Quadruple(or more) all gun/projectile damage

[kyres1]

What the title says. We've finally gotten to the point where I feel medical and round-by-round things have stabilized consistently enough to warrant major gameplay changes like this, so I think now's a good as time as any to see how the players would handle being given a more believable and highly cruel system of firefights.

Some things to preface this :

The PR being up does not guarantee this will get merged or even test merged - this is not my decision whatsoever

The PR is proposed as a TEST and be test merged in ways we can hopefully plan to monitor or glean feedback better later, if it's even considered

With that said, this thread is here for a few reasons; to get feedback for the values I'm proposing, to focus feedback on the idea to me, and to test the waters to see how reactions on this generally go.

These values in of themselves are also absurd by ingame damage standards; most singular shots, if hitting something critical, are going to be fatal without heavy armor to absorb or soften the blow. This means that, if the PR itself has remotely accurate numbers, things may be a little weird as far as damage goes; after all, I'm not a coder.

All of this also operates on the best faith assumption possible. The obvious intent behind a test merge should also not ignore the fact that people might just abuse these damage modifications and we'll see utterly ridiculous levels of ganking - that's not optimistic, but it's definitely a possibility, further reinforcing that this really should be taken as a simple idea and nothing more.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/16653

Edited July 8, 2023 by kyres1

[Roostercat]

Willing to try it, but I am PRETTY SURE this will result in comically fast antag deaths or security wipes.

[Kintsugi]

It seems like this PR doesn't change the armor values of everything to compensate. This means armor will be functionally useless.

[kyres1]

14 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

It seems like this PR doesn't change the armor values of everything to compensate. This means armor will be functionally useless.

I need to look at this later in more detail

[ClemTheDuck]

i feel as though if armour is changed to compensate, then this will only serve to make unarmoured combat much much much more deadly which negatively benefits antags like ling, vamp, and traitor. Only other thing i can see this doing is turning every fight into a slog since the increased damage will mean longer trips to the medbay and longer stays in the surgery box which is just not enjoyable.

[Evandorf]

Tell me you don’t like melee combat without telling me you don’t like melee combat. 
 

I’m joking but in all seriousness, if we boost projectile damage I would seriously consider adding or changing items to block them entirely. For example, making combat energy shields have a very high block chance for all projectiles and make them available on uplinks, or improving the personal shield item, giving vamps innate dmg resist as they grow in power, natural armor purchases for ling, ect. 

[Peppermint]

I'm a big fan of more lethal combat. Would be cool to at least test it and see what happens. My only worry would be making it too lethal to the point medical can never do anything.

[OolongCow]

As is, pointmed is basically irrelevant (and possibly? on the way out), while quadrupling damage numbers could severely warp things that actually matter to combat like organ damage, delimbs, etc, in unforseen ways. Sec having their totally unarmored hands shot into gore by the first bullet larger than a pistol round that hits them, REQUIRING a surgeon and mechanical limb replacement and utterly gimping them from fighting back, for example.

I personally feel like combat is fairly balanced with the possible exception of how much pain wounds cause. It feels like the first few hits do nothing, until you hit a critical threshold of pain and just become a useless ragdoll. I'd honestly suggest smoothing out that curve, with more "tiers" of slowdown and distress. Maybe make injuries cause a higher level of pain, and nerf (easily available) painkillers so John Sol on 10 units of perconol doesn't run around with five sucking chest wounds until immediately dropping to the floor and quickly dying of 10% blood oxygenation.

Also yes, this change would be a very bad idea to implement without armor buffs, for literally everyone.

[Carver]

This just makes every antag but mercenary non-viable while also making the existence of anyone but antagonists or security utterly miserable in a bad situation. I don't really see what's fun about this, 'man with gun' is already dominant in most cases due to the server's reasonable movespeeds compared to alternatives. You don't need to make 'man with gun' the absolute focal point to where I see a man with a gun and I have to more or less be sure to shoot him first without giving him any chances - lest he do the same and immediately end my round.

There's already an inherent problem with security shutting down most antagonists, this isn't going to help unarmoured or melee antagonists whatsoever. Will changeling armblades one-hit decapitate anything short of a hardsuit or riot helmet? Will energy swords one-hit delimb? What of Technomancers who are already glass cannons trivially capable of being ended?

The last thing the server needs is either of the two logical conclusions of this: 'Shoot first' or 'Never shoot first in fear of being banned'.

[OolongCow]

Also, a reminder that currently red grabs give a 2.5x multiplier to damage done, and ashing people's head is consistently done in two shots with a standard laser rifle. This proposition as is would add instant, permanent kills if you click someone while aiming head twice.

[WickedCybs]

Fundamentally do not agree with this PR on every level and the problems are evident enough that a test merge doesn't seem reasonable as it is now. That said, if it's being test merged regardless then armour needs to be touched, otherwise it's going to be mechanically better to go with nothing in all cases and melee damage should be heavily increased to compensate too, because I don't really think it's going to be fair in the least for this "lethality" increase to only go one way.

[geeves]

i would like to see this testmerged for a couple days to see how it handles

[Sparky_hotdog]

I can't really comment on values and how armour needs adjusted, but as a fairly long time on-off medical main, I would definitely would like to see more lethal combat - I miss the stress that came with more patients being in an actually critical condition. My only concern would be that, rather than increase the number of people who end up in that sweet spot between 'basically stable with a single injection' and 'so fucked by the time a responder arrives there is nothing we can do', it might just push more people into the latter category. Regardless, I would like to see it tested.

[Zelmana]

I shot a vampire with a shotgun from 2 tiles about 6 times, and then from point blank an additional 7 times or so (maybe 6).
They were still alive. I'm not sure the extent of their vamp healing, but it seemed excessive considering I was mouth-aiming and unloading shells into their face directly.

