Nuclear Operatives Rework Suggestion

Development Feature Requests
1

Introduction
So, nuclear operative players often use the same strategies every time, and a good few people keep complaining about it, and when they try to do something different, they may be called flukies if that alternative method fails. So I’d like to propose something that may help with this issue a bit.

The problem
Over my time watching nukeops rounds or participating in them, I realized one problem. They only ever have one real goal: Blow up the station. Sure, they’re nuclear operatives, but this often leads to the exact same strategies being used because it’d be more likely for them to win, especially when they declare war. War Ops is also not good for roleplay in most cases, since everyone is often more focused on combat and survival than making a sort of roleplay scenario out of it, considering war ops nuclear operatives don’t often roleplay in those scenarios either. It’s combat to the end.

My proposed solution
My idea is to give the nuke ops something to do aside from blow everything up the entire time, and to give a slight lore change to give them more merit for why they target Nanotrasen stations. This’ll hopefully diversify nuclear operative rounds a bit more so people don’t get tired of them doing the same things over and over.

Lore changes
Currently, as we may know, the syndicate is a collection of organizations that hate Nanotrasen’s guts. However, it is never explained why. My suggestion? It’s about corporate espionage. Nanotrasen has grown to be too big of a corporation, controling too much when it comes to nearly any and all departments, being the leading company in many ways, and needs to be taken down a few notches. The goal? Sabotage Nanotrasen as much as possible without directly destroying the company itself (centcomm), as the syndicate may still need some of its services for supplies.

Gameplay changes
Most syndicate roles are interesting enough, so I’ll focus directly on Nuclear Operatives. Nuke Ops players often employ the same two strategies: Rush in guns blazing, or declare war and rush in guns even more blazing. Sometimes you’ll get the occasional stealth round that has a decent chance of failing, but otherwise it’s the same deal. Reason being that their only goal is to get the auth disk, arm the nuke, and defend it until the station blows or is about to blow.

So what can be done? Well, Nuclear Operatives could be changed to focus more on sabotaging station majorly, rather than outright destroying the station. For example, they could have the goal of majorly cripling the station by taking out a single entire department, or permanently destroying communications. There could also be tasks that put some of the other items to use, such as the power sink or the singularity beacon. My idea is to give them tasks such as that instead of just- blow up the station.

However, why not keep the destroy the station task? There are two ways I can think of to do this: first could be to have those as mandatory side objectives that need to be done before destroying the station, and two, the nuke could be locked until war is declared on the station. A third possibility could have the nuke be an optional side objective.

Conclusion
I feel personally like this could make Nuke Ops rounds more interesting, and make the operatives use unique and different strategies based on other tasks, rather than almost only stock up on every weapon immaginable and go in guns blazing. It may also diversify nuke ops rounds to let players have a bit more fun with it rather than just a complete, sometimes grueling firefight.

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Another option for this request
If that makes them too similar to the syndicate agents, then here’s a different way this could be used, as suggested by a friend of mine when I shared this post to them.

Instead of reworking nukeops rounds, they suggested cutting the chances of a nukeops round in half, BUT adding a new role/gamemode: Syndicate Raiders.

They may have their own outpost or station, their own ship, and their own roles that might have them complete these objectives. Basically having more extreme syndicate agent tasks than the usual while arriving similarly to the nuclear operatives, and using what I stated above as a baseline premise.

The idea being group of raiders prepare at their outpost, using TC to get items required for their goals, and maybe even getting their own style of weaponry in order to majorly sabotage Nanotrasen. This could make it to where some agents spend their TC on their task related items, and the others helping them prepare by getting items for them to defend themselves, or splitting the task related item purchases between them all, limiting how many powerful items they can buy so they can’t prepare TOO much. Like a nukeops-traitor hybrid role with its own style.

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I actually was thinking about this the other day on my own server, and thought of this idea

S.U.R.G.E. Operatives

Surge ops is basically this, your nukies with more objectives,

Stuff like kill all command, steal valuable loot, and massacre people

They work for the syndicate and is basically nukies with objectives

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On the sabotage side of things, I do have a proposal to add in a nukie borg with a primary task of performing sabotage. It’s currently sitting in the review queue.

