nerf burn damage

[Butterrobber202]

Hi!
Did you know Security's primary damage type is burn damage?

Did you also know that the most lethal damage type in the game right now is burn damage?

Now you do!

Burn damage deals increased pain, increased infection rate, has blood boil, and organ damage. (though that last one isn't burn damage exclusive) The main issue here is the blood boil, because that is a direct attack on your oxygen levels, which means burn damage is also dealing very good oxygen damage. Oxygen damage, does cause pain, which stacks with the burn pain, meaning you will enter crit very quickly when struck with burn damage.

This is pretty bad, just, on any side. But, Security has laser rifles, just standard, basic, laser rifles. 

These are, remarkably reliable weapons! Good rate of fire, good shot capacity, excellent accuracy, and window penetration. Very few antagonist armors (that I know of) have the protection value to ward off a laser rifle, infact, the only one I'm aware of is the heavy military armor plates, and even then, focused fire will bring you down to 5% blood oxygenation quickly. Now, this isn't really the fault of a the laser rifle, so much as burn damage, combined with this reliability, makes them very super deadly. 

 

TD:LR: Please nerf burn damage.

Edited November 16, 2021 by Butterrobber202

[NG+7 Gael]

I'm genuinely surprised burn damage hasn't been nerfed already considering it's so strong and everyone knows it. I really think it should be nerfed significantly, and/or laser weaponry should be made more rare and replaced with ballistics.

[Gr33d]

yeah I pretty much agree with Duck here, it does way to much at the moment.

[Triogenix]

Not even just with laser rifles, it's super annoying when you touch a shocked door and suddenly 15% of the blood in your body is gone, and you all the other nasty effects Butter mentioned in the original post. As for ways to nerf it but not completely make it useless as a damage type, I'd make bloodboil much less effective, but probably up the damage if possible for weapons that use burn.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Triogenix

[Peppermint]

Switch the two rifles for two ballistic carbines or something rather than making the weapon type useless imo. Been playing a lot of FR lately and lost count of the number of people I've rocked up to with 2% blood and it's just 'welp, guess they'll die'.

[WickedCybs]

Burn damage isn't the most lethal damage type, but it is pretty annoying. Will note, it doesn't damage organs (I was wrong). I think one of the main reasons it seems more powerful is because, at least when it comes to the rifles, it is the only actual option against an armed and armoured antag considering the rest of their arsenal isn't going to work due to the how the armour system is. Since it is the only option for sec, you remember getting taken down with it. The lessened lethality compared to ballistics would make that memory worse considering the extra pain and slow degeneration of the brain really helps in securing a capture as the target either enters crit, or they escape and potentially become helpless or weakened. It's not very complicated for medical to treat too, almost always not even requiring an OR visit if there's a pharmacist, though the severity at the time they find someone can make it time consuming and it eats up a lot of blood.

Ballistics can do a lot of things at the moment. Stuff that speeds people to death faster.

• They create actively bleeding wounds assuming they're not absorbed by armour.
• They have a chance to straight up deal damage to an organ. This is why people tend to drop very fast after a rifle burst if not protected. It's not usually the pain, though that helps. Their heart was destroyed. Even a lethal pistol can drop someone quickly with RNG like that. Potentially requires surgery.
• They break bones, causing pain, a chance of organ damage on movement and can disable limb function. Always requires surgery.
• Arterial bleeding is usually inevitable and seriously deadly. Always requires surgery.
• Shrapnel. 

It's just better for actually taking someone out of a round. There's a reason why sec only ordered scoped rifles instead of the LWAPs when we still had those in the cargo menu.

I do think lasers are excessive in just how much pain and blood boil they do. They currently do two times their level of damage in pain I think. Lowering that a little could potentially make it feel better for people on the receiving end, because the fast crit tends to be the main complaint from what I hear.

Edited November 17, 2021 by WickedCybs
i did stuff

[Roostercat]

48 minutes ago, WickedCybs said:

 Will note, it doesn't damage organs.

 

There have been way too many cases of people getting lasered and then their lungs popping for me to actually believe this. Lasers also boil blood away and leave high chance of infection (which is probably the most annoying thing in the game). 

 

The way I see it, Lasers are more lethal overall, they just take longer to kill somebody, whilst Ballistics are more deadly in shorter bursts due to arterials and the like.

