Aurora's Security Dilemma - A Cautious Balancing Suggestion Regarding The Armory

[icedcabbage]

Introduction

After an hour long discussion of the issue, I thought it would be best to create suggestion topic in order to better organize feedback, as the discussion grew to be sprawling. First though, what is Aurora's Security Dilemma? For the purposes of this suggestion, it is the careful balancing act that exists between Security and Antags. Give Security too much  (or this case too powerful) equipment, and rounds that create conflict often result in Security destroying the antagonist, potentially limiting the ability for a gimmick to be completed, stifling the broader interaction between the Antag and Crew outside of Security. Give Security too little, and it becomes ineffective, unable to tangibly effect the round.

 

 I will present three broad topics discussed extensively in Discord.

• The Effect of a Powerful Security On Round Progression

Security is in a unique position on Aurora as being on the forefront of Antag Interaction. Therefore, the ability of Security to 'end' the gimmick is greater than any other department. Ending a gimmick too early prevents the broader Crew (i.e. the majority of players) from enjoying the fun stories antagonist bring to the table, making rounds less engaging than they could be. When Security is too powerful, any hostile interaction becomes the end of the gimmick unless it is Group Antagonist or they pull an amazing display of robustness. This is, in my opinion, part of the reason On-Ship antagonists are favored far less than Off-Ship Group Antagonists. Not only are Group Antagonists less stressful, they provide a better opportunity for delivering a gimmick to the Whole Crew, not just Security. By making Security slightly less powerful on their own, 'weaker' antagonists can reach the crew with their gimmicks.

• Security Armor - In particular, Heavy Armor

It is not understatement that the Armory Armor Security has access to is powerful. While Ablative, Ballistic, and Riot all serve niche roles, providing extensive protection against specific damages, Heavy Armor stands above the rest, its high, and more general, protection values make it the best choice in most situations. This armor is so effective that I have made myself avoid using any of these specialized armors. In my experience while wearing Heavy armor, I could be shot three times and not need any medical attention. Not only does this present a balancing issue in the pure mechanics of combat, but it removes many stakes from firefights and reduces the need for cooperation between Security and Medical. I believe that reducing this kind of group teamwork makes for a less fun game, let alone less tense. This same situation plays out when the Antagonist only has ballistic weapons, as Ballistic Armor makes the average Mall Cop immune to the idea of bullets.

• Security's access too many powerful weapons, nullifying the need for Inter-Departmental cooperation

Security has access to: One PEAC,  Four .45s, Two Machine Pistols, Two Energy Carbines, Two Laser Rifles, Two Shotguns, and Two Ballistic Rifles, a grand total of Fifteen Separate Guns along with ammunition. This is not say that there should be a reduction in the variety of fun weapons and equipment Security can use, only that perhaps some weapons should have to be ordered from Operations, produced by Research, or Assembled by Engineering. The fact that Security has access to so much eliminates the need to work with any of these other departments in all but the most dangerous situations. This is truly sad, and I would go far as to say giving Security too many weapons has actually reduced the variety of equipment they can enjoy. With less guns in the Armory, Security will be forced to try those experimental lasers Research has spent the round on, or work with the Machinist for a kick-ass exosuit, or chat with Operations for that Orion Express Gun Delivery, or even beg Engineering to assemble some firearms to bridge that deficit. Security having so weapons gives us less roleplay, less teamwork, and worst of all... less fun

 

Conclusion (The Actual Suggestion)

Although my opinion is always subject the change, my current cautious suggestion for The Armory is to tweak the armor values of Security's powerful array of specialized armors to allow more damage to go through, there-by increasing injuries and raising the stakes of being shot by an actual bullet. Further, and I admit this is more contentious, cutting the amount of weaponry (with the exception of small arms) in half, forcing Security to make a choice either accept less effective weaponry or go outside and mingle with the other departments for advanced and powerful equipment (I know, this would be a horrid reality).

 

Since this is the beginnings of my cautious suggestion, I encourage feedback to better refine my broad goals into a more realistic and effective solution to the current Security Situation. I hope through careful balancing we can foster more roleplay, and interaction between players and the various departments.

Edited May 8 by icedcabbage
Correcting Weapon Count....

[LynxSolstice]

You made a mistake in the above post, it's actually four .45s, bring it to an actual grand total of fifteen entire separate weapons and an absolute avalanche of available ammunition.

[ClemTheDuck]

Im going to say this as someone who played when security had only 2 laser rifles and e carbines as primary weapons. I do not want to go back to that era. 

From a balance standpoint, the armoury is not the big issue with antag/sec balance. Besides the specialised armour, Security has 2 sets of corporate heavy armour, which have identical protection values to the heavy armour that is available to all uplink antags. On the weapons side, you have 4 weapons with reliable damage and AP at any range, Laser rifles and Burst rifles. On a damage level, a burst rifle firing 5.56 polymer only does a maximum of 15dmg through heavy armour, this is less damage than a 9mm round to an unarmoured target. Laser rifles can do a flat 18 damage through heavy armour, still less than 9mm to an unarmoured target. Compare this to 7.62 ammo, which all uplink antags have access too (mercs get 2 7.62 ARs for free and most military style gear crates give one). 7.62 ammo does around 18-19dmg per shot against heavy armour. While the difference is only really 3 points, ARs also have the ability to go full auto, which drastically ups the DPS and effectiveness compared to the two round burst of a Burst rifle. 

The existence of specialised armours does negate most of the damage for their respective type while leaving the wearer open fully to others. I would honestly say that ballistic armour is more oppressive than coporate heavy in most practical situations, due to its protection from bullets which most antags have easy access to. Ballistic armour being able to drop a 7.62 round to just 7-8 dmg. 

While on the topic of weapons, besides the burst and laser rifles, security also has access to the 9mm machine pistols, .45s, e carbines, and shotguns. Shotguns aside for now if we look at the performance of 9mm, .45 and the e carbine lethal laser we see that the only one with appreciable AP is 9mm with 15ap. Against STANDARD security plate carriers as well as any combat voidsuit (think sol gargoyle, CoC vulture, zavod, etc), 9mm will do around 5-6 dmg per shot. Against heavy armour which traitors and mercs have access to, 9mm .45 do ~3.5 and ~5.7 dmg respectively. E carbines do around 6dmg to heavy armour users. While shotgun buckshot can do up to 80 dmg, in point blank range to an unarmoured target, it also requires the user to enter point blank range. 

