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94 changes: 94 additions & 0 deletions src/en/space-station-14/round-flow/proposals/ninja.md
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# Space Ninja V2

| Designers | Implemented | GitHub Links |
|---|---|---|
| Warpzoned, Doru991 | :warning: Partially | TBD |

## Overview

This proposal is aimed towards addressing some issues that Space Ninjas currently possess, as well as adding some extra flavour and other miscellaneous content.</p>
<p>New abilities have been added, and existing ones have been tailored to better fit with the stealth-based gameplay the Spider Clan so endorses. The Space Ninja now also come with an extra assortment of apparel, both useful and cool-looking.</p>
<p>The Space Ninja's weapons have gotten a slight nerf, to compensate, new weapons and armament interactions have been added.

## Background

Currently, albeit being an extremely fun mid-round antag role and definitely one of the better ones, Space Ninjas aren't correctly geared towards what they should be the best at: Stealthing - Which is what this document hopes to address, mostly to add some more uniqueness to antagonist roles since a lot of them can be played by just killing everything in your way, and this includes Space Ninjas.

## Spider Clan Code

All Space Ninjas will now have a Spider Clan Code they will have to live by, and this thus affects gameplay substantially by imposing certain restrictions.

- The already existing one, being the inability to shoot ranged weapons, will be included in this Code.

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Ninjas should get a roundstart Scroll of the Spider Clan Code, outlining an "honor code" that promotes treating enemies with respect and similar things (not RRing them for example). New players playing ninja might change their play style to fit this honor code given they are playing a ninja character, reducing murderboning. Obviously someone can ignore this, but I think it would immerse people in the role of a ninja more.

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@Warpzoned Warpzoned Dec 4, 2024

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Ninjas should get a roundstart Scroll of the Spider Clan Code, outlining an "honor code" that promotes treating enemies with respect and similar things (not RRing them for example). New players playing ninja might change their play style to fit this honor code given they are playing a ninja character, reducing murderboning. Obviously someone can ignore this, but I think it would immerse people in the role of a ninja more.

I was discussing the honor code mechanics with chief funk officer the other day, and it eventually devolved into a pretty funny idea that was as follows: basically, if the ninja kills too many personnel, eventually there'll be a "Son of X (killed victim)" that's tasked with finding and killing the ninja at any costs, a sort of terminator, and if said "Son of X" is killed there'll be a "Son of Son of X", so on and so forth.

Personally, I found this hilarious and would love it or something similar to be added, however, I think a more appropriate approach was for there to be a DeathSquad equivalent in the Spider Clan that if the ninja kills too many people one spawns in as a ghost raffle, and they have one and only objective: to kill the ninja, as they have tainted their code of honour, afterwards, they teleport back to base (acidify).

Also, to better "visualize" the code of honour maybe it could be on the objectives page, so "Follow your code: don't kill more than X people, don't self-heal, don't wield firearms"?

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Also, to better "visualize" the code of honour maybe it could be on the objectives page, so "Follow your code: don't kill more than X people, don't self-heal, don't wield firearms"?

Yeah it would be better as an objective. "Respect your Ninja Honor."

You can easily make this fail by tracking how many people the ninja kills outside of self defense (attacking first).

That way, people can easily say "you may have done your objectives, but you are not honorable"

- The second restriction is making it so the Space Ninjas can no longer tend to their own wounds - This includes applying topicals, injecting syringes, consuming pills, and drinking liquid chemicals, as it would be preferred that they are not even spotted during their mission. To compensate, Space Ninjas will now have increased passive regeneration as well as faster bloodloss recovery that far exceeds what normal crewmates could ever achieve due to their bio-engineered bodies.

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Will this ability be based on their suit power, turning the ninja into a "live and die on your suit and engineering" or will this be something seen on the actual ninja character?

Another consideration: can a ninja go into crit in a concealed spot and be slowly mended and revived given enough time? The idea is that if a ninja knows they might go crit to bloodloss/wounds soon they would find a spot to go into crit and hopefully come back out.

