Add a short cooldown to the traitor invisability cloaker.

[Dauntasa]

flashes are everywhere

The pockets of staff heads, the robotics lab, and the sec vendors do not combine to equate to "everywhere". Robotics is probably the easiest available source of flashes for the common public, and that's right in medbay, one of the biggest chaos centers of the station.

also there's one just chilling in the warehouse where assistants can grab it, and one in tech storage where, again, assistants can grab it


if assistants have legitimate access to it it is not a difficult to acquire item

[BaneOfGiygas]

That's two. Now consider the other thirty people who probably don't have flashes. My point still stands.

[Paineframe]

Didn't you actually have to hit the invisible person you couldn't see with the flash, rather than just randomly flashing the room?

[Marquesas]

I'd like to add that you're more likely to be beaten to death than the cloaker if you run around popping your flash.

[Dauntasa]

That's two. Now consider the other thirty people who probably don't have flashes. My point still stands.

the other 30 people minus the heads of staff, electricians, roboticists and anyone else in medbay who can ask the roboticists to borrow one, and security, you mean?

Basically everyone except Botany, Mining, and Research just have flashes lying around in or very close to their workplaces, and for Botany Mining and Research there are a couple lying around out in the open they can go grab

[BaneOfGiygas]

It's rather hit-or-miss as to whether or not the roboticist will be braindead when you ask, and some people have a noted tendency to AVOID places like medbay when they know there's a cloaker running around, since that's where most of the bad shit in a round happens, the other place being security, which just so happens to be the other major source of flashes. The flash isn't even that good of a counter to the flash anyways, since the only real tactic is running around popping it every now and then, which will land you the ire of pretty much everyone ever.

I'm not saying that flashes aren't available, I'm saying that having one of the only semi-commonly-available counter to something like the cloaker be almost exclusively under the sole domain of a choice few station departments barring generosity or bulglary is not a good idea.

[Dauntasa]

Isince the only real tactic is running around popping it every now and then

Or moving in a group and popping them when the invisible man attacks one of your guys?

And it's not so much a "choice few" departments so much as it is "like 60% of them".

[BaneOfGiygas]

Isince the only real tactic is running around popping it every now and then

Or moving in a group and popping them when the invisible man attacks one of your guys?

This is less than optimal since it also stuns your other guys unless you also have sunglasses (which are almost exclusively held by security) or welding masks (a bit more readily accessible, but still somewhat limited).

The point I'm trying to make isn't that there aren't enough flashes, it's just that just about all pieces of traitor gear have counters that are available to everyone. Typically that counter is in the form of robustness, which tends to be an equalizer in most combat situations. But you cannot be robust if you do not know that you are about to be robusted, so unless the cloaker is hideously unrobust or messes something up, you cannot rely on your robustness in most instances. The deck is stacked in the favor of the cloaker, and everyone else has to find a way to neutralize it. You also can't really figure out where the cloaker is using keen observation skills, the other equalizer in these situations, because it's just about impossible detect a cloaker unless they mess something up at the wrong time or the AI can and is willing to track them.

[DyssalC]

Isince the only real tactic is running around popping it every now and then

Or moving in a group and popping them when the invisible man attacks one of your guys?

This is less than optimal since it also stuns your other guys unless you also have sunglasses (which are almost exclusively held by security) or welding masks (a bit more readily accessible, but still somewhat limited).

I'm not sure how I feel about the cloak at all, but I feel the need to add to this discussion.

Dealing with traitors, especially a cloaker, is Sec's job first and foremost.

In the event there is literally no sec or head position willing to bear that burden, then at that point it becomes some poor sap's job. At that point you will in fact have to do some hunting for a flash, yes. However, all you really have to do is get into robotics. Is there a roboticist? Flush yourself to the morgue, he'll greet you there assuming you're a dead guy. Is there no roboticist? Find a borg and tell them you'll upgrade your cell if they let you in. Is there no borg? Ask the AI to let you in. Is the AI either dead or being a total bitch? Bust the window down.

There's a reason it's hard to deal with well-equipped traitors when you don't have Sec gear. It's supposed to be that way.

[Dauntasa]

it's worth noting that there are many traitor items that have basically no counter

sleepypen, for example: fill it with the right stuff and your victim has no idea that he's being robusted until he collapses with his brains leaking out his ears

radbow is another one, providing you use it properly, as is the silenced 22. There's no disputing that the cloak is the easiest way to do this, or the most powerful, but there are plenty of traitor items that Joe Assistant has no means of dealing with, countering, or even knowing about until they're already dying. Really anything other than a gun or an e-sword where it's obvious that the guy has it and is attacking you, and that you can just steal from him if you stun him, falls into this category.

