The Space Armor Nerf Post 2: right forum this time

[Dat_Legion]

As it currently stands, the level of armor and loot in the Trade Route ruin and every other ruin are completely unbalanced. Space exploration is far, far too easy in its current state, with the only requirements being the very basic forms of environmental protection and transportation needed to clear every single ruin save for a few exceptions.

Trade route, with its 40 burn, 60 brute 90+wounding burst infinite ammo simple mobs capable of gg ez’ing you in 3 seconds. The only option when dealing with it is either an ungodly amount of knowledge and cheese about how the mobs move, spawn, fight and act when not agro’d or instantly die to getting hit with 2 buckshot rounds and 4 .45 rounds from trying to face tank with zero armor. I don’t want to have to have 100+ hours of knowledge for *one ruin specifically* when every other ruin has as much difficulty as those little put the right shape in the right hole toys. With all the space grade armor axed by Timbertoes, which I see as an overreaction to the problem. I would’ve preferred having 60-80% of it axed, 15-35% of it nerfed and the last 5% being in trade route, say something like a boxed syndi suit in one of the crates.

On top of it all, its annoyingly difficult to properly summarize the entire problem without throwing a 4 page post on every detail and flaw that was created or exacerbated with the space nerf.

[Ivuchnu]

No fun allowed. Don't you get it, NO FUN ALLOWED. This is part of grand design, end goal is clone of Among Us where non-antag actions have no impact (beside finding valid) and where you don't have anything remotely exploitable.

You still can throw those basic spacesuits back on station, cargo does not exist and may not order more spacesuits, I guess. Personally I'd like space getting more Trade Route tier challenge, not dull removal of good loot.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

trade caravan ruin is a puzzle you arent supposed to facetank like an idiot

[cacogen]

Simple mobs have always been garbage. Especially the ones that mimic humans without being balanced like them. Is it so much to ask for them to be stunnable and run out of bullets?

[Dat_Legion]

Imagine the amount of salt this sort of thing would get if every single piece of armor in lavaland was removed in one PR. Lavaland has access to over 4 different types of armored space suits, counting the miner hardsuit, champion hardsuit, the syndicate hardsuit (Legion roundstart spawn drop) and syndicate space suit (xeno nest suit, just orange for some reason). In almost any other case, we wouldn't be removing armored cloths or hardsuits for the reason of "people actually used them" without a storm of people complaining. Space is barely used as is, with its functionality now degraded to "grab whiteship after searching for 30 minutes, return to station and hand over 7 unactivated cores, 3 camera bugs, and 4 BEPIS techs to sci to get 3 phazons with."

Space is not lavaland, and probably will never be LIKE lavaland. They are two completely different types of offstation content that have their own challenges and loot tables. Lavaland has infinite armor, diamond ore and healing sources that can be cheesed for even more powerful sources of items. Using one watcher tendril and alot of time, you could arm every single crewmate with full coverage bone armor and bone axes as well as anything from the mining vender. Space is finite, with roughly enough gear for two people at best stretched over 8 z-levels with ZERO usable armor.

The armor nerf was rather pointless, quite literally this isn't going to stop "going to x location, grabbing y gear and returning to z after 15 minutes." It's just going to change x, y or z unless you axe every single source of armor, off station content and form of powergaming. And with even more recent nerfs removing *even more* viable / unique gear from space, like the Hilbert BoH (https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/54194) , is slowly turning 8 z-levels of ruins and gear into a bland pit of 12 EVA suits and 5 unactivated cores.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

the funny thing about that pr other than eva suits in safe is that it just enforces the shopping list way of doing space exploration by adding gps signals everywhere (they were removed for a purpose in the first place)
now u can rush honk mechs in 10 min while before you had to hope u find something worth using before shuttle is called at 00:30

[NoxVS]

if the guy who fucks off into space about every other round is complaining about the nerfs then they are working as intended

[Armhulen]

I'm hoping to see more station helping items, like valuables to sell or sidegrades to higher tier stuff.

[EOBGames]

I'm hoping to see more station helping items, like valuables to sell or sidegrades to higher tier stuff.

Perhaps once the offstation freeze is lifted I can look into the explorer archive for some ideas, since I've wanted this too

[mstachife]

Personally I wish space explorer / salvager was its own job, with a small shuttle they could use attached to cargo. Whiteships would be a thing they could still find for a much better ship. Replace some of the loot with disks for technology like phazons and advanced eguns, maybe a few new things. Make more dangerous ruins, so they could have a reason to get weapon permits and utilize gear from said tech disks. Probably too much work though.

[chocolate_bickie]

I wish there was an easier way to get more of the station involved in space exploration. Recently on Terry admins have been spawning mini events with the trade route caravan being dropped on the station z level or accessible via teleporter and it's pretty fun for teams of crew to attack them.

If anything the ruins need to be more accessible to larger numbers of players. If space explorer does become it's own job it'd be good for it to have Teleport access and extra beacons so they can pull in more crew to raid these stations.