Decloak Ninjas when they attack

[Kaed]

I swear I saw a PR about this once, but apparently it's not in play anymore.

Ninjas shouldn't be able to shoot you to death with a revolver, or chop of your head, or any other nonsense, while being invisible and unable to be easily targeted.  Attacking should just decloak them, with any weapon.

[geeves]

 

Sorry for hijacking your suggestion, but this one has some feedback from people for why they don't want this to be a thing. For.. some reason.

[Kaed]

Well, I lack the ability to delete this post, so from what I gather there, people think it would nerf ninjas to unusability.

So here is why that is wrong:

A stealth mechanic is there to keep you from being detected.  It is intended to hide you from sight so people cannot find you and you escape danger, or sneak in somewhere without being seen on cameras.  The heavy drain it has on your energy it is somewhat of a joke excuse for balance these days, now that ninjas have a module to give them ~1000 power instantly upon clicking a button with a fairly low cooldown, and they've always had the ability to swap batteries to a 30k cell and make power drain a negligible thing.  And it only takes like 10-20 seconds to kill someone when they have almost no way of fighting back, so stealthing right before you attack is all you need.

When it becomes used to kill people with no risk to yourself, there is a serious issue at work here.  I saw suggestions like 'fire at the tile you know they are in' or 'throw a shoe at them to find where they are'.  Here is the problem with those non-solutions.  A ninja is constantly moving while stealthed, and most likely, is firing their gun at you over and over, or swinging their sword at you.  Attempting to use tactics to find where they are means that you are probably already dead before you can find them.

They are perfectly capable of still killing someone by striking them from stealth, decloaking, and continuing the fight.  (They could also withdraw immediately and recloak for another attack).  As the one who got the first strike in the combat, got a significant advantage already - but that should be their only advantage.  A ninja with a sufficiently powerful gun (which they can now get, I should point out, due to there being native TC in the station vault after a recent update, making machine gun toting invisible ninjas viable), could, with things the way they are now, kill an entire security team from stealth by machine gunning them down, and potentially not take a single hit, because no one can actually see where they are to target them, and while laser beams are pretty much a line pointing out the source of your attack, ballistic weapons are just small black dots moving across the screen, and not always easy to tell the source of, because they make your screen shake when you get hit.

Stealth can and should give you an advantage in a fight, but not this much of one.  This is just awful.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Kaed

[Itanimulli]

I'd like to see them flicker. Like GITS when they shoot. Pop in for a split second before being invisible again.

 

But now that I've read the other thread, yeah, nah, solo antags should be a helluva threat on their own. On top of that, the whole vault-a-palooza scheme is gonna become simewhat unviable when the bluespace disruptors get added.

[ben10083]

I will use an example (old but still viable) of what a typical fight with a cloaked ninja is.

 

I was a CSI named I-AN, mobility frame. The AI spots the ninja in bridge and raises the issue to security, and they move there. I think I was told to come as well to gather some evidence once security chases them off, and due to lack of living security (ninja killed others who first responded) I was given a laser rifle in case I was attacked (once again example is old, so don't remember specifics). Me and the last officer remaining enter command and a few seconds later the officer suddenly goes horizontal, I ask him what is wrong then all of the sudden I get killed by a axe embedded into my head by an invisible ninja.

Now I know what some may be thinking: "Why didnt you try firing at the tile you were being attacked by?" Thing is, I did . I saw the axe swing and fired at the tile, however by the time I fired the ninja already moved and was attacking me somewhere else. I died shortly after (mobility frames are weak).

 

I agree that solo antags should be more powerful than regular antags, but being able to stealth kill the entire sec team with them having little to no chance to even hit you is not the way to go. I feel that the ninja should try to pick off people alone, with a surprise attack and uncloak, followed by a battle they will almost certainly win in.

 

In conclusion, I feel that being able to stealth attack for consecutive attacks is OP, and should be nerfed or the ability to do so removed.

Side note: No, the power drain is NOT sufficent, for reasons described in other posts.

[BurgerBB]

Let me make it clear that I was never ever killed or let alone attacked by a ninja from this oversight, however I genuinely think that it's a very good idea to make it so that ninjas are decloaked when they interact with objects.

Absolutely every single video game with cloak mechanics has this. It makes no sense not to fix this.

[Kaed]

1 hour ago, Itanimulli said:

But now that I've read the other thread, yeah, nah, solo antags should be a helluva threat on their own. On top of that, the whole vault-a-palooza scheme is gonna become simewhat unviable when the bluespace disruptors get added.

It has not been made in the least bit unviable with this change. You just need to have some skill now.

All the ninja has to do is steal the captain's ID access, disable the turrets, and then hack their way into inner vault. The AI can't turn the turrets on because of a firewall so if they're fast enough they get it even without the teleport.

Or they could just breach a wall and walk in.

This ideology about skill should matter more could also be applied to the ninja cloak. A powerful antagonist should have tools that allow them to be powerful if they are skilled.

They should not be there to allow people who are shitty at combat to get a free pass on murdering whoever they want simply to create fake difficulty for solo antags.

An aware ninja already has the tools to escape from any combat situation they want. They do not also need the tools to win every combat situation they want.

Compare them with the wizard, which also can be a highly mobile opponent, but has also had their instant no counter gibs-you spell removed a long time ago, and lacks the ability to enter combat without a way to be countered.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Kaed

[Itanimulli]

Fair. Sometimes I wish mechanics changed based on pop.

[Kaed]

Why would it become more acceptable to kill people while cloaked in low pop. Or high pop.

 

It's pretty much universally bullshit, it doesn't become less so because there's more or less people around to kill.