Limit Sana Injectors

[CampinKiller]

Yeah basically what the title says, except I don't know how to spell sanasonium(?). It should be limited for mercs at the very least to no more than 1 per uplink, though I would go so far as to say it shouldn't be in the merc uplink at all, but rather a limited amount they spawn with (2-3). Pretty sure this is already being looked at after the round earlier today, but suffice to say allowing offstations like mercs access to a nearly endless supply of the equivalent of quick revive is not balanced.

[ClemTheDuck]

i do agree, it feels like giving them a limit like you said to just one each would emphasise that its an emergency tool to give them a second chance. Mercs already have a lot going for them including their own teammates anyways.

[Triogenix]

I also support this. Not for balance, but because it is unfun to have to fight the same person more then 2-3 times because they managed to get away and inject themselves. I believe that mercs and other antags defiantly need Sana injectors, or something like them because they don't have a full department backing them up when it comes to medical issues, but having it as it is now can lead to super frustrating situations where security just ends up dead-checking every hostile.

[kyres1]

4 hours ago, Triogenix said:

I also support this. Not for balance, but because it is unfun to have to fight the same person more then 2-3 times because they managed to get away and inject themselves. I believe that mercs and other antags defiantly need Sana injectors, or something like them because they don't have a full department backing them up when it comes to medical issues, but having it as it is now can lead to super frustrating situations where security just ends up dead-checking every hostile.

This pretty much accurately summarizes the experience I felt having to repeatedly use sana to counteract quick game-overs in a round last night (which I believe led to this post.) While the sanasomnum injectors, to me, really felt essential if I wanted to get around whatsoever, it became trying to strike a balance between having reasonable enough goals to try and carry out when faced with being conventionally unkillable. Three of my teammates ended up headgibbed at the end of the day, and using one of their uplinks, things got even crazier because I was able to use seven telecrystals to even greater effect. At that point, the snowball of the sanasomnum ended up having me reduce my objectives to "gather corpses and leave," because the volume of ballistics in crew hands (especially after killing the other mercs) meant every engagement afterwards would promptly result in a sanasomnum stop somewhere in maintenance. It wasn't fun for anybody involved and it was nobody's fault.

Basically, sanasomnum may seem essential to antagonist players but actually holds them back because it produces a get-out-of-jail-free card that can be hidden and used any time, many times. For something to provide second chances to mercenaries, much less far more vulnerable antagonists such as traitors, it's best to make what it is abundantly clear so the crew can expect more difficulty and adjust accordingly, as opposed to just dying. Armor once functioned to a similar hypothetical degree ; Breachers used to be very very scary. I do not know precisely how strong they are now, but seeing a breacher used to be a certain crew wipe if people didn't coordinate, not just meaning security but everybody if the Unathi chose. It's like bringing in a tank, which is super intimidating and insurmountable at first, but with coordination and a plan you could defeat it. Breachers, in this case, just needed freeze rays followed by an excessive amount of bullets, though on the Aurora armory that was very difficult to come by. The takeaway being you needed to know you were fighting a tank for this to actually happen. If the Breacher was invisible, you were just fucked, similarly to how sana is working out right now.

This leads me to think it should be capped at one or two purchases, or at least expensive enough to bar repetitive buys. A clever way of doing it would be making its price six telecrystals - therefore, mercenaries and ninjas could only buy two, but weaker antagonists like burglars and traitors could buy three if they saved 18 telecrystals for whatever reason. The same goes for adjusting it to nine, because then mercs could only buy one, but burgs/tators two, which makes more sense honestly (but does make it very expensive for traitors.)

An alternative to the necessary "second chance" would just need to be something apparent. Anything from a two-handed impervious front facing shield to an unarmed protective brick works, as long as it makes surviving less inhumanly difficult but not character breaking to counter. While I'm not gonna use this suggestion thread to propose that, I just mean to say that there's probably alternatives that work besides sanasomnum functionally.

 

Edit : I forgor how easy it would be, so I just adjusted the price myself. The PR is here and links back to this thread ;

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/15055

Double edit : I closed the PR because dreamy has a better PR up with the framework to make it better easier (I am very intelligent) so I'll do it with that after it's merged optimally

Edited November 8, 2022 by kyres1
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