/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

I think we should wait to see how the test goes before we resort to drastic measures.

>2 shot stuns for the Sec pistol

yeah no.

How is that worse than the one-shot stuns they have now?

Wyzack wrote:How is that worse than the one-shot stuns they have now?

Because tasers are inaccurate, have a shorter range and can be deflected.

This change is only good if it's the first step to finally get rid of one-hit stunners. Otherwise it's just giving sec more guns. You can spin it all you want but keeping the tasers/disablers AND the new ballistic weapons is just buffing sec for the sake of it. You say it's to give a counter to certain antags, but currently we don't have any issue with unbalanced antags, nuke ops get cucked quite often and traitor murderboning the whole station only happens on low pop with 0 security.

Tunder wrote:

Wyzack wrote:How is that worse than the one-shot stuns they have now?

Because tasers are inaccurate, have a shorter range and can be deflected.

Inaccurate? What?

You can dodge projectiles easier at longer ranges, I fail to see the problem with that.

I think he means that taser projectiles are slower than bullet projectiles. On max runspeed you can outrun taser bolts, but not bullets, I think.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:I think he means that taser projectiles are slower than bullet projectiles. On max runspeed you can outrun taser bolts, but not bullets, I think.

Bullets do have no limit on range true enough but the same is for lasers.

Tornadium wrote:

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:I think he means that taser projectiles are slower than bullet projectiles. On max runspeed you can outrun taser bolts, but not bullets, I think.

Bullets do have no limit on range true enough but the same is for lasers.

I didn't say anything about taser range?

I was even talking about fastspeed, which was before tasers had a range

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

Tornadium wrote:

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:I think he means that taser projectiles are slower than bullet projectiles. On max runspeed you can outrun taser bolts, but not bullets, I think.

Bullets do have no limit on range true enough but the same is for lasers.

I didn't say anything about taser range?

I was even talking about fastspeed, which was before tasers had a range

Yeah I know you didn't, tasers have a limited range though. Its very rare that if you were in range you'd dodge unless you were literally running in straight lines and the person is bad at aiming.

I can introduce a range limit on the sec gun's stun ammo if we want.

My thoughts on the guns in game thus far.

Some changes or things I've noticed based on feedback from first three rounds.

* HoS inventory is a bit more clutterd, might not spawn him with a pistol. Or give him a lethal mag instead.

* The Pistol itself seems to be somewhat enjoyed by Officers using them.

* The Pistol seems to do well against lower level threats and antags but is not very effective against high level antags like the Nuke Ops or Wizard. Some of this is as normal for sec but the broken stamina model also aggravates the issue.

* Need a better way of holding bullets in the brig rather than a locker.

Overall the pistol seems to be doing ok, but its still early days.

I still intend to go with a voucher system to allow Officers the choice between a Pistol or Taser as each offers their own advantages.

Steelpoint wrote:My thoughts on the guns in game thus far.

Some changes or things I've noticed based on feedback from first three rounds.

* HoS inventory is a bit more clutterd, might not spawn him with a pistol. Or give him a lethal mag instead.

* The Pistol itself seems to be somewhat enjoyed by Officers using them.

* The Pistol seems to do well against lower level threats and antags but is not very effective against high level antags like the Nuke Ops or Wizard. Some of this is as normal for sec but the broken stamina model also aggravates the issue.

* Need a better way of holding bullets in the brig rather than a locker.

Overall the pistol seems to be doing ok, but its still early days.

I still intend to go with a voucher system to allow Officers the choice between a Pistol or Taser as each offers their own advantages.

Steelpoint, letting officers choose between whether or not they want a taser or a pistol is not a good thing. Going back to game balance, the game is balanced around sec having a ton of laser weapons, and few ballistic weapons, this is something we all know. If we replaced tasers completely with these pistols, sec would be balanced around having a ton of ballistic weapons, and comparatively few laser weapons, making it far easier to balance. Giving sec easy access to both of these will create problems in the future, because any armor changes would have to have both damage sources in moderation, instead of having one higher than the other due to quantity of that damage type, making everyone more fragile due to the variance. I really do think we should make the pistols standard issue, with the only tasers left in the armory.