[Butterrobber202]

1 hour ago, WickedCybs said:

Burn damage isn't the most lethal damage type,

This simply isn't true as it stands. The slowdown from burn pain is just an instant tick to the grave if you are in a fight. Burn deals both the burn and the oxygen damage, it's basically hitting for double damage every shot.

1 hour ago, WickedCybs said:

I think one of the main reasons it seems more powerful is because, at least when it comes to the rifles, it is the only actual option against an armed and armoured antag considering the rest of their arsenal isn't going to work due to the how the armour system is.

Most antag armors are not ballistic proofed or laser proofed. The strongest armor I know of is the heavy plate suit, and it's the only armor accessible to antags rated to defend against rifles. 

1 hour ago, WickedCybs said:

Ballistics can do a lot of things at the moment.

True, ballistics can do alot and they can do it fast. I'd still rather take a single bullet rather than a single laser blast. I'll be afforded the chance to run away or keep fighting if I'm hit with a bullet. 

2 hours ago, Peppermint said:

making the weapon type useless imo.

I don't want to make burn damage useless, I just don't want it to be a, "You're dead kiddo" option. It's atleast twice as powerful as ballistics currently.

[WickedCybs]

5 hours ago, Roostercat said:

There have been way too many cases of people getting lasered and then their lungs popping for me to actually believe this.

You're correct, actually. I double checked because I was only remembering the tweak PR. Forgot Matt's stated goal was re-adding laser organ damage due to the armour rework. That does change things.

4 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

This simply isn't true as it stands. The slowdown from burn pain is just an instant tick to the grave if you are in a fight. Burn deals both the burn and the oxygen damage, it's basically hitting for double damage every shot.

Only true on the first bit. Adrenaline ensures movement stays normalishh for a small but notable length of time in combat, same for ballistics except it gives less time in exchange for less pain. But in the end, burns do slow you down more. I'd say getting shot multiple times with either is a death sentence though.

As for the 2nd thing.

I shot this guy like three or four times. There is no "double damage". Burn doesn't do straight up oxy damage. You get burned, afterward the lost blood gives you some brain damage if you did lose any. That's a slow process. If you have damaged lungs, you do take oxy damage, though.

4 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

Most antag armors are not ballistic proofed or laser proofed. The strongest armor I know of is the heavy plate suit, and it's the only armor accessible to antags rated to defend against rifles. 

If sec only utilized their laser carbines, fourty fives and disruptors against a threat wearing heavy armour they would get wiped because of the damage reduction at that point. Antag voidsuits can even competently face off against most of the sec arsenal as well, and those don't have rifle tier protection. It's not about being 100% proofed versus a single damage type, it's about how much you can mitigate the damage. The laser rifle is the only weapon that can punch up reliably out of the box.

If giving them a long weapon was re-examined, I don't think there is any way sec is going to get a ballistic rifle beyond speciality stuff like the PEAC. At best, I think the popular ideas would just be removing the rifles entirely from the roundstart armoury or nerfing them in some way. I do think it's best sec continues to have a means to resist a big threat.

4 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

True, ballistics can do alot and they can do it fast. I'd still rather take a single bullet rather than a single laser blast. I'll be afforded the chance to run away or keep fighting if I'm hit with a bullet. 

Kind of true, assuming a rifle, you could take a single shot to the chest specifically better, unless you got seriously unlucky or are a Tajara/Offworlder. The adrenaline does even things out on a first shot though, extra pain on lasers gives you a little more. If you took even a second for ballistics, that's when you fracture right afterward with a good chance of organ damages and arterial bleeding. On the other hand, with lasers. Four shots could be enough to take you down to 81% blood oxy. I'm not sure if I messed up or something, but sometimes the blood boil didn't seem to proc or people would lose less blood than expected though so it ended up being very survivable sometimes with the exception of getting unlucky with organ damage, which appears more infrequent compared to straight up brute damage dealt organ damage, but still threatening enough.

Considering it does do organ damage, it could stand to deal less pain at least I think because that's a huge killer. It's definitely a very dangerous and oppressive damage type, don't get me wrong. Scales good too, which is why shocks and pulse weapons/x-rays can pretty much rival ballistics or even surpass them. Sec has trended to lasers for a reason, though. 

