Flash and spray rebalance.

[Farya]

 

Well, using often flash and spray I found out that they are not as good as they could be and there is some idea.

 

Pepperspray: work as its now but is blocked only by rig helmets, bio and radiation hoods, medical masks, any masks providing internals. All the googles but science googles(and maybe IAA large shades to make them more unique and to prevent shitsec from spraying them) would not give any protection against it or would just reduce the vision reduction. IPCs are immune to spray because they can't inhale it obviously.

Flash: Works as its now but IPCs are more vulnerable to it now. They would be stunned by sensory overload just like borgs do.

Some buff to its second mode could be nice however. So everyone without protection around in close proximity would drop their shit from their hands.

 

That way both tools would be useful for security and they would also work nicely in set. If the not-so-dangerous crook wear mask - flash him. If the crook wear sunglasses - spray him. If he wear both - well, baton him hard. Welding helmet while protecting against both when pushed down would reduce vision by itself which is fair tradeoff for it.

 

Edited August 23, 2016 by Guest

[Shadeykins]

 

Both these tools are already incredibly effective. Pepperspray is best utilized on prisoners, and flashes are best utilized on pissant civilians causing trouble.

 

Flash + baton is incredibly effective even on large groups of civilians, very, VERY few people are honestly flash-immune.

 

Pepperspray is something a security officer is immune to, and can go into a cell with without fear of being disarmed and stunned.

 

[Farya]

 

Both these tools are already incredibly effective. Pepperspray is best utilized on prisoners, and flashes are best utilized on pissant civilians causing trouble.

 

Flash + baton is incredibly effective even on large groups of civilians, very, VERY few people are honestly flash-immune.

 

Pepperspray is something a security officer is immune to, and can go into a cell with without fear of being disarmed and stunned.

Officers have gasmasks in their lockers. So removing protection from eyewear would not do any harm to them. And anyone with any glasses is effectively immune pepperspray while prisoners... well there are more then enough tools for control of prisoners already. Like wall-mounted flash, which stun long enought to get inside and handcuff. While perma have gas distribution system with sleep gas. Why pepperspray should be the designated tool for that? Making it a reliable pair for flash would be better so having sunglasses(or just any, any eyewear) would not be automatical advise to being tased/batoned. That would as well give some use for spare sprays in equipment room. IAAs and heads could ask warden for them if they want. For now spray is only used on people who are already helpless and by brig physician who is non-combatant.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Getting peppersprayed is absolutely awful - with that said unless it gets in your eyes it's not debilitating.

 

I'm pretty sure this is the logic going on here.

 

[Farya]

 

Getting peppersprayed is absolutely awful - with that said unless it gets in your eyes it's not debilitating.

 

I'm pretty sure this is the logic going on here.

But only the science googles and mesons fit the face close fitting enough to protect te eyes. The first ones are especialy made to protect eyes from chemical spills. But the rest of eyewear and especially medical/classic sec huds(which could be holograms) are not designed to protect against that. Some spray would still get into eyes. And moreover - spray is also highly painful when inhaled. Person with his eyes covered could be slightly resistant to spray but not outright immune like now. Greytider with sunglasses would be completely immune to both spray and flash.

So only people with gasmasks(or both facemask and science googles) would be immune to spray completely.

People with either facemask or science googles would be suffer but not as bad: either drop shit but have no vision mess or dont drop shit but dont see anything

Officer with security mask and his HUD on would not be happy to get into his own spray but nothing dangerous for him. Slight vision inpairment but nothing more.

Someone with sunglasses would be hurt but slightly less then without them.

 

[davidchan]

 

As someone who'se been hit with CS (Tear) Gas and Pepperspray (Part of training), I can definitely tell you that its the eye irritant that does the most to hamper you over inhaling it. CS Gas is probably the worst of the two and the only one I noticed making it harder to breathe, pepper spray is more of a mist so unless your mouth is open already it's not much of danger to inhale.

 

The main reason it's worse on the eyes is because you can cough up most of the gas quickly and get fresh air unless you are constantly being sprayed, where as once it sticks to you eyes you're basically waiting for your tears to flush it out, rubbing it makes it worse though if you access to fresh water you can reasonably flush it out.

 

Hence, I never understood how a surgical mask protects against it.

 

[Farya]

 

As someone who'se been hit with CS (Tear) Gas and Pepperspray (Part of training), I can definitely tell you that its the eye irritant that does the most to hamper you over inhaling it. CS Gas is probably the worst of the two and the only one I noticed making it harder to breathe, pepper spray is more of a mist so unless your mouth is open already it's not much of danger to inhale.

 

The main reason it's worse on the eyes is because you can cough up most of the gas quickly and get fresh air unless you are constantly being sprayed, where as once it sticks to you eyes you're basically waiting for your tears to flush it out, rubbing it makes it worse though if you access to fresh water you can reasonably flush it out.

 

Hence, I never understood how a surgical mask protects against it.

Thats interesting to know. Thank you. Would keep that in mind.

But still its very unlikely for eyewear not designed for for protecting eyes from things coming into them to give reliable protecting from the spray. Security sunglasses(and their brig phys medical counterpart) being also ballistic googles could offer such protection(but I doubt it would be perfect) and science googles are especialy designed for that. But when medical/diagnostic HUD and any other not close fitting glasses makes you outright immune to spray thats pretty eliminate any need in it. There is nothing for now that spray can do but flash cannot even in his weakened form it is now.

So only science googles and shilded HUDs should protect from spray reliably. That would by the way make science googles more use. People rarely ever use them now.

 

 

 

Maybe add new craftable shit for greytide? . Make them look more like IRL agressive football fans.