To put it into game-terms, I'm going to need a hypothetical situation here, so say the sec team that round has 10 officers. Five of those officers choose laser rifles, and five of those officers choose pistols, both on their lethal settings. You are a Traitor who just broke into the armory unseen and have a choice between three pieces of armor, the ablative armor, the tac armor, and regular armor. The ablative will allow you to fair far easier versus the laser security members, but will also cause you to be incredibly weak versus the pistol security members. The tac armor will make it so the pistol security members will have a harder time downing you, but the laser security members will destroy you. The regular armor will give you somewhat decent chances versus both of them, but isn't even close to being as good as either of the other two armors are versus their respective damage types. This means that you either have to go with fairly low quality armor to have a chance of fighting sec so that you aren't outed due to their sheer damage variation, or you have try specializing even through the risk. This is somewhat the same situation with giving officers vouchers, there will be TOO much variation in what sec can throw at antags, making antags with their limited resources be unsure of what to buy in order to have the best chance at fighting security.

Now that I've said what I've had to say, I need to know if tac armor makes it so bullet based stamina damage is reduced. Put more eloquently, if I were to shoot someone unarmored, and someone armored with tac armor with a nonlethal bullet from the pistols, would it do 60 stamina damage to both or would it do far less to the tac armor?

OOC: NikNakflak: If you don't want pistolprojectiles, please leave feedback saying it's awful on the feedback thread so it actually DOESN"T get merged permanently

I guess I'm posting here to show that I'm against this idea. I played a couple rounds of ballistic sec as an officer and I didn't like it, and I'd prefer the old taser/disablers.

No, based on:

1) This upsets the balance of the game in serious ways.

Security goes from having tasers, which can be counterplayed with e-swords, eshields, and good ole jukes because they have low ammo + disablers, which can be tanked in order to get a disarm off, or dodged with more difficulty, to... traitor revolvers that do stamina damage instead of brute damage. Oh, and they have 10 shots instead of 6, and you can reload them instantly once you're out.

They have no counterplay of any kind. No EMPing them no esword reflection, no tanking shots to try for a disarm. They are more difficult to dodge than either disablers or tasers. Take prenerf tasers, now make them do stamina damage, which basically ends all hopes of escape once you're hit once, and make them impossible to counterplay through any means. You've got these things.

2) This is contrary to the precedent that Nanotrasen uses energy weapons and the syndicate uses projectile weapons.

Self explanatory and people have already said it.

3) It makes way, way less sense for a futuristic professional security force to be using rubber bullet pistols compared to tasers.

This PR was made because Steelpoint loves playing security and wants to roll over antagonists with broken weapons. Please, for the love of singulo, do not merge it. Don't set the precedent that you can get any turd merged if you do the coding and spriting before you check if people want it.

I'd prefer if the pistols were removed as well, at least from standard issue. They'd be better as riot gear.

Pistols seem pretty well received so far, obviously there is the vocal shit in OOC from the people who were bitching in IRC but I like the change.

I far prefer the pistol to the taser, any day.

More problems:

- Bullets move faster than taser shots, and are VERY hard to see, making them tough to dodge. Huge buff. Any nerf to this end should be done solely to security pistols, otherwise you're nerfing antagonist combat ability FNR.

- Infinite fucking range.

- Reloading OP, gives you a shitton more shots than a taser.

- Tedious to reload in the brig.

Tornadium wrote:Pistols seem pretty well received so far, obviously there is the vocal shit in OOC from the people who were bitching in IRC but I like the change.

I far prefer the pistol to the taser, any day.

Nonsense. There was a split, but most people didn't seem exactly in favour of it. Mostly neutral or against thematically or in gameplay. It's a huge buff to sec.

