Free nukeop gear every round

[Oldman Robustin]

Plz

If youre going to load every away mission with Hardsuits, C20r's, genetic powers, eshields, double eswords, fucking etc.

At least REQUIRE that the gateway leading out from the mission is behind a majority of the threats/loot.

The Syndie ship with the BSA has the right idea. Dump people aboard with no way out and force them to fight their way through the mission if they want to return to the ship pimped out harder than the average nukeop.

As it is I've seen at least three missions where you can go in, poke around, run out the same way you came in if shit goes south, a few people wander in, toolbox the nearest syndie and within 2 minutes you've got a pimped out Nanotrasen Nukeop Squad with virtually no risk or effort, just walk back out the way you came in and go nuts with your commando gear.

It's very simple, if you're going to get the best combat gear available, require a proportionate amount of effort. The simplest way to do that is move the gateways so that you actually have to make a committed effort if you want to run around on station with your newcop loadout.

[Zilenan91]

Pls post this in the "please remove the emitter maze away mission" thread because I've already covered a lot of this.

[PKPenguin321]

I heard a suggestion to make items like C20s "tagged" the same way away mission antags are exile implanted, I that they're free to use on the away mission, but can't be brought back to the station. I feel that that would probably be an optimal solution.

[Steelpoint]

Seems like a good idea, let's you balance out a away mission without worrying about giving the crew the power of a high level antagonist.

Can also still allow reward items to be sent through the gateway that are not weapons, or weapons tagged to allow transport.

[oranges]

monthly reminder that away missions need to be a full roundtype.

[Oldman Robustin]

Pls post this in the "please remove the emitter maze away mission" thread because I've already covered a lot of this.

Emitter maze is decent because you have to run the gauntlet to get gear and there's only a small amount of neato nukeop gear (and some of it is syndicate firing pinned).

Its the other new ones where you walk in, there's a syndie like 20 feet from the entrance, so a couple assistants can easily overwhelm it, get his gear, and snowball in a matter of minutes into a mini-nukeop squad.

Exile-implanting the gear is a solution but:

1) It would require tweaking the away missions. I know I would never do any mission more than once (just to explore) if I knew all the cool shit would disappear once I finished.

2) It seems like a really obtuse mechanic compared to just moving the damn gateway. Not having a gateway at the entrance changes the whole feel of a mission. It requires people to show up prepared and not just wander in and get free shit, and it really give you that chill of "oh god what did I step into" when there are a dozen or more syndicate between you and the escape. It just doesn't feel like an away mission when you've got a portal to complete safety right behind you.

[ShadowDimentio]

Make a new "exile" firing pin that prevents guns from being fired unless you're at the away mission or replace it.

It'd gate the guns behind having the stuff to remove the pin an replace it.

[Oldman Robustin]

Make a new "exile" firing pin that prevents guns from being fired unless you're at the away mission or replace it.

It'd gate the guns behind having the stuff to remove the pin an replace it.

Yea but you still have assistants with double e-swords in nukeop hardsuits and a few other goodies (genetics powers, explosives, etc.).

[Super Aggro Crag]

i dont even like away missions, remove em!

[Zilenan91]

There was a pr that made it so they don't drop eswords and all the guns they drop are syndi pinned. I think it got merged.

Oh also Emitter Maze isn't even a gauntlet. You can cheese around the whole thing by just having tools because you can deconstruct the windows leading to the emitters, then getting in and deconstructing the emitters. After that use the machine frames to block lasers as you move your way to the right side, then get in, and keep deconstructing emitters and using their machine frames to block shots as you go down. If you do it right, you get to the end with no challenge and no damage taken. After that just hack open the door, then put a machine frame in front of hte bolted open door so all the mobs with guns in there die to space. Pick up their guns, kill the mob in the right room, get bigger guns, then shoot the eshield mobs to death with your bigger guns and suddenly you have infinite gear.

[TheNightingale]

You can't deconstruct the emitters any more, I'm pretty sure.

[Zilenan91]

You can. Also fun fact, Emitter Maze is literally bugged right now so none of the emitters or turretes even fire so it's literally walk in, get free gear, walk out.

[Steelpoint]

This needs to be fixed, its getting old that every second round has the crew in Ops gear with C20r.s

Not to mention when antags get their hands on them.

[lumipharon]

Remember when people said to not have away missions that had lots of loot?

Remember when that got us interesting, non balance shattering missions like WJ's xeno one?

That's why I like the lavaworld one - there's some neat as fuck loot, but it's not just piles of guns and swords, and it requires time and effort to conquer and escape from.
Even space battle is shit, since you can deconstruct walls to safely get back to the gateway, and once you kill one dude you can pretty reliably clear out the entire mission with enough time.