 

Edited November 17, 2021 by WickedCybs

[Lmwevil]

Ballistics have risks of hull breach and massive collateral damage that engineering will have to fix after a shootout - plus janitorial have to clean up the casings. generally speaking ballistics make little sense inside a pressurized metal box 

[Carver]

11 minutes ago, Lmwevil said:

Ballistics have risks of hull breach and massive collateral damage that engineering will have to fix after a shootout - plus janitorial have to clean up the casings. generally speaking ballistics make little sense inside a pressurized metal box 

I would agree with you if every single window on the station weren't bullet-resistant glass with a layer of breach/fire shutters. Lasers as well are very, very prone to collateral damage - and can trivially break windows accidentally (or on purpose if you're using them wisely).

[Lmwevil]

10 minutes ago, Carver said:

I would agree with you if every single window on the station weren't bullet-resistant glass with a layer of breach/fire shutters. Lasers as well are very, very prone to collateral damage - and can trivially break windows accidentally (or on purpose if you're using them wisely).

yeah that's true, good point 

[Colfer]

I can whole heartedly agree with this post in almost its entirety. I was playing as a raider and got shot TWO. TIMES. with a laser rifle as a unathi and my brain activity dropped to such incredibly low levels and the pain was so unbearably bad that I could not operate any machine in the game and my speed was reduced by upwards of 75%. 

It is honestly more survivable to be shot point blank in the head with buckshot from a shotgun than it is to get shot 3 times with a laser rifle in the foot, I haven't tested this but I'm almost 100% confident based on my experience.

Laser rifles should not do organ and blood boiling damage which is the main problem with them. The inital damage is survivable but extremely painful right now, its just the fact that getting hit once reduces your IQ by 38 points over the course of 40 seconds

[KingOfThePing]

15 hours ago, Colfer said:

I was playing as a raider

Most suprising thing I read so far, Colfer playing an actual character :^^^^^^^^^^^)

 

more seriously, I didnt know the numbers of burn and laser damage and it does sound ridiculous. A normal human has around 5-6 liters of blood. Instantly getting evaporized 15% of it equals would be ~750 ml just deleted from your body. You would have a lot of problems if that would happen. I know, I say it myself that real life cannot always be applied to SS13, I just wanted to say it for comparison. It should be nerfed a lot. I actually feel guns need a big balancing patch(tm) across the board probably. Maybe I look into this with the help of a coder.

[NotASpider]

+1

Since we're on 'realism' medical and not brute/burn/tox/suffocation medical I can make realism arguments. The whole evaporating blood thing is dumb as hell and shouldn't happen, not to mention that it makes blood and saline plus end-all-be-all solutions to basically every emergency. Burn shock irl is never an immediate problem, taking a few hours to manifest since your blood thickens as all the plasma gets funelled into the burns for healing. Maybe a slow blood/thirst drain with untreated burns? Something like a laser rifle especially would cauterize itself and cause no bleeding.

Electrical burns are a different story. Touching an airlock or exposed wire should absolutely cause organ damage - but not blood evaporating - since it basically cooks you from the inside out and can easily lead to toxin buildup (finally a use for dylovene!?) and necrosis. Not to mention how much an electric shock can fuck up your heart. As rare as it is ingame, being on fire or in fire should not only cause full body damage but lung damage as well since you're inhaling extremely hot air. And speaking of, severe burns from any source shouldn't cause pain because third degree and higher burns go deep enough to burn the nerves away. Going further, fourth degree burns should be instant necrosis if on the groin chest or head and require an amputation if on limbs.

I really don't see this causing too much of an upset in terms of medical, since ballistics already require surgery in most cases with arterials and shrapnel removal. Maybe even bring back the cryo tubes to quickly heal the surface injuries and slow down the onset/progression of internal injuries instead of "hahaha IV go brrrrrr" for everything.

/medbay main tears

Edited November 22, 2021 by NotASpider
clarity

[stev]

Quick disclaimer: I've been inactive for a month or two, I'm not 100% up to date on specific current values and stuff, but these complaints seem to be identical to ones I made when I was last active so, like, whatever.

 

I think some of the perceived issue with burn damage being overwhelmingly powerful is in large part due to laser rifles being overwhelmingly powerful.

