nerf burn damage

[Scheveningen]

All four damage types in-game are individually deadly in their own right. Not to mention extremely balanced at their current state, not imbalanced. The unforgiving and brutal nature of the medical system is ironically fun and fair in itself.

[Colfer]

17 hours ago, Susan said:

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.

If a moderately equipped security team is caught out by a heavily armed mercenary team and blasted, they should die as well, right? Well they do not because the laser rifle is objectively better in almost every single circumstance and situation in the game as of right now. They don't need to strategize and prepare for the mercs, they can just point and shoot and also win.
Only a few security officers will die in a heavily armed mercs vs moderately armed security fight, due to the fact that security has an objectively superior weapon in all aspects.

Laser weapons are a catch all and have nearly no disadvantage to any other weapon in my known memory that is easily obtainable without special or circumstantial conditions

Edited November 23, 2021 by Colfer

[Rabid Animal]

The power creep that security has, in general, is atrocious - and as Colfer mentioned: a reasonably populated security department doesn't need a strategy to win every confrontation, yes every. Huge part of that is the laser guns, though I think combat in general could use a good looking at - nerfing the blood boil and pain seems to be a very good first step for laser guns. No one said they can't be lethal, but as mentioned, it's a bit atrocious for them to be able to two shot someone into pain crit.

[WickedCybs]

6 hours ago, Colfer said:

If a moderately equipped security team is caught out by a heavily armed mercenary team and blasted, they should die as well, right? Well they do not because the laser rifle is objectively better in almost every single circumstance and situation in the game as of right now. They don't need to strategize and prepare for the mercs, they can just point and shoot and also win.
Only a few security officers will die in a heavily armed mercs vs moderately armed security fight, due to the fact that security has an objectively superior weapon in all aspects.

Laser weapons are a catch all and have nearly no disadvantage to any other weapon in my known memory that is easily obtainable without special or circumstantial conditions

I clipped a very bad video of the use of an assault rifle mercs get and a laser rifle sec get. These are on dolls, so it's a little different but roughly we'd see the same performance here. 

Not surprisingly, the assault rifle ends up killing very quickly. Mercenaries get two. It's reloadable, can fire faster and has multiple firing modes. You do frankly need some kind of plan most of the time to deal with it, even with laser rifles which are also the only actual tool that has any effect on mercenaries playing traditionally. The paincrit only really starts to happen on the third to fourth laser rifle shot. I think anyone that's actually played sec or merc already knows this though.

While the laser rifle is balanced around the most dangerous threats while still not giving sec the upper hand in those situations, it is oppressive on smaller scale antags. Which is why I only really agree that the pain and blood boil is an issue.

Edited November 24, 2021 by WickedCybs
extra

[Triogenix]

I think people are getting very hung up on laser rifles vs ballistic rifles and what not, when it shouldn't really matter to the discussion. The main issue for me is not about balance between security and antagonists or balance of combat in general, but the fact that burn damage is much more debilitating then any other common damage types. This is because when burn damage is taken, pain, blood loss, and the burn damage itself is immediately applied, rather then having it happen overtime as with bleeding or losing air. This means that burn damage itself, not laser rifles or w/e thing people want to complain about, is unbalanced when compared to the other damage types at a baseline. They start to become more balanced with high-level combat gear as @WickedCybs pointed out in their post, which is good, because  any high damage, regardless of type, bullets swords or lasers, should be deadly, but the issue with burn damage specifically is that; Even at lower damage numbers, it is much more debilitating then oxygenation, brute or even toxin damage.

 

As for how to fix it, I'm not a developer, and it is hard for me to input specifics, but the general idea  I think is that burn damage should not also do 2 other damage types instantaneously, even at low damage numbers,  as well as organ damage if it's applied to areas with organs(though I'm unsure if that's a laser specific thing). Removing blood boil would be a good step towards this, or even making it somehow damage over time as is seen in normal bleeding, with the rate at which it boils off scaling with the total damage taken to the part like with brute damage, and being able to stop it with bandages. 

Edited November 26, 2021 by Triogenix

[TrainTN]

Drastically reducing the blood boil aspect of burn damage seems like a fair idea to me. Maybe even remove it entirely if others think it's good to go that far.

[Gangstafary]

After having read most of the comments in the post I think that the most frequent common ground is reducing the blood boil and excessive pain that comes with it, which I support too. I think the previous nerfs to the laser rifle can be enough or slightly tweaked by just slowing down with BB and the pain given, currently it makes too much of an impediment.

[MattAtlas]

I'm not sure I'd approve of only nerfing laser rifles. I think it's better to give security alternatives to the laser rifle, first of all, that don't force them to use lasrifles on solo antags - carbines are not an option as they suck both stylistically and physically. Some sort of AP stun gun needs to be added, is my thinking.

Add another lethal gun and only then can you nerf lasrifles. Because they're meant to be powerful enough to allow security to go head to toe with mercs, otherwise it'd be a stomp, as merc assault rifles are ridiculously powerful - so much more powerful than laser rifles that it isn't even funny. And mercs can buy laser rifles off the uplink to just bypass the one counter to ARs which is ballistic armor.

Additionally, some self-healing may need to be added to the uplink.

[Shadow7889]

Just removing or nerfing the blood boil of burns would be acceptable at this rate. It's extremely lethal beyond what laser rifles already do. 

[Butterrobber202]

I've also been talked down into the "remove blood boil" mindset. Or bare minimum just heavily reducing the amount of blood boiled.