Brainmed and Lethality

[MattAtlas]

I waited for a bit to make this thread to get people used to brainmed and how people die in it first. Now that everyone is used to it (and there's a pretty big divide in this issue), let's talk about time-to-kill and lethality, as that's what I will need to adjust.

Currently, the most efficient way to kill someone is hitting the head with a high damage weapon, as that causes spillover to most likely damage the brain directly. However, shooting the head is pretty inaccurate. I am currently adjusting this by making aiming head more accurate and diminishing the penalties received for being hit in the head at high amounts of damage.

Of course, you can also kill people via blood loss and organ damage. Blood loss takes time and organ damage also takes time. For any immediately severe amount of either to happen you need a relatively high damage weapon. Both of these are also pretty slow.

So, since combat is not currently based on securing kills - we have a problem where people shoot the other a bunch and the other doesn't really die - they just stay in a near-death state for a while. The usual death damage amount, to note, is 300 damage or so. Including toxin damage, which is total organ damage.

The questions I want to ask as such are the following:

- Is current lethality fine?

- If not, how would you improve it?

[Melariara]

You can kill yourself by donating blood. I mean, I don't think that's fine at all. You drain too much blood, you immediately start getting brain damage.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Melariara

[Leudoberct]

i'm fine with the current lethality of brainmed tbh, though guns could probably be made more lethal by doing more organ damage if they hit the upper body (ballistics, that is)

[Happy_Fox]

I don't know if there is any already in the code but maybe a chance of randomly getting a lot worse very quickly while heavily (mortally) wounded. Basically crashing. Might help prevent people languishing and dying for a while if there's a chance for them to rapidly decline.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Happy_Fox

[Jupiter Storm]

I like the fact that current lack of lethality of brainmed enables people to potentially remain in the round given that they cannot be cloned, while simultaneously punishing them for a significant amount of time when they become injured.

What I don't like about it is the fact that it makes certain monster types (e.g. Shambling Horrors and Zombies) extremely if not preposterously robust because they are immune to pain, and stamina loss. What I would like to see as an area of improvement for this is to incorporate stronger inherent 'weaknesses' - for instance, the head for zombies (which follows accurately with all written zombie lore) or fire damage for Changelings (as per The Thing). And of course something like better light-based stuns against Vampires. That sort of thing.

Finally, a big bugbear for me with Brainmed is the fact that many forms of damage lead to organs becoming necrotic ridiculously fast, and biology just doesn't work that way. It creates horrifying complications for less experienced Medical characters, but by and large minus what I've said, I think it works well and is more conducive to roleplaying and not 'scoring kills'.

[MattAtlas]

Just now, Jupiter Storm said:

What I don't like about it is the fact that it makes certain monster types (e.g. Shambling Horrors and Zombies) extremely if not preposterously robust because they are immune to pain, and stamina loss. What I would like to see as an area of improvement for this is to incorporate stronger inherent 'weaknesses' - for instance, the head for zombies (which follows accurately with all written zombie lore) or fire damage for Changelings (as per The Thing). And of course something like better light-based stuns against Vampires. That sort of thing.

Simple mobs (shambling horrors) are not affected by brainmed changes in any way.

Zombies currently have weaker brains (75 damage or so), and die pretty much only from brainloss. With the head aiming buff, it should be better.

[AmoryBlaine]

I've survived way too long after being hit with like, 3 grenades, shotgun shells, TTVs, Depressurization. It's really weird. We should make succumbing easier to achieve. I hate being stuck, unable to tell what's going on for 10 minutes as I slowly die.

[FreshRefreshments]

This may come off as a strange complaint, but dying takes, too long. There is a time period where, as a merc, after being shot with lasers that subsequently hit a welding tank, I was trapped in a vented area. It took, an unholy amount of time to die from the oxygen loss. I feel like I owe it to the game to stick around, in case SOMETHING happens, but if nothing does, its just wake up from pain, take a single step, fall back down, and repeat for 20 minutes. 

Suffocation, and blood loss, things that knock you unconscious for a very long time but very quickly, are not likely to ever be enjoyable. But it seems like the pain for it sets in VERY fast. Which, in a way, makes sense. But, once I was in an elevator that was vented for half a split second, and I went into paincrit. 

[Roostercat]

Some things take way too long to kill you, for example: guns may as well have a damn nerf logo on them, as they barely do anything since shrapnel doesn't do a whole lot and the only real threat is AB. On the other hand, some things kill you too damn fast, such as donating blood. Being a blood donor for some reason can kill you faster than being shot with bullets repeatedly, which I think is ridiculous.