The main point being made here is that the armoury weapons are not really in any way ultra powerful when compared to the weapons easily accessable to any uplink antag. However I do want to point out one big difference that ususally tips the scale for security vs merc encounters is logistical support, either from medical or engineering. For traitors and other onship antags alot of their problems isnt really weapons and armour, but numbers. Even with an LMG and heavy armour, if four people with rifles run up on you, you will very likely die.

Overall however, i personally believe that instead of removing things we should improve more on the tools and equipment given to antags. If the issue is that antags are feeling oppressed by dying in firefights and haveing to constantly be wary of being caught out, we should give them more tools to escape, and increase survivability. The addition of Sanna, the healing chem was a step in this direction allowing antags to heal from grievous wounds provided they can escape into saftey for a small amount of time. More additions like this, and more additions to support this would be much more effective at giving antags more breathing room for gimmicks. 

 

[SpookyCactus]

Hey! As someone who mostly plays investigator roles, i dont have as much experience with the weapons and stuff, but what I do have is experience with the armor. I think you made some really great points about how strong the armor sec gets is, and imo at least, it ends up leading to sec offs just kinda chucking themselves at combat as soon as they can, as opposed to making well thought out plans or using any real teamwork.

[Rabid Animal]

There's been a balancing war going on for sometime. Antags get buffed with better equipment, security gets stomped, and then security gets buffed as well. Rinse repeat for many years. Unfortunately this has made solo or ship antags remarkably unfun as the arms race excludes them entirely and the game becomes comically deadly for everyone. The solution here is a debuff, the game was more fun when security didn't get ballistics because guess what? They didn't get to just erase antags with essentially no effort. Strategy and planning was involved, antags of all kinds actually had a chance. 

 

Consider that security has a ton of support from an entire station, that the antag is often 1-5 against 20+. As long as medical exists, security has an extreme advantage not only in arms but in survivability. This lowers interaction with the whole crew because the ISD monopolizes the antag in that if the antag tries anything else they're fucked. This is why security is the most played department, people crave interaction. This is also why every new mode added in the last few years have been a team mode(something I'd actually vote to remove many of or consolidate into mercs, but that's another topic), solo just cannot work with the current balancing.

 

So yeah, in my opinion both armouries shouldn't have ballistics period. It was balanced this way in the very beginning to offset the disadvantage antags had with medical support, and it makes some degree of sense to not casually equip a civilian ship with tons of ballistics because guess what? We're in space? As much fun as accidentally blowing a hole in the hull or having a  bullet ricochet 600 times into some assistant, it's much safer to use laser weaponry - which is effective in its own ways. (If for some reason you need a RP justification, though I think the balance argument is more than enough) I also think ballistics should do less damage overall, return us to an older era where combat wasn't as deadly. Where there was more of a chance to get up and walk away to plan a different angle of attack. To involve more crew. 

 

In debuffing security you open avenues for other departments to shine. Engineering can set up an elaborate barricade. Science can hand out tools not normally available or even seen 99% of the time. Cargo can order that specialized weaponry we just happen to have already. Bring players back to the other departments, the ones that have become stagnant and boring after so many years of being excluded from this arms race.

[Jaeger Brothers]

1 hour ago, Rabid Animal said:

So yeah, in my opinion both armouries shouldn't have ballistics period.

I mean, Most of my charachters perfer laser weaponary then ballistics and the diffrence is they don't have a High delay and as said do more AP and absolutely Singe the antag even giving them hard to repair damage since they have to recover the inevitable blood lost when you get hit with a Laser for comparison I shot an Antag ONCE and he was falling over for the entire rest of the round until he was arrested and brought to medical, Lasers are more effective then Ballistics they get balanced out by the short magazine size, hell powerful laser weapons like LWAP can Disable an Entire exosuit if used correctly.

 

1 hour ago, Rabid Animal said:

As much fun as accidentally blowing a hole in the hull or having a  bullet ricochet 600 times into some assistant

Now, that is why we are using an Intermidiate Poly 5.56 Cartridge in the first place since 5.56 doesn't have much Overpen atleast not on a Steel wall and a bullet after richoet tends to not cause the same amount of damage as if it came straight out of the barrel. 

what I want to say is the choice between Laser- and a Ballistic Rifle is down to prefrence since I haven't seen one Lord over the other Balance wise.

and personnaly , we are balanced for the worst possible situation like Mercs which can Still wipe security if done well due to them getting fully automatic guns with 7.62 and more often then not some kind of thermal Vision. 

I think the armory should have more options for Lighter threats instead the Big Bulky heavy armor and rifles only being Reserved for High Risk Situations and there is just a Low risk section that would be applicable to most situations it having like maybe a Tranquilizer rifle and all of it being Non-lethal or Less-lethal options like rubber rifle ammo or a Stun orientated Laser rifle with okay armor pen that cause mostly pain.

and lethal ammo only being used when the antags running Heavy Armor full sized rifle or a Full merc team deciding to roll up and steal Ian forcefully or something along those lines. 

The rant is Lethals as LAST option even after the Exosuits and Hardsuits have been brought out they should get more non-lethal options too other then the taser on the Exosuit and Ecarbine on the hardsuit (maybe a tranquilizer dart?)

Edited May 8 by Jaeger Brothers

[Rabid Animal]

13 minutes ago, Jaeger Brothers said:

what I want to say is the choice between Laser- and a Ballistic Rifle is down to prefrence since I haven't seen one Lord over the other Balance wise.

Ballistics create shrapnel which is much harder to recover from, on top of the active bleeding opposed to just some degree of blood boil. Don't get me wrong, lasers do too much damage as well, but that doesn't mean they're less powerful than ballistics in most scenarios. 

 

15 minutes ago, Jaeger Brothers said:

I think the armory should have more options for Lighter threats instead the Big Bulky heavy armor and rifles only being Reserved for High Risk Situations and there is just a Low risk section that would be applicable to most situations it having like maybe a Tranquilizer rifle and all of it being Non-lethal or Less-lethal options like rubber rifle ammo or a Stun orientated Laser rifle with okay armor pen that cause mostly pain.

The issue I see with this is that these weapons will often not be used in favor of jumping straight to the lethals, security already has non-leathal weaponry at its disposal. Flashes, flashbangs, stun guns, etc that barely see use. If the suggestion here was to remove the hard hitting stuff in exchange for rubbers and etc then yeah, I'd be down for it; but thats not it. Security has so much at their disposal that it is almost pointless to involve outside departments, this was a major point I was trying to make above, giving them anything more just detracts from that even more.

The horizon feels more and more like a larp vessel as we go on, if I wanted milrp I would play torch or CM. The only reason aurora had any draw for me, and I assume others, was because it still had a civilian feel to things, this has been chipped away by the current state of security and how events are handled. Once again; see this in action by how the populations of every dept out of security just dwindles more and more as time goes on. The SCC needs to decide what its special snowflake ship is actually for and commit one way or another, and my vote is to debuff sec and let the solo antags actually be fun again. 

[Jaeger Brothers]

5 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

security already has non-leathal weaponry at its disposal.

What I mean by this is VIABLE non-lethal weaponary even when used against armored targets since all of our Non or less Lethal options can be damn easily Negated with flashbangs you just pop your sunglasses with extra features stingers are a good less-then lethal option for ANY situation that's what I like about them but I see the point you are making lone-antagging is damn hard even if you are pretty robust and know what you are doing.

 

10 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

often not be used in favor of jumping straight to the lethals

This is just a suggestion that was on my mind, the warden could access the Less and non-lethal weponary while the Lethal ones were barred and only acquireable with Command access but then there is the issue with Hivebots and what not its Balancing is an Incredibly hard thing to do. but I would lovingly use a good non-lethal option that is not easily negateable by armor or sunglasses and it would make medicals life slightly easier and give the warden more work to do. 

and just as an add on, the ship events like Hivebots/blob/Vines and such do make us play together more and with the Pirate base or cult base off-ships there are lots of diffrent tactics security can undertake with the help of engineering/Operations/Bridge Like to tilt the chances in their favour but this is slightly off-topic. 

Oh and thank you for the back and forth and reading my Arguement and I agree with you on the rest of the points.

[ClemTheDuck]

35 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

The issue I see with this is that these weapons will often not be used in favor of jumping straight to the lethals, security already has non-leathal weaponry at its disposal. Flashes, flashbangs, stun guns, etc that barely see use. If the suggestion here was to remove the hard hitting stuff in exchange for rubbers and etc then yeah, I'd be down for it; but thats not it. Security has so much at their disposal that it is almost pointless to involve outside departments, this was a major point I was trying to make above, giving them anything more just detracts from that even more.

The horizon feels more and more like a larp vessel as we go on, if I wanted milrp I would play torch or CM. The only reason aurora had any draw for me, and I assume others, was because it still had a civilian feel to things, this has been chipped away by the current state of security and how events are handled. Once again; see this in action by how the populations of every dept out of security just dwindles more and more as time goes on. The SCC needs to decide what its special snowflake ship is actually for and commit one way or another, and my vote is to debuff sec and let the solo antags actually be fun again. 

The first issue here is an issue for both antags and security. There are many instances where you cannot take non lethals in the first instance because the first instance is seeing a dude with a rifle in a voidsuit/hardsuit/heavy armour. For sec you are likely just walking into a deathtrap by going up against antags without lethals or heavy armour as any traitor can suddenly pull out an LMG in the blink of an eye with no escalation or prompting. On the other side antags feel like they need to go hard early otherwise sec will roll them with heavy armour and rifles. Its a self repeating cycle of both sides expecting the worse of the other.

The second i dont really see having rifles as being LARP. The horizon isnt some second rate research station like the aurora and is expected to deal with and has dealt with, paramilitary, military, and pirate forces. Security is far from a milrp environment, even accounting for PMCG characters. Narratively the horizon returning to the Aurora's sec armoury would make little sense, espescially now after the dreary futures, and konyang events.

Alot of these arguments about departmental inclusion and sec vs antag balance i feel, take away from the core focus of roleplay/narrative/and canon. Antags are there to drive a story and generate conflict. They arent there to fight everyone and everything in an even fight.  With that being said they still need to be able to generate that story/interaction, which is why i think we should focus more on tools and equipment that improve their survivability than who gets which gun. More ways to disengage from fights and more ways to keep themselves alive. 





 

[Sparky_hotdog]

32 minutes ago, ClemTheDuck said:

The first issue here is an issue for both antags and security. There are many instances where you cannot take non lethals in the first instance because the first instance is seeing a dude with a rifle in a voidsuit/hardsuit/heavy armour. For sec you are likely just walking into a deathtrap by going up against antags without lethals or heavy armour as any traitor can suddenly pull out an LMG in the blink of an eye with no escalation or prompting. On the other side antags feel like they need to go hard early otherwise sec will roll them with heavy armour and rifles. Its a self repeating cycle of both sides expecting the worse of the other.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter: It's a vicious cycle of fearing the other side's potential, rather than what they should realistically do. I'm about 9 months out of date when it comes to playing security, but this is far from a new issue. I'm not sure of a good way to overcome this either, as it requires both antags and security (a relatively large portion of the playerbase as a whole) to nigh bilaterally decide to just... chill the fuck out when it comes to escalation. Maybe don't rush to open the armoury the second someone shows up with a pistol, and maybe don't have your opening antag play be pulling an AR on someone.

32 minutes ago, ClemTheDuck said:

Alot of these arguments about departmental inclusion and sec vs antag balance i feel, take away from the core focus of roleplay/narrative/and canon. Antags are there to drive a story and generate conflict. They arent there to fight everyone and everything in an even fight.  With that being said they still need to be able to generate that story/interaction, which is why i think we should focus more on tools and equipment that improve their survivability than who gets which gun. More ways to disengage from fights and more ways to keep themselves alive. 

Oh hey, it's the old gameplay vs roleplay false dichotomy rearing its head again. I wholeheartedly agree the solution to this is not a numbers game of how much damage X gun does to Y armour, but the options and tools available to both sides.

It doesn't even really have to focus on survivability - What matters more is the ease in which the antags can create an engaging narrative through the tools at their disposal, not how long they can hold out. In many ways the worst experience as security are antags with high survivability (I'm looking at you, changeling) which draw their "engagement" (read: Chasing around aimlessly) out far longer than their gimmick really necessitated. Personally I always favour the game slightly favouring security, simply because for general crew consistent ISD wipes are far more awful to play with (Hide in your department or join a crew militia) than consistent antag wipes (Go back to doing whatever you'd be doing otherwise).

Edit:

As an additional point, I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on antags involving as many departments as possible. Maybe I'm in the minority here as someone who almost exclusively votes Extended, but since I stopped played security I've found that I couldn't really care less if John Sol who's going to break into the vault finds some way of staying alive long enough to involve me in his gimmick. Security and medical are pretty much always intertwined with the conflict most antags generate, and if you want to be a part of said conflict consistently then those roles are where you play. Don't get me wrong, I love a gimmick than engages a niche department like research as much as the next guy, not to mention those rare ones which engage everyone (such as the recent greimorian release round), but I do think we need to start seeing these more as exceptions and not the rule. Imho, it's okay if the antag only ever interacts with security, before dying in a firefight, so long as the interaction was enjoyable.

Edited May 8 by Sparky_hotdog
Thoughts on department engagement

[Rabid Animal]

As an aside to this whole thing, because it is somewhat off topic, antags don't need to be violent. I see a lot of 'peaceful' gimmicks turn to violence as a result of what I see as poor sec play, which is just enabled by having the tools available to just frag people. This really doesn't drive a narrative, and for a server that has such a focus on wanting to drive a narrative, so many rounds just turn into a firefight. Power creep is real.

 

Aurora station saw a lot more of the peaceful gimmicks because it wasn't outright punishing to try and do them. The Horizon is just a death trap for antags, that should change. I like violent rounds, I like peaceful rounds, it's good to have both.

[Evandorf]

1 hour ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

What matters more is the ease in which the antags can create an engaging narrative through the tools at their disposal, not how long they can hold out

I've said it before but antags need to focus on goals/objectives that do not require a standoff with security. As much of a meme as they are ( and ignoring other issues with their goals and RP engagement ), nuke-ops mercs had a decent gameplay loop because you had two objectives: get the disk and arm the nuke. Neither of those requires interaction with security. I'm not advocating to bring back nuke-ops or anything, but you can use its progression as a decent template for objective based goals:

Early Phase (security is not engaged):

• Generate RP via announcements, conversations with non-security crew, radio messages, even ahelps for global notifications or CCIA faxes. The RP is always what we're about.
• Heavily telegraph your intent. You might think that this is counterproductive as it puts security on alert. This is true to a degree but there are many ways to achieve your goals or to force security to abandon a target. It also informs everyone what the round will be about. People interact with you better and enjoy the game more when they know what's going on.

Late Phase:

• Work to achieve your goals. It might be kidnapping a particular crew member, stealing something of value (sentimental or otherwise), corporate espionage, ect. I'd recommend focusing on a department that's not security or command since both will inevitably be included anyway.
• Use all the tools available to you. There is a lot of great gear in the uplink that gets overlooked and there's been an increase in the amount of crystals available to spend on equipment. If you don't know the limits of certain equipment or how things work then don't be afraid to experiment. Testing equipment could be a gimmick in itself and if you really think something you bought was trash you can ahelp to try and refund it. If you only buy combat related gear, don't be surprised when you get stuck in a firefight and die. If your goal was simply to have an excuse to have a shootout then congratulations but just having firefights over and over gets stale and leads to these sorts of discussions about balance.
• Know when to stop. This includes not just keeping track of round time and making sure things don't drag on too long, but also know when the gimmick has run its course. Good command members who are keeping the crew updated will announce when danger has passed or when the enemy has been neutralized. It serves to punctuate the end of the round and continues to inform other players. You should do the same if you find yourself on the winning side as an antagonist. Resist the urge to gloat; if you have any TC or BC left you can send a fake announcement. ahelp for global messages or faxes, or just use the radio in a pinch. One of the nice things about nuke-ops is the animation that plays for the antag victory and while killing everyone and blowing up the ship isn't something we usually want to see here, the animation definitely provides a sense of finality.

[Omicega]

I've seen two security wipes by a solo antag (traitor both times) in the past week alone, and that's with a solid 90% of rounds still rolling as either voted extended or secret extended. Most antagonists aren't very good at the game because the more established players on Aurora tend to be here for the roleplay rather than antagging, so there's a definite and natural trend towards antags being more inexperienced in general, but you absolutely do notice it when someone who knows how to use and abuse the mechanics on offer is strapped into their antag role.

None of it is an issue of mechanical power available to both sides; rather, it's just that antags who don't play to win invariably wind up being crushed to death by security either overtly or covertly (security players will not shoot first for fear of being ahelped, sure, but you will still get boxed in on all sides by a fully kitted department if you allow it, or an officer will prowl after you looking for any evidence of valid behaviour, or something along those lines). Conversely, it's basically impossible for security to follow its usual 'gradual escalation' routine against antags who use a guerilla sort of playstyle against them in turn -- any attempt to play along in good faith with gimmicks like these tends to result in failure since there's no way the antag is going to stick around to talk with the investigator or a sympathetically-played officer just so the rest of the department can strap on its jackboots and get ready to kill them once the mandatory talking phase is over.

Basically, someone always seems to end up frustrated no matter how it's played -- whether it's the antag being blown to shit because they weren't robust enough to outmanoeuvre the unrelenting march of the entire security department towards them, or whether it's the security department being slowly ground to death by an antagonist who has all the tools to very easily stay five steps ahead with better equipment, (often) all access, and a whole host of exciting (!) tools like punji traps, landmines, and the old reliable of fleeing to the Intrepid so security are forced to teleport themselves right into your finely crafted, custom-made death trap.

I don't want to boil everything down to literally just being a big case of 'skill issue', but the reality is that the majority of antag players can't use the tools at their disposal to even a tenth of their potential. The ones that do, though, can and do bend entire rounds over all on their own if you give them the slightest chance. Beyond that, my only other observation is that I'm on board with this sentiment when it comes to picking one side over the other, because both of those security wipe rounds I mentioned earlier were pretty miserable to sit around in:

1 hour ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

Personally I always favour the game slightly favouring security, simply because for general crew consistent ISD wipes are far more awful to play with (Hide in your department or join a crew militia) than consistent antag wipes (Go back to doing whatever you'd be doing otherwise).

 

[La Villa Strangiato]

1 hour ago, Omicega said:

I don't want to boil everything down to literally just being a big case of 'skill issue', but the reality is that the majority of antag players can't use the tools at their disposal to even a tenth of their potential. The ones that do, though, can and do bend entire rounds over all on their own if you give them the slightest chance.

Basically this. When an antag is obnoxious, they're extremely obnoxious (see the round a few days ago where a randomgen name xenobiologist sent uranium golems around the ship and put nearly everybody into MSOF within five minutes). When an antag has a skill issue, they rush security with a 9mm pistol.

There's a delicate balance to be struck between sandbagging and playing really annoyingly to make the round a boring, drawn-out fragfest. This isn't something that's always immediately obvious on how to do, and it's not really something that mechanicalnerfs or buffs are going to fix.

[icedcabbage]

I think it is important to clarify that I do not want to mechanically nerf Security for the sake of antagonist. What I would like to achieve with a reduction to the Armory is not a reduction to Security's overall power. Afterall throughout this discussion it has been mentioned that Security's power comes not from pure guns, but both the logistical advantage of having the Crew on their side and the relative inexperience of Antagonists, which I  agree with. I envision a future with a reduced Armory that has Security just as powerful as they are now, except this power is de-centralized, Security's power would come from their ability to function with other departments.  I think this would make lesser used weapons like the .45, 9mm machine pistol, and energy carbine more integral too! Currently they are reduced to merely sidearms unless a Warden or Commander actively restricts what equipment their officers can use (which funnily enough serves a similar purpose to this suggestion). This kind of decentralization would encourage creativity and exploration of other lesser used weapons that Research, Operations, and Engineering has access to. Although Aurora does not have any physical barriers preventing Security from working with other departments, the fact that the Armory centralizes Security's power makes cooperation with departments beyond Medical very niche. There is little current reason to call upon Operations to make an Exosuit, or order interesting weapons, or for Research to produce interesting tools, we are losing out of interaction and variety through a powerful Armory. 

 

I will go further to say that this kind of inter-departmental cooperation is not unheard of. Often with Hivebots, Security, Engineering, and Medical work together to combat the threat collectively. This is not only just plain fun, it also fosters roleplay with all these different players coming together. There is joking, strategizing, and teamwork, the Hivebots create a tension throughout this interaction that is powerful and exactly what I seek in Aurora. This is why I wish to encourage inter-departmental play through the de-centralization of the power security wields, it simply makes things more enjoyable.

 

I feel this is my primary goal, although I will admit that the original context of the argument was in regard to Antagonists

Edited May 8 by icedcabbage

[Jaeger Brothers]

As I've said it is really fun to do teamwork even if its just boring most of the Time Security won't ask anything from the machinist in fear of being bwoinked but really early in my days we used the help of engineers to breach the antag shuttles. Science could make Combat drugs or cool Implants to help security and so on and so forth making security the main frontliners while the others help with Logisitics, Just imagine a fully hyped up on hyperzine sec team going from Light armor with SMGs to Heavy Hardsuits , a mech, good guns and so on to really fight off a Full merc team really dispersing securitys power into the crew and making them more reliant on others to fight bigger threats,

Edited May 8 by Jaeger Brothers
Removed the weird rant and added a bit of dreaming,

[Nol4]

There seems to be a lot of concern about 'robust' antagonists maximizing their tools to run circles around security and subject the entire ship to an underwhelming/annoying gimmick if security's killforce is reduced. I don't think this is warranted: antagonists are already the most heavily scrutinized role on the server. An antag, at any point, has half a dozen ghosts, administration, and most of the active crew watching them with access to the ahelp button. Bad faith antagonists can and are filtered out by OOC mechanisms- security doesn't need to hold the firepower to cleanly end all sufficiency annoying antagonists. Moreover, it only takes one security member to decide it's guns time, and the rest of the team will also start shooting.

I completely support a change to reduce security's firepower and armor that's available literally one click by the warden away, which as it stands lets them comfortably toe to toe a fully armed merc team, and bulldoze anyone who isn't optimizing uplink heavy plates. Onships especially suffer for it. I play a lot of sec- I can count on one hand the number of times merc teams have bested an even half-staffed security team, and I would quickly run out of fingers for the amount of times I've seen 'mercs are all dead and security has one broken arm between them'.

Besides- I think science would love an opportunity to hand out experimental guns, supply would like to run crates of them, and I've never seen the crew not absolutely frothing at the mouth for the crew armory to open so they can participate in the fragging. Security right now is self-sufficient against almost any threat that can be thrown against them.

[Peppermint]

I like how much of these suggestions just push further and further into the kind of mrp TDM time gameplay you'd get on paradise. Mm yes let's just remove the rifles and then plug the gap with mechs and science guns as if that isn't actually even more unabalanced.

Most antags aren't very good at the game. A lot of sec officers are pretty good at the game. There's also an entire ship of medical behind them and the horizon's map sucks to hide in and get some space. Antags on HRP just don't work which is what the whole point of a new game mode approach is. Gonna echo Omi albeit clearer - skill issue.

[dessysalta]

I hear people talking about giving antagonists a break a lot. They don't need a break. In a mercenary team you have access to a really good amount of things for free, and then from there you can grab anything in the uplink, such as combat cyborgs, mechs, specialized equipment, and that doesn't even get into playing a species that's mechanically better or trading for something powerful via ahelp. As mentioned, they have the ultimate authority of "if you don't do what I say, I am within the rules to shoot you and kill you instantly." It completely disregards that if an antagonist or group of antagonists want someone dead, they should have to earn that, as someone whose total rounds are about 1/4 to 1/3 group antagonists. 

I don't ask this to be sarcastic, but it's a question that runs through my head a lot: do people forget what a coordinated and aggressive mercenary team is capable of? With the bare minimum coordination between 4 guys you can completely neuter any and all threats. Send two guys to the crew armory to rob and two more to the main armory and the ship is essentially screwed. Want to give the ship a break anyways for a laugh? Let security arm up but target their legs, make use of stun weaponry and net guns, put on flash-resistant goggles and buy the soundproof headset in the uplink for negligible TC cost, use the barricades you spawn with and buy more as you go, take hostages. How about the two sanasomnum injectors per uplink (this is just absurd) you get as a "get out of round removal free" card? It's not that hard to make the ship your bitch if that's your goal.

Likewise, security understands that when there is a serious and present threat to the ship that is trying to do this they're well within their right to punish them. "Oorah, the Solarian clone corps is here!" Is only going to fly for the two minutes or so it takes security to get guns and tell them to stand down. Even if they are going for a narrative and security doesn't get to shoot them instantly, that doesn't make them subject to less scrutiny along the way. At any rate, ops/cargo can order practically any weapon that matters within sixty seconds if they're fast enough, and that includes PEAC shells or ion rifles to delete mechs and synths respectively. 

As a sec and command main, I want antagonists to roll us more often. I want to have the thrill of beating as many as 8 guys with guns and mechs knowing I'm completely outclassed but that my character will do everything in their power to defend what's good (or what's "good"). I give antagonists leeway and swap to lethals far later than I should from a reasonable perspective, but I know when to pick up the pace to meet the difficulty curve.

This spoiler has a paragraph that I thought about including as the intro to what I was going to say, but I debated whether or not it belonged, so I'll put it here in case any of you think it's relevant or approaches the problem better.

