DAY OF THE BUDGET CUTS: Which uplink items should be removed

[bandit]

People are finally coming around to the idea of paring down a bit of the bloat in the game and codebase at the moment. One of the biggest sources of bloat is the uplink. There are two problems:

1. Many of our uplink items are geared either toward gimmicks that get old after one round, or straight-up murderbone. This leads to bad traitor rounds.
2. Handing players uplink items that accomplish things that can be done on the station keeps traitors from interacting with the rest of the crew and station and leads to boring traitor rounds for anyone who isn't the traitor.

The uplink is also hugely cumbersome and hard to navigate even for people who've played 5ever; I can't imagine what new players think of it. It is redundant, with several items serving multiple functions. Not all of it see use. Paring it down would not only help with all the above but would help the items that are there get improved, and possibly made more thematic if the traitor-factions thing ever gets designed/coded.

Note that "paring it down" does not necessarily mean getting rid of the items. In many cases it would be better if the items in question could be made on station, with more or less work. (Bombs are the biggest example but that is a controversy in and of itself.)

NOTE: This cannot be done until after the freeze, as it is considered a balance change.

On my personal chopping block, please give your own chopping block:

DEHYDRATED SPACE CARP: Few people use it, code is buggy, carp are available via the holodeck.

STIMPACK: Near-totally geared toward murderboning; stimulants are available in the adrenal implant.

PIZZA BOMB: Buggy, gimmicky, almost never used, it should be possible to rig a pizza box like you can rig a crate without uplink items.

TOY GUN WITH RIOT DARTS: Redundant, we already have the mini syringe gun which is more versatile.

Maybe the mulligan, as it can be done via genetics.

[Qbopper]

Pizza bomb ONLY if it gets replaced by rigging normal pizza boxes with explosives (hell, let us use IEDs for it too)

His Grace is cool in theory, shit in execution, I've only ever seen it bought at roundstart so the chaplain can eat like 10+ people then die themselves, it's got no use other than ez murderboning - it's a shame because it sounds cool but I honestly believe it's one of the worst TC items

that's all I can think of at the immediate moment

EDIT: I'd like to see a shift towards forcing people to work creatively with shit on the station, antag items should be in addition to whatever it is you're doing, not your sole toolkit

[Dr_bee]

His Grace, my god His Grace.

It is only for murderbone and besides that it can be avoided by simply telling everyone to hide in a locker until the user gets eaten. It is overall a shit meme item.

Also I think guns in general need to be tweaked. Why bother using makeshift weapons when you can order a gun better than anything security can use.

[CPTANT]

His Grace, my god His Grace.

It is only for murderbone and besides that it can be avoided by simply telling everyone to hide in a locker until the user gets eaten. It is overall a shit meme item.

Also I think guns in general need to be tweaked. Why bother using makeshift weapons when you can order a gun better than anything security can use.

Guns should be powerful but have low ammo.

[Dr_bee]

His Grace, my god His Grace.

It is only for murderbone and besides that it can be avoided by simply telling everyone to hide in a locker until the user gets eaten. It is overall a shit meme item.

Also I think guns in general need to be tweaked. Why bother using makeshift weapons when you can order a gun better than anything security can use.

Guns should be powerful but have low ammo.

it used to be the case back when it was only science and RnD that could reliably get autolathes.

Maybe remove the ammo from the autolathe and make a new machine to put in the armory for ammo?

[Super Aggro Crag]

Poison kit

[DrWoofington]

Poison kit

poison kit is GODLY for smoke grenades/syringe guns

[bandit]

you seem to be missing the point of the OP

maybe I'll readd it as a $20 tier donator item

[PKPenguin321]

Can't really do this with the freeze going on, bad time to make this thread

[D&B]

FREEZE

[Lumbermancer]

Syndicate Bomb and eswords.

