A Return of Cloakers

[Scones]

You can't arrest what you can't see

As suggested by Forceful in OOC it'd probably be best if the item were to work like an alien hunter's cloaking, more visible the closer you are. In the interest of balance, I think it should be a belt slot thing that you turn on and off.

Traitor only, disallowed for nuke
Toggle on/off without a stupid charge system because you can just see them if you get close anyways


Thoughts?

[Xhuis]

Cloaker has kicked Dalis Haister!
Dalas Haister stammers, "H-H-E-EL-P-P"
Cloaker yells, "NOW GO ON THE FORUMS AND CRY LIKE THE LITTLE BITCH YOU ARE!!"

[PKPenguin321]

It's probably an awful idea because any kind of ranged weapon (read: ebow) pretty much negates the balance changes.

Might still be cool to test it if anybody can get it working, but it would have to be pretty expensive and would probably still be really powerful.

[Scones]

8 tc no ebow allowed :^)

[Cheimon]

I think it'd fucking suck as soon as anyone got a decent gun, like anything laser tier and above. Gods help you if someone gets a revolver and a cloaking belt, if they've geared up with flashbang protection there'll be literally no reliable way to take them down.

[invisty]

For those of you who weren't around during the days of cloak'n'bow, let us assure you that it was positively scary, even when there were thermals.

How about a device that is an amped-up version of the superpower that lets you fade out, taking a few seconds instead of ~20 seconds. That way it wouldn't be a super-murderboner device, but instead favoured to area control or more dynamic usage than just run&gun.

My only bother is that the AI would easily hard-counter it even more than it did the old cloaking device.

An alternative "nerfed cloaker" would have the the cloaking individual revealed whenever they perform an action that isn't walking (like the cham projector).

[Reimoo]

Make it work like the spy's watch or a variant thereof

[Vekter]

NO.

[THE MIGHTY GALVATRON]

YES.

Then we can slowly cull the weak.

[Falamazeer]

Meh.
There is a lot to be said for either approach, Traitors need a boost, but the old meta of trying to control the thermals was a bit boring amiright?

[MMMiracles]

Is there literally any reason I'd buy this over a chameleon projector, which lets me hide as literally anything, dodge projectiles, and cancel aggro against mobs?

I mean, you can even buy an ebow with it and still be the unseen killer, a cigarette among the corpses waiting for its next victim.

[invisty]

YES.

Add thermals back to the places they used to spawn and add cloaks to the uplink. One week trial.

[Incomptinence]

Cloak was mass murder personified.

I fucking loved it (on the receiving end) but are our tatorshy sniveling worms ready for station wide annihilation?

If we make traitors actually robust some coder might pull some mental gymnastics after the first time they die and decide to make is a solo antag. Wizard lite anyone?

[Scott]

Use a chameleon projector.

[Incomptinence]

Cham projector all it's wonderful properties aside slows you down a lot. It is more a trapdoor spider kind of thing.

[Amnestik]

Considering our view range is like 7, I don't know how useful a cloaker that lost effectiveness the closer you were to someone would be.

[callanrockslol]

If you aren't moving it should make you completely invisible from anything other than point blank, but if you move it just makes you a lot harder to see.

[Void Slayer]

The cloak device should be used in hand and must be carried in a hand to work. That way it can be counteracted by just knocking the guy over and you can not use two handed weapons. Random taser shots and banana peels.

[Steelpoint]

I think a Cloaker return might be amusing.

I think the biggest hurdle in handling traitor attitudes is actually convincing people to go lethal, even if given all the tools many people are too used to hiding for hours and not doing much.

I would wager that even if given Pulse Carbine's traitors would still be wary in going loud.

[PKPenguin321]

I think the biggest hurdle in handling traitor attitudes is actually convincing people to go lethal, even if given all the tools many people are too used to hiding for hours and not doing much.

I would wager that even if given Pulse Carbine's traitors would still be wary in going loud.

If a cloaker were to get in the game and murderous, super-loud traitoring from our more robust players set a new meta, then more players would be inclined to be lethal. It's kind of a problem that solves itself once you fix the symptoms.
I know it's off topic, but I personally think that giving traitors the syndicate headset key by default would do this the fastest. Two isolated traitors are usually very reluctant to do much, but two traitors that have each other's backs are often death incarnate.

[MMMiracles]

I'm still confused on why people don't just use chameleon projectors for this shit. Did everyone just forget about stupidly robust it is or?

