kyres1 Posted July 4, 2019 Posted July 4, 2019 TL;DR EMPs suck. They presently do a hundred different things, from blinding you to discharging your super advanced energy weapon, to even draining your baton. This proposal removes a heavy reliance on EMP in determining engagements and reworks security's power a bit. Instead of their armory being rendered useless by 1 EMP grenade barring some pistols, security will have the following from their armory : 1. staying power 2. lethal response to extreme threats (boarders, namely, being the main threat you're supposed to worry about) 3. consistency with threat level To expand upon these points and why they're needed, Staying power is different from potential counterplay. Unlike ERT, security largely needs a way to be overwhelmed or some way to be incapacitated that does not kill every character within the department. However, security requires some way to actually stay in the round given the antagonist has taken steps to ensure they remain. It is very easy for the majority of antagonists in their current state to utterly wipe security, and they have little reason not to, seeing as once lethal .45s come into play, shrapnel does, and when shrapnel does, you're fucked no matter who you are. In this sense, this will give security more reparable damage to deal to antagonists permitting them to have their lives spared without their service pistol becoming the primary threat from the armory. Lethal response to extreme threats is necessary due to consistency. To counteract arguments against this requires a simple setting update - we're bordering Sol and Tau Ceti, two major conflicting factions, and are constantly CANONICALLY under threat of boarders, terrorists, and various things that'd require basically the whole crew armed for their own safety. Before jumping to conclusions, no, this doesn't arm the whole crew, but that should put into perspective just how dangerous of a station lore ended up making this place. Consistency with threat level is a big thing. Without heads of staff or engineering to help you out, there should be no final tier of escalation from the armory, period. You should perpetually be stuck with minimally lethal armament until the proper alert level has been triggered, and otherwise stuck with less-than-lethal on green. For clarity : I think non-lethals are things that are functionally intended to minimize risk of injury or death. Rubber bullets are not non-lethal, as killing someone with them is markedly easy. They would fall under less-lethal in this case. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. With the reasoning out of the way, the actual suggestion is this : Add escalating tiers to the armory with the following traits exactly : The armory is separated into three sections. The first two are nonlethal and low-lethality weapons available on code green or code blue. Only a warden and/or stationbounds are required to open the second tier. The third tier involves high-lethality weapons accessible only on code red or by bypassing safety checks with engineering. Best case scenario is one powerful turret and a door that stationbounds can not interface with, to minimize risk of death entering it but dissuading trespassing nonetheless. This section of the armory is surrounded by blast doors on any code except red, in which case, they raise. Only the head of security or captain-level access can unbolt and open the door by utilizing ID-locked buttons to permit access to this section of the armory normally once the blast doors raise. Add additional gear to the armory as follows : More nonlethal measures and replacement gear for officers in the first two tiers. Spare stunbatons, tasers, and pistols should be seen here. Not sure why it isn't this way already, perhaps because our armory is already so bloated with useless crap that should be in standard security storage like barriers, portable flashes, gas masks, biohazard suits, bomb suits and more. The final tier, because of the scope of this suggestion, probably should retain the same stuff barring a rework so there aren't enormous balance changes at first. No, security does not need assault rifles or slugs in the armory based off of this alone. Rework energy weapons to mostly have the following traits : Probably the meatiest part of the suggestion. Energy weapons should for the most part not be hitscan, instead being high-powered blasters with minimal, specialized rechargeable ammunition in cells that is mostly immune to EMP. The primary concern here is making them too similar to ballistics. The counterpoint to that is the ability to go through windows, have rechargeable cells, and different traits in general such as much more limited on-hand ammunition, much higher overall damage, burn damage, and the obvious extreme agony they put you in. Hitscan energy weapons should be not only a rarity, but should be a very powerful addition to the arsenal of whoever has it. Immediate concerns to me are how higher energy weapon damage will mesh with current species resists. While Vaurca aren't much an issue as they die in like one shot already to the current lasers, Tajara, IPCs and some event mobs may meet the same fate as those poor souls on the receiving end of an EMP so many times before. With that said, higher damage ought to be reserved to nonstandard gear seen outside of the hands of normal round-by-round security. Rework armory ballistic weapons to mostly have the following traits : The ballistic weapons in the armory should have varying lethality, rather than "lethal" and "rubber." More simply, tiers beneath the most lethal variant for the armory should not have access to rounds that generate shrapnel. In the red alert stage of the armory, any ballistic armament could be seen, removing this restriction entirely. Lower shotgun