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Will this ability be based on their suit power, turning the ninja into a "live and die on your suit and engineering" or will this be something seen on the actual ninja character?

This will be something on the character itself, the suit can only do so much.

Another consideration: can a ninja go into crit in a concealed spot and be slowly mended and revived given enough time? The idea is that if a ninja knows they might go crit to bloodloss/wounds soon they would find a spot to go into crit and hopefully come back out.

I hadn't considered this, mostly due to the fact that from my point of view it'd be pretty much impossible for the ninja to go into crit from DoTs, although, if they do, yeah I can see them getting stabilizied again after a while.


# New Items & Abilities

New content that revolves around both a higher quality of life and a more immersive playfield.

## Flavour Additions

- The Space Ninja now comes with an adequately themed satchel, as well as a katana sheath.
- The Space Ninja's pinpointer will now act as software for the brand new space ninja PDA instead of being its own gadget, the agent ID card will also be within the aforementioned device.
- Equipping the space ninja helmet is now an instantaneous toggle action that comes with the space ninja suit.

## Ability Additions

- The Space Ninja can now fabricate ninja caltrops, a variant of ninja throwing stars with an emphasis on piercing damage and bleeding, once deployed, that is, dropped on the ground, they will progressively get more and more camouflaged to the point of near-invisibility. Upon being stepped on, the caltrops will stick to the victim and perform continous bloodloss damage until taken off.

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Extremely cool, I like the idea. It would also be cool if it told the Ninja that the caltrops had been activated (stepped on)

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Extremely cool, I like the idea. It would also be cool if it told the Ninja that the caltrops had been activated (stepped on)

I discussed about making it so that every person that stepped on the caltrops would have a miniscule tracking implant injected (that'd show on the ninja's own handheld), but that's probably a bit far out of reach, oh and thank you!

- The ninja visor can now alternate between normal vision and night vision.

# New Objectives & Mechanics

Gives the Space Ninja more to do and tinker with, so that all rounds don't play out the same.

## Objective Additions

- Steal X spesos - A strongbox for Cargo containing all their deposited spesos will be located in the vault, the Space Ninja is tasked with stealing a designated amount - An alternative to "Steal X technologies".
- Upload the law board - An AI law board with a Spider Clan-oriented law set, the Space Ninja is tasked with uploading it to the AI upload console - An alternative to "Detonate your spider charge".
- Hack Si-XXXX - The Space Ninja's kill-target equivalent, they are tasked with hacking a specific cyborg, turning it into a zealous Spider Clan tech-priest that obsesses over hoarding all manners of electronics and machines.

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This is good. The SS13 implementation was transforming a Borg into some psychotic kill machine, but having a Borg that behaves similar to a ninja would be cool.

A suggestion to this point: Borgs should be able to hack the machines the same way a ninja would, albeit at a slower rate, and when completed, they count for the ninja. Might be something interesting to see.

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A suggestion to this point: Borgs should be able to hack the machines the same way a ninja would, albeit at a slower rate, and when completed, they count for the ninja. Might be something interesting to see.

I like this idea a lot, my only issue with it is that it''d probably be way too good, I mean, an AA buddy that's not immediately valid? sounds like a dream! maybe the borg itself could get objectives that don't conflict with the ninja's by serving as a distraction? or maybe a "seppuku" module similar to the martyrs that the ninja can activate at will? open for more suggestions


## Objective Changes

- All stealing objectives can now only be performed with a specialized item that is dropped by the ninja upon death, unlike previously where they only used their gloves - This allows the crew to regain their losses.
- Make an announcement - The communications computer objective now revolves around the Space Ninja sending a Spider Clan Announcement from it, the contents of said announcement being up to their discretion. Like before, it requires the use of turned on space ninja gloves, the one key difference being that now the EMAG interaction is instantaneous, overriding all access restrictions as well as unlocking Spider Clan as an announcement sender. (Replaces "Call in a threat", the new objective keeping the threat-calling functionality is still in discussion)
- Hack X - 1-3 of the Miscellaneous Interactions machines is picked to be hacked by the Space Ninja. Note that you can still hack machines that aren't included in your objectives. (Replaces "Set Everyone to Wanted")

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I like this idea.

