Request for Comments: Stealth Nuclear Emergency

[Mosheninkov]

Noticable flaw with a couple of ideas: If stealth nuke ops don't start with a pinpointer, then the captain can fairly safely just hide both his personal pinpointer and the disk in any closet, box, bag, or disposal/mail chute and the operatives would be screwed. Maybe a less accurate pinpointer that operated only as a "warmer/colder" type sensor, rather than directional? This'd prevent them from tracking the captain easily, while also preventing the disk from being hidden for the entire round.

As for the countdown that could be disabled by any head ID - it might be alright if it was 30 seconds or less, but anything more gives the HoP/Captain or anyone with their ID enough time to disable the bomb and then fart out dozens of spare head ids to every person on the station, meaning that as long as there is a computer, any crew member could disable it, which'd make it "the nuke ops hunt down and kill every crew member", which wouldn't really be in the spirit of stealth, or very practical. A different, and better, fix would be to make only computers with the nuke disc program be able to stop the bomb (still with a head ID, though it'd be fairly easy to stop them by destroying or discarding head IDs - easily accomplished by accident if the captain goes exploring, and no one else took any head roles). This would mean that the station crew would have to find the computer that the nuke operatives used to start the bomb, making the 3 minute limit far more practical, and a greater emergency.

The obvious problem with that, though, is if the program on the disk can be copied to any hard drive, meaning anyone could just set it up at the start of the round as a life line. I suppose the program itself could verify if the nuke disk is in the disk drive before it performs any commands? That'd make sense.

Does a new nuke disk spawn if the previous one goes off z-level? Might be more balanced for this situation if the disk itself returns to the z-level, rather than a completely new one (so that you won't end up with duplicate disks).

I really like the "warmer/colder"-type non-directional pinpointer, and it'd be super easy to make.

As for the nuke program - maybe the nuke authentication disk has a copy of the nuke activation program, and then there's also a copy (non-auth disk, so the Syndicate couldn't just steal this one) of the program on a disk in the Bridge and in Electronics Storage? That'd give some options for the crew to try to stop it, and would be something the Syndicates could either preemptively steal or guard to make sure it times down. Alternatively, it could be something that one of the heads picks up as a safety measure to prevent a syndicate steal.

As another thought, it's kind of silly that the Syndicates just let their operatives get blown up. Maybe part of the victory condition should be that the Syndicates have to be off the station z-level? If the Syndicates want to "win", they'd have to leave everything unguarded, which means they'd have to make sure they were fairly confident it would go off before leaving the station, or sacrifice someone to stay behind.

A new nuke disk does spawn if the original goes off-z-level or if the original is destroyed. There are no duplicates.