Holding your breath

[Frank_Stein]

So, initially I was going to make a post about how fast people die from a lack of air in a room, and how that should be lowered. That got me thinking of ways to handle that, and I thought of a solution that might be useful in other situations.

So, how about we revive the joke breathing emotes as serious things one can do to help get through some dangerous situations?

So the idea is you use an emote like *breath to take a deep breath, temporarily shutting off your need to breathe without taking any oxygen loss damage or anything. However, while holding your breath, your stamina decreases. Go to long holding your breath and you pass out, breathing normally again until your stamina builds back up and you wake up. Just type *breath again to stop holding your breath.

You could use this to get past rooms without oxygen when you don't have internals, avoid breathing in toxic gasses when you know they are there, avoid some chem smokes and airborne pathogens, use breathing exercises to calm yourself if you have something like paranoia or panic inducing traits, or throw temper tantrums and hold your breath until you get your way.

[Frank_Stein]

Also, this should definitely be something you can do to hold in smoke from hits off of weed.

[UrsulaMejor]

space jumps by holding one's breath? count me in

[Midaychi]

Gameplay wise, it could be neat.
Realism nerd wise thoguh, holding your breath only works for humans at 1 atmosphere.

[Zadeon]

A simpler version if they don't want to implement yours would be that your character automatically holds his breath when there's no air present, and gets a few seconds before airloss damage starts kicking in.

[Vitatroll]

Really like it. Cause losebreath and halt oxy damage till stamina runs out. I like how things're deadlier, I just don't like an etank being practically mandatory. This sounds like a grand compromise.

[Midaychi]

Well if you want to get super technical and game mechanics with it, holding your breath or inhaling deeply during decompression would cause the gas in your lungs to expand almost a hundred fold, and tear/rip lung tissue to shreds.

But let's assume that spacemen are trained enough that they have a space sixth sense, and can detect a hull breach right before it happens, giving them enough time to completely expel their lungs.

An average human being in said condition would be able to last about 15 seconds without passing out, and about 2-3.5 minutes without taking brain damage. A professional deep diver with time to oxygenate their blood can do around 30 seconds without passing out.

My suggestion would be to somewhat agree with the above post, but also still add the emote/verb/whatever.

Specifically, mechanics wise: Two parts.

Part 1: the verb:

You would have a verb, that would only work in 60% to 300% of 1 atm worth of pressure. Call it 'hold breath'. Push it and you hold your breath, until you pass out or press the verb again. It would allow you to attempt to avoid inhaling poisonous gasses or the like, but wouldn't do much vs chemicals that work on contact with skin or mucus membranes or such. The amount of time you could do it without starting to pass out would be based on a ratio of your ideal atmosphere vs the current atmosphere, with an absolute values limiter so it's the same both ways.

The downside of using said verb is that it would make entering a depressurized area much more damaging than usual.

Part 2: the automated system.

Making assumptions that the spacemen get ideal circumstances and training during a hullbreach, unprotected spacemen will automatically expel all their breath before a hull breach/entering a depressurized area. They can last between 12-30 seconds before blacking out. (Possibly downgraded to 2-13 IRL seconds to preserve ss13's increased pace, if necessary for balance)

After about 2 or 3 minutes (Or maybe 1 minute in spaceman time, if necessary for balance), they would then start taking oxygen deprivation to the brain.

Stuffing an oxygen mask on them and restarting their breath before this time will avert the damage, but will still leave them incredibly numb and woozy. Like a crazy charly horse for the entire body.


This sounds powerful, but you must realize that oxygen deprivation is the least of a spaceman's problems during a hull breach. Space is full of cosmic radiation and all sorts of nasty electromagnetic influences, on top of the lack of pressure causing instant evaporation and evapo-freezing of any porous surface.

[Erik]

A dedicated UI button would be cool.

[Sex_Robot]

Well if you want to get super technical and game mechanics with it, holding your breath or inhaling deeply during decompression would cause the gas in your lungs to expand almost a hundred fold, and tear/rip lung tissue to shreds.

But let's assume that spacemen are trained enough that they have a space sixth sense, and can detect a hull breach right before it happens, giving them enough time to completely expel their lungs.

An average human being in said condition would be able to last about 15 seconds without passing out, and about 2-3.5 minutes without taking brain damage. A professional deep diver with time to oxygenate their blood can do around 30 seconds without passing out.

My suggestion would be to somewhat agree with the above post, but also still add the emote/verb/whatever.

Specifically, mechanics wise: Two parts.

Part 1: the verb:

You would have a verb, that would only work in 60% to 300% of 1 atm worth of pressure. Call it 'hold breath'. Push it and you hold your breath, until you pass out or press the verb again. It would allow you to attempt to avoid inhaling poisonous gasses or the like, but wouldn't do much vs chemicals that work on contact with skin or mucus membranes or such. The amount of time you could do it without starting to pass out would be based on a ratio of your ideal atmosphere vs the current atmosphere, with an absolute values limiter so it's the same both ways.

The downside of using said verb is that it would make entering a depressurized area much more damaging than usual.

Part 2: the automated system.

Making assumptions that the spacemen get ideal circumstances and training during a hullbreach, unprotected spacemen will automatically expel all their breath before a hull breach/entering a depressurized area. They can last between 12-30 seconds before blacking out. (Possibly downgraded to 2-13 IRL seconds to preserve ss13's increased pace, if necessary for balance)

After about 2 or 3 minutes (Or maybe 1 minute in spaceman time, if necessary for balance), they would then start taking oxygen deprivation to the brain.

Stuffing an oxygen mask on them and restarting their breath before this time will avert the damage, but will still leave them incredibly numb and woozy. Like a crazy charly horse for the entire body.


This sounds powerful, but you must realize that oxygen deprivation is the least of a spaceman's problems during a hull breach. Space is full of cosmic radiation and all sorts of nasty electromagnetic influences, on top of the lack of pressure causing instant evaporation and evapo-freezing of any porous surface.

Stop that.

You are playing a game where you fart on a bible to explode and reattach limbs with a staple gun.

[Noah Buttes]

Stop that.

You are playing a game where you fart on a bible to explode and reattach limbs with a staple gun.

[Gannets]

This is a neat idea. An emote hotkey that started/stopped holding your breath would work pretty good.

[Scrumpys]

This would go well with that child trait that was suggested in the trait thread.

[Frank_Stein]

stuff

Yeah, it doesn't need to be overly complicated or realistic and it's more about adding a mechanic that can be both useful and amusing.

That said, having situations where taking a breath backfires would always be amusing especially since this is supposed to be a poormans substitute to internals much like a zipgun to a revolver. Losing track of how long you held your breath and passing out meets that risk, but a rare and situational way to blow out your lungs would be funny.

[atomic1fire]

Just make clicking the O2 Button hold your breath, in addition to a hot key for keyboard nerds.

Cue dummies leaving it on too long and passing out.

[atomic1fire]

Just make clicking the O2 Button hold your breath, in addition to a hot key for keyboard nerds.

Cue dummies leaving it on too long and passing out.

Addendum: To go with this a Diver trait that lets you hold your breath 30 seconds longer. Something that might be useful if you plan on traveling through space a lot and are willing to spend trait points on it.