Exploration Crew Job Removal Proposal

[PowerfulBacon]

Before any of this is done, #7004 will be completed first. The majority of these changes will affect supercruise over the exploration crew job.

Summary

Exploration is a very large aspect of the game, however with that it requires a lot of maintenance. Currently there are just not enough people who are willing to work on exploration in order to make it viable; I can create design documents in order to improve some of the issues with it, however it is extremely difficult in order to implement these.

Along with this, there are many other glaring design issues in the game that also need touching up and as such the best solution I see for exploration at the moment is to remove the part of it that causes the most problems. It is unlikely that it will return, unless someone manages to start a small team of developers with the goal of reworking it and learning from the issues.

Change list

• Exploration Crew job role will be removed.
• The exploration crew access will be removed.
• Any doors using exploration crew access will be changed to science access.
• The exploration shuttle will still exists and will be able to be used by scientists.
• Objectives and the objective console will be removed.
• Shaft miners will spawn with a discovery scanner.
• Research disks will spawn at beacons with the name of the beacon indicating the name of the research it unlocks.
• There will be no other changes to the supercruise map.
• In order to generate money, Nanotrasen will issue 'grants'. These provide a set of money, and then a bonus amount of money when completed. If not completed within a certain timespan then the grant will be cancelled and money will be taken.

Changes Reasoning / Effect

Exploration Crew job role will be removed.
The exploration job role is the source of a number of issues with the game, rather than communicating with other departments, they will usually take the most effective route of just doing it themselves, which requires tiding. It is only natural for players to take the best possible option to them, so I don't believe that this is an administration issue as enforcing players to play a certain way (that the game discourages) will only lead to frustration, when in reality some changes need to be made in order to make communicating with other players the best option and doing it yourself is only viable when strictly necessary.
Almost all other changes are being made around this point.

The exploration crew access will be removed.
Any doors using exploration crew access will be changed to science access.
There is no reason for exploration access to exist anymore, so the exploration doors will be transfered to science access.

The exploration shuttle will still exists and will be able to be used by scientists.
I did consider removing the exploration shuttle entirely, however the less mapping changes are required the easier this will be to pull off, mapping changes cause a lot of issues with development due to the amount of merge conflicts the mapping format generates.
In addition, this allows for exploration crew to be removed without re-introducing the inbalanced areas of research.

Shaft miners will spawn with a discovery scanner.
Exploration crew have a very limited reasons to coordinate and work with science. They are in a one-way relationship where they provide and get nothing in return. Shaft miners are in a much better position to have the responsibility of getting discovery research, as not getting it means science won't research for you and science not researching for them means that they get no materials.

Research disks will spawn at beacons with the name of the beacon indicating the name of the research it unlocks.
Scientists will now be able to see which end-game tech is hiding at certain beacons and will have to go and collect it in order to gain it, giving them an extra (optional) responsibility if they want the more powerful and rare technology.

[williamcll]

If that's the case can't we just go back to pre-supercruise research.

[DrDuckedGoose]

In terms of reverting back to pre-supercruise research, I personally think discovery points should be kept, in some capacity. They're certainly not perfect, not without exploration anyway.
Maybe with xenoarch & possible changes to xenobiology, discovery points could become more involved with science's general goal.

[PowerfulBacon]

A lot of the research based changes were made as a result of pre-supercruise research being terribly unbalanced. The research disks are important at preventing the overpowered researches from being unlocked consistently and within 30 minutes each round. Discovery research exists to throttle research and prevent them from building 3 more servers and unlocking the entire tech tree in 20 minutes.

[Chirynnn]

What's so bad about it exactly, that warrants a complete removal of it?
2 jobs are already on the chopping block by the sounds of it, making exploration 3 (alongside virology and curator).
If your reasoning is that people tide as explorators and have little to no interaction with other departments, then what about shaft miners? What about xenobiologists? They're all busted in their own ways and interact very little with anyone else.

[PowerfulBacon]

I think that there are too many problems for them to exist with no intention for them to be modified in the future, and at the moment I do not have the resources to change them so I know that they will never be changed.
The reason I am targetting exploration over virology, miner or anything else that could need a rework is because I made them and I am the only person who has done a large amount of work on them, which means they are essentially my responsibility to keep updated and working and I am unable to do that.

[Penwin0]

Fixing exploration would be quite the harsh endevour and by removing the job itself not much is actually lost, scientists can just take up their mantle if they want research disks and so on.

