[PR] Mindhack rebalance

[github_bot]

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About the PR
All security officers (not assistants or detectives) get the anti-mindhack health implant currently reserved for HoSes.

Adds a new 2 TC traitor item available to traitors, spy-thieves and nuke-op custom class uplinks: implant remover.
After a 3 second public action bar and obnoxiously loud noise, the implant remover purges all non-syndicate implants from the target, dealing 10 burn damage per implant removed.

https://i.imgur.com/0qwdjA2.mp4

The sprite and sound effect are placeholder, if this looks like getting merged me or someone else can make an actual sprite for it.
Why's this needed?
One traitor immediately mindhacking the entire security team generally doesn't make for very entertaining rounds, this aims to make mindhacking security officers much more challenging but still possible if you can remove the implant. Cloned security officers will also be vulnerable to mindhacking unless they are able to recover the implant from their corpse.

Standard disclaimer that although I'm a dev, this is far from guaranteed to be merged.

Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)LeahTheTech
(*)All security officers (not assistants) now receive anti-mindhack implants.
(*)New 2TC traitor item: implant remover. Removes all non-syndicate implants from a person after a short delay.

PULL REQUEST DETAILS

[Ikea]

This feels like a really messy, having an item whose only practical usage is one playstyle for mindhack implants, just seems like itll clog up the traitor menu. The only other practical use is removing health alerts implants which eh? Signal blockers are only worth a credit more, way better, and easier to use. I dont see why nukeops get this as well, they cant even get mindhack implants.

I agree with the design goal of making it harder to mindslave security officers though, its boring and too easy. Personally heres what Id suggest:

Make anti-mindhack implants no longer work below ~30 hp. This means that if you want to mindhack someone, you either have to beat them up enough to where you can, or find them in a weak spot/stalk them to take advantage of that moment. I think this would be way way more interesting gameplay wise and fun because, 1. This makes mindhack way more synergetic, buying weapons now makes it easier to mindhack people, and 2. It makes the difficulty of mindhacking security primarily tied to how good they are. If you want to mindhack the HoS you'll have to work for it even more. Since this will mean you could easily mindslave people while theyre in crit, implanting someone should probably inject lots of good healing chems in them as well (maybe syndie donk contents?)

Anti-mindhack implants can already be a bit of a noob trap already so what Id recommend with this change or without it is for mindhack implants to not implant if they detect the person has an anti mindhack implant in them. This would make it more forgiving for new players if they dont know that some people are mindhack immune.

[Idiot]

Yeah, this is a weird way to go about it. Making an item which's only purpose is to remove anti-mindhack implants feels weird, and the health alert thing doesn't matter because of signal blockers, and plain just running away from the crime scene. Ikea's idea of making anti-mindhack implants not working at low health feels best to me.

[LeahTheTech]

The issue I see with a health threshold is that it's arbitrarily set, you just have to know what the threshold is and how low on health someone is to know whether your mindhack will work or not. That feels very frustrating if you get your mindhack eaten due to someone being 31 health instead of 30.

[Ikea]

The issue I see with a health threshold is that it's arbitrarily set, you just have to know what the threshold is and how low on health someone is to know whether your mindhack will work or not. That feels very frustrating if you get your mindhack eaten due to someone being 31 health instead of 30.

I think this is a fair concern, I think having you be unable to inject someone if theyre immune from having too high of hp would help a lot here, that way you can use the mindhack to test it. Though this still leads a bit of unclarity however I think having healing chems there would make people comfortable to overdo it

Re: What if you gasped when you entered crit and the mindhack threshold only applied when crit happened? This is probably too wide of a change but would fix an issue I have with security health implants

[Keiiro]

From an RP player perspective: I haven’t seen multiple security members be mindhacked in the same shift, let alone all of them; I imagine this change is mostly guided towards the classic server and I’ll try to adapt my opinion to that environment.

I agree with Ikea that an item exclusive for something as specific as counteracting anti-mindhacks is awkward and in a way it also nerfs mindhacks obtained through indirect mediums, such as those found in surplus crates or as a spy thief, so I don't think it's the best solution.

Having multiple existing anti-mindhack implants that can be recycled could also create a frustrating uncertainty issue around them, example:

1. A security officer dies and they cannot be cloned back.
   
2. Their body gets reclaimed and their anti-mindhack implant is left for anybody around to grab.
   
3. Later on the shift, an antag attempts to mindhack a random staff assistant. 
   
4. They fail because the staff assistant grabbed the anti-mindhack implant from the dead secoff from earlier.
   

I think that if anti-mindhacks are to be extended to more members of security, making them non-recyclable after death and inactive while the implanted person is below a certain health threshold is a good way to balance them.

As a small note, although this would be a rough solution, an overlay could show up who you can’t mindhack if you have a mindhack implant in your hand, preventing somebody from wasting it, or otherwise, the implant could just not be depleted if it’s used against someone with an active mindhack implant.

[Sord213]

I like the idea of all security officers getting an anti mindhack ability. Requires more effort that pulling out an implanter and clicking red armor man to get instant access to stun weapons and the inherent trust a seccie has, but you can still implant any other crewmember normally.

[Katzen]

I'd rather make the non deluxe incapable of mindhacking security and potentially limiting the number of mindhack purchases per uplink to two.

[Cheffie]

I'd rather see a change to the root cause of oops all mindhacked security. Being the fact their gear is the strongest out of anything on station making mindhacking anyone else worse. Also mindprotection implants should showup on sechuds with an outline or such to make it clear who has them and who doesn't for both security and antags.

[Lord_earthfire]

I kinda like this.

Especially if the mindshield gets lost on cloning. This works, instead of the 30%health option, with stuns and poisons, so its kinda more fitting.

[Cheffie]

I kinda like this.

Especially if the mindshield gets lost on cloning. This works, instead of the 30%health option, with stuns and poisons, so its kinda more fitting.

I am against action bars for implants, they just turn interesting things stun only. See interacting with inventories with items, not used anymore since it has a public actionbar.

[Lord_earthfire]

I am against action bars for implants, they just turn interesting things stun only. See interacting with inventories with items, not used anymore since it has a public actionbar.

I think for mindhacking sec that is completely fine. Action bars got their time and place.

[Katzen]

I'm interested in the idea of dropping stamina damage by maybe a quarter but fundamentally I don't think you will ever see a change from sec gear being able to compete with weapons or sec will just get steamrolled unless stacked.

[Cheffie]

As a security main, most rounds you don't see any sec being in real danger of dying unless its from stuns or things without much counter like explosives or sleepy pens. So I too am interested in a reduction in stamina damage.

[LeahTheTech]

I'd rather make the non deluxe incapable of mindhacking security and potentially limiting the number of mindhack purchases per uplink to two.

I don't like this approach because it kills any mass mindhacking gimmicks (apart from cloner), which generally tend to not be too unbalanced when they don't involve security. Think mindhacking 4 staffies and pretending it's revs.
It also doesn't really solve the issue, as two duluxe mindhacked security officers is often enough to steamroll the station anyway, I'd say it's actually more common than the 4 temporary mindhacks.