Are TTVs too powerful or too easy to make multiple of? (classic)

[valtsu0]

I feel like TTVs never lead to anything else than early shuttle calls. While one is usually repairable the bomber probably gets at least a few off. Maybe TTVs would be more interesting if there were an actual chance at defusing it?

It's really rare to see any the other explosives. Cambombs are empty prank ones most of the time and pipe bombs aren't exactly popular either.

What do other people think? Should TTVs be changed or are they fine the way they are now?

[Mouse]

NOOT's suggestion that TTVs be a scientist traitor item seems like a good idea to me.

[Lord_earthfire]

If you want to blow something up to get a shuttle call, there are multiple ways. TTV's are just so prevalent because Toxins is just too sheltered and noones looking at it. And the TTV's are just lying there without any security measurements. It's like leaving an antag alone with a chem dispenser for 15 minutes. You are asking for trouble.

And well, the culture of grief on classic is, as always, a problem.

Locking TTV's behind traitors would only be a detriment to sleeper agents and non-traitor antags.

Locking them in a locker in the RD's office would be the best solution. That would require the bane of classic players, communication, or actual effort to get the transfer valves.

[Kotlol]

RD only seems like a good idea. What you could also do is put TTV's behind a certain lock too.

You can also put TTV in a "Fabricator" but have the right materials NOT be in there yet until MINING finds it.
Thus again.. doing what classic hates.. "Cooperation and communication"

This would automaticly halt early TTV's till mining finds the required materials.
But adds the possiblity for INFINITE TTV's.
This does mean antags can make the Chemicals early on... but at the very least it's not as annoying as RD locking it.

[babayetu83]

If you want to blow something up to get a shuttle call, there are multiple ways. TTV's are just so prevalent because Toxins is just too sheltered and noones looking at it. And the TTV's are just lying there without any security measurements. It's like leaving an antag alone with a chem dispenser for 15 minutes. You are asking for trouble.

And well, the culture of grief on classic is, as always, a problem.

Locking TTV's behind traitors would only be a detriment to sleeper agents and non-traitor antags.

Locking them in a locker in the RD's office would be the best solution. That would require the bane of classic players, communication, or actual effort to get the transfer valves.

i dont think that would be much of an impediment when you can just smash windows/thermite through the walls and smack the locker for 5 minutes until it yields the tasty delicious lockermeat hidden within

[Snowy :D]

Pretty much anything that has the potential to instantly gib multiple people should be expensive or difficult to obtain.

Personally, I think that toxins should function similar to the armory with it being heavily guarded and requiring multiple scientists to access. That would make sense as TTVs are about as dangerous as armory weapons.

Or perhaps the engineers can be competent for once and do the absurdly simple task of scanning the cloning equipment so that the shuttle doesn’t have to be called once the cloner is inevitably annihilated by the world’s most obvious antag scientist.

[Lord_earthfire]

i dont think that would be much of an impediment when you can just smash windows/thermite through the walls and smack the locker for 5 minutes until it yields the tasty delicious lockermeat hidden within

That's ~10 minutes with additional criming involved that could get sec on your toes. Yes, it will be a high enough impediment to decrease the amount of TTV'ing on the station.

And, importantly, it requires antagging if done this way.

[Mouse]

If you want to blow something up to get a shuttle call, there are multiple ways. TTV's are just so prevalent because Toxins is just too sheltered and noones looking at it. And the TTV's are just lying there without any security measurements. It's like leaving an antag alone with a chem dispenser for 15 minutes. You are asking for trouble.

And well, the culture of grief on classic is, as always, a problem.

Locking TTV's behind traitors would only be a detriment to sleeper agents and non-traitor antags.

Locking them in a locker in the RD's office would be the best solution. That would require the bane of classic players, communication, or actual effort to get the transfer valves.

hot take: vampires, lings, revs, gangs, etc shouldn't be ttving in the first place and should be actually playing their own goddamn antag role and thus preventing them from making ttvs is an upside

[Kotlol]

If you want to blow something up to get a shuttle call, there are multiple ways. TTV's are just so prevalent because Toxins is just too sheltered and noones looking at it. And the TTV's are just lying there without any security measurements. It's like leaving an antag alone with a chem dispenser for 15 minutes. You are asking for trouble.

And well, the culture of grief on classic is, as always, a problem.

Locking TTV's behind traitors would only be a detriment to sleeper agents and non-traitor antags.

Locking them in a locker in the RD's office would be the best solution. That would require the bane of classic players, communication, or actual effort to get the transfer valves.

hot take: vampires, lings, revs, gangs, etc shouldn't be ttving in the first place and should be actually playing their own goddamn antag role and thus preventing them from making ttvs is an upside

Okay this one I am going to approach form all ends.

1st off: I agree that TTVing should be something for an antag who's goal is to break things.
Vampires, Lings, Revs and Gangs should focus on taking things over.
Especially Vamps and Lings as they are stealthy killers, NOT CRAZY BOMBERS!
Revs and Gangs using TTV's make sense. Revs wanna prevent their enemies use things against them, so blowing up security is a way to go.
Gangs on the other hand... blow up another gang's base.

2nd off: TTVs being powerful is a joy for an antagonist.
I am not saying Vamps and Lings SHOULDNT use TTVs. After all...
Blowing up part of a station from a distance so security is looking away, while you drag a victim into your den on the other side or eating fleeing staffies who ran into you away from the destruction is also a way.
But if every antag goes for it.. it just becomes mind numbing. Remember when Pathology was added and every round became "The french cough"?
I sure did. It became especially annoying when it was players who were either incompetent or non antags doing it for the lols.

