positive effect on the department. | ||
| - Efficiency feels powerful; moving fast to keep ahead of the resource drain curve is encouraged, while mistakes slow things down. It should feel good to make numbers go up. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| - Efficiency feels powerful; moving fast to keep ahead of the resource drain curve is encouraged, while mistakes slow things down. It should feel good to make numbers go up. | |
| - Efficiency feels powerful; moving fast to keep ahead of the resource drain curve is encouraged, while mistakes slow things down. It should feel good to increase numbers. |
|
Having looked over this document and given it general thought, I think it falls into the long lineage of post-hoc salvage/shaft-miner design docs that seek to enumerate a line of perfected ideals without ever examining whether the basic mechanics of the game even support them, or if the gameplay presented is beneficial to the complete experience. At the core of the doc is the baseline assumption that salvage and the off-station gameplay it provides is something that is valuable to the game's health, an idea which I don't really think has been meaningfully interrogated and proven to be true. Moving onto the meat of what's written, I think the majority of things outlined for the job are fundamentally vapid and not really thought out or planned in a meaningful way. Largely, I think it's just encompassing preexisting salvage gameplay, which is pointless since it's largely proven to be plainly bad in its design. The intended experience section of the doc is the most obvious example of this, as it really just states some things that literally everyone except the most diehard powergaming salvagers would agree with and does not flesh out those ideas further. Saying that your job is cool, collaborative, and has some level of efficiency optimization in it does not really tell me anything. You can go back to the original salvage doc from like 2022 and these exact points are written on them, except with way more actual information about what the job is supposed to do. As presented, there's no real description that can be meaningfully transferred into actual content and features for the job. In fact, it seems to be the general mode of operation to make this doc as vague as physically possible. Despite collaboration and progression being listed as a key component of the role, the only other job mentioned is Cargo, which--despite literally encompassing salvage--is essentially defined as merely the passive benefactor of the salvage team, simply managing materials which come in from salvage (the core of this material-gathering gameplay is never elaborated on, so I can only assume its analogous to the current status quo, where it's an obligatory tumor grafted onto an otherwise unrelated gameplay loop at pretty much the expense of everyone else.) I'd write more about the inadequacies of various sections of this doc but there it's largely equally unsubstantive. Despite the majority of these mechanics and ideas being battle-tested failures in the current salvage implementation, these ideas are recycled and presented as if they have potential by being divorced from their actual implementation in game. Ultimately, even in the limited scope of talking about "what Salvage brings to players, the game and the roundflow," I don't really think there's a real discussion occurring about what these elements actually contribute to the game and why their existence in past and current versions of salvaging or mining have resulted in the issues that they have. People advocate for the removal of salvage not because we just think that expeditions are bad or that there's too much powergaming, but because the fundamental gameplay elements of the job do not mesh with the rest of the game in a way that creates an experience that is pretty much poisoned from the beginning. If any real thought was put into these problems I'd feel more amenable to this exercise but as it stands it just feels like another instance of the long line of "well this thing is bad but instead of removing it we're gonna do some long dance about how we're gonna make it better" that never really manifests as anything. |
PJB3005
left a comment
PJB3005
left a comment
There was a problem hiding this comment.
This document doesn't design anything. It's a list of hopeful philosophies, nothing even remotely concrete that would explain how to get there.
|
From reading the documents you linked, it is extremely clear to me that this "direction" approach is not working. The cargo document was merged 10 months ago and has exactly the same issue. It's a bunch of intends where I find nothing objectionable, but it provided absolutely no direction for how to achieve those goals. For example: The cargo doc says "cargo should be the first place to look for resources". It does not elaborate how this should be achieved at all. I can tell you from personal experience playing cargo where the friction is, and having that actually written down would do a lot more good. These documents don't feel like they provide any way forward, only a way to hold us back. |
i'm happy you personally believe this to be true but is the point of a design doc not to actually outline the reasons and motives behind what makes something good for the game? If you just are going to bullet point out a bunch of elements and not explain why they are necessary then what is there even to discuss. It's essentially just a wiki article describing what salvage is, which doesn't seem helpful to anything.
There's nothing meaningful to say about these "directional" design docs that are just dust in the wind with nothing of substance to them. If you want to just write out a list of things you want to see with no reasoning for why they are good and no concrete idea of how they can manifest in the game, I can't stop you, but I won't entertain it by giving it serious thought. |
Exactly. I personally did this in my own salvage "thoughts" document here: https://static.slugcat.systems/salvage/ I agree that Salvage adds things to the game. What I am not sure of is how to weigh those additions to all the issues it causes in its current state. This is important to acknowledge no matter what path we take with Salvage. |
The purpose of the game area documents is to inform maintainers and contributors on whether features and design decisions fit the direction of the department, not prescribe what those features are. E.g. if someone decided to make it a PR such that Botany becomes the defacto raw materials producer via new and buffed plant mutations, we can say "No, that's stepping on Cargo's purpose" and actually have documentation to refer to. A lot of our current design decisions handwaves into "Oh everyone knows it is supposed to be like that" or "SS13 did it", and I'd prefer to have those "obvious" definitions written down - it is an explicit development shift compared to how things were done previously.
If you believe these bring nothing to the game development process, I welcome you to start a discussion on Discourse about the general idea of these types of game area design documents. |
|
I am just going to close this PR. It is not even clear at the moment that Salvage is a mechanic we want. If we were to merge this it would be a serious signal that we do want it, but this document makes no attempt to address any of the issues with Salvage that underpin that discussion. If we want to save Salvage we need a plan, not a prayer. |
|
It might be a better idea to finish the cargo design doc first, write down how they should obtain materials in it, and work from there |
13 participants
This PR adds a Salvage game area design document.
There have been recent talks about revamping Salvage, and I think for that conversation to properly take place we all need to agree on some base fundamentals of what Salvage is supposed to bring to the game.
This is a game area design document and therefore doesn't really point towards specific game mechanics or implementations, but rather what Salvage brings to players, the game and the roundflow. E.g. you'll notice it doesn't mention anything about shuttle gameplay or expeditions, but doesn't necessarily prohibit them either (depending on implementation).
Make sure you read the Cargo design document as well!