AEG Rework Suggestion

[Norwest]

Suggested Changes:
-Change the w_class of the AEG to 5.
-Give the AEG the 'bothhands' flag similar to the L6 SAW.
-Change the max_w_class of the Bag of Holding to 4.

 

Why It's Good For The Game:
1: The AEG is just too good. The moment the first miners return with uranium ore, every laser weapon on-station is instantly outclassed. Let's compare it with the exotic, interesting weapons which are made irrelevant:
-The Captain's unique laser gun? Second-tier; it's only got lethals, while the AEG's got full-spectrum shootyness.
-Red-ERT Security lasers? No self-charging means the crew is armed better than the Emergency Response Team sent to save 'em.
-Sec's own arsenal? Can't self-charge, limited fire options; AEGs are better across the board. Fifteen minutes into the round, most of Security's own Armory is made sub-par at best.

The only weapons which keep some limited viability are those which provide a unique capability the AEG can't duplicate, such as X-ray lasers on blobs, immolators on vampires, and ballistics weapons against desword users and cult Juggernauts. However, for everything else the AEG is a no-duh upgrade. A competent R&D team means that Security will be running around with lethals early, because who wants to run back for a recharge when you can carry out a self-charging weapon? It's a no-brainer.

This also heavily affects simplemob antagonists, terror spiders in particular. Tspiders depend on their webs, but with R&D printing AEGs like crazy, they can just keep firing the things until entire rooms are cleared of webs. And with AEGs being small and portable, you can easily stack three or four and keep up literally endless laser fire. AEGs are EMP-resistant, they have tasers and disablers on the side, and have no downsides whatsoever to them.

2: My solution is to keep the weapon's advantages (self-charging, lethal and non-lethal modes), but to add some complications to offset them and make other laser weapons viable again. By increasing the AEG size to 5 (huge), equivalent to a combat shotgun or L6 SAW, and adding the 'bothhands' flag, the AEG is turned from "endless AEG laser spam" into a one-off weapon that can be used to complement an arsenal. Instead of an AEG in one hand, a riot shield in the other, and three more in your backpack, you've now got a single weapon that will recharge...in time. Not being able to stow the weapon also puts the AEG at a disadvantage for everyday use, as you can't simply carry the thing in your backpack/armor/belt as you can currently. Sure, you can still haul it, but now even the roundstart laser weapons have a new niche of "everyday carry" that the AEG can't displace them from.

3: The powergamer's solution to this will be, as always, the Bag of Holding. A BoH can hold up to 7 weight-5 weapons such as the combat shotgun, and holding/dragging another BoH lets one move around - and use - absurd numbers of large guns. I understand that Mining would be significantly complicated without having BoHs, so I'm not going to suggest they be removed completely. Instead, I'd like the BoH's max_w_class to be dropped to 4 ("bulky") rather than 5 ("huge"). This will still let the BoH be useful for Mining and other areas, while preventing it from being used to spam heavy weapons as easily as it is today.

I recognize that this doesn't stop people from using the bluespace locker, regular lockers, etc. and simply dragging around endless weapons in that, but that's a problem for a separate discussion. For the AEG in particular, I believe the above tweaks would be enough to keep the weapon's utility without making it the /only/ sensible option that it is currently.

[Charliminator]

I agree with every single thing here. Except the two handed thing. I'm not sure, it just feels off for a laser. 

 

BOH has always been science powergamer juice. Nerfing it in this way would nerf many strategies that aren't healthy for the game. To give some examples: 

- one sec officer caring and entire armoury and healing to dunk on whatever antag

- one antag carrying an entire armoury to dunk on sec

- miners carrying hundreds of eldritch bulkey swords each with the power of wizard items

- crew carrying 4000 guns to blast down a blob

I do completely agree with making AEGs bulkey. This way crew can only store one at a time in an armour slot.

Finally, I'm not convinced aeg + teleshield is all that OP. Especially once tasers are removed.

All in all, good suggestion.

[Viz]

Don't necessarily agree with two hands. Agree with literally everything else. You can easily make the argument that the literal nuclear reactor the AEG runs off of makes it bulky.