[onleavedontatme]

Can't really do this with the freeze going on, bad time to make this thread

[Luke Cox]

Poison kit

Crag is incorrect

[bandit]

Can't really do this with the freeze going on, bad time to make this thread

the idea is to gather feedback before I actually do it so players can't complain they weren't warned, and maybe to nudge atlanta_ned into compiling uplink purchase stats if he hasn't already

[Anonmare]

Power fist I've never seen used in any great amount. Is it even still in the uplink?
Stimpack is meme trash, it's a shitty adrenal knock off with less utility and doesn't even make up for it by being cheap
Toy gun is a meme
Sleepy pen is completely overtaken by EMP flashlight. Sleepy pen is too slow to act for knocking someone out and the mute is replicated in the EMP flashlight's ability to disable radios. They're even the same price. I'd say either replace it with something like zombie powder (It paralyses and makes someone appear dead) or just drop it entirely.
Pizza bomb, used to be used more often but now it's meme-y and never used.
Power sink I never see used except once or twice when it's in a syndi-supply crate

[Oldman Robustin]

I support this if we can get people to add some legitimately cool traitor items.

It's really sad that after so many years and the addition of job-specific gear we still don't have much in the way of ~fun~ traitor gear yet somehow wizards get some new crazy piece of shit (that would probably be fine for 20TC) every week.

[lumipharon]

While a few items are straight up utterly impractical/useless, in general what is the issue with a large variety of items? Just because shit doesn't get used a lot doesn't mean it should get axed. Similarly, redundancy only applies if it literally achieves the same thing as another item in the same way.

For example, the pizza bomb was so over meme'd that anyone has played for any period of time is suspicious as fuck of them - and they could be completely replaced by remote triggered c4 if you were able to put it INSIDE the pizza box (as opposed to on it).

Toy gun vs syringe gun: Toy gun isn't dodgy contraband, but is actually surprisingly effective at taking someone down non leathaly. The syringe gun requires either further tc investment for poisons, or acces to chem/botany/science to make use of it.

stim vs adrenal: Ok, stim is actually pretty shit in my experience, since it's only useful if you use it before a fight, and if you know a fight is coming there are better ways to prep then waste tc on a stim (like blowing their head off before they can react, or do anything to you that would make a stim useful).

Also don't touch carp - 100 carp army for ops is 10/10

[Qbopper]

Just because shit doesn't get used a lot doesn't mean it should get axed.

I think the idea was to list shit you want removed because it's overall negative to the game because it's just ez murderboning or skipping player interaction, not "remove unused shit"

[Swindly]

The radioactive health analyzer functions like a sleepy pen but worse in most situations. It should probably be buffed and made a role-exclusive item for doctors or removed.

[Segmented]

Haunted 8 Ball is borderline worthless.

The Suitcase Full of Cash is pointless since no one roleplays.

[Qbopper]

The Suitcase Full of Cash is pointless since no one roleplays.

I think removing it is a bad idea though

if we want people to do cool interactions and we want more interesting non antag gameplay we might find a neat way to use space cash

[Ayy Lemoh]

The Suitcase Full of Cash is pointless since no one roleplays.

If Nuke Ops had chameleon kits then more stuff like the Jew Nuke Ops could be done. If I remember correctly, nuke ops used the kit to disguise themselves as jewish bankers or just bankers and used those briefcases to buy the disk.

Also, I guess they could be a cargonian's dream come true if they REALLY need points.

[calzilla1]

I miss themed bundles that gave you unique, unpurchasable items and more bang for your buck TC

A) they're still in the game and B) for some fucking reason theyre WEIGHTED

[bandit]

Toy gun vs syringe gun: Toy gun isn't dodgy contraband, but is actually surprisingly effective at taking someone down non leathaly. The syringe gun requires either further tc investment for poisons, or acces to chem/botany/science to make use of it.

This is kind of my point. The syringe gun requires you to interact with chemistry, botany, or science in some way, without attracting suspicion. The toy gun is handed to you. One encourages -- requires, probably -- interaction with other people. One is suited to lone-wolf killing, and probably killing a lot of people because that's what riot darts are suited for.

