The structural explosion prog traitor objective is terrible and needs to be removed.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

No one enjoys this objective. It causes tons of unnecessary random damage that engineers hate fixing, if they bother fixing it at all, causes tons of spacing on the station, ruins pipe and power networks, and adds nothing of value to the game. It's not skillful like stealthily stealing a hand tele, it doesn't even benefit the traitor like stealing a hand tele does, in fact, it's arguably detrimental to the traitor themself. Remove this terrible objective.

Also, the impact this objective has on lowpop shifts is insanely detrimental. This one objective can ruin entire lowpop shifts.

[Pandarsenic]

Love to get bootyblasted as a borg by the fact that it seemingly hits robotics every time, vaporizing my chassis AND ensuring I can't have a new one built.

Or to see it make holes to a lower Z-level all over Icebox

etc.

[bastardblaster]

kaboom funny

[Mothblocks]

the problem once again is that reconstruction is slow, boring, and frustrating

this problem was made much worse when the rcd got locked

[Pandarsenic]

Honestly, the explosions are mostly very small so I typically don't mind rebuilding them personally

I think the greater issue is that if you're standing at the wrong place, you die instantly with no recourse, and the only way to prevent the kaboom is to aggressively validhunt any traitor might be going for it.

[Shadowflame909]

the problem once again is that reconstruction is slow, boring, and frustrating

this problem was made much worse when the rcd got locked

Yes we should remove toxins gates. A lot of things have been soft-removed and havent been seen in years and that list is just growing. (Rip anomaly armor and rcds which recently got added)

[Mothblocks]

My point of view is that if antagonists blowing things up is a problem, then that's the root of a much much deeper issue of reconstruction being terrible. Blowing stuff up is like the most standard antagonist behavior that we should expect

[Pandarsenic]

Being gibbed by the random explosions feels worse to me than being gibbed by a proper maxcap, a syndiebomb, or even an old parapen-C4 stick that was true round removal. Like they weren't even out to get me, really, it just kind of happened almost incidentally.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Being gibbed by the random explosions feels worse to me than being gibbed by a proper maxcap, a syndiebomb, or even an old parapen-C4 stick that was true round removal. Like they weren't even out to get me, really, it just kind of happened almost incidentally.

I'm pretty sure syndie bombs have a extremely low devastation blast zone compared to other bombs of similar caliber. Its something like one tile. It should be the same for the structural explosion thing if it stays in the game.

[HeyHey]

It's a fun objective and it rewards your for the massive risk you take planting a bomb in a high value area. What's wrong with random explosions?

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

My point of view is that if antagonists blowing things up is a problem, then that's the root of a much much deeper issue of reconstruction being terrible. Blowing stuff up is like the most standard antagonist behavior that we should expect

This is only part of the issue. The other two parts are that this objective is being activated every single shift, forcing engineers to do reconstruction every shift, and secondly that it is extremely worse on lowpop shifts where theres likely 0 secoff and only 1 engineer - hope you didn't have anything else fun planned for the shift because guess what? You have to do reconstruction now as the only engineer, or else we have to call the shuttle, because atmos just got blown up.

An acceptable fix, to me, would be locking this objective to a round start population requirement of 30, because there is likely to be at least 3 engineers at that level, and if the population requirement is met, it only has a 30% chance of appearing, determined by a round start roll. This way, with these two changes, lowpop shifts dont get ruined, and people don't get sick of having to do reconstruction literally every shift.

[blackdav123]

Pop requirement on it is reasonable

[Misdoubtful]

I just got one of these for the toxins bomb site recently, laughed.

Double laughed when I had discovered that the bomb site had already been used.

My point of view is that if antagonists blowing things up is a problem, then that's the root of a much much deeper issue of reconstruction being terrible. Blowing stuff up is like the most standard antagonist behavior that we should expect

Its worth considering that on quite a few other codebases bombings are much fewer (unless someone puts some serious effort into a good bombing), and (re)construction in general in some of those places isn't an easy thing -- or even attempted. Picture places where we are going back to the old school 'there is only one RCD', or the RCD doesn't exist at all.

TG feels like one of the most (re)construction friendly codebases out of them all already. That being said, TG also experiences what feels like some of the most bombings out of the codebases.

I'd unironically rather keep the objective and see a boost on the price of normal big tot explosives than see the objective itself go.

A good bombing creates a lot of moving parts for a round (the objective can help ensure that happens), but too many bombings, or the inability to really just rebuild an area proper can be a heavy burden that factors into it.

People might feel a lot differently if this construction mule thing were to come into play: https://hackmd.io/4TMXnLqHSPaLeQA5bKUvSw?view

[cacogen]

My point of view is that if antagonists blowing things up is a problem, then that's the root of a much much deeper issue of reconstruction being terrible. Blowing stuff up is like the most standard antagonist behavior that we should expect

Yeah, I think this too.

explosions = cool, fun
rebuilding = finicky, too slow to be practical

It would be nice if it were possible to expand the RCD destruction scan to everything vital to the station functioning. Then the real cost would be materials and RCD access instead of manpower.

[Mothblocks]

Engineering doing reconstruction every round wouldn't be an issue if reconstruction wasn't so awful, though. You mentioning engineers having to stop their projects is a side effect of reconstruction being the way it is. You don't hear people saying "dying wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to use the defibrillator" because the defibrillator isn't terrible to use

[cacogen]

That’s what I’m saying. It’s bad because it’s too slow and too technical, here’s how it could be improved. The defibrillator is a one and done thing like the RCD too.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Engineering doing reconstruction every round wouldn't be an issue if reconstruction wasn't so awful, though. You mentioning engineers having to stop their projects is a side effect of reconstruction being the way it is. You don't hear people saying "dying wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to use the defibrillator" because the defibrillator isn't terrible to use

All right. You're right, if you can make reconstruction at or near the level of defibrillators, then I can easily accept this explosive objective.

In the meantime, however, can we please implement my requested change of implementing a relatively high population requirement of 30 and a 30% roll chance for this objective until such a time that reconstruction is improved to this standard, so that way we don't just end up suffering with terrible existing reconstruction for the next 20 months until someone SERIOUSLY fixes reconstruction?

[Mothblocks]

Yeah probably

[carshalash]

It's stronger than the syndie bomb in every way and it's free for some reason. For what purpose.

[BlueMemesauce]

For the purpose of causing major structural damage.

[iwishforducks]

i dont like the objective because it doesnt have the same kind of dread that a syndiebomb carries. every time i hear a beep i go “is that a syndiebomb?” or “OH FUCK, A BOMB!” and GTFO. this objective introduces no dread other than “oh, guess i got blown up. Okay.”

[HeyHey]

It's stronger than the syndie bomb in every way and it's free for some reason. For what purpose.

Unlike the Syndie Bomb you can't choose where it goes to maximize kill count.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

With the merging of https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/67865

I am closing this thread as I consider this issue acceptably resolved.