What if stun durations were reduced ?

[The Specimen]

I would like to preface this that I do not know if this is a good idea or not, this is just an idea that we can discuss.

So I've been playing GoonStation for a while now and I'd like to state that first and foremost I am in no way shape or form in any position to dictate balance of the game. But however I do want to propose, a discussion about reducing stuns from non antag and non chems. Baton and flash are the main offenders. I think since security is able to handcuff you in 2 seconds. ( 4 if you aren't security. ) Hand cuffs require a long time to be removed. 40 to 70 ? Or something akin to that I am unsure what the exact numbers are. 

Currently, the baton will down you for 30 seconds. Half a minute of immobility where you are for the most part harmless ( unless you're a vampire ) now I know you can reduce this with drugs such as meth. Regardless usually you'll still be down for a very long time. 1 baton in theory can keep up to 5 people down, provided you've the charge. Add that to cuffs and you've basically condemned the person. 

Security isn't meant to be a push over. I know that much. However I do think it's odd how with one tool you're able to fend off several people. I think in scenario where it's two against one, it's fair for the officer to hold their own. But anything further than that and I think it's a little strange. A single officer can easily manage 3 people or more. 

Now what is my proposal ? 10 seconds hard cap on stun batons and/or flashes. With this said I don't know how this would mesh with drugs. Should they just not work against stun batons ? Of course this is just a discussion / suggestion. I can totally see if it isn't feasible. As a matter of fact I wanted to share this explicitly to see what the community thinks including developers and admins.

Share thoughts below - Specimen

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I proof read it TWICE and still it made some mistake and there's an invisible .3 pixel word Goon station hates me...

[Kotlol]

Drugs like meth increase your stamina recovery wich decreases your stun timer.

But here's something a lot of stun detractors "NEVER ADRESS"

Why does security use stun insted of straight up murdering the antagonist everytime?
They are the good guys no? Well yes... but guess what.. if you can't stun someone, you will resort to murder.
on classic if you are an antagonist it's more likely you will get murdered anyway if you get stunned.

In my opinion you can nerf stun as much as you like but the meta will then have security whine they cannot KILL antagonists since stun isn't good anymore.
But the most annoying thing...is... stun is so good antags rather have it as they can use it to hold someone hostage and such.

Insted of "ALLOVERNERFSTOSTUNS!"
I recommend different ways to deal with stuns.
Remember stun does the 3 following things:
1 - Won't make you pick a fight with security unless you are prepared.
2 - Makes you want to use stun wich WON'T kill antags , giving them a small opening to escape.
3 - Makes you want to have stun as an antagonist wich means the victims get a chance to escape.

But if you get killed by lethals without preparition.. you are out..
MURDER means you gotta wait to be cloned, and you might get a permanent debuff due to it and if it ain't blown up.

Sure a lot of stun in classic leads to murder ANYWAY. Wich is why people want the stun.. since "Stun ends the run"
But it doesn't END THE ROUND.

So we just need more tools to deal WITH STUN or deal with things OUTSIDE OF STUN.

Nerfing stun will only lead to people reverting to murder.

[Cheffie]

Stunning someone IS the best way to murder someone. Stunning and then cuff + beating or space is by far the most tried and true method of making someone defenceless and dead. Arguably giving LESS of room for escape outside of niche cases since a basic taser down can lead to cuffing. Getting lethaled you can at least move and has a much longer TOK than stun in most cases since you can pretty much be considered dead if you get downed any length of time against security gear in most situations.

[Snowy :D]

Oh hey I remember talking about this on Discord!

Yeah, one secoff shouldn’t be able to easily keep down multiple people at once, although I don’t think that I’ve ever seen something like that happen myself.

The main thing that I think would be impacted by this change are antags who manage to get their grubby hands on a baton or flash. The 30 second stun gives you a massive window of time to kill someone. Reducing it to 10 might make things more difficult if you don’t have a plan beforehand.

I can’t imagine that this change will make stuns bad by any means, at least for secoffs. If it gives you enough time to cuff and grab ahold of someone, then I see no problem.

[The Specimen]

To respond to this in my opinion security having lethal options isn't off the table. Of course I don't know the implications of security having lethals. I can imagine developers and admins might say it doesn't fit their vision of the game, which is fair. However, I wouldn't be against a system where everyone spawns with a cloning disk similar to Security. Lethals are made available to security officers for situations where stunning isn't viable. Thus a kill then clone system might be enforced as part of securities job ( for questioning and brigging or what not ) these weapons could maybe be ID locked like the Lawbringer ? I'm not totally sure. This is all just quick brain storming.

