Energy Pistols Fuck Up Everything

Suggestions
1

It’s been a while since they’ve been testmerged and I hear a lot of people complain, so I guess this is the official complaint thread. Here are my issues with energy pistols:

The Damage Is Ridiculous

The energy pistol now on red alert deals 30 BURN. For comparison, a energy rifle deals 15 BURN, and a laser/HoS laser deals 20 BURN. This is obviously an oversight that has NOT been removed yet and it throws the balance out the window.

On top of that, you can double wield them, have ridiculous ammo capacity and you can carry 6 of them (without BoH). The fact that laser guns were made clunky so that one cannot carry the entire armory on their back is now obsolete.

In This Broken State, It’s A Fuck You To Many Antags

Xenomorphs, for example, aren’t even a threat anymore. Their innate fire weakness means they are laughable against these guns. 5-6 shots can down even a queen.
Are you a changeling? A single energy pistol can husk you and render your powers useless.
Not even reinforced vault doors don’t hold against a single energy pistol.

They Are Freely Available And Easy To Unlock

So what do you need to get this overpowered item? That’s the best part, you don’t! Every SO gets one. HoS and Warden can just swipe red together and turn every pistol into a pulse weapon, with no consequences whatsoever, IC or OOC.

Red gets called every round that is not greenshift. As soon as a flash is heard/rune is seen, code red is called, rendering group antags almost powerless.

It Addresses Problems That Never Existed

Mindshield firing pins existed, and they were lategame technology. DNA firing pins did not need to be implemented… Not roundstart.
Disablers were already overpowered ranged weapons, especially when dual wielded. They did not need a ‘lethal’ mode.
Officers were not losing their disablers as often, and if they were, they could easily replace them.
Security did not need a ‘lethal alternative’, that is what armory is for.
Antagonists, especially group antagonists, already had trouble fending off 8 security members. They were not a problem that needed to be addressed.

10 Likes
2

i think ike added that pr just to make fun of seccies crying about being underpowered

2 Likes
3

THAT is the main issue, innit?
Red allert being called when its realy not appropriate what so ever

Altough yea it probbly shouldnt have MORE damage than an actual laser rilfe hahaha

2 Likes
4

That’s a code issue, it’s not sec’s fault that they want a 30 burn damage gun as soon as possible, also it’s like 2 lines of code Ike could change to make the PR tolerable.

1 Like
5

As far as I can tell the whole thing was introduced to give sec better odds against mass station threats, and I think it completely fails at that purpose. Honestly it seems to affect solo antags more then anything. The amount of times I’ve seen red alert be abused over the past rounds is laughable, I’ve seen a red alert for a single heritic rune in dorms ten minutes into the round on sage. I mean I never play sec so I cant really be the best one to state an opinion about this but as far as I can tell this is how it generally works out.

WHEN IT IS USED AS INTENDED:

Blood Cultists - Pretty much every single competent cultist will have a mirror shield or at least an emp spell by the time they are discovered and red is used. Making this change pretty pointless. However it will let sec pick off the newer players easier, so it just kind of punishes them.

Nukies - If the nukies declared war now they don’t only have to deal with mosin spam and xeno bio bullshit, now they have to make sure they never skip xray implants and emps. Because without them turning one wrong corner could mean an immediate death no matter how good you are. This takes a situation that was already stacked against the nukies and makes it 2x harder.

Revs - If you enjoyed having fun as a rev good luck with it now, if your caught early enough to let the staff red alert your practically screwed. Unless some big brain lad made some maxcap to break into sec, it is now a fortress of windows and incredibly deadly lasers. The new laser pistols water down combat and make fights so much quicker and more boring (at least in my opinion). Revs where already a case of steamroll on one side or the other but at least it was somewhat balanced. This change just makes the sec steamroll 10x stronger and more likely.

WHEN IT ISN’T USED AS INTENDED:

Loud - When a really good solo antag player is going loud and murderboning, sec now have a last resort that kind of evens the playing field. I still find it unfair and would rather it not work this way. However I do admit it is nice that a very competent murder boner can be stopped somewhat more easily. Still though I do feel this makes the combat so much more boring.

