[1 dismissal] Remove resist timers and replace with RNG rolls based on intent and restraining instrument quality

[Scheveningen]

Okay that sounded long-winded and confusing. What I mean is, wouldn't you rather have it so that resisting out of handcuffs is a coin flip instead of guaranteeing that your round is over just because a security officer is able to account for the mechanics of you escaping handcuffs and totally neutralize your chances of doing so?

Fear not, I have a set of terrible ideas.

Things we get rid of:

Most arbitrary timers attached to weaseling out of handcuffs/cablecuffs/zipties.

Things we keep:

Mobs capable of cuffbreaking still retain their mechanics for breaking handcuffs. They will get a noise dependent on what restraints they break out of, but their mechanics are unchanged.

Things we implement:

Percentage chances of slipping out of restraints based on intent and restraining instrument quality.

--

To explain further, as to what the consequences and nuances to some of these features will be:

Help intent: Allows you to utilize a timer to slip out of handcuffs, but this process cannot be interrupted except by stuns. Even being moved will allow you to still continue. You'll slip out in one minute with cableties, 2 minutes with zipties, 3 minutes with handcuffs. As a catch, there is no emote process for this. But every 20 seconds, there's a small 5% chance that this process might be noticed and that the game will print out your tragic failure at being subtle. There is a sound effect for failure as well.

Disarm intent: This is brute force but slightly stealthy, but not as stealthy as help intent. You have a 15/10/5% chance of instantly slipping out of restraints, based on the restraining model shown above. You always have a 20% chance to be exposed, with a sound effect to support it. The sound is not too loud though.

Grab intent: This is the not so subtle way of slipping out of restraints. You have a 25/20/15% chance of slipping out of the restraints but a 45% chance to be exposed, with a pretty loud sound effect that you're trying to brute force the handcuffs.

Harm intent: This is extremely loud, obvious, and probably stupid. You're wrenching around with plain obviousness, desperately attempting to remove the handcuffs with little regard for your personal safety. While you have a 60/45/30% chance of slipping out of the handcuffs, you also have a 50-50 coinflip to determine whether your hands take damage after removing them. If you do take damage trying to remove them, you automatically fail trying to remove the restraints. You have a 100% chance to have your efforts be exposed.

Cooldown state: You can only use the other intent resists every 5 seconds to prevent spamming. You also lose a bit of stamina whether you succeed or fail. If you have no stamina, you cannot resist anymore until you regenerate your stamina reserves.

Numbers provided in the original post do not actually determine a balanced model, as the mechanics themselves are the actual concept that needs proven to function for gameplay purposes. Numbers can be tweaked and thus don't matter in terms of being judged for a suggestion post, as they are subject to change throughout development anyway.

[Itanimulli]

Yes but G2s Zhan Unathi males and Vaurca should get b o n u s e s.

[BurgerBB]

Or better yet how about a handcuff rework where you're allowed to do some things while handcuffed but not others?

Asking too much, probably, but I feel that this is the best option.

[Scheveningen]

Or better yet how about a handcuff rework where you're allowed to do some things while handcuffed but not others?

Asking too much, probably, but I feel that this is the best option.

 

I suppose? I figure this would still work well within tandem with whatever ends up working with that.

If leg cuffing was actually relevant that would be nice

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

This will encourage or even force me to abuse prisoners to fulfill the goal of making them not escape.

[Scheveningen]

That's ok, I feel like we don't get enough cases where security personnel don't mistreat people anyway

[Arrow768]

This will encourage or even force me to abuse prisoners to fulfill the goal of making them not escape.

 

I have to vote for dismissal for exactly that reason.

The resist mechanic isn't meant to be able to break out of your cuffs while in sight of security personnel.

It is meant as a way to unrestrain yourself if you are forgotten somewhere.

(Its also important to remember that certain species have certain advantages and disadvantages which make them more or less suitable for certain playstyles. If you wish to be able to break your cuffs in a obvious manner, then you should consider playing a unathi.)

Security needs to have a reliable way to deal with people that resist-spam.

The suggested implementation would effectively prevent that and reward people that resist spam while in sight of security personnel.

The current mechanics are sufficient to allow antags to break out of cuffs if they are not actively monitored.

One thing that I could see being implemented is a longer timer if you do it on the disarm intent and the big red "wiggle out of cuffs"- message being changed to a standard message that is only sent to the person standing directly next to the prisoner.

However the currently suggested implementation in the OP is a nogo.

[Scheveningen]

I have to vote for dismissal for exactly that reason.

 

It's not an argument, he's trolling.

 

(Its also important to remember that certain species have certain advantages and disadvantages which make them more or less suitable for certain playstyles. If you wish to be able to break your cuffs in a obvious manner, then you should consider playing a unathi.)

 

See, no, this is sort of the issue here that needs addressed. A lot of other games implement 'hard counters' in similar fashions like this but inevitably lead to the game being incredibly skewed against you if you don't pick something with such a blatantly overpowering advantage that nobody else gets to have. So unless you plan ahead and make a character explicitly designed for antagonism, i.e., male unathi, it leads to a very limited spectrum of gimmicks you can actually run as an antagonist. It's an unfair advantage Unathi have over every other species compared to what unique advantages they offer for playing.

