Revs, its issues, and some potential solutions

[NOOT]

Revs its an interesting game mode, but has its severe drawbacks. Revflashes being blocked by an easily acquireable headgear, the lack of knowledge of sides in brawls involving revs / nonrevs as a loyal crewmember without sechuds, and the awful lategame stalemates when one person cant swallow their pride and accept defeat.

I propose these solutions to the gamemode.

Counter Revolutionary implants act like the new Tranq darts, wherein they can be removed if pulled out whilst standing still, over a duration of say, 8 seconds. Once the implant has turned the crewmember loyal, the implant then becomes embedded and can only be removed surgically. This would make implanting the first step of combat with a revolutionary crewmate, rather than a fire and forget (as their only option is to go to an operating table for its removal, which are severely restricted on most maps, both by access and presence of security once the round type is revealed. This would mean that implanter holders have to actually commit to the people they want to derevolutionize rather than just driveby people in hallways.

Players with an embedded revolutionary implant (which is only acquireable if they were previously revolutionized, as non rev crew implants would not embed) can see other players in the same state of implant as them, allowing them to better discern their teammates from their enemies, preventing the awful sechud requirement to be any form of useful as a loyal crewmate.

Revheads recieve an extra TC every 10 minutes after the start of the round, additionally, ID Trackers are changed to DNA trackers, for actual tracking of players hiding in space / lockers / disposal chutes. Given the lack of any pure broken bs on the revhead uplink, this shouldnt break the game and allow for dna tracking should the game drag out. Similarly, once the revolution alarm arrives from centcomm(usually around the 30 minutes mark), each head gains a pda program allowing them to trace remaining rev heads by dna, hopefully mitigating the awful stalemates, whilst still giving the side with a higher population of crew on side a decent advantage.

Players converted by combt actions (beatn to low crit) glow with a mist indicating the side to which they have been turned, which persists for a few seconds. Currently the mass brawls that can happen in hallways generally end with players continuing to beat on crew who they have already brought on side (particularly loyal crewmembers). This mist should hopefully provide an imporved visual indicator over the current one and make said "accidents" less frequent.

Also, make revflashes penetrate welding hats and sunglasses, but normal flashes not.

[Kotlol]

Also, make revflashes penetrate welding hats and sunglasses, but normal flashes not.

I knew this was gonna be a note I had to adress the moment you said "The rev flash is blocked too easily"

Alright then let's get to this point 1st. The Revflash is a flash that gives a light signal to the brain to become a Revolutionary. Anything that blocks the signals will make it fail. That is the "concept"

If someone is wearing a Welding Mask the whole time has one major disadvantage, their sight is blurred and very dark, but in my opinion they also need to have a less line of sight as well.

And sunglasses block harmfull light from the eyes, but not fully.

Infact.. sunglasses do not BLOCK FLASHES, they minimalize them to tolerable levels. Infact I can tolerate flashes without sunglasses unless there are alot of them, then I need shades too, but the burn in can still happen with them.
Infact on RP the sunglasses from the pool do not block flashes either.. they make the stun less impactfull and the stamina damage. So sunglasses not blocking RevFlash is totally acceptable, but... The captain will NOT have a defense against Revs at the start with their shades and it;s why they wear shades... TO AVOID BEING FLASHED. Insted I move to make the captain's glasses.. "DARK TINTED SUNGLASSES" a new sub type that DOES block flashes and Revflashes.

Now for the welding Mask one, just give it a vision nerf, but keep it from blocking revflashes. Infact blind people are immune to flashes and revflashes too and I say welding masks annoy my eyes if I keep em on too much since the saturation annoys my eyes, but that's not a fun game play mechanic.. since if I play on higher saturation and brightness the problem is medigated.. (until I take it off then MY EYES!) So doing a lighter filter + taking away a few squares of vision would make this a good fix... but still block Revflashes since you are "blinding" youself.

Sec-Huds block them naturally.

I just think once Rev's are announced people should have a way to fight them without resorting to simple ways like wearing a welding mask and sunglasses since they are easy to find, but by removing sunglasses and restricting it to welding masks, while limiting vision of Welding masks might stop people from wearing them all the time.

Now as for the rest of the idea.. I wouldn't know how it feels as I never played a headrev before. But I understand the flash debate.

[NOOT]

The problem is with welding masks is there is currently an interface option to complete disable view tint, under the guise of accessibility. Personally  Ithink this option shouldnt exist as anyone can turn it on regardless of if they have accessibility issues or not. That and the current state of darkness makes any accessibility due to low visibility argument as a balance factor pretty null.

