Bookworm (New): Library

[arimah]

About the PR

Adds a new shuttle, the SBB Bookworm, a library ship with a large open reading room, a games room, and a private study for the librarian. This is the second vessel to come out of Shipyard BlueBird (the first being Lyrae, #1110).

Why / Balance

You've mined every rock in sight, stripped every wreck, gone to planets and killed four dozen dragons and xenos, and your account balance is overflowing with more spesos than you could spend in a lifetime. It's time to relax. Why not visit the local library to read a book or play a board game? Maybe the librarian will write epic tales of your heroic conquests, or you can write about your exciting smuggling adventures.

More RP-focused ships have been requested for a long time now, and I've been enjoying playing librarian on upstream. :)

Design considerations:

• The main library section, with all the bookshelves, is free of walls so librarians can redecorate as they see fit. The bookshelves were deliberately placed to break up the line of sight, helping this fairly small library feel dense with bookshelves.
• With such a big main compartment, I could imagine people retrofitting the ship for use as a cheap cargo hauler or inconspicuous smuggling vessel. The narrow corridor between the entrance area and the library is designed to counteract that kind of lame powergaming, or at least make it more work.
• With a total of 8 thrusters, the generator must run at an inefficient 17 kW. This did not feel like enough power draw to warrant using two generators or a SUPERPACMAN.
• Though libraries have limited money-making potential, there is still a withdraw-only ATM for librarians who wish to charge for their services.
• The large glass wall in the reading corner was heavily inspired by Malmö City Library's Calendar of Light.
• The cell recharger on the bridge is for the many desk lamps strewn about the library.

Statistics & info:

• Tile count: 258 (medium)
• Appraisal price: ~25,330
• Shipyard price: 28,000, ~10% markup – I don't imagine owners of this ship will make much money, so I definitely don't want a huge markup
• Recommended crew: 1–3
• Available roles: Librarian, Pilot

Known issues

• Wood is an incredibly expensive commodity on the Frontier, with a single stack of wood costing 7,000 spesos. With this ship's modest markup, a powergamer hungry for wood could save 12 grand by buying a Bookworm and breaking apart the bookshelves. Hopefully no one is silly enough to actually do this.
• The current random bookshelf fills are too random. You may end up with 12 copies of how to keep station clean, or you get a bunch of unique titles. The number of books per shelf also varies. To introduce an element of non-randomness, there is a guidebooks crate in the librarian's office. Luckily, books have a value of 0 spesos, so the appraisal price of the shuttle won't vary at least.
• Several of the guidebooks open URLs that no longer work, making them effectively useless. If you get unlucky, you may get a mostly unreadable library.
• The only books that can be ordered from cargo are guidebooks (fixed selection) and blanks.

I may create a few more bookshelf prototypes for Frontier with different, more predictable, perhaps even themed random fills. I may also add more orderable book crates. These will both be separate PRs.

Technical details

.yml

Media

Preinit, with and without subfloor:

Postinit:

• I have added screenshots/videos to this PR showcasing its changes ingame, or this PR does not require an ingame showcase

Breaking changes

no

Changelog
🆑

• add: Added the SBB Bookworm, a medium-sized library ship.

[dvir001]

Based

[dvir001]

Also to some issues:

Wood is an incredibly expensive commodity on the Frontier, with a single stack of wood costing 7,000 spesos. With this ship's modest markup, a powergamer hungry for wood could save 12 grand by buying a Bookworm and breaking apart the bookshelves. Hopefully no one is silly enough to actually do this.

You can farm wood super easy with tree caps, never been a real issue.

The current random bookshelf fills are too random. You may end up with 12 copies of how to keep station clean, or you get a bunch of unique titles. The number of books per shelf also varies. To introduce an element of non-randomness, there is a guidebooks crate in the librarian's office. Luckily, books have a value of 0 spesos, so the appraisal price of the shuttle won't vary at least.

There is a upstream PR that auto generate millions of books that should fix this issue, they are mostly just titles and descriptions with no actual data in them but they work fine for RP.

Several of the guidebooks open URLs that no longer work, making them effectively useless. If you get unlucky, you may get a mostly unreadable library.
The only books that can be ordered from cargo are guidebooks (fixed selection) and blanks.

Guide books are moving to in game guide anyway, so most getting removed from game, if not all.

[MagnusCrowe]

Sick.

[MagnusCrowe]

The ship at purchase operates at a power deficit that needs to be fixed or the ship will lose power.
To remedy this I would include a pre-flight checklist document that informs the owner of what the ideal power settings are. Have it sit on the desk in the cockpit and/or the engineering room.

Additionally I've attached a picture of how you could include a power monitoring computer into your engineering setup, you can take it or leave it, just thought it might be nice. Up to you.

Other than informing the owner of the power settings, the PR is ready for merge.

[arimah]

@MagnusCrowe Thank you for your review! I have tweaked the engineering section in accordance with your suggestions:

The shutter button had to be moved, as the power monitoring computer rendered it unreachable. Also, I'm not overly fond of how the waste pipe now goes under the wall, but within the tight space constraints, this is the best piping job I could do without overcomplicating things.

An identical copy of the pre-flight checklist is also placed on the bridge, to reduce the risk of people missing it: