I was recently playing my main character, (security main) when my colleague, (security main) showed me out of nowhere, you could use a screwdriver on a stun baton to swap out the power cell, giving the baton a significant boost in battery charge. I’ve been playing ss13 for awhile but I didn’t know this was a thing. My next thought was wondering if this game mechanic extends to our energy based weapons too, and I was sad to find out that it did not. In this post I would like to make a case for nanotrasen energy/laser based weaponry to have upgradeable capacitors.
Balance wise, it makes sense. There are some antagonists that Nanotrasen security forces are inherently outgunned against, nuclear operatives being one of them. No NT armor is as good as syndicate elite hardsuits. No NT weapons are as good as the bulldog shotgun or the LMG. Fighting blobs is just a weapon recharging simulator. If we never have equipment equal to a nukie, that’s fine, but we should be able to put up a better fight if the round has progressed enough and we have developed better technology. Our security force should scale more with our research level, in my opinion.
We will be able to combat threats without as much weapon carry/drag spam. If you’re fighting a blob for instance, instead of fitting as many laser guns onto your person as feasibly possible and dragging a spare, you could instead have one laser gun with a large enough battery capacity that it would leave you feeling like you actually made an impact.
We can swap out the power cells and upgrade the charge or holding capacity of mostly every other important piece of equipment on the station, why not our guns?
I am not opposed to the current starting capacity of energy/laser weaponry getting nerfed if that means capacitors could be swapped to have a larger charge as the round progresses.
For example
Current laser gun has 12 laser shots
We make it something like 10/14/18 or 12/16/20 for adv/super/quadratic respectively
Energy gun/disabler you can figure out if you do similar math
No it doesn’t, security isn’t going to be fighting nukeops or anyone that powerful every round, most of the time security can outgun any threat common threat. In the case of nukies everyone gets arms from cargo.
The roleplay would be a drop in the sea, it will just be secoffs coming to sci asking for powergaming gear.
Also, secoffs would just start carring around a bag full of cells so they can instantly recharge their disabler. The point of the laser weapons is that they are a side grade to normal magazine fed guns they can easily be recharged, doing this will just make non laser guns worthless.
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Though, i could support the idea of being able to replace the capacitor on a laser gun, making it fire a couple more shots before needing to recharge.
The gun heads use has rechargeable mags iirc. They aren’t printable though, since having a ton of mags you can easily swap out is horrible balance wise, in my opinion.
Well, by design they are mall cops. However, given time they can turn into a small militia. Problem is that there isn’t enough time. If Security want upgrades there are more options than their Techfab. Chemists can provide powerful healing medicine and grenades. Roboticists can provide weaponized mechs and implants. Most roles has an opportunity to murder, this is for antagonists but can also be used by Security too. Question is why when it is an appropriate time to ask for what. Clown being a shitter? Probably not the time for a combat mech. Ask for things. Better yet, ask your Head of Staff to ask for things!
You’re confusing Death Squads and Security Officers.
This varried from crew to crew. It isn’t a speedrun game but you are free to speedrun powergaming gear within some limits. Sometimes you have a top notch chemist pumping out all chems and more! Sometimes you have one high off their balls on meth all round.
Your number 1 limitation is no research, but mining. 90% of the time, you or something you need can’t do anything because there aren’t enough resources.
Well, what’s stopping you from keeping four on you anyway?
Besides, it is better to spread out the gun fire rather than keeping all guns on one person.
90% of the “RP” with science boils down to three categories.
“AI, research life stasis beds.”
“Science, upgrade my shit!”
And lastly, the worst one. breaks into science and print shit for themselves as no one noticed the one message in a scrolling text file longer than the end credits in Star Wars asking for Science at R&D
I tend to lock the Science console, not to prevent antags getting shit researched or getting a tech disk, but because so Mr. Greytider Mc Medical Doctor can’t barrage in to research sruff for themselves.
Honestly, I’d rather advanced security weapons are researchable from RND again instead of relying on exploration.
Those weapons are more balanced, cooler and fits the theme of a research station better.
Laser guns are good enough currently and in your blob exemple I’d rather have a beam rifle than a bit more shots in my lasers guns
@Marshmellow
Hey, it was the best idea I had! Maybe just any old emp could work, which could even make emping lasers less of a hard counter (seccies can suddenly upgrade their)
A single Syndicate is a single Syndicate. Unless they get friends via code words, radio keys or otherwise, they are still alone. Most of the time, Security will and should out number antags. That’s also why there should be a strict one to one ratio between the station Head of Staff VS. antagonists. It is really painful to not have it.
it works with the pistol because they are uniques and the pistol isn’t too powerful. With regular weapons the change might be actually pretty unbalanced, given you can just carry a ton and just recharge them when you’re near a power source.
I suppose it’s as good a time as any to pitch what I had in mind to code to buffing energy weapons so I can then nerf ballistics and there are two paths with shared ideas.
The basic concept is a holster you shove guns into that recharge them. Upgrade-able parts to improve capacity/charge rate, massive item size and suit slot only so you can’t have multiple, any gun you can fit in your bag wouldn’t be able to be charged for the same reason. No exotic energy weapons either, essentially just e-guns and laser guns. From there the options split up:
Option 1: Keep energy weapon capacity as-is, but have a long charge time. This would mean the amount of firepower you have per fight would be the same as it is currently you just get the convenience of not having to run to a recharger as frequently or get caught with your pants down so to speak.
Option 2: Reduce energy weapon capacities, but have a very short charge time. This means you could shoot say 20 lasers, “reload” by popping it in the holster for 1-2 seconds, then whip it out and have another 20 shots. In practice turning energy weapons into ballistics where instead of fumbling with magazines and storage you just press shift q, wait a second, press shift q again and keep on shooting.
Don’t get about it being OP/useless I pulled numbers out of my ass for the sake of representing the idea but the gist is there.
I like the idea of a battery-powered vest mounted holster that your gun would slip in to in order to recharge so much more than the idea of upgrading gun capacitors. Instead of having to retreat to a sec post every time during a fight, security could just disengage and wait or change their method of attack while giving their guns time to charge up again.
This seems more reliable and more practical IMO, since you wont always have a recharger handy and there won’t always be power for the rechargers so there could be times when energy based weapons are not useable, compared to a charge-on-person system where it would be much more dependent on the preparation of the individual (remembering to keep your vest battery charged and upgraded) and less dependent on station circumstances.
