Ways to Deafen Near Death Gasps.

[Rukert]

Imagine this with me, you’re trying to be a silent Antagonist trying to take your target out quickly and quietly. You finally got your victim to a nice, secluded place in maints and you grab them from behind with your fiber wire! You’re in a enclosed room and nobody has been around in ages. Then all of a sudden your victim starts gasping super loud even though their throat is being completely deprived of oxygen and is basically closed. A Security officer hears from the hall and pinpoints exactly where you are and you’re in cuffs.


 Alright so I opened up with an example for a reason, to display how goofy I think the noise when gasping when near death is. I feel as if right now, unless your off station or completely cut off from the other crew your at a Huge Disadvantage if your attempting to play silently due to near death. The Two Main “Stealth” Antagonists who rely on gaining points by choking are constantly foiled by these super loud gasps. It pretty much makes Choking just a worse way to finish off your opponents than opposed to just bashing their head in with a weapon while they are down. You could throw them out to space, or go off station but honestly, I think it’d be better to rework the way your character makes noise when near death, it'd allow for more Antagonist moments in rounds ON station besides rampages and give a much-needed change to gasping.




Here are some changes I was thinking about when I was brainstorming for how to balance this:

• Allow Choking to Deafen or Mute Gasps and replace them with a much Quieter but more menacing Choking sound. With this change it would allow Strangling to be a alternative to beating people to death, with it being slower but much stealthier. Imagine you're a security guard who was in maints patrolling, you enter a small room to eat some floor pills and all of a sudden you hear somebody getting choked out and your surprised by it! This change would allow for more Dramatic/Funny Moments when you're suspecting to be caught.
  

• Buff the Fiber Wire for it to be able to mute ALL sound coming from the person being choked, allow a really faint choking noise to be heard from maybe 1 or two tiles away. This EXTRA muted effect with the fiber wire would only occur when upgrading the fiber wire grab. The tradeoff is of course, with the second level fiber wire grab you'd be leaving blood everywhere.
  

• If you are on a space tile/Carbon Dioxide infected tile, without any connected oxygen your gasps will be muted near death. No air in an environment with no Oxygen = No Gasping.
  

If you have anything you want to suggest for this feature please comment below, and if you have questions/criticisms or please also comment.

[klushy225]

I like this idea. I've had a few antagonist rounds go way off the rails because of this. I would favor the choking sound, as I think it gives the person being choked an opportunity to be saved while not being super obnoxious.

[Rukert]

I like this idea. I've had a few antagonist rounds go way off the rails because of this. I would favor the choking sound, as I think it gives the person being choked an opportunity to be saved while not being super obnoxious.

Exactly! I really think it'd be a cool way to still have that social deduction aspect of SS13 play into it, like having the menacing AHA! moment when you find somebody choking out a fellow spaceman while going "Oh shit" because your about to be their next victim.

I feel like if this change gets implemented there will be a LOT of station activity to happen, Detective gets more work to do, People finding bodies etc. With it being easier to actually give a quiet finishing blow it would be fun to see how people would use it to assassinate their targets quietly.

Another Reason I wanted to add this would be to help newer players fit into the antagonist role, I feel like if I were a newer player and finally getting antagonist, getting your first victim ever as like Changeling or Vampire and getting ready to put them into a chokehold. When you finally get them into crit, you'll have to deal with super loud gasps that reveal your location and that'll seem really unfair to them.

[colossusqw]

This should probably be a thing for the 'paralisys' status effect as well.

[KikiMofo]

Yeah the death gasps are VERY loud.
I feel you shouldn't be able to hear that through walls.

