Phaser Type I: a weak/versatile standard issue phaser for emergencies

[kyle2143]

About a month or so ago, mybluecorners had a joke round where everyone spawned with a random gun in order to "test" something with projectiles because someone suggested it in ooc before round start. And that round was very fun, but super dangerous. People were stealing and hoarding guns and most of the guns were very deadly. We should each have a standard issue self-defense weapon, we're spacemen on a space station and the best option for self defense most people have are their fists and toolboxes, that's just wrong. (it is funny and I would never want to take that away, but I want more space-age stuff)

Hear me out on this before you jump down my throat.

The phaser I'm proposing will be very weak and pretty situational. For the most part I want it to be something to help you get away from danger, not something that will let you kill people. This is what I have in mind:

- Just about every crew member should have one of these small phasers in their pocket on round start. Most Scientists, Medical staff, Command, Security, and Engineers should have them, maybe even the Civilian jobs too. Obviously the clown's Phaser will just shock whoever tries to use it.

- Phasers are fingerprint locked to the person it was spawned for, sort of like the security tasers used to require security access to fire a few years ago. This way nobody really has a way to steal them. Emagged phasers could be fired by anyone I suppose.

- Has small self-charging power cell. You'll only be able to shoot this 1-3 times during an encounter depending on the power level used

- It has 4 modes so far, maybe more if anyone can think of other features: stun, damage, power, utility
    - stun - Actually a misnomer, this isn't actually a stun. It only reduces stamina of the person shot. Helpful for outrunning people trying to kill you. uses small amount of power per shot
    - damage - weak phaser bolt. does about 10 burn damage uses modest amount of power.
    - power - powerful phaser beam. You have to stand in place for a couple seconds for you to "aim" and for the phaser to "charge" in order to fire. You can see my prototype in the video. This will drain the whole power cell.
    - utility - This is mostly what I want suggestions on. I have it in mind that these phasers should be like the Star Trek phasers (hence the name I stole) which have more uses than combat. 
        - I think this should be able to be shot on an object in order to heat it up, to provide heat for cold places. 
        - Maybe there could be another function that blocks the user from an energy weapon shot, or some of the damage if activated at the right time. 
        - Protects your from space/atmos damage while active if you have internals too. Only active for a couple seconds at most and would drain all the power remaining.
- Also firing the phaser on damage or power might send a PDA notification to the AI or Security. But that might be OP.
Below is a link to a video I made showing the basics for what I have so far. I still need sprites for projectiles and the gun. Also the power setting I want to be a beam, like in star trek, but I just have it as another projectile here.

https://streamable.com/c8jqs

[Spoodle]

Interesting concept, but I feel that crew members already have enough ways to defend themselves. A weak phaser would just make life harder for unrobust antags, and easier for valid hunters.

[BlackPhoenix]

Not a fan of this, especially with the justification being that it is for some reason wrong that people on the space station wouldn’t be given firearms. If a person’s job is to run an engine, clean up a station, be a doctor...why would they be given a gun. The people who have potential need for weapons to detain others, security, have them. If things get out of hand, a Head of Security can even break out riot gear. It just doesn’t make sense from a fluff perspective and seems like a bad idea for the game’s sake too. Sorry, it does seem like you put a lot of thought in.

[kyle2143]

Okay, I'm picking up what you're laying down. No offense, but I don't care. I wasn't really looking for anyone to tell me not to do this so I'll be making the patch regardless.

Mostly I wanted suggestions for balancing issues for how each power level should work and function. And more ideas for the utility function. Maybe I'll remove one of the damaging settings in favor of one of those.

[hipBEE]

give every crewmember a zipgun.

[Mordent]

Okay, I'm picking up what you're laying down. No offense, but I don't care. I wasn't really looking for anyone to tell me not to do this so I'll be making the patch regardless.

Mostly I wanted suggestions for balancing issues for how each power level should work and function. And more ideas for the utility function. Maybe I'll remove one of the damaging settings in favor of one of those.

Making a patch that no one wants is a great way to get a thread moved to here. Community feedback is important.

With that out of the way:

For the most part I want it to be something to help you get away from danger, not something that will let you kill people.

I don't understand the correlation between this idea and the motive. How does this help you get away from danger? If you're being chased, sure, I'll concede that having a ranged weapon is better than not, but you're currently looking at 30 burn damage if all of the shots hit on the "damage" setting.

Small amounts of burn damage are not really a great deterrent for someone coming after you. If you're security, you have something better than this. If you're a regular crewmember and you're able to run and have time to shoot back, running to somewhere where there are more crew would be a better use of your focus. If you're running from security rather than antags, we don't need another way for staff assistants to be griefy shits. If you're an antag, how you have you not found something better to use?

