CereStation

[S34NW]

What Does This PR Do

Ports CereStation, an out-of-rotation map from TG. It is a larger map (28k non-space turfs, vs Box's 17k, with about 3k more "playable" aired turfs, 15k vs 12k) that has each major department on its own asteroid.
The map is relatively dimly lit, with a focus on feelings of isolation and loneliness. While box gets cramped at 70+ users, this map will maintain its atmosphere, even on higher pops.

Key map features:

• Every department is separated into its own asteroid island inter-connected by bridges.
• Every department has its own separate SMES storage that departments feed off of for power. Engineering has several wires that lead out leading to these departmental SMES'.
• Disposals is mostly external rooms jutting out of the asteroids, flinging trash/packages/corpses through several launch pads in space. Bring some coffee and a set of internals if you plan on surviving the disposal ride.
• Engineering and Atmospherics get several compact pickaxes to work around the asteroid rock, with emergency picks scattered around maintenance for anyone who wants to dig out their own assistant fort/body storage.
• All heads spawn on the bridge in their own personal quarters instead of in their department office, including the QM (as the QM is not a real head, they don't have main bridge access, only foyer access). Meet your fellow heads of staff before dying to revs/cult/incompetence.
• Brig is set up in a cell-block fashion, with the Warden sitting next to the main entrance to the cell block.
• Most APC's are in maintenance, allowing sneaky/really obvious sabotage. This balances the more "defended" elements of some departments. AI can still see them through the walls via cams, so they can interact with 90% of them as normal.
• Security has departmental offices, with "Criminal delivery chutes" than run on a secondary (and safe to use) disposals system, to deposit criminal scum into the brig lobby for processing. This is important due to the size of the map and para's move speed.
• Quantum pad network connecting the outer corner asteroids, these need to be set up now work at roundstart and work very poorly with stock parts, meaning as the round progresses more use of the quantum pads will be seen.
• Asteroids have the "Asteroid sand" base turf, as opposed to space. This means when the floor tiles are deconstructed (usually explosively) they won't create space tiles and plating, but space and asteroid sand. Non-asteroid areas still turn into space as usual.

Things that likely should be done in the future:

• Medbay could use a remap, I've patched it up to be functional, but as I am not a medical player, I am not the best person to look at this area.
• Brig could be remapped, it is currently quite inefficient in its use of space, while this does contribute to the map aesthetic, functionality should take precedent above form.
• The map will need extensive testing due to the nature of porting maps. While I have done my best to catch all the issues and bring it up to paradise standards, I will have missed a few things.
• Since map rotation is not in yet, this map will need to be standardised with any upcoming changes to box that get merged before rotation makes this available.
• Add more hardsuits and softsuits on the various departments, since this is a space-focused map.
• Look at escape pod placement.
• Needs a psych office
• Needs a paramedic office

Why It's Good For The Game

We currently lack a map that was designed for a higher population. Box was created with <70 people in mind, and while it has been adapted by us to fit our needs, it is still cramped.
Our other potential highpop maps; meta and delta, are severely outdated and need extensive work. While this work is being done, starting from scratch is easier, and having additional maps in rotation will add to variety. The benefits of having this map are, in my opinion, well worth the additional maintenance cost.

Images of changes

Detailed view of the map:

(click to expand)

Size comparison vs. Box

Changelog

🆑
add: Added CereStation, a new highpop map.
/:cl:

[hal9000PR]

COWABUNGA. THE MAD MAN DID IT

[S34NW]

I can hear the bug reports rumbling on the hills, but:

[AffectedArc07]

Let the first round of nitpicks begin

Arrivals quantum pad room: Shouldnt these be reinforced glass? Same applies for all window exteriors.

Escape needs way more chairs:

Medbay is way too vacant but this needs a remap anyways as said above

This whole corridoor for the mining shuttle feels surplus when you can just flip the docking port

See: Deltastation

Tcomms room looks really off. Possibly take a leaf out the metastation or deltastation AI sats

Remove this other bed from the captains office. Its only going to encourage bad things

Same with all these dorms rooms. iirc we removed dorms for a reason, and I dont like the reason. Possibnly convert into an arcade.

Gamma armoury only being accessible through execution feels off

Give the vault dark flooring for extra aesthetic

Stick a mr changs vendor in here

We dont use the auxiliary mining base on this code. replace with asteroid wall or a regular construction area.

Unsure if these are disaster counters or just monitors, and if the latter, they need adding.

What is this shuttle + shuttle console for

Atmos needs more hardsuits

All out-of-room APCs could do with being moved inside

[Vi3trice]

Landmarks in general will need a go over for the various spawns, but most notably, arrivals has no arrivals. Latejoiners spawn into nothing.

[AffectedArc07]

Approving of this as a concept but will put my final approval down once its up to par.

[S34NW]

Thanks for the help, the things you've both mentioned have been fixed.

We dont use the auxiliary mining base on this code. replace with an asteroid wall or a regular construction area.

Indeed, the console and mining stuff are gone now. It was meant to be a regular construction area.

What is this shuttle + shuttle console for

It's just fluff for the engi sat, an abandoned shuttle seemed relevant. The console was not meant to be functional, this has been fixed.

All out-of-room APCs could do with being moved inside

I feel this is a map specific thing that fits the style, however I won't object to moving them if there are issues with having them outside of the physical room (area tiles cover them, so they still work as normal for that room). With so much of this map walled in by asteroid, it gives antags an alternative method of break in: de-power the doors and crowbar their way in.

[Fox-McCloud]

Our present two maps aren't even up to standard yet nor are they ready for prime-time.

We have a small dev team that has a lot of burdens already with maintaining multiple maps---heck, TG only has 2 more maps than we do and their dev team is gigantic.