slug damage and remove their armor penetrating properties. Rework ballistic weapons in general to mostly have the following traits : Bullet shrapnel should not stick if its damage is reduced enough. For whatever reason, a 9mm can do all of 0.1 brute to a breacher or something but shrapnel still sticks. When shrapnel sticks, it is jostled randomly based on movement, causing organ damage and breaking bones no matter how it's applied. In short, you can go so far as to not even penetrate someone's armor, yet somehow the bullet makes its way inside of their ribcage, tearing apart their insides every time they turn or walk. I'm almost tempted to call this a bug because it's so broken but something tells me it's intentional for gameplay balance. In summary, the means to shut down antagonists early on is mostly restricted to a head of staff's decision or requires genuine effort to pull off. Without shrapnel accessible to your most basic sidearm, the potential for filling the armory with actually believable weaponry can be seen. You can get creative, too - replace the AMR with a spartan laser, give security rapid-fire low-powered blasters, etc. This is, in my opinion, substantially better than the current armory, which has properties that make zero sense. You have non-reloadable hitscan laser weapons that instantly get discharged by EMP, currently. In character, why would NanoTrasen arm its security with such easy-to-defeat weaponry, seeing how prolific EMP is? Mechanically, just like IPCs, they are rendered a game of rock-paper-scissors by EMP. I should not have to explain why "Haha your entire department loses" in one EMP grenade is no fun for anybody involved. This is compounded by the fact that many other things ingame are massively affected by EMP, from APCs, to fire alarms activating, to doors getting shocked and more. The least we can do is make the very things meant to defend the station not be so largely susceptible to them. Important note : If you intend to make blasters more prolific with this, new weapon sounds, muzzle flashes and hit effects are more than necessary to ensure quality. They presently have none of these and they're kinda underwhelming in the hands of TCFL as they've been seen for it. Time to answer the biggest question of all, though. Is this a nerf/buff to security? It's neither, it's a refactor of what we have based off of the assessment I have of security after playing both it, and antagonist, a lot. This should roughly change nothing except what was outlined in the first page of the suggestion in regards to any definitive "power level" security has.
AmoryBlaine Posted July 4, 2019 Posted July 4, 2019 I can get behind this if you throw in energy weapons requiring powerpacks, rather than having a set amount of charges before the whole gun is little more than dead weight until you return to the brig, the library or the checkpoint.
Nantei Posted July 5, 2019 Posted July 5, 2019 (edited) I initially came into this pretty apprehensive, but now I'm more open to the idea after having read it through. Currently the escalation tree is something like this. Non lethals, less lethals, lethals. Non lethals are often useless against most antagonists, at least any violent kinds. The baton is a bizarre inclusion that should be outright replaced with a telescopic; I mean this in terms of design, not practice. I have never even seen the telescopic used, but my vision would be similar to rubbers as a less lethal weapon. The baton is just a better taser, no idea why we still have it. But other than that I think our code green gear is in a good place. The deadliest option available probably won't kill anyone without a concerted effort to do so. So that said, I don't think anything from the non lethal list belongs in the armory. By the time you are opening the armory this would be useless, and I'm rather happy with most of the tools we get out the start. My suggestion would be to scale with levels of lethality, and have armor be in the first section alongside some stronger less lethal options like the shotgun with bean bag rounds. If we were to add more, stronger armor, it should be in the other tiers. Second level would contain things that are able to be lethal, but still have less lethal options with less damage/capacity to make up for their flexibility. The carbine and a beanbag shotgun are good examples of weapons to put here imo. The final level would contain the really dangerous things only boarders and other high threats would warrant. Lethal shotgun ammo maybe, lethal rounds for the service pistol, maybe machine pistols with lethal rounds depending on how high we want to go, and of course laser rifles. That said, I think the energy weapons changes and shrapnel should be their own post. Shrapnel needs adjustment, emp shouldn't turn sec's mainline rifle into a paper weight. I completely agree there. Finally my concerns: I don't like locking things like this behind a whitelist in general, but I do like the idea of them being able to bypass other requirements. This will work fine during the normal hours, but in dead hour this will become very problematic. I would rather tie this to alert level or a head, not both. Either the hos or Captain swipe, or the alert hits red which lets wardens open it. Having to both raise the alert and swipe with Captain or HoS level access is too much and makes the rush security strat even stronger than it already is. Reducing it down to 2 levels may be a better solution imo. Since often if I'm taking a carbine it's because I want to try and take them alive. Also a minor thing: The turret should be tied to the doors so it cannot be turned on while the doors are open to prevent security from abusing it, and other issues. Edited July 5, 2019 by Nantei
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