Ever since I've been disarming Weird Looking Bombs ...
Ever since I read the news articles about the clan terrorist attack on Titan Mining's maglev catapults ...
I've been wondering if we couldn't do Somthing Cool with all these leftover Weird Looking Bombs. And then, the other day, I had a Crazy Idea.
Create a new line of nanoformulae, general, not sold in stores: Arm Weird Looking Bomb, Arm Fiendish Device, Arm Doomsday Bomb. Each one requires higher and higher levels of something nano, probably MatMet and SpaceTime, goal of around character levels 50, 100, and 150. Target must be a Weird Looking Bomb, which must be on the ground in an area of suppression gas 75% or less. Oh, and it should also cost a lot of money to cast.
Once it does, it creates a bomb that cannot be picked up or moved until it has been disamed.
When the bomb is armed, the bomber has five minutes to get away. Then every mission terminal on the planet offers a mission to disarm it: duration, 55 minutes (and counting).
At minus 1 minute, a civil defense siren (sound effect) and warning (text) is broadcast to everyone in that playfield, and all human, mutant, and cyborg NPC mobs start running for randomly selected doors or caves, each one selected at random from that playfield. Anyone still in that playfield when the bomb goes off takes insane damage, appropriate to the level of the nanoformula, what would be an ordinary one-shot kill of radiation damage for the bomber's level.
It should also automatically, on the back end, email whoever maintains the community web page with a date, time, place, and count of the human PC and NPC dead and wounded, so it can make the news. If possible, it should also include any celebrities who were affected.
("Today a Fiendish Device detonated in the area of Lush Fields, killing at least 170 people and wounding 3. Among the wounded was Omni-Tek's lovely and popular spokeswoman Eva Pourais, who was in Lush Fields to announce an Urban Improvement Program. She suffered minor radiation burns from the blast, and is expected to make a full recovery. In sports news ...")
It's more or less my feeling that the bomber should not get XP for the kills, but feel free to make the case that I'm wrong. I think it would be unbalancing.
The bomb's defense skill is the bomber's Electrical Engineering (60%) and Quantum FT (40%). Attack skill is anyone with Bomb Disposal Tools who gets to it's Bomb Disposal. On a success, they turn it back into a disarmed Weird Looking Bomb.
On a critical success to disarm, it also tells them who set it, and creates a mission with an appropriate level reward (but admittedly, no location) for the first person to kill the bomber, one month's duration, available at any mission terminal.
(Or at least, it should email the reporters who set it and who disarmed it, and where it would've gone off if it hadn't been.)
Whoever makes the first successful disarm roll should get the mission reward. They should also get XP as if they had killed a character of the bomber's level. They should also get the disarmed bomb itself as loot. An honorable bomb disposal technician would delete it. How often do you think that's going to happen?
My gut instinct is that bombs should not be allowed in mission areas, period. However, if my separate suggestion about events gets taken, events should permit bombs. Maybe.
("Today in Old Athen, the fashion show for the fall line from Miir had to be evacuated because of a Weird Looking Bomb. No one was hurt, and the event has been rescheduled. No evidence was found at the scene, but a radical clan faction called the People for the Ethical Treatment of Mobile OBjects claimed credit. 'We will continue to harrass Miir and their customers until Miir stops using minibronto leather and leet fur in their collection,' said an unnamed PETMOB spokesman in an anonymous email to this magazine. When told this, a spokesman for Miir replied, 'Oh, get over it,' and used an unprintable gender-specific insult. The Council of Truth had no official statement on the bombing.")
- - - - -
Yeah! 'Cause I'm the Mad Bomber What Bombs at Midnight, Baby! Yeah!
Weird Bombs