3rd off: Antags wanna antag in their own way. We basicly do not say to any player: "You have to follow everything to a T. Just do what you want but don't make it bad for others unless you are an antag with reason."
A scientist in Classic can spend all their time in the bar if they want to, it's seen as poor favor and you can get people yelling at you, but it's not against server rules.
But.. I hate to say it.. but at the same time we do need "some order" as some jobs are required to do their work. So while an antagonist that doesn't have the objective: "BLOW UP THE STATION" can still blow shit up... it's still more fun for everyone to follow the directive of a role/job,

HOWEVER....

It's also kinda bullshit to limit players who barely get to be an antagonist away from the mighty TTV.
Imagine you playing classic for months, but you can only play 1-2 shifts a week. And then you role antag. FINALLY , you can try out TTVing yourself, but whoops...
It's locked away for you cause "despite normally" antags being able to get it... you cannot as you are a changeling.
Now in this scenerio (Made up), Antags need to play acording to their role and this changeling... cannot make TTVs or else the admins will get on their asses.
Welp their shift is ruined....
And you could say: "Then don't roll changeling" But... maybe they wouldn't have gotten an antagonist role then.
The whole point of the game is to play the game within the rules with your own experimenting... and just denying the TTV from them would be wrong.

So yes, it is a hottake as in goon culture. We stand for freedom of goofiness within parametres.
But... locking TTVs away to be harder to get is NOT a bad thing though.
I still agree with it.

Basicly this is just the balance Goon has to go with. Chaos vs Order.

[Lord_earthfire]

hot take: vampires, lings, revs, gangs, etc shouldn't be ttving in the first place and should be actually playing their own goddamn antag role and thus preventing them from making ttvs is an upside

Hard disgree. We should not shove antags into their role. That's making their gameplay stale.

And for this, departments need to have teeth. Deadly botany plants, phasers in cargo, chem bombs, pipebombs, the engine, mining weaponry, mechboots, RCD, TTV's for engineering and science. The whole damn asteroid belt loot.

The more they use their abilities to supplement the antagging instead of being the main source of antagging, the better.

[RelentlessGarbage]

The only thing I'd like to contribute here is that I'm pretty sure you can purchase TTV's from a vendor in the debris field if you know where to look. So you're not limited to the ones available at round-start in Toxins.

TTV's do frustrate me, given that you can often see them showing up multiple rounds in a row, and especially if you get non-traitor antags making them. (Example: the other day, a werewolf that seemed reasonably chill ended up blowing up two TTV's as part of their antag shenanigans.) Making them slightly harder to nab from Toxins seems like a good move. There are a select few (very rare) instances where making a TTV is productive for the station, so making it antag-only might not be the best solution, but I personally wouldn't really care if they were made antag-only.

[Zamujasa]

this is another one of those player culture things where the solution isn't "make them harder to do" or "make them impossible for non-antags"

people need to be yelled at more for using them at the wrong times (gibbing people fighting a blob, doing huge collateral damage to attack one person, etc), people need to just use them less. it's like debris field loot: yes, it's there, but the expectation is that you not just abuse it over and over again.


edit: speaking as myself, of course, not for other admins

[valtsu0]

this is another one of those player culture things where the solution isn't "make them harder to do" or "make them impossible for non-antags"

people need to be yelled at more for using them at the wrong times (gibbing people fighting a blob, doing huge collateral damage to attack one person, etc), people need to just use them less. it's like debris field loot: yes, it's there, but the expectation is that you not just abuse it over and over again.


edit: speaking as myself, of course, not for other admins

I do think TTVs are at the point that they are being abused too much and too often and i don't see it stopping anytime soon, therefore they should be limited in some way. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently

[Lord_earthfire]

I do think TTVs are at the point that they are being abused too much and too often and i don't see it stopping anytime soon, therefore they should be limited in some way. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently

Permanent ban for TTV-abusers when? (Thats half-joking)

[Kotlol]

this is another one of those player culture things where the solution isn't "make them harder to do" or "make them impossible for non-antags"

people need to be yelled at more for using them at the wrong times (gibbing people fighting a blob, doing huge collateral damage to attack one person, etc), people need to just use them less. it's like debris field loot: yes, it's there, but the expectation is that you not just abuse it over and over again.


edit: speaking as myself, of course, not for other admins

We have removed good and fun features or limited them before cause of abuse.

- Pathology.
- RCD on Ghostdrones
- The AI Core blueprint in the robotics fabricator
- Liquids and gas in Escape shuttle on RP.

It's clear this is a round ending problem and can be used for grief easily. We will see if we can yell at em more will slow it down...

I do not think TTVs should be "banned" but desuading players to go "Lol let me TTV cause it's easy and I can" will go futher then having players and admins yell at TTV users, every single time it happens.
Infact most of the things above happened cause we had to keep yelling at people to KNOCK IT OFF. Especially the escape shuttle one on RP where botanist hotboxed the shuttle every... single... shift.... then it lessened.. then it came back... 

So sorry to say Zamu that I do not agree with this sentiment this time. If every scientist antag or any antag in general just makes TTVs and bombs cloning bay and it's very frequent... It just makes players go: "Welp time to give up"

Alternatively.. you could just make medbay or clone bay immune to being bombed. It will still do damage, but no breaches or equipment damage.
That way the TTV's main target will not be medbay everytime and players will be more enticed to fix any other damage.