Expanded Disarm Intent

[FalseIncarnate]

 

Preface and Suggestion

 

As you probably already know, generally disarm intent tends to do one of three things: miss, actually disarm, and push over.

 

Undoubtedly, this is kinda boring, and also not fully logical. How would a slap to the wrist knock someone over completely, or a swipe to the legs make them let go of their wallet (ignoring flinching)? Disarm tends to be a common sight in petty squabbles around the station, because generally the one who lands the first push tends to gain a massive advantage in the conflict. Also, how infuriating is it to need to spam click frantically to make someone lie down in a crowded escape pod so you can climb inside and let the door close before you all suffocate?

 

I suggest expanding the disarm intent to be more impactful without overly increasing it's undeniable power, by factoring in zone targeting to the resulting action's effect. Further, for flavor, adjusting the resulting message of the action so that it reflects the variety of crew on board the station by referencing the target more accurately.

 

Suggestion Details

 

Effects by targeting zone:

 

• Head:
  • Low chance of making victim drop held/pulled items and grabs

  • Low chance of disorienting the victim (causes confusion/randomized movement) and causing a short deafen effect (ear clap / discombobulation, blocked by earmuffs / bowman headsets)

• Moderate chance of missing

 

[*]Mouth:

 

• Chance to silence/cut-off victim for a brief moment (maybe 1 life cycle)

• Blocked by things that cover the entire face/head

 

[*]Eyes:

 

• Chance to remove and drop eye-wear of victim (smack the glasses off that NERD) or cause blurry vision if no eye-wear is present

• Blocked by things that covers the entire face/head

 

[*]Chest:

 

• Low-Moderate chance to knock downvictim

• Low chance to knock victim back one tile (if possible)

Moderate chance of causing stamina damage

Low chance of missing (largest target)

 

[*]Arms:

 

• Moderate chance of forcing victim to drop held/pulled items and grabs

• Moderate chance of causing stamina damage (elbow/funny-bone hit)

Low-Moderate chance of missing

 

[*]Hands:

 

• Moderate-High chance of forcing victim to drop held/pulled items and grabs

• Moderate chance of missing

 

[*]Lower Body (groin):

 

• Moderate chance of paralyzing the victim in place briefly (low-blow)

• Low chance to knock down victim

Low-Moderate chance to miss, blocked by armor and hardsuits, but not soft space suits or aprons

 

[*]Legs:

 

• Moderate chance to knock down victim

• Moderate chance to cause stamina damage (knee-cap/shin hit)

Low-Moderate chance to miss, obviously won't work against wheelchair-bound targets

 

[*]Feet:

 

• Moderate-High chance to knock down victim

• Moderate chance to miss, obviously won't work against wheelchair-bound targets

 

 

 

Effects/Message by Gender/Species

 

• Male:
  • Groin hit messages can be true "low blows", but can also be kidney strikes

   

  [*]Female:

   

  • Groin hits are probably just kidney strikes

  • Chest hits might reflect the female figure more (hit in the boob)?

 

[*]Tailed Species:

 

• Groin hits might be tail-yanks instead of kidney shots?

• Groin hits might also have a chance to stop wagging tails in addition to their normal effect?

 

[*]IPCs:

 

• Head hits would become monitor smacks

• Silencing strikes would become mute buttons

Groin hits would be wire pulling / servo sticking?

Gender messages are unisex

 

[*]Diona:

 

• Gender messages are unisex

• Groin hits messages might be less prominent (due to being plants)

 

[*]Vox / Plasmaman / Grey:

 

• Gender messages are unisex (can't really differentiate the genders on these)

 

[*]Slime People:

 

• Groin hit messages are unisex (but chest hits might not be)

 

 

 

The gender/species bits are obviously less impactful and more for flavor. Downside is, they'd be the more snowflakey side of things and less meaningful from a gameplay perspective, so I kept them separate so as to make it clearer that they are easily left out should we want to actually add any of this.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Absolutely not on the eyes.

 

While funny and I understand where it's coming from, it's just going to be spammed to steal the ADV Security HUD all the time.

 

[zaka888]

 

 

shit I hope I'm doing this right

 

Probably unbalanced, and generally a bad idea, but I like it.

Even though I don't think it will ever happen.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

Not a fan, really; this is just going to end up being as snowflaky as the help-intent PR is.

 

Adding stamina/silence to disarms is a bit much---disarm is already generally considered the best overall intent for combat due to its potential to disarm the other person and/or knock them down completely.

 

[FalseIncarnate]

 

This is why stuff gets posted to the forums for suggestions.

 

I honestly came up with all of that in like 5 minutes at most, and am not particularly attached to any of it.

 

That said, I do think that targeting the arms and hands should have a better chance of knocking things from their grip and less or no chance of knocking them down. A slap on the wrist isn't gonna drop you like a shove to the body or a leg sweep. Likewise, an attempt to trip someone is unlikely to force them to let go of something in their hands.

 

The rest was mostly just flavor and alternate stuff that probably is overpowered, but perfect for getting discussion started. Which, it seems, it somewhat has.

 

[Kyet]

 

Disarm is already OP.

 

You can win a lot of fights by shoving someone, taking their weapon, and shooting/whacking them with it.

 

It doesn't matter if they're a sec officer with a supposedly good energy gun, a wizard of unfathomable power, etc.

You can still run up to them, and probably get that weapon out of their hands with a disarm if you really try.

 

Heck, melee in general is OP. In real life, shoot someone once and they are down, not for a few seconds, but for hours.

Any kind of proper weapon in SS13 is ridiculously weak by comparison - which makes melee moves like disarm ridiculously powerful compared to what you'd expect.

 

Sure, design for fun, but at what point does it just become silly?

 

IMHO, different flavor text for disarming different areas is fine, but anything that makes disarm more powerful is just pushing us further towards sillyville.

 

[Ace_McLazer]

 

Disarm is already OP.

 

You can win a lot of fights by shoving someone, taking their weapon, and shooting/whacking them with it.

 

It doesn't matter if they're a sec officer with a supposedly good energy gun, a wizard of unfathomable power, etc.

You can still run up to them, and probably get that weapon out of their hands with a disarm if you really try.

 

Heck, melee in general is OP. In real life, shoot someone once and they are down, not for a few seconds, but for hours.

Any kind of proper weapon in SS13 is ridiculously weak by comparison - which makes melee moves like disarm ridiculously powerful compared to what you'd expect.

 

Sure, perhaps this is deliberate design, but at what point does it become silly?

 

I seriously cannot agree enough. Combat is not great in this game, everyone knows that but its also severally unbalanced thanks to disarm.

 

Maybe the idea of taking disarm back to the drawing board for some tweaks is a good thing. I feel a lot of people who should have won a combat instance lost it not due to their personal incompetence but the fact the disarm RNG is TOO good for a combat system that is little built around little more then spam click.

 

These are good example features. Combat could use some expansion/increased depth. This is coming from someone who practically lives security, so take it as you will. But I've been on both sides of the baton and can firmly say disarm/grab could use some depth in the way of changing how it effects damage zones.

 

[Tauka Usanake]

 

Can I at least post this first? I just finished making it after reading the OP.

 

Head hits would become monitor smacks

Done.

 

[Shadeykins]

With some tweaking this system could actually make disarm less OP and more reliant on skill rather than chance, as it'd require forethought and reasonably high APM.

[Spacemanspark]

 

I'm not a terrible fan of the current disarm system. As many have pointed out (including the OP), it just causes people to spam it in fights to knock someone over.

Not sure why we re added it back in after it was removed.