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Brother, you fucking cooked.
It feels different to sleepers because they arent trying to just get certain things done, i.e “whack Jack Jargn, local meth addict” its “completely fuck this function of the station.”
Id only suggest one last thing in adding a definitive end goal so it doesnt just end in “okay, med dead. We leve”
I.e, “80% of medical is dead, use the teleporter and warp its remnants out” at which point, giant fucking gaping hole.
That or each operative has a different goal?
Either way, you fucking cooked.

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This sounds like a good idea. Have a system that really punishes the station for not doing anything about it. Certain amount of people died in a department, their bodies teleported, good luck reviving your medical team!

And I feel like to add onto my original idea a little more, they could have a main goal that they must complete together, and side goals which are different per-person. And if we’re going with the “syndicate raiders” separate round type idea, unlike the nukeops, extraction could be mandatory to count as winning. The amount of raiders that successfully extracted could contribute to their overall score, though if they manage to do their main major objective at least, it could be considered a minor victory even if all of them died. “The main objective was completed, but there were major casualties on their side” or something like that.

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Nukies are meant to be a round ender.
MY issue is that it is too short. A nukeops round never lasts past the engagement.

The issue is not the fact that the station is destroyed, but the fact that their presence means any other activities are completely halted and RP is completely unincentivized. (Zombies also suck for this reason but that is for another day)

Looking at SS13, cultists have to covertly progress accross objectives due to their low initial combat potential.
Blob is less opressive and only destroys a section of the station if successfully stopped.
But nukies just rush trough halls destroying the station, get the disk and the final stand begins.

Round enders should be round enders. But letting them just go against the game’s goals of RP and variety while keeping ONLY the chaos is just counter productive.

Maybe nukies should have less up-front firepower. And more survivability options so they can perform more persistent assaults on the station without the need for all out war. Meaning that doing blietzkrieg tactics becomes less useful vs doing surgical attacks and that the crew is not incentivized to spend all resources on weaponry and loot armory(and we can finally remove the rules allowing all crew to loot armory). Just spawn more nukies every X time or smt and give them less mass destruction tools.

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on starlight we have 2 nukie alternatives as admemes (that we are working on moving into game)

  1. hostage ops
    dont get caught. kidnap all heads of staff non-lethally and get out and then send a ransom to NT for something.
  2. listening ops (midround)
    a single lone nukie in a shuttle with allcomms and a syndicate comm to try and act as a listening outpost and relay events to traitors on the station.
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I would agree, however with the fact that the nukeops are more of their own gamemode (and they appear at the start of the round to begin preparing), I would say otherwise. They’d be a round ender if they could spawn during any gamemode later in the game as maybe a ghost role (like lone-op, which also isn’t a round ender, but a role that appears randomly like the other ghost roles). Them declaring war is a major tell for this. Upfront firepower is kinda what they’re meant to have, it’s like a multi-enemy boss the entire station has to fight against. I do agree that Nuke Ops do ruin the RPability of a round, but only when the bumrush fight strategies are used, and when the nuke is armed.

As far as your first comment, I do half agree. A lot of departments do halt their work, but ONLY when the nuke ops arrive. During prep time, the station runs like normal. And when war is called, the station kicks into high gear, preparing as much as possible before the oncoming attack (especially science usually kicks into high gear to get those better weapons out). Plus, keep in mind, they’re nuclear operatives, they’re meant to be dangerous and tanky, 5 people against an entire station.

In conclusion, I feel like Nuke Ops aren’t meant to be round enders, but instead, more of a boss fight that starts when the round begins and prepares for their onslaught. The station being destroyed wasn’t my main issue, the issue was moreso the lack of diversity in nukeops strategies. Dialing them back isn’t really fitting to them being nuclear operatives, so giving them more to do other than just “get disk, nuke station” would help them diversify their tactics a bit.

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I guess i am a bit used to goob station where they can be a mid round spawn.
I guess the main issue is that there is such a game mode. I’d argue all game modes should benefit RP in an RP centric game, but that is also for another day.