Just an anecdote. I ended up switching to a crowbar to finish it off. In all honesty, it seemed as though my crowbar was doing more work than my damn shotgun at point blank to the face.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Zelmana

[Fluffy]

I don't think this will go well, but as usual I am down to try it with a testmerge, so we can talk with some experience at hand

[Jasorn]

ready to get tarkov'd (head, eyes)

[CampinKiller]

What cybs said. I’m not a fan of this already, but armor at least needs to be touched as well. I feel like this is going to just increase ambushes where people are lightly armored (or not at all) and just cause people to get steam rolled and 1 shot

[DickFreedomJohnson]

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I've always been a fan of lethal gunplay I would LOVE to see this test merged HOWEVER I have a few issues

1, obviously the armor shit people have been talking about.
2, With more lethal gunplay there is less time to talk/rp during a fight. (Example, somebody getting riddled with bullets and surrendering, Usually I've seen people honor speech bubbles as a time to not shoot but holy shit will ganking be easier.) 
3, Player skill balance, people that have been playing for years and are well experienced with the ROBUST combat system ss13 has will for obvious reasons absolutely steamroll newer players if firearms are made more lethal. I know this'll probably net a ton of >skill issue responses but it doesn't change that it'll make Security/antag gameplay absolutely more vicious to get new players into and that might make it more frustrating for newer players.

I would like to propose an idea of a surrender button that makes you drop whatever is in your hands and gives an emote that raises your hands as a counter balance for those that would like to surrender but not get gunned down by a hail of bullets.

 

[Boggle08]

This is going to do weird things to medical, if implemented as is, in the long run. Medical does have enough of a groove now to keep most of their patients stable, even under intense pressure/gaps in specialized staff, but making everything flatly more lethal is just going to raise the skill floor and the expectations from medical over time. Knowing how medical behaves, there'll be a period where more people are declared dead in the sensors console, then the meta will adapt to meet the demands of the additional lethality. 

On the whole though, I'm very wary of anything that dramatically bumps up the lethality or TTK of combat, because it starts to resemble stun combat that skips over the stun part and just kills you. I'm also not a fan of anything that makes the disparity between regular crew VS. security/antagonists wider. I don't care how true to life it is, no one likes playing as a GTA Bystander NPC.

I still think the test is a great idea, though. I disagree with the current implementation as a final product, but something like it could introduce more variation into round outcomes.

 

[Garnascus]

On 07/07/2023 at 20:18, kyres1 said:

What the title says. We've finally gotten to the point where I feel medical and round-by-round things have stabilized consistently enough to warrant major gameplay changes like this, so I think now's a good as time as any to see how the players would handle being given a more believable and highly cruel system of firefights.

To what end? How does this benefit us?

I think any increase in the lethality of combat is going to be a net buff to security and the crew and a net nerf to antagonists. Security and the crew have the advantage of ship resources to rely on where antagonists have to steal or capture them. Security can get healed in medical and still return to the fight, antagonists cannot. Security is overall too strong as it is. I do however think combat is too safe at this moment. You can survive for far far too long bleeding out and still get healed in medical. I am not against a more nuanced update to combat and its lethality. 

-1 at this time.

[Boggle08]

11 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

I think any increase in the lethality of combat is going to be a net buff to security and the crew and a net nerf to antagonists.

It's a net nerf to the crew as well, in my view. This makes a matchup between antag vs crew more skewed, which becomes exacerbated when you introduce conditions such as population size or a lack of command/security to act as a buffer. The survival rate of hostages will certainly plummet.

[Garnascus]

8 minutes ago, Boggle08 said:

It's a net nerf to the crew as well, in my view. This makes a matchup between antag vs crew more skewed, which becomes exacerbated when you introduce conditions such as population size or a lack of command/security to act as a buffer. The survival rate of hostages will certainly plummet.

Completely agree and i think its also something we should consider. 

[EJJ]

Adding my one cent to this. My main issue stands with:

What's the point of upping damage if we're just going to up armor to make the future damage more or less the same as it is now? After this all that'll happen is if someone shoots into a crowd and hits you too many times you fall over and die if you aren't wearing armor. If we're going to do this all sec chars are going to be wearing full basic armor all shift with their helmet in their bag just to avoid getting ganked. There'll basically be no real reason to play a sec char who wears something besides the vest.

If the issue is antags/sec surviving confrontations then maybe add a mechanical recovery period after surgery or something else?

[OolongCow]

I don't think many people are taking notice of what I pointed out earlier.

You can currently ash unprotected heads in two shots if the person is redgrabbed. And that's only a 2.5x modifier. You can likely ash someone's head, from range and through a helmet, if this is testmerged. Which is an instant and permanent kill that medical has no interaction with.

Why is anyone even entertaining this idea if something this obvious wasn't addressed?

Edited July 11, 2023 by OolongCow

[Rookie Eyes]

I agree that combat should feel more dangerous, and punishing; however, I don't think the answer is to make it more immediately lethal. I don't think it's fun for anyone to get clicked into a twenty minute wait, clicked into lying-on-a-surgery-table-for-the-rest-of-the-round-RP, or to have other types of RP interrupted by trigger happy antags/security. I'd be more in favor of what Oolong suggested, or something similar.

On 07/07/2023 at 20:54, OolongCow said:

It feels like the first few hits do nothing, until you hit a critical threshold of pain and just become a useless ragdoll. I'd honestly suggest smoothing out that curve, with more "tiers" of slowdown and distress. Maybe make injuries cause a higher level of pain, and nerf (easily available) painkillers so John Sol on 10 units of perconol doesn't run around with five sucking chest wounds until immediately dropping to the floor and quickly dying of 10% blood oxygenation.

Also yes, this change would be a very bad idea to implement without armor buffs, for literally everyone.