Laser rifles fill almost every conceivable niche that you'll need as Security (or any other combat-oriented role/antag, for that matter), bar non-lethal capabilities, though even that is somewhat mitigated by the fact that situations frequently escalate right from standard green alert to full lethals with little in-between. The laser rifle, in comparison to the rest of the armoury, is:

• The weapon with the highest (read: best) shot capacity and ammo availability; at around 15 shots its shot capacity outclasses everything else in the armoury except .45s and shotguns, but that carries the extra difficulties of managing magazines or boxes/piles of shells.
• The weapon with the highest straight damage output; its pure damage value is by far the highest of anything in the armoury, as well as being of a particularly potent damage type (see the rest of the thread). You could argue that shotgun slugs are equivalent or even better in this regard, but this requires printing from outside the armoury and is generally hard to get in many situations.
• The weapon with the best armour penetration in the game, bar hyper-specific rare examples like x-ray rifles or literal anti-tank guns. It can pierce through almost any armour in the game and, given its already extremely potent damage, renders most armour kind of useless against it.
• One of the better choices for tactical flexibility, i.e. its ability to shoot through windows safe from retaliation unless the enemy also has a laser weapon; this is the rare case that the laser rifle is equivalent to something else stocked in the armoury on any level, as the laser carbine can also shoot through windows with its lethal mode. While this can encourage clever tactics on the part of Security to take advantage of this, this also sometimes leads to one-sided engagements where a poorly-equipped antag or team of antags is unable to fire back through windows, rendering them largely helpless. Other specialised weapons (mainly snipers of various types) have some tactical advantage over laser rifles, primarily through cross-screen range or explosives, but these are either rare, expensive, highly specialised into one function, or a combination thereof.

Now any of these advantages would be fine in and of themselves, if they were a particular advantage of a specialised weapon designed for a specific task. The laser rifle, however, is either the single best in the armoury or a shared best with another armoury weapon, not to mention that it's often equivalent to some of the best weapons in the game in many areas, full stop. It is also good for some of these niches to be filled by armoury equipment, as that gives Security some options and flexibility. This leads to it being the weapon of choice for almost any scenario outside of non-lethals, meaning it gets deployed in almost every situation.

The laser rifle is both a jack of all trades all-rounder weapon and also one of the strongest weapons around in almost every metric by which we can judge weapons.

I've often heard the argument that the laser rifle's power is necessary because Security needs something to pierce heavy armour, otherwise a heavily-armoured antag can just run roughshod over everything with barely a fight. My suggestion to fix this, then, is to lean into that niche: Make the laser rifle a specialised anti-armour weapon for dealing with heavily-armoured antags, but make it less overwhelmingly strong in other areas to compensate - for example, keep its high armour penetration and high per-shot damage but heavily reduce shot capacity and maybe shot speed, making it inefficient for fighting less-armoured antags but still very good for its particular niche, allowing the laser carbine or .45 ballistic pistol to fill that medium armour lethal role. As well as making burns in general and the laser rifle in particular less horrible to deal with as an antag, this would also give other armoury weapons a chance to shine in their respective roles and encourages more interesting, flexible combat gameplay for Security.

 

Tl;dr: laser rifle op nerf pls noob wepon

Edited November 22, 2021 by stev

[Peppermint]

Bear in mind that overly nerfing the rifle - when pretty much everything else in the armory assuming you're not using slugs sucks bad in comparison - very much encourages cargo weapons to be bought which are way, way better than anything security has at round start. 

[Shadow7889]

100% agree. Burn damage has gotten very lethal. A nerf to the amount of blood lost per shot or maybe just switching the armory to full ballistics and leaving the rest to cargo to order if needed sounds cool. 

[Susan]

Conveniently, it is forgotten the laser rifle has already been nerfed. Twice. Both AP values and ammo capacity, as well as fire rate.

 

[Connorjg1]

20 minutes ago, Susan said:

Conveniently, it is forgotten the laser rifle has already been nerfed. Twice. Both AP values and ammo capacity, as well as fire rate.

 

Doesn't matter if it's been nerfed once or a million times in the past. If it's still too strong, it's still too strong. This is a discussion about the laser rifle as it stands currently.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Connorjg1

[Susan]

Yeah, that's the thing. It isn't. Cybs basically parroted everything I was going to say, but to reiterate:

It is the sole weapon security has that is at least partially effective, and thus you remember dying to it. Every time I get tickled by a 9mm and my body explodes in a shower of gore from my glass bones and paper skin, I remember how dangerous ballistic weapons are but they aren't so dangerous as to deserve a nerf. The wide variety of weapons antags have access to make it less likely to be singled out, whereas security only has rifles, carbines, or pistols, and two of those options are only effective in certain situations. Everyone cried about how lethal .45s were for unarmored antags when security had them standard issue. Moved to the armory and used less often, the complaining subsided. It is only due to the fact they are always prevalent that people recall being killed by them.

