Kicking items

[JamOfBoy]

With an empty hand, toggling throw intent on and on a specific intent such as harm, by clicking an item on the ground you can launch it in roughly the opposite direction with a higher throw force than regular throwing. Perhaps with or without a short timer. Kicking grenades away from your friends, or at your enemies. Kicking floor tiles into people for slightly more damage. Kick sand into people's eyes. Adding another option that serves some mechanical utility is a good thing, right?

[Mwahahahaha]

This seems like a pretty neat idea that's certainly doable in terms of whether a person can actually achieve this, and personally I would like to see it become a thing for that reason.

However, I do want to consider that others may feel that this would lead to some sort of abuse. How I would imagine it would be that, worst case scenario, you'll get people practically playing hot potato with a live grenade (for example) when any other person would just gtfo the heck away from that jazz — if possible.
Or like, jump on it or something and be a total hero.

That's entirely something that's likely to happen, I feel. I think that's a bit more a community-related issue though; there are a number of things you can actually do/exploit in the game but are generally frowned upon and/or moderated against. That doesn't necessarily guarantee satisfaction from everyone, though.

I have a question questions related to how this is implemented if it would be:
Regarding people who are restrained (as such with handcuffs, cable ties, straightjackets), how would this be handled?
Regarding people who are buckled (as such in chairs; but not restrained), how would this be handled?
.................and I guess this one is really more like a coder's momma forewarning: "Don't forget to check that they have feet to kick with"

 

And speaking of which, what about people with damaged legs, organic or otherwise? Do you think it would be viable if, say, it caused some pain or malfunction for them to kick something while their leg is damaged (albeit maybe not something extreme like  OH MY DEAR GOD I STUBBED ALL TEN OF MY SHATTERED TOES ON THAT PILLOW AAAAAAANNNNOOOOOOOOOO)?

And what if you kick something heavy? Something metallic?
Can you kick animals away?
Can you kick me away?

There's perhaps a few things to consider.

Might be a bit weird that you'd only be able to kick with an empty hand but I guess that's part of a (current) technical limitation with controls, huh?

If this is being implemented, there might also be an opportunity for adding in a new room, either added on or as part of the holodeck system. Put in a (small) football field or some such.

Edited July 31, 2019 by Mwahahahaha

[JamOfBoy]

For years I've laid dormant within the burning flesh of my forsaken carcass. Robbed of my life and my future, I could only feel the pain piercing my bones. That changes today.

Anyway, to answer your concerns:
If you cook a grenade properly people won't have time to either pick it up and throw it back or kick it. People already toss grenades back and as far as I am aware jumping on it is only really useful for frag grenades when you need 1000-ish brute damage and 20 pieces of shrapnel inside of your body but your big-chested cargo tech girlfriend is in the room and you don't want them to die because you have no one else to ERP with.
Ideally you'd put a timer between starting the kick and actually kicking the item, you gotta wind up the kick.
I'd that while the majority of these concerns are valid; just like how you can tug people's hair mechanically, eye stabbing will still do more damage. There are a lot easier ways to deal damage to someone than kicking something at them. Okay, actually, kicking uranium spear towards someone is pretty strong, provided it doesn't miss, they don't catch it, they don't just pick it up from the floor, or something.

As for damaged legs, I don't really know the best way of handling this. I'd say if both legs or feet are broken, kicking an item has a chance to fail, but no matter if it does or doesn't, you take pain damage (and maybe some brute). You'd also need to be able to stand and have at least one foot. This is how I see it working, however it is ultimately up to whoever would implement it.

I'd say that only items, as in, things you can put in your hand slots, would be able to be kicked. The heavier the item, the less far it goes and the more inaccurate it'd be. To elaborate, kicking a pen would probably send it in a straight line in the opposite direction to where you were when you kicked it for a pretty good distance. It'd have a minor chance to maybe go a tile to the left or right of straight ahead of you.
O = you | / = pen | p = axe
O / - - - - - - ->X
O p - - <?_X^X
But kicking something like a fireaxe, which is larger, would be different. You'd have a much larger chance for it to go left or right, and it wouldn't go as far. We have a size classification system for items, so we can already use this to determine if something is harder or easier to kick.