Amelius wrote:More problems:

- Bullets move faster than taser shots, and are VERY hard to see, making them tough to dodge. Huge buff. Any nerf to this end should be done solely to security pistols, otherwise you're nerfing antagonist combat ability FNR.

- Infinite fucking range.

- Reloading OP, gives you a shitton more shots than a taser.

- Tedious to reload in the brig.

Tornadium wrote:Pistols seem pretty well received so far, obviously there is the vocal shit in OOC from the people who were bitching in IRC but I like the change.

I far prefer the pistol to the taser, any day.

Nonsense. There was a split, but most people didn't seem exactly in favour of it. Mostly neutral or against thematically or in gameplay. It's a huge buff to sec.

People are literally saying in OOC right now that they like the change and they don't understand why people are so against it.

We've had good feedback earlier in the day as well.

Things to fix

- Reloading Magazines

Reloading is not OP, hell I'd usually carry around a backup taser anyway so you're trading an extra weapon for a magazine. I'd agree with limiting the range though.

Edit : So this pistol is fucking amazing holy shit.

Tornadium wrote:Reloading is not OP, hell I'd usually carry around a backup taser anyway so you're trading an extra weapon for a magazine. I'd agree with limiting the range though.

> I can carry an EXTRA TASER, of which there are limited, so it's balanced if every sec guard has the equivalent of multiple tasers by default. Oh, and also, each mag has twice as much ammo as a taser, but still only needs one shot to slow someone to a crawl making the next shot a guaranteed hit, i.e. you have nine opportunities to hit someone with a pistol and the last is almost guaranteed, whereas with a taser you only have 5 per mag/taser.

> Also, who cares that the sprite for the projectile is tiny and blends in, or moves faster than a taser. Let's ignore that point!

> This isn't a buff apparently.

Amelius wrote:

Tornadium wrote:Reloading is not OP, hell I'd usually carry around a backup taser anyway so you're trading an extra weapon for a magazine. I'd agree with limiting the range though.

> I can carry an EXTRA TASER, of which there are limited, so it's balanced if every sec guard has the equivalent of multiple tasers by default. Oh, and also, each mag has twice as much ammo as a taser, but still only needs one shot to slow someone to a crawl making the next shot a guaranteed hit, i.e. you have nine opportunities to hit someone with a pistol and the last is almost guaranteed, whereas with a taser you only have 5 per mag/taser.

> Also, who cares that the sprite for the projectile is tiny and blends in, or moves faster than a taser. Let's ignore that point!

> This isn't a buff apparently.

They're not really that limited to be completely honest.

Then change the sprite to make it more visible, I have no problem.

I never said it wasn't a buff, it's a minor buff in some areas. I love the change and I think its extremely effective.

Tornadium wrote:I never said it wasn't a buff, it's a minor buff in some areas.

> Minor buff.
> Basically invisible undodgeable bullets with a higher bullet capacity and stam damage instead of a flat stun, meaning when they're down even after the stun wears off they can't move.
> Double the ammo capacity to tasers before having to go back to reload (sec/cargo).
> Infinite range.
> Armor doesn't typically have much ballistic resistance so you don't even get much damage mitigation, and if this is remedied, antags, traitors esp. will be fucked coming and going even harder than they already are, since sec armor will have increase ballistic resistance as well, surely, as it is the prime source of armor for antags. I.e. ballistics would be vastly effective against nonsec, but not sec themselves, shitting on antags even harder.
> Lethal ammo changeable on-the-fly on par with a sketchkin but for free for EVERY OFFICER (reduce sketchkins to like, 2 TC, seriously).
> Roundstart equipment that hardcounters eswords/eshields that are ultra-expensive designed to force sec into melee range sans detective or a prepped force with riot shotguns.
> 'MINOR BUFFS IN SOME AREAS'

LISTEN TO YOURSELF!

Amelius wrote:

Tornadium wrote:I never said it wasn't a buff, it's a minor buff in some areas.

