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Hunter - Thoughts and ideas
#1
Question 
Current gear:

Space Cowboy Boots - Galoshes, acid proof
Trophy Belt - Fannypack equivalent
Laser Rifle - 35 BURN, recharging
Hunter Mask - Gas mask, voice changer, syndicate thermal vision, acid proof.
Hunter Suit - Acid proof
Hunting Spear - Syndicate butcher knife with better stats and no butchering. 28 damage, 35 thrown.
Cloaking Device - Syndicate device
Microbomb Implant - Double microbomb.

Current bonuses:

250 Max Stamina and 20 Stamina Regeneration
Punches do 7-14 BRUTE
Break handcuffs
Tear open doors


Weakness:

Stuns
Toxins
AI spying on you constantly
HoS + Detective thermal vision
No abilities

How they currently play:

You start as a regular staff assistant with the ability to call in equipment and an ID card. Using this suddenly transforms you into a Hunter with gear.
At this point you probably lurk around in cloak as being seen will result in radio call out and the AI tracking you. The spear is quite effective at dealing with lone players and the laser gun will scare off general crew.

Thoughts

The hunter has a bunch of neat gear and an interesting scoring mechanic. They can effectively pick people off one on one and stalk targets with their cloak.
However, playing them isn't always as simple as it sounds. If the hunter is wearing their gear they are extremely obvious to anyone who can see them and their laser rifle is very loud. If the AI starts following them and thermals get deployed by sec it can go south very quickly for the hunter as they stand out as much as a werewolf.

I'd argue it's actually worse for a hunter to start by getting their gear. A better strategy is to remain human and steal access/commit sabotage like a sleeper agent, then use the gear either for a Get Out Of Jail card or to go loud once you feel comfortable.

Ideas

Resprite belt, resprite gun, ability icons.

1. Remove human form and gear claim
Allowing the hunter to run around as a human and then suddenly race change and acquire a whole bunch of gear on the spot is weird and combines two different antagonist styles into one. This rewards them acting more like a sleeper with a get out of jail button that no-one can see coming.
Hunters should just start in their race and gear, I'm not sure how best to handle this but we could start them in a random maintenance area.

2. Reward skull trophies
Trophies are an interesting unique mechanic and it would be good to encourage interacting with it. Considering the predator already comes loaded down with gear I don't really know what could be done other than removing some of their starting passives, gear or gear upgrades until they acquire some points which is effectively a nerf.

3. Reduce potential to be a loot pinata
The hunter is carrying a butcher knife, syndicate thermals, cloak and laser gun. If they are disarmed or manage to get looted without their microbomb exploding this is quite a lot of loot to steal. I'm not fond of antags acting as a potential pay out. The equipment could be linked to mutant race or training (like how chaplain training works) to make it less effective/functional, for example the cloaker wouldn't be compatible with human biology or you aren't experienced with the spear so it loses it's stun.

4. Remove backpack, stop spear fitting in pocket (wtf), allow spear on back.
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#2
Quote:Hunters should just start in their race and gear, I'm not sure how best to handle this but we could start them in a random maintenance area.

Imo, have them start off station and give them some kinda unique stealth pod they can park and cloak and occasionally return to.

Make em less Predator based and instead an amalgam of all the "Space Bounty Hunter" characters out there
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#3
Give them spaceproof armor.  Ranged resistance applies to tasers, after all.
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#4
(08-26-2021, 12:13 PM)Mouse Wrote: Give them spaceproof armor.  Ranged resistance applies to tasers, after all.

Surprisingly a hunter actually has garbage stats in their equipment:

Total Resistance (Heat): 25%
Total Resistance (Cold): 25%
Total Resistance (Radiation): 0%
Total Resistance (Disease): 0%
Total Resistance (Explosion): 0%
Total Ranged Protection: 1
Total Melee Armor (Body): 1
Total Melee Armor (Head): 2
Total Resistance (Body Disorient): 0%
Total Resistance (Eye Disorient): 0%
Total Resistance (Ear Disorient): 0%
Total Resistance (Stuns): 0%

This is barely better than a staffie, having 3% more heat res and 2 head armor.

(08-26-2021, 08:39 AM)Frank_Stein Wrote:
Quote:Hunters should just start in their race and gear, I'm not sure how best to handle this but we could start them in a random maintenance area.

Imo, have them start off station and give them some kinda unique stealth pod they can park and cloak and occasionally return to.

Make em less Predator based and instead an amalgam of all the "Space Bounty Hunter" characters out there

Like a pilot Trait? Could work although there's a good chance they would lose where they parked it...
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#5
(08-26-2021, 08:39 AM)Frank_Stein Wrote:
Quote:Hunters should just start in their race and gear, I'm not sure how best to handle this but we could start them in a random maintenance area.

Imo, have them start off station and give them some kinda unique stealth pod they can park and cloak and occasionally return to.

Make em less Predator based and instead an amalgam of all the "Space Bounty Hunter" characters out there


Double idea, make the pod their merchant and vendor as well. Give Hunters some Syndcate reskinned items they can purchase, with the skulls effectively being the TC they can spend.

Or, they can pod back to a Hunter only spot to go to a vendor to buy things.
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#6
I don't know if they meant a wizard style shuttle, that might be hard to get approval from the devs.

A regular pod with a skin and cloak on the other hand, should be straigtforward.
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#7
I'd love if the hunter was more common and more interesting, first of all i think the cowboy shoes could either get axed and the no slip given to hunter legs or at the very least renamed to something like "Hunter Boots".

