Remove the outlier ship warp-in for the Space Battle Mission

[Zilenan91]

What happens here is that you spawn into a room with four or five esword mobs and die instantly. It's fucking awful. (they all got killed by a sentienced statue in the pic above)

[TheNightingale]

It'd be nice if you spawned in a room with energy swords and hardsuits, just so you can stand a chance against the rest of the Syndicate mobs.

[Zilenan91]

There are eswords and hardsuits on this ship but you die instantly to the legion of esword eshield mobs anyways so it hardly matters.

[J_Madison]

There's a solution to this. You just need to be prepared for the away mission and act quickly when you spawn.

There's about 2 spawns, both with extremely valid solutions to beat the away mission.

By beat, I mean get to the Gateway.

Going to be honest here, this mission is possibly one of the easiest of the harder missions. The difficulty is the sheer grouping of the mobs and the difficulty fighting them this way.

[Zilenan91]

It's not that this away mission is hard

It's that this upper spawn spawns you in a room full of so many syndicate mobs that I doubt even a Durand could beat them

And then once you get out of it, assuming the syndicate mobs in the pod haven't suffocated yet, they all have guns that they will use on you

All you get is some eswords a hardsuit and no medical supplies to fight all of them

Remove this upper spawn

[Cik]

i went in with a party of four as a changeling the other day. i went in to kill the captain.

we got in.

within about 5 seconds all of us were dead. i figured "i can beat them by attrition by abusing revive and armblading them!"

i get up

try to pop armblade

onehitted into crit

2hitted into death

i ded pls nerf

[Zilenan91]

Yeah this upper spawn wouldn't be bad if it wasn't an RnG teleport location. By that I mean, everyone else could tp down below while only you could teleport up top and you get fucked and everyone else gets the loot and brought back to the ship while you don't.

[lumipharon]

This whole away mission is honestly terrible - it's 'huge piles of deadly loot', the away mission.

[Anonmare]

I wouldn't want to remove it to be honest, the Bluespace artillery on it is a very nice reward for any antagonist that makes it.
If the spawn wasn't RNG based and had some weaponry/armour (Even a few basic lasers and standard armour would suffice for you to wear the mobs down by attrition) then it'd be a better mission instead of "Oh you spawned on the Syndicate ship? Hope you backed yourself up in cloning ". You have to remember, assuming players didn't use tracking beacons and GPS/Slimepeople scouts they have no way of knowing what's on the other side and getting GGnored by unstunnable, perfect accuracy/reactions, e-sword-wielding mobs isn't either fun or challenging.
What I'd like is the players spawning in the cargo bay with the gateway so if you've bit off more than you can chew, you can pull out and get some assistants to be your meatshield assist you

[Zilenan91]

Yeah spawning everyone in the cargo bay would fix this mission tbh. Until there's a way to know where exactly you're going that's easy away missions have to either give you lots of gear to survive like Caves or put you in rooms you can back out from like the academy.

[lumipharon]

You know there is a far, far easier way to survive this right?

Just lob a couple of smoke/foam death grenades through the gateway - they'll toast NPC's just as well as players.
Then you can just stroll through.

[Zilenan91]

Well yeah but by then other people would've gone through and you would've also melted all the gear, meaning you can't use any of it to fight the furhter esword mobs a room away.

[MMMiracles]

You know there is a far, far easier way to survive this right?

Just lob a couple of smoke/foam death grenades through the gateway - they'll toast NPC's just as well as players.
Then you can just stroll through.

Where the gateway drops you is random in terms of what point you'll get. You could very well lob all those grenades into the same place or somewhere entirely pointless, only to walk in yourself to one of the many areas the grenades probably didn't hit.

Mission needs redone badly or scrapped, as said above, its just a giant deadly loot pianta that serves to rack up the bodypile and reward the last few who come through.

[lumipharon]

Wait.

Wait wait wait.

What happens if you go through the gateway inside a box?
I'm 99% sure that simple mobs won't attack you while in a box, and I'm 100% certain a box can go through a gateway.

You could box into the mission, then just casually creep away from all the hostile mobs.

[iamgoofball]

Wait.

Wait wait wait.

What happens if you go through the gateway inside a box?
I'm 99% sure that simple mobs won't attack you while in a box, and I'm 100% certain a box can go through a gateway.

You could box into the mission, then just casually creep away from all the hostile mobs.

tactical
espionage
action

[Zilenan91]

Wait.

Wait wait wait.

What happens if you go through the gateway inside a box?
I'm 99% sure that simple mobs won't attack you while in a box, and I'm 100% certain a box can go through a gateway.

You could box into the mission, then just casually creep away from all the hostile mobs.

Things you're riding on always go through the mission first, so yeah you can cheese the whole thing with a box but all the loot is on mobs anyways so it's basically pointless to do it on Space Battle.

Also if any of them ever bump into you while you're in the box, because of bugs with it if it gets destroyed you get flat-out deleted. I could be wrong and that bug could be fixed, and even if it is they'll still find you and fuck you.

[lumipharon]

You'd just need to get out of the room of death, then you can just choke point them and death nade them all/teleport in all your mech buddies to your beacon etc etc.

We're talking about a mission that has literally dozens of extremely powerful weapons, e-shields, armoured hardsuits, vicerators, bluespace artillery etc etc.

I personally think it should be removed because that sort of firepower skullfucks round balance, but while it's in, atleast think outside (or in the case, inside) the box to earn your OP loot.

[Zilenan91]

Yeah I remember the entire crew going on the away mission during a super boring malf round, and then coming back armed to the fucking teeth with guns and armor and just killing the malf in .2 seconds

[MMMiracles]

E-shield doesn't really matter when they all have ballistics, considering the shield lost its ability to block ballistics.

Fun fact, the e-shield mobs still block ballistics because whoever did the e-shield change forgot to change them for consistency, honk.

[Zilenan91]

Also syndicate mobs have an unfortunate tendency to throw themselves out the airlock. Just go to the listening post as a ghost in any given round and the mob in there is probably dead.

[Steelpoint]

So the problem here seems to be its all up to RNG if you either spawn in a somewhat good place with some equipment versus spawning into a group of five Syndicate mobs ready to kill you instantly?

Wouldn't the solution be to simply rework the away mission and spawn all people in one location? Or at least in secure locations so you have a few moments to get your bearings.

[Zilenan91]

Yeah afaik every other warp in spot is sane and doesn't spawn you in a death pit, just the syndi ship full of esword mobs does this.

[Steelpoint]

Well that would be a very easy fix, just remove the death ship spawns and keep the rest.

[Steelpoint]

PR up: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/14192