[CLOSED PR] Traitors now get 25 TC - Buylist items are scaled to match

[github_bot]

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[Balance] [Input Wanted]
About the PR
This PR increases the TC count for traitors to 25 from 12, but also scales the cost of all traitor items to be about equivalent to what they were before.

The only mechanical additions/features that have been added are:

- Microbombs now have an average of 1.1 explosion power (`prob(90) ? 1 : 2`), down from 2.25 (`prob(25) ? 3 : 2`), to account for them still sticking at 1 TC
- Macrobombs now roll the microbomb chance a number of times equal to its cost in TC (25), instead of using its own strange math
- You can now buy TC from uplinks in stacks of 5 as well
- Traitors do get the equivalent of 0.5 extra TC (12 -> 25 instead of 12 -> 24)

Why's this needed?

This change may not do much immediately in this PR, but I fully intend to make a future PR regarding balance and cost of the items, but here's some reasons why this is a good change in the long term:

- Currently, items that cost the same can be hard to stand out. For instance, take the Agent Card (1 TC) and the Chameleon Jumpsuit (1 TC). The agent card is miles better and more worth the TC than the jumpsuit, but you can't make the jumpsuit picked more by making it cheaper, it's already as cheap as can be, and you can't increase the agent card's price _at all_ without knocking it from costing 1/12th your TC to 1/6th, which is a massive jump in terms of TC breakpoints.
- In a future PR, I plan to increase/decrease the price of some items, bringing their cost to what would properly reflect their effectiveness, something that in some cases is undoable with how underinflated our TC are.
- It may lead the way to future content that could potentially give traitors a small amount of extra TC, which giving even _1_ more to traitors currently would upend a lot of balance decisions.


Why not rebalance the item's costs in this PR?
I'd like to get the go-ahead on the concept first before making actual balance changes, in addition to atomization concerns.

Edit: Here's a document I threw together, which increases/decreases the cost of certain items by 1, [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a_fG...sp=sharing).
Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)Zonespace
(*)Traitors now get 25 TC, but their uplink item costs have been scaled to match this increase.

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[Recusor]

Pretty interesting idea for sure. I feel like much of the game is balanced around the current traitor TC economy but your points about some values leading to items being picked or not being picked is a good one I think and discussion about it is only a positive in my mind.

I don't have much feedback to your numbers, or any insight into the current math for microbombs or your new math but I look forward to seeing others feedback.

[Nidabutt]

Seems like a good change, being able to set more specific values for TC seems very useful for balancing purposes and will allow for more interesting options with more precise number tweaks. At the very least it will allow for easier adding of traitor items later on due to more accurate points balancing and facilitate the addition of cheaper traitor items without eating into your budget as much.

[Deadvickyart]

12 divides evenly by 1, 2, 3, & 4. 25 ony divides into 1 and 5. If it changes at all, change it to 24.

Don't think microbomb should be nerfed. They're not very good unless spammed right now.

[Zonespace]

Don't think microbomb should be nerfed. They're not very good unless spammed right now.

The cost is kept at 1, it's not a nerf if you're spending an equivalent amount of TC (1.1 * 25 = 27.5 vs old 2.25 * 12 = 27)

[Zafhset]

Not a fan of the micros being divided like this - this means more traitors will be able to find the budget to simply explode on death as a final "hah hah fuck you" along with any stuff they stole/etc.

additionally, this would trivialise how easy it is to kill someone permanently - you can beat people into death-crit and stick a 1/25 cost tc into them to get rid of their body.

[DioChasek]

Zafhset hit the nail on the head there. A single tc to remove someone from the game after you out robust them, you can do this up to 25 times? Thats a lotta potential carnage.

[saccharineChampion]

additionally, this would trivialise how easy it is to kill someone permanently - you can beat people into death-crit and stick a 1/25 cost tc into them to get rid of their body.

Note that the trick cig box already does this up to six times for 1 TC - the explosion from a trick cig is guaranteed to gib any body on its tile. That's 1/72 cost TC per body gibbed!

[Froggit_Dogget]

or potass water.. breaking a pod... the grinder/gibber/furnace..

[Zafhset]

Note that the trick cig box already does this up to six times for 1 TC - the explosion from a trick cig is guaranteed to gib any body on its tile. That's 1/72 cost TC per body gibbed!

Trick cigs take time, and people can drag the corpses away from it.
In comparison, micros are an instant unavoidable gibbing upon death unless they happen to have the right tools and beds/surgical table nearby.

or potass water.. breaking a pod... the grinder/gibber/furnace..

these have obvious stuff (chems in beakers/glasses) to be used and prepwork, or to be near specific locations (disposals,kitchen, etc). Micros are easily concealed and can be done anywhere, anytime.

[DioChasek]

Not only that you can order them as you need them. Did you just knock a guy into crit? Open up your pda order your injector, inject them, and go look for the next fool. Long story short micros should probably be 2 tc apiece if the limit goes to 25.

[Nidabutt]

I see the point about gibbing bodies with micros. Sure there's other ways to do it, but it would be extremely convenient - to the point of potentially being quite unfun for the crew - to just jab someone with a micro to gib them at very little damage to yourself, due to the lower explosion damage.

[Deadvickyart]

Micros don't reliably gib corpses any more. Haven't for a long time, they aren't strong enough to destroy organs. If someone dies to a microbomb they can usually be borged or have their brain cloned in another body.

[Zonespace]

Micros don't reliably gib corpses any more. Haven't for a long time, they aren't strong enough to destroy organs. If someone dies to a microbomb they can usually be borged or have their brain cloned in another body.

Quite literally any explosion will gib corpses (which is why the wrestlebelt can gib with some moves)

[Deadvickyart]

Zafhset

Trick cigs take time, and people can drag the corpses away from it.
In comparison, micros are an instant unavoidable gibbing upon death unless they happen to have the right tools and beds/surgical table nearby.

these have obvious stuff (chems in beakers/glasses) to be used and prepwork, or to be near specific locations (disposals,kitchen, etc). Micros are easily concealed and can be done anywhere, anytime.


Still takes killing them yourself, otherwise the bomb just won't go off. Isn't a stealth item either, so shooting them with an implant and running will get you nowhere. It'll just be removed.

not a fan of sneaking stealth balance patches through unrelated features anyway, this should be about changing the telecrystals from 12 to 25 and I'm firmly against it. Big part of the telecrystal system is being able to split it into one, two, three, four, or twelve even parts. 25 crystals doesn't divide as well.

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Quite literally any explosion will gib corpses (which is why the wrestlebelt can gib with some moves)

I'd suggest you check this before changing. At low explosion levels, this is simply not true. Current microbombs do not destroy organs (they used to but they were nerfed already!) and weaker explosives like pipe bombs don't always gib corpses. Making micros have less power than pipe bombs would absolutely mess up their ability to perform their role.