[Sytic]

Some tweaks definitely need to be made in regards to what kills you too fast or too slow. For example:

- Taking any toxin damage means you're fucked because the liver will go necrosis in like two minutes and when that happens expect total organ failure in five while Medbay fails to save you because they don't know where to get a replacement or how to fix a necrosis limb.

- Blood donors? More like literally instantly dying

- Hope you enjoy paincrit.

[MattAtlas]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/7967

I have made some preliminary changes. Check the PR to see what they are.

[Peppermint]

I agree with toxins being utterly ridiculous. Especially on ling rounds and that necrotic organ repair can act a 'lil funny.  But at the same, it's considerably easier to die at medical right now. I'd like there to be shrapnel changes so it actually does something, and increased damage of ballistic weapons to the body. 

 

I don't think the damage of low blood needs to be increased though. Especially with things like vampire.

[N8-Toe]

I think shrapnel and bullets should be buffed. and I always like increased lethality

[Shenaanigans]

Echoing a lot of what's been said-- a reduction to how quickly liver necrosis sets in after exposure to toxins and a buff to the lethality of guns/shrapnel would be nice. I do like that there's a specific point at which blood loss starts to harm the brain, so I wouldn't propose totally taking that out just to make donating blood less dangerous, but perhaps making it slight so long as you don't dip far below that threshold? More of an exponential effect as you lose blood oxygenation.

[Wigglesworth Jones]

I'm fine with it for the most part, but I think that shrapnel and ballistics should be buffed, like @N8-Toe said. I point-blanked (meaning I shot at them on harm intent when they were next to me) someone with buckshot and slugs 5 times and they were still standing, which seemed pretty odd to me.

[Carver]

I vastly prefer a slow, agonizing death. The time to kill is perfect, there's just some jank with the aforementioned necrotic organs coming on hilariously fast. Tweak the organs to be a little more robust against specifically that problem, and the rest of the system is perfect as is.

I'll take paincrit and 20-40 minutes in medical any day, especially when the new system lends so well to recovery RP.

5 hours ago, N8-Toe said:

I think shrapnel and bullets should be buffed. and I always like increased lethality

1 hour ago, Wigglesworth Jones said:

I'm fine with it for the most part, but I think that shrapnel and ballistics should be buffed, like @N8-Toe said. I point-blanked (meaning I shot at them on harm intent when they were next to me) someone with buckshot and slugs 5 times and they were still standing, which seemed pretty odd to me.

Slow death is good, things are lethal without being immediate and I find it far more enjoyable. Near-all examples mentioned above would cause mortal wounds regardless that kill anyone who doesn't get saved in short order, and will put them out of action for just enough time to do whatever you need to do (whether that's antag shit or recovering and preparing as crew). Mortal wounds > murderboning.

[Randy]

9 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

...

Sometimes it just becomes redicolous the amount of stuff you can go through and still survive because med got too you.

 

Recently as a sec officer I got shot like 5 or 6 times with a 9mm and I was still well enough to stand upright.

on the other hand I played antag and had a hostage, despite having a revolver to the hostages head sec raided me and I executed the hostage point blank.. but the hostage didint die. Why take a hostage then or why should sec ever feel any real need to take caution  when they can just throw a flashbang knowing that you wont be able to unload enough damage to be any real threat to a hostage

 

"keeping someone in the round" isint really a good justification for being able to tank copious amounts of damage. It takes a lot out of the danger out of a game that has danger as an integral part.

Why should I take mercs, raiders and traitors even the slightest bit seriously when I know for a fact that if a shoot out will happen im going to come out on top since by the time weve worked through the escalation ladder medical is already on standby ready to heal me up even if I take 7 shots from an assult rifle to the chest.

We forget that antags dont exist to be defeated but to make interaction and having antags have real danger by making damage much more dangerous will liven things up quite a bit

Also I agree with this too

9 hours ago, FreshRefreshments said:

This may come off as a strange complaint, but dying takes, too long. There is a time period where, as a merc, after being shot with lasers that subsequently hit a welding tank, I was trapped in a vented area. It took, an unholy amount of time to die from the oxygen loss. I feel like I owe it to the game to stick around, in case SOMETHING happens, but if nothing does, its just wake up from pain, take a single step, fall back down, and repeat for 20 minutes. 

Suffocation, and blood loss, things that knock you unconscious for a very long time but very quickly, are not likely to ever be enjoyable. But it seems like the pain for it sets in VERY fast. Which, in a way, makes sense. But, once I was in an elevator that was vented for half a split second, and I went into paincrit.