Nuclear Emergency

[Scones]

This gamemode has seen a lot of changes recently, in the form of new items and default equipment shuffling.

It's been put in a kind of extremely weird place. There have been a few changes making nuke more "user-friendly" (See: the start of bulldog power creep by changing their default ammo from buckshot to slugs because of friendly fire). As of now, it's as easy as ever to fluke - That is the nature of the gamemode. Explosive mishaps and being shit at the game, sure, you can lose. But conversely? Nuke right now is hilariously easy to win.

So what's the cause? The bulldog. The bulldog getting it's default ammo changed to the wildly strong slugs was the biggest buff to nuke - Not because they were getting a strong gun, but because they no longer had to invest in a long-range high damage accurate weapon. This opens the doors to shit like below.

Right now, getting 12 additional TCs, I can become god. The addition of nodrop implants was a horrible, horrible mistake. Adrenal+Nodrop+Eshield and you are immune to everything the station could ever think to throw at you. Toss in an extra 4 TC for noslips just as a final fuck you to the Clown. You are unbeatable. You are immune to every lethal source of damage, throwing spears is actually the best way to consistently inflict damage on you. You have 100% laser reflect, a high bullet avoidance chance. What? The crew brought one of the three ranged weapons capable of stopping you? Good thing you have a chance to block those as well and an adrenal implant.

I don't need to explain bioterror, anyone who has seen them understands how dumb it is for the cost.

It is currently EXTREMELY heavily weighted in favor of operatives, because the lack of weapons investment means energy shields (Already obscenely good buys) are much more commonplace, and you can also get away with implants and the like. Security and as a result, the station is just incapable of combating people with shield +double implants. All of Security's lethal weapons are laser-based. The three bullet weapons all come loaded with nonlethals, and it's kind of annoying to get lethals.

I don't think words can capture the frustration of fighting someone who has an amazing weapon, total immunity to every ranged weapon and grenade you have, and to top it off, can just brute force through a melee confrontation with their implants.



tldr; its way too easy to be godmode immune to all crew+sec weapons and shit your way to victory

[Cheridan]

So basically the timeline for Bulldogs was that they were supposed to replace the energy guns as a stun weapon, so they started out with stun rounds and you could buy other ammo for them. Then they got buckshot for some reason and now they get slugs.

Return the stun rounds for Bulldogs so they fulfill their original purpose. Nuke Ops aren't supposed to get free strong weapons, they're meant to spend TC on them so the population-TC bonus lets them scale up with round population, but also scale backwards so they don't stomp low-pop stations with heavy weapons.

[Shaps-cloud]

Whose idea was it to give the ops buggy heartstopping slugs that can only be fixed by a defib from medbay (read: a long ways from the brig where almost every firefight happens)

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I'll go make taser slugs the default for Bulldogs again, and remove the ammo bundle bag.

[Steelpoint]

Paprika originally intended the Bulldogs to simply be a replacement for the three Eguns that spawned on the Operative's ship, with the intention of making Ops a fully ballistic only unit. Of course now they've become the most powerful weapon the Ops have.

I'll continue to say this but the only real way to improve the win/lose ratio of Nuke is to have a scaling population, so on low pop you get three operatives while on high pop you should get around seven operatives.

Furthermore I do think we should return to making C20r's standard issue, and look at increasing the price of other utility items so that picking something is now a tactical choice instead of standard issue equipment.

So instead of picking everything you have to make a hard individual choice on if you should get the shield, or a implant or another weapon or whatever. Or spend all your TC's on cheaper equipment like ammo, emag's and C4 and hoping your skill with the C20 is good enough.

[callanrockslol]

Flukes having nodrops doesn't even make sense.

[lumipharon]

>advanced implants that require research at the research station that is ss13
>cave men ballistic weapon nuke ops magically have them

I've already made my suggestion about primary weapons for ops in multiple threads so I won't bother again.

@cheri what about 'moving away from stun combat'?

[Steelpoint]

Moving away from stun combat's been a pipe dream for years, the only thing we got out of it were disablers being made more standard issue.

[Incomptinence]

So people finally prefer being stunned to being straight up dead again?
Well that is a relief.

[Oldman Robustin]

I enjoy robust opponents but no-drop implants are crossing a bright fucking line of "stupidly OP shit". Jab yourself with a stimpack/adrenals, open your console and type godmode_nodrop, and then equip either an eshield+anything or just double eswords.

What the fuck is supposed to stop that? Dropping shit when you go down is the great fucking equalizer. Seeing a flukeflop coming at me an eshield, nodrops, adrenals, and an extended mag revolver (aka bulldog) is just "I give the fuck up" territory. I would rather deal with a mauler when they've spaced our ion gun than I would want to fight a decent player running the godsetup. Your ONLY option is literally try to beat him to death through his armor while his teammates are covering him, with stims/adrenals that's just a fantasy... better hope Toxins is ready to bomb the flops because that's probably your only realistic option.

