/tg/Station 13

No, hear me out.

Currently, thanks to Syndicate Bombs being widely available both to traitors and to double agents, most of the other antag modes having no use for bombs, thanks to suicide bombing being a bannable offense and mining bombs being nigh-useless even if they were literally ever used, toxins never sees meaningful use. Anyone who wants boom can get a good-enough boom out of a syndicate bomb; it takes longer, but in practice the length is not enough for anyone to actually make toxins bombs instead. I can't remember the last time I saw a classic TTV, let alone canisters or any of the more obscure varieties; this is because the risk-reward tradeoff is just not enough to justify the extra effort. Plus it renders an already pretty-useless department even more useless.

To top it off, admins are known to remove the bomb cap if the right people ask at the right times with the stars aligned, so it's not even as if it's a solid limitation, it depends on admin whims, which is never good.


So my proposal is to raise the bomb cap. Not remove it, raise it. How much? I don't know, it'll require (gasp) playtesting, and the input of people who can into toxins better than I can, but there must be some better triangulation of "worth the effort" and "won't crash the serber" than the one we have.

[youtube]A8VqdhNnwdY[/youtube]

This idea pleases me. I think a small-yet-significant uptick to the bomb cap might be good.

With help of atmos, it's completely possible to crash the server with a good enough mix. The bomb cap exists to prevent this, more or less.

If people put in the time to actually use toxins, they can completely and utterly fuck the station, almost as bad as a singulo in some cases (see: Bones McGee as a traitor scientist). I think it's more that people are too lazy to fully utilize toxins on a round to round basis, which is probably a good thing

As someone who uses toxins consistently as a traitor, you can easily get 6 max cap bombs within ten minutes. And with the use of smugglers bags can easily hide them even in high profile areas. I think the bomb cap is good where it is. The six bombs are more than enough to completely destroy the station. If anything I would support lowering the TC cost for the syndicate bomb because of the mandatory timer.

the last time i increased the cap the server literally broke, and that was at 7,14,28
at best it could be increased to 5,10,20 or 4,8,16 and six bombs would have to go off at once without causing serious lag
there is also balance issues due to the intensely destructive nature of bombs and the fuckton of damage they can do

Sometinyprick wrote:the last time i increased the cap the server literally broke, and that was at 7,14,28
at best it could be increased to 5,10,20 or 4,8,16 and six bombs would have to go off at once without causing serious lag
there is also balance issues due to the intensely destructive nature of bombs and the fuckton of damage they can do

5/10/20 or 4/8/16 would work

It seems like you want an easier way to force the shuttle call.
That's from three days ago. Was cap changed since then?

Lumbermancer wrote:It seems like you want an easier way to force the shuttle call.

No? I suck at toxins. I just want to encourage people to actually work to get a decent-sized bomb instead of instant syndibombs.

We really don't need the bomb cap increased. I find it perfectly satisfactory if not strong as is as long as you know how to do it. Toxins is better than syndibombs anyways.

Lumbermancer wrote:It seems like you want an easier way to force the shuttle call.

Spoiler:

That's from three days ago. Was cap changed since then?

except these bombs are 7,14,28 raised in a single round and over twice the normal cap.
the problem is that when things explode due to new features a lot of objects move around too and this causes even more lag also.

I always thought that supermatter shard explosions and nitroglycerin bombs should have their own, higher bombcaps because they're more difficult to get/set up.

I cranked it one step up for Laharl once and it lagged the server really horribly and TOTALLY fucked the station to the point where if this was the norm it would just be a balance issue.

Also toxins is crazy useful on a round to round basis
140 TC Marauder? DEAD
Blob? FUCKING OBLITERATED
Cultists trying to group? SHUNT THINE MORTAL COIL

Tokiko2 wrote:I always thought that supermatter shard explosions and nitroglycerin bombs should have their own, higher bombcaps because they're more difficult to get/set up.

It did for a while. Supermatter was a dev 8 explosion but that got removed for reasons. Probably because the general effects of the supermatter are deadly enough as it is.

Scones wrote:I cranked it one step up for Laharl once and it lagged the server really horribly and TOTALLY fucked the station to the point where if this was the norm it would just be a balance issue.

Also toxins is crazy useful on a round to round basis
140 TC Marauder? DEAD
Blob? FUCKING OBLITERATED
Cultists trying to group? SHUNT THINE MORTAL COIL

and then, in all cases except blob (and even then, probably in blob): BWOINK! BANNED!

bandit wrote:

Scones wrote:I cranked it one step up for Laharl once and it lagged the server really horribly and TOTALLY fucked the station to the point where if this was the norm it would just be a balance issue.

