/tg/Station 13

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/4673

Coders are proposing a change to restrict the larger syndicate bombs to nuke ops rounds only. The reason being so for the "greater good of the community", despite never asking the community. I personally find this insulting, given the large potential for change. This also implies that that community does not know what is best for it.

So here is your chance. Do you want them restricted, or leave it as is.

My opinion? Considering that it's pretty costly for the area of damage it does, its large and difficult to move(well when it's taken out of the beacon), the beacon literally gives itself away (what else is a "suspicious beacon" used for? we all know its a damn bomb), you have 60 seconds to either evacuate the area or remove it, it beeps relatively loudly, the sound being rather constant and can be heard through walls a decent distance (again, considering the area of damage it does) and can be easily wrenched out of place with a wrench ( a tool that all station engineers and atmos techs start with, can easily replace, all cre members have decent access to, and all assistants have very easy access too, of which the station is almost always highly populated of) and placed in many positions, is easily spaced, I think it's pretty well balanced.

But again, that is just my opinion. And I am just one member of this community. I want to hear yours.

mrpain wrote:https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/4673

Coders are proposing a change to restrict the larger syndicate bombs to nuke ops rounds only. The reason being so for the "greater good of the community", despite never asking the community. I personally find this insulting, given the large potential for change. This also implies that that community does not know what is best for it.

So here is your chance. Do you want them restricted, or leave it as is.

My opinion? Considering that it's pretty costly for the area of damage it does, its large and difficult to move(well when it's taken out of the beacon), the beacon literally gives itself away (what else is a "suspicious beacon" used for? we all know its a damn bomb), you have 60 seconds to either evacuate the area or remove it, it beeps relatively loudly, the sound being rather constant and can be heard through walls a decent distance (again, considering the area of damage it does) and can be easily wrenched out of place with a wrench ( a tool that all station engineers and atmos techs start with, can easily replace, all cre members have decent access to, and all assistants have very easy access too, of which the station is almost always highly populated of) and placed in many positions, is easily spaced, I think it's pretty well balanced.

But again, that is just my opinion. And I am just one member of this community. I want to hear yours.

A toxins antag can make six much larger more easily transported bombs in 10 minutes. One bomb isn't enough devastation to cause a shuttle call. (At least it shouldn't be with a competent crew) I haven't even seen much instances of it being some kind of huge issue ic or ooc. Can we at least have some links for complaints or round ruined because of them? Why is it being fixed when there's not really any outstanding problem? I think repairs from the one bomb encourage engineers to rp and do their job without really being enough to devistate the station. Show me proof of it being abused or over powered and I'd be happy to reconsider.

There's nothing interesting about syndicate bombs. It's a no-risk no-effort way to cause too much disruption early in the round. They only thing they add to the game is shortening round length.

I'd rather encourage traitors to make their own explosives. Because that way they'd actually be putting time and effort into it, and we wouldn't have bombs going off left and right from every uncreative traitor, every round.

Ikarrus wrote:There's nothing interesting or creative about syndicate bombs. It's a no-risk no-effort way to cause too much disruption early in the round. They only thing they add to the game is shortening round length.

I'd rather encourage traitors to make their own explosives. Because that way they'd actually be putting time and effort into it, and we wouldn't have bombs going off left and right every round.

Same could be said for A LOT of syndicate items but how it's used makes it interesting and that's the players responsibility not the weapon. Using it as a distraction far off so you can kidnap your target for a gimmick while engineering does repair work and its just become interesting. But an ebow and esword or parapenc4 combo and its back to boring. The players make the interesting antag roles not the weapons. Also I was looking forward to hearing from ikarrus because I know you're a big supporter and really my biggest issue is the why so woo hoo.

The problem is a lot of the time it's just used to bomb the same tired targets. The SMES, telecoms, and the emergency shuttle. The first two almost always happens early in the round for no reason other than to end the round early.

Ikarrus wrote:The problem is a lot of the time it's just used to bomb the same tired targets. The SMES, telecoms, and the emergency shuttle. The first two almost always happens early in the round for no reason other than to end the round early, because "fuck these objectives" time to kill people and blow shit up.