Beyond that stupid stuff, I think Ops still need help on highpop. TC and Population do not scale with one another properly. There's much less marginal utility from additional TC's compared to additional crew (chance of being spotted, drying out your ammo, miracle /push, flashin ur borg, etc.), highpop Nukeops needs to be fucking bathing in TC but instead its like HEY THERE'S 20 MORE CREW THAN AVERAGE, HAVE A COUPLE EXTRA WEAPONS.

[Hornygranny]

Bulldogs were changed away from stun shot in the first place because stun shot was absolutely useless compared to an energy gun.

[Scott]

I enjoy robust opponents but no-drop implants are crossing a bright fucking line of "stupidly OP shit". Jab yourself with a stimpack/adrenals, open your console and type godmode_nodrop, and then equip either an eshield+anything or just double eswords.

What the fuck is supposed to stop that? Dropping shit when you go down is the great fucking equalizer. Seeing a flukeflop coming at me an eshield, nodrops, adrenals, and an extended mag revolver (aka bulldog) is just "I give the fuck up" territory. I would rather deal with a mauler when they've spaced our ion gun than I would want to fight a decent player running the godsetup. Your ONLY option is literally try to beat him to death through his armor while his teammates are covering him, with stims/adrenals that's just a fantasy... better hope Toxins is ready to bomb the flops because that's probably your only realistic option.

A minor EMP will force you to throw anything you're carrying and stun you.

[callanrockslol]

I enjoy robust opponents but no-drop implants are crossing a bright fucking line of "stupidly OP shit". Jab yourself with a stimpack/adrenals, open your console and type godmode_nodrop, and then equip either an eshield+anything or just double eswords.

What the fuck is supposed to stop that? Dropping shit when you go down is the great fucking equalizer. Seeing a flukeflop coming at me an eshield, nodrops, adrenals, and an extended mag revolver (aka bulldog) is just "I give the fuck up" territory. I would rather deal with a mauler when they've spaced our ion gun than I would want to fight a decent player running the godsetup. Your ONLY option is literally try to beat him to death through his armor while his teammates are covering him, with stims/adrenals that's just a fantasy... better hope Toxins is ready to bomb the flops because that's probably your only realistic option.

A minor EMP will force you to throw anything you're carrying and stun you.

Of which there are no realistic options at the start of the round.

[DemonFiren]

Ion rifle, tater gear (good luck salvaging). Get lucky and jump onto the Derelict, or find uranium early. On Meta, grab the EMP grenade in maint.

[Steelpoint]

Realisticly the only EMP source for the crew is the sole Ion Rifle in the armoury. Furthermore I think only a minority of people are aware of the effects of EMP's on operatives wielding this equipment.

Oldman is correct in his statement, what the operatives can put together currently may as well be a switch that gives them the nuke disk. You can't say for people to use a counter that is all but impossible to acquire.

[newfren]

Botany can also make an emp reasonably early if they get lucky with berry mutations. Mutate berry into glowberry --> grind for uranium, get 50u in a bottle, grind a piece of metal or two for the iron, tip uranium into beaker when you want an emp.

Noone does this though, so it's academic!

[Oldman Robustin]

The ion gun is the only realistic option and that's likely to be stolen/spaced by a combat strike team that's going to be using no-drops.

It's useful information but if I know that no-droppers have taken the ion gun I'm heading to toxins because fuck trying to outrobust that shit.

[Anonmare]

NoDrops for Nuke Ops is too much, they already get alot of advantages over the crew (who are very unlikely to have advanced enough to develop any reasonably good weapons by the time you c4 the armoury and space the ion gun - because why the fuck wouldn't you if you have NoDrops or a Mech). They don't need to be immune from the one saving grace the crew has, let alone the fact that those implants require research at a high-tech research facility and will obviously be in low-supply.
I mean, with an E-shield or double E-sword, you've already invalidated most weapons the station can muster because Centcomm seems to think the answer to an organisation with energy-deflecting swords is energy-based guns.
Getting lucky with a disarm and nabbing an OP's gun is already difficult, at least reward the poor grey-shirted bastard a chance to kill his enemy instead of no-selling his best and last defence.

If you're going to keep NoDrops, then at least make them prohibitively expensive (i'd say about as much as a SAW) to reflect the difficulty the Syndicate went to getting them and how overpowered they are for an Op in terms of gameplay

[Oldman Robustin]

NoDrops for Nuke Ops is too much, they already get alot of advantages over the crew (who are very unlikely to have advanced enough to develop any reasonably good weapons by the time you c4 the armoury and space the ion gun - because why the fuck wouldn't you if you have NoDrops or a Mech). They don't need to be immune from the one saving grace the crew has, let alone the fact that those implants require research at a high-tech research facility and will obviously be in low-supply.
I mean, with an E-shield or double E-sword, you've already invalidated most weapons the station can muster because Centcomm seems to think the answer to an organisation with energy-deflecting swords is energy-based guns.
Getting lucky with a disarm and nabbing an OP's gun is already difficult, at least reward the poor grey-shirted bastard a chance to kill his enemy instead of no-selling his best and last defence.