Also toxins is crazy useful on a round to round basis
140 TC Marauder? DEAD
Blob? FUCKING OBLITERATED
Cultists trying to group? SHUNT THINE MORTAL COIL

and then, in all cases except blob (and even then, probably in blob): BWOINK! BANNED!

I've done all of these multiple times without even being questioned by admins or other players. You just have to be smart with your bombs and not a friendly fire mongoloid.

I think the bomb cap is fine as is, it's already a case that if one bomb goes off the shuttle gets called because no-one can be arsed fixing the damage

And uplink bombs are a thing that never should've happened

Bombcap seems fine as it stands, honestly. You get a nice balance of station destruction without it being game-breaking while not being completely useless. Not to mention, server stability stands fine with what the bomb cap is at. If what you want is more destruction and explosions, maybe what we need are more TTVs in science at roundstart.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Spoiler:

Malkevin wrote:And uplink bombs are a thing that never should've happened

opinion + irrelevant

Bombcap seems fine as it stands, honestly. You get a nice balance of station destruction without it being game-breaking while not being completely useless. Not to mention, server stability stands fine with what the bomb cap is at. If what you want is more destruction and explosions, maybe what we need are more TTVs in science at roundstart.

Cargo can order more TTVs last time I checked, just the act of managing them to actually order them without getting a big o' red flag by the sheer act of requestiong a crate just steers people away from them.

MMMiracles wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:snip

Cargo can order more TTVs last time I checked, just the act of managing them to actually order them without getting a big o' red flag by the sheer act of requestiong a crate just steers people away from them.

Yeah, this exactly. There is a way to get more TTVs, but it's practically impossible due to the meta being that the only reason more TTVs would ever be needed is because of on-station bombing. I've never actually seen a TTV crate get purchased, much less delivered to science. Again, more at roundstart would solve this issue.

This is a server config issue, not a code development issue.

bandit wrote:

Sometinyprick wrote:the last time i increased the cap the server literally broke, and that was at 7,14,28
at best it could be increased to 5,10,20 or 4,8,16 and six bombs would have to go off at once without causing serious lag
there is also balance issues due to the intensely destructive nature of bombs and the fuckton of damage they can do

5/10/20 or 4/8/16 would work

I agree, could be fun, stuff above this could cause performance issues.

MMMiracles wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Spoiler:

Malkevin wrote:And uplink bombs are a thing that never should've happened

opinion + irrelevant

Bombcap seems fine as it stands, honestly. You get a nice balance of station destruction without it being game-breaking while not being completely useless. Not to mention, server stability stands fine with what the bomb cap is at. If what you want is more destruction and explosions, maybe what we need are more TTVs in science at roundstart.

Cargo can order more TTVs last time I checked, just the act of managing them to actually order them without getting a big o' red flag by the sheer act of requestiong a crate just steers people away from them.

A ttv crate is incredibly expensive in terms of cargo points.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Malkevin wrote:And uplink bombs are a thing that never should've happened

opinion + irrelevant

Not irrelevant when people in this thread are basing their reasoning for increasing the bomb cap on the fact that no one bothers using ttv bombs due to uplink bombs being almost as good, you dork.

Uplink bombs are small in devastation and usefulness when compared to normal capped bombs.
Specifically with "normal" bombs you get six bombs with a range of 3 devastation 7 heavy damage and 14 light. These bombs can be carried and are generally more useful for surprising people.
With the syndicate bomb you get one rather obvious bulky bomb which must be dragged and does 2,5,11. The only real advantage they have is that they can be used early in the round but even then if your quick enough you can make normal ttv bombs very quickly too roughly in about a minute or two with the same damage.
Basically they are nowhere near as good as normal tank transfer valve bombs.

as much as removing/upping the bombcap would be !!fun!!

do you really want this to happen every other round?

pretty sure this is the reason nobody ever removes bombcap for me anymore :'(

edit: for reference, this was 4 10/20/41 ttv bombs.

cool that people are talking about removing the bomb cap entirely and basing their counter-arguments on that when what is actually being proposed is just one or two ticks up (5/10/20 or 4/8/16)

That's how debating works here.

Yea, if it's not going to cause lag I see no problems with raising the cap a little bit, I would think 4dev or 5dev would be a good choice.

no

I was around for Cuban Pete. Never again.

It's not 'remove the bomb cap', it's not 'double the bomb cap', it's 'make TTVs the most powerful ordnance again, if only by a tiny bit.'

With the upcoming pr that effects how explosions work (walls an r-walls etc limit explosions), it does actually make sense to raise the bomb cap - by how much I'm not sure.

Fair enough. Probably should if walls are going to react realistically.

I will throw up a poll