Semi Loud - This is the new matchup I really hate, a lot of players (like myself) usually like to go semi loud, letting their presence be known but not ripping sec a new one. This used to be my favorite way to play as leading sec on a benny hill chase, and fighting two officers with some good gear and barely winning was very nice. But now if they push that magic button your just dead. I remember I got holopara recently and my master and I where running around maints. We critted three seccies and where leading them on a chase. It was all really fun and engaging for both sides until we saw the red alert notification. Then one seccie turned a corner with two pistols and critted my master in two shots. Recently the average amount of sec players on sage has been going up, making it harder for this playstyle.

Stealth - This rework has encouraged stealth much more for many of the less experienced players, and I find that kind of sad. It really constricts antagonist as a concept and hurts their experience quite a bit. Making sec seem less like an obstacle and more like an unstoppable force.

Overall I know complaing about this change is dumb, as combat has always been ridiculously unbalanced. However I still feel this amount of unbalance is inexcusable and needs to be changed.

3 Likes
6

also this update means that a single person dual-wielding disablers on red alert can take on a blob. you can solo a blob. a blob can be killed by one person. one person can kill a blob.

7

This sounds like some awful /tg/ change, why is it on Bee lol

1 Like
8

No clue. It baffles me how ike would find it acceptable for a readily available weapon to deal 30 damage on lethal mode. Around 100 damage is a crit. 4 hits will crit someone. 4. 4 fucking hits.

9

Not to mention le funny dual wield and the fact that they have 16 shots, and you can carry them in your backpack. So in summary, bullshit damage + high fire rate + high ammo count + easily carriable + goes through windows + can’t be stolen and used by others + people spawn with one. This is totally fair and balanced tho cause no random crits.

1 Like
10

MFW my random crits PR got closed so I can’t doubly make sure everything is fair and balanced

2 Likes
11

The current state of the PR is a bastardization of a baystation concept and I’m not exactly thrilled with the way it was implemented.

Smartguns aren’t an inherently terrible idea.

This implementation is.

12

Smartguns are silly.
Seccies should be punished for losing their gun no matter how it happened, if you really wanted to change something about that you’d focus on making it harder to steal guns rather than tampering with the reason to do so

Good balance decisions address opportunities, not outcomes

8 Likes
13

You should not be able to easily steal firearms from security. This discourages people from trying to take on sec without many tools, relying on mid combat theft to obtain weaponry, thus weakening tiders and still giving antagonists a chance (who should have the tools to deal with such weapons). Seccies are punished for losing their gun in this situation, the punishment being they don’t have a gun anymore.

The issue with the PR isn’t the dna locking, it’s the massive buffs to the weapon that place it above traitor tier weaponry. The smart pistol does 30 damage per shot, 90 damage per second and 480 damage total. Let’s compare that to various weapons around the station:

The standard sec laser rifle does 20 per shot, 60 per second and 240 total. smart pistol wins hands down before you even consider the smaller size and dual wielding capabilities of the pistol.

The stechkin does 30 per shot, 90 per second and 240 total. Again, smart pistol wins over an 8TC traitor item.

the C20r does 25 per shot, 50 per second and 600 total. The basic nukeops primary weapon is comparable to the smart pistol, and that’s very silly.

the pulse pistol does 50 per shot, 75 per second and 250 in total. Again the smart pistol performs rather well compared to such a powerful item.

Thankfully the smartpistol has been made significantly weaker by Ike.

14

Sec’s armor reduces this even further too right?

8 Likes
15

huh, i wondered why heads of staff wanted to go red alert on every minor inconvenience, didn’t even realize that these peashooters had a blast mode

16

I Agree with ELOn, Tampering with the guns itself instead of making it harder to steal (THere is no real way to make it harder to steal, so tampering with the gun is the only real option)

The idea of dynamic guns based on alert levels is a cool concept, but it fails to take into account the trigger-happy security and heads of staff trying to red alert for a stechkin found in maint, cucking all the other antags, in other words, this change DISCOURAGES gimmicks and cool antag ideas, since shitcurity is very good at shutting down fun, it forces rounds into an antag vs security mindset

5 Likes