For the same reason I personally am not going to remove RP-oriented stuff like the cash briefcase, that's the kind of thing good stories come out of

[Dr_bee]

Poison kit

Crag is incorrect

Replace poison kit with goon style 1 TC random poison bottles.

you may get initro but you have an equal chance of getting morphine or weedkiller.

[Grazyn]

Isn't there a stat page with the actual number of the times each item is bought? If the problem is bloat just remove the items on the bottom of that list

[lumipharon]

Toy gun vs syringe gun: Toy gun isn't dodgy contraband, but is actually surprisingly effective at taking someone down non leathaly. The syringe gun requires either further tc investment for poisons, or acces to chem/botany/science to make use of it.

This is kind of my point. The syringe gun requires you to interact with chemistry, botany, or science in some way, without attracting suspicion. The toy gun is handed to you. One encourages -- requires, probably -- interaction with other people. One is suited to lone-wolf killing, and probably killing a lot of people because that's what riot darts are suited for.

For the same reason I personally am not going to remove RP-oriented stuff like the cash briefcase, that's the kind of thing good stories come out of

If you use that logic though then most~ uplink items are pointless because you can get the same effect by using non tator stuff if you put in enough time and effort.
Only a handful of things provide truly unique effects - adrenal implants, projectile reflect from dsword, powersink. cham projector etc.

The point of most tator items is to let you do traitorous shit without having to waste a good chunk of the round/have the right access. Precisely no one will use the dart gun unless they already have access to useful chems/random crate. The upshot of this of course is that you can make all sorts of 1 hit kill/ko darts with chem, where as a toy gun is just a stam damage plinker, with the upshot of anyone being able to effectively use it.

[Incomptinence]

Dehydrated carp are cute, fun and make for a robust as fuck one time ambush of you + carp.

Sure they quickly disperse and get ganked but not every item has to be about infinite murderbone potential.

Deserves bug fixes a temporary friendly npc is an interesting angle.

[bandit]

If you use that logic though then most~ uplink items are pointless because you can get the same effect by using non tator stuff if you put in enough time and effort.
Only a handful of things provide truly unique effects - adrenal implants, projectile reflect from dsword, powersink. cham projector etc.

The point of most tator items is to let you do traitorous shit without having to waste a good chunk of the round/have the right access. Precisely no one will use the dart gun unless they already have access to useful chems/random crate. The upshot of this of course is that you can make all sorts of 1 hit kill/ko darts with chem, where as a toy gun is just a stam damage plinker, with the upshot of anyone being able to effectively use it.

"Waste" is the key word here. I don't view interacting with the rest of the crew and station as a "waste" and I think this mentality is directly responsible for so many rounds being shit.

[Qbopper]

If you use that logic though then most~ uplink items are pointless because you can get the same effect by using non tator stuff if you put in enough time and effort.
Only a handful of things provide truly unique effects - adrenal implants, projectile reflect from dsword, powersink. cham projector etc.

The point of most tator items is to let you do traitorous shit without having to waste a good chunk of the round/have the right access. Precisely no one will use the dart gun unless they already have access to useful chems/random crate. The upshot of this of course is that you can make all sorts of 1 hit kill/ko darts with chem, where as a toy gun is just a stam damage plinker, with the upshot of anyone being able to effectively use it.

"Waste" is the key word here. I don't view interacting with the rest of the crew and station as a "waste" and I think this mentality is directly responsible for so many rounds being shit.

thank you for this reply

what is the point of playing a game designed to foster interesting situations and interactions between players if you can just fucking summon everything you want right away

god forbid you have to break into somewhere to get what you want, or talk to someone

this type of thinking is what has created the "if I don't get the blueprints/boots/rare item at round start I may as well suicide" kind of stuff and I DESPISE it

[bman]

If you use that logic though then most~ uplink items are pointless because you can get the same effect by using non tator stuff if you put in enough time and effort.
Only a handful of things provide truly unique effects - adrenal implants, projectile reflect from dsword, powersink. cham projector etc.

The point of most tator items is to let you do traitorous shit without having to waste a good chunk of the round/have the right access. Precisely no one will use the dart gun unless they already have access to useful chems/random crate. The upshot of this of course is that you can make all sorts of 1 hit kill/ko darts with chem, where as a toy gun is just a stam damage plinker, with the upshot of anyone being able to effectively use it.

"Waste" is the key word here. I don't view interacting with the rest of the crew and station as a "waste" and I think this mentality is directly responsible for so many rounds being shit.

thank you for this reply

what is the point of playing a game designed to foster interesting situations and interactions between players if you can just fucking summon everything you want right away

god forbid you have to break into somewhere to get what you want, or talk to someone

this type of thinking is what has created the "if I don't get the blueprints/boots/rare item at round start I may as well suicide" kind of stuff and I DESPISE it

that's not that bad, if the boots are with the CE you just need to gun him down like an animal, in fact, the only hard to steal items are the RD's teleport armor while it is on his person and the HoS' gun while he is active.

Maybe the disk, but I'd say most caps are unrobust.

[Qbopper]

I know that but I'm saying that there is a number of people (that is far too large for my tastes) who will actually ahelp about steal objectives and ask for new ones if they late join because they think it's impossible to do after the items are taken from where they start

[Lumbermancer]

Those people should be banned from the server.

[lumipharon]

If you use that logic though then most~ uplink items are pointless because you can get the same effect by using non tator stuff if you put in enough time and effort.
Only a handful of things provide truly unique effects - adrenal implants, projectile reflect from dsword, powersink. cham projector etc.

The point of most tator items is to let you do traitorous shit without having to waste a good chunk of the round/have the right access. Precisely no one will use the dart gun unless they already have access to useful chems/random crate. The upshot of this of course is that you can make all sorts of 1 hit kill/ko darts with chem, where as a toy gun is just a stam damage plinker, with the upshot of anyone being able to effectively use it.

"Waste" is the key word here. I don't view interacting with the rest of the crew and station as a "waste" and I think this mentality is directly responsible for so many rounds being shit.

thank you for this reply

what is the point of playing a game designed to foster interesting situations and interactions between players if you can just fucking summon everything you want right away

god forbid you have to break into somewhere to get what you want, or talk to someone

this type of thinking is what has created the "if I don't get the blueprints/boots/rare item at round start I may as well suicide" kind of stuff and I DESPISE it

But that's not what I'm suggesting at all? I am equally against that sort of mentality, but I am stating the FACTS of what traitor items do.
You can do CLOSE TO everything you might want without antag specific items, but everything is situation dependent.

To keep with my dart gun/toy gun example, say I wanted to kidnap and detail lizards...
If I happen to be a botanist/chemist tator, there's a reasonable chance I would consider a dart gun because it lends itself to the resources I have ready access to - I can easily make stun/mute darts to subdue lizard filth.
If I am an engineer or greyshirt, I would probably get a prod and emp flashlight. for ye olde emp/stun combo.
If I was a cargotech, I might go for a improvshotgun/toy gun, since I already have an autolathe.

While I could still use the dart gun as a engineer or cargotech, there is a lot more effort and risk involved to achieve exactly the same result - it's not powergaming to use something that lends itself to your role, it's just logic.

Edit: and for other examples:
The syndie space suit - it's a 'please valid me' suit, and yes you can just go to eva and take a suit - you don't even have to break in, as no one but A+ shit sec will arrest someone for taking one. But that doesn't make it 'lazy', or 'pointless'.
Sure, if I plan to bomb the shit out of the station I might get a suit before hand. But what if some other tator had that plan, not you? Are you going to be anal annihilated because most of the station is fucked and you'll die if you go anywhere? Or are you going to spawn in a syndie suit and get your shit done, bombs or no?

Shit that SHOULD get removed are the one dimensional items that can ONLY be used for dull shit like murderboning. His Grace being the #1 (and really only truly significant) example. Once you use it you literally HAVE to be a turbomurdering assblaster. That is something that's not healthy for the game.

