Remove Gank

[Cnaym]

Would like to talk about the parapen. Can we rework that to promote RP instead of monologue before death? My suggestion would be to replace the chemical inside with the pacifier, so that you cannot fight but still talk and interact with people.

That's not a big suggestion since I'm not that creative of a person, but I think this item in it's current state is rather counter productive to our environment. I would even prefer it to hand them out in a box of three, if the effect was anything else than instant cuff and off to dead chat. We could implement it into a set of pens that are color coded and have different effects (Heal, Pacifier, Hyperzine, Poison?).

[Bear]

Yeah. It's exactly what it is. Anesthetics such as sopo are already easily available. I support this.

[Carver]

Parapen is the only item (not abilities, those are a whole other mess) other than the stun talisman I find to be a forgotten holdover of the 'click once in melee range and it's over' era, so I'd support this.

[Roostercat]

Eh, I am split on this. When I use the Parapen, it is either bc security is onto me and I need a distraction, or for kidnapping. Knock em out drag them to a sublevel then go from there with RP. Usually ends pretty well. I dont like having to talk to someone the entire time while you are in their vicinity, a short knoxkout isnt that bad. On the other hand, I know that just bc I do it the way I do it does not mean that others wont use it for an easy kill, so replacing it with sopo is understandable

[Carver]

Replacing it with the pacifying chemical (and having it give a couple of extra utility/medical pens to benefit the user, as per OP) was a fine idea.

6 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

On the other hand, I know that just bc I do it the way I do it does not mean that others wont use it for an easy kill, so replacing it with sopo is understandable

9/10 times I've seen it used it was a traitor dragging someone into maintenance to choke them to death, cut their head off with an e-sword or space them out an airlock.

Edited November 8, 2019 by Carver
To which there's still the energy crossbow as a disabling weapon, I believe. Equally if not more effective at kidnapping/ditching, but it leaves a trail for those who don't prepare correctly.

[wowzewow]

I'm all for this, only exception being using your headset.

You know, like paralyzed neck-down, you still can move your head and stuff but you can't move your arms to the headset button to transmit, to prevent shit like ;HELP MAINT or some shit.

[KingOfThePing]

You very clearly don't need a free hand to use the headset ICly

[Azande]

20 minutes ago, KingOfThePing said:

You very clearly don't need a free hand to use the headset ICly

Fairly certain you do, as you can no longer us the radio while handcuffed.

[KingOfThePing]

Then how can you use it while aiming your laser rifle? While wearing a hardsuit? While carrying two buckets? The situations where you can use one despite clearly not having a free hand are basically limitless.

[ben10083]

This idea is either a +1 opr a BIG -1 depends on if they can use radio

Because if they use radio, here is how every future interaction will go.

*stabs janitor with parapen*

>para pen takes affect

Janitor: "HALP I WAS STABBED WITH PARAPEN AT CARGO LOBBY COORDINATES 35, 203, -4!

Security: 

tldr: If you allow them to use radio, this cant be implemented as it would make the parapen useless.

[Pratepresidenten]

29 minutes ago, Azande said:

Fairly certain you do, as you can no longer us the radio while handcuffed.

You can yap in the headset while cuffed, and you can yap in the headset with both arms removed. Hands nor arms are required for headset operation, believe it or not!

[Itanimulli]

5 hours ago, Carver said:

Replacing it with the pacifying chemical (and having it give a couple of extra utility/medical pens to benefit the user, as per OP) was a fine idea.

9/10 times I've seen it used it was a traitor dragging someone into maintenance to choke them to death, cut their head off with an e-sword or space them out an airlock.

That really, really sounds like an issue that'd be dealt with via ahelp.

[Kaed]

The problem with nerfing the parapen like previous nerfs with the justification that we are 'moving away from one-click stun-based combat' several-fold.

First of all, unlike flashes and batons, they are not readily available to anyone on the server.  This is why both of them being able to very easily stun people in a single click was toxic to the environment - they were extremely prevalent and thus overused, due to the fantastic advantage they offered at almost no difficulty to obtain.  Not only that, but batons also double as a blunt force weapon, allowing you to beat someone down and break bones while stunning them at the same time.

