Sec Equipment being overtuned

[Lt487]

There has been some discussion in the discord server about how oppressive sec can be in fights a lot of times thanks to their equipment being perhaps a bit over tuned.

An example of this would be the taser smg and taser shotgun. Both of these sec weapons showcase this the most. Both require very little aiming and can led to a 30 sec stun. As one person in the discord put it: "the most robust traitor in the world still has a 50/50 matchup against someone with a taser SMG and 20 hours playtime".

This issue becomes a lot more pronounced when antags get their hands on sec equipment, leading to a HUGE power spike for the antag and making them almost unbeatable for most normal crew.

This thread was mainly made so that the conversation in the discord about this issue gets stored somewhere rather then disappear into the void of the discord Space-Chat void.

What are your thoughts?

[TDHooligan]

from the same conversation i gathered 3 key things, alongside what i'd do to change them:

Tasers:
-> Disoriented is triggered instantly on even the slightest taser SMG hit, which can make escape nearly impossible even when you have the upper hand, for a low amount of effort on sec's side.
---> Limit when disoriented can apply.

Stuns/Cuffs:
-> Stun reduction on BRUTE worked, but now antagonists are using cuffs or are spacing people
---> Cuffs should probs be easier for sec to use, harder for antagonists to use
---> Same for spacing, perhaps dragging stunned people lowers stuns over time to limit the edgecases

-> Being cuffed is too restrictive, a traitor that manages to escape has functionally no chance of escaping, even after they have truly swindled security. doors being the main issue
---> uncuffing while walking maybe? idk. you can just hide in disposals units.
---> opening airlocks with an action bar to rub your upper torso all over the ID scanner. sounds fun

[Hydrochloric]

As someone who's both a security main, has hated stun meta for a very long time and was part of this discord discussion, here are my thoughts:

Stun in general:
- A 30 second stun cap is ridiculously high, and even with recent changes, gives people enough time to set up a near-guaranteed kill on a target. Even if you don't know what to do for 30 entire seconds, it's not exactly difficult to keep stunning an incapacitated person.
- I think the stun cap should be lowered heavily to around 15 seconds.

Ranged weapons:
- Taser shotgun and SMG take 0 skill and are incredibly oppressive. Reduce their range and give them less stun/disorient/slow.
- As for wavegun and taser gun, make them more slow/disorient-focused, so you can get close to someone and baton them.

Batons:
- More energy usage. They do insane stun and stamina damage. They should be a way to confirm an arrest so you can place cuffs or put someone in brig/portabrig
- 2-3 hits should NOT inflict 30 seconds. They should give you enough time to place handcuffs with a moderate margin of error

Cuffs:
- Cuffs should be a way to, for the most part, end the fight. Nerfing stuns *heavily* will alleviate a lot of the problems people have, since it will be harder to just 2-shot someone into handcuffs.
- However, I agree that opening doors in cuffs slightly takes away from the feeling that you're screwed if someone manages to get cuffs on you. Anyone who's good at the game will rarely let someone in handcuffs slip out their grasp anyway, so it should be more punishing if you do

Overall, these changes would make security feel much less oppressive, and reward both antagonists and security for skill. It's ironic that lethals are called lethals, but the safest way to kill someone is to get your hands on a stun weapon and hit them twice so you can cuff them and have all the time in the world to kill them.

[le mon]

Some really good points made here, especially about the instant disorient trigger of taser SMG bolts, the laughable spread and PU cost of the taser shotgun, and the stun cap itself.
I too would like to highlight some other passive benefits that are far too good for being round-start items:

1) Night Vision SecHUDs: Pretty popular accessory, but it completely nullifies the benefits of our already limited maintenance area. Luring a secoff into maints or setting up a modest trap becomes pointless because the officer can likely see your trap better than you can. Not to mention, disabling "View Tints" removes one of its primary downsides. Some visual examples - imgur.com/a/yaU5D0C

2) Healing Donuts: Donuts already provide slight passive healing to seoffs, but now they have more bites and include a variety of healing chemicals (salb, epi, saline, synaptizine, and sugar), all spread across just two donuts for a single requisition point.

3) Round-Start Armor: Free round-start armor with -6 melee resist is quite decent. Against a sec officer, an extinguisher (which hits for 10 damage) only does 4, a revolver (which hits for 60 non-AP damage) only does 30 (50 if AP), and a Csaber (which hits for 60) only does 54-55.

4) Barrier (too cool for a change tho): The only decent protection against the awful disorient effect. It provides -9 melee resist, 1.5 ranged resist, 65% disorient insulation, and the special reflective barrier effect, all for just one hand and a slight movement delay. Blocking with it further increases disorient resistance and adds explosive resistance too.