While Ninjas aren't under the meta shield on WizDen, players still behave an in odd IC way and start to defend consoles and ninja objectives, even though it's much more interesting to pretend otherwise.

I think giving ninja enough objectives will be good, as security possibly can't guard them all. Security will have to take a more active approach to ninja countering. They can't simply spread out and guard everything, and if they try to, the ninja gets something unguarded in return.


## Miscellaneous Interactions

- Hacking the criminal records computer is now one of the many miscellaneous actions the Space Ninja can do in order to frustrate the crew - The error announcement will now only be sent by the criminal records computer on the Security channel, opposed to the previous station-wide Central Command Announcement.
- The crew monitoring server is now prone to being hacked by the Space Ninja, doing so will disable everyone's sensors until deconstructed and reconstructed.
- The station records computer is now prone to being hacked by the Space Ninja, doing so will delete a small % of random personnel from it accompanied by a station-wide announcement.
- The camera router is now prone to being hacked by the Space Ninja, doing so will kill a large % of its connected cameras and render them useless.

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I'd like the server to become unrepairable, and require an engineer or so to do maintenance on the camera router. It can be something where there isn't no true physical destruction, it's just disrupted and required repair.

This would make countering the AI extremely viable and the ninja could plan ahead: "I'll break into telecoms and short out the cameras to security, so I can get a high-cap without being spotted"

To reduce metagaming ("ninja on station, my cameras in sec aren't working!!") we could have this same effect trigger for a random telecoms server during a solar flare. It would expose players to the situation more often and make it less unique to the ninja. EMPs should also disrupt cameras, and if they hit servers, it should disrupt them and cut cams too. I believe there's an issue on the repo right now that asks the question "should cameras have to be routed through a router" which I really like, both for regular gameplay, and for this idea.

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I'd like the server to become unrepairable, and require an engineer or so to do maintenance on the camera router. It can be something where there isn't no true physical destruction, it's just disrupted and required repair.

Maybe, just maybe, what if instead of the router itself being affected only the cameras require repairing? It'd probably require for a certain % of them to suddenly get their wires cut, though. I just can't really see any way of the engineers having a way to repair routers without it just being a "use in-case of ninja" thing.

This would make countering the AI extremely viable and the ninja could plan ahead: "I'll break into telecoms and short out the cameras to security, so I can get a high-cap without being spotted"

To reduce metagaming ("ninja on station, my cameras in sec aren't working!!") we could have this same effect trigger for a random telecoms server during a solar flare. It would expose players to the situation more often and make it less unique to the ninja. EMPs should also disrupt cameras, and if they hit servers, it should disrupt them and cut cams too. I believe there's an issue on the repo right now that asks the question "should cameras have to be routed through a router" which I really like, both for regular gameplay, and for this idea.

agreed! it'd also enrich engineering gameplay which they severely need, also, if possible, could you link said question so I can take a look at the discussions that take place?

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Maybe, just maybe, what if instead of the router itself being affected only the cameras require repairing? It'd probably require for a certain % of them to suddenly get their wires cut, though.

Having wires on cameras get cut would be annoying:

  • If they were cut, someone would have to uncut literally all of them.
  • It makes no sense for the wires to be suddenly cut.
  • There is not very obvious communication to the player that a camera is malfunctioning.
  • To solve this, a camera that is broken could become a fried camera, and it could be easily repaired by using 1 LV cable.

And, to be honest, I like the central outage idea more for the ninja. BUT I wouldn't mind having fried cameras for tiers of camera damage, which is another problem that has been discussed before.