> Minor buff.
> Basically invisible undodgeable bullets with a higher bullet capacity and stam damage instead of a flat stun, meaning when they're down even after the stun wears off they can't move.
> Double the ammo capacity to tasers before having to go back to reload (sec/cargo).
> Infinite range.
> Armor doesn't typically have much ballistic resistance so you don't even get much damage mitigation, and if this is remedied, antags, traitors esp. will be fucked coming and going even harder than they already are, since sec armor will have increase ballistic resistance as well, surely, as it is the prime source of armor for antags. I.e. ballistics would be vastly effective against nonsec, but not sec themselves, shitting on antags even harder.
> Lethal ammo changeable on-the-fly on par with a sketchkin but for free for EVERY OFFICER (reduce sketchkins to like, 2 TC, seriously).
> Roundstart equipment that hardcounters eswords/eshields that are ultra-expensive designed to force sec into melee range sans detective or a prepped force with riot shotguns.
> 'MINOR BUFFS IN SOME AREAS'

LISTEN TO YOURSELF!

>At a range where you would be able to see the projectile before it hit dodging was more luck/reliance on the enemy being a shit shot. This really isn't an issue.
>You can carry multiple tasers and reload them at multiple points across the station. Supplies are not limited.
>Range can get nerfed
>Only one piece of armor in the game stops tasers
>EShields already block some ballistic attacks, just increase this.

I really don't enjoy the new pistols. I've just played a decent length traitor round with them, so I'll share why.

Landing two hits on someone is harder than landing one hit on someone. Stamina damage is slower and weirder to stun than taser bolts.

And that's pretty much it (apart from a few other things). Ammo seems easy enough to get and replace, the gun itself seems functional, I enjoy recharging but I'm sure I can handle not being able to use it (would you consider spare ammo in the security outposts?). The gun sprite looks good and is therefore fun to use, but the mechanics of it just aren't as effective, at least to me. I'll give some examples.

Case one: as cargo tech, I nabbed a security hardsuit from the floor, yelling "Free clothes? Alright!" A sec officer gave chase and got a shot off pretty early, but then had to chase me well into cargo (I got into the main bay from being outside) before he could have another clear shot. They seemed about average to me. That is demonstrably worse than a taser. The stamina damage would, however, make it more difficult to run off, even though I was up in what seemed like a pretty quick time. You have to follow it up with a baton as far as I'm concerned, which you don't need with a taser.

Case two: as security officer, I was chasing a victim. I shot them twice and went to baton and cuff. An assistant decided to intervene, got them up, and started running off with them. With a taser, this would have been easy: two shots, two perps down. With the gun, I unloaded several shots into the original victim, but it took several seconds for them to go down, allowing them to act as a moving meat shield for the person dragging them. Literally just worse. Did get them further up the room, but it took more ammo and more persistence, and I only ended up getting one person to the brig (would be tricky to get both brigged even with taser, though). I don't know why this was: does stamina regenerate faster after reaching 0, or something?

Imaginary case three: I have a target behind a window as security officer. If I have a taser, I can switch to 'disable' mode and shoot through it. With a pistol, I cannot.

Imaginary case four: I have fired several shots, and am unsure of my ammunition count. If I have a taser, I need only glance. With a pistol, I must move my cursor to examine.

Overall, I think stamina damage is also less fun for both. Stunners keep you down for longer but stop once you're up. Stamina damage stays for absolutely ages, having increasingly small effects, but allows you to stand very quickly. This is both inconvient for the released person (assuming they were not shot for a long sentence) and inconvinient for the arrester.

I think the magazines idea is fine. Ballistics and stamina damage is not. Keep the pistols and magazines, change the pistol to a beam based one, and have security fire either tase/disable mags or laser mags. Security has lethal sidearms, ammunition can be just as available, and overall you will please a lot more people.

Can we implement a speed loader to reload the magazines in the brig so it doesn't take out of a guard's time to sit there and manually reload a clip.

I'm for this so long as traitor items are rebalanced accordingly. Not every officer should get ballistics though. Half tasers half stun pistols would be ideal.