How i see a hunter rework/buff would be turning them more into a trap focused antag. They could spawn on a ship like others have suggested there they'd get gear up, maybe they also get a camera monitor so they can gauge where would be safe spot to go. Now for changes to their actual kit, to better suit their new trap based focus i propose the hunter to get the following:

1. Some sort of landmines, most likely a special variety only the hunters would get suited to kill people but not gib them so they could still get their skull. A feature i'd love to see but one that could also be horrible to fight against is a "cloak" where the landmine adapts to the type of turf it was placed on in a way that it's not obvious but if you're looking out for them it's easy enough to spot.

2. A net launcher, this would function kind of like handcuffs mixed with a taser the magazine would hold 2 shots and slowly self charge over time (The gun would also have a cell you couldn't swap for balancing). If someone was hit by the projectile they'd get a "Net" debuff this stops them from being able to use their hands and slightly slows them down but they can still run into doors to unlock them and the like, if you clicked on the debuff icon/resisted an action bar would come up and after 10 seconds the net would come off removing the debuff.

3. A light breaker or anything that makes breaking lights easier, tbh right now it's a bit of a pain to do it manually and if people can see your traps easily they probably won't run into them

4. An ability to toggle a wrist weapon, it's a pretty iconic thing and would make fighting hunters a lot more challenging since they basically have a weapon arm at all times but can still use both hands if they need to. The two ways i could see this go are a melee wristblade or we could replace their laser rifle with a wrist mounted gun that'd deal less damage and was more focused on debilitating targets rather than murdering them, that should be the spear's job

5. Barbed wire. This isn't the most original idea but i think it fits with the trap aspect i'm going for. Basically after like a 2~ second action bar and not moving the hunter would deploy some barbed wire, this significantly slows any non hunters walking through it and causes a small amount of brute + bleed. Wirecutters could be used to turn them back into their original item form.

6. Since this is a lot of gear i suggest they get a pouch/box to deal with inventory space issues

7. Make their armour not trash, currently it's laughably bad at actually protecting you. Since the hunter jumpsuit is available to crew on some maps it'd be best to make a costume version and a special combat version for the real deal. 1 or 2 ranged protection and 4 or 5 melee protection should do the job for their torso. The mask could get a small buff to melee protection too. Both pieces of the set should definitley get upgrades in the heat and cold resistance department.

8. An ability to detonate their micros at any time, it's here to stop the hunter from being even more of a loot pinata. It'd have an "Are you sure?" before confirming so people who misclick the button aren't left very salty and very dead. I think it'd be a good idea to make it usable while stunned to stop the crew/sec from looting you and they already can't cuff you so in most cases when you're stunned you are as good as dead so this doesn't change much.

One last note: Hunters shouldn't trigger landmines, while possibly very funny to watch a hunter getting killed by walking into their own mine wouldn't be great.
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#8
Being able to trigger micros at any time seems like a nice compromise between no loot for you and free pinata.
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#9
(08-28-2021, 02:29 PM)Ikea Wrote: Being able to trigger micros at any time seems like a nice compromise between no loot for you and free pinata.

Honestly, being able to trigger micros (And only micros) at anytime via a hud layout or genetics ability would be very nice. Nuke Ops goes down? Know you're going to get looted? Trigger the micro. Hunter goes down? Someone gonna take that fancy loot? Trigger the micros.

Macros though? No, you bought a macro, you get the big boom, micros get the on demand. Maybe even only for Nukies and Hunter.
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#10
Just succumb? Suiciding has a chance to make the micro/macro fail for a good reason.
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#11
(08-28-2021, 07:37 PM)THISISANICEGAME Wrote: Just succumb? Suiciding has a chance to make the micro/macro fail for a good reason.

The situation. You're a hunter, you are actively hunting. You round the corner to go kill this staffie, and the Turbo-cop hits the maint door next to you with thermals, tases you and cuffs you. You now have to do a few things.
First, you gotta start suicide, and let me tell you, lots of folks don't even know how to do this. Then you have to succumb. Some folks don't know you can do this either.

Other Codebases, when you hit crit have a big UI button come up. Just give up and die, you know its gonna happen. Here we have to do it manually, folks from other codebases don't know this, and new players sure as hell don't either.

But, if you're a hunter for a first time, and you look up at the abilities bar on the top left and see this red button that says EXPLODE (CAUTION, YOU DIE!) Then, i'm pretty sure they'll know they can click that to die, and instantly deny someone their equipment.
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#12
I think it would be fair to give hunters a suicide ability that does a noise, timer (10 seconds?) and some kinda visual effect to trigger their micro. Kinda like the end of that one, unrelated movie.

I don't know if the devs would like that though and they are still at risk of dropping 1-2 pieces of gear, you could likely still speed loot a hunter and get away from the corpse.
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#13
Giving hunters special microbombs that always trigger on suicide seems fair to me.
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#14
Quote:How i see a hunter rework/buff would be turning them more into a trap focused antag

Would be interesting to give them something like mechanics objects so they could rig up custom traps with different kinds of triggers and mechanisms.
Just, different kinds of batman gadgets.
Maybe hoping back in the ship lets you swap out gear you purchase.
Wear different sets of gloves with wrist mounted weapons like CQC Claws, a pickpocket gun like grappling hook, Dart gun, etc.

Different armor sets with perks like higher damage resistance and shielding or a stealth suit with cloaking fibers.
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#15
One vague idea I had a while ago but never posted was an antagonist that lacks direct fighting abilities but instead can lay traps to weaken their target before they attack. A reworked hunter would fit well with that I think.
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