But won't these players just find another way too be shit? A different item or sabotaging singulo? I just think this sounds like a problem with certain players as antags not the actual item itself. And is there pre exsisting complaints or ban request or policy discussion threads on this specific item causing such a problem?

I want more rp fun interesting antags too but I don't think taking this item is going to solve any problems just start complaints. Our most popular server is known as a 'team death match' play style.


EDIT: upping the price and leaving it in a bundle to assure only one can be bought would be fine and keep it as a means to cause chaos or distraction but limit it from devistation.

Syndie bombs are still a relatively new thing. We played without them before, and the game was better for it.

And no, we can't change our players. It's not against the rules but it doesn't mean it's going to be good for the game

What we can do is design the game around them to suit their playstyles. In this case, if syndicate bombs detract from the game more than it adds to it then we will need to reconsider them. It's true that the bad ones are ruining it for the others.

Ikarrus wrote:Syndie bombs are still a relatively new thing. We played without them before, and the game was better for it.

And no, we can't change our players. It's not against the rules but it doesn't mean it's going to be good for the game

What we can do is design the game around them to suit their playstyles. In this case, if syndicate bombs detract from the game more than it adds to it then we will need to reconsider them. It's true that the bad ones are ruining it for the others.

See I think a big part of this for myself and other players is I was COMPLETELY unaware that they were a problem and causing issues for gameplay on the server. This is the first I've heard of them being abused by players in such poor taste. I had no idea they were a problem until they were being removed. I haven't seen any discussions or threads nor have I experienced ooc complaints first hand. But like I said originally I'd be happy to reconsider my position on the subject if I knew why and saw proof that it was so detrimental to our server.

You ask for things you know cannot be given. Most players don't see everything that goes on in a round. As an admin I get notifications every time one of these things are armed. And lo and behold a lot of them are used to bomb the SMES in the first 5 minutes of a round, and the shuttle gets called as soon as it's refuelled.

Ikarrus wrote:You ask for things you know cannot be given. Most players don't see everything that goes on in a round. As an admin I get notifications every time one of hese things are armed. And lo and behold most of them are used to bomb the SMES.

I wasn't asking for anything...

I very much respect your opinion and was probing for your reasons behind supporting the removal. That's all.


EDIT: I just wanted to say shouldn't we encourage resolving the SMES being blown rather than taking away from antags? There are multiple options. Wire solars directly into the grid. RnD can print te boards and bits to rebuild the SMES and this encourages the role play and job duties!

All I can say is that if we removed every syndicate item that ended up being used in a predictable, "success before fun" way we'd very rapidly run out of syndicate items.

Syndicate bombs are usually not even used in the pursuit of success. There are an assortment of other tools that do that better. My issue is when they are used to end the round early.

Ikarrus wrote:Syndicate bombs are usually not even used in the pursuit of success. There are an assortment of other tools that do that better. My issue is when they are used to end the round early.

What if they could only be purchased later in the round?

Ikarrus wrote:Syndicate bombs are usually not even used in the pursuit of success. There are an assortment of other tools that do that better. My issue is when they are used to end the round early.

What if we encouraged players to fix the destruction rather than baby the actual job role play? Recall that shuttle.

Again, these things just simply do not happen with our players. The shuttle is called the moment anything of importance is bombed. There's rarely any effort made to repair any significant damage to the station. Player behavior is something we cannot easily influence without coding solutions, which is what this PR is.

Incoming wrote:All I can say is that if we removed every syndicate item that ended up being used in a predictable, "success before fun" way we'd very rapidly run out of syndicate items.

^

How long until we remove Eswords and Ebows?

But honestly i wouldnt mind if Syndicate Bombs were limited to Nuke Ops only. However id suggest allowing Traitors to get them through the 10TC Bundles, to stop any metagaming "Syndie bomb in maint! Nuke Ops confirmed!".

Ikarrus wrote:Again, these things just simply do not happen with our players. The shuttle is called the moment anything of importance is bombed. There's rarely any effort made to repair any significant damage to the station. Player behavior is something we cannot easily influence without coding solutions, which is what this PR is.

You're better off trying to herd cats.

Consider this:

Vg has their end or round score that calculates destruction to the station right? Is there a way for when a shuttle call is made for us to determine the destruction level and NOT allow a shuttle to come if there isn't a certain level reached where it would be difficult to recover from?