By contrast, a parapen has absolutely zero presence outside of traitor rounds.  Sure, mercs and ninjas can TECHNICALLY get them, but they have so many better tools at their disposal that short of someone deliberately using one as a jokey ninja/merc gimmick it's not worth it.  This is because the parapen is not a weapon, and it's barely even a viable gimmick in itself.  It costs 1/4 of your starting telecrystals (6/25), and has a single use, becoming an inert roleplaying item you can at best try to stab someone in the eye with once it's expended its charge.  Because of all this, it's more of a facilitating item than anything else.

And it's damn fucking good at it.  The zombie powder will mute you and put you flat on your ass for several minutes, making it absolutely the perfect object for setting up a high profile prisoner/hostage situation.  It can facilitate a much greater story for the round than being injected with soporific would, which causes 90% of players to notice they are yawning and them begin shrieking over radio that someone has drugged them and exactly where they are right now, while running away from the nearby person they have now metagamed as an antag.

The fact that it is being used as a free kill item is not a design flaw any more than one of the mercs cyanide pills being possible to put in someone's drink or food to kill them within a minute is.  The item's telecrystal value and effect is precisely as intended and as it should be.  Changing it to give people a chance to get away from  HYPOTHETICAL shitty antags who just want to esword their helpless head off in maint is reactive design changes addressing a problem from the wrong angle.  A bad experience of interaction between a player and an antag is the result of the antag utilizing their given tools in a bad way, and they need to be given guidance, rather than having their toys taken away and replaced with nerf guns to remove the CHANCE for them to be shitters.  Because you can't remove the bad shit without also obviating some very good possibilities too.

So, until we code in a disabling mechanic that allows people to be unable to radio for help while still being able to talk, the parapen should not be changed to something that lets them scream for help, or even worse, start running away as soon as it becomes clear they have been stabbed with one. You will simply devalue the benefits and possibilities of the parapen in an attempt to prevent a few bad experiences.  Once the parapen has been used on your character, the responsibility is now on the initiating antagonist to drive an enjoyable experience.  The fact that your agency has been temporarily taken away is the point.  They paid a substantial amount of their resources to take a PRISONER, quietly.  If they drag you off to main and cut your head off, that's their fault, not the parapens.  Ahelp them. 

Ganking is against the server rules, you don't fix it by removing/nerfing the offend object, you remove it by taking action against gankers.

Edited November 8, 2019 by Kaed

[Carver]

2 hours ago, Itanimulli said:

That really, really sounds like an issue that'd be dealt with via ahelp.

I do, yet the 9/10 amusingly remains. For whatever reason it's a fairly uncommon pick for non-ganking traitors. Probably for it not holding any value past a single use, which is again why I support OP's suggested "set of pens that are color coded and have different effects (Heal, Pacifier, Hyperzine, Poison?)" as even nerfed it would be more appealing if it gave you other pens with other uses.

[VVipEdout]

Paxazide is horribly short-lasting to be much use without mass amounts, if I remember correctly. With that said, it's perfectly possible to make a pseudo-parapen that acts only as a pacifier or only as a muting mechanism, what with wulumunusha extract being easily available. If the problem is a lack of muteness leading to the usual ;HELP SEC MAINT, chloral or any instant knockout would make up for it by giving you a window to take the headset away with. Chlorophoride also has the current parapen's weaken effect without the muteness, I think?

The set of pens idea is great. The healing option could just be a survival autoinjector reskin, or if we want to make it the end-all-be-all, rezadone. As with the permadeath proposals, the prospect of being unable to do much of anything for RP for several minutes is quite plainly boring. All it takes to shift the parapen from a ganking tool to a quick pacifier with no chance of radio yelling is changing the payload.

[Resilynn]

Things you can still do with paxazide- run, use tools, enable your sensors, talk, tap an intercom or holopad, radio for help, resist.

Ahelp if someone ganks using a parapen with no prior rp. We need to get out of this mindset that everything antagonists do requires several means to defeat it or it’s unfair we died. 

-1

[Brutishcrab51]

I once used a parapen to kidnap @Scheveningen's HoS during a traitor round as a Security Officer.

