Bomb Residue

[TullyBBurnalot]

 

Hello, long time Detective player here.

 

I've had something bug me literally every round I played as a Detective. As long as a criminal wears gloves, it is physically impossible to ascertain who bombed anything without eyewitness reports. The whole place is bombed to hell, any evidence on the wall is gone (since the wall is gone too), and if you don't have anyone sitting there going "I saw X come out of there just before/after the explosion!", you're basically grasping at straws. Doubly so if the bombing happens in a public area, like maintenance, so your suspect list now includes literally everyone on the station but you.

 

As such, I'd suggest: Bomb Residue

 

How it would work:

 

1. Bombs, rather than being obliterated on explosion, would leave shrapnel. Tiny bits of it stuck to walls, items, eyes, you name it. These tiny bits of shrapnel can then be collected, and would have a tiny, tiny chance of having a print/fiber (since, you know, tiny shrapnel that just got blown to bits). Mostly, the forensics report would tell you something related to the bomb itself (example: if it was a Soda Can IED, the forensics report would note something like "appears to be a fragment of a logo");

2. The epicenter of the explosion, and the inner radius, would contain information regarding what type of bomb it was, and what materials were in it. So, for instance, if it was a simple plasma/oxygen Toxins bomb, the report would indicate trace materials of it. If it was a Chemical Bomb, then whatever materials were in the thing. It won't give you a suspect, but it'll allow you to have something.

 

 

[Plotron]

 

I think we do need this.

 

IRL bombs leave a shitton of evidence behind (as far as I'm aware; http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... osion.html).

 

The only opposition to this would be the argument that updating the forensics scanner this way would add lots of manual labour for the coders (lel, snowflake argument) just like the update of the autopsy scanner to account for various new methods of death (plasmaman, etc.).

 

Also the shrapnel idea is bloody brilliant - clean your shit up or get caught.

 

[TullyBBurnalot]

 

IRL bombs leave a shitton of evidence behind.

 

This. This is the crux of my argument.

 

Real bombs leave so much evidence behind that you can actually make PATTERNS out of them and find serial bombers if they keep using the same materials/methods.

 

[FalseIncarnate]

 

I like the idea of shrapnel getting left behind. Few things I'd suggest to tweak the original idea though:

 

Instead of a bomb always leaving a bunch shrapnel with a tiny chance of each piece having prints/fibers/whatever, it would instead RANDOMLY leave an amount of shrapnel (maybe 0-10 pieces?) which would always have some sort of indication of the TYPE of explosive ("looks like a logo", "appears to be a piece of a gas tank", "contains glass fragments", "has a charred Syndicate logo", etc) and then a chance for the prints.

 

Larger bombs would have a higher chance to produce shrapnel, meaning a syndi-bomb might leave an average of 5-7 pieces but still could leave no shrapnel, while it would be rare (yet possible) for an IED to produce 10 shrapnel pieces. Helps balance the bombs with a risk/reward set-up: bigger boom, bigger chance to be traced back to you.

 

Bomb residue in the blast area wouldn't work too well since a large number of explosives will destroy their turf, and scanning residue off of space makes no sense. Putting that info onto the shrapnel might work though.