Alex Crimson wrote:metagaming "Syndie bomb in maint! Nuke Ops confirmed!".

And there's another serious problem with doing this.

"OH MY GOD TICKING BOMB YOU GUYS CALL THE SHUTTLE NUKE OPS CONFIRMED GUARD THE DISK CAPTAIN ARM THE SECURITY

And no one ever goes for those awful bundles. Ever.

Yeah, I'm actually okay with it being kept in bundles. Without the guarantee that you'll get it, round-start bombings should be kept a rarity.

Mandurrrh wrote:

Ikarrus wrote:Again, these things just simply do not happen with our players. The shuttle is called the moment anything of importance is bombed. There's rarely any effort made to repair any significant damage to the station. Player behavior is something we cannot easily influence without coding solutions, which is what this PR is.

You're better off trying to herd cats.

Consider this:

Vg has their end or round score that calculates destruction to the station right? Is there a way for when a shuttle call is made for us to determine the destruction level and NOT allow a shuttle to come if there isn't a certain level reached where it would be difficult to recover from?

We have this calculation, too. But the problem is there is a number of things that could give a genuine reason to evacuate that doesn't actually damage the station itself. Off the top of my head I can name mass murder, plasma flooding, nuke ops, and nar-sie.

Ikarrus wrote:Yeah, I'm actually okay with it being kept in bundles, because it's not a guarantee that you'll get it.

Mandurrrh wrote:

Ikarrus wrote:Again, these things just simply do not happen with our players. The shuttle is called the moment anything of importance is bombed. There's rarely any effort made to repair any significant damage to the station. Player behavior is something we cannot easily influence without coding solutions, which is what this PR is.

You're better off trying to herd cats.

Consider this:

Vg has their end or round score that calculates destruction to the station right? Is there a way for when a shuttle call is made for us to determine the destruction level and NOT allow a shuttle to come if there isn't a certain level reached where it would be difficult to recover from?

We have this calculation, too. But the problem is there is a number of things that could give a genuine reason to evacuate that doesn't actually damage the station itself. Off the top of my head I can name mass murder, plasma flooding, nuke ops, and nar-sie.

Dead bodies is on the list. We could add an option for centcomm forced call with nuke ops/aliens/hostileinvasions/cult. Air quality should be able to be determined to see how bad it is. Narsie definitely causes pretty significant damage like singulo! I'm just bouncing off ideas of ways to encourage players to get more involved in gameplay then just picking off their options to end rounds one by one. Syndicate bombs are gone they'll use another method. There are plenty of options. If the player wants to just be a shit he's going to be a shit with whatever tools are available. You'll end up losing most syndicate items at this rate.

Why are we more focused on taking things out of the game rather than adding things in? Can any of you remember when the last decent traitor item was added?

Large syndicate bombs are fucking terrible for nuke ops. Once battle is joined in an ops round the ops move fast just to get to the disk/not get mobbed. The one minute flacid shit bombs are pretty poorly suited to the mode, tank transfer valves performed much better. The interim between these replacing nuke op ttvs and the nuke overhaul was pretty dark in my mind.

I don't see the syndicate bomb as a major problem. It isn't even a maxed bomb blast and I have participated in bomb repairs recently myself. I have suggested changes to make bombs less gg in the past such as removing the stupid lattice requirement to place hull plates which would pretty much double the pace of basic repairs(hint missing wires and pipes aren't causing shuttle calls here). Unless something like that happens I suggest people either proactively start repairing themselves if they don't want a premature end or play head positions to make the shuttle call decision more measured.

The free syndibombs nuke ops do get are mostly used as breaching tools, you could pretty much replace them with 2 c4 each and the nuke ops would perform just as well. If you remove them from traitors, for whom wanting an early round end is good enough a reason, you might as well remove them entirely. I have used them to steal corgi meat before, overkill and I almost died to space exposure but it worked.

Alex Crimson wrote:

Incoming wrote:All I can say is that if we removed every syndicate item that ended up being used in a predictable, "success before fun" way we'd very rapidly run out of syndicate items.

^

How long until we remove Eswords and Ebows?

