"The Stun META discussion Thread"

[TDHooligan]

TL;DR: You can just read the bold stuff

Since stamina was added to the game, I think the 'stun' part of the meta isn't directly attributed to how stuns work any more.

I think the key issue is the disparity in equipment. Dedicated murder tools aren't just good at their job, they're *insanely good* at their job.
So good, in fact, that security needs super-restricted, specialised gear that can actually deal with it. Stun batons, tasers. There's no staff-available equipment that comes close, and this is due to a multitude of factors, i've listed in order of magnitude:


1: Traitor weapons make combat *incredibly* fast
- With their original design goal, traitor weapons are built to be able to handle someone before they escape, or someone else can reasonably intervene.
- Right now, this stands at an average TTK of 2-3 hits (usually 2 to shallow crit, 3 to deepcrit)
- This is the main reason why your best chance at beating traitor weapons is 'spam disarm and hope for the best'


2: Stun weapons need similar TTK to traitor equipment
- This currently makes their effective TTK 2~3 hits (You'd generally consider someone helplessly stunned 'defeated')
- Note how CSaber stuns were a huge issue after batons got disorients
- Another interesting part is that these also ignore (most) armor. I think this is fine but would need accounting for if adjusting non-stun gear.


3: Improvised weapons are not only weak, but are also much weaker vs armor
- A traitor with even an upturned welding helmet sees a 26% reduction in damage from Fire extinguishers, a common higher-tier melee. A staffie with the same takes 6% less damage from a saber, making zero difference to their TTK.
- Weaker weapons just get dunked on further.
- Every traitor wears sunglasses. Flashes are out of the question.


4: Unbalanced combat gets out of hand really quickly
- Health induced movement penalties make the second hit easier to land. They also only start at 30 damage, meaning traitors are unaffected by pain until they've taken 2~3 hits. Once a traitor lands a single hit the entire fight is in their hands..
- You *can* sprint - but why would you lay down all your stamina to hit someone once more with anything but a baton?



I'd say there are several other things that make the 'stun meta' worse. Many departments have been significantly de-fanged, so rampaging with weapons is still your most sure-fire way to make people dead.

I think there's room to adjust these 4 key issues, moving them towards making traitor weapons a huge leg-up rather than duels of 'cheese the weapon out of their hands or lose' - I'll list a few examples.


Address 1 & 2 : Lower the raw, immediate power of traitor weapons & stun batons.
- This ultimately lowers the relative impact of issues 3 & 4 too.
- I think there's room for making batons explicitly weaker than traitor weapons in this scenario, lowering the risk for traitors that're fighting.
- Another issue to consider is actually number of opponents when taking this approach. Perhaps it's worth investigating changes to bleed, as vigilante mobs generally take a long time to actually pin down antagonists. Adding a long-game to lethals like bleed-induced stamina degens could improve their one-vs-many staying power


Address 3: Adjust melee armor to be multiplicative.
- Melee armor VS ranged armor acting different is a weird thing anyway. Stun weapons would likely need to be weakened to compensate, as this shifts combat in security's favor. 
- There should still be cases where full immunity is granted, like punches. perhaps keep lower additive numbers as 'absorption' values.


Address 4: Limit the effects of pain in combat (ie. while dodging and weaving)
 - Lowering how it affects BASE_SPEED while maintaining the effect on BASE_SPEED_SUSTAINED would lower the in-combat disadvantage of being in pain.