[Connorjg1]

2 minutes ago, Susan said:

Yeah, that's the thing. It isn't. Cybs basically parroted everything I was going to say, but to reiterate:

It is the sole weapon security has that is at least partially effective, and thus you remember dying to it. Every time I get tickled by a 9mm and my body explodes in a shower of gore from my glass bones and paper skin, I remember how dangerous ballistic weapons are but they aren't so dangerous as to deserve a nerf. The wide variety of weapons antags have access to make it less likely to be singled out, whereas security only has rifles, carbines, or pistols, and two of those options are only effective in certain situations. Everyone cried about how lethal .45s were for unarmored antags when security had them standard issue. Moved to the armory and used less often, the complaining subsided. It is only due to the fact they are always prevalent that people recall being killed by them.

Exploding into gore over a 9MM is a Tajara specific issue. It's one of the least damaging guns in the entire game and an average person can easily take a whole magazine of 9MM and be fine very quickly. 

 

The complaining regarding .45's only slightly died down when they were moved. For a long time they were still known as the "gun for when you really need to kill things" due to their high AP and damage. This only changed with the armor PR. 

 

Either way if Laser rifles were to be nerfed it would push towards buying cargo guns. Security would struggle against group antags without said cargo guns and this would be a bigger issue as they have a tendency to be broken powerful. It would shake things up but I'm not sure it would shake it up in a good direction. 

 

 

[Susan]

The point sailed so far over your head it's not even funny. For all the complaining antags do about the laser rifle, it is no different than how Tajara are laid out flat by ballistic weapons. I merely choose my engagements and position myself to minimize their danger to me. Antags in general seem to lack the presence of mind to perform this basic task. Even a 9mm on an unarmored human hitting the chest can damage your heart and kill you. It is why ballistics are so much more dangerous, and why you die more quickly and more often to them - again, people only remember lasers because the way they kill you is more long and drawn out as opposed to, say, 2 arterials, broken lungs, and a failing heart.

In the end, I find topics like this spurned not from mechanical disadvantage, but because antags seem to want everything for nothing. If a poorly equipped antag team is caught out and blasted to death through windows by security, then they should die. They failed to strategize and prepare for this. They put themselves in a bad position. Oft I have to wonder if these kinds of questions result from engagements where a solo antag decided to try and take on two officers with rifles, got bodied because they played poorly, and acted out the funny Principal Skinner meme:

Did I die because I was caught out and bit off more than I could chew? No, it's the laser rifle that's wrong.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Susan

[Roostercat]

Keep the discussion civil, please.

[Connorjg1]

15 minutes ago, Susan said:

The point sailed so far over your head it's not even funny. For all the complaining antags do about the laser rifle, it is no different than how Tajara are laid out flat by ballistic weapons. I merely choose my engagements and position myself to minimize their danger to me. Antags in general seem to lack the presence of mind to perform this basic task. Even a 9mm on an unarmored human hitting the chest can damage your heart and kill you. It is why ballistics are so much more dangerous, and why you die more quickly and more often to them - again, people only remember lasers because the way they kill you is more long and drawn out as opposed to, say, 2 arterials, broken lungs, and a failing heart.

In the end, I find topics like this spurned not from mechanical disadvantage, but because antags seem to want everything for nothing. If a poorly equipped antag team is caught out and blasted to death through windows by security, then they should die. They failed to strategize and prepare for this. They put themselves in a bad position. Oft I have to wonder if these kinds of questions result from engagements where a solo antag decided to try and take on two officers with rifles, got bodied because they played poorly, and acted out the funny Principal Skinner meme:

Did I die because I was caught out and bit off more than I could chew? No, it's the laser rifle that's wrong.

Comparing antag balance in firefights with playing a Tajara and being more susceptible to bullets is a ridiculous statement. 

 

Antags cannot go around "minimising the risk" all round if you want even vaguely interesting antags. Sure they could barricade themselves into a defensive position, sneak through maintenance and avoid all the windows but this does not lend to interesting engagements the majority of the time. Not to mention the laser rifle still has armor penetration so even if they do all these things no amount of armor will save them from getting shot. Antags shouldn't have to play to win. It's the rounds they do that are the ones that get complained about the most.