[ShadowDimentio]

>Xeno one
>Interesting

Okay I see we're just using words we don't understand here

[Saegrimr]

Remember when people said to not have away missions that had lots of loot?

Remember when that got us interesting, non balance shattering missions like WJ's xeno one?

That's why I like the lavaworld one - there's some neat as fuck loot, but it's not just piles of guns and swords, and it requires time and effort to conquer and escape from.
Even space battle is shit, since you can deconstruct walls to safely get back to the gateway, and once you kill one dude you can pretty reliably clear out the entire mission with enough time.

Xeno base is the fuckin best. Right amounts of spook and comfy with only a little bit of danger unless you really wanna go tackle the xeno hive.

[bandit]

rip fluff-only away missions like beach, hotel, etc

[Steelpoint]

What I could do is move the Gateway to the very end of the away missions, so if you go in you have to commit to finishing the mission if you want to escape back to the station, instead of going in, killing the first Nuke Op/PMC/Whatever then looting them for free higher end antag gear and then running back to the station.

[Steelpoint]

In fact why don't we make more toxic away missions?

Right now we have all this away mission equipment, bio gear and survival tools. Yet people know what to expect so they fling themselves in to kill the Ops they find. If we add more missions that are just as much about environmental dangers then at least it makes going into the gateway far more risky, especially if you don't spawn at the gateway.

Suddenly your Op gear run turns to disaster when you plop into the middle of a radiation storm and your not wearing a protective suit.

[kevinz000]

Exile implanting the gear = no one wants to go
no loot what's the point

[Super Aggro Crag]

Exile implanting the gear = no one wants to go
no loot what's the point

>no one wants to go
>people actually stay on the station and do their fucking jobs
>less than half the crew dies immediately to syndies in the mission, so they don't all spam restart
>round doesn't get a shuttle call 10 seconds in because someone welderbombed and theres no one to fix it

wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[Steelpoint]

We should redesign the away missions to be extremely difficult to the point where you would need the entire crew to devote themselves to preparing a expedition and researching/buying/creating the needed tools, weapons and other in order to mount a expedition.

[J_Madison]

I'm actually getting tired of it, as an away mission completer.

Remove that shit.

[onleavedontatme]

Space Battle is disabled.

[Oldman Robustin]

Space Battle got bad once RCD's became common and easy to fill, and people got better at exploiting mob AI.

The NT Private Security one is the worst though. All the fat loot of the space battle with even less risk since you have the gateway right behind you at mission start. Just pull mobs to gateway, beat them down, get your free double eswords+armor+combat gloves+etc. and then snowball from there until you've got more weapons than the armory. Easily obtained genetics powers too.

Did the gateway time get shortened too? Used to be tolerable when you had like 30 minutes of downtime before the gate opened and everyone got their fat loot, now it seems like its open much sooner.

I could see a place for a mission where you can bring back fat gear after an extreme challenge. I like the idea of player-controlled mission defenders, throw in other enrivonmental hazards, tons of mobs, and no easy escape, and I could see support for letting the survivors leave with some guns or something.

[TechnoAlchemist]

I'd really like a siege mission with pc defenders

[TheNightingale]

Snowdin is a good one. It's long, difficult to escape from, full of sweet loot, full of dangerous hostile mobs, and has ways for ghosts to get back into the round.

[PKPenguin321]

Exile implanting the gear = no one wants to go
no loot what's the point

well not all the loot is exiled, just shit like C20s, eswords, syndiesuits etc.
select loot that are prizes for beating the mission would still be allowed

[ShadowDimentio]

My suggestion I think was the best of both worlds. You still get the loot, it's just gated behind tampering with it.

[PKPenguin321]

My suggestion I think was the best of both worlds. You still get the loot, it's just gated behind tampering with it.

this doesn't stop any of the other free nuke op gear, only the guns, and wont even fully stop guns since you can just re-pin them in science

[Steelpoint]

I would be fine with loot at the end of a very difficult away mission, I just think the early game stuff should not be usable.

For example, if you get a C20r near the start that should not be able to be brought back to the station, but the loot at the end should be.

[lumipharon]

Shit lik exile pins are pretty redundant when removing a pin from a gun takes like 5 seconds and the only uncommon thing you need is a plasma cutter, which takes like, 5 seconds of research to get.

Snowdin is good in terms of being somewhat difficult, but it has too much loot.

Need more missions where the gate just spawns you in various different locations (like space battle), and you have to trek through nightmarish shit to try find your way back to the gate.
Good loot should very much be in missions, but it should be an actual achievement to come out alive with your dong blaster 5000, not just a question of who can rush there first.

[Steelpoint]

We should just remove all away missions sans Snowdin and gimmick non-loot one's for now. Shits insane with Nuke Op gear influencing almost every round at this point.

