Flash Rework

[BurgerBB]

I do not like how the flash works currently. It's only useful against cyborgs, and is just ridiculously silly against humans because of how weak it is. On humans, it's a 2 second laughable screenblocker with no additional effects. The code is a mess as well. I want to just scrap everything and make a new flash with HRP worthy effects.

Current plans:

Don't implement stun.

Add an actual battery charge to flashes. Battery charge determines how many times a flash can be used before the flash needs to be recharged. A flash can have an upgraded battery, if desired.

The bulb of a flash can still burn out if used too frequently.

Add different variants of flashes researchable by R&D.

Causes temporary blindness for 2 seconds. (ACTUALLY USES THE BLIND SYSTEM INSTEAD OF JUST THE FLASHING SCREEN)

Causes blurry eyes for 10 seconds.

Causes disorientation (chance to move in a different direction) for 2 seconds.

Causes slow (movedelay increase) for 2 seconds.

Causes clumsiness (current method of clumsiness will need to be reworked, easy to do) for 2 seconds.

[Sytic]

IIRC the flash was only changed recently to avoid the major stunning capability of the flash that made it essentially the "meta" for Security.

Expanding on this without making it stun would be just an expansion of the concept, so I agree. +1 to this.

[DiscountDan]

I'm inclined to agree with this one. There's been times where I've flashed someone as Security and lo and behold they've managed to overcome this seemingly blinding light within seconds, either running off or fighting back. Given, as Sec you can likely stun baton them as they make a break for it or drop them with a taser, but it feels like it lacks the...oomph.

[Sandvich]

I have to agree with this fully, I was taken hostage as an officer, even though I flashed the suspect at least four times. He just shook it off and beat me. As we were on orders not to harm the crew, it may that situation resulted in a flash, but it’s like using glitter, or an actual flashlight pen

[Ferguson]

Please god I am begging you; this sounds fantastic.

[Scheveningen]

The new flash changes have only been out for a week.

 

On humans, it's a 2 second laughable screenblocker with no additional effects.

Absolutely untrue. Run a watch and it's up to 10 seconds of a blind through a direct flash and 7 seconds with an AOE flash. You greatly underestimate the value of it.

 

Add an actual battery charge to flashes. Battery charge determines how many times a flash can be used before the flash needs to be recharged. A flash can have an upgraded battery, if desired.

 

Making a battery-fed flash with no passive recharge capability is bound to make it completely useless. Don't change how flashes recharge/store charges or they're going to be way less powerful than they were or are currently.

 

The bulb of a flash can still burn out if used too frequently.

 

It already does this.

 

Add different variants of flashes researchable by R&D.

 

You can already juryrig a flash to supercharge and set someone on fire. lol jk this was on the original aurora codebase, not the current one. There's really not a lot of need for making flashes modular. If you want to make flashes even more gimmicky, though, this is surely the way to go about doing it.

 

Causes temporary blindness for 2 seconds. (ACTUALLY USES THE BLIND SYSTEM INSTEAD OF JUST THE FLASHING SCREEN)

 

Not a good idea. You'd still be able to see your own character when blinded. 2 seconds is no time at all, it's a negligible disabling effect. The white overlay is there to simulate the immersive effect of being blinded by a white flash. I would've potentially made it so that the overlay overwrote anything on your screen, but then people would've complained about not being able to click someone while blinded. I would've also taken the method of Baystation's way of doing it if it was at all easy to port into our code.

 

Causes blurry eyes for 10 seconds.

Causes disorientation (chance to move in a different direction) for 2 seconds.

Causes slow (movedelay increase) for 2 seconds.

Causes clumsiness (current method of clumsiness will need to be reworked, easy to do) for 2 seconds.

 

2 seconds for those debuff effects is little time at all. Gimmicky and absolutely not impactful at all on virtue of how measly the duration is for those effects. It was the previous duration of how long the AOE flash blinded you before I made these changes.

tl;dr

• Don't touch flash charges or add a battery to them. Flashes need the passive regen to be consistently useful.
• If you want to add disabling effects to being flashed, make them longer than 5 seconds. Numbers already dictate the impact of how flashes sit in the current state of the game.
  