Did I use it to gank their character? Steal their access? I mean, no. I duct-taped the character up and cut out their loyalty implant. And then let Schev's character go. One distraction done, the HoS was now temporarily compromised (to some degree) and I had completed my objective. Even copied the card access with an agent card, but saw no reason to steal it.

I'd say that was one effective use of the Parapen. Generated RP and conflict, didn't take anyone out of the round unnecessarily, accomplished my traitorous goals (at that exact moment) allowing me to carry on with my other purposes in the round.

In summary? Blame the player, not the tool. The Parapen is where it should be, ahelp people that abuse it. -1.

Edited November 8, 2019 by Brutishcrab51
ADDITIONS!

[Nantei]

The parapen can be used either as a great tool to facilitate interesting things or as a horrible gank/Win button. I'm thankful that a lot of the... Less savory antagonists don't seem to know how overpowered it is.

It's very feast or famine, and knowing what I do about the chems, I don't think there may be a good fix here that makes everyone happy.

At first I thought, "Okay so the major benefit of this tool is it's a stealthy and instant kidnapping tool."

And then it occurred to me that this is the problem. It's a kidnapping tool. Kidnapping tools are naturally going to be like this due to the nature of how it works. I thought we could replace it with soporific or something and give it charges, but it will still be an amazing ganking tool then. There isn't going to be a good compromise here, so this is going to boil down to: Can we trust the playerbase with this tool? And that's going to be almost entirely down to personal experiences.

With any tool that is easily abused we can always say, "Administration will deal with it." But the problem with that is it doesn't undo the damage it caused. Yes, if you get ganked the person will probably be warned at the least, but this doesn't stop others from doing it again, or fix that you just had an awful experience.

My personal experience has been generally positive with the pen. I've used it to enable gimmicks I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Like the time I penned Astor, put a death alarm implant in him, and told him and Fernando that it was an explosive implant in order to hold him hostage while forcing Fernando to make grenades my client wanted (Using his exploitable information). The parapen guaranteed my first part succeeded, but I probably could have achieved the same effect with a gun. 

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

If its harder to quickly (and therefore safely) stun and kidnap someone why should i not kill them instead? I have crazy few tools to nab someone safely and without mauling them.

[Nantei]

1 hour ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

If its harder to quickly (and therefore safely) stun and kidnap someone why should i not kill them instead? I have crazy few tools to nab someone safely and without mauling them.

Problem is that anything like this is also going to be good for killing people quickly. It's actually better at killing a single person than the revolver is, and we all know how nasty the revolver is.

To give you an example as to why: The Parapen is regularly used on Baystation explicitly to kill people. I am just glad it hasn't caught on here, hopefully due to our ganking rules discouraging it.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Our parapen doesn't kill us. Its also not regularly used to quickly kill someone. Its a tool for kidnapping; cant we instead push to make sure thats how it remains used?

Its so difficult to drug people in a way that catches them unawares. A lot of our chemicals not locked behind chemistry have a delay where the victim almost universally runs and screams for help.

Parapen is useful to quickly and safely nab someone. I have to stress that its really the only thing antags have left in terms of the uplink. Otherwise its easier and safer to just assassinate the person quickly with a radio jammer in my pocket.

[Itanimulli]

42 minutes ago, Nantei said:

Problem is that anything like this is also going to be good for killing people quickly. It's actually better at killing a single person than the revolver is, and we all know how nasty the revolver is.

To give you an example as to why: The Parapen is regularly used on Baystation explicitly to kill people. I am just glad it hasn't caught on here, hopefully due to our ganking rules discouraging it.

Ganking rules are exactly why.

[Nantei]

I don't really have an issue with the current parapen. I am just stating that it's difficult to do much about it if you do. There's not much room for compromise with how our chemistry system works. Replacing it with an anesthetic is arguably worse because you can't even talk then. Paralysis is the only chemistry effect that does what the parapen needs to, and very few chemicals grant it without horrible side effects. 

What I will contest, though, is that the parapen is an excellent ganking tool, there's no real denying it. It is the most surefire way to kill someone quietly, as there is almost no room for error.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Gank is already against the rules.

[AmoryBlaine]

The real answer to this is to ahelp when you're parapenned and killed after a "heh, got you kid." without proper build up. Honestly, just make the pen spawn empty but let it be loaded with anything. And include a seperate vial of parapen juice.