Why I think energy lethals suck, and some ideas on how one could improve them

[TheSardele]

I recently noticed something. Every time the armory is opened and the officers come streaming in to get their lethals, the shotguns are always the first to go. If you join late into a round as an officer and come in to see the armory is open, you might find energy guns or laser guns left, but the only thing remaining of the ballistics are the rubber shots scattered all over the floor. I'm pretty sure this is due to a simple reasons a lot of sec and probably antag regulars will likely agree with.

Energy weapons kind of suck when it comes to lethal force.

Sure, tasers and disablers are nice since the game's entire combat system focuses around stuns, but as soon as you are up against something that is very resistant or even immune to them, you'll need a lethal option.

Let's go with an example. You have a laser gun, and a traitor released their lesser hellhound on you. You land every shot your energy gun is willing to give you, 12 shots all dealing 20 damage (Assuming I'm reading everything on the github correctly). That is 240 damage, but a lesser hellhound has 250 hp. Sure, one more whack with your gun will do it in, but if it gets in even one attack it might break a bone, or in the case of a hellhound depending on your internals setup knock you out and easily turn the fight around. And all of this is assuming you hit literally every shot.

A shotgun on the other hand can deal enough damage without needing to reload, and even if you miss, you can, you know, reload.

I've decided to list what I think are the advantages of both energy lethals and ballistics:

Energy

• Only requires energy to recharge, which is effectively infinite.
• More locations to get ammo (chargers), which are scattered around the entire station, as opposed to just lathes.
• Burn damage is slightly harder to heal without preparation compared to brute damage.
• Chargers bundled up in a location can make an area sustainably defendable in a siege type situation, such as a fight against a blob. This takes time to set up however.
• Can be cheaply mass ordered from cargo, mostly useful against blobs.
• Doesn't leave lasting damage such as IB or bone breaks when lethaling someone you don't want to stay dead.
• Can be printed on station.
• Passes through windows (Lasers at least).

Ballistics

• Deal lasting damage that is very hard to deal with without help and preparation (Bone breaks, IB), extremely useful when fighting a KOS enemy.
• Causes bleeding.
• Can carry as much backup ammo as you can carry.
• Can be reloaded very quickly, compared to waiting in front of a charger for half a minute.
• Significantly higher damage output.
• Variety of ammo (Technological shotgun shells, Different Auto Rifle ammo)
• Best way of dealing with enemies that can block/reflect energy projectiles (How often do you see people screaming "For fucks sake, cargo ordered lasers against nukies!" "Shitsec just tried tasing a desword." etc.?). Also became a more important factor since blobs got reflective tiles.
• While you don't see this happen, you could technically set up more autolathes to have ammo available in more locations, while chargers cannot be built.

While energy weapons have a couple of things going for them, a lot of their pros are situational, and they are severely outclassed when it comes to the primary use of lethals: Causing damage.

Looking in the #changes_wanted channel on the discord, the headmins and maintainers are not a fan of ballistics in crew/security hands. Which makes sense, given this is supposed to be a sci-fi with energy weapons, and the fact that ballistics are more the Syndicate's thing. I therefore have some suggestions as to how one could make energy weapons more viable and popular, rather than have everyone run around with ballistics.

Suggestions as to how energy lethals could be made more effective

• Have energy gun batteries be upgradeable: Simple one, if energy guns could have their batteries upgraded and therefore ammo capacity increased, people using them could actually sustain fire long enough to deal with a threat without having to carry several guns on themselves, and without the need to run to the nearest recharger after every fight.
• Have energy gun batteries be rechargeable in the field: If there was a portable charger which could be used to recharge an energy gun in the field, it would allow people to stay in a fight without having to run to a charger, while still forcing periods where they can't fire.
• Have lasers cause bleeding: Lasers don't necessarily cauterize IRL, and it would make sense to design a lethal laser weapon to not cauterize the wounds it causes. In game, this would be dangerous to species that have blood or a blood analogue if they didn't prepare medicine in advance, forcing them to seek help. At the same time, this doesn't cause serious lasting damage, lost blood is easily fixed with the correct medicine on hand.
• Have chargers be constructable: This would just be a nice addition in general, especially in rounds where the chargers end up destroyed. Coul has since ported them over.

Problems with buffing energy lethals

• Even with the addition of reflective blobs, the default reaction to blobs is to order a dozen laser gun crates. Blobs would have to be rebalanced around buffed energy lethals.
• Science antags already get access to a ton of really dangerous stuff, and buffing energy guns which they can print will make them even more dangerous.
• Drask. Oh poor, poor Drask.
• Security vs. Antag balancing in general, as security are the ones that start out with energy weapons.

Now I'm sure I didn't think of everything, and there are more things that need to be taken into consideration. Feel free to give your own opinion and further suggestions. Telling me to just git gud is also an option.

Edited August 29, 2019 by TheSardele
Chargers have been made constructable since

[Regular Joe]

Git gud! Or… no. The buffs suggested seem reasonable for me. Low amount of damage dealt, as it is presently is, but more sustainable fire, more than presently. So you could prefer energy, when you need to shoot a LOT, like with a tspider or a xeno case happening. And yes, I'm one of the officers who always takes the shotgun if lethals are to be taken. Mostly because of the feel you could go and print ammo enough prior the battle, without having to retreat because of got to charge it.

These would be a pain for a blob, though. The problems with the buff are also reasonably put.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Regular Joe

[Tayswift]

Instead of a portable charger, we can just make all energy guns self-recharge, at a slow enough rate that it wouldn't really help you much in a single combat, but would make running around for a charger less important. Increasing the convenience and ease of use of energy weapons could help make their lack of damage feel better.

[Coul]

This is pretty neat, well structured even though some ideas I don’t agree with(god would yellow cell laser guns be op)

but! I’ve made a PR for constructable rechargers and put up another one for laser effects. Hopefully these two help with some of the issues you’re having with laser guns if they’re merged

Edited July 8, 2019 by Coul

[McRamon]

What about removable cell? You still have recharges but if you want to, with for example proper access to balance it a bit, you could remove basic  powercell from it and swap it with charged slime core or bluespace one, making a normal energy gun a much more dangerous spammy lategame weapon?

 

Bonus points - more interactions between sec and science

 

 

Alternative idea - if all energy gun get selfrecharging, that means they get wireless transmission of energy which comes from... Engine! What if, depending on power output, energy weapons could get increases charging rate or even damage! That will make a reason to set up a supermatter engine (tesla could be safe and easy power source, but lord singuloth would produce much more power to the sec team) and also a reason for antags to sabotage engine (in Non-destructive manner ofc)

[Spacemanspark]

1 minute ago, McRamon said:

What about removable cell? You still have recharges but if you want to, with for example proper access to balance it a bit, you could remove basic  powercell from it and swap it with charged slime core or bluespace one, making a normal energy gun a much more dangerous spammy lategame weapon?

We actually full on had this feature, years ago.
Every round every officer (myself included, shameless admission) would rush tech storage for a better power cell.

[TheSardele]

I didn't include that as an idea as I figured that adding a yellow slime core to guns might be a bit insane. Besides, you could just switch out batteries mid combat with that feature, allowing you to carry a ridiculous number of shots by just switching batteries to reload.
Also, I think the laser guns come with a basic power cell, which holds 1000 if I recall correctly. The next step up, the high capacity cell, already holds 10000, which would need some changing to the battery capacities to make that work, as that would be way too much of an upgrade for such an easy to acquire item.

[McRamon]

What if not normal cells but specially designed balanced rnd ennergy weapon cells?

[Fursamie]

On 6/27/2019 at 9:39 PM, TheSardele said:

Suggestions as to how energy lethals could be made more effective

• Have energy gun batteries be upgradeable: Simple one, if energy guns could have their batteries upgraded and therefore ammo capacity increased, people using them could actually sustain fire long enough to deal with a threat without having to carry several guns on themselves, and without the need to run to the nearest recharger after every fight.

 

On Discordia, where miners charge you thousands for minerals, with research you can effectively make it so that your laser gun can go from getting a couple extra shots to making the gun recharge over time with better and better power cells, and I think such a system could work well in paradise - the only problem I see is that mining is more or less forced to work with Research and currency is useless + how scarily fast RnD can be maxxed / near complete making it less of a hassle to get these legendary power cells.

[John_bigless]

On 7/10/2019 at 10:13 PM, Spacemanspark said:

We actually full on had this feature, years ago.
Every round every officer (myself included, shameless admission) would rush tech storage for a better power cell.

Instead of using ordinary power cells, make a special, more expensive, harder to get type of cell.

This would guarantee that Security would have large or more plentiful laser weapon power cells much later into the round, as oppososed to rushing Science for hyper-capacity power cells when they reach all 5 tech levels excluding Toxins.