Currently, nukeops can microwave their roundstart ID cards with the microwave in their base or on their ship (there’s 100% one in the base I’m like 80% sure there’s one on their ship?) to gain station accesses before even entering the same star system as the station. There have been multiple rounds where nukies have full access to just walk into security, the armory, command, all kinds of rather secure areas. I don’t like this as this doesn’t allow much counterplay at all and doesn’t make much sense either from a gameplay sense (since it doesn’t allow counterplay and is very strong / unbalanced) or a verisimilitude sense (why access to this station we’ve never visited? why not some other random place?).
I don’t want to nuke this mechanic completely but I don’t want this to be the meta for nukeops.
The solutions that come to mind to fix are
Remove the microwaves from the nukeops homeworld / shuttle
Restrict access to IDs that are microwaveable for access to nukeops before they go to station or reduce the amount of tries for access with these IDs
For 1 I don’t personally like it from a verisimilitude perspective since it would make sense for such an advanced team to have access to something as simple as a microwave, especially considering they’re a team sent by a syndicate of corporations one of which is primarily known for making microwavable basically hot pockets.
For 2 the two paths I see are either giving their ID cards a metallic component (so the microwave explodes after they microwave it a time or two) and optionally doing something with the ID card in the clown PDA in the clown kit so they can’t get ID cards that way, or giving the nukeops an agent ID roundstart instead of their default syndicate ID card (I would want this to have syndicate access immediately for obvious reasons, would also want it to default to the syndicate ID texture and no job icon or passenger) - this would fix the microwave problem but may introduce other problems especially as nukeops interact with borgs (they are now crew roundstart for free) and essentially gives them an extra 3 TC.
(and by ‘not nuke this mechanic completely’ I’m referring to wanting to keep this microwaving IDs thing in the game for tiders or syndicate agents on station, at least as much as feasible)
2 was PR’d but is closed right now due to the freeze. Honestly I think 1 is a better option - if they need a microwave for their donkpockets give them a Cybersun-Brand (or whoever would make microwaves) microwave, that can still do recipes but can’t fry ids.
Yes I was aware of this - [26576] if anyone is curious. I like that cybersun brand microwave idea. Maybe you can get an access but it’s just a 50% chance of syndicate access and that’s the only available one so completely useless in practice? Sounds like a touch more work than half a line of yml but it may be worth it.
Inspired by by own idea (and why the heck not it’s kinda funny)
I’ll be making a PR for a Donk Co. Microwave that cooks faster at the cost of treating ids as something unsafe (With a 30% chance to explode for each successful access change PER card).
It’ll also make microwave explosions destroy the circuitboard so you can’t cheese it. I’ll link the PR when I make it (on the 14th).
