Idea discussion: Advanced hacking Device

[Lord_earthfire]

Hello people,

So, we kinda got some problems in regard to advanced mechanics being able to be accessed for antags:

• If we lock them to the emag, only traitors have access to them and spiefs very rarely. This means these are locked out for all other antags.
  
• The emag is overloaded as fuck
  
• If we add powerfull tools for antags in departments, they tend to get abused by self-antags
  
• There are interactions which are not worth an emag on its own, but locked behind it
  
• There are possible interactions which are interesting in-combat, but would be too powerfull for the emag to add/override with others.
  
• People shown interest in the ability to interact with station equipment for sone antags, e.g. arcfiend
  

So, what i thought about was adding an emag-light into the game.

This is a gimmick/combat focussed emag variant, which is charged. It starts with a 200 pu cell and requires 50u per use. Certain effects can take less or more energy. Swap the cell or try recharging it if you want to use it more.

It should cost 3 TC for traitors and should be accessable for other antags: buyable for gangs, revs and salvagers. Redeemable for an utility token for nukies ship. Make each conspirators start with one. Add a costly, with an action bar added ability to abomination (hack by injecting biomass) and arcfiends (electric manipulation).

Interactions i had in mind:

• Borg: Applies an EMP-blast on them
  
• Doors: toogle door bolts
  
• Cyberorgans: emag-effect
  
• Vendors/fabricators: open a secret-secret menu with antag-related tools for the job (e.g. very dangerous seeds for botany, antaggy mechcomp tools for engineers, pipeshot ammunition in the bartender vendor)
  
• Access-locked crates: lock their Access for EVERYONE
  
• Batons/energy weapons: applies an emp, draining their battery
  
• APC: toggle unlock
  
• Nuklear reactor: make the control rods move randomly fir 20 seconds
  
• Artifact: damage the artifact and applies an electric effect on it
  
• Chicken rooster: make it aggressive to anyone but you
  
• Law rack: same effecr like an ion storm, drains the whole 200pu battery.
  

I want to code amd PR this thing as my next bigger project and i need 2 things:

• Feedback from the devs if this is wanted
  
• Ideas from the rest of people on interactions
  

I think a mechanic such as this can be very interesting to spice up antag activity and make it more interesting to keep a balanced but varied gameplay loop.

Also, this is a very neat tool to keep self-antags or validhunters at bay. If an interaction (e.g. emagged cyberorgans) is deemed too much abused by validhunters but too interesti g to be added behind the emag, this offers a possibility to lock it behind antags in general instead of a high TC cost traitor item.

[Kotlol]

Since Spiefs start with camera's that can stun too... I see no problem with "lesser antags" getting this.
Conspirators would be great to get it.
Gangs I am not so sure on that since you can pick and choice your gang members (cept security/cap)

Also I do not think Emags effect artifacts right?
And how does the rooster get effected by emags?

And the nuclear reactor one sounds like a headache...if you're gonna sabotage it with an emag just simply have rods start melting to cause a melt down.. or increase the output too much so people get irridated.

[Lord_earthfire]

Since Spiefs start with camera's that can stun too... I see no problem with "lesser antags" getting this.
Conspirators would be great to get it.
Gangs I am not so sure on that since you can pick and choice your gang members (cept security/cap)

Also I do not think Emags effect artifacts right?
And how does the rooster get effected by emags?

And the nuclear reactor one sounds like a headache...if you're gonna sabotage it with an emag just simply have rods start melting to cause a melt down.. or increase the output too much so people get irridated.

Iirc emag does nothing with artifacts or roosters.

I will ask around engineers about the control rod idea.

But i wanted to make the point clearer that the effects of this one are seperate from the emag one. While they can share some (e.g. the cyberorgans/vendors), they can and should very much have different effects on other parts due to different focus. Like big sabotage (rogue borgs/borken doors) versus combat hacking/utility (emp borgs/bolt doors).

But i think once we got a list of these that affects stuff the emag cannot, we could maybe add these or stronger variations of these to the emag as well.

[Kotlol]

Then no on artifacts and roosters... it just seems odd.

THAT SAID....

I like to add the following effects.

- ATMs (Spits out 10% of the last used bank acount's credits) 10 u.
- Sec Vendor (Spits out a random security item) 100 u.
- Announcement Computer (Announces "ALL YOUR BASE" or random funny phrazes with the cool down) 10 u.
- Showers (Makes start pouring water at an extreme rate, causing minor flooding)
- Mulebot (Will start driving around eradically to locations, insted of stopping near crew/players, it runs them over and runs through walls. Will stop at a random destination for a minute, before racing off to another random one) 25 u.
- Cloning Pod / Monkey Vendor. (Spits out mutants) 100 u.
And finally:
- The annoying duck (Insted of going insane, it actually becomes the sophisticated duck, giving random inspiring quotes and poops out bandaids.) 50 u's

Thats my lil list of ideas.