But honestly i wouldnt mind if Syndicate Bombs were limited to Nuke Ops only. However id suggest allowing Traitors to get them through the 10TC Bundles, to stop any metagaming "Syndie bomb in maint! Nuke Ops confirmed!".

Eswords and ebows are violent, but they don't do any property damage. Most rampages with these items end up with the guy on the ground, getting killed with his own sword.
Syndicate bombs however can be used immediately destroy tcomms/smes/gravgen which leads to an immediate shuttle call because nobody can be bothered to repair anything apparently.
Like I said in the PR, most rounds end in 30-40 minutes despite the refuelling time being 20 minutes. They're ending as soon as they're able to, and considering that the first 10 minutes is prep time, that leaves a whole 20 minutes to actually do things before it's all wiped clean and ready for another 30 minute round.

Reimoo wrote:Why are we more focused on taking things out of the game rather than adding things in?

because any time anything's added it's abused until it becomes an issue and needs to be nerfed/removed and then everyone cries about muh nerf mentality fun removal

Arguing with the mode huh? Nuke, da, wizard, malf, monkey have the same mode for time range while having a worse distribution than traitor because well so drat many traitor rounds and this change wouldn't remove syndicate bombs from any of those. 64 is a lot but out of (as of me looking at the last month stats) 467 proper rounds it is hardly consistently game ruining.

I would quote the item use stats for traitors but they seem a bit wonky. 37% usage in rounds with uplinks for syndicate bombs? Okay and the emag is used iiiin oh 179% of rounds with uplinks? Well okay I guess it tracks those spawned in rounds that should not have uplinks too, useless.

If people are so eager to evacuate the station when a bomb goes off, thats a player problem not a code problem.

It would be more effective to try and incentive players to repair damage, even if its just a pat on the back, since there is no drawback to bailing off the station, despite the OOC implications there are negatives to doing so.

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/4690

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/4681

Giving Floorbots an unlimited supply of Tiles would sure be nice. Abusing it for free metal would result in a ban, obviously.

Just go ahead and limit bombs to Nuke Ops for a few months, see how things go. No harm, right?

Incoming wrote:https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/4690

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/4681

I find that to be much more reasonable than just outright yanking it out of traitor rounds.

Ikarrus wrote:There's nothing interesting about syndicate bombs. It's a no-risk no-effort way to cause too much disruption early in the round. They only thing they add to the game is shortening round length.

I'd rather encourage traitors to make their own explosives. Because that way they'd actually be putting time and effort into it, and we wouldn't have bombs going off left and right from every uncreative traitor, every round.

I do this frequently now because it's the only way to produce interesting traitor rounds.

As I argued in my traitor thread, traitor has been nerfed to the extent that even robust traitors are relegated to maintenance 5ever and unrobust traitors end up borgfood.

Bombing Tcomms early results in some really fun rounds where you can actually engage in open hostilities without bolts and borgs jumping on your ass seconds later.

Asking traitors to make their own explosives would require either a method to allow people to make custom bombs, which will never happen for obvious reasons, or regulate explosives to only people with science access.

Bombs have their usage, as I said however I think promoting people to fix the damage, and giving traitors alternative ways to cause mass confusion, would be better than outright removing bombs from traitors.

You can get TTVs from cargo now.

I've sat around as the lone engineer repairing things like telecomms, the R&D server, and more just because I find the chore more interesting than setting up atmos after the shuttle call is finalized. With that said, I kinda wish the bomb was LOUDER and had a longer timer. Easier to counterplay and it is SO MUCH more fun to defuse a bomb with a bomb squad than it is to fix the damage it caused. And it STILL fills the role of distraction.

An idea I had floating around was to scale a bombs destructive power based on its detonation timer.

So if the bomb is set to detonate in 60 seconds, it would not be extremley powerful. If the bomb was set to 3 minutes (Say that's the max) it would cause a very powerful explosion (10/20/40). This would create a interesting dynamic and encourage traitors to hide bombs more efficiently. As well as actually let the Bomb Suit in the armoury be put to good use.

Telecoms, grav generator, SMES, etc, can be blown up with a simple C4 and chances are nobody will repair them.
Remove the bombs and like someone said earlier, the traitors will fall back on the singularity to cause massive damage and believe me that's gonna surely get you shuttle calls.

