Air alarms are now usable by Station Engineers as well as Atmospherics Technicians.
Why It's Good For The Game
It has been two years since this PR was last proposed and we now have a new headcoder, thus meaning it is time for another consideration of this change.
My pitch is as follows:
Atmospherics Technicians do not fix breaches.
There is zero design incentive for them to do so.
They will continue playing with their danger donut and HFR and hypertorus and such.
Do you know who actually has to fix breaches? Station Engineers.
Who are forced to use ghetto tools like the space heaters and premixed air cans to do so.
And can only fix 2 or 3 breaches before running out of premixed air cans.
As such, I've allowed Station Engineers to use Air Alarms to actually do their damn job and fix breaches.
This will drastically reduce the amount of times the shuttle gets called over breaches that went unfixed because the Engineers patching the breach couldn't actually make the air not freezing because an atmos tech refused to leave atmos to swipe their card on the air alarm.
It is not a problem of atmos techs finding it annoying to fix air because of gameplay design.
It is a problem of atmos techs simply not being interested in the gameplay of fixing the station's air as a whole. The maintainers have shown no drive or willpower to actually fix this aspect, and the most they are willing to do is simply throw more toys and fun tools at atmos techs and think that giving the atmos techs more toys will motivate them to go fix the air, while completely disregarding the fact that there is zero interest from the modern day atmos tech in actually fixing the air on the station.
They consider it a job for the engineers/the AI, not atmos's job.
Changelog
:cl:
balance: Air alarms are now usable by Station Engineers as well as Atmospherics Technicians.
/:cl:
Original PR: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/85881
About The Pull Request
Air alarms are now usable by Station Engineers as well as Atmospherics Technicians.
Why It's Good For The Game
It has been two years since this PR was last proposed and we now have a new headcoder, thus meaning it is time for another consideration of this change.
My pitch is as follows:
Atmospherics Technicians do not fix breaches. There is zero design incentive for them to do so. They will continue playing with their danger donut and HFR and hypertorus and such. Do you know who actually has to fix breaches? Station Engineers. Who are forced to use ghetto tools like the space heaters and premixed air cans to do so. And can only fix 2 or 3 breaches before running out of premixed air cans.
As such, I've allowed Station Engineers to use Air Alarms to actually do their damn job and fix breaches. This will drastically reduce the amount of times the shuttle gets called over breaches that went unfixed because the Engineers patching the breach couldn't actually make the air not freezing because an atmos tech refused to leave atmos to swipe their card on the air alarm.
It is not a problem of atmos techs finding it annoying to fix air because of gameplay design.
It is a problem of atmos techs simply not being interested in the gameplay of fixing the station's air as a whole. The maintainers have shown no drive or willpower to actually fix this aspect, and the most they are willing to do is simply throw more toys and fun tools at atmos techs and think that giving the atmos techs more toys will motivate them to go fix the air, while completely disregarding the fact that there is zero interest from the modern day atmos tech in actually fixing the air on the station.
They consider it a job for the engineers/the AI, not atmos's job.
Changelog
:cl: balance: Air alarms are now usable by Station Engineers as well as Atmospherics Technicians. /:cl: