How are IPC's OP?

[Jboy2000000]

To put the ease of disarming, pun intended, IPC's by blowing their limbs off in perspective, Ive seen an someone use an e-pistol, the guns the HoP, captain and HoS are given, and blow the legs off an IPC with full sec gear in only two blasts, making them completely and utterly useless and defenseless since they can't even hold items because they can't stand. And the "ease of replacing limbs" thing is bloody stupid, you repace the limbs on IPC's the exact same way you replace limbs on humans/other.

[Guest Menown]

Anwar Yo'wa is an MMI IPC. IPCs can be OP, and they are in certain aspects. I'll lay some down.

She went against four nuke ops wielding stun carbines. She took two down, and another out, while a third killed her, and blew her up, causing an EMP which took out the rest of his weaponry, and brought security in to detain him.

A griefing warden decided to tase half the security force, while Anwar charged through his fire without a scratch and took him down.

There are times where Anwar has been punched once, and her hand was out of commission. No robotics or engineers meant nobody could fix it, rendering her fucked in that hand, causing a serious issue with her ability to perform as an officer.

Anwar has also been affected by various mode rounds. One mutiny round she and Yinzr went after their targets, eliminating them one by one. She chewed off her own hand, upon being detained by security and fled through a group of seven odd people, some armed with stun weaponry, others with flashes and pepperspray. None of these effected her.

They are overpowered, and there is no doubt about that. However they do have their limitations. The slightest heat causes them to virtually die. Groups of two or more IPCs. Take one out, and it kills the rest. They discharge an EMP when they die.

They are able to use gutter and tradeband, a huge advantage for security IPCs, as virutally nobody can hide from your ear if they speak over the radio or near you with these languages.

I play Anwar, as a way to utilize the abilities of an IPC to better perform as a security unit. This has caused my abilities to soar, and to see that they are indeed excellent for the position, despite also being limited in their own right.

Long point short, they have strengths, also weaknesses. Shells have changed who they are, and made them much more dangerous. Blade Runner event when?

[Guest Menown]

Anwar Yo'wa is an MMI IPC. IPCs can be OP, and they are in certain aspects. I'll lay some down.

She went against four nuke ops wielding stun carbines. She took two down, and another out, while a third killed her, and blew her up, causing an EMP which took out the rest of his weaponry, and brought security in to detain him.

A griefing warden decided to tase half the security force, while Anwar charged through his fire without a scratch and took him down.

There are times where Anwar has been punched once, and her hand was out of commission. No robotics or engineers meant nobody could fix it, rendering her fucked in that hand, causing a serious issue with her ability to perform as an officer.

Anwar has also been affected by various mode rounds. One mutiny round she and Yinzr went after their targets, eliminating them one by one. She chewed off her own hand, upon being detained by security and fled through a group of seven odd people, some armed with stun weaponry, others with flashes and pepperspray. None of these effected her.

They are overpowered, and there is no doubt about that. However they do have their limitations. The slightest heat causes them to virtually die. Groups of two or more IPCs. Take one out, and it kills the rest. They discharge an EMP when they die.

They are able to use gutter and tradeband, a huge advantage for security IPCs, as virutally nobody can hide from your ear if they speak over the radio or near you with these languages.

I play Anwar, as a way to utilize the abilities of an IPC to better perform as a security unit. This has caused my abilities to soar, and to see that they are indeed excellent for the position, despite also being limited in their own right.

Long point short, they have strengths, also weaknesses. Shells have changed who they are, and made them much more dangerous. Blade Runner event when?

[Frances]

To put the ease of disarming, pun intended, IPC's by blowing their limbs off in perspective, Ive seen an someone use an e-pistol, the guns the HoP, captain and HoS are given, and blow the legs off an IPC with full sec gear in only two blast

Again, the problem with breaking IPC limbs is that it requires firing on them with lethal lasers. Keep in mind laser carbines generally down people within two hits (I have no idea if pistols do less damage).

The situations where people will fire upon others with lethals (and they have to be lasers) are relatively few, compared to the many situations where IPCs are nearly guaranteed to prevail due to being able to play their strengths best. Antags rarely if ever have laser or EMP weapons available to them on instant demand, which makes security IPCs (or really any intervening IPCs) an extremely dangerous threat to face. And if you're just a regular joe, you're at even more of a disadvantage.

Even for nuke ops, having to register the target decked out in full security gear to be an IPC, switching from non-lethals to lethals, and then attempting to gun down said target would usually give the IPC opponent time to close the gap or lay down a lot of damage themselves.

It's easy to say that IPCs can be countered in some situations, but having every fight feel either unfair for the IPC (because they got instantly blown up) or for their opponent (because they lost due to bullshit) seems like a sub-optimal design.

[Frances]

To put the ease of disarming, pun intended, IPC's by blowing their limbs off in perspective, Ive seen an someone use an e-pistol, the guns the HoP, captain and HoS are given, and blow the legs off an IPC with full sec gear in only two blast

Again, the problem with breaking IPC limbs is that it requires firing on them with lethal lasers. Keep in mind laser carbines generally down people within two hits (I have no idea if pistols do less damage).

The situations where people will fire upon others with lethals (and they have to be lasers) are relatively few, compared to the many situations where IPCs are nearly guaranteed to prevail due to being able to play their strengths best. Antags rarely if ever have laser or EMP weapons available to them on instant demand, which makes security IPCs (or really any intervening IPCs) an extremely dangerous threat to face. And if you're just a regular joe, you're at even more of a disadvantage.

Even for nuke ops, having to register the target decked out in full security gear to be an IPC, switching from non-lethals to lethals, and then attempting to gun down said target would usually give the IPC opponent time to close the gap or lay down a lot of damage themselves.

It's easy to say that IPCs can be countered in some situations, but having every fight feel either unfair for the IPC (because they got instantly blown up) or for their opponent (because they lost due to bullshit) seems like a sub-optimal design.

[Guest]

Not being able to heal, arm/hand damage frequently causes you to be unable to hold an object in your hands. You're basically reduced to have to punch someone when your arms start to malfunction. Burn damage is simple enough to do just with a welding tool. Also, even with their .5 brute modifier they're very easy to cripple via their limbs.

If somebody manages to break both of your arms in a fight, I can assure you you wouldn't be in a much better situation as a human.

(And did this happen when you were fighting the cultist with the sword?)

 

Yup.

Most people that I've seen intentionally aim for the limbs. As an IPC, the effect was multiplied due to my synthetic limbs, and they bobbed in and out and were smart enough to switch their target intent to make me useless.

[Guest]

Not being able to heal, arm/hand damage frequently causes you to be unable to hold an object in your hands. You're basically reduced to have to punch someone when your arms start to malfunction. Burn damage is simple enough to do just with a welding tool. Also, even with their .5 brute modifier they're very easy to cripple via their limbs.

If somebody manages to break both of your arms in a fight, I can assure you you wouldn't be in a much better situation as a human.

(And did this happen when you were fighting the cultist with the sword?)

 

Yup.

Most people that I've seen intentionally aim for the limbs. As an IPC, the effect was multiplied due to my synthetic limbs, and they bobbed in and out and were smart enough to switch their target intent to make me useless.

[Frances]

Yup.

Most people that I've seen intentionally aim for the limbs. As an IPC, the effect was multiplied due to my synthetic limbs, and they bobbed in and out and were smart enough to switch their target intent to make me useless.

So you were fighting a cultist in melee range (who I assume had cult robes, if they managed to get close enough to you without being stunned instantly). That sorta seems like asking for trouble regardless of your species.

Would you have expected to fare better as a human?

[Frances]

Yup.

Most people that I've seen intentionally aim for the limbs. As an IPC, the effect was multiplied due to my synthetic limbs, and they bobbed in and out and were smart enough to switch their target intent to make me useless.

So you were fighting a cultist in melee range (who I assume had cult robes, if they managed to get close enough to you without being stunned instantly). That sorta seems like asking for trouble regardless of your species.

Would you have expected to fare better as a human?

[Jboy2000000]

Any antag that has a telectystal uplink can get a box of nine EMP grenade, so antags can get get EMP grenades on demand, anytime they have their PDA.

And you say the situations where firing lethal lasers are few, but then you go on to use Nuke Ops as an example, but Nukes Ops happen a lot less often than lasers do. And even if they don't have lasers, traitors have easy access to a revolver and ammo, that can blow the limbs off an IPC easily as well.

[Jboy2000000]

Any antag that has a telectystal uplink can get a box of nine EMP grenade, so antags can get get EMP grenades on demand, anytime they have their PDA.

And you say the situations where firing lethal lasers are few, but then you go on to use Nuke Ops as an example, but Nukes Ops happen a lot less often than lasers do. And even if they don't have lasers, traitors have easy access to a revolver and ammo, that can blow the limbs off an IPC easily as well.

[Frances]

It's difficult to pull up your PDA mid-battle and start ordering items. There's the problem.

If you have a combat plan in SS13, it's generally going to work with pretty much anyone, except IPCs. You have to devise different strategies for IPCs.

Due to how throwaway combat encounters are (you can't really predict who you're going to run into, and combat tends to be short and decisive), people generally come up with one way to fuck up any people they expect to have to fuck up. IPCs, and IPCs only, tend to throw these plans completely off-balance.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Victory in SS13 comes from preparedness. The biggest strength of IPCs in large scale conflicts is that people don't expect them. And needing to make double plans for everything just for random IPCs or carry EMP weaponry just for random IPCs sounds honestly terrible.

[Frances]

It's difficult to pull up your PDA mid-battle and start ordering items. There's the problem.

If you have a combat plan in SS13, it's generally going to work with pretty much anyone, except IPCs. You have to devise different strategies for IPCs.

Due to how throwaway combat encounters are (you can't really predict who you're going to run into, and combat tends to be short and decisive), people generally come up with one way to fuck up any people they expect to have to fuck up. IPCs, and IPCs only, tend to throw these plans completely off-balance.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Victory in SS13 comes from preparedness. The biggest strength of IPCs in large scale conflicts is that people don't expect them. And needing to make double plans for everything just for random IPCs or carry EMP weaponry just for random IPCs sounds honestly terrible.

[jackfractal]

It's also worth pointing out that most EMP weapons are not particularly discriminating.

If YOU'RE an IPC, or an organic with synthetic organs, and you need to take out an IPC? Your choices basically start and end at 'beat them to death'.

[jackfractal]

It's also worth pointing out that most EMP weapons are not particularly discriminating.

If YOU'RE an IPC, or an organic with synthetic organs, and you need to take out an IPC? Your choices basically start and end at 'beat them to death'.

[Reyjakai]

It's difficult to pull up your PDA mid-battle and start ordering items. There's the problem.

If you have a combat plan in SS13, it's generally going to work with pretty much anyone, except IPCs. You have to devise different strategies for IPCs.

Due to how throwaway combat encounters are (you can't really predict who you're going to run into, and combat tends to be short and decisive), people generally come up with one way to fuck up any people they expect to have to fuck up. IPCs, and IPCs only, tend to throw these plans completely off-balance.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Victory in SS13 comes from preparedness. The biggest strength of IPCs in large scale conflicts is that people don't expect them. And needing to make double plans for everything just for random IPCs or carry EMP weaponry just for random IPCs sounds honestly terrible.

 

This almost makes me think that the EMP weakness should be added to station androids and the AI as well. This would definitely give more validity to the weapon. Also, there are quite a lot of people who play IPC now, so there are almost certainly several IPCs at any given time aboard the station. This shouldn't be something that surprises people anymore.

[Reyjakai]

It's difficult to pull up your PDA mid-battle and start ordering items. There's the problem.

If you have a combat plan in SS13, it's generally going to work with pretty much anyone, except IPCs. You have to devise different strategies for IPCs.

Due to how throwaway combat encounters are (you can't really predict who you're going to run into, and combat tends to be short and decisive), people generally come up with one way to fuck up any people they expect to have to fuck up. IPCs, and IPCs only, tend to throw these plans completely off-balance.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Victory in SS13 comes from preparedness. The biggest strength of IPCs in large scale conflicts is that people don't expect them. And needing to make double plans for everything just for random IPCs or carry EMP weaponry just for random IPCs sounds honestly terrible.

 

This almost makes me think that the EMP weakness should be added to station androids and the AI as well. This would definitely give more validity to the weapon. Also, there are quite a lot of people who play IPC now, so there are almost certainly several IPCs at any given time aboard the station. This shouldn't be something that surprises people anymore.

[jackfractal]

EMP's already affect cyborgs and AI's. EMP grenades remain one of the easiest and least destructive way's to take out a MALF.

[jackfractal]

EMP's already affect cyborgs and AI's. EMP grenades remain one of the easiest and least destructive way's to take out a MALF.

[Guest]

Personally, I think the .5 modifier to brute damage is actually ridiculous. It needs to be tuned to .8, so that punching an IPC isn't nearly as effective but melee weaponry can still stand a chance against a droid, and IPCs don't have their limbs be completely crippled instantaneously.

Alongside that, adjusting how synthetic limbs work when damaged would be nice as well.

[Guest]

Personally, I think the .5 modifier to brute damage is actually ridiculous. It needs to be tuned to .8, so that punching an IPC isn't nearly as effective but melee weaponry can still stand a chance against a droid, and IPCs don't have their limbs be completely crippled instantaneously.

Alongside that, adjusting how synthetic limbs work when damaged would be nice as well.

[Frances]

Also, there are quite a lot of people who play IPC now, so there are almost certainly several IPCs at any given time aboard the station. This shouldn't be something that surprises people anymore.

The problem is that you have to plan for them at all. It used to be that if you had some way to fuck up people, it was relatively guaranteed to work, with varying but reliable degrees of effectiveness (flashes were good against non-sec, melee for people without armor/hardsuits, stuns for people you could get in melee range to.) You knew the strengths and weaknesses to your plan, and things were relatively straightforward from there as long as you executed it well.

IPCs changed that because you need two plans. Unless you're carrying out an assassination or kidnapping against a specific person, the "optimal" way of being robust is to always pack something against IPCs on top of your regular battle solutions. Chemists would have to make EMP nades as well as chloral, traitors would need to spend TCs on EMPs as well as their regular gear, and so on.

Yes, different situations call for different countermeasures, but do note that all of these situations come with dead giveaways. The station as a whole has time to identify antag types and adapt to them, whether they be cultists, nuke ops, malf AIs or wizards. Antags, in comparison, would have to plan both for IPCs and organic crew. That's just a lot more than what they originally needed to do, and keep in mind the metagame didn't significantly change much otherwise. And it's not like IPCs are slow borgs, or immobile AIs.

Anyway, that's just for the antagging side of things. I think it's also worth considering anyone who isn't an antag (and thus generally doesn't have access to EMPs or lasers, or simply doesn't want to completely destroy an IPC) is prone to getting fucked by one in a fight. And I don't really understand why that's a requirement - it doesn't seem to serve lore or realism (they're made up robots), and it certainly doesn't serve gameplay.

[Frances]

Also, there are quite a lot of people who play IPC now, so there are almost certainly several IPCs at any given time aboard the station. This shouldn't be something that surprises people anymore.

The problem is that you have to plan for them at all. It used to be that if you had some way to fuck up people, it was relatively guaranteed to work, with varying but reliable degrees of effectiveness (flashes were good against non-sec, melee for people without armor/hardsuits, stuns for people you could get in melee range to.) You knew the strengths and weaknesses to your plan, and things were relatively straightforward from there as long as you executed it well.