Spoiler

This goes without saying, but part of what makes this a slippery slope is hugely tied to skill and experience. If you're new to Aurora's gunplay, you're going to get steamrolled no matter what you do or how many of you there are. I think the balance for security versus antags is pretty much fine when you factor in the antagonist has the ultimate win card of "do what I say or I'll execute you" versus the secoff who has to act within a reasonable limit with less capable guns. It's made even worse when every situation goes from a "fight or flight" to "just fight" because running away is a no-go (vaulting/leaping takes too much time, running usually means you're going in a straight line (the best thing for the people who can close the distance while you try and juke them because diagonal movement is impossible or something?), and don't get me started on how if you're not security/command/maybe medical you aren't allowed to fight on your lonesome).

Now to work my way down the list of responses that I think I should give my two cents on.

15 hours ago, icedcabbage said:

Although my opinion is always subject the change, my current cautious suggestion for The Armory is to tweak the armor values of Security's powerful array of specialized armors to allow more damage to go through, there-by increasing injuries and raising the stakes of being shot by an actual bullet. Further, and I admit this is more contentious, cutting the amount of weaponry (with the exception of small arms) in half, forcing Security to make a choice either accept less effective weaponry or go outside and mingle with the other departments for advanced and powerful equipment (I know, this would be a horrid reality).

I half-agree; I think bullets in general should be far more lethal. I've always been surprised how you can get shot 3-5 times in the head with no armor and somehow get up, walk your ass to medical, and live. Outside of that, security's arms are pretty adequate in my opinion.

- Side-arms (small threats or a last resort)
- Carbines (medium threats, such as grems or rowdy assistants, the go-to non-lethal with lethal option)
- Both rifle variants (all lethal all the time, for bigger threats that you absolutely must use lethal force against)
- PEAC (utility weapon for mechs/IPCs)
- Shotguns (weird gray area between being utility with flash/tracking rounds, and lethal with lethals. Nobody uses beanbags.)

I agree that other departments like science should be involved, I just struggle to see how. Science can make some pretty scary things.

14 hours ago, ClemTheDuck said:

Overall however, i personally believe that instead of removing things we should improve more on the tools and equipment given to antags. If the issue is that antags are feeling oppressed by dying in firefights and haveing to constantly be wary of being caught out, we should give them more tools to escape, and increase survivability.

Generally speaking, I think everyone should be more open to escape opportunities. As it stands, if you're at gunpoint, you're at gunpoint. If you try and run away, you're running in a straight line which is perfect for shooting. Sana needs to go or be restricted to one, I'm sorry. Play around having no/little medical or pay the price for it; that's the trade off of being allowed the most powerful weaponry for existing. This PR by Fluffy seems like an interesting new addition that I like. Past that, it would be nice to have some more speed-enhancing tools that aren't hyperzine/coffee, which are pretty incredibly all-or-nothing. A good example is leg actuators that make you do a leap. I like those.

11 hours ago, Rabid Animal said:

[...]comically deadly for everyone

I like brutal and unforgiving mechanics in my SS13. BLACKSTONE was fun up until it turned into a giant murder-fest, since it's a downstream of an old Lifeweb-adjacent server that, while bolstering an extremely contentious community, had the best melee combat I've ever seen in the history of SS13 servers (I only played on BLACKSTONE, to be clear, I do not want to be associated with the server that was its upstream or Lifeweb in general on account of all that I see and hear about them). The only downside is they made it so getting hit once makes you stop for like a year (this is hyperbolic) so the person can hit you once and random-chance cut off your head in two slices (this is not).

Brutality in combat mechanics are something I want to see done more, because it not only makes combat feel satisfying so long as you have smooth movement and sufficient mechanics to accompany it, but because death is meant to be a common occurrence in a firefight, death isn't supposed to be fun. You shouldn't be tanking 10 high-powered rifle rounds in real life, and it's not like the plates we see given to antags/sec are made of some mythical material that eats them. It's the same reason I want players to be more invested in combat events along with me, because knowing that death is a very real possibility means you should not be running in willy-nilly acting like an idiot. 

I know this particular section is a hot take, but that's just my thoughts. Less of a hot take is: it's only ever comically lethal because the presence of the ever-noncanon antagonist interactions means that deaths and injuries have no weight and thus people ignore pain far too often. This is why new canon missions are being introduced in June.

2 hours ago, icedcabbage said:

-snip-

At the end of the day, I'm more curious than anything how this change would be implemented and how well it would actually work. The issue with making reliance on departments more common is you're nerfing one department to make them more likely to rely on others, which might not even be staffed, leading to the demise of security and everyone else. Really, cooperation would be more common if there wasn't an enormous "don't do this or you'll get bwoinked/warned/banned in extreme circumstances" barrier between the departments. Instead of making the "strong" area less powerful, make the less powerful areas stronger. Yes, including their opposition, if you really have to. Otherwise you're going to force people to conform to a playstyle they don't want and only do what's best for the situation for the sake of it.

A real life analogy would be when they were developing the original Team Fortress; they made it so the original Demoman could open up specific areas on maps for coordinated pushes and tactics, but because his kit was so unfun to use out of those vital passages for his team, people would just swap to him to get the job done and then go back to whatever they were playing prior to it. The same thing applies here. You're just gonna get more machinists/scientists who make shit for security to own antagonists because, worst case scenario, that's the only way security has a chance at whatever mystical antagonist team is cooking that day. Not everyone, and the rules will filter some of those people out, but definitely not all.

7 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

I like how much of these suggestions just push further and further into the kind of mrp TDM time gameplay you'd get on paradise. Mm yes let's just remove the rifles and then plug the gap with mechs and science guns as if that isn't actually even more unabalanced.

Most antags aren't very good at the game. A lot of sec officers are pretty good at the game. There's also an entire ship of medical behind them and the horizon's map sucks to hide in and get some space. Antags on HRP just don't work which is what the whole point of a new game mode approach is. Gonna echo Omi albeit clearer - skill issue.

Agreed. 

To close:

Security is a role that is often staffed by players who have had time to learn what the antagonist types are and how combat works; it is the role that is designed to teach you about combat and involve you with every single antagonist gimmick under the sun. They have gear that is meant to catch inexperienced and experienced gunmen alike, so it only makes sense that tools that are meant to bypass certain things (mechs, etc) are strong. Yes, the crew backs security up in many instances, but not always, and even if it was only 1% of the time security isn't backed up by everyone else, we need to compensate for that. As it stands, I've played security for a year straight with no breaks. I have also played group antagonists for a year straight with no breaks. Neither is inherently over the other, it's all coordination and skill based, but as Peppermint said, this shouldn't matter so much. If we have a group of 6 miscreants going after the disk or executing civvies without a very good reason they shouldn't be here in the first place, that's not what this server is.

