Remove the Ability to Detonate Cyborgs With the Robotics Control Console

[NamedDisplay]

Why would this be good for the game?

As it stands, the detonate function is an "instant win button." All cyborgs in the round can be very quickly destroyed regardless of their location from the comfort of a single console. This is highly frustrating for the cyborgs involved, and it's a very cheap, thoughtless experience for the person doing the detonating.

Detonation can happen to both subverted and non-subverted cyborgs alike, and is capable of permanently removing them from the round by destroying the cyborg's brain.

In most cases, the ability to lock cyborgs makes the detonation function completely redundant. Locking a cyborg allows them to be taken to robotics and de-subverted so they can continue a round.

Removing the detonation feature increases the quantity of fun that can be had in a round.

Scenarios:

For a normal, unsubverted cyborg, an antagonist may choose to remove any cyborgs they may see as a problem once they have gained proper access. Brains will be left on the floor, sometimes in out-of-the-way places. If they never received MMI radio upgrades, they may be trapped in this state for a very long period of time. This is not fun.

For an emagged cyborg, whoever gets to the console to take care of the cyborg problem simply needs to lock them to remove the threat they pose. However, they may also chose to detonate the cyborg without any repercussions. The latter option permanently removes that cyborg from the round and is unnecessary. Also it leaves a giant hole in the station hull and may harm bystanders.

In the case of a malfunctioning AI (the scenario where the detonation feature seems to make the most sense), the AI is both empowered to and extremely incentivised to completely destroy RnD to prevent use of a robotics console, and is essentially a requirement for a successful Malf AI. Unless the AI does not know what they are doing, they will nullify the console's use anyway.

A Hypothetical Rhetorical Comparison:

Suppose that all members of the crew also had bombs implanted inside them, and a special console allowed these bombs to be detonated at any time without physically seeing the person you are destroying even once.

How engaging would it be if all the antagonists in the crew could simply be deleted at the push of a button?

How frustrating would it be for an antagonist to do the same to the rest of the crew?

 

How difficult would this be to implement?

Conceptually, it is trivial.

Code-wise, it would involve stripping out the associated functions of detonation (and ensuring that this didn't break any dependencies), and also altering the UI to reflect the change. 

[PPI]

While the the detonate all button, comes off as highly frustrating, its only a win, if that is everything the antagonist bet on, be it a traitor rd or roboticist, or a traitor ai, it does server as a necessary counterbalance, more so with multiple cyborgs present "just emp, just flash" this comes down to the issue where you cant disarm a cyborg, or beat it up without weapons, as you would for most other antags. Plus the only time it deletes a cyborgs brain, is if it is emagged to begin with, and thats both a design and balance issue. And while locking them works, but anyone with tools can unlock them. And it has been an issue where locked down borgs are never retrieved or really dealt with, one way or another, so it takes away player agency as both crew and antag, and generally speaking, detonating all the borgs without a good reason can get you bwoinked, and it ensures player agency both for crew and antagonists alike, more so incase it is an antag blowing them up, which usually means there are MMIs without radios, who can be ignored for quite a while, which again, is not an issue with detonation, its an issue with mmi's. Additionally, incase of malf ai detonating the station nuke, they usually have the cyborgs defending the satelite, and if they have been emagged by the ai, they will cause a fairly dangerous explosion to the AI, so that is another level of player agency.

While I understand your frustration with the feature, your primary gripe is that it can permanently remove subverted cyborgs from the round.  
 

As for your scenario, it does not pass through 100%, imagine if every crew member had a gib implant, that could only be detonated via a special console, and detonating all, would kill all crew members, making it a fantastic button for nukeops or wizard. Using your hypothetical scenario as a way to only target antags, when that is patently false for cyborgs only comes of as kinda disingenuous to me.

 

Really, the best option would be to remove emagged cyborgs being round ended, add radios to all mmis, and have it toggled on by default, as well as giving emagged cyborgs the convertion antag treatment, i.e on deconversion they remember nothing about what happened when they where converted.

This removes the issues you, and many others have with cyborgs being detonated, as well as removing the possible issue of deconverted borgs snitching, so destroying their brain on explode seems reasonable.