[lumipharon]

Lavaland also seems fine, since it's good chance of dying and not that much loot. Also gateway is at the end.

[InsaneHyena]

I agree with Oldman and Steelpoint, majority of away missions need to be removed.

[Atlanta-Ned]

Away Missions need to be a cute gimmick map that doesn't lead to the vast majority of the crew dying or being stranded with no way to get back. It's not fun when you're 3/4 of the way through a round and everyone's MIA. The round is about dealing with whatever antag is currently on the station, not going off-site to practice robusting simple mobs.

The only away mission should be the beach.

[MMMiracles]

I'm still looking into general away mission reworks/additions so if you like, have any ideas, send me a PM.

There's a PR up currently that removes the energy weapons and gives mobs the syndicate-pinned variant of their weapons for space battle. Go beg for its merge if you want here: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/15484

[Oldman Robustin]

This isn't a hard fix. There should be an annoucement when the gateway opens that only specifies that the Gateway is one of three risk-levels:

Class 1 = Minimal risk, either beach-type noncombat missions or missions where the gateway is near the entrance and the threats are all ones you can "walk away" from, all "loot" will be largely cosmetic

Class 2 = Moderate risk, enemies and challenges within, but threats are manageable and a majority of excursion team is expected to survive. However, loot will never be worth more than a few TC (e-daggers, EMP nades, etc.).

Class 3 = High risk, little to no survivors expected most rounds, gateway only present at the end of the mission, extensive threats that will easily murder you but the loot is highly lucrative (nuke op gear, genetics powers, magic tomes, etc.). Ideally will have a player-controlled defender as well.

[CPTANT]

To be honest I personally find that away missions only distract from the actual gameplay happening on the station.

[Scott]

To be honest I personally find that away missions only distract from the actual gameplay happening on the station.

Yep. They could maybe work if tg had longer rounds and were used minimally.

[Jazaen]

I think Oldman raises a good point. Do you remember how much bleb was buffed with player-controlled blobbernauts? Maybe adding more player defenders to away missions really is the way to go.

[Atlanta-Ned]

Why are we talking about blobs now? Remove the away missions. They're turning into/have been powergamer loot piñatas. Remove them and reevaluate post-haste.

OK, round's over. There is no scenario in which a player should be able to obtain nuke op gear and wizard spells during a normal round, without admin button pushing. Yet this ability is in the game right now. The game is significantly less fun with away missions enabled. They must be removed. Not reevaluated, not rebalanced, just removed.

[PKPenguin321]

OK, round's over. There is no scenario in which a player should be able to obtain nuke op gear and wizard spells during a normal round, without admin button pushing. Yet this ability is in the game right now. The game is significantly less fun with away missions enabled. They must be removed. Not reevaluated, not rebalanced, just removed.

or at least frozen until they can be tweaked

[Atlanta-Ned]

OK, round's over. There is no scenario in which a player should be able to obtain nuke op gear and wizard spells during a normal round, without admin button pushing. Yet this ability is in the game right now. The game is significantly less fun with away missions enabled. They must be removed. Not reevaluated, not rebalanced, just removed.

or at least frozen until they can be tweaked

I played the AI last night and got my shit dunked in by a rev with C4, a nuke op hardsuit, an e-sword and wizard spells. The only conscionable solution is to remove away missions and revist the entire concept from the ground up. Freezes and tweaks are not sufficient.

[TheNightingale]

OK, round's over. There is no scenario in which a player should be able to obtain nuke op gear and wizard spells during a normal round, without admin button pushing. Yet this ability is in the game right now. The game is significantly less fun with away missions enabled. They must be removed. Not reevaluated, not rebalanced, just removed.

or at least frozen until they can be tweaked

But Snowdin is already frozen.

[PKPenguin321]

OK, round's over. There is no scenario in which a player should be able to obtain nuke op gear and wizard spells during a normal round, without admin button pushing. Yet this ability is in the game right now. The game is significantly less fun with away missions enabled. They must be removed. Not reevaluated, not rebalanced, just removed.

or at least frozen until they can be tweaked

I played the AI last night and got my shit dunked in by a rev with C4, a nuke op hardsuit, an e-sword and wizard spells. The only conscionable solution is to remove away missions and revist the entire concept from the ground up. Freezes and tweaks are not sufficient.

i dont think you understand the concept here my friend
the idea is freeze away missions, tweak them to remove the C4/hardsuits/eswords, only leave very select and specific loot (read: not roundbreaking), the unfreeze

[Zilenan91]

You can't remove syndicate loot from inherently syndicate away missions without removing them as a whole. We really should just do away with Wild West, Space Battle, and Emitter Maze, since at the core they can't be saved conceptually because they were always designed to just be massive loot huts and nothing else.