[Dr_Bee]

it's worth noting that there are many traitor items that have basically no counter

sleepypen, for example: fill it with the right stuff and your victim has no idea that he's being robusted until he collapses with his brains leaking out his ears

radbow is another one, providing you use it properly, as is the silenced 22. There's no disputing that the cloak is the easiest way to do this, or the most powerful, but there are plenty of traitor items that Joe Assistant has no means of dealing with, countering, or even knowing about until they're already dying. Really anything other than a gun or an e-sword where it's obvious that the guy has it and is attacking you, and that you can just steal from him if you stun him, falls into this category.

sleepypen is balanced by the delayed action most poisons have and the rarity of super-poisons, plus a small in-hand sprite for the paranoid to see.

.22 has an in-hand sprite, a click sound when fired, and somewhat minor damage compared to other firearms. meaning that, again, if you are wary, you can spot a person shooting it and counter-attack.

radbow has an OBVIOUS in-hand sprite, delayed damage, a long recharge time, and a visible projectile. meaning you can easily identify someone using it and then counter-attack.

your comparisons are nowhere near what the invisibility cloak is.

[Dauntasa]

sleepypen is balanced by the delayed action

so it's balanced because the person has enough time to poke you and then run away before you receive any indication that you've been lethally poisoned and are going to die?

sounds like a pro and not a con, to me. Plus there's nothing stopping them from filling it with something that immediately fucks you up like, say, ClF3(which you can make in about 5 seconds in the bar).

As for the others, yeah, obviously the cloak is better but only in that if you're extremely paranoid about it you can recognize that you're being attacked before you're lethally wounded. So while the cloak is "you can't recognize that you're being attacked until you've been hit once", the others are "you can't recognize that you're being attacked until you've been hit unless you're paying close attention to the inhand sprites of everyone you meet". Which, although I may not be the norm here, I rarely find myself doing. The cloak is the strongest but they all are designed to do basically the same thing, allow you to win a fight with someone before they even realize there is a fight. And they all do that to varying degrees of success(and I will argue that the pen is basically just as good as the post-nerf cloak if not better because with the right poison you can kill two people right next to each other in quick succession without either of them realizing what is happening where with the cloak you only get one before your cloak shorts out).

[BaneOfGiygas]

Dealing with traitors, especially a cloaker, is Sec's job first and foremost.

In the event there is literally no sec or head position willing to bear that burden, then at that point it becomes some poor sap's job. At that point you will in fact have to do some hunting for a flash, yes. However, all you really have to do is get into robotics. Is there a roboticist? Flush yourself to the morgue, he'll greet you there assuming you're a dead guy. Is there no roboticist? Find a borg and tell them you'll upgrade your cell if they let you in. Is there no borg? Ask the AI to let you in. Is the AI either dead or being a total bitch? Bust the window down.

There's a reason it's hard to deal with well-equipped traitors when you don't have Sec gear. It's supposed to be that way.

You do raise a fair point, it just seems like the cloaker is a particularly egregious case of this phenomenon. I'm trying to say that, even if security's job is to dispatch traitors and such, the rest of the crew shouldn't be running around like decapitated chickens in the case of a nonexistent/dead/incompetent security team. Those are all valid counterarguments that you bring up, but I'm just not sure of their practical application. I'll admit that I've seen pretty much no one use a cloaking device before, so I'm talking theoretically as opposed to practically.

sleepypen is balanced by the delayed action

so it's balanced because the person has enough time to poke you and then run away before you receive any indication that you've been lethally poisoned and are going to die?

sounds like a pro and not a con, to me. Plus there's nothing stopping them from filling it with something that immediately fucks you up like, say, ClF3(which you can make in about 5 seconds in the bar).

Sleepypens are balanced out by the fact that pretty much everyone is paranoid about letting people into adjacent spaces; if you suddenly start dying and you know that Asshole McGee was standing right next to you earlier, all you need to do is shout an accusation over the radio with your dying breath. Even sedatives take a while to kick in, and if you're quick enough with your reaction time, you can figure out what happened easily. Their use of a limited reservoir also means that you can only jab so many people before you have to run back to resupply, time that the crew can use to ambush you when you're out of murderjuice. Both of these also apply to the radbow: It's quite apparent when you start suddenly dying, and it has a long-ass time between shots.