5) Power Cells: Dodging taser bolts or baton hits is almost useless because the secoff can simply retreat for a moment and recharge their gun or baton with a new cell in a single click (uninterrupted while moving). Two baton hits are usually enough, so equipping it with a disruptor cell means you rarely have to recharge, covering 90% of situations, and get an extra baton’s default 200u cell.

6) Some other points:
- SecHUDs instantly identifying revs.
- Anti-rev implants being an instant action, while re-revving is locked behind a time gate.
- Round-start health implants reporting the locations of dead sec officers.
- Round-start cloning data disks

Apologies for my rambling, but here are some more stuff I’ve noticed. I don’t wish to express all of them very strongly because I’m not very aware of our maintainer’s POVs regarding them:

ARMORY:
- This is a very confusing place for me. By the name, I’d assume it’s simply a storage place for lethal weapons where non lethals fail. But, (to me) it feels like a bloated mess, as if someone went through 10–20 rounds on observer mode and added countermeasures for most of the dominant antagonistic activity. Thermals for cloakers, NVGs for power sinks, mutadone darts for hulks, tranqs for stimulants, pod missiles for rogue pods, pulse rifles (a cool concept, honestly) for rogue borgs, flamethrowers for blobs, and so on. The only bread and butter lethal equipment seems to be shotguns, phasers, heavy armors, and grenades. Maybe.... we could ease some of this bloat to cargo??

HOS:
I know I know this is a controversial opinion, and our whitelist is the only reason this position isn’t the big bad of the station like in other codebases. But still, for a department that (in my opinion) needs a head in majority of situations, it’s frustrating to see it often left empty, leading to unnecessary conflicts which wouldn't have surfaced if we had one (specially frustrating on mid to low pop).

Weak Antags and Certain Syndie Items:
This is beyond the scope of this thread (I apologize for that), but I think our humble traitor is too weak. Many job specific and surplus only items (thermals, sacrificial dagger, syndie armor) could easily fit the normal buy list or we can have some TC changes too but don’t because some items behave as if they’re stuck in 2012 (wrestle belt’s instant no-aim stun, cloaker lacking ANY movement or visual downsides, shotgun itself). Meanwhile, other items feel like filler (chameleon outfit, chameleon projector, duct tape, moustache, floor closet, holographic disguiser, signal implant, trick cigies). Probably a reason why special ability antags are so popular and dominating too.

[BioFrequency]

Less because I feel strongly about the following idea - and MORE because I simply want to put the idea out there.

My first instinct to your comments about the Sec stuns weapons being too good wasn't to agree with them needing a nerf. But rather, for countermeasures to the stuns being stronger and/or more accessible.

For say.... The classic Syndicate Traitor.

Something that comes to mind is the (usually) Chef exclusive Syndicate Donk Pockets and its exclusive Syndicate Meth cocktail. Why not make 'A' pocket purchasable from Listening Post (even if the price is steep) - or even just the Syndicate Meth itself? Meth can do a lot to counteract the effect of stuns.

Alternatively..... Or in addition to the above.... What about adding stun resistant qualities to some gear? Such as insulated space suits or armor?
Now.... I'm NOT saying make said gear sooooooo stun resistant that they solve the problem themselves. But even a small difference can help - and if combined with stun resisting chem abuse like mentioned above maybe all that would come together to make a VERY hard to stun traitor?

[Kotlol]

I do want some small nerf's from security.. but I do not want 1 antag to be able to BODY SECUIRTY from minute 1.

I think traitors can easily go kill happy from the moment they can get their tools. They don't build up either. They just get em and it's done.
And I am fine with them being like that.. but I believe most security complaints comes from TRAITOR players.

But... Most other antags build up power and security ABSOLUTELY hates dealing with them.
Arcfiends especially since all they do is drain energy, stun and run.

Vampires can get out of stun with abit of health sacrifice and can still fight back most of the time when stunned.

Changelings can freely sting and get out of cuffs. Making most of securities way of handling them: "Stun them over and over till their dead or in a port-a-brig."

Spiefs can nicely build up tools but are fighting eachother too.

Wizards can also easily ramp up killing like traitors, but unlike traitors... they can easily teleport to safety without sec doing much. Or simply get arrested, teleport back to base and get a new supply.

Blob and Flock do not care... they are fighting the whole crew.
Wraith's are excellent escalators but Sec hates fighting them...
Werewolves once they rampage... they are unstoppable beasts and gotta be killed.
Then we got gangs.. wich security is always outnumbered against.. but since they are also fighting eachother.. the best way for sec to deal with em is finding their leaders and taking them out insted.
And of course Salvagers.. but again.. that's more station vs antags.
Same with Nukies.


