Players Trivializing Bombs
Its just a 2 minute cleanup choom!

Having had exstensive experience on both ends of this, being bombed and bombing others. I have seen the same thing over and over again ;

People dont take bombs seriously at all. They dont even make an effort to see it seriously.

Sure, mechnically. The worst thing that happens to you is your clothes get burned. Maybe a very, very slight HP reduction. And then you have to repair some damage which literally takes 30 seconds.

But just because it's mechnically easy to do so, that means people begin treating this unrealistically too. It's still a molotov, or ethicol, or pipe bomb going off. This has consequences, i.e if you run a business or are apart of a corp this is a major attack that demands a very serious response. It's not just something you should scoff and ignore because mechanically the consequences are minimal.

It's frustrating to take the time to roleplay a characters response to what should obviously be a major threat and issue ICLY, only for others characters to just shrug it off and ignore because its so easy to do so.

If you run an event and it gets bombed, people just scoff it off and continue with their day. Nobody cares. People just forget about it and move on with their day.

In my opinion this can be solved by greatly increasing the damage bombs do, as well as making it cost chyen to repair damages. Maybe WCS can be reimbursed for damage costs for this, and maybe it can also be a way for them to embezzle abit of money.

It's a balancing act code / harm wise. We make it easy enough to survive and fix the damage because it needs to be easy enough with the right skill and parts to make one of these things icly.

I've never felt we quite got the impact right, but at the same time the levers we can pull (more hp damage, actually destroying things, taking longer to repair things) seem like more of an OOC punishment than an IC one for the players on the receiving end.

Some bombings create a lot of RP and intrigue and some do not.

At the same time, players have the congnitive dissonance of, if this happened in real life I would stop risking life and limb going to big parties, but ICly that is boring so I have to go.

If we made them truly dangerous then people would gather less and the meta would likely move from combat to blowing people up which isn't the direction we want to go.

There does seem to need to be some changes here, both on the player side and the code side.

- characters need to take it seriously when it happens even if their memory for it is short term such that they don't become shutins
- an explosive going off needs to have longer term impacts
- we need to find ways to make these impacts generate rp

One impact could be in a businesses ambient profits. A bombing could reduce those profits for the month. But not a huge amount. Repeated bombing reduces it further. This generates rp for the people doing the bombing and those countering the threat but it also provides another incentive to bomb your enemies business which just further reinforces the loop we already have which isn't working.

Another could be the damage takes longer to repair but we make that more interesting some how (not sure how).

Another could be we increase the HP damage it gives or increase the chance of it killing someone (not sure how I feel about this).

Some of these changes would need to be balanced on the bomb creation side by making parts more expensive, take more time to create, or have a higher likelihood of blowing up while being made and harming or killing the person making them (even IRL bomb makers are missing fingers or hands right?).

I've thought about this for years and don't have any good solutions that don't feel punitive in some regards. I'm open to hearing ideas on other things we might do, change, implement. Maybe that will spark a solution we can try.

(Edited by Slither at 8:41 am on 7/11/2026)

(Edited by Slither at 8:41 am on 7/11/2026)

I think people too often negate the RP on the side of the people who are seriously bombing events to shut them down or disrupt them. The RP heavily OOCLY favors the event organizer and people just seem to want a PvP free zone while the event is conducted.

Bombings do create RP if the sindome shrug is not enacted. The system as is could be fine if the victim didn't just shrug it off and laugh, because doing that negates it for both sides and just makes people want every pipe bomb to contain the power of Hydrogen bomb because their valid RP efforts are just finger wagged at as wrong or annoying.

"I think the question I have here is how do you WANT people to respond?"

I don't think how me or a bomber wants you to respond is really as important as a response of anything but the sindome shrug. I am not trying to dictate behavior aside from just taking it seriously.

"Mollies/bombings (most kinds) take very little preparation. Shroud up, light thing, throw thing to direction, go e e e e, laugh from your locked pad full of cams."

It's hard to argue against this because it is just not a serious point and another example of the sindome shrug. To generalize everyone who bombs something as just trolling and returning to a hypothetical command bunker is just bad faith.

"I just don't think bomb event should equal "win", but I do agree we should all work to roleplay around it happening."

I am not sure where "Bomb event should equal win" has been mentioned in this discussion. Winning or losing is not what is important. The important thing is people just shrugging it off like it is not a big deal.

Just because you didn't see people planning it out should not undermine coordinated efforts. Event Organizers also learn from these things, some of which you mentioned.

Again, it is not about "I bombed you, kneel and cry out in pain." I also see the value in the bomber making getting bombed meaningful, but to accomplish that the person or persons getting bombed have to also make it meaningful. I would also refrain from pretending that every venue is totally safe for any event every time. Violence can happen anywhere in the game at any time. Using that as an excuse to never leave your apartment is not really a compelling one.

I honestly question why bombs exist if they can't do actual damage and have a real threat of killing someone; it's unthemely, creates this cognitive dissonance and makes the skill essentially a novelty when it should be as legit a combat skill as any other. I'd maybe increase cost in materials, or risk in creation, but they should definitely be buffed up. The choices shouldn't be 'bombs are a joke' and 'no one leaves their pad', it should be the very natural escalation between two forces trying to effect one another.

Got bombs going off at events or your place of biz? Hire security. Leave traces for forensics specialists to track bombers down. Create more accessible tech like long range bomb sniffers or quick disarming kits. We've had robot accessories for this purpose for a while that doesn't work.