[onleavedontatme]

Everything Lumi has said in this thread is smart and should be listened to

[kevinz000]

Everything Lumi has said in this thread is smart and should be listened to

[bandit]

oh look, another kor enters a thread just because I've posted something and that apparently requires kneejerk disagreement with episode

[Yakumo_Chen]

-Airlock Charges: If these are still in the game, fuck them (it's still on the wiki, joy). It's a 2 TC guaranteed kill for anyone opening a door, almost always knocks you out or sets you on fire and exposes you to space. It's not even a good item for anything other then random murder unless you wait by the door all shift for someone to open it, or spam escape for obnoxious murder.

-His Grace: Only ever used for roundstart murderbone, it's not a fun item at all for anyone (being killed roundstart sucks, the chaplain will inevitably die and you'll go through cloning hell) and doesn't add anything interesting to the game. Just bad.

-Poison Kit + Sleepy Pen needs to be gated so you can't buy both with one uplink. Mixing all the chems together and putting them in the pen is so unbelievably deadly it's insane. By the time you realize it's happening you're already dead in less then a few seconds.

-Pizza bomb honestly I think isn't worth the slot any more. Pizza is rarely ordered these days from cargo and carrying a box around to give to your target is so suspicious that most people just avoid pizza boxes in general, or use empty ones to fool people. It's no longer a good gimmick.

-Syndie Bomb for the same reason as his grace, except replace 'murderbone' with 'giant hole in the station'. All it really does is serve to get a shuttle called ASAP unless it's high pop. I've tried to get it removed and nerfed but it hasn't worked yet. Honestly Syndie Bombs just aren't used creatively at all, they're a boring item that only serves to shorten rounds and are only extremely rarely used outside of the first possible opportunity to get one.

[D&B]

Singulo beacon should.be reworked to work with batteries or removed to be quite honest.

[lumipharon]

-Airlock Charges: If these are still in the game, fuck them (it's still on the wiki, joy). It's a 2 TC guaranteed kill for anyone opening a door, almost always knocks you out or sets you on fire and exposes you to space. It's not even a good item for anything other then random murder unless you wait by the door all shift for someone to open it, or spam escape for obnoxious murder.

-His Grace: Only ever used for roundstart murderbone, it's not a fun item at all for anyone (being killed roundstart sucks, the chaplain will inevitably die and you'll go through cloning hell) and doesn't add anything interesting to the game. Just bad.

-Poison Kit + Sleepy Pen needs to be gated so you can't buy both with one uplink. Mixing all the chems together and putting them in the pen is so unbelievably deadly it's insane. By the time you realize it's happening you're already dead in less then a few seconds.

-Pizza bomb honestly I think isn't worth the slot any more. Pizza is rarely ordered these days from cargo and carrying a box around to give to your target is so suspicious that most people just avoid pizza boxes in general, or use empty ones to fool people. It's no longer a good gimmick.

-Syndie Bomb for the same reason as his grace, except replace 'murderbone' with 'giant hole in the station'. All it really does is serve to get a shuttle called ASAP unless it's high pop. I've tried to get it removed and nerfed but it hasn't worked yet. Honestly Syndie Bombs just aren't used creatively at all, they're a boring item that only serves to shorten rounds and are only extremely rarely used outside of the first possible opportunity to get one.

But syndie bombs aren't even very strong? They were powerful back when bomb cap was 3,7,14 or whatever, and when walls and shit didn't weaken explosions.
Now days they are massively overshadowed by max cap bombs, are far less subtle, and have a substantial tc cost. Honestly their cost relative to their destructive power is so low I never use them outside of ops or random crate loot.

[Yakumo_Chen]

the problem is that you can buy them at roundstart.

the other problem is that you can make 5 minute maxcaps in toxins too, but honestly toxins severely needs a nerf because 8 minute bombing is incredibly obnoxious and often makes me throw my hands up in frustration because I know it's going to be another 30 minutes before I get a chance to get anything interesting done in-game.

Seriously all you need to do is just have a heater (which is provided on most maps)

I remember when people actually used the burn chamber to make bombs but apparently you don't need that to actually give a flying shit now.