So who do we nerf sec for.. since if we nerf sec for traitors to be able to 2 on 1 em. You are essentially making all antags more dangerous by default.

As much as I hate the stun meta. Without the stun meta... security will start beating people to death.
So while I am fine with some stun resistances. I think nerfing stun abit is fine... but at the same time.
I think we need to add 1 mechanic to the game if we are nerfing stuns.

Security gear like batons and tazers can be turned off and NOT turned on until the right DNA code is on them.

This will have the next effects:

1: People cannot just "swipe" security gear and use it unless it's turned on in advance. If it turns off/runs out... you cannot turn it on.
2: A certain mutation will become MORE USEFUL for antagonists (The polymorph one). Since now you got the DNA profile of the security officer and can use it unlimitedly.
3: Forcing security officer to "Lose" their DNA profile will also become more useful since if their gear is off. They can't turn it on until they are changed back/cloned.
4: Changeling gameplay will fully have a new avenue of annoying security with a certain sting. (So a changeling buff for a silly sting that had barely any use)

Anyway.. I said myself enough on this.
The problem security is.. "if they aren't scary, there won't be any decieving just fighting."
But "they are too strong so now I can't interact with them at all."

A balance has to be met... and I think the better part would be for traitors / spiefs to get buffs to their kits to resist security then just freedom implant and syndicate pocket donks.
I think traitors need the option to "reveal themselves" fully but by doing so can be more combat effecient against security. How they would o it? Maybe by doing some sort of objective too?

[KikiMofo]

I feel like nerfing stuns will just cause sec to go back to beating people with batons.

[Cal]

As one person in the discord put it: "the most robust traitor in the world still has a 50/50 matchup against someone with a taser SMG and 20 hours playtime".

Uh. Seems fine to me? 20 hours is a very large amount of time to have played and learned this game. That's a literal day of play time.

[Kateaclysm]

I dislike the stun meta as much as the next person, and i'm for the disorient changes, but complaining and moaning about the taser SMG and shotgun when you have options like stims and other drugs, and then insinuating that the person using them is merely "unskilled" leaves a bad taste in my mouth and reeks of bitterness.

[mona]

we should reduce stun gameplay i think. and also give sec more decisive options i think and we can rename them to TURDS maybe. and fire the hos i think

[le mon]

when you have options like stims and other drugs, and then insinuating that the person using them is merely "unskilled" leaves a bad taste in my mouth and reeks of bitterness.

I mean, even the moaning comes from a rightful place in my humble opinion. Syndie stimulants are locked behind a job specific uplink and cost 6 TC out of the preset 12 TC (that’s 50% of the whole uplink!). Not to mention, there are two sources of nullifying the effects of stimulants and if you don’t manage their dosage properly then it’s a confirmed slow death anyway.
Also afaik, there are no synthesizable chemicals that counter the disorient effect. All they do is help with stamina regeneration and increase your speed for a set amount of time. They require actual synthesis or traveling through Z-levels if all you want is meth/crank. Plus, they’re addictive, which sometimes goes away on its own or stays even after spending multiple minutes in the sleeper. On top of that, you have to manage the dosage to avoid post OD effects.
All this, compared to just running close and spam clicking with a taser shotgun or SMG in the general direction of a person for a guaranteed takedown, does feel unfair in my eyes.

[Silent Majority]

Spam clicking is forgetting the component of 'dodging' and 'aiming'. someone can dodge quite easily, as can someone hit quite easily. Our combat is fast. its very fast. I like that, personally.

[Lt487]

The disorient changes would most likely fix all issues I have with the taser shotgun and the taser smg but my frustration with them is that its unsatisfying to use and get owned by in comparison to other weapons. Nailing someone with a good taser shot or a good macro phaser shot feels great! and so those juking them and playing those mind games to try and get a hit off.
I feel that both taser shotgun and taser smg forgo this satisfying micro gameplay. There is a lot less of a need to aim when you can saturate the entire hallway with taser bolts!
I will say that the disorient changes I think would most likely solve this issue, would force you when using the taser smg/ shotgun to have to hit multiple bolts in order to take someone down rather then just one, Hopefully would make using and getting hit by such weapons more engaging

[Cal]

Syndie stimulants are locked behind a job specific uplink and cost 6 TC out of the preset 12 TC (that’s 50% of the whole uplink!).

They make you nigh-unstoppable for a whole minute or so, and you get three. I think you're only vulnerable to bleeding or tranquilizer shots which people generally don't pre-prepare carrying around.

[Glamurio]

Personally, if you want stun to be worse but keep letting Sec have options, why don't we nerf all Security equipment and just put better scaling on them if you have Security training? That way batons can be weak in antag hands, but strong in Security hands because they know how to use them.