• Unless you want to bring in Bay's changes to blinding and flashes, don't touch how the overlay is currently.
  
• Better yet, since this was my project in the first place and I already expressed intent to do a propose some changes next month, please don't go over my head and propose changes without first trying to discuss particulars with me, since I am responsible for the previous changes. How would you feel if I posted KA tweaks + the PR for it without even talking to you about it?

[Kaed]

The new flash changes have only been out for a week.

 

On humans, it's a 2 second laughable screenblocker with no additional effects.

Absolutely untrue. Run a watch and it's up to 10 seconds of a blind through a direct flash and 7 seconds with an AOE flash. You greatly underestimate the value of it.

 

I have already come to you and explained that it does not last the extended time you claimed it does. Unless you have recently fixed it, you need to stop disregarding player feedback.

[Scheveningen]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4919

And I fixed it. It's been fixed for a full week.

What are you complaining about

[Kaed]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/4919

And I fixed it. It's been fixed for a full week.

What are you complaining about

 

I suppose I'd be complaining about your lack of clarity about that in your original comment. If you recently fixed an issue, you should put that out in the thread so people know the issue is resolved, that their information is out of date, instead of just calling them wrong with no further details. It is indisputable that at one point the flash blind extension was not working properly, so in the future if you have corrected an issue someone pointed out in a suggestion, clarify that instead of expecting everyone to have read PRs and changelogs and know what you know. It saves this whole tedious conversation about 'but it's broken' 'no I fixed it idiot' from happening.

I haven't played in over a week. It's possible that Burger hasn't been flashed in over week, especially if people are still under the impression that flashes are in a state of uselessness.

In any case, if it does in fact work as you intended it now, I see no reason to change it further at this time.

[BurgerBB]

too late the code is actually better than what it currently is now

I've made flashes modular. You can switch out the lense for a more powerful/burnt resistant lense. Budget flashes are shitty and are given to non-sec. Normal flashes are given to sec. Advanced flashes are given to research which they can unlock for high technology points.

Flashes now also use cells as batteries. Budget flashes get a shitty 5 use battery while normal flashes get a 50 use battery.

[Coalf]

So what exactly does this do?

I mean, let's review.

Add an actual battery charge to flashes. Battery charge determines how many times a flash can be used before the flash needs to be recharged. Pepper spray has limited shots.

The bulb of a flash can still burn out if used too frequently. Pepper spray can't burn out.

Add different variants of flashes researchable by R&D. Pepper sprays don't rely on R&D

Causes temporary blindness for 2 seconds. Pepper spray

Causes blurry eyes for 10 seconds. Pepper spray

Causes disorientation (chance to move in a different direction) for 2 seconds. This is new

Causes slow (movedelay increase) for 2 seconds. Pepper spray

Causes clumsiness (current method of clumsiness will need to be reworked, easy to do) for 2 seconds. This is new.

The flash will have the whole one advantage of being able to stun borgs, which it does now, still.

In short this'll become a mediocre pepper spray.

To further hammer in the point the teargas grenades do everything above AND cause halloss, making it impossible for anyone to run off.

[BurgerBB]

You should've brought up those points before flash was nerfed. Unless you want me to bring back stun, I can't do anything about it.

[Coalf]

What I said is, pepper spray fills the place of flash 100%, it's useless to revert it in any way.

Currently flash is an anti-borg tool and a crowd distruption tool as when you activate it in your hand you blind everyone who is currently on your screen.

It's purpose changed and people need to learn that instead of trying to forcefully hammer it into the old spot.

[BurgerBB]

What I said is, pepper spray fills the place of flash 100%, it's useless to revert it in any way.

Currently flash is an anti-borg tool and a crowd distruption tool as when you activate it in your hand you blind everyone who is currently on your screen.

It's purpose changed and people need to learn that instead of trying to forcefully hammer it into the old spot.

 

I'm not hammering it into it's old spot.

[Kaed]

too late the code is actually better than what it currently is now

I've made flashes modular. You can switch out the lense for a more powerful/burnt resistant lense. Budget flashes are shitty and are given to non-sec. Normal flashes are given to sec. Advanced flashes are given to research which they can unlock for high technology points.