[Miauw]

cham projectors really are stupidly robust, to the point where i've considered restricting w_class 1 items from them (but MEH).

i mean would this be used any differently from a buffed cham projector?

[MisterPerson]

What's the goal here, to encourage murderboners? How about no, murderboners are retarded.

[Oldman Robustin]

There's a consensus that traitors need love and that rounds are lacking in lethality.

Think for a moment about our rounds. Malf/Gang War/Rev/Cult/NukeOps/Wizard are often/always absolute bloodbaths. The lethality poll was up either during or shortly after the period where traitor/traitorling/DA made up like 70% of rounds. People are OK with more murderous traitors MisterPerson.

If shit like binary keys and implants are 5-8 TC, you can be damn sure that will be the floor for a cloaker. If cloaker was in the range (aka 8+) where you can't get a revolver too then you have almost no valid balance concerns. If I can sit in maint with thermals and kill you in 2 bullets before you can see me or even react to the shots, trading off the winvolver and thermals for ebow + cloaker does not strike me as a balance issue. If someone shoots you with the ebow you will quickly figure it out and have absolutely 0 problem yelling out your location, source of harm, your favorite foods, where you would like to be buried, and you'll probably get a good look at your attacker anyway because murdering someone with JUST the ebow is horrendously slow, you need some kind of melee weapon to speed up the process and that means you'll have someone shouting your identity/profession/appearance too.

It should also cloak you from the AI cameras (but not borg vision, though that's tempting too since unless you sneak up and flash one in an isolated area you really don't have anything to stop a borg with) for obvious reasons since that's the pretty much exactly why something like this would exist.

I think it's funny that there are any people here who think this might unbalance things. The classic traitor problem of dealing with HarmYeller McDoorBolter is still present here, after a week of cloakers every AI will make it a practice to start bolting doors when someone is yelling HELP!! while down on the ground in an otherwise empty room. Taking the cloaker would also deprive the traitor (presumably it's going to cost 5+ TC) and any means to actually silence their victim while still using a ranged weapon (which means you have to either try to get close with a stunprod before they can react or shoot them from afar and have a plan for them yelling your location out). Like I said before thermals are already essentially a maint cloaker but with huge vision benefits too, and the chameleon projector can let you ambush people with ebows as well and give you a good chance of escaping if the AI doesn't see you disguise on camera.

As one of the station's preeminent murderboners I can say that after trying a couple gimmicky rounds with this, I still wouldn't touch it as currently described. AI power means that anyone on a killing spree HAS to stay off-camera in maint, and at that point thermals are better in virtually every way. I mean genetics already has the ability to unlock a version of cloaking and I have yet to see it used effectively for anything other than stupid pranks.

---

Off-camera this item will be hard to distinguish from a cham. projector, the use is chiefly against the AI on-camera. If you murdered someone using the cham. projector on camera, the AI can immediately see you as soon as you break form, add you to records, etc. while bolting you in and quickly shouting out whatever disguise you take. A cloak (that keeps you invis. on camera) lets you kill people on-camera and POSSIBLY surviving the ensuing search because the AI will have no idea who you are or where you're hiding. Anything less than a thorough sweep could result in you getting overlooked. There's also the possibility that the victim wont shout about your cloaking and the AI won't deduce it (i.e. this guy has wounds mysteriously appearing all over his body), giving you the chance to zip out scot-free. The other advantage is also movement, Cham. Proj. is clunky because you can't run around with it on, and when it is on you're basically left to camp a single spot. Cloaker (should) let you run about at full speed but appear to anyone (besides AI) as semi-transparent. Walking or standing still should be the only way you obtain that full invis. effect. It will also have an interesting interaction with lights. The cloaker will not be as effective if an area is being illuminated by an invisible light, so in the dark you will either be obvious and able to see or sneaky but blind (and even then it doesn't offer much marginal utility over just hiding in the dark without a cloaker since the average PDA light will probably put them in the same range where they can see past your cloak). It would be really fun to see the AI cut lights to try and save a cloaker victim or at least have the cloaker expose himself as a walking ball of illumination.

At the very least I think this is an interesting idea and there's absolutely no reason it can't be balanced between TC costs and effectiveness (i.e. whether you're completely visible at 1 tile away or 2). If anyone does somehow pull off effective murderboning with this device, it should at least be extremely entertaining.

