Nuke Early-Launching the Emergency Shuttle via Emag

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I jest when I say ‘nuke’ over ‘nerf’ because I still think it can be a decent mechanic when played right, but it’s been getting thrown around as an uncounterable bone lately and the server deserves better. So many times have I seen a situation, whether I’m in-round or observing as a ghost, where a traitor or blood brother pair or whoever else waits right by Departures for the shuttle to arrive, either alone or only with a couple other people because a lot of people only head to the shuttle once it’s docked, and right as it docks, they rush on, into the Cockpit, swipe, and oh no! The shuttle will launch in ten seconds! And no beacon on! Welcome to station life, crew.

This is incredibly lame, it’s become repetitive, and it’s very uncounterable; you can easily say that the crew should ‘just collect at Evac sooner’ but it’s not that simple, people want to continue their jobs and interactions for as long as they can up until the shuttle arrives, and it’s a part of community culture in how they interact with each other. I mean, what kind of climax to the round even is it for the traitor to rush an early launch so that they can peacefully do their hijack while the janitor and botanist look on forlornly from the main compartment? No possible opposition, and dissatisfaction from the entire server. (I recognize that this mechanic was likely logical and rewarding in higher population rounds when the hijacker would have to fight their way into the Cockpit, past Command, and away from Security, but it’s absolutely terrible on lowpop.)

I could think of several ways to fix this. The countdown could be increased from ten seconds to, say, thirty seconds, so that crew actually have a chance to run to the shuttle with a beacon in tow instead of anyone further than three rooms away being boned. It could be made where the shuttle launches, but the escape pods don’t and remain on their normal timer, although my fear is that this involves some amount of being hard-coded, so probably not, and this wouldn’t be a very good solution anyways. The option could be removed, because Hijack as an ultimate objective is meant to be hard and worth a fight between the hijacker and the entire crew instead of being a choice between that, or the silly easy-win button. I can’t think of any more possible solutions, so I’ll open this post to feedback and thoughts.

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I like the idea of separating the shuttle timer from the escape pods, possibly even removing the automatic launch of the escape pods entirely (does NT really launch all their escape pods automatically when a crew shift is over, even if they are empty?).
This would make the marooning objective harder though, but it could be changed to not boarding the shuttle.

Personally, I am not that bothered by being marooned on a survivable station for a few reasons:

  1. Most of my crew objectives don’t require being on the shuttle.
  2. My character is less likely to be murdered now that I miss out on being attacked the moment we land in CentCom.
  3. The remaining abandoned crew tend to be happy to roleplay their frustrations of being left behind, and joining in for a drink.
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My view is tainted by recency bias since this happened in the last round I played but yeah its kind of a bummer when it happens. Like when you read an exciting book and instead of the climax it just says “and then the story ended!”

Hijack is already trivial on lowpop because half the time nobody gives a fuck, or only one guy gives a fuck and dies in vain while everyone sits around, or the antag spent 2 hours poisoning a disk and nobody expected a hijacking.

I think increasing the emergency departure timer isn’t a big deal (and in fact affects antags and non-antags depending on who is trying to keep who off the shuttle, assuming the regular emergency departure would also be raised), but again my view is tainted and biased likely so don’t take me too seriously.

EDIT: I’m still at work so keeping brief. I am not the lizard I was a few hours ago. I think my issues are more with low pop hijack and the behaviours around it and I don’t think changing this would really remedy that.

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ided. kind of. the moment which I know is responsible for this thread was on a round with low pop and no security or command. there was just no one to play the role of guarding the shuttle, or going after the hijacker.

my thoughts are rather simple.

‘the emergency shuttle will launch in 10 seconds’ is shit and should be removed in general. it’s just a scumbag move on a meta level, and i don’t get why it exists in-universe either. so go, wipe it off.

everything else is fine.

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