[Kotlol]

Stunning someone IS the best way to murder someone. Stunning and then cuff + beating or space is by far the most tried and true method of making someone defenceless and dead. Arguably giving LESS of room for escape outside of niche cases since a basic taser down can lead to cuffing. Getting lethaled you can at least move and has a much longer TOK than stun in most cases since you can pretty much be considered dead if you get downed any length of time against security gear in most situations.

Yea I hear this is a huge problem.. but in my opinion... nerfing stun ain't the way chief, 10 seconds might be able to be enough... but with certain buffs and how certain antags can work.. it will give them a lot more freedom. (Mostly things like wizards)

This is again.. I prefer then "NERFING STUN" to become "Use more ways to go against Stun."

Nerfing stun will increase killings wich sure you can live long.. but imagine dieing for 3 mins, being basicly unable to move but clinging on and not wanting to hit suicide to be punished with a longer respawn.
With stun you can atleast STILL talk, STILL be able to be released at full health, STILL be able to may pull a trick. With dieing.. once you are flopping over.. you better have medicine ready or something and hope you don't pass out.

Wich is why things like ANTI STUN ARMOR isn't a bad idea. Things to lower stamina damage or ignore it and such.
Wich forces security to adapt to it by using other methodes.

Pretty much I want traitors and such to decide: "Am I going against lethals or stuns?" But not both.

But if there are more ways then drugs and food to avoid being stunned... it will make the meta more fun then "nerfs"

I do agree stun is kinda strong, but at the same time... if with enough buffs 10 seconds of stun ain't enough since it's decreased enough for you to escape after cuffing and breaking them.

Anyhow that's all I will add. It's more fun to have options dealing with things.
Heck we have antags who are basicly immune to stun and security cannot handle with their baton AKA:
- Blob
- Flock
- Wraith

And all 3 require the crew to work against them. So there are already antags that a stun baton cannot fix.

[Cal]

disagree.

one secoff SHOULD be able to keep multiple people stunned. if he's giving you THAT much trouble you gotta preprep better. bring a chair with you and flip into em and let your buddy grab his baton, it's over.

about 2 years ago the stun durations and max were tinkered with like 5 times in 2 days, this is what was settled on. another look isn't off the table I suppose

[Meowgical]

Neat topic. While I wouldn't mind a slight reduction, I just can't see it as necessary or a real option to the scenario. I think if you're coming across the rogue secoff who can hold their own against 3, 4, 5 people, it sounds more like the antags need a new strategy more than stunning needs a nerf. You can counter stuns pretty reliably with food/drink/drug, not all antags can be stunned, and those that can mostly have a natural way to avoid it at least, imo. 
Anti-stun armor would be a fun introduction, or other ways to counter stuns but I think stun duration is in a pretty good place.

[JanusRose]

It's likely not really going to change but at this point whenever I play an antag like traitor I more and more prefer to always have microbombs implanted in me because stun means absolute game over; even if you have the best prep in the world it takes one lag spike to be cuffed and your rounds to over when you're inevitably debrained.

Vampire is a little easier with fighting stun mechanics but kind of a meh antagonist due to limited play style and predictability, the thrall costs rising, and other reason. And beyond that all the supernatural or alien life form antagonists have good counters.


If you're like a regular antagonist with gadgets though the best and only good option when your caught is to suicide bomb on the spot or just suicide and wonder if you should set to dnr as you are borged. And security does sometimes feel so powerful that you're forced to play extremely silent, like you'll do minor antagonist things and get caught for the tiniest slip up 16 minutes in.

So sec could definitely use some sort of significant nerf or the antagonists could be given new tricks.

[Kotlol]

disagree.

one secoff SHOULD be able to keep multiple people stunned. if he's giving you THAT much trouble you gotta preprep better. bring a chair with you and flip into em and let your buddy grab his baton, it's over.

about 2 years ago the stun durations and max were tinkered with like 5 times in 2 days, this is what was settled on. another look isn't off the table I suppose

I agree with this too. Security will always have less numbers then converted crewmembers.

