Increase the bomb assembly time whilst reducing its cost could have improved effects on the roleplay possibilities and making its impact (not the explosive part) much greater.
Currently the minimum time for the bomb assembly is 60 seconds at a high cost of 12 TC or 0 TC if you make it yourself using TTVs. The time is insanely low for the amount of destruction it can do whilst the cost is insanely highly for its effect. It will demolish a department but not more than that. The chances are that once a bomb has been called out, it’ll be less than 40 seconds left. For someone, who isn’t suicidal, to either get an AI shell or the Security Bomb suit and then make their way back to the bomb is slim, next to none. You are better off evacuating everyone and everything within the blast zone.
The goal is to…
- improve the crews chances to try to defuse the bomb.
- encourage antagonists to make use of the bomb.
To solve its high cost and lack of non-explosive interactions with the crew the solution is rather direct. Lowering the cost of the bomb and increasing the minimum bomb timer will encourage antagonists to use it while also giving the crew a chance to stop it. With a low TC cost stopping it wouldn’t do much harm on the antagonist as it didn’t use most of their TC.
I suggest dropping the TC cost down to a staggeringly low cost of 2 TC. To counter-act the possibility of a single antagonist buying 10 bombs or more, it would be limited to one purchase per antagonist unless they have murderbone. Additionally, the minimum time for the bomb would be increased to the current player counter multiplied by ten. You may question why it should be increased by the player amount rather than lowered, my argument for that is that the more players you have in a game, the more players at risk of being affected. If there are only ten players it won’t matter as much compared to there being 40 players.
To conclude, I hope this change will improve the dynamic between major explosives and the gameplay experience of the crew whilst not crippling either antagonists or the crew too much. Making major drama along the way as the Engineer in the bomb suit desperately try to hit the correct wire.