[MERGED PR] Security Vendor Changes

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About the PR
Splits up the loadouts in the Security Vendor between two sections; Loadout and Utility. Also adds a few more Utility items. Each token comes with two Utility credits, so you can pick two items from the list below.
Current utility item choices:
Four morphine autoinjectors
Two Robust donuts
Four crowd dispersal grenades
Forensics scanner
High Capacity Power Cell (300)
Advanced first aid kit, the one that spawns with menders
NVGs
Two boxes of 40mm PBR rounds (4 shots total)

Nothing is lost from the old loadouts, just lets you pick what bonus stuff you get. Also adds in a free barrier to every loadout!


Why's this needed?
Brings more versatility into selecting a loadout as a Security Officer. Should hopefully improve the secoff experience by allowing them to pick what gear they want and adapt to situations better.

Also removes the "Support" loadout. I've seen too many new secoffs select the loadout, not knowing they don't get a ranged stun weapon then being stuck with it the entire round. Often times these players would simply disconnect.

Update: Replaced 200 cells with 300 cells after the received feedback. Added a "Just a Baton" loadout that comes with baton + barrier as well for security officers who do not want a ranged weapon.


Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)Sord:
(*)Reworked Security loadouts in the Security equipment vendors.

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[Leeanei]

This is a very good PR.

Any thought to Yass's idea for 40mm baton rounds in a 2 pack magazine for riot cannon use?

Note: Every kit comes with a barrier!

[GORE]

Like the idea - really dope PR.

I just feel like the Forensics scanner should be moved to the normal vendor and not the loadout thing...or rather just do a mapping change and ensure there are enough forensic scanners for every officer,...

I mean - not even that - see - every security PDA can scan for fingerprints; they just have to be then checked manually at a security computer.
Spending a utility point for an essential item like a forensics scanner sounds a bit off.

[Flaborized]

I feel like the particular items that you can choose are kinda poorly picked/thought out. for instance:

Forensic scanners are already *pretty* readily available. Seems like an abject waste of a point.

Night vision goggles are just sitting in the armory, a lot of players probably *won't* break into the armory to get them but it's still trivial to circumvent buying them which I think is bad. It's a utility point you don't *have* to spend. 

First aid kit only contains items that they could go and vend themselves. Again, wasting a point for the sake of getting something you could *already* go grab.

The other items are ~exclusive~ so they don't have that problem, but I still think the power cell is pretty much The Good Choice between them. I feel it has the most actual utility out of all of them, especially since this weakens the starting cell. Being able to reload *more* is pretty strong compared to what all the other items get you.

The morphine injectors say 'capable of holding a dying person over until further medical aid can be delivered' in the description but that doesn't seem to be the case according to the wiki? They just reduce damage slow by a lot. (which, tbf is decently useful, but the tooltip there has misleading info imo). 

I'm also concerned that this would lead to a similar effect that nukeops have, where officers spend a good part of the start of the round just trying to figure out what to buy, I enjoy the simplicity of the current implementation of tokens, where you only make *one* choice. With your change, that's suddenly *three* choices, and the choices aren't really even that good or balanced, with a few of them feeling pointless/clutter-y. I don't absolutely *despise* the idea but I don't think it's particularly well implemented in this PR !

[Carbadox]

Removing the support loadout is good. It's a bit of a new player trap honestly and should make thinsg less anoying for newer players.

However I agree with Flab on alot of the proposed utility items.

If you've got flashers set up in the armoury, you're most likely gonna set them off by accident and if you do so while forgetting you're wearing NVG, you're gonna be hit with a really strong stun, stamina damage and if you do it again, chance of eye damage. Not to mention you're opening yourself to a huge vulnerability to people using flashes in general.

Forensic scanners dont really make sense in a vendor for combat items. Even if you cut down on the amount of forensic scanners available, people would prefer picking something that gives a combat advantage instead.

Not sure how I feel on the 300u power cell getting cut down too

[nefarious6th]

I second Carb and Flab's points.

The only thing missing from here that I don't quite understand is how many loadout items you can take. Not thrilled about the powercell getting cut down; I take support, I only take support and standard, I recognize this preserves the options given there, but I also really, really specifically don't like carrying a taser and never feel like things are safe enough to leave in HQ even if it's in a locker or something. I just wanna know if there would be an option to buy only the baton then, if I don't wanna go and purchase the other gun types, and not have a wavegun, taser, or shotgun spawn from the vendor that I then have to think of the sneakiest securist place to lock it up.

