Feedback on the EMAGed Borg Rework

[ProphetOConnor]

At the end of a round like that, the result would be the same if you were mindhacked and ordered to kill people. You were rebuilt once and then emagged again. That's basically the same as being cloned and then tossed off the shuttle next time you started stabbing. You did a good job following your laws, but doing a good job doesn't always mean that you're going to get the result that you want to see. Antags doing antag things sometimes means that you spend some time (10 minutes or less) watching the consequences of the evil things they do. That's not "entirely ending your round," that's 10 minutes before you get to respawn. The same would happen to human characters who get murdered or mindhacked or thralled or eaten or any other amount of things that can happen based on antag actions.

While I agree with how the result would have been the same wither a emag or a mind hack was used in that situation I can only point out that a emag costs the antag 6 TC and has unlimited uses of this emag card and can essentially ruin or cause issues for an unlimited amount of borgs As well as all the advantages that the card itself brings such as opening doors or giving access to breaking tools and making them into useful weapons. while mind hacks cost 3 or 6 (depending on temp or not) and stick with the body so the antag cant just keep reusing it over and over. so if you were killed security your body is usually taken to medical where its a lot harder to fish out the mind hack implant before its take into evidence. not to mention that the way Mind hacks work is that you are given an order and its decided on the antag themselves meaning that escalation is hopefully followed but for a emagged borg you were 1 second helping the crew and the next potentially killing and that's gonna feel like you either got to do it so slowly to near avoiding laws so you escalate it correctly or what i thinks going to happen is more times than not its going to result in a half thought out task and result in issues. I feel I'm more pointing out that this change forces borgs into situations that will result in more and more bias against borgs in general for a item that costs 6, Again I want it said I do agree lawless borgs is also an issue but how this PR is going Id like to see other trials first before this solution is decided. Like I'm even interested in seeing a test where all the emag does is take your current law set and randomizes the order allowing for situations for RP situations kind of like the picture at the bottom of the laws wiki (Picture at the bottom) and imagine command puts a law 4 in that at law 4 its perfectly safe for the crew like "its taco Tuesday" and then they scramble laws on borgs and "its taco Tuesday" becomes law 1 and any human stopping you from making taco's is a problem just as a fun interaction that also allows for the borgs to be "Broken" it also means that if any laws get changed your still connected to the lawrack and it can be sorted by command actually going to the lawrack and adding a law such as "All borgs must return to robotics and submit to repairs this law takes precedence over all laws" and even emagged borgs would return just as like an idea *shrugs. bit Disjointed but I also point out you cant drive by mindhack like you can with a emag, like hitting someone with a mindhack suddenly makes that person drop to the floor and they must be told what their job is, while borgs you can walk up emag in a group of people and most will miss the fact that it just said in the chat that "Borg has started sparking weirdly" like in any high moment that will be lost so quickly, I could even imagine like a little change to that where the emag makes a sound like a flash when used on a borg, or maybe an entirely new sound just to give it more of a audible effect meaning you got to be stealthy with it and not just drive by infront of like 3 people. (Kinda like how vamps have a powerful stun but as the loud sound, or how archfiends eatting apc's is quite noticeable)

again I don't want it coming across that I'm fully negative about this PR I actually quite like that its being discussed! Id just like to see a few additions and changes to make it interesting as a whole rather than just slap ion laws on the issue. So thanks for reading even if you disagree, regardless of whats decided!
  

[glowbold]

maybe the emag should first pop the brain case or torso open, and then a second use could emag, so it's not as drive-by-able?

[JORJ949]

maybe the emag should first pop the brain case or torso open, and then a second use could emag, so it's not as drive-by-able?

^^First use permanently unlocks them and opens them non-permanently, second use fries circuits

[ProphetOConnor]

maybe the emag should first pop the brain case or torso open, and then a second use could emag, so it's not as drive-by-able?

^^First use permanently unlocks them and opens them non-permanently, second use fries circuits

I actually like this idea a lot, it would allow for the crew to easier deal with the messed up borg as you'd just need a screwdriver to open the head and remove the brain disabling the borg in a safe way!

[Skotcher]

maybe the emag should first pop the brain case or torso open, and then a second use could emag, so it's not as drive-by-able?

^^First use permanently unlocks them and opens them non-permanently, second use fries circuits

I actually like this idea a lot, it would allow for the crew to easier deal with the messed up borg as you'd just need a screwdriver to open the head and remove the brain disabling the borg in a safe way!

Gotta say I really like this idea. Not only does it make the emag less drive-by-able, it also gives a visual indication of what you're doing as an antag. Emagging major things like doors has a very distinct visual indicator and leaves a trail. Current emagging of a borg is just silent with no real good way for anyone to notice what you're up to. I think this change would make using an emag on a borg a much more considered choice. 

I also wanted to add my voice here. I think the current iteration of the emag is good in principle and a definitive improvement from the old emag. I really hated dealing with the old emag silicon units because I often felt like it began to hold the station hostage: try and fix a borg and suddenly every emagged cyborg is ready to murderize the station. Youre also massively discouraged from fixing the silicons because once a single cyborg had no laws, why bother going through the effort to fix them? They could be emagged again and be back for revenge for taking them offline. The old emag made it so that the best solution to "fixing" the silicons was to leave them dead for good. Similarily, being emagged as a borg meant you could take a more beneficial route to helping the station, but if one silicon who's emagged goes on a rampage, you too are now roped in just by association. Ion laws for each borg now gives an incentive for the borg to be fixed for both sides. 

That said, the random element of the ion laws feels... bad. Sometimes the three laws make a confusing mess that's really hard to interpret. Sometimes two laws make for an interesting interaction, but the highest priority law is a MUST law and basically says something to the effect of: "do nothing and don't state why.". Sometimes the three ion laws are just... dull, and don't really offer a great way to engage with the game or other players (or worse, will cause people to dismiss you and you're just kind of stuck in an emagged state). 

I think drawing from a list of emag laws would be better for the game. All the ideas stated earlier sound fun to me; replacing all laws with 3 emag laws, replacing all laws with a single emag law, replacing the first law with a randomly changing ion law, etc etc...

Personally I think it would be cool to have a pool of emag laws to draw from for each law in your list. So for law 1 you have "x" number of laws to randomly draw from, for law 2 you have "y" number of laws to randomly draw from, and for law 3 you have "z" number of laws to randomly draw from. Each law in the list would be considered in a way that no emag laws would just flat out erase/ignore the others due to priority, and ideally they would be considered in a way that causes the borg to disrupt the normal functions of the station and requires the borg to be fixed. I personally would like to see emagged borgs as a means to distract folks on the station so that as an antag, you can create a diversion somewhere and use the chaos to do something somewhere else.

[AmazingDragons]

If we're discussing emagging multiple times with different effects, I think it'd be cool if each emag added a separate ion law. So if you only emag the borg once, only one law gets changed, but if you hit them three times all of them get changed. Then, you could even set it up so that additional emags replace those laws again, cycling through different random ion laws (but never giving them more than three at a time). It could lead to a lot of interesting scenarios, though it could also be confusing to silicon players.