Reduce the overbearingness of stunmeta

[NOOT]

Atm it feels super weird that the game balance hinges around stunmeta so heavily. The fact most antags would rather use a stun baton than most of their core kit speaks volumes to the strength of stuns.

In its current state, playing an antagonist feels lkek you have to tread on eggshells lest you incur the wrath of the arrest setting, and have the entire security department descend on your location for using X clearly antagonist ability.

I understand that the security department have stuns and that stuns are for arresting people, that is fine. The main change I propose (amongst others) is that dealing damage to a person who is currently stunned should reduce their stun duration, and regain a slight amount of stamina (If they are not in crit) rather than reduce the stamina (and further extend the stun). This would encourage the use of stuns as a means of apprehending rather than the first part of a combo that just looks like hehe 2 hits with a backpack stun baton and then 30 seconds of free damage (which inevitably leads to death should you be anywhere alone)

Secondly, the power of small stuns in combat is overbearing. The current state of wizard is awful simply because too many of their spells cause a haha sub 5 second stun that makes you drop your held item. Blind, magic missile, Rathans, Empower, It feels like wizards would be far more engaging to fight, if instead of every time you went prone, you did not automatically drop what you were holding (causing you to either press p and deal with timing an awkward message box prompt, or ms delay, on picking up the item, or find a pixel under your sprite (which will shift when you recover from being stunned) to pick up your previously held item which now lies conviently underneath your sprite.) Such short stuns would feel far less annoying, whilst still allowing the wizard to use them to do actual wizardly things (eg, fight or flee). Basically, stuns with a duration of less than 5 seconds should not cause you to drop your held item.

Thirdly, the max duration of stuns is currently 30 seconds. This feels far too strong given how chainable stuns are in their current state. I would propose a 15 seconds maximum on stun duration (More than enough time to handcuff a perp) whilst making the use of stun batons far less effective for beating someone to death (assuming change 1 went through)

In summary, one or all of the below would be welcome changes
Damage taken whilst stunned reduces stun duration (if over 4 seconds)
Causes of short stuns (ie most melee weapons) should cap at 4 seconds in duration
Stuns of less than 4 seconds should not cause held items to drop
A player should need to be prone unvoluntarily for more than 4 seconds for their held item to leave their hand (manual proning shoul dstill cause item drop)

If we diddnt drop held items from forceprone of short duration I might even actually wear my clown shoes. No promises

[Kotlol]

I know plenty of antagonists that can counter stun easily.
I know plenty of antagonists that need that 30 second stun since without it, the only way of dealing with them is killing them.
I know plenty of antagonist ways that make you IMMUNE TO STUN.

The reason stun is so strong is so security has NO TEMPTATION to kill you.
For example.. changelings. You want to arrest them but they keep making cuffs slip off. Thus they keep slipping away.
In 15 seconds you now must get them in a port-a-brig and lock it. You can't cuff em.. you can't carry them for 30 seconds to security.

But let's say we do change the 30 seconds to 15 seconds... okay.. now security batons you to 15 seconds insted of 30, when the timer is almost out.. here's another 15 from the baton. You basicly changed nothing but security batoning you in intervals.

As for no item dropping... that's hard as it's a coding thing.

So if anything... maybe we need to put some stun on some weapons who have lethal.
Like being shot from certain guns gives a stagger cause those bullets have some knock back to it? This would buff antagonist certain weapons of antags to fight sec without them gaining on them. Forcing sec to not power through it.

Also about your weapon dropping thing... in real life if you get tazed you don't hold onto a weapon/object in your hand since you can't control your muscles.

[BatElite]

A while back when flock was just patched up, I remember one of the first rounds I had against them there was just a flockdrone in engineering who was stunning then harmbaton-ing people to death and I kinda felt my soul leave my body. From what I can see every fucking antag boils down to getting a baton, same energy as that "it goes in the square hole!" video. What's the point, right?

Stuns are overbearing yeah, but frankly at least half of all antag types rely entirely on stuns anyway. Vampires, lings and arcfiends all have abilities designed to incapacitate lone people with long stuns. A suggestion I've heard that I like the sound of is to let people act in stuns so it's more about disabling their movement. (And before people get started: Make the cuffing actionbar not cancel when the target attacks you. Make csabers and shit easy to disarm when downed. Figure something out, these things aren't hard to adapt.) That way you're still a threat when someone tases you, but only one party has the option to retreat from a fight.

There's also the yelling over radio thing. I kinda wonder what would happen to the meta if we made talking into the radio take half a second or something so it's interruptible but I expect that to be one of most unpopular changes ever suggested. :p

[fungicidal]

Stun meta blows, I'm all for this. I'd like to see antags commit murder and mayhem without just resorting to stun-gib-repeat because it's the most effective and easy way to play

[Lord_earthfire]

Firstly, im all for max srun of 15 instead 30 seconds. Yes, you can be baton'ed again, but you need more supervision and have more opportunitues for mescapes. If sec wants you out for a longer tine, they should use tranqs. Tranquilizers are far too underused by sec because stunning alone is sufficient and utilized. These work on changeling as well.

While on most antagonists plenty of stun avoidance exists, baseline traitors and especially sleeper agents have it rough.
Personally, i would revisit the counter options. Look at combat drugs. Increase stun resist on armors or give it a material science related way of scaling. It shouldn't be that you need ~3 different drugs in you to regen enough stamina to noticeable recoup from stuns (diminishing returns could be added if we increase the baseline). Buffing armor so you need 5 instead of 3 baton hits would sufficiently help as well.