When it comes to discovery points though it's a whole other matter which I feel could be handled better than it is right now but that's neither here nor there

[williamcll]

Also the "giving scanners to miners" just gives more reason for miners to not come back to the station because they have to find mobs for sci.

[dwasint]

I think the removal of exploration is great, i don't think it ever should have existed in science to begin with. But just giving Miners the scanners and calling it a day isn't the solution. They have 1 shuttle and are responsible for collecting ores. Most miners already just screw off the lavaland to go kill megafauna and never get ore. This just gives miners another reason to not collect ore.

[DrDuckedGoose]

If you wanted to lean hard into some newer features, you could completely replace every aspect of exploration with xenoarchaeology.
Essentially replacing tech-disks with scanned artifacts and having the supercruise shuttles depart to dig-sites.
An example of implementing tech through archaeology could be, scanning 15 artifacts with the Bluespace-Capture trait unlocks BoH tech.

[Howluinb]

Xenoarcheology would be imo a rad way for discovery points to be generated, as they'd be a side product of cool fun experiments conducted by scientists, rather than, as you said, a one way relationship where explorers provide and science does nothing

[Fronsis]

''Research disks will spawn at beacons with the name of the beacon indicating the name of the research it unlocks.''
These beacons refers to the ones in... lavaland right? While i understand the reasons behind the push towards Explo team removal (specially the one that puts all the weight on Bacon to keep it afloat mantaining it ) I don't think moving everything to lavaland will fix it

On one this relies on the miners doing extra stuff (scanning fauna, getting disks, etc) and the players who are mining main already have their own way of doing stuff so, i expect even less of the disks being researched than when we had Explorers bringing them.

On the other hand a scientist could go to lavaland taking the shuttle, however they'll have to arrive and start fixing the science outpost (Honestly if that's the idea the outpost should be default-repaired) and after they do that they'll have to go on their own with a pickaxe and try to get them

Obviously the ideal scenario would be for the scientist to ask aminer to go with them so they potect them against the fauna so they can retrieve the game but at that point it's... easier and safer to pda a miner to grab the disks instead of risking going there, if a scientist go on their own, the most greedy ones would probably grab a kpa and do it themselves which.. is something we probably don't want considerng a scientist shouldn't known how to properly fight against fauna, as well as that if that scientist dies it's another body to lavaland that will probably never be retrieved (unless for some miracle that scientists had a GPS)

Miners at this moment, even with all the pvp-loot nerfs and other nerf shenanigans they still have a pretty busy schedule and having them also be responsable for the disks and scan would me them a proto-scientist 2.0 just based on the extra responsabilities they have.

This in my opinion shouldn't go through without giving a proper fix to what is Research points, discovery points and the tech disks, putting a band-aid after causing a big laceration is not convenient

I believe using something like Xenoarcheology to replace almost all of exploration responsabilities should be put through at the same time Exploration crew is gone, that way the discovery points could be moved to a more pro-active gameplay as Xenoarcheology in which you could get increasing DP based on what you discover/scan with Xenoarch and maybe even do some kind of reward system so the tech-disks could be unlocked after a good amount of progress (thus preventing any type of cheese and rush for a 10 minute BoH unlock)

Overall Bacon justifications are more than reasonable, specially if it's all on him, from what i've seen Bee unfortunately has few maintainers and coders compared to others servers and at the end of the day the resources should be moved to where it matters, however i'm still inclined that this balance towards putting the weight on the miners and lavaland is not the solution, i hope this gets some reconsideration and if it goes through it'll go with the help of Xenoarch or even go as the pre-super cruise system

As a side note the only reason why i'm sad on the exploration team removal is because i've always liked going around to explore unknown ruins/signals/stations just because i enjoy that sci-fi element and it was certainly more welcome to go around and do it with a small team and being able to help the station at the same time, since super cruise's gonna stay my best bet is that i'll just go yolo-mode with the science shuttle every once in a while *shrug it's a cool concept for me but it seems it's been pretty clear that the core gameplay that Bee wants is to be in the station and nothing more, i wouldn't be surprised if the Lavaland removal eventally gets through and we get the station+mining in the same Z level just like TG, in any case there's other servers that push the exploration-thingie so if i ever really need to scratch that ich i can just hop on those and return.

[llol111]

Removing explo is a good idea
Not sure if giving all their duties to miners is a good one though

[kit-katz]

it will be fine. stick ores as explo loot from time to time if you worry they wont deliver