[S34N]

6 hours ago, Charliminator said:

I agree with every single thing here. Except the two handed thing. I'm not sure, it just feels off for a laser. 

 

BOH has always been science powergamer juice. Nerfing it in this way would nerf many strategies that aren't healthy for the game. To give some examples: 

- one sec officer caring and entire armoury and healing to dunk on whatever antag

- one antag carrying an entire armoury to dunk on sec

- miners carrying hundreds of eldritch bulkey swords each with the power of wizard items

- crew carrying 4000 guns to blast down a blob

I do completely agree with making AEGs bulkey. This way crew can only store one at a time in an armour slot.

Finally, I'm not convinced aeg + teleshield is all that OP. Especially once tasers are removed.

All in all, good suggestion.

 

7 minutes ago, Woje said:

Don't necessarily agree with two hands. Agree with literally everything else. You can easily make the argument that the literal nuclear reactor the AEG runs off of makes it bulky.

 

Can't really express it any clearer than this, totally agree.

[Spacemanspark]

AEGs used to irradiate and incur a small stun. This was back in around 2014ish when radiation also spread to clothes and such, much like it does now (but much better coded). 

Perhaps something like this would be a good alternati--HEY PUT DOWN THE PITCHFORKS-

[Rurik]

I'd love a BoH nerf, preferably even removal. Bag space exists for a reason, and it'd be nice to balance AEG around that without the "lmao infinite space" bag.

1 hour ago, Spacemanspark said:

AEGs used to irradiate and incur a small stun.

I like it already

[MarsMond]

On 9/25/2021 at 12:20 PM, Charliminator said:

Except the two handed thing. I'm not sure, it just feels off for a laser. 

I figure it would be better to allow you to fire it inacuratly using only one hand. The reactor recharging it is heavy and makes it unwieldy, but as a laser weapon, it has no recoil that would fuck up your hand to holding it incorrectly.

[MattTheFicus]

Agree with @Charliminator.

Bulky AEGs will be good, allows the Armor Slot to be used still, and prevents a bag filled with AEGs to be the norm outside of BoH (which is its own issue honestly).

In regards to Teleshield + AEG, late game Security really is meant to be stronger than at the start, so I dont see this as a massive issue any more than Teleshield + Disabler is.

 

The real curbing of AEGs/Teleshields/BoHs/etc will be once TechWebs is done eventually and you cant have all the gamer gear at once in as short of a time.

[procdrone]

rename it to "awkwardly enormous gun"(<- that part is a joke, this one is not ->) and make it a rifle, both hands, bulky, So you can only really carry it on the back. just like shotguns.

Though I always didn't see the gun AS usefull considering its rather high self-recharge time, can't sustain bigger fights that dont end in one stun.

[Carthusia]

On 9/25/2021 at 11:07 AM, Spacemanspark said:

 

Perhaps something like this would be a good alternati--HEY PUT DOWN THE PITCHFORKS-

STICK STICK MAN SPARK WITH FORK PITCH!

 

Though it would be an interesting thing, since it is powered by a maguffin, could easily make it a larger size and add a rad gain, maybe not to huge but somthing.

 

I myself am guilty of stuffing a bag FULL of AEGs on a blob war, and basicly acting like reaper from overwatch

 

Use up a gun, swap it,use it up, swap it, use it up, swap, and by time your on the 4th-5th AEG, your first one has recharged.

[Daylight]

On 9/25/2021 at 10:41 AM, Norwest said:

Instead, I'd like the BoH's max_w_class to be dropped to 4 ("bulky") rather than 5 ("huge").

I started off strongly against this, before I thought over what "huge" weapons the crew and crew antags have access to, which would be the fire axe, chainsaw, and combat shotgun (The combat shotgun being huge whilst the bulldog shotgun is normal sized seems to violate physics somehow, but whatever). Being able to store and hide those items can be very useful and help people avoid murderboning (Good luck avoiding nasty encounters with secuurity when you've got a chainsaw in your hands), but the loss wouldn't be very strongly felt in a wide majority of rounds. I'd still advocate for making huge items take up more space instead of removing them from the BoH entirely, but I could accept the loss.

[Viz]

Yeah. BoH needs this nerf. It still will be extremely good, you just won't be able to... stealth with a chainsaw.