The point being that roundstart bombing is incredibly devoid of creativity and it baffles me each and every single time why someone would want to even waste their antag role on doing it when they could do a much more interesting gimmick that doesn't make me immediately go 'well I guess this round is pointless'

[lumipharon]

Yeah but syndie bomb is literally not good. You spend most of your tc's to blow a fairly small hole in the station round start.
Congrats, you have like 8tc left or whatever it is, and you've mildly inconvenienced 1 or 2 jobs, maybe killed a few people, but probably didn't even remove them from the round because they can hear it ticking.

[Grazyn]

Transfer valves bombs are going, maybe not soon because of the freeze but I don't think they will survive the year. Coders are reclutant to remove them because they've been a defining feature of ss13 since the very beginning, but in the end most agree they need to go. They will either be nerfed or locked behind a time sink/skill ceiling so huge that it will practically make them disappear in the wild and reduced to a rare gimmick.

Yeah but syndie bomb is literally not good. You spend most of your tc's to blow a fairly small hole in the station round start.
Congrats, you have like 8tc left or whatever it is, and you've mildly inconvenienced 1 or 2 jobs, maybe killed a few people, but probably didn't even remove them from the round because they can hear it ticking.

You can remove the core and play around it to make some some interesting stuff without the ticking issue but whatever you do with it you still have the equivalent of a mediocre science bomb.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Its main advantage is that you don't have to autism science for the five full minutes and give someone a chance to notice you're the toxins guy and to actually make sure you don't plant bombs all over the station.

Syndie bombs are mostly annoying in lower pop rounds where you can blow up enough of a chunk of medbay that there's not enough engineers who exist / care enough to fix it and the round is essentially done from that point. Even if the hull breach is patched, there's still piping and wiring that will need to be done before the area is ever completely considered 'fixed' again and nobody but the most autistic of engineers will ever, ever bother, leaving medbay a mess half-devoid of air and lacking power.

In the last 6 months I've played I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone defuse a syndie bomb either.

[Steelpoint]

Syndi Bomb's effectiveness depends on engineering's competence. One competent engineer can fix the hull breach within thirty seconds of arriving to the scene.

12 TC's for such a pathetic explosion that takes a long time to detonate, or you have to risk disarming it to get a core that you have to physically detonate with a weapon, is a big ask for such little gain.

[Yakumo_Chen]

Yeah but in the timeslot I play there's usually only one engineer or an engineer and a CE, syndie bomb is almost always a shuttle call and will have completely ruined whatever department it hit for the rest of the round. I had a round the other day where science was syndie bombed, right near Research and Development.
Despite the proximity research was still completely intact, but for the entire rest of the round there was not enough air in science and often I was taking pressure damage having to just deal with it. Science as a whole was dark for the rest of the round because of the lack of functioning lights. I had to change APCs with research power cells because there was no wiring. The entire department was wide open for nearly the rest of the round. This is despite the fact the breach was actually fixed not terribly long after the bomb went off.

[bandit]

Syndicate bombs were a bad idea but this argument has been litigated and re-litigated enough that I doubt they'll ever get removed

[onleavedontatme]

Yeah but syndie bomb is literally not good. You spend most of your tc's to blow a fairly small hole in the station round start.
Congrats, you have like 8tc left or whatever it is, and you've mildly inconvenienced 1 or 2 jobs, maybe killed a few people, but probably didn't even remove them from the round because they can hear it ticking.

There are many ways to override the timer for an instant explosion.

oh look, another kor enters a thread just because I've posted something and that apparently requires kneejerk disagreement with episode

I could let you waste time making a PR I know in advance I will dislike and then close it if that would make you feel better.

Should I link you a thread were I argued the same things with different people to show this isnt about you or would it be a waste of time?

[captain sawrge]

Thread is tl;dr but it would be nice if half the uplink wasn't slightly different ways to kill the entire station

[captain sawrge]

That said, objectives are boring and inconsequential so what else can traitors do?