Remove death confirmation text from examine text

[Spacemanspark]

Hello and welcome to another small suggestion thread made by me

I'm not exactly sure when it was added (somewhere in the past few years), but I've always felt that the immediate message you get when examining a dead person was fairly... lame, for lack of a better word. 

Prior to this, you generally had to actually confirm someone was dead, typically via medical scanners, other obvious sighs that show up later during death (flesh rotting, bloating, et cetera)... or the most common, walking up to someone and taking their pulse. 

This, while somewhat small, had quite an interesting impact at times. It allowed people to do a much wider variety of things, such as playing dead, springing traps on the unsuspecting, and other miscellaneous things. It made people slightly more cautious about approaching random bodies in maintenance. 

I think this would be beneficial for elevating paranoia. 

[Carthusia]

Huh, the old method does seem better.

 

Walk into a room: Examine, oh their dead, or oh their not dead, move from there, if your a nuke op, shoot them on the floor.

 

Compared to:

Walk into a room, 6 bodys on the floor, you have ZERO idea if their actualy dead until you take the time to check them, which depending on circumstance, you may not have time for, and simply move on.

Good for nuke op avoidance, why shoot the "corpse" on the floor when you have lots of other more mobile obviously living targets to shoot.

[MarsMond]

To play dead, you would need the asleep examine message, too. You should be able to tell the difference between a guy that just flopped onto the floor and an unconscious (due to their death) one. Shouldn't be impossible to add an option to attempt to fake your death/unconsciousness though. Maybe limit your vision during it, can't look around much without showing you are still alive and active.

[Mitchs98]

Disagree with this. I don't see this really increasing paranoia, all I see it doing is leading to people abusing it to get free kills/get out of situations they normally really wouldn't be able to basically for free. All it would really do is allow most antags to pop up when someone tries to examine them, stun them, and get a free kill. Which again, shouldn't happen.

If it took more effort such as Mars' suggestion to add an option to attempt to fake your death, then I could see it being valid. Otherwise...big no on this. It's not needed and would only cause frustration from players that didn't abuse it as a mechanic.

[Spacemanspark]

6 minutes ago, Mitchs98 said:

All it would really do is allow most antags to pop up when someone tries to examine them, stun them, and get a free kill. Which again, shouldn't happen.

That's... exactly the point? 

Don't walk up to random bodies you find in maintenance without caution. That's exactly the idea. Report it and let the people who are supposed to handle it deal with it.

 

I don't feel it really needs extra effort, although the slightly blinding piece might not be a bad thing.

As it is, however, it's not exactly hard to pretend unconsciousness, and people that die don't always have their eyes closed.

The core idea of my post is about removing the death text from an actual dead body. It shouldn't be easy to spot a dead person straight away, especially if they are, say, poisoned. 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Spacemanspark

[Mitchs98]

3 minutes ago, Spacemanspark said:

That's... exactly the point? 

Don't walk up to random bodies you find in maintenance without caution. That's exactly the idea. Report it and let the people who are supposed to handle it deal with it. 

And that's exactly why I disagree with it. Antags shouldn't have it easier to kill people than they already do. They don't need more easy free kill options, at all.

[Spacemanspark]

It won't be an easy kill option if you play it smart. As it is, it would still be somewhat risky to pull off. 

If you want to walk up to random 'dead' bodies in maintenance and expect nothing to happen be my guest, man. 

Unlike easy kill haha meme tactics antags use, this can also be used by anyone. 

[Mitchs98]

10 minutes ago, Spacemanspark said:

It won't be an easy kill option if you play it smart. As it is, it would still be somewhat risky to pull off. 

If you want to walk up to random 'dead' bodies in maintenance and expect nothing to happen be my guest, man. 

Unlike easy kill haha meme tactics antags use, this can also be used by anyone. 

No riskier than anything else that antags can do. I see no reason for this to be changed for reasons I've already stated. Nor do I see the use for non-antags being able to use to to balance out antags' use for it.

And I certainly don't consider it being this way in the past a merit in its favor.

[Regular Joe]

Sounds a neat idea to me, good one to make a PR of, and to test it out? Due to the examination text giving out the death, a thing like count pulse is rather useless. And it feels indeed kind of too straightforward to judge between the living and dead just with one glance, without hitech medical gear or some effort to check it out. Irl you would need to check whether they respond to speak, pain, light, do they breathe, have a pulse; inspect them, unless it is really apparent. (Slapping as test whether spaceman lives or not, when?) A space adaptation of that would bear some potential horror indeed, presently what only a changeling could really do. That is terrific and as such fun. Spot a downed one, start counting pulse - oh damn!  
 

Concerning antags, they could be in the receiving end of tactics done with this, just as well as crew/sec would be, thinking about fight scenes. And as the examination would still give out physical damage, to avoid getting surprised, you got to stay alert of surroundings, which is a general requirement of staying alive as say, a sec officer: a motionless guy in the dark maintenance, but they appear to be in sound condition externally - better approach this fellow carefully, if I have to. Test shift or two could give out how this would turn out in terms of adding to the game. No examination text giving it out, coupled to a function in style of what Marsmond said.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Regular Joe

[farie82]

Made a PR on this: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/13428 do tell what you guys think of the implementation there!

[Gatchapod]

I understand Mitchs' worries, but they do seem to think it's somehow an efficient killing method.
It is not. You can't really prepare an ambush for a specific person like that and randomly killing anyone who checks your pulse would be restricted only to the vampires. With vampires around, you probably don't want to approach "dead bodies" that aren't pale, anyway.

Calling security and a paramedic to a dead body instead of having civilians gleefully dragging rotting cadavers around is, in my opinion, definitely a fair trade for a minor buff to vampires. A buff they most likely won't use, anyway. I'd even go further and say that vampires trying to pull that off are also vampires that don't space your body after draining you to 0 and decapitating you, because they want to be fun antags.

Basically, I don't see it as a major change to mechanics, just adding some flavour to the game. And if you can't handle not being cloned 30 seconds after dying, well. Don't die next time, I guess?

Edited May 16, 2020 by Gatchapod

[Pckables]

Realistically, creating a situation to convincingly fake your own death would require set up.
Generally, it'll be extremely easy to tell a corpse apart from someone just laying down, as the corpse is either going to be:
1. Covered and/or laying in pools of blood.
2. Looks Husked
3. Looks pale on examination.

on top of not making constant gasping sounds.

The only way someone would normally die without any visual hints is by suicide or lack of oxygen.

I'm not sure if this would really give antags a larger advantage (considering they have to start in vulnerable position), but it'd definitely lead to security shooting corpses more.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Pckables

[Nukechicken]

There's already two different medicines you can use to fake your death, one of them much better than the other, and the better one can be found in maints, and the other can even be used to frame someone as a changeling, although rarely, i do think this is a great idea, but wouldn't that make those two medicines basically obsolete unless if you're planning on taking enough of it to play dead for a very long time, which is expensive and hardly worth it, also consider the absolute unbalance, vampires now have a way to absolutely wreck you, and its not like theyre gonna actually believe you if you fake death, therefore making them have a much higher advantage, cultists can destroy sec with this if played right aswell.

[Vallidian]

I agree with this, my take is that unless you have a medhud, or a scanner. Examining should only show VISIBLE signs. Pale skin, husked body, missing limbs, ect.

You can die from SO MUCH, some of which have zero visible tells. You should need a health scanner, medical hud, or to physically check for pulse to KNOW somebody is dead.