So yea against I rather have a NEW TRICK to deal with stun that's antag only.

[The Specimen]

disagree.

one secoff SHOULD be able to keep multiple people stunned. if he's giving you THAT much trouble you gotta preprep better. bring a chair with you and flip into em and let your buddy grab his baton, it's over.

about 2 years ago the stun durations and max were tinkered with like 5 times in 2 days, this is what was settled on. another look isn't off the table I suppose

Your thoughts as a long time player and dev are important. Though it doesn't make it better in my opinion. It just becomes who can get the stun weapon first and thus win. Overpreparing can often be associated with 'Power-gaming' which I know isn't against the rules but seems to generally be frowned upon. 

I appreciate that there is  an opportunity at least for it to be looked at though.

[babayetu83]

i think having drastically reduced stun duration would be a good thing, though in exchange you could tack on a movement penalty to give any feeling of hope that you might escape

[Lord_earthfire]

Even though i am not a fan of how stuns currently stand balance-wise, the stun duration is not the problem and, in fact, very much combatable. Stun resist is quite easy to get access to, if you are prepared.

If you and your fella got access to stun resist, they wont.be able to keep you down.

I could see a raise of max stun resist to 85% instead of 80 be sonething that would be worth testing out.

Why does security use stun insted of straight up murdering the antagonist everytime?
They are the good guys no? Well yes... but guess what.. if you can't stun someone, you will resort to murder.
on classic if you are an antagonist it's more likely you will get murdered anyway if you get stunned.

This is off-topic, but oh well.

If we reach that point it would be good. I extremly rarely see security pull out lethals on RP and i think it should happen much more frequently.
Ignoring the whole healthpool mechanics because "they are the good guys" is... bad. Let the people go down guns blazing and force security to give them their glorious death..

[Cheffie]

80% to 85% won't change anything. Duration is the biggest issue in my opinion you can baton someone down run away and arrest someone come back and the first guy is still stunned. 30 seconds for security is just complete overkill. maybe it wouldn't be a big issue if it wasn't complete hard stun but it is.

[Kotlol]

80% to 85% won't change anything. Duration is the biggest issue in my opinion you can baton someone down run away and arrest someone come back and the first guy is still stunned. 30 seconds for security is just complete overkill. maybe it wouldn't be a big issue if it wasn't complete hard stun but it is.

The duration is needed in case security has to deal with mobs. It's so you don't want to fight security and have to outsmart em.

But let's move to a complete hard stun. While dieing makes you unable to communicate at all... hard stuns do, so if you are coordinating, you can send a message saying: "I am down here and here, security is over there." But if you are dieing and gasping for air.. good luck saying anything.
This is till something detractors of stun keep forgetting. if it's lethals and security leaves you to die... the longer they do that.. the longer you will be in medbay.

Now let's move on the problem with hard stuns. And this is one I think we can all agree... laying on the ground for 30 seconds sucks. You can only talk and complain...
Again same as dieing but without the damage going up and such. In my opinion N2O gas clouds are worst since you are knocked out, not dieing, can't see anything nor talk...

People keep forgetting that security has to deal not with 1 antag. They have to deal with Antags, greytiders, events and more.
While in RP they are more chillaxed... in classic they don't have time for this. Antags spawn fast.. live fast... and security has to go twice as fast.

But can we maybe put mechanics in that players can move slightly during the duration of stun? I don't see why not.
Being able to crawl away slowly doesn't seem like a bad idea. It won't do MUCH.. but it's good non the less.


Eitherway a crawling mechanic is not a bad idea.. maybe not RNG based.. but being able to move during stun durations will be nice.
So what I 'recommend' is two stun mechanics.
"Soft stun"
"Hard Stun"

Hard stuns will have a max duration of 8-10 seconds as Cheffie recommends.
These stuns will make you unable to move or such. You can still talk.
Then we have "Soft stun" this is a 30 second one we know, but this disallows you to get up or pick up items, so you can still CRAWL away.
After 8-10 seconds of "Hard Stun" you will only have "Soft stun" Wich allows you to crawl away before you regain feeling in your legs.

This would mean that security "can" leave you alone, but you can crawl away, getting a lil distance. Forcing security to decide to cuff you then and there or grab you or allow you to crawl away a little and potentially lose track of you.

This is as "far" as I would go to nerf stun. Since security with alternatives will make em murder hobo's on classic.