Nuke Ops Ship Hunting and Nukie bombing Dilemma

[Ezel]

Nobody is saying this, so im gonna bring it up

Nukie ship hunting used to be a policy when the turrets didn't exist which prevented people to hunt the ship unless they had the nuke disk or you were pinpointed to it. Now they have turrets to defend themself cool and fair right
Let me present you with some example scenarios(which definitly and will happen.)

1. Nukies leave their ship to go hunt for the disk, a crewmember hunts for their ship throws smart foam at it to clog up the vision of turrets and then enter the ship. (At this point the scenario can split into two things.)
1A. The crewmember in question starts walling up the shuttle so nukies can't enter their ship.
2B. The crewmember in question is an traitor buys a agent ID and just leave with the ship(Nukies will be gauranteed to lose this way.)

2. Crewmembers speedrun TTV's bombs as soon warops declared this is fine in its own. but once again this splits into 2 dilemmas
2A. Crew makes bombs and seek for the nukie ship before they arrivere ready to rush in and bomb the nukies before they even get a chance to get out(Which is unhealthy and boring way of dealing with nuclear ops)
2B. Crew makes bombs and bombs like 5-10 crewmembers and a crucial part of their station to get 1 nukie(which really should get cracked down harder on)

And before somebodies argues that somoene should just protect the ship. No single person in this world plays a nukie to babysit the ship for a potentional thing that could happen. this is not fun its not in the spirit of the gamemode

So what im trying to propose with this policy thread is to Ban nukie ship hunting again unless.you know or have a suspicoun that they have the disk(So not as soon they arrivere) previous time this policy got repurposed it got pushed off to the coders, and this is not a code issue this is a player issue that causes the gamemode itself to stagnate by cheesy tactics to win

[NecromancerAnne]

In the last related thread to this, the conclusion was to resolve this via code problems: viewtopic.php?t=38071

Since this was deemed a codebase problem, I'm here to say that I think this is not a reasonable or fair decision as there are no reasonable or fair means by which this can be resolved via code. Or, at least, not without it becoming not only extraordinarily destructive to the game to resolve, but also likely to burn out more than a few people trying to outpace our players. Sometimes policy exists to enable interesting stories and narratives that would be either difficult or painful to enable via code alone. I think having at least this restriction was enough to keep things a bit sensible.

To foist the problem onto the codebase is to ask contributors to engage in what will effectively be an arms race with player creativity to stop enough cheap shots for at least the potential for something to happen. The last time this policy was removed, the codebase had inched the arms race forward by giving the ship more powerful, more vicious tools to fight attackers. Those have since been figured out and circumvented. I could inch the arms race forward one more time, but it will be circumvented. This is a Sisyphean task. This arms race has burnt out more than a few contributors and at least one maintainer. It's not a long term viable strategy.

For the sanity of anyone having to fix these problems, please just re-enable the policy so there is less pressure to make this dilemma go away. It isn't going to go away, and I'd rather not see the antagonist disappear because we can't get it into a fun state due to an unwillingness to at least enforce some good sportsmanship rules. Even a smidge.

[Cobby]

Whats the realistic end goal for people who want this to be a code solution?

Like yeah coders want to be able to just "make it work" but particularly with shuttles and other things that touch turfs, there is really only so much we can fit in a single Z level, and even less that doesnt touch the station proper. If theres no realistic solutions to this besides buffing the ship, which requires us to constantly update the power level to acknowledge the latest cheese strat of getting onto said shuttle (which mind you because we are open source can be tested extensively on a private server then distributed), I dont really see what the effective solution is here people think changing the code solves.

I'd rather people just say theyre fine with people legally-metagaming it rather than act like its a simple change we can ratify and until then it just has to be the way it is.

[warbluke]

Would letting the shuttle be remotely controllable break anything? Like putting the control console interface on the Nuke Ops Ipad or something along those lines.

[Ezel]

Would letting the shuttle be remotely controllable break anything? Like putting the control console interface on the Nuke Ops Ipad or something along those lines.

This isn't something you can fix trough code since the core of the problem will exist that a person is deadset on hunting your ship down before you even arrivered/got the disk

[warbluke]

This isn't something you can fix trough code since the core of the problem will exist that a person is deadset on hunting your ship down before you even arrivered/got the disk

>Show up with ship
>Leave the ship
>Send ship back
>Ship is safe
>Get the disk
>Call the ship back somewhere
>Get on
>Leave

If someone is waiting in the exact spot where the ship lands and also manages to defeat an entire nuke ops team and a ship with turrets at the same time then I think they would deserve the win.

[Ezel]

This isn't something you can fix trough code since the core of the problem will exist that a person is deadset on hunting your ship down before you even arrivered/got the disk

>Show up with ship
>Leave the ship
>Send ship back
>Ship is safe
>Get the disk
>Call the ship back somewhere
>Get on
>Leave

If someone is waiting in the exact spot where the ship lands and also manages to defeat an entire nuke ops team and a ship with turrets at the same time then I think they would deserve the win.

Theres a thing called good sportmanship and rushing nukies before they even get to arrivere at the shuttle is just not one of those things it makes rounds dull and boring. and im talking from the TTV/smart foamer standpoint because no nukie in existance is gonna stay behind so the shuttle is safe this is also one of the reasons why the nuke starts anchored so people just dont pull it away

[NoxVS]

Whats the realistic end goal for people who want this to be a code solution?

Make it so there's no actual shuttle on the station z-level, you have like pods or something that let you move between the shuttle and space. There's always going to be way more crewmembers than there are nukies, there's always gonna be some cheese to override whatever protections you put in place. You either make the shuttle invulnerable or get rid of it because otherwise someone will find a way onto it and it's really not enjoyable.

[beegsteve]

A good start would be the turrets being able to aim and shoot through those metal foam grenades

[RedBaronFlyer]

just don't let the nukie ship get hijacked when you're a nukie 5head

I've always thought that a half decent way to try and prevent too much fuckery would be to have something on the nukies themselves that they can't throw away* that is required to activate the ship computer. That way you have to kill a nukie in order to board the shuttle while preventing someone immediately jumping on said shuttle the moment the nukies leave it.

*perhaps some sort of implant or something, or a thing in their ID card perhaps? It would need to be something that the nukie player wouldn't just toss out.

[zxaber]

Point-defense drone ghost role that's tethered to the ship and has to remain at least in view of it. Point-defense drone would be free and auto-polls for a player the first time the ship is launched from the Ops base. Give them an automatic weapon and a breaching missile launcher to delete any placed walls or foam causing issues. (Make the missiles auto-detonate after they leave tether range).

Alternatively, I'd say skill issue tbh. Ops is like six people max outside reinforcements, the bigger team should have at least equal chance of winning, even if by underhanded tactics.