Being handcuffed and restrained is a round-ender for a player. The only thing that should be a round-ender to an antagonist is their death, not arbitrarily overloading handcuffing to have such the power to totally disable someone's ability to continue to antagonize while they're still alive.

Telling someone that their only counterplay to being handcuffed is to suck it up and hope they re-roll antag next round as an Unathi on a roleplaying server simply for the mechanical advantages Unathi offer that nobody else gets to have is terrible design philosophy and goes against the very core of what makes this server interesting at all: antagonists and the experiences they create.

Security should not have a guaranteed "I win" tool in the form of handcuffs. Handcuffing someone should not be a guarantee that you detain them, nor does it make sense that it should be an actual binary coinflip if your chances of escaping the handcuffs and security custody are based on the IQ amount of the officer detaining and processing the person handcuffed.

handcuffs

.

 

The resist mechanic isn't meant to be able to break out of your cuffs while in sight of security personnel.

It is meant as a way to unrestrain yourself if you are forgotten somewhere.

 

Then it is useless, because it is not even applicable in 99% of the circumstances. How many times have you seen someone left in the hallway handcuffed? It almost never happens. A security officer has to be intentionally doing their job wrong, be mechanically terrible or inexperienced at security to enable someone else to be able to escape handcuffs as it stands. So how often do any of those apply? It is a very unlikely coinflip that any antagonist that gets detained by security will manage to be able to escape handcuffs. It takes two minutes, it is disrupted by movement or stuns which then forces you to reset. Resisting out of handcuffs may as well not exist for all anyone cares and it would have the same effect it does now.

 

The current mechanics are sufficient to allow antags to break out of cuffs if they are not actively monitored.

 

Let's count the amount of antagonists that can counter this.

Ninja: Hardsuit blocks handcuffing attempts, otherwise a very healthy, balanced self-sustaining antagonist with on-demand mobility and powerful tools to outplay virtually anyone that stands against them.

Wizard: Can't directly counter handcuffs but can teleport/jaunt/blink in order to relocate to an isolated area... only to have to be forced to wait two precious minutes in the round to remove themselves of handcuffs. If they get gagged and their clothes meta-removed, screwed.

Traitor/Mercs: Freedom implant which costs precious amounts of TC, single-use only. Otherwise, they have no direct counterplay to handcuffs. Screwed in that situation.

Changeling: Revive breaks handcuffs but is not very applicable in most situations. Lingspeak allows them to communicate with the other changelings who have no actual IC obligation to help their kin. Playing ling makes you screwed anyway due to how weak they are and how awful their ramp-up and dynamic of gaining power in the round is.

Cultists: Screwed. Zero chance of immediately rescuing themselves with their mechanics.

Revs/Loyalists: Screwed. Zero chance of immediately rescuing themselves with their mechanics.

Vampires: Without vampire jaunt available; screwed.

Raiders: Screwed if you aren't Vox.

So no, the belief that current mechanics are sufficient to 'counter' handcuffs is not even applicable for 2/3rds of situations of the various antagonists. It's wrong to assert otherwise.

Whoever has the restraints and pull on a nearby restrained character is able to have 100% control on what the other character can do in the round, and thus is holding not only the character hostage, but the player's time hostage as well. This is not something anyone should be capable of doing. It needs changed to something that actually gives people a fair chance to still come back into the round without killing themselves and respawning as a new character.

 

Security needs to have a reliable way to deal with people that resist-spam.

The suggested implementation would effectively prevent that and reward people that resist spam while in sight of security personnel.

 

I already suggested that resist spamming should lead to individuals having to suffer certain risks. Resisting out of handcuffs outside of help intent should consume stamina based on the severity of the attempt. If they don't have enough stamina, they can't resist again until they recharge that stamina, and that there will already be a five second cooldown between resist attempts before they can try again. This allows officers who are paying attention to respond to this and be ready for someone slipping out of handcuffs.

Edited November 16, 2018 by Guest

[DeadLantern]

I am heavily in favor of this. Even if the intention of resisting cuffs was not to escape from sec, that is what it is used for now. Anything that could be used to promote gimmicks and antaggery is a +1 from me. What is interesting? A 5 minutes round where the traitor is arrested and sits in brig all day. Or a round where the traitor is arrested within 5 minutes of the round, but by luck, escapes, manages to kill a security officer, escape into maint, and fulfill his dastardly deeds?

This is very much needed as cuffs are a game over to antags, most of the time. +1.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I'm not trolling because my argument wasn't trying to make you angry. You have built in to your proposed mechanic that the only way of stopping someone resisting on help intent is to stun them. Using stuns on someone who is restrained is a form of abuse. Currently all I have to do to keep someone restrained is pull them a single tile and their resist is cancelled.

[Scheveningen]

"Stop resisting"

"Okay I warned you" *stun baton zap*

It's not abuse. It's forcing compliance. It's in the law enforcement handbook throughout almost all nationalities to use force when diplomatic compliance hasn't worked. Especially if someone is trying their damndest to wrench themselves out of handcuffs.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Why do you believe this is more ideal than moving them with the single tile movement method?

[Scheveningen]

It's an actual application of force shown through a combat log, rather than a single click to totally disable someone from being able to escape handcuffs.

It's for the same reasons stun batons do not in most situations instantly floor you, but instead stack up pain damage to floor you instead. It's the difference between a tenth of a second of reaction time and three seconds.