If you're going to keep NoDrops, then at least make them prohibitively expensive (i'd say about as much as a SAW) to reflect the difficulty the Syndicate went to getting them and how overpowered they are for an Op in terms of gameplay

Also just to cut off anyone who starts talking ballistic counters, I was hauling around a sawed off shotgun with the new riot buckshot as captain. Flukeflops showed up and I unloaded the whole damn thing into a dbl-eskill user. Some shots were off but I got a majority of them right in his face, his sword then deflected roughly half of those pellets and what was left was not enough to do anything more than slow him down.

Only the det's revolver offers the level of ballistic stamina damage + robustness to reliably drop someone with eshield/dblesword, and with nodrop/stims/adrenals the revolver is just going to be a brief pause in your damage before you get back up to murdering.

[Scott]

Is this cybernetic implant feedback based on real rounds that happened or are you just predicting bad things? Serious question.

[John_Oxford]

I say we make a new set of guns for syndies all together.
Instead of having them pick guns from uplinks, have the uplinks only allow equipment to be spawned in (Pens, Noslips, Translator Keys, Emags, ect ect)
Make a armory section at the syndicate base, creating gun racks and equipment cases for all the gun types and items.
You enter the room with 2 WP and 2 EP. (Weapon points and equipment points) that start out based around your ID card.
1 weapon point can be converted into 2 equipment points.
2 equipment points can be converted into 1 weapon point.

Syndicates would have 6 basic weapons in total (Stetchkins not included, all ops will spawn with a stetchkin)

The C20R, costing 1 weapon point.
You would be able to add a grenade launcher for 2 equipment points. (NOTE: All ammo of all types is freely avalible in a section of the armory)

The P90 mock up thing that we have, the C30-GL or something, it would spawn with a grenade launcher, but costs 2 weapon points.

A BRD-30, costs 2 weapon points
A heavy carbine type rifle, deals 24 brute, and knocks you on your ass.

A MCAR-31, costs 1 weapon point.
A light weight fast firing next to zero click delay sub machine gun. Does 10 brute, no knock down. But you can pull some sick fucking mag dumps with this thing.

A XMGL Rotary Grenade Launcher, costs 2 weapon points and 1 equipment point.
Fires 40mm grenades, the same thing thats in the under barrel grenade launchers. 65 brute and knock down if a direct hit, 35 and short knock down in a 3x3 area. Can be equipped with a multitude of grenades, from 40mm Smoke, to incendiary, to HE, to AP, to tear gas, to flash bangs.

A ZRV-M Binary Rifle, costs 2 weapon points and 2 equipment points.
A heavy rifle that fires super concentrated bolts of plasma, does 85 brute and 10 burn on contact, acts like a pulse rifle in terms of destroying things, but has a ridiculiously slow fire rate.

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You would be able to buy a range of attachments for equipment points.
Mounted Flashlights - 1 EP
Silencers - 1 EP
Foregrips (Reduces screen shake) - 1 EP
Grenade Launcher - 2 EP
Mounted EMP Device - 2 EP (Discharges a EMP apon useage)
Foldable Stock (If the weapon has a stock) - 1 EP (Allows for the weapon to fit inside smaller containers)
QwikMag™ System - 2 EP (Every mag you load in, if you load another mag while another one is already in the gun, it will connect the two together, and allow for near instant reloads when the first mag runs out)
ID Locker - 2 EP (Prevents anyone whom of which is not a syndicate, from using the weapon)

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I'l make sprites for this, if this happens to let me get another crack at gunsmithing.

[Oldman Robustin]

Is this cybernetic implant feedback based on real rounds that happened or are you just predicting bad things? Serious question.

Unlike most of the coders I actually play this game, often, and in high-level positions.

Even when I haven't experienced something (either because its new or proposed), I have a far better idea than most as to how it will play out. (Hey guys I'm giving syndicate access to rounstart implantable maxcaps, there's NO WAY it will be abused because it will take them out of the round and you can do the same thing in Toxins anyway...).

All that aside, yes I've fought a no-drop nukeop with eshield + balancedog and adrenals. My reaction the entire time was "OH CMON YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME". I mentally swept through my options after realizing why they weren't dropping their shit and my conclusion was basically "run away forever". That's the kind of power that would make the Deathsquad blush and ascended shadowlings say "Damn man, that seems a little over the top".

[lumipharon]

Using a pneumtic cannon to embed a pile of rods/glass into an op will fuck them up, or using a damp rag with neurotox(drink) will work, and are pretty easily to access...
But it's pretty sad when your best bet is a RAG.

[Scones]

Is this cybernetic implant feedback based on real rounds that happened or are you just predicting bad things? Serious question.

Yes. The presence of nodrops broke the gamemode horribly - Regardless of price, dropping shit on the ground is the great equalizer. As I said in the OP, the lack of a need for investment in a gun means they can grab a shield and implant.

Spears are, not joking, usually your best bet.

[Scott]

So why aren't nukes forced to buy guns.

[Steelpoint]

Because they get a free Bulldog semi-automatic shotgun which is objectively one of their most powerful guns, ammo for it is cheap and very powerful meaning you don't need to spend TC's on buying a gun.

[Steelpoint]

A revert PR for the antidrop implants is up: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/10826