EMPs, Mechs, Silicons, and IPCs
A design document by Markus
As this document is quite large, I fully expect it to be broken into smaller PRs and merged by themselves. Anyone is free to use ideas here for their own PRs on BeeStation.
Background
As it stands, EMPs are the Achilles heel of counters. It is a safe guaranteed way neutralize mechs, IPCs, and Cyborgs. With two of them having no method of countering this method. Mechs being the most resistant with the least amount of consequences from being hit by it while IPCs and Cyborgs are practically dead from a single weak EMP depending on the circumstances.
Goal
- Give IPCs and Silicons options for avoiding, negating or mitigating the effects of EMPs while adding additional functionality to them.
- Nerf and or buff mechs to keep mechs viable for antagonists and the station while making conflicts more interesting than Ion gun spam.
Method
Oil
The addition of another materials to remain operational would add another layer of difficulty for antagonists doing their evil deeds and more maintenance for the station to the flawless mechs. silicons and IPCs would use too and consume oil as they operate, some more than others. This would put pressure on the Chemist or Cargo to supply oil unless it is done by themselves in the case of antagonists.
Lacking oil will not make the mech, silicon or IPC inoperable but will significantly make its operation more difficult. Increased shooting time, increased reload time, slower movement and rotation and other negative effects.
Robotics and Medbay will come with an IPC medkit containing a welder, welder goggles, syringe, and four bottles of oil. Robotics could be supplied an oil drum and syringe instead. If there is no chemist, oil is available to be ordered by Cargo if needed.
Recharge Stations
Instead of exclusively keeping a mech recharge station and cyborg recharger at Robotics, they will be spread out over the station where it makes sense. However, the ones at Robotics would repair both mechs and cyborgs slowly (tier 2 parts on round-start).
EMP
Changing the EMP from being a purely damaging tool to being a utility for disrupting the operation of things would return it to not be a simple flawless counter to IPCs, mechs and silicons. Normally vision will not be disabled for the IPCs or Cyborgs for every EMP hit. Instead one or multiple effects will happen to the one hit by an EMP.
Mechs, IPCs and Silicons (the first three) will be affected by these effects:
- Random side step, stepping into the direction of a wall will stun them.
- Damage, pure damage.
- Voice failure (can not talk or make any noises).
- Temporary outage, disables the mech for a set time also making it immune to further EMPs until it is activated again.
Mechs
The less HP a mech has, the more damage the mech pilot will take from damage done to the mech. This will force mech pilots to not sit naked inside the mech and use adequate protection. If not, they will most likely bleed to death.
- Random weapon switching.
- Randomly toggle strafing, environment air and light. This would have a slight, slight chance of changing the pressure environment air is set to and could cause pilots without hardsuits and internals to die from the air pressure inside the mech.
- Random mech voice notification.
- Do_After ejection (unless cancelled). It will mostly be detrimental if the pilot is not aware of their situation or if the mech is directly disabled from the next EMP.
- Slight burn damage to the pilot.
- Disable a random equipment weapon for a longer time.
- Electric discharge, shock nearby things (scales with battery charge).
- Corrupt name, change random characters in the name with special characters.
IPCs
- Randomly emote something exclusive to IPCs.
- Disable a random hand.
- Trip (stun).
- Replay a random previous message.
- Hit themselves with current active hand.
- Disable limb (not stun nor hard-stun).
- Disable vision (static).
- Electric discharge, shock nearby things (scales with battery charge).
Silicons
- Randomly emote something exclusive to silicons.
- Temporary disable a random tool in the hotbar.
- Replay a random previous message.
- Toggle Cyborg connection to AI law sync.
- Toggle Cyborg lockdown.
- Reset Cyborg module.
- Toggle camera connection.
- Hit themselves with current tool.
- Disable vision (static).
- Electric discharge, shock nearby things (scales with battery charge).
- Corrupt name, change random characters in the name with special characters.
Artificial Intelligence
- Randomly emote something exclusive to silicons.
- Replay a random previous message.
- Give random ion law.
- Delete randomly law.
- Lockdown random cyborg.
- Deal pure damage.
- Disable vision (static).
- Enable maintenance mode.
- Make announcement with random long previous message (100 characters or more).
- Toggle floorbolts.
- State random ion law over common.
- Voice failure (can not talk or make any noises).
- Temporary outage, disables the mech for a set time also making it immune to further EMPs until it is activated again.
- Change AI display icon.
- Corrupt name, change random characters in the name with special characters.
- Unlock combat abilities (MALF abilities with a VERY low chance).
- Announce a random amount of randomly selected vox messages.
- Bolt, shock or open random doors around the station.
IPC chameleon kit
A basic chameleon kit with the added functionality of protecting you from EMPs with a short cooldown. Can be toggled to outright negate EMPs or to mitigate EMPs. It is a difference between not being stunned at all at the cost of a longer cooldown or being stunned for a shorter time but with a much shorter cooldown.
Material Armours
Many different armours for anyone to create using either an autolathe or their own hands. These would mostly be for combat situations and would replace hardsuits unless it is space combat.
| Material | Effect |
|---|---|
| Iron | Mitigating the effects of EMPs, sturdy against non-piercing brute, heavy weight. |
| Glass | Breaks on blunt, change to reflect lasers, light weight. |
| Wood | Great from blunt, change to be set on fire from lasers. |
| Plasma | Set on fire from lasers, light weight. |
| Bluespace Crystal | Teleport from blunt damage, will stun you. |
| Cooper | Mitigating the effects of EMPs. |
| Uranium | Sturdy against brute, heavy, irradiates you and those near you. |
| Titanium | High change to reflect lasers, sturdy against non-piercing brute. |
| Plasteel | Sturdy against brute, heavy weight. |
Feedback
I’d like to hear what you think of these additions and changes! Many of the suggested changes are to move EMPs from damage dealing weapon to a utility weapon where it should be situated. I do very much enjoy the idea of these changes.
I’d love to hear what folks thinks of this, especially these gangs of folk!
IPC gang: @notebe96.
Silicon gang: @ColonelOrion and @Rust.
Roboticist gang: @Doktorwueue.
Security gang: @XeonMations, @Szczebrzeszyn and @Fronsis.
