We need to talk about the invisible deathtrap that is CO2 canisters

[CaptainBravo]

So there is some real-life basis for being able to recognize you're breathing in too much CO2, though I'd rather shy away from realism arguments for a game where you can eat beans to fly in space with farts and restart your heart with a stun gun.

i don't feel this specific thing in the game (that is dumb and unfun for anyone who suffers it) should be defended by an argument of keeping more realism out of the game when other things that weren't hampering peoples' experiences (and some that were) were made somewhat more realistic.

i hate CO2 leaks now, and i hated them when i used to play a lot more often. what irks me about watching people defend CO2 existing in its current form is that to my knowledge it hasn't changed in a long while, whereas several other related aspects of the game have. it's more of a pain in the ass to find a large O2 tank to fill up from, and O2 tanks themselves got hit in some odd way a long while ago (though i don't recall exactly how) because someone felt that everyone having internals on all round long in a pressurized space station killed the magic a bit.

i don't disagree with the reasons for those things happening, but they all happened when the game existed at basically half speed and i could actually spot a potential initial victim on the ground and turn myself around while i waited for the tick to happen. and i had my tank on if i felt i couldn't. and the pressure was set to 1000, and it was always pure oxygen, and there were likely no holes anywhere on board, and if there were they were patched by someone taking advantage of the tickrate to plug them before the halls lost oxygen, and people got cold much more slowly near holes as it was and could sometimes safely just skirt by one without internals at all, so even if my tank wasn't full i had what i needed, and i had one map to memorize spawns for large gas tanks to fill up etc. etc. etc. many advantages over modern spacemen.

all of those advantages eroded over time and after starting to play again i can say that, comparatively, finding internals that would last me half of a round feels like a big time wasting chore to avoid something that rarely happens but pretty much ends my playtime in rounds when it does. CO2 is like the final atmospheric boogieman from a time when not having internals on all the time was considered stupid or lazy. other gasses might not have changed much either but they aren't as low visibility and high consequence as CO2.

in conclusion: this is a dumb, low effort, moderate-to-high reward mechanic that sucks fun out of the game. just bring it in line with the rest of the game already