Related to the powercell, then, I'd also miss the extra two (four? math hard) hits that comes from the spare power cell I spawn with, considering I don't use the tasers. I think all the powercell cut does is make it so when you do need the extra few hits for whatever reason (long chase, in melee, long haul back to HQ or to gibber/crematorium) it just means they're not going to be there and the job will be harder. You have to make the extra space for the spare powercells in your gear. If I wanna take something like my usual support loadout, I then also have to look at leaving behind part of the donuts or morphine to make room for this.

I dunno. I like more ability to mix and match. I feel like this unduly targets and makes item-heavy loadouts like support and control suffer for keeping collections of more but individually weaker items. I do agree with Flab too; I already spend 5-10 mins on RP getting geared up, this would eat into more of that time in a round, which I don't really have a lot of. If you were to keep the support loadout in the mix in a streamlined loadout selecting process, maybe renaming it might be a better solution to fixing the new player trap? Not sure what would be best but maybe something like "melee" to drive the point that there's no taser with it.

[Mouse]

The morphine injectors say 'capable of holding a dying person over until further medical aid can be delivered' in the description but that doesn't seem to be the case according to the wiki? They just reduce damage slow by a lot. (which, tbf is decently useful, but the tooltip there has misleading info imo). 

IIRC that's a holdover from the PR that originally introduced morphine autoinjectors - it rebalanced a bunch of less-used medical chems and, in an early version of the PR, had morphine reduce the random death chance from being in crit.  The version that was ultimately merged moved that over to a synaptizine/atropine combo, leaving morphine identical to how it was before.

[Sord213]

Flaborized

   I feel like the particular items that you can choose are kinda poorly picked/thought out. for instance:

   Forensic scanners are already *pretty* readily available. Seems like an abject waste of a point.

   Night vision goggles are just sitting in the armory, a lot of players probably *won't* break into the armory to get them but it's still trivial to circumvent buying them which I think is bad. It's a utility point you don't *have* to spend.

   First aid kit only contains items that they could go and vend themselves. Again, wasting a point for the sake of getting something you could *already* go grab.

   The other items are ~exclusive~ so they don't have that problem, but I still think the power cell is pretty much The Good Choice between them. I feel it has the most actual utility out of all of them, especially since this weakens the starting cell. Being able to reload *more* is pretty strong compared to what all the other items get you.

   The morphine injectors say 'capable of holding a dying person over until further medical aid can be delivered' in the description but that doesn't seem to be the case according to the wiki? They just reduce damage slow by a lot. (which, tbf is decently useful, but the tooltip there has misleading info imo).

   I'm also concerned that this would lead to a similar effect that nukeops have, where officers spend a good part of the start of the round just trying to figure out what to buy, I enjoy the simplicity of the current implementation of tokens, where you only make *one* choice. With your change, that's suddenly *three* choices, and the choices aren't really even that good or balanced, with a few of them feeling pointless/clutter-y. I don't absolutely *despise* the idea but I don't think it's particularly well implemented in this PR !

   I feel like the particular items that you can choose are kinda poorly picked/thought out. for instance:

   Forensic scanners are already *pretty* readily available. Seems like an abject waste of a point.

   Night vision goggles are just sitting in the armory, a lot of players probably *won't* break into the armory to get them but it's still trivial to circumvent buying them which I think is bad. It's a utility point you don't *have* to spend.

   First aid kit only contains items that they could go and vend themselves. Again, wasting a point for the sake of getting something you could *already* go grab.

   The other items are ~exclusive~ so they don't have that problem, but I still think the power cell is pretty much The Good Choice between them. I feel it has the most actual utility out of all of them, especially since this weakens the starting cell. Being able to reload *more* is pretty strong compared to what all the other items get you.

   The morphine injectors say 'capable of holding a dying person over until further medical aid can be delivered' in the description but that doesn't seem to be the case according to the wiki? They just reduce damage slow by a lot. (which, tbf is decently useful, but the tooltip there has misleading info imo).

   I'm also concerned that this would lead to a similar effect that nukeops have, where officers spend a good part of the start of the round just trying to figure out what to buy, I enjoy the simplicity of the current implementation of tokens, where you only make *one* choice. With your change, that's suddenly *three* choices, and the choices aren't really even that good or balanced, with a few of them feeling pointless/clutter-y. I don't absolutely *despise* the idea but I don't think it's particularly well implemented in this PR !

Forensic scanners there's usually only one or two per map in security. The idea for adding it into the vendor is if someone late joins they would be still be able to grab one if they so desired.