And yes, upfront firepower is their gist, but it also creates an unsolvable issue. If you give them upfront firepower, they are going to use it. You cannot fix that just by giving them more objectives. They will just rush trough halls for longer instead.
The ONLY fix to prevent these rushes is by making them less viable, you do that by removing the tools for that, which is the fire power.

But no, as soon as war is stated, all departments dedicate all their time rushing out guns and nothing else. Medical stays mostly normal. But engi only makes defenses, sec only distributes guns, research only goes for weapons, cargo only orders guns and crams all their mats into the secfab. Service becomes another combatant as no one has the time to even interact with them.
Nukies being predictable is the least of the issues when the entire station has an even more rigid strat themselves.

You also say they are not meant to be round enders, but they literally are, as soon as they are done the evac is auto-called, even. More objectives does nothing other than broaden their mass destruction.

They always use the same strat because it works. They kill all opposition then work on their goal. They will keep doing this for ALL other goals regardless of what they are.

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War is basically an insta lose with nukeis, everyone arms and kills you, and you lose, idk how they would fix that though

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I’d say this is false, there’s a decent chance that with the right team you can win. and if you have a good captain. the extra TC means you can buy more expensive weaponry and prepare better.

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I do agree that the RPability should be put first in a RP centric game (especially in servers with higher RP rulesets).

Their upfront firepower has been countered many times by good station crews and depending on tactics the crew exhibit. The firepower is not a major focus in my request, it’s their chosen tactics, their strategy. Their run-in-and-gun style.

As far as departments go, research focuses on getting weaponry technology, yes, but still does that through their usual research methods. Cargo does bounties still in order to get the money to afford weaponry, and salvage often scours places for their supplies that could be used. Contraband or not. Engineering gets the power situation sorted so it’s easier to get all of this done, and still makes repairs where needed until the nukies arrive, with the added defense setup. Medical does its usual of course, though security does do something different, making sure the crew is armed and ready for combat, however, they do patrol sometimes in order to spot the nukies as they arrive. I’ve seen service, specifically janitors, help out in battle in case of lube bombs to clear that out with cleannades, chef and bartender MIGHT (not guaranteed) make food and drinks before the battle to keep everyone fed. Service workers help out where needed, though the rest of service is entertainment or performs a role not necessary in war (though zookeeper could use the tranq ammo for thier shotgun). Command makes sure everything is in order for the oncomming onslaught. Everything runs in accordance to the war, but still through their usual functions.

Yes, evac is called, but usually because of or after their attack. SOME rounds (not all) do not end on the nukie invasion, unless major damage is done. That is the decision of the captain or acting captain at the time, the server itself does not call it, it’s not automatic from my experience. Sure, more objectives may broaden their destruction, however, it might also split them up to make them do different tasks, isolating some of them, making it easier to pick them off. And again, my issue wasn’t the difficulty to deal with them, it was their tactics never changing.

And finally, yes, they use the same strat because it works. Highest success rate. Though sometimes it doesn’t work and they may end up failing. Having played nukie rounds myself, I understand this. However, in my last two nukie rounds, we did something different, based on stealth (chameleon ops). First time succeeded, and had light elements of RP to gain the crew’s trust a little, and the second time failed, HOWEVER, only because of a frame perfect diffusal of the nuke. The first time we were basic crew members, the second time we were acting as freelancer roles and tricked the captain heavily into believing it was true, via roleplay. Ended up killing a good portion of command, securing the disk, and regrouping before starting the actual assault. It was a good round, and even others agreed. It is possible for regular nukies to incorperate roleplay into their strategies and take different approaches, but most don’t because they’re blindsighted by the need to win. I wanted to try to give them something else to do that might diversify their tactics, and to split them up a bit. There’s also a slight flaw in the community calling them “flukies” whenever the nukies fail, even worse so if they were actually trying to be unique.

In conclusion, the idea wasn’t to nerf their weapons, considering a fair amount of nukie rounds are fails because of skill or bad luck circumstances. The idea was to make them think of other ways and not to stick directly to the meta. Also, in the first comment I made, I stated that this could be its own gamemode revolving around “syndicate raiders” if the nukies weren’t planned to be changed at all.

This is an interesting topic to debate about. I’m truly interested in seeing how you respond.

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Hostage ops unironically sounds like a fun ass nukies alt

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