We only play to win so much because at some point you run out of things to say on the 100th extended round. With eight(?) or so months between I think it was Cold Dawn and Silicon Nightmares, no wonder people start developing metas, because there's only so much narrative you can fit into news articles and talking about each other's days.

I could go on, but I run the risk of repeating myself.

[dessysalta]

Also you could argue that while sec is the combat learner role, team antags are a chance to get used to specific mechanics like being a combat medic or engineer, blah blah blah, but that's not my place nor is it my main point.

[Rabid Animal]

I think a point that's been missed is the reoccurring mention of solo antags. There are other modes than Merc, you could also argue that traitor has it good, and to be fair they do pretty well. What about everything else? Every mode without an uplink? Don't you think there's a reason Merc wins out more often than other modes? Could it possibly be because it's fun? Because the game is balanced around it?

1. Power creep makes combat too deadly for people without access to the meta tools of the game. 

2. This is a mechanical issue. It's like designing a shooter and getting mad when people shoot each other. Yeah, the gameplay will inform how people roleplay, the sheer access to items that encourage violence, will result in violence.

I don't think getting one tapped is fun, death can be fun, but I want a narrative experience out of it. This happens far more when security is absent and the antag is one without an uplink. Scarcity breeds creativity. 

Nerf security. Nerf the uplink. Encourage creative solutions.

 

[Sneakyranger]

While I really don't play security and cannot comment on the balance proposal here, I do want to comment on one thing:

4 hours ago, Nol4 said:

Besides- I think science would love an opportunity to hand out experimental guns, supply would like to run crates of them, and I've never seen the crew not absolutely frothing at the mouth for the crew armory to open so they can participate in the fragging. Security right now is self-sufficient against almost any threat that can be thrown against them.

I'm going to pick on NoI4 here even though it's a sentiment more widespread since it's a pretty succinct example of the thing I want to talk about. I'd like to throw my lot in with those who have (usually indirectly) mentioned the following thing in this thread:
I play engineering because I do not want to directly interact with antags. I really don't have any interest in directly fragbraining (to borrow a little bit of terminology from the quoted post) with the crew armory and would prefer for security to monopolize their direct attention. Am I happy to clean up an antag's ship damage? Yeah. Generally speaking, though, the last thing I ever want to do is interact with an antagonist directly as I pretty much never find their gimmicks more engaging than the alternative of speaking with my department cohort or working on some project I have.
Does this opinion deny the existence of people who don't play security but still really want to mess with an antag for whatever reason? No, they exist. I just want to add my stone to the pile on the team of people who really would prefer direct antag interaction to remain the remit of security as, while I acknowledge their necessity as a driver of the gameplay loop and have no hate for those who play them, generally speaking being directly involved in their gimmicks is a net negative to a round for me.

All of this is to say that the argument of the security armory being so powerful shutting down the crew's ability to interact with the antag directly is not something that everyone sees as a bad thing. I don't know if the majority or a minority of players think of the issue as I do, but as evidenced from this thread alone there is at least more than one person who feels this way.

Edited May 9 by Sneakyranger

[Nol4]

10 minutes ago, Sneakyranger said:

While I really don't play security and cannot comment on the balance proposal here, I do want to comment on one thing:

I'm going to pick on NoI4 here even though it's a sentiment more widespread since it's a pretty succinct example of the thing I want to talk about. I'd like to throw my lot in with those who have (usually indirectly) mentioned the following thing in this thread:
I play engineering because I do not want to directly interact with antags. I really don't have any interest in directly fragbraining (to borrow a little bit of terminology from the quoted post) with the crew armory and would prefer for security to monopolize their direct attention. Am I happy to clean up an antag's ship damage? Yeah. Generally speaking, though, the last thing I ever want to do is interact with an antagonist directly as I pretty much never find their gimmicks more engaging than the alternative of speaking with my department cohort or working on some project I have.
Does this opinion deny the existence of people who don't play security but still really want to mess with an antag for whatever reason? No, they exist. I just want to add my stone to the pile on the team of people who really would prefer direct antag interaction to remain the remit of security as, while I acknowledge their necessity as a driver of the gameplay loop and have no hate for those who play them, generally speaking being directly involved in their gimmicks is a net negative to a round for me.

All of this is to say that the argument of the security armory being so powerful shutting down the crew's ability to interact with the antag directly is not something that everyone sees as a bad thing. I don't know if the majority or a minority of players think of the issue as I do, but as evidenced from this thread alone there is at least more than one person who feels this way.

In brief, my response to this: I think when security is in the position of needing to lean on other departments, it's typically opt-in. If you aren't interested in being the guns builder, someone else probably will be and you can still choose not to be involved in even a minor way. (I've never once seen a shortage of volunteers at the crew armory, or of engineers already volunteering to point emitters at things, for example. There's a whole thread up right now expressing frustration about how non-sec departments swarm what little tasks they have.) This gives those players who do want to be involved the option to participate, whereas now they simply don't have it short of joining the already highly competitive sec roles.

Edited May 9 by Nol4
short edit for typos

[Sparky_hotdog]

Long list of two cents being added to previous points ahead. Ye have been warned.

11 hours ago, Nol4 said:

I've never seen the crew not absolutely frothing at the mouth for the crew armory to open so they can participate in the fragging.

This, I feel, is bad. I have mixed feelings on the crew armoury in general, and while I acknowledge that it is probably needed and makes sense, this is exactly the problem it causes. What self respecting chef, in their right mind, is going to go and hunt down a group of mercs with a shitty gauss rifle. Unless there is genuine risk to the safety of the vessel (i.e. Hijacking, scuttling, etc.) I feel like your average corporate employee would just let the Conglomerate take the hit to their phoron profits or what have you. Even in those extreme cases, the fact the response to ISD being unable to handle it is "Give the crew guns" rather than just calling an evacuation is wild. Emergency evacuations used to be uncommon, but present, on the Aurora, and I think them being so rare now, instead focusing on letting everyone "frag", is a detriment. I comment on this later, but if you want to shoot antags, play security. I don't think it is good for a HRP corporate/civilian server to have made crew militias as commonplace as they are.