There is currently literally no downside to wearing a welding helmet on station. I do agree that welding helmets should be changed to actively make your vision worse by X tiles. say down to the 5x5 square that short sigted people get

[Kotlol]

The problem is with welding masks is there is currently an interface option to complete disable view tint, under the guise of accessibility. Personally  Ithink this option shouldnt exist as anyone can turn it on regardless of if they have accessibility issues or not. That and the current state of darkness makes any accessibility due to low visibility argument as a balance factor pretty null.

There is currently literally no downside to wearing a welding helmet on station. I do agree that welding helmets should be changed to actively make your vision worse by X tiles. say down to the 5x5 square that short sigted people get

Pretty much 5x5 is the perfect range and I agree with that. I DIDNT KNOW THAT ACCESSABILITY OPTION!

[Mouse]

The problem is with welding masks is there is currently an interface option to complete disable view tint, under the guise of accessibility. Personally  Ithink this option shouldnt exist as anyone can turn it on regardless of if they have accessibility issues or not. That and the current state of darkness makes any accessibility due to low visibility argument as a balance factor pretty null.

There is currently literally no downside to wearing a welding helmet on station. I do agree that welding helmets should be changed to actively make your vision worse by X tiles. say down to the 5x5 square that short sigted people get

IIRC there are overlays that bypass the view tint, welding helmets could (and should) be changed to use those.

[MetricDuck]

Alright then let's get to this point 1st. The Revflash is a flash that gives a light signal to the brain to become a Revolutionary. Anything that blocks the signals will make it fail. That is the "concept"

I would have thought it’s not a single bright flash, but a very rapid series of flashes that’s a form of subliminal (de)programming. I don’t see why the concept couldn’t work through glasses: light is dimmed but they aren’t blind.

Then again, if flashes of light instinctively cause spaceman to rage against the machine that would explain chemists.

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Oh also I like all of the op idea except the mist - the solution is good but it would be nice if it was more thematic somehow. “Red team” and “blue team” mist is a bit game-modey. Maybe force-say/emote something as well as the chat window message? Could allow for possible deception, and depressurisation doesn’t HAVE to be addressed

[George_Manning]

Some ideas:

Give welding helmets 40% flash res like pool sunglasses. I don't really have an issue with normal sunglasses, since 100% flash res ones are designed to be rare.

OR

Make 100% flash res still convertable with revhead, but it takes an extra half-second or some other timeframe based on the flash resistance. IE a welding mask would take 5 extra seconds, pool glasses 2, etc.

Honestly I prefer my first idea but thought I'd throw the second out there

[Kamikaze Mongoose]

At it's base, Space Station 13 is a game and game balance should take priority over the technical function of flashes. The lore can be easily altered if the way they function changes, so this seems like a non issue.

What makes implants powerful is that they're effortless to obtain/apply but far more difficult/situational to remove. Making them tranqs with a charge bar to remove makes counterplay more accessible without nerfing loyalties into uselessness. My only question is how you would continue you to apply them since tranqs are normally loaded into guns. Could we stab people with them like a syringe? I feel like that could be pretty intuitive.

I'm far less confident on how to tackle flash resistance; Any small change to this will have large ramifications. I'm fine with the way regular flashes work, perhaps rev flashes can work through flash resistance with a charge bar equal to the level of resistance? It would be like revving someone with a loyalty implant but the time spent would vary a lot more.

What if people implanted with loyalties get to see the L icons without sec huds? The standard crew member would see no icons, but the moment you're converted to either side you would permanently have an icon unless you get cloned. Revs and gang members can tell who their friends are without glasses, but people who are brainwashed to be loyal to the heads of staff aren't? It seems weird!

[Frank_Stein]

I always thought REV and GANG had a lot of similarities, being team based combat. I think the two oughta borrow more ideas from each other, because I think certain concepts might work well if not better for the other.

For instance, GANG has the call do do things like hold an area for a certain amount of time. This I think could work really well for REV as well. Perhaps holding a location would drop items for the REV team to use. This could make some of the REV violence more centralized to certain spots if the REV team decides to stick in one angry mob that progressively gets more armed.

[nefarious6th]

I like George's first idea for handling flash resistance. Or the complete bypass by rev flashes I'd be fine with. If you're committed to playing the round for whatever team you're on, then not being able to circumvent revflashes with eyeprot should be fine, I think the only people who care are ones that dont intend to play the round as a teamfight and want to do whatever.

call me a powerful gamer, id much prefer those versus viewtint removal as I legitimately strain my eyes to try and see in the darkness of the welding helmet without it. I didnt even realize it was a thing until like 2 months ago ;-;

[Sbmhawk]

Imo, if revflashes bypass resistance, they shouldn't be a flash anymore, or at least lose the stunning properties, as you would be able to flash secs with sechuds, stunning them, allowing for an easy kill.

[Mouse]

Revflashes already don't stun security or heads, iirc.

[Sbmhawk]

Ah. I still like the idea of them not stunning anymore if they do penentrate eye protection.