[Lefinch]

I'm for this, but consider that this is a pretty significant change: It's pretty easy to break visual lines as an antagonist but trickier to conceal the gasping and it's a bit fuzzier, as I assume most people aren't carrying exact radius of the hearing range of a death gasp in their mind.
I'm not saying don't do it, I think on balance it could be interesting to give a method to stifle that (Maybe the handkerchief has a little more use here too, as an aside) and the idea as stated means poor pegleg pete who got his leg blown off in an unrelated explosion is still hopefully being heard gasping. Just that it might be worth keeping an eye on how it impacts antag detectability. I think it'll be fine though.

[freedo5]

I like the changes you proposed, the sounds could probably be reduced. Only thing i would say is to not remove the carbon dioxide gasping as it's already very hard to notice until too late

[Rukert]

Yeah the death gasps are VERY loud.
I feel you shouldn't be able to hear that through walls.

Death Gasps are a very weird Balancing thing for this, death gasps definitely serve an important purpose in informing people that somebody ya’know died. I think with strangling deafening death gasps it’s be an Antagonist Exclusive thing. Mostly to prevent self antagging and honestly if your found strangling somebody in maints and your basically found out as an Antagonist Obvious Change To Death Gasp or Not unless they’re not a antag A-Help.

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I'm for this, but consider that this is a pretty significant change: It's pretty easy to break visual lines as an antagonist but trickier to conceal the gasping and it's a bit fuzzier, as I assume most people aren't carrying exact radius of the hearing range of a death gasp in their mind.
I'm not saying don't do it, I think on balance it could be interesting to give a method to stifle that (Maybe the handkerchief has a little more use here too, as an aside) and the idea as stated means poor pegleg pete who got his leg blown off in an unrelated explosion is still hopefully being heard gasping. Just that it might be worth keeping an eye on how it impacts antag detectability. I think it'll be fine though.

Agreed it would be a huge Balance Change but I think it’d be a nice change of pace. To be able to strangle somebody in the first place you have to beat them in a fight, which usually is very obvious especially when using stuns (Flashes, Stun Batons, Tranq Darts, Stun Gun, Vampire Flashe, Etc). If you get poisoned and knocked out well you’re probably already dead and is very obvious. As I said with my Original too, I think it’d help new Players as Antagonist with it feeling unfair to be heard strangling somebody from some guy from the hallway.

I think with completely muting Near death gasps/Death Gasps it’d come from Antagonist Items only for balancing reason. Also about the Handkerchief thing, I think it’d be cool if you have somebody handcuffed/Stunned you can stuff the Hankerchief into somebody’s mouth as a makeshift gag, muffling near death gasps/talking and transferring chemicals infused with handkerchief passively until the victim clicks on themselves with the help intent.

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I like the changes you proposed, the sounds could probably be reduced. Only thing i would say is to not remove the carbon dioxide gasping as it's already very hard to notice until too late

Yeah that’s fair, there’s usually still oxygen in the environment where the CO2 was released. Just keep near death gasps unmuted in that situation unless your in a weirder situation where theres 100% CO2 in the environment lol.

[Kotlol]

I am fine with deathgasps being lessened in range if you are being choked. It makes sense.
BUT DO NOT TURN IT OFF! As this is also the "kill confirm" for an antagonist.

Essentially just lower the range of deathgasping when being choked.

[Spoodle]

The game used to not have audible death gasps at all (iirc, from my time), and I think its introduction put stealth in a bad place. Mind you, it probably was right to add some sound to people dying, but I think that it's excessive in its current state. While it'd be a significant change, I think that lowering the death gasp & death rattle sound radii to something more like 5-10 tiles would lift a lot of pressure off of antagonists in a way that'd make the game more fun for everyone involved.

[Kateaclysm]

Does our codebase currently support localized audio? For some reason i remember people saying that stuff like that is difficult to work around. Maybe that's old news and things are more doable now. No idea!

Aside from deathgasps, i think other antagonists with nuclear-bomb-level audio cues for their abilities (looking at you, vampire glare) could benefit from reduced radius of hearing. Often times i'll completely ignore a glare sound effect because I can tell i just heard it from three rooms over in maintenance. It must be frustrating!