New Karma Race: Box (a.k.a Shadow) People

[Sothangel]

Why these shadowpeople opted for a box, rather than a hardsuit is beyond me.

[HugoLuman]

I say leave them as xenobio rewards. The whole reason they exist is that slime people were made a karma reward, making these guys a karma reward would be a bit of a gaffe and probably necessitate a rebalance

[Bigtimetripod]

 

So to add my two cents.

 

 

Was a shadow person few rounds ago as RD. Not by choice, but Experimentors RNGesus blessed me with that power... it was quite annoying to break lights in science that had no switch and then yelling on everyone to put on nightvision goggles, cause science is a Dark Zone from now on.

 

That box thingy....

 

It does not work as intented i think... yes, i blocks light and prevents takin damage, but ye cannot heal while in the box. Yer damage is stuck that it was prior entering the box. My logic is that when ye close the box, yer in darkness and should heal... not pause the damage takin.

 

But either way, it was a interesting round. Also caught acting RD as a hijacker tatortot who was building AIs on outpost and bending em to his will. I broke all the lights where i moved around on the outpost giving me regeneration. While he only had a PDAs light to guide him, i had nightvision goggles and was able to stalk him and steal his AI before captain and everyone else got to the outpost.

 

[Citinited]

 

I'm guessing you're referring to the ability of boxes to conceal identities and move around corpses. In a way I agree with you, that boxes can be used for nefarious deeds, but so too can closets, and the boxes that already exist in-game. Concealing your identity is as easy as a borrowed, stolen, or fake ID of any kind and a face mask of many kinds.

 

Yes, but the box people would be required to have a box at all times, which would put them under a lot less scrutiny (as they get harmed whenever they are in the light). Additionally, dragging a closet is suspicious, whereas being in a box that is vital to your functioning is not immediately so.

 

While I can envision a scenario where a boxed race would make boxes less suspicious and therefore more exploitable in one way, more often I end up envisioning the fact that anyone can open a box to check it's occupants at any time, and whenever a door needs to be opened, or anything interacted with, the box must also open. The most likely avenue of exploitation that I can think of would be people murdering box people in the maintenance shafts that they would all likely frequent in order to simply enter their box and impersonate them.

 

True, but opening the box requires you to be in melee range of the box, which allows you to be easily stunprodded or whatever. You do raise a good point that the box does need to be opened in order to open doors, so I guess that would cut down on some of the stuff they can get away with.

 

What kind of exploitation do you envision? Perhaps a solution could be that when these fancy boxes are examined, their description would display a list of humanoid occupant visible identities?

 

Keep in mind that this hypothetical boxed race would not be very common.

 

Things like being able to carry guns or wielded chainsaws freely without anybody knowing, being nearly impossible to stun at range as the box blocks tasers, being nearly impossible to detain by security (unless tape guns were added), and being quite difficult to track by the AI are a few of the things that I thought of. As I said above, yes you can also gain these abilities when you're in a movable box (something I'm still not that okay with), but with box people there is literally no way to tell anything is amiss, whereas other boxes are mildly suspicious.

 

If examining the box would also display its occupants, then that would probably fix most of the problems I've listed here.

 

[ExGame]

 

Man, this is probably the most snowflake race I've seen yet.

Seriously though, why would NanoTrasen ever hire a race that can not work properly because they have to live in the dark or otherwise in the box.

That's like hiring a blind guy as Drive School Teacher.

And with the addition of Drask that already happened, this is never going to get implemented any time soon (Fox™).

Also, the ominous thing you mention as "RP" will probably be only used by 30-40% of the guys playing that race.

And jesus christ, the box mechanic, that'll give people another reason to scream at Security trying to searching them "HELP SHITCURITY, THEYRE TAKING MY BOX!!!!!!!".

 

And man, theese guys as Vampires or Changelings are going to be OP as fuck when in maintenance tunnels (where they usually are) considering their full on free NV and regeneration.

 

[flimflamm]

 

Yes, but the box people would be required to have a box at all times, which would put them under a lot less scrutiny (as they get harmed whenever they are in the light). Additionally, dragging a closet is suspicious, whereas being in a box that is vital to your functioning is not immediately so....

 

True, but opening the box requires you to be in melee range of the box, which allows you to be easily stunprodded or whatever. You do raise a good point that the box does need to be opened in order to open doors, so I guess that would cut down on some of the stuff they can get away with...

 

Things like being able to carry guns or wielded chainsaws freely without anybody knowing, being nearly impossible to stun at range as the box blocks tasers, being nearly impossible to detain by security (unless tape guns were added), and being quite difficult to track by the AI are a few of the things that I thought of. As I said above, yes you can also gain these abilities when you're in a movable box (something I'm still not that okay with), but with box people there is literally no way to tell anything is amiss, whereas other boxes are mildly suspicious.

 

If examining the box would also display its occupants, then that would probably fix most of the problems I've listed here.

 

You make some really great points here...

 

There are a bunch of mechanics that leap to mind that ideally I would like to build in to the box items I'm attempting to create:

 

- boxes would be created by applying an ID card to a special item named "compressed personnel box" (or something), which would apply the job tag to the box sprite and name and title tags to the box object name, perhaps making them track-able on camera networks as well.

 

- cardboard boxes currently have 10 hp, making them very easy to destroy (normal closets have 100 hp). I would increase the hp of the personnel box to at least 40 and have it be made described as constructed from plasteel or metal

 

- When an electricity based stun or tazer bolt hits the box, it should electrify it and simulate a stun by rendering the occupants temporarily immobile

 

- When these boxes are examined, an "external bio-sensor display panel" should relay the same information on the occupants that would be displayed if they were examined normally in full sight

 

- Doors could be opened via the access of the box's occupants

 

 

So to add my two cents.

 

 

Was a shadow person few rounds ago as RD. Not by choice, but Experimentors RNGesus blessed me with that power... --snip--.

 

It's an interesting challenge right?

 

This thread makes playing as a shadow in a box seem way more OP and functional than actually trying to play as a shadow does... Indeed being inside a box does not make shadow people heal, and to be honest I am worried that if they did then they would begin to lean toward the OP side. I'm still working on learning how tiered object codes and functions work in BYOND code, but if I can figure it out I will try to implement this function to the custom box code for testing...

 

Man, this is probably the most snowflake race I've seen yet.

Seriously though, why would NanoTrasen ever hire a race that can not work properly because they have to live in the dark or otherwise in the box.

That's like hiring a blind guy as Drive School Teacher.

And with the addition of Drask that already happened, this is never going to get implemented any time soon (Fox™).

Also, the ominous thing you mention as "RP" will probably be only used by 30-40% of the guys playing that race.

And jesus christ, the box mechanic, that'll give people another reason to scream at Security trying to searching them "HELP SHITCURITY, THEYRE TAKING MY BOX!!!!!!!".

 

And man, theese guys as Vampires or Changelings are going to be OP as fuck when in maintenance tunnels (where they usually are) considering their full on free NV and regeneration.

 

To be honest I mostly wanted to see how people would react to the idea. I've made some pretty questionable suggestion threads in my sparse SS13 career....

 

Realistically I think I'm hoping for a re-work of shadow people and or for possibly the implementation of these boxes (as an admin spawn only item most likely) because even though they are snow-flakey as hell, I find them entertaining and it would be neat to have possible access to them as I live out my own shadow-box gimmick RP lifestyle...

 

Regarding your final objection about OPness in maint, you're ignoring the fact that even in dark environments, simply having a flashlight turned on and in your pocket is enough to absolutely dominate a shadow person. You can chase after them and what can they do except use some sort of ranged weapon on you while fleeing? If they chase you, you simply run and they will continuously take damage from your light sources. That said, the other day a vampire wasted me in maintenance with incredible ease. He handily used his vamp abilities to disable me and beat me to within an inch of my life and then spawned bats on-top of me to ensure my death. He foolishly ran away, not finishing the job entirely, and the bats flew off chasing someone else, and I slowly convalesced in the dark maintenance area that I was left for dead in. After about 5 minutes of regeneration, I was able to stand up and continue on with my shadowy existence... That is about as OP as the regeneration will ever be, which is to say, not very OP.