[Miauw]

the real problem is common radio

also oldman friendly reminder that you can cut cameras with 0 warning to the AI now, and the camera sprite is so tiny that nobody else will notice.

[Oldman Robustin]

I think the biggest hurdle in handling traitor attitudes is actually convincing people to go lethal, even if given all the tools many people are too used to hiding for hours and not doing much.

I would wager that even if given Pulse Carbine's traitors would still be wary in going loud.

If a cloaker were to get in the game and murderous, super-loud traitoring from our more robust players set a new meta, then more players would be inclined to be lethal. It's kind of a problem that solves itself once you fix the symptoms.
I know it's off topic, but I personally think that giving traitors the syndicate headset key by default would do this the fastest. Two isolated traitors are usually very reluctant to do much, but two traitors that have each other's backs are often death incarnate.

That's pretty accurate. When thousands of rounds of had shown our players what happens to loud/ambitious traitors, who is going to bother to try and do something similar with a fraction of the experience and understanding. Most loud traitors nowadays do it out of ignorance of how powerless they are as opposed to making an informed and calculated approach to loud traitoring (where your choices become pathetically limited).

Traitors have acquired a futility syndrome where unless you're using atmos/toxins/engine to ruin the station, you have no real chance of conducting overt acts of hostility that don't involve a revolver. Meanwhile robust players like Tim Ebow just turn off traitor/ling because it's not fun to play as a flaccid antag that everyone gets to hunt down. That gives it sort of a spiral of death where losing robust antag players means there are less antags who can pose enough of a threat to distract security from your own antagonism, which in turn means that antagonizing the station becomes less appealing and other traitors have even less chaos to conceal their behavior, and on and on.

[Miauw]

traitors havent really caught much in the way of nerfs, though?

parapen+c4 was removed but thats hardly a murderboner tactic as both items were single-use.

the ebow has gotten a buff if nothing else, and the AI has always been omniscient.

[Oldman Robustin]

the real problem is common radio

also oldman friendly reminder that you can cut cameras with 0 warning to the AI now, and the camera sprite is so tiny that nobody else will notice.

And that has been a god-send for many antags, but outside of a team environment the impact is more limited. As a traitor you have to create your own opportunities. The access you want, the station equipment you need, the targets you have, those are all very unlikely to come to you. For most jobs you have a very narrow area of influence where someone either won't see you cutting cameras or won't report you to security/AI for cutting them.

If my target is chilling in the chapel its simply not an option for me to run around cutting all his cameras before shooting him in the face. I'd say the ability to effectively control camera vision and use it to your advantage as a solo antag is a rare skill. You have to do it in such a way that isn't going to backfire (e.g. the AI wouldn't give 2 shits about you standing in chapel waiting to ambush your target, but it would notice all the cameras cut and send sec/borgs to check it out, and you end up spilling all your spaghetti when a patrol rolls up as you're ventilating the chaplain), or be ineffective (e.g. cutting the camera next to you without realizing that there's one 5 tiles above you that can still see what you're doing). It's also inherently risky because if the AI does happen to witness an area go static and know that its sabotage, you are going to get searched when you otherwise wouldn't and brigged or perma'd/executed depending on what security finds (this goes back to the dept. radio issue, you won't know if AI sees you cutting cameras until you've got a SWAT team charging into your room). Losing a round this way is extremely frustrating because you've been punished for trying to take extra preparation/security in your antagonism. The idiot who goes loud on camera with no forethought at least gets the satisfaction of a kill or two before getting dunked, your dumb ass didn't even get to antagonize and now you're naked in perma, so yea... cam cutting is not anywhere close to a universal solution for HarmYeller McDoorBolter.

[Oldman Robustin]

traitors havent really caught much in the way of nerfs, though?

parapen+c4 was removed but thats hardly a murderboner tactic as both items were single-use.

the ebow has gotten a buff if nothing else, and the AI has always been omniscient.

Ratios were a HUGE one. See my first post in this thread about chaos. Cutting traitor numbers altered them from a "slow decay into being uninteresting and underpowered" into a rapid descent into the spiral of death.

The tl;dr version is less chaos = much greater chance of "chaotic" acts getting fully investigated and you getting caught = less motivation to commit "chaotic" acts = less chaos (which is awful because the best options for chaos as traitor are actually the kind of activity that goes just a little too far by making the station downright lethal through atmos/sing/toxins, so you have this stupid choice of either killing everyone with minimal effort or tryharding just to be more than a minor inconvenience to a few crewmembers). Parapen+C4 was useful because it let even the least robust traitor inject chaos into a round by allowing them to take out a head/security and use that access to further antagonize. I said as much when parapens were removed and I think that history has proven that belief, anyone who doesn't live/eat/breathe SS13 is going to greatly struggle to actually present themselves as a serious threat when playing traitor/ling (for the same reasons relating to parasting).