Again, coders being coders:



And without even asking for the community approval, for the sake of a "This is for the greater good so you don't get to voice your opinion in this"

There is a difference between the two Kuraudo and to be honest the main issue we do have at the moment is we dont have the right statistics on hand for most of these things but I do assure you bombs normally do target the same areas because they are the highest effective way to do the most damage and to prevent things from being fixed. C4 on one equipment PFFT that can be fixed easily no shuttles getting called for that.

A bomb is really bad because it normally breaks the APC the SMES cell and over half of the telecomms meaning you cant easily fix it at all. If placed correctly you need to hope the guy didnt take all the tech storage items aswell for a replacement.

I do agree that traitors need more better items the issue is we got so many items for traitors at the moment that its this simple issue: We need to merge items down they will get better that way.

>mfw there is a single entity in the known universe that thinks this is a good change

Wasn't there a PR to up syndicate bomb costs to 6 TC (to keep people from buying two)? Why not see how that plays out first?

Also, removing syndicate bombs won't do shit against people early-calling the shuttle. It's idiotic to think it will.

Jalleo wrote:There is a difference between the two Kuraudo and to be honest the main issue we do have at the moment is we dont have the right statistics on hand for most of these things but I do assure you bombs normally do target the same areas because they are the highest effective way to do the most damage and to prevent things from being fixed. C4 on one equipment PFFT that can be fixed easily no shuttles getting called for that.

A bomb is really bad because it normally breaks the APC the SMES cell and over half of the telecomms meaning you cant easily fix it at all. If placed correctly you need to hope the guy didnt take all the tech storage items aswell for a replacement.

I do agree that traitors need more better items the issue is we got so many items for traitors at the moment that its this simple issue: We need to merge items down they will get better that way.

Nobody ever repairs the SMES, especially if you do it after the engine is setup. If the shuttle isn't called immediately it will be after the containment field goes down.

I'd like to point out that this PR also removes minibombs too.

Mastigos wrote:I'd like to point out that this PR also removes minibombs too.

You fuckin wot mate?

I can "maybe" let it slide on removing bombs, even if I disagree with the reasoning (No, not the "Good for the community bullshit), but removing a fucking grenade is really a step too far.

Either bloody rework the bombs to only work after a set amount of time, or encourage people to not call the damn shuttle when they stub their toe and call foul.

I honestly can not remember the last time I saw a syndie bomb. If this goes through /tg/ is officially carebear station.

Scott wrote:I honestly can not remember the last time I saw a syndie bomb. If this goes through /tg/ is officially carebear station.

Oldman admitted to often using it few posts above.

So? If people want to use them, they should be able to.

Scott wrote:So?

Oh, I thought you meant that nobody uses them anyway in your opinion. Sorry if I was mistaken.

I just meant that it's not used as often as it used to be, especially since it was removed from DA. It's a good option for traitors, but when it's spammed it's bad. It's not spammed any more, a balance has been reached. There's even a practice bomb in the brig now, so the crew only doesn't defuse the bombs if they don't want to.

Do not complain about antag destruction and try to nerf things when in a single round you have one million traitors, lings, cultists, etc.
I just played a round in which i was a traitor, we also had changelings, and cultists. This is too much.

I have always hated syndibombs since their addition as a nuke nerf. Old nuke totally did not need the nerf at the time in any way.

The sheer ridiculousness of this removal implying the syndibombs are PERFECT for nuclear agents and that is where they work as intended is my main problem.

Incomptinence wrote:I have always hated syndibombs since their addition as a nuke nerf. Old nuke totally did not need the nerf at the time in any way.

The sheer ridiculousness of this removal implying the syndibombs are PERFECT for nuclear agents and that is where they work as intended is my main problem.

You can use the big red button in the syndicate base to circumvent the timer in nuke for the bombs once they're set, and you're fully expected to.

The blast radius is exactly the same as the TTV, the only "nerf" is that you can't 420 noscope throw live bombs at people (and that's what the minibombs are for)

Are you suggesting setting up loudly beeping disarm-able bombs all over the station, which big hint here is a slow play by itself, is a solid way to get the captain?

you can use the button as many times as you want, hell back when traitors had it a big problem was them being overzealous with it and accidentally getting caught in their own blast because they were detonating too quickly.

In any case that's off topic