I'd rather not add more to this burden when our affairs are already not in order, not to mention making the turf transition even more of a nightmare to handle.

There' also the notion of a map of this size entrenching the idea that 150 or permanent ultra high population status is a good/admirable thing that we should aim for. I'm fundamentally opposed to this, as I firmly believe this will trample RP standards...as has been demonstrated numerous times in the past.

And, of course, there's the performance considerations---both memory and CPU. Larger maps inherently are going to use more memory--while that's not a major problem yet, we're only a few major features away from having to given that serious thought and consideration.

And, of course, a map with a lot more turfs is just a map with a lot more active turfs--a room twice the size is going to have twice the impact when a window breaks/someone breathes/what else have you.

So for reasons for performance, memory, not to mention maintainability (and near-future refactors), I'm going to have to object to this.

Our house is far from in order, and I'd rather not add a gigantic additional factor to maintain, on top of it.

[S34NW]

This map can't cope with 150 either, not optimally (What map even can?).
Even if (when) a server split happens, we still need "highpop" maps because 70+ is highpop. Delta has solid design, Box with all our tweaks is good enough for a range of pops.
But meta is so similar in box to design, why do we even want it? If maintenance cost is such a pressing matter, ditch it for a map that does something unique. With what you were saying about playercount taking up most of our CPU, having a large map should be okay with a <100 player count.

Edit: After investigation, it seems actual floor turf count for cere is almost the same as box, just a few hundred more (~10k turfs). So a lot of the additional non-space turfs are just asteroid walls. So I don't actually think the atmos impact will be all that different between the two maps

[Kiyahitayika]

The main corridors need vents, scrubbers, and air alarms and would need to be sectioned into separate areas for atmos to fill them properly (one air alarm per area). If I'm not mistaken, right now, the corridors with insulated floors would require folks to be wearing hardsuits, masks, and gas tanks to traverse.

[warior4356]

Personally, I agree with almost all of Affected's feedback on this map, and I also applaud how quickly you've made the desired changes. The only point I disagree with is the out-of-room APCs. I like the antag opportunities this opens up. This also gives maintenance more of a purpose than it has now, as power management is handled via breakers in maintenance instead of inside the shiny space station rooms.

Though it does also open things up for griefing, so I'm not totally sure on this one.

[S34NW]

The main corridors need vents, scrubbers, and air alarms and would need to be sectioned into separate areas for atmos to fill them properly (one air alarm per area). If I'm not mistaken, right now, the corridors with insulated floors would require folks to be wearing hardsuits, masks, and gas tanks to traverse.

Good point, they would still have air at roundstart but no way of replenishing it. I'll make the changes soon.

[warior4356]

An issue I think you missed. I only count 2 escape pods.

[Kyep]

While I am generally opposed to non-box maps, especially ones from TG, I have to admit this map looks pretty nice. Perhaps that's because I haven't actually played on it... but it certainly looks more appealing than metastation (though equally, that's a very low bar to pass).

I'm not voting on this yet, but I'd like to see it testmerged a bit before I decide how to vote.

[AffectedArc07]

Please modify .github/workflows/ci.yml and add the Cere datum to the CI list

[S34NW]

@AffectedArc07 Done and compiles

[Wojz]

Bar doors are called "Kitchen" and are not common access.

Airlocks that the atmos pipes go through parallel to the glass corridors between asteroids seem to have common access, at least near bar.

[S34NW]

AT count on a 120 pop shift. Performance feels great, will supply metrics for perf soon.

[Wojz]

Merch vendor missing from near cargo, all external airlocks start unbolted and common access it seems.
No pet store.
The roundstart bats might be a bit too much.

Map ran super smooth despite pretty high-ish pop, there was absolutely no comparison to the previous TM. So much better. Extremely solid work from S34N upgrading it, reducing the distance between stuff, and just prettying it up with glass floors, colored carpets, railings, and such. Labor of love and it shows.

[JackoMallows]

IIRC the bridge... lounge/lobby(?) was accessible to anyone, not sure if that was intentional, but figured I'd mention it just in case. (Apologies if it turns out I misremembered as well, there were a lot of people around so I may have caught something else.) Everything else I noticed was already mentioned by Woj.

Really great stuff S34N, I'd love to see this map in the standard map rotations in the future. Performance seemed perfectly stable, and it's clear a lot of work has gone into this, excellent job!

[PeppermintEclipse]

I'm not sure if this is a mapping-related issue or just a standard glitch, but was told to mention it here just in case; at one point someone trailed blood through the hall outside HoP and the stain on this specific tile couldn't be cleaned no matter what I did. The blood also layered above objects (but not people) instead of going underneath:

This room (I think it's Departures) has no lights in the southern half and is pitch-black in one corner as a result:

Also, the extra space and supplies in the janitor's closet are a godsend - on any other map, having more than one janitor means immediately being undersupplied and cramped in the tiny closets - but it's worth pointing out that the janitor supply wardrobes each come with equipment for two people, so having two of them at roundstart feels a bit excessive and makes cargo orders a bit pointless (especially when there are only two of everything else). Since the biohazard wardrobe only comes with one bio suit, could I suggest replacing the supply wardrobe on the left with a second biohazard wardrobe?

[S34NW]

reopening for CI

[Fox-McCloud]

We have analyzed the performance metrics on this, and it's not good. Atmospherics is considerably more expensive (30%+) on Ceres, which is what we predicted.

It initially seemed to perform equally to box, but it turns out someone did a lot of shenanigans with simple mobs which hugely bloated up the cost and put it in line with Ceres.

Performance alone is a huge reason this has been rejected.

At this point in time, I do not think we need a 4th map--especially when our affairs aren't in order for the present ones.