Luke Cox wrote:I'm for this so long as traitor items are rebalanced accordingly. Not every officer should get ballistics though. Half tasers half stun pistols would be ideal.

I outlined up above why half taser and half pistol is a bad idea.

Noticing an alarming trend - people shot by stun rounds tend to drop into crit out of the blue with this message...

You feel woozy.

...several minutes after the fact.

So I'm a sec person, I have been for some time, and I've been involved in most balance discussions about sec lately.

...And I can say with utmost certainty: FUCK these pistols

What was the intent? They suck absolute cock during nuke, and are decent everywhere else. I prefer roundstart tasers in every possible situation, and there is no gamemode where I would rather have pistols over tasers with the obvious exception of blob. Why people have construed this as a sec buff is entirely beyond me - I have played with and against these guns and they feel directly inferior to a taser. Perhaps their lackluster performance was intended to be counterbalanced by the presence of the other guns in the original PR, but as it stands, without them, the pistols just suck.

Not to mention the stolen bay sprite is horrendous.

As I said I discovered a bug with Stamina damage which makes them really poor against Nuke Ops and other antags with bullet resistance. Meaning instead of the bullets taking 4 shots to stun a Operative they take 8 shots due to the resistance removing stamina numerically and not by a percentage.

Amusingly this also effects other stamina damage such as Eguns and AdvTasers using the Disable setting, its just that since almost no one uses Disable often that no one ever noticed as this bug seems to have been around since its inception.

If the general opinion is that the Pistols are doing poorly then I'll close the PR after the test is concluded.

Irrespective of what the general consensus of the Pistols are I hope to go ahead with my other PR introducing the Auto Rifles.

However I should note that there seems to be surprisingly a good level of support for this change in OOC chats. So Eh.

A lot of people really enjoy the pistols.

I think they're pretty damn effective. I'd like to see RD get some nice toys in the energy weapon department to add some kind of progression maybe.

I started off extremely negative towards this change, and my view has changed considerably.

Having service firearms is fun as fuck, something new, and extremely satisfying.

However, the pistols are pretty shitty, definitely worse than tasers in every scenario that isn't shooting unarmored crew, which Sec was already proficient enough at to begin with.

I would suggest that sec officers start with a lethal magazine in addition the extra stun magazine for trial purposes, as I have been playing consistently all day and the Warden/HOS are not organized/aware enough to issue them to us.

Also, they need better looking sprites. Something like a Glock or a Sig-Sauer P226.

Ausops gave me new sprites that I intend to use. Which look better.

Also its that damn stamina bug that makes pistol stun rounds crap against Ops and similar.

Steelpoint wrote:Ausops gave me new sprites that I intend to use. Which look better.

Also its that damn stamina bug that makes pistol stun rounds crap against Ops and similar.

It's not the stamina bug I'm talking about.

You pushed this change under false pretenses.

Firearms are not superior to taser/disablers against any particular enemy. This was a flavor change, not a buff or a QoL improvement as you have implied.

If you're just pushing for guns over lasers because you have a firearm fetish, say so instead of lying to us about your reasons just to get your foot in the door.

You have yet to justify the change, and it is an unnecessary nerf against everything that isn't vanilla unarmored crew, and an unnecessary buff against them.

Again.

Firstly I do like ballistic weapons, the concept not just their implementation in SS13. If I had the choice I would use a ballistic weapon over a energy weapon.

But secondly ballistic weapons do offer a slight buff for security versus certain antagonists.

Nuke Ops will not be as powerful due to bullets having a chance to piercing eshields and swords, meaning the Op strat of running into officers and killing them is not as 100% viable (once that bug is fixed). In addition adding in Auto Rifles will help Security in crowd control as the Ballistic SMG will fair better in fending off groups of people thanks to its burst fire ability (Rev, Cult, Gang).

Overall I do admit I have a preference to ballistic weapons, but I do think they offer a advantage in game if done correctly.

It needs more work and polish, hence why I pushed for this test.

I still have my two unanswered questions.
Whaat are you trying to achieve with this change?
Why is this change the best way to achieve it?

