Explosives rebalancing/overhaul ($50 bounty)

[Rukofamicom]

Explosives overhaul

This aims to keep explosives viable for use while making them substantially less overpowered, and hopefully will herald an end to antagonists being disallowed from using explosives entirely.

Explosives on a large scale will have a beeping timer that is not possible to bypass, and while they will kill people who don't get out of the way, they are directly intended for the destruction of the station itself

Anti-personnel explosives will still exist, be lethal and useful, but not be capable of nearly the scale of destruction that they currently are.

Large bombs (the ones you can't hide in a bag) are the primary source of large explosions

• Bomb payloads no longer detonate unless they are part of a fully assembled bomb.
• Bombs can only be activated if they are bolted and not damaged, and will only explode if they were active when destroyed.
• Minimum bomb timer reduced to 30 seconds. (For both Syndicate and manually created bombs)
• Obey maxcap settings
• Wires:
  • Pulsing wires can no longer detonate
  • Pulsing boom/activate gives the same message to retain the 50/50 success chance
  • Pulsing a wire that adds time will add 10 seconds
  • Pulsing a wire that removes time will halve the current timer, may only be pulsed once.
  • Cutting wires will remain the same, only a 33% chance of successful disarm without multitool.

TTVs

• Now function like bomb payloads, which means they require a bomb casing to detonate anywhere near their full potential.
• Single tank bombs no longer possible

Grenades

• Grenades are now incapable of devastation type damage - hull breaches will only occur near windows or already heavily damaged areas
• Large chemical grenades removed. 600u reactions are too large for an easily concealed item.
• Meth still explosive, but reduced dramatically in explosive capability. Make a dedicated explosive compound if you want good explosives.

[PowerfulBacon]

I like that the bombs can only be detonated when cutting, so you can't set up a signal to remotely insta-detonate a bomb but still make defusal risky.

Single tank bombs no longer possible

I'm not entirely sure how easy this is to do, since these explosions are handled in the atmospherics dll as far as I know.

This seems pretty good from glancing over it.

[Megaddd]

30sec might be a bit short but I guess we'll see
most times I've observed people find it with ~40-50 of the 90 timer remaining, if it's in maint or not immediately in the open
e.g.: 10-20sec for someone to find it, then like another 10-30sec for someone with tools to show up

Does this balance change also effect the 12tc syndicate bomb? (largely the concern here)

[Rukofamicom]

Yes, it would affect all bombs.

[Megaddd]

How does toxins bomb thrower work now for RnD? Will you need a code change on the mass driver to be able to throw anchored bombs?
e.g.: the supermatter already has some snowflake code for it (will throw supermatter placed over it, regardless if supermatter is anchored or not)

[zeskorion]

oooh goodie. if you want to balance explpsoves for combat, maybe introduce more granularity to their player damage than "a light breeze" -> "death" -> "you cease to exist"? pretty please

[zeskorion]

oooh, ooh! also- make the explosive cores only work when anchored!

[Coding-Grape]

I don't disagree with the large grenade removal, a large grenade min-maxed can devastate an an entire department with a massive plasmafire or a big hole where there shouldn't be a big hole, and I don't see slime cores used in them enough to warrant their inclusion

I don't think preventing devastation in grenades is the answer however, especially if you're limited to small grenades

I do agree that meth shouldn't be as explosive as it is though

Perhaps instead of nerfing chem payloads not in a casing make them not be normal sized items, as a large grenade casing removal would already heavily nerf their output

[Coding-Grape]

I'm not really a fan of the toxins changes, both of the things you want to rework are non issues, unless you mean raising the maxcap for TTV bombs in a bomb casing (which is hard because it's literally the tanks calling the explosion because they're overpressure), and singletanks need a rework over outright removal

The bomb refusal thing is dumb though, it would literally trivialize defusing bombs with a multitool to having no threat

[Rukofamicom]

it would literally trivialize defusing bombs with a multitool to having no threat

Then you didn't read carefully enough. Currently pulsing the activate wire tells you it is safe to cut, as part of my listed changes this is no longer the case:

Pulsing wires can no longer detonate
Pulsing boom/activate gives the same message to retain the 50/50 success chance

Pulsing is now 100% safe to do, but it no longer tells you which wire is safe to cut. It's still a 50/50 shot, you just have to break out the wire cutters to actually flip the coin instead of the explosion chance happening while the multitool is being used.

[Rukofamicom]

I have turned this discussion directly into a bounty since it is mostly well receieved and already more or less approved by head coder.

[PowerfulBacon]

Do you want me to announce that there's a bounty active for this?

[Rukofamicom]

Sure, I'm working on typing up a couple of others as well, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna run out of time and have to go to work first

[kit-katz]

please remember once more that botany exists and they have mass produced explosives that detonate on impact to instantaniously crit with the power of anything from a small plasmacig to a c4
if you are making a bomb nerf bounty this shit needs to be on your radar

[zeskorion]

didnt we remove sepchems

[Rukofamicom]

Yes, and also have a massive botany overhaul by @EvilDragonfiend actively in progress which addresses most issues.

[EvilDragonfiend]

#7072 the botany rework is also touching the unbalanced plants, but it will need months to redesign the damn stat system, so I am fine for someone with touching the explosive stuff in the botany, or tell me I can adjust it with this discussion proposal.

[Pirill]

Generally a fan of the ideas presented, but one thing I would like to see is more versatility with explosives. Zesko pointed out one of the issues with damage granularity, but I'd also like to see explosives with more varied uses or effects in general.

I don't think handheld explosives being able to cause breaches is that big of a deal, but maybe this could be an opportunity for more options for how that's applied. Explosives that affect a concentrated area specifically to cause a breach, area denial, perhaps some very wide-area, but low damage options to cause chaos and deafen people or act as a distraction, or shaped charges if you want to just bust a room without exploding yourself in the process.

Just having more tactical options in general would offset the current meta of just making pot/water grenades in seconds, or meth grenades in minutes with easy results, even if said explosives get neutered somewhat by these changes.