[Mwahahahaha]

Cool stuff!

13 minutes ago, JamOfBoy said:

jumping on it is only really useful for frag grenades when you need 1000-ish brute damage and 20 pieces of shrapnel inside of your body but your big-chested cargo tech girlfriend is in the room and you don't want them to die because you have no one else to ERP with.

listen

i got      my priorities    ok

13 minutes ago, JamOfBoy said:

People already toss grenades back

All right! Fair enough. To this one would probably say that it makes it easier and reduces the risk, but you've elaborated some more with things like flight pattern depending on the weight/size (w_class) and a timer. That might satisfy someone in the gameplay balancing department but I mean I don't really speak for them.
So...
Maybe someone else can offer more from there that I haven't been able to.

15 minutes ago, JamOfBoy said:

Okay, actually, kicking uranium spear towards someone is pretty strong, provided it doesn't miss, they don't catch it, they don't just pick it up from the floor, or something.

woaw waht is this  shaolin  soccer

And of course, indeed, I suppose you could say that it wouldn't really be effective in terms of an offensive tactic when much more viable methods are available.

A number of the arguments I've been trying to bring up to mind stem from this archived suggestion from years back where, iirc, someone had a the idea of being able to use rod-like items (baseball bats, stun batons) to bat a thrown item out of the way/back to its sender if the person has Throw Mode switched on.
A lot of the feedback though was concerned about what would effectively be a batting outbreak where everyone takes to the streets batting everything out of the way once everyone catches on that you can do this as a power tactic (I'm massively paraphrasing and generalising, of course).

Now PERSONALLY, I wouldn't mind seeing this implemented at all, simply because it     can be done. It's doable. A person can kick things.

I think there'll just be concerns with how if this feature gets implemented, you'll get (at least for a temporary period) a whole bunch of people running around kicking stuff and trying to find ways to kick ass and whatever — might be seen as ridiculous, but I mean that kinda happens to just about everything here. So one could say.

Aforementioned suggestion about batting:

 

And regarding these questions:

9 hours ago, Mwahahahaha said:

Regarding people who are restrained (as such with handcuffs, cable ties, straightjackets), how would this be handled?
Regarding people who are buckled (as such in chairs; but not restrained), how would this be handled?

What would be some thoughts on this?

[JamOfBoy]

So, basically,

I'm not against people being able to kick things while handcuffed, if it can be done code-side. Buckled, however, does not make sense, and I do not think you should be able to kick items while sat down on a chair. Its all in the legs, baby.

[Mwahahahaha]

I know this is starting to deviate a little from the suggestion here, but what if say, hypothetically speaking, they added the ability to kick people as an attack while they’re handcuffed (I think this might’ve also been suggested at some point in the past)?

Do you think it should just be limited to kicking items, or maybe would that be pushing things and seem unbelievable in terms of the in-universe?

What would be a possible IC explanation for having one not be able to kick another person, otherwise?

 

Or would this be overthinking things 

[JamOfBoy]

Kicking items is very easily stopped. A very common solution to a handcuffed person that might kick something at you is just to toggle throw intent, in which your use of hands comes into play, and you catch the item. Another solution is to not have anything on the floor. ANOTHER solution is to start dragging the person, in which case you can move them, interrupting the timer. I do not think allowing handcuffed people to attack others directly is a good idea in any means, you would make life ten times worse when it comes to people who really do not want to be brigged and try to escape at every opportunity. It OOCly devalues the use of handcuffs, which is not a good thing when we do not have anything else to restrain people commonly available. Devaluing handcuffs raises the value of putting someone in crit, dislocating limbs, and other stuff like that, such as outright killing people.

in terms of an IC explanation, its actually pretty difficult but here's a stretch:
someone is holding you by the handcuffs. Your arms are straight ahead, 90 degree angle from your body. The other person is two full arms lengths away from you. Trying to kick them from here would be difficult. Moving closer and trying to kick leaves you open to being pushed back, and with one leg trying to kick, you'd have only your other leg to support and balance you. You are not capable of easily kicking someone while handcuffed.

TL;DR
Handcuffed people can't attack you vs dead people can't attack you. One is bad for RP, one isn't. Which do you prefer?