Essentially, I don't think this is filling the niche you want it to be.

[Wraithcraft]

For the most part I want it to be something to help you get away from danger, not something that will let you kill people.

Thrown objects already do damage and stamina damage, right? I don't think we need everyone to have a powered down phaser when we already have a quick and dirty ranged option for people chasing you.

[Noah Buttes]

Okay, I'm picking up what you're laying down. No offense, but I don't care. I wasn't really looking for anyone to tell me not to do this so I'll be making the patch regardless.

Mostly I wanted suggestions for balancing issues for how each power level should work and function. And more ideas for the utility function. Maybe I'll remove one of the damaging settings in favor of one of those.

Making a patch that no one wants is a great way to get a thread moved to here. Community feedback is important.

[kremlin]

if this is a self-learning exercise to get into the ss13 codebase, by all means, go for it. but any kind of weapon changes, especially very large scale ones like this, can turn ss13 into a completely different game, usually for the worse. i would not expect anything like this to get merged, please understand

the large abundance of items that can (humorously) approximate weapons also is a big part of ss13's charm. i wouldn't want that to go away

[Frank_Stein]

For the most part I want it to be something to help you get away from danger, not something that will let you kill people.

Thrown objects already do damage and stamina damage, right? I don't think we need everyone to have a powered down phaser when we already have a quick and dirty ranged option for people chasing you.

Do they? I should throw things at people more often

[Flourish]

For the most part I want it to be something to help you get away from danger, not something that will let you kill people.

Thrown objects already do damage and stamina damage, right? I don't think we need everyone to have a powered down phaser when we already have a quick and dirty ranged option for people chasing you.

Do they? I should throw things at people more often

Throw a knife at Mr. Muggles 2day!

[kyle2143]

OK, this is wildly more unpopular than I hoped. Maybe it's because of the presentation, or the whole idea, or me attempting to be snarky. I guess I'll never know. I think I'll probably hold off on this for now until I can figure out a good way to do it if at all, but I would like to clarify some things about the idea just for the sake of correctness in terms of what I had in mind. For starters, I wanted this to be more of a utility item than strictly a weapon, but showing 3 "weapon" settings probably gave the wrong idea.

@Mordent, the way in which this "should" have helped you escape from danger was the "stun" setting, which reduces the stamina of humans by about 40 on hit so you can out sprint them if you land one or two on them.The burn damage setting I wanted because I felt that it should have at least some offensive functionality, and it would be an actual way for a regular crewman to deal with a pod shooting lasers at them through a window. I had the two damage settings because I didn't have much of the utility settings worked out yet so I thought I'd just keep the weak damage setting around(that shot took 60PU of the 90PU cell capacity so it couldn't do much). Like I said, I mostly wanted ideas for more utility functions because that was what I felt would make it an interesting tool more than a just weapon, but none of the ideas I had on my own seemed particularly good enough.

@Kremlin I think I stated in my post somewhere that the idea was definitely not to take away using improvised weapons in favour of always using the phaser. That was explicitly why I made it so weak and unable to actually stun people unless they were out of stamina, which is exactly like hitting them with a melee weapon. But I thought projectile weapons were fun, and having an accessible/low-stakes weapon that people could use would be interesting. Plus I hoped that I could get better ideas for the utility functions that would have been more interesting than what I had, which would have made it more of a common useful tool (sort of like how the PDA has so many functions) more than the weapon.

[mbc]

utility functions that would have been more interesting than what I had, which would have made it more of a common useful tool (sort of like how the PDA has so many functions) more than the weapon.

I have a pretty silly idea for this.

Make this gun into a PDA module that you insert and attaches a little barrel to the end of your PDA. Also, you could have the gun interact with the PDA internal battery in some way (wait, do PDAs even have batteries??)

aand THEN, you could change the PDA module's settings based on the job or the needs that need to be met. What if the RD could heat or cool a target tile with a bullet? What if the CE could fire RCD rounds to repair at range? Dumb stuff like that.

[Wisecrack34]

Wouldn't mind if this got buffed into a potential security weapon

[Nnystyxx]

utility functions that would have been more interesting than what I had, which would have made it more of a common useful tool (sort of like how the PDA has so many functions) more than the weapon.

I have a pretty silly idea for this.

Make this gun into a PDA module that you insert and attaches a little barrel to the end of your PDA. Also, you could have the gun interact with the PDA internal battery in some way (wait, do PDAs even have batteries??)

aand THEN, you could change the PDA module's settings based on the job or the needs that need to be met. What if the RD could heat or cool a target tile with a bullet? What if the CE could fire RCD rounds to repair at range? Dumb stuff like that.

Well that sounds rather fun actually. I like it.