IPCs changed that because you need two plans. Unless you're carrying out an assassination or kidnapping against a specific person, the "optimal" way of being robust is to always pack something against IPCs on top of your regular battle solutions. Chemists would have to make EMP nades as well as chloral, traitors would need to spend TCs on EMPs as well as their regular gear, and so on.

Yes, different situations call for different countermeasures, but do note that all of these situations come with dead giveaways. The station as a whole has time to identify antag types and adapt to them, whether they be cultists, nuke ops, malf AIs or wizards. Antags, in comparison, would have to plan both for IPCs and organic crew. That's just a lot more than what they originally needed to do, and keep in mind the metagame didn't significantly change much otherwise. And it's not like IPCs are slow borgs, or immobile AIs.

Anyway, that's just for the antagging side of things. I think it's also worth considering anyone who isn't an antag (and thus generally doesn't have access to EMPs or lasers, or simply doesn't want to completely destroy an IPC) is prone to getting fucked by one in a fight. And I don't really understand why that's a requirement - it doesn't seem to serve lore or realism (they're made up robots), and it certainly doesn't serve gameplay.

[Eliot Clef]

it doesn't seem to serve lore or realism (they're made up robots), and it certainly doesn't serve gameplay.

 

I'm not inclined to support IPCs being super OP against everything in practice. However, I do want to address this argument.

Robots who are made to do a thing are better at doing the thing than humans are. Now, in real life, with admittedly no real intellect to speak of but all the same, when you make a machine to do a thing that thing is exponentially more capable than a human in most circumstances.

See: Assembly line robots, self-driving cars, robotically assisted surgery, etc.

An IPC that is made for fighting for whatever reason is not going to have specs that would give a human chance to do anything to defeat them, realistically. It'd be like fighting a drone without an operator, or in fictional terms, a Terminator. Getting punched by one would cause massive injuries.

SHOULD IPCs be categorically better? Nah. That sucks for gameplay purposes. Would it be REALISTIC for IPCs to be categorically superior to a human at whatever task they're designed for? Yes, and we already have non-sapient robots that do their job better than their human equivalents.

This is why creating a true artificial intelligence in the vein of the kinds of machines we build leads to ideas like SkyNet. If I'm not misremembering, in our lore the Skrell even stopped messing with AI technology exactly because it can expand out of control.

EDIT: While I do think it makes sense that punching a robot wouldn't be very effective, IPCs no longer suffer simply being removed from the round if they "die", so it'd probably be fair to make their overwhelming resilience less overbearing. That said, punching a robot probably shouldn't ever be a good idea.

[Eliot Clef]

it doesn't seem to serve lore or realism (they're made up robots), and it certainly doesn't serve gameplay.

 

I'm not inclined to support IPCs being super OP against everything in practice. However, I do want to address this argument.

Robots who are made to do a thing are better at doing the thing than humans are. Now, in real life, with admittedly no real intellect to speak of but all the same, when you make a machine to do a thing that thing is exponentially more capable than a human in most circumstances.

See: Assembly line robots, self-driving cars, robotically assisted surgery, etc.

An IPC that is made for fighting for whatever reason is not going to have specs that would give a human chance to do anything to defeat them, realistically. It'd be like fighting a drone without an operator, or in fictional terms, a Terminator. Getting punched by one would cause massive injuries.

SHOULD IPCs be categorically better? Nah. That sucks for gameplay purposes. Would it be REALISTIC for IPCs to be categorically superior to a human at whatever task they're designed for? Yes, and we already have non-sapient robots that do their job better than their human equivalents.

This is why creating a true artificial intelligence in the vein of the kinds of machines we build leads to ideas like SkyNet. If I'm not misremembering, in our lore the Skrell even stopped messing with AI technology exactly because it can expand out of control.

EDIT: While I do think it makes sense that punching a robot wouldn't be very effective, IPCs no longer suffer simply being removed from the round if they "die", so it'd probably be fair to make their overwhelming resilience less overbearing. That said, punching a robot probably shouldn't ever be a good idea.