Flashes now also use cells as batteries. Budget flashes get a shitty 5 use battery while normal flashes get a 50 use battery.

 

50 seems like a bit much for a standard issue item. I think it would be better if you halfed that, at least. Maybe the science advanced flash can have preposterous efficiency, but 50 is so much you would literally never need to recharge it ever during a round.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Guest

[Scheveningen]

What does the flash not do currently that wasn't initially intended in the recent update?

It's a disabler tool, but not a guaranteed stun. It was intended in the PR I pushed to be a situational utility tool to be paired with other tools to combo with.

Is there any confusion as to how I intended people to be using it? If not, what's wrong with that method?

[Coalf]

and people

Plural, refered to the previous posts before Scheveningen's.

You are not hammering it into it's old spot.

You are just making it a worse pepper spray.

After a bit of wondering this legitimately seems like a further NERF to the flash, not only do you plan to remove the strongest and most unique thing the flash has going for it, which is the completely screen white-out. You plan to add effects which the pepper spray not only already has but has them last much longer and ACTUALLY STUNS PEOPLE.

Also if the AOE effect would just be the curret effects but weaker then it's just going to be straight up not worth wasting a belt slot on.

[BurgerBB]

I think it's fine. I'll look into Increasing the duration for blurriness.

[MattAtlas]

Keep the flash as is. I wouldn't mind the pepper spray stun being removed either-- moving to non-stun based combat is a GOOD thing.

[BurgerBB]

Keep the flash as is. I wouldn't mind the pepper spray stun being removed either-- moving to non-stun based combat is a GOOD thing.

 

There are no stuns in the proposed changes.

[MattAtlas]

Keep the flash as is. I wouldn't mind the pepper spray stun being removed either-- moving to non-stun based combat is a GOOD thing.

 

There are no stuns in the proposed changes.

 

Yes, thus it doesn't really require any further change. Switching to what you proposed in the thread is pretty much a nerf-- increasing blindness and dizziness wouldn't make up for the loss in massive screen wide blanking, I'd think.

Edit: Give me 10 hours until I wake up and I'll give a proper, clean breakdown of every change. Promise.

[Scheveningen]

-1, Standing in opposition to these proposed changes. The flash rework in its currently intended form has only been out for a week due to an issue with the UI interactions which got fixed just a couple days after the issue was identified.

Furthermore, all the main OP proposes to change is tacking on unnecessary amounts of additional disabling effects that amusingly are too short in duration and too little in impact to be worth it. You're effectively attempting to add unnecessary amounts of mechanics to flashing. Presently, being unable to see for 7-10 seconds through direct flashing and 5-7 through the AOE activated flash is already more impactful than what 2 second slow-dizzy-blur combos will do.

Flashes are not meant to be more physically irritating than pepperspray. They're a lower form of escalation of force for that reason, so that anyone who uses the flash isn't prosecuted for assault, unlike pepperspray where you can be prosecuted for assault/using it for torture.

The power in the flash as it is, is due to its absolute simplicity. It does one thing but it does it quite well in ideal circumstances. If used incorrectly or in a situation where it'll have no impact anyway, it's useless, just like most tools. No tool in the security belt is supposed to be a swiss army knife alone, the security officer themselves has a wide assortment of tools to cover all the bases because it makes sense. Every tool individually tends to be singularly good at one thing, though, and the flash is excellent for setting up a grab or an immediate batonning/tasing.

The change to their charge count is absolutely pointless. They passively regenerate an additional use every minute and they can easily short the bulb out if used too much.

Furthermore, the OP has been uncommunicative, rude and dismissive of negative feedback, choosing only to reply to positive feedback.

[AmoryBlaine]

Fine as is. Needs no real changes.

[Kaed]

I think a lot of this is just overcomplicating things with a bunch of unnecessary moving parts. The flash works fine as is with a temporary blind, you don't need to keep tacking new things on.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Having a very brief random movement will allow the flash to remain slightly useful in its current form. Currently the flash can not stop me if i am moving in a straight line. Having a single jolt in the wrong direction disorients without the need for additional effects.