 

[davidchan]

 

Against pepper spray, anything that covers both eyes is going to be leagues better than something that doesn't cover them at all. True, the pepper spray can still drip or flow down from their forehead into their eyes, but the majority of it will hit the eye gas and flow away. Pepperspray works best when most or all of it contacts the skin, so just having residual drip means it will be momentarily painful but otherwise not incapacitating. Really, just wearing glasses and wrapping your head in cloth (jumpsuit, shirt, guaze) would be one of the better ways to ghetto protect yourself against being sprayed, otherwise a splashguard shield that MedChem and SciChem mysteriously lack would also work wonders against PS.

 

As far as CS gas goes, you also want to cover your mouth, usually with a tightly woven fabric thats been lightly drenched in water to create a better seal to catch the gas, if you ever seen videos of people protesting/rioting against police you'll usually see at least one guy dumping a water bottle onto a jacket and wrapping it around his face best he can. Covering your eyes is still the most important if you're looking to avoid pain, but if liberal use of CS gas is being used against you, it can get pretty damn hard to breathe in the cloud.

 

[Fox McCloud]

 

Flash + baton is incredibly effective even on large groups of civilians, very, VERY few people are honestly flash-immune.

 

This. Flash is absolutely devastating against those who don't have flash protection (not many people will get it, to be honest--far less than a year ago, largely due to random maint); one quick AoE flash and that person is not only blind, but can't control their movements, making a quick baton all that much easier.

 

[Farya]

 

Flash + baton is incredibly effective even on large groups of civilians, very, VERY few people are honestly flash-immune.

 

This. Flash is absolutely devastating against those who don't have flash protection (not many people will get it, to be honest--far less than a year ago, largely due to random maint); one quick AoE flash and that person is not only blind, but can't control their movements, making a quick baton all that much easier.

People dont always wear sunglasses but when they do they could be only tased/batoned now. Because spray is blocked even easier then flash.

 

 

 

Splash shield for butcher, medics, scientists sounds neato by the way. Nice addition to medical saw. Maybe even give to tators on set with chainsaw.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Flash + baton is incredibly effective even on large groups of civilians, very, VERY few people are honestly flash-immune.

 

This. Flash is absolutely devastating against those who don't have flash protection (not many people will get it, to be honest--far less than a year ago, largely due to random maint); one quick AoE flash and that person is not only blind, but can't control their movements, making a quick baton all that much easier.

People dont always wear sunglasses but when they do they could be only tased/batoned now. Because spray is blocked even easier then flash.

 

 

 

Splash shield for butcher, medics, scientists sounds neato by the way. Nice addition to medical saw. Maybe even give to tators on set with chainsaw.

 

Then good for them, they're an antagonist who had some forethought and took measures to protect themselves against security.

 

Actual sunglasses are rare, and the only people who have flash protection by default are security, the Captain, Blueshield, CE and RD. That's maybe 10 people out of the 60 or so in the round, and these aren't the intended targets for flashes anyways. There's maybe three, four pairs of sunglasses across the entire station if you're lucky, so that leaves 46/50 of your intended targets unprotected against a blinding, AoE stun that makes it impossible to react.

 

If you want to utilize pepperspray for crowd control, there's grenades in the armoury for that.

 

[SomanB]

 

Actual sunglasses are rare, and the only people who have flash protection by default are security, the Captain, Blueshield, CE and RD.

 

 

And the QM. And the bartender.

 

While not default, pretty much all of engineering is immune to flashes, due to welding helmets/hardsuits.

 

[Farya]

 

But the problem is that: there is like you said three or four pairs of sunglasses to protect from the flash. Thats is not a lot. Plus rig helmets offer protection.

But to gain protection from pepperspray one can now just take cheap sunglasses in loadout menu and become immune to spray completely from the roundstart. Regardless from the job. Even MDs need to equip their medical HUDs, they dont spawn with them on(and HUDs are limited in numbers).

Thats does not look fair for me that already not very powerful weapon could be countered in so cheap way.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

But the problem is that: there is like you said three or four pairs of sunglasses to protect from the flash. Thats is not a lot. Plus rig helmets offer protection.

But to gain protection from pepperspray one can now just take cheap sunglasses in loadout menu and become immune to spray completely from the roundstart. Regardless from the job. Even MDs need to equip their medical HUDs, they dont spawn with them on(and HUDs are limited in numbers).

Thats does not look fair for me that already not very powerful weapon could be countered in so cheap way.

 

Cheap sunglasses do not protect against *anything*. If they do that's an oversight, since they're not supposed to.

 

Medical huds do not protect you from pepperspray last I checked.

 

Even accounting for engineering, and the QM and bartender, we're still looking at 38-40/60 crewmembers being flashable.

 

Pepperspray is a weapon that's great for using on detainees. The cell flashers don't work very well, and flooding permabrig with N2O is an irreversible last ditch measure to deal with a riot in permabrig.

 

Flashes are powerful, they just don't get used often - they can even be upgraded to light people on fire.

 

Pepperspray is, has, and always will be an item intended to help security with detainees, or for crowd-control in the case of the capsacin grenades. I would be in favour of trading out security's pepperspray nades (if they're still there in the revamp) with CS Gas grenades though.

 

Security has an insta-stun baton, an insta-stun taser, an incapacitating flash, lethals, armour, flash protection/face protection, a long-range disabler, shotguns, riot armour, protection from flashbangs, an ion rifle and flashbangs themselves.

 

I really don't think an innocuous, under-utilized weapon that's already considerably useful needs a buff - keep in mind that all the heads of every department get them (They're mega useful for dealing with tide or would-be assaulters) as well, so if you buff the flash for security, you buff the CMO, HoP, RD, CE, Blueshield, Roboticist and cyborgs.

 

None of which need a buff in any way (The RD and CMO especially).

 

Items are situational. They should remain situational, and should not be an end-all answer to every problem.