10 hours ago, Nol4 said:

Besides- I think science would love an opportunity to hand out experimental guns

As someone who mains research at the moment... I'm not so sure on that front. By far and away the majority of science players are xenoarch/bio/bot players who just want to be on the Intrepid or in their lab doing their work. Add onto this the fact that, asides from I believe R&D, the rare sight that is a Scientist player can only do one of gun making, chemistry, tele science, circuits, etc, and there's a strong chance nobody in research can or wants to hand out weaponry. I'm not saying it will never happen, but basing the balance of security around something that might happen once a fortnight at best feels bad. Also, current IC regulations stipulate that experiments, including guns, aren't to be taken outside of research to be used; Obviously that can be changed, but that rule is there for a reason - Science is really strong if it does get used. Speaking of:

9 hours ago, Peppermint said:

I like how much of these suggestions just push further and further into the kind of mrp TDM time gameplay you'd get on paradise. Mm yes let's just remove the rifles and then plug the gap with mechs and science guns as if that isn't actually even more unabalanced.

Pretty much. Considering the original complaint was regarding security being too strong, nerfing the armoury and making it common practice for them to acquire gear from other departments is just going to make them too weak to do anything on low pop, and even stronger on high pop.

8 hours ago, dessysalta said:

Generally speaking, I think everyone should be more open to escape opportunities. As it stands, if you're at gunpoint, you're at gunpoint. If you try and run away, you're running in a straight line which is perfect for shooting.

Definitely agree here. I can't remember ever playing a round where things escalated to a gun fight and the conflict between security and antags that was close on a grand scale. As in, one side will win the first fight that happens, and then... the other side is either heavily injured/dead or on the run. There's no chance for an outgunned security to decide they're outgunned and retreat. There's no chance for the antags to realise they're in over their heads and bail. There is only firing a million bullets at each other until one side hits the floor.

8 hours ago, dessysalta said:

Brutality in combat mechanics are something I want to see done more, because it not only makes combat feel satisfying so long as you have smooth movement and sufficient mechanics to accompany it, but because death is meant to be a common occurrence in a firefight, death isn't supposed to be fun. You shouldn't be tanking 10 high-powered rifle rounds in real life, and it's not like the plates we see given to antags/sec are made of some mythical material that eats them. It's the same reason I want players to be more invested in combat events along with me, because knowing that death is a very real possibility means you should not be running in willy-nilly acting like an idiot. 

I really want to agree here, in that committing fully to a fight should be a last resort, "we've tried everything else time for everyone to burn in hell" option that is equally bad for both sides. I think that would go a long way towards really mitigating the fact that in a videogame with two sides with uneven resources, one will almost always be slightly stronger than the other, and incentivise more RP. It would make rounds even more susceptible to one random shitter with an itchy trigger finger, but I think that's worth it. I do worry, however, that by making combat too brutal you reduce the likelihood of it ever breaking out, thereby reducing the workload of medical. I haven't played medical recently enough to comment on if that's a good or a bad thing though.

9 hours ago, dessysalta said:

We only play to win so much because at some point you run out of things to say on the 100th extended round. With eight(?) or so months between I think it was Cold Dawn and Silicon Nightmares, no wonder people start developing metas, because there's only so much narrative you can fit into news articles and talking about each other's days.

6 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

I play engineering because I do not want to directly interact with antags. I really don't have any interest in directly fragbraining (to borrow a little bit of terminology from the quoted post) with the crew armory and would prefer for security to monopolize their direct attention.

I'm putting these together because I think they are two sides of the same coin. The vast majority of security's job involved antag interaction (It really is this, killing greims/carp/hivebots and preventing battery). Not a single other department requires antag interaction to do their job, so if security doing the thing they rolled the slot to do means that an engineer only gets to do the thing they rolled the slot to do then... okay? I don't want to sound mean, because enjoying playing with antags is perfectly valid whether you're a HoS or a miner, but I think there is a certain level of entitlement where people feel that antags should find some way to systematically check every department for everyone who wants to get involved in the gimmick, which is a load of pressure on the antag and also kind of negates security's role as the primary point of contact with antags. We give a ton of shit (rightly) to officers who act like their character knows engineering, but are seemingly okay with all of engineering grabbing guns and making spears to fight mercs.

7 hours ago, Rabid Animal said:

I think a point that's been missed is the reoccurring mention of solo antags.

I'm curious as to which solo antags you feel don't work with the current balance of things. Techno and burglar (not technically solo, but weaker so I'm including it) are both low pop antags intended for low stakes gimmicks. If the armoury is opened either you fucked around and are about to find out, or security haven't escalated properly which is not an issue regarding the contents of the armoury. Traitor is technically solo, but on high pop rounds there's usually a couple, so some AOOC coordination or when to start your gimmicks can allow you to split security's attention, and you can group up as well. If anyone tries to suggest that ling and/or vamp are too weak against security I will fire a PEAC at their computer. Am I missing some other mode?

9 hours ago, Peppermint said:

Gonna echo Omi albeit clearer - skill issue.

I agree here because we simply can't call it a mechanics issue. We cannot expect mechanics to be able to account for the broad range of variables that go into each and every antag round: Antag skill, Horizon crew skill, Antag mode, Pop count and where it's distributed. There's too much difference between a lone techno who's never played antag and a full team of veteran mercs to not expect the majority of how the round goes to be the responsibility of those playing.

[Susan]

Fundamentally this argument has been around since 2012 when I first started playing, and it never really changes. It goes without saying I do not think touching the armory is anything that should be considered - it is already comically laughable in stock when juxtaposed against the repeated canon events the Horizon has been in (hostile military incursions, terrorist robot invasions, et al), but it is in a solid enough balance position right now with offenders like the ion rifle being removed and the laser rifle's AP being nerfed. The problem is, as has been pointed out repeatedly, generally at the level of antagonists who are inexperienced with their toolkit. The 'skill issue', for lack of a better term.

But moreover, any suggestion to replace it with 'asking science/engineering for guns' is going to implode immediately on its face, and I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the fatal, fundamental flaw with this concept, why it would never work, why it would be nothing but a significant nerf:

Powergaming.

I can already 'lean on' another department for gear. It's Supply. I can walk up to their desk and order a LWAP at round start. But why would I not do this? Because it's powergaming. And dollars to donuts the situation is going to turn into 'science please make me lawgiver' at roundstart, followed by adminhelp, bwoink, and jobban, or 'science please make me lawgiver the man with the 7.62 auto rifle is slaughtering us' and at that point it's going to take too long to be useful. I find it distasteful to think that Security should need to grovel for its basic gear at the benefit of other departments because in reality there will be no situation where these weapons will be provided until the point of no return has already been crossed, and by then, it will simply be too late.

If there's anyone even in the department to make them.

Edited May 9 by Susan