NVGs were a suggestion from someone. I doubt I would usually take them but they're more of a "hmm I might need them" pick for some people. Very situational, and I tried to make it clear they aren't a direct upgrade to sechuds in the description to prevent players from buying them thinking they were better.

First aid kit I added just as a personal idea. I usually end up raiding medbay as a secoff for a "first responder keep someone from dying while I drag them to medbay" kit. Medbay already ends up severely depleted of menders in the Nanomeds by about minute 20 on a standard round on main, this would hopefully help it a little. A first aid kit wouldn't be my first choice but could at least save some time for people that tend to heal a little as a secoff.

Morphine injectors I simply thought healed some damage, I might have been confused with another chem. I'll update the description.

This mostly covers Carbadox's post as well.


In regards to the power cell someone had brought up that initially security started with a 200 power cell in the pouch then at some point it got raised to 300.I had wanted to make the purchasable cell a 300 cell, but was convinced not to on the reasoning that it would turn it into a "always buy this as it's flat out the best option" type thing which makes sense to me. Now an extra cell is an upgrade but it also comes at the cost of it takes another inventory slot. It's still a good thing to have but requires a little more thought than "300 cell go big"

[nefarious6th]

I guess I'm also just curious wrt this and the power cell PR, since I know someone asked earlier in the rp-discussion channel, did an all-HOS meeting ever happen from that? I guess I just wanna know why these changes in specific are being made, whether there's been any recent balance issues that they're specifically seeking to solve, or this was from a spot of HOS input or admin deliberations? I just want to know where these things are coming from since I haven't run into a lot of issues with support loadouts or powercells or things, but I'm not sure my experience is necessarily representative of what you all see and what other Sec players are seeing and any additional perspective to help my understanding is always appreciated!

I want to reiterate that I do like the idea of mixing and matching a bit more and know that was something mentioned before at various points, I think I only differ on how much mixing and matching I think there is to do!

[Leeanei]

There's several maps where sec only has access to 1 forensic scanner. Sec begins to desperately want more on these maps. Moving forensics scanners to the basic secvend would be good as well.

The medkit thing is more RP oriented than main oriented, where it is not considered Good RP to go raid medbay, steal their supplies and give the doctors less to work with.

The point of NVGs is people should be mindful and swap to them if they think they'll be needed. Some maps have pitch black maintenance. Sometimes there's power failures. The NVGs are a "what if" option, tbh.

Most people don't really use their spare cells that I've seen? They actually drop them or discard them. So it isn't going to be a peak option outside of the people who realize hotswapping exists. I think we'll see a lot of donuts and morphine get purchased, tbh.

[Boxta]

As a somewhat common sec player, The 300 Cell is really nice. Perhaps have it as a thing you can only get one of, so you can buy the 300 cell once, but only once. Along with the 200 cell, you get 500PU. I like the addition of the NVGS to the vendor, as they are useful, but yeah moving the forensic scanner over to the secvendors is a good move.

[UrsulaMejor]

when I gave them the 300 power cell, I also rebalanced how all the charge costs for all energy cell using equipment worked. they have that cell with the expectation that they can use it to make one of their weapons a "main weapon" with a bit of a boost. the 300 cell is roughly equivalent to what they had before, because stun batons used to have a 300PU cell inside them. what you would do is swap your 200pu cell into your stun baton for a 300u cell, then put that one on your taser for extra shots

[BatElite]

WRT forensic scanners, sec PDAs also function as one.

[nefarious6th]

when I gave them the 300 power cell, I also rebalanced how all the charge costs for all energy cell using equipment worked. they have that cell with the expectation that they can use it to make one of their weapons a "main weapon" with a bit of a boost. the 300 cell is roughly equivalent to what they had before, because stun batons used to have a 300PU cell inside them. what you would do is swap your 200pu cell into your stun baton for a 300u cell, then put that one on your taser for extra shots

Interesting! Thank you for clarifying! I guess this means support could have a neat leg-up as is, with only one "main weapon" and no need to choose between the two cells. I'd definitely be happy to see the powercell swap actionbar thing added, in that case! Not sure what that might translate to with loadout changes.

[Flaborized]

Again, I think the cost of making sec players (especially *new* sec players) choose 3 items instead of 1 is way greater than the benefit of letting people pick from some (imo really poorly chosen) items. It makes the system significantly less well designed overall and is a bit Sloppy. I guess I'm just not a fan of the PR overall then.