Stuns are strong for a reason. But i believe we should take some load off the shoulders of antagonists and make them "come online" with a bit less preparation. And revisiting the tools at hand is an option.

[Love]

I would love for stuns to be be clawed back a bit.
Personally, I'd favor the 'lethal damage reduces stun duration' option. I think that's a great idea. It leaves changelings/vampires alone to do their Single Mandated Hunting Type, but prevents the usual 'bop twice with baton followed by beating to death for free' thing. Or the ever-beloved Detective stun then lethal magdump. Plus, it reduces the horror of an antag getting a stunbaton and soloing the station.

The sheer level of min-maxery you need for your antag round to not be over the second a SecOff looks at you once is absurd, even as a long-time player. And the counters to it keep getting ever more and more restricted over time. Worse stims. Meth kills with no ability to soften it. Caps on stun resist. Heavy restrictions on what traitors can get stun resist items. SMES human nerfs. And so on and so on. And ability for non-sec to get stuns get ever more restricted as well, with Wizards not getting to touch them, and Sec Tokens from QM being replaced with Assistant Tokens.

Maybe more and more power is being congealed into the donut-frosted hands of Security since Main seems to have a problem of often never having near enough Sec. But maybe the reasons for that might be worth looking into, instead of pushing things ever further into the realm of 'SecOff sees you be bad, antag round over'. I consider myself pretty good at fleeing from Sec. But even so, one fortuitous tile click, and it's back to waiting another week for an antag round.

[Kotlol]

Ooh I didn't get the "if you start lethaling someone who's stunned they get up faster"

No i agree with that. After all I think stun should only be used to arrest, not to stun and dump.
At that point tranqs need to be used!

[Frank_Stein]

Hrm. Maybe it shouldn't be damage that reduces the stun, but movement? Say, someone dragging you somewhere.

I suppose you'd still be able to repeatedly stun someone, but moving them to a secure location to finish them off or space them would become harder, while still leaving Sec able to follow a stun up with cuffing or a pin.

[babayetu83]

make it more tied to stamina than anything

make stamina more important and make managing it more important. make stun duration be based on your stamina pool or something so that way stuns become a way to finish somebody off and not an instant "i win" button. it would also encourage people to be more careful with how they engage because if they burn through all of their stamina then they're leaving themselves wide open to get stunned

[UrsulaMejor]

Hrm. Maybe it shouldn't be damage that reduces the stun, but movement? Say, someone dragging you somewhere.

I suppose you'd still be able to repeatedly stun someone, but moving them to a secure location to finish them off or space them would become harder, while still leaving Sec able to follow a stun up with cuffing or a pin.

Remember when I nerfed dragging stunned people but then everyone complained and demanded I reverse it :whelm:

[DimWhat]

Frankly my issue with that is that I couldn't even murder as a vampire cause they kept breaking out of my grabs

[NightmarechaMillian]

I know this is a (pretty) dead thread, but I and a few other coders (couldn't get a dev to weigh in) seemed to all agree that a 1:1 damage received/stun reduction change would be pretty good.

That having been said, since classes are back up in full swing, and I've got my hands full with ghost sawflies and surplus ops, I don't forsee myself adding it in the near future. If anyone wants to pick this up, though, I'd support them and give advice to the best of my ability.

[Ikea]

Most of the stuns in universe come from causing damage (see sec using a cattle prod), damage reducing stuns I dont think make much sense, nor do I think it really fixes the issue as if youre lying down (which stuns provide) someone hitting you with a c saber is a guaranteed kill. It makes harmbatons weaker technically but if youre stunned you're dead regardless, it doesn't reduce sec's killing potential, it just changes the method. Securities' stuns need to be strong because they're designed for going against antags, who need to be strong as they're going against the crew.

If the issue is antags using stuns to go against the whole crew, I think the best solution would be to just reduce the capability of stuns to be used against the whole crew. Things like nerfing disruptors so they arent practically always a free charge, making cells medium sized items that way carrying them has a high inventory cost, etc. While this does nerf sec, its less of an in the moment nerf and more of an overarching nerf by forcing them to go back to sec more to recharge, and it makes sec gear for antags more for picking off stronger targets then for using it against everyone.

[colossusqw]

Imo it goes beyond just security stuns. At the moment slipping, getting shoved, random chem stuns and all seem very strong. Getting half your health taken(IE getting shot) slows you down a bit, but you still keep on fighting, meanwhile anything stuns you and you're on the floor completely incapable of retaliating while someone murders you. Stuns are too plentiful, too strong and generally just completely end fights via disarming you, stopping your movement and making it so you're basically stuck there while you die.
It feels quite jarring to me that slipping on a banana peel can be more immediately debilitating than getting shot. In many ways, a lot of very lethal things seem much more forgiving to go against and offer much more counterplay than stuff that uses stuns.

Edit: i'd say, at least how i'd change things is swap out some of the smaller stuns for heavy disorient/slows that still allow you to protect yourself to some extent, while also making it so you keep your items in your hand while fallen, and you have to be shoved for them to fall, so slipping on a banana peel/lubed floor isn't a instant disarm and that lets whoever just walk in and steal your stun baton or predator revolver

[Frank_Stein]

make it more tied to stamina than anything

make stamina more important and make managing it more important. make stun duration be based on your stamina pool or something so that way stuns become a way to finish somebody off and not an instant "i win" button. it would also encourage people to be more careful with how they engage because if they burn through all of their stamina then they're leaving themselves wide open to get stunned

I do kinda wish we had a second stamina bar. Something that the current stamina drew from to replenish itself.