Because so far, the only concrete example that has come up is the reflect from e-swords and e-shields, something that can be changed far more easily then completely gutting what security is armed with, by making snowflake weapons for them.
ie: Sticky's thread on the very issue.

Snowflake is a shitty buzzword at this point, almost every item in the game can be defined as a snowflake item.

Do I have to again point out how not only do I like ballistic weapons but that ballistic weapons offer versitility to security? The Pistols and Rifles have a chance of bypassing Shields and dealing with large crowds. So instead of sec being fucked against Ops they can somewhat fight back and their SMGs can try and hold back a crowd.

Steelpoint enforcing his vision of sec on the server is nothing new, Tunder. Look at the masks, or the warden key, or the stupid snowflake HoS gun.

The Masks were added by Malk I'm sure.

The Warden Key was added by Paprika, I just moved it to the armoury from the Warden's backpack.

The HoS Gun was to compensate for the gun overhaul making the Hos start with no good weapons and forcing HoS players to raid the armoury for Tasers.

Auto Rifle PR is up: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/11689

So you're saying the only benefit of the pistol pr is that sec officers will be able to shoot people with e-swords/shield?

Have a chance to, and that's pretty much it.

Its more a aesthetic change with some benefits.

Steelpoint wrote:Have a chance to, and that's pretty much it.

Its more a aesthetic change with some benefits.

Then just. Fucking. Change tasers. Or change the reflect chance of e-shields or something. Holy shit.

The SMGs might be okay, if not OP (literally free uzis for security en-masse in a cordoned off area of the armory, making it essentially impossible to access for antags but freely accessible at _any_ time by security, predicated on a HoP, Captain or HoS opening it - how is this fair for antags with zero counterplay? You can't even fully loot the armory without a dead sec force). Honestly, it makes more sense to halve the number of them to 2 and provide one reload apiece, so you don't have an entire sec force with insane equipment the moment a HoS decides it'd be a great idea to grab one. Also, you know the HoS and Captain are immediately going to grab one at roundstart anyways, similar to how the Captain would always grab his laser until the comdom alarm was created, but even then...

Sec shouldn't have major amounts of ballistic gear, they are and always should be energy-based, primarily for balance purposes. Like, why do antags have to use all their TC/influence/etc. to barely be on par, if not below par with a single sec guard in combat, with no special abilities or adrenals? How is that fair that sec can bust them out at roundstart with zero repreccusions and just acquire more ammunition from cargo at little expense?

I'm still generally of the opinion that this is a terrible idea.

The same reason you always see Security handing out Energy Guns, Lasers and Riot Shields to each other at round start.

Oh wait, that does not happen.

There's no reason to think that the Auto Rifles will be issued as standard, if that does not happen with Lasers or Eguns why would it start with Rifles?

Steelpoint wrote:The same reason you always see Security handing out Energy Guns, Lasers and Riot Shields to each other at round start.

Oh wait, that does not happen.

There's no reason to think that the Auto Rifles will be issued as standard, if that does not happen with Lasers or Eguns why would it start with Rifles?

On the other hand, the Captain's Laser was grabbed at roundstart so frequently we had to add an entire alarm type to the game and make it bolt down his office and alert the AI when he took it.

Except that's the Captain not Security.

Again, its extremely rare if not non-exsistant for security to raid the armoury at round start.

Here's my final pistol thoughts.

I think there's enough tactical reasons to want to sometimes use the Pistol over the Taser just as you want to use a Taser over a Pistol.

I am going to go with a voucher system to allow Officers to pick if they want a Taser or a Pistol at round start, this gives Officers flexibility with their starting weapon.

I think that's the best way forward.

If you go with the voucher system then remove spare hybrid tasers/pistols from the armory. If officers want to powergame and take both, at least make it so they have to order from cargo.

I don't understand why you're fucking with the balance of every game mode for an "aesthetic" change that also helps against e-shields when you could just change eshields' laser reflect if that's what you're so concerned about.