Emag Design direction or STOP FUCKING LOCKING ALL SHIT BEHIND A 4 TELECRYSTAL TAX

[Longestarmlonglaw]

The emag is a very cool hacking tool. Unfortunately it suffers from a lot of problems. One of them being how it's an extremely desirable item for crew. This is caused by a massive portion of dangerous features (hacked defibs and grappling guns are 2 major examples) locked behind this 4 telecrystal tax.
The emag should be a 'sabotage' tool. The functions it should do are dangerous and harmful to crew, having one as a non-antag is not "Yay i get free weapons now'.
Good, current examples of this are:
THE RECYCLER
Emagging a light replacer makes it fill the bulbs with plasma. This is completely useless if you're not an antagonist, but very useful if you are one. This is what most emag(act)s should be aiming to be. NOT:
Bad examples:
Emagging a defib to get a powerful stun
emagging a grappling hook to use onstation
Limb grower getting a synthetic armblade. Note that the synthetic armblade only does 20 damage when attached to someone. The chainsaw does 24.
Toolset implant getting a combat knife.
These bad examples are basically giving shit the crew wants. The reason why we don't want all the cool stuff locked behind emags is we will make the emag WAY too overpowered for a 4 telecrystal item. We also have to consider that other antagonists exist.
A hypothetical example for adding an emag effect to an RCD:
Bad: Emagging it will allow you to shoot compressed matter like a 'gun'
Good: Machine frames, and airlocks constructed from an emagged RCD are sabotaged and may explode if the machine/airlock is interacted with.

Grey areas: Things which are an instance of a bad example, but are very minor in benefits and the crew can easily compete with it, Or just misc effects.
Chemdispensers, booze, and soda dispensers: Allow you to dispense nasty chemicals, The only things of note are zombie power production without relying on botany, and mint toxin. There are other more deadly chems than zombie powder, and i don't even know if mint toxin works (It gibs fat people)
Arcade games: Sure they give you cool rewards, but you risk killing yourself, so it's okay because there's risk.
Supply console: Allow's for the ordering of autorifles, agent id cards, and other misc low-level traitor gear (Read the code)
i don't see autorifles being very good anymore, they're an 'endurance' weapon with their ability to carry large amount of ammo, easy to get dunked on by security donning bulletproof armor, and rushing you down. Agent ids, emp nades, and the 'prime' streika rifles aren't TOO useful for non-antags. I see regular streika rifles jam not very often, so the 'prime' variants are almost the same.
Emagging cyborgs: Achievable as an antag that's not traitor/spy by researching illegal tech, and subverting the AI

[Capsandi]

spot on.

[BrianBackslide]

Counterpoint, emagging your own defib is a very powerful use of the emag. This is more of a case of the benefits to the traitor also extend to the crew, since disallowing crew from using the emag would result in it becoming an antag test.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Counterpoint, emagging your own defib is a very powerful use of the emag. This is more of a case of the benefits to the traitor also extend to the crew, since disallowing crew from using the emag would result in it becoming an antag test.

Sure it's a powerful use. we must consider blood brothers exist. and i am NOT making it an antag test. Im trying to rework most functions of the emag to really only be useful to antagonists, you CAN use it as a non-antag, it just won't be very helpful. (emagging a light replacer for instance)

For your defib example, a rework in the works would be:
Emps now toggle safeties.
Emags do not, and have a seperate use:
They now rig the cell inside them with plasma, causing you to explode if you use them. Or if plasma cells do work, using an emagged defib will shock YOU with a heart attack.

[BrianBackslide]

For your defib example, a rework in the works would be:
Emps now toggle safeties.
Emags do not, and have a seperate use:
They now rig the cell inside them with plasma, causing you to explode if you use them. Or if plasma cells do work, using an emagged defib will shock YOU with a heart attack.

EMPs toggling safeties was literally nerfed because crew would make a 1u single-tile EMP and turn their defib into a better baton. Here's the pr: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/74018
Even rigging the cell is better achieved by simply rigging the cell. Why would you ask for a 4tc tax for it when your very thread is against that?

The cross section of "useful to antag" and "not useful to crew" is incredibly small.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

For your defib example, a rework in the works would be:
Emps now toggle safeties.
Emags do not, and have a seperate use:
They now rig the cell inside them with plasma, causing you to explode if you use them. Or if plasma cells do work, using an emagged defib will shock YOU with a heart attack.

EMPs toggling safeties was literally nerfed because crew would make a 1u single-tile EMP and turn their defib into a better baton. Here's the pr: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/74018
Even rigging the cell is better achieved by simply rigging the cell. Why would you ask for a 4tc tax for it when your very thread is against that?

The cross section of "useful to antag" and "not useful to crew" is incredibly small.

Also emagged defibs are an instant hard-tell you're a traitor, and you're forced to carry them around your belt. Most traitor items are designed to fit in bags (revolvers) or have some way of disguising them (chameleon modsuit upgrade or storage compression and a syndicate modsuit). Openly carrying it is a sure-fire way to get robusted.
Imagine if traitor guns don't fit in bags you're forced to openly carry them and go "IM A TRAITOR, COME AND GET ME"

[ju45he]

What if emagged defibs only flashed red occasionally and exploded the hearts of anyone you try and revive with it. Maybe with a 20 seconds long action bar to explode the hearts of living people.

Imagine you're getting revived after getting healed and then your fucking heart explodes and delays the revival for like another minute, peak medical sabotage.

[VexingRaven]

For your defib example, a rework in the works would be:
Emps now toggle safeties.
Emags do not, and have a seperate use:
They now rig the cell inside them with plasma, causing you to explode if you use them. Or if plasma cells do work, using an emagged defib will shock YOU with a heart attack.

EMPs toggling safeties was literally nerfed because crew would make a 1u single-tile EMP and turn their defib into a better baton. Here's the pr: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/74018
Even rigging the cell is better achieved by simply rigging the cell. Why would you ask for a 4tc tax for it when your very thread is against that?

The cross section of "useful to antag" and "not useful to crew" is incredibly small.

I actually think this is fine. Hear me out. You can spend time and be very obvious about swapping the cell and injecting it. Or you can just emag it. There are other things like this. Doors for example. You could just fuck with the wires or smash the door or replace it with a wall. Or you can just use an emag. Not everything the emag does has to be a truly unique effect. In my eyes, the emag is more fun when it's a tool for mass-producing chaos rather than something that takes existing things and upgrades them. It doesn't particularly matter where the individual things it does can be accomplished other ways, the point is that you can emag everything you walk past and cause chaos.

EDIT: Vending machines are another example, you can emag them or hack them and achieve roughly the same results IIRC.

[MooCow12]

I actually like emag because it has an identity that is unique to space station 13....its basically a chaos card meant to mess with the electronics of whatever its used on with unique effects based on what its used on and that identity wouldnt exist if people didnt code in unique effects.

It belongs in sci-fi

You can also emag a toilet bong causing you to drop it in the toilet and accidently sabotage the equipment attached to it when youre fishing the card out...



The only other time ive seen any other sci-fi go in that direction was when they got the "reprogram" event card in the zathura movie which had chaotic results pretty close to what youd expect from an emag.





If you make emag only a super dangerous sabotage tool, it will still be ultra desire-able for crew, being able to prime an airlock to blow up when youre being chased by an antag for example...

an emagged light replacer would likely be desireable for an atmos tech that wants an easy way to make a plasma fire wherever they want one...now a room can easily be heated up a tiny bit...