Ebow was not a buff, calling it a sidegrade is still being extremely generous. It also REALLLLY needs to just have a slow rate of fire and not this insanely unintuitive manual reload. Most of the traitor nerfs have come through other changes that didn't focus on traitors but still disproportionately screwed with them. Slower movement speed, introduction of flashbangs, AoE flash blind, removal of traitorsec, AI default dept. radio, etc...

Edit: Lastly back on topic, anyone who compares this to cloakers of old is an idiot, i.e. there's no more eswording people in the face while they still can't even see what's killing them.

[imblyings]

If we do return cloakers can we make them a var like ventcrawling is for mobs

It'd be neat to set it for custom pieces of clothing, I mean, we could have actual invisibility cloaks.

[Miauw]

I'm fairly sure that somebody (either Kor or Ikky) increased the traitor amounts to 1/5 or something like that. Maybe make a thread in policy discussion or something to get some hard numbers on what the amounts are and what you want them to be, it's being mentioned everywhere but in such a "by the way" manner that it's hard to really DISCUSS.

[Supermichael777]

I think the best way to implement this would be a stealth jumpsuit/face concealing mask/special white glove combo/tool-belt. the best balance i can think of is that it should not allow you to carry much on your person(two pockets and maybe a belt-full of tools). that combined with limitations on how you can interact with objects(best i have seen for this is only being able to interact with objects on the same tile while invisible, cloaking makes you invisible not silent, only size 1 or 2 objects in the hand, etc.) and lets say a 15 second delay or re-cloaking and price balancing should cut down on horrendous abuse of it for murder(do your part to prevent ninja lite - price out cloaker, ebow, esword,).

[rdght91]

What's the goal here, to encourage murderboners? How about no, murderboners are retarded.

[DemonFiren]

Murderboners are retarded. Then again, I come from Basil, which is lowpop as fuck.

[Tsaricide]

As the man who got cloakers removed I say no they should not be available to players, admin only maybe.

[Oldman Robustin]

As the man who got cloakers removed I say no they should not be available to players, admin only maybe.

The cloakers we're discussing here don't remotely resemble the cloakers of old.


Your sentence might as well be, "As the person who coded the new viruses, I say that engineering should not have RCD's in their vending machine".

[MisterPerson]

So the goal here is to allow people to sneak into a department to get the kill/theft/whatever? Sure, yeah we need more stuff to encourage that.

[Oldman Robustin]

So the goal here is to allow people to sneak into a department to get the kill/theft/whatever? Sure, yeah we need more stuff to encourage that.

and kill people on camera, people who yell HELP on camera, and maybe... just maybe... the killer won't get bolted in/shouted out by AI/etc.

Unless we make the cloaker visible on camera in which case it better be a super cheap item or else it will end up in "Foam Force" tier of syndicate gear.

[MisterPerson]

I dunno, as you said yourself, the cloak isn't going to do much to enable an immediate escape since AI's will start to assume that people suddenly bleeding on the ground = cloakers = bolt all the doors.

And being invisible on camera is already taken up by the agent card.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I dunno, as you said yourself, the cloak isn't going to do much to enable an immediate escape since AI's will start to assume that people suddenly bleeding on the ground = cloakers = bolt all the doors.

And being invisible on camera is already taken up by the agent card.

Agent cards do not do this. They block AI tracking.

[Anonmare]

I wouldn't mind digital camo but I would be very against making Agent IDs making you invisible on camera. Nuke OPs get them by default (And they need more nerfs not buffs) and they're only 3 TC for traitors to get and the IDs are only meant for disguises+stealing access+avoiding Beepsky (You're pretty much ignored by securitrons with an Agent ID, even if you have a gun out and guncheck is on. Unless it's an emagged Beepsky) - Not trolling the AI who will have no way of finding you outside of your effect on the environment.
Besides, Agent IDs already make you hard to find for an AI since it has to manually search everywhere you might be to find you. And now you can reforge them too so you can just hop into maint, switch out clothes, reforge the name, cover your face and now the AI has completely lost you