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agreed! it'd also enrich engineering gameplay which they severely need, also, if possible, could you link said question so I can take a look at the discussions that take place?

space-wizards/space-station-14#33696


# Balance Changes

Changes mostly geared towards fixing previously outright broken mechanics, as well to accomodate the new additions.

## Nerfs

These nerfs are intended to make previous go-to combat tactics less prevalent, hence incentivizing a more varied playstyle.

- [Fix ninja stunlocking](https://github.com/space-wizards/space-station-14/pull/33244)
- All Space Ninjas are now bio-engineered humans, making it so they don't get specie-specific attributes such as tail-dragging.

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I'd like to still see player characters, I'm partially against having everyone be human for the sake of balance, even though it's easiest. I know I love being a spider as a ninja just because I'm part of the "Spider Clan" and I RP it as well.

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I'd like to still see player characters, I'm partially against having everyone be human for the sake of balance, even though it's easiest. I know I love being a spider as a ninja just because I'm part of the "Spider Clan" and I RP it as well.

I disagree, while part of it is for the sake of balance, I find it to also be much more immersive for certain factions to prefer certain species, just like how S.E.L.F. would prefer IPCs, the Spider Clan prefers bio-engineered humans, and honestly, the ninja fit just goes much harder when there's no added characteristics like wings or tails.

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B-b-b-but... spider... spider clan...

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Having to restrict an antags species to human is lame and circumvents a whole part of the game: different species. It's part of this games character.

See: SS13 where nukies were only humans because the AI was speciesist. We can do better in SS14.

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Having to restrict an antags species to human is lame and circumvents a whole part of the game: different species. It's part of this games character.

See: SS13 where nukies were only humans because the AI was speciesist. We can do better in SS14.

I had a relatively lengthy discussion about this on discord a while ago (after the git comments one), and really I think I'll be implementing Dragonjspider's "The role needs to randomize your character when spawned entirely" proposal, as it'd be the best of both worlds imho, having it be your character could prove not nearly as fun as if you had done it with a different species, but having it always fixed to a certain species could prove to be against the game's character, and so it'll pick one of the species from a curated species pool (eg. humans, dwarves, reptillians, arachnids - as they are moderately "standard")

- Removes the extended-capacity survival box from the ninja's satchel, as there's no longer any use for it.
- Lower the energy katana's one-handed damage.
- Lower the ninja throwing star's piercing damage to compensate for the newly added ninja caltrops.
- Lower the ninja throwing star's stamina damage.

## Buffs

Enhances some things on the Space Ninja's kit in order to make it less of a one-trick pony, as well as to fix some inconsistencies.

- Space Ninjas no longer have a need to eat nor drink.
- Space Ninjas now come outfitted with a ninja headset as per [Alwayswannahunt's PR](https://github.com/space-wizards/space-station-14/pull/32841) , green encryption key included.
- The space ninja gloves can now unlock access-restricted lockers and crates.
- The energy katana's slash rate is slightly faster than it was previously when one-handed to compensate for it's damage loss.

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So the DPS is unchanged, or is it still less?

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So the DPS is unchanged, or is it still less?

the katana's dps is slightly lower than what it currently is, but by not that much (whereas, wielding it does slightly higher dps than what the current one does)

- The ninja throwing stars can now be stacked, as well as thrown in spreads.
- When phasing, the Space Ninja is able to discreetly steal from people.

## Miscellaneous Tweaks

Mostly new additions that weren't either complete buffs nor complete nerfs.

- The katana dash is considerably quieter, at the cost of a longer recharge duration.

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Im ok with this, as it gives the Ninja more of a chance to slip up and make a mistake. Right now a really good ninja is untouchable by security because of their amazing ability to pick fights. However, despite this change, I still think a very robust player can still escape 99% of situations.

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Im ok with this, as it gives the Ninja more of a chance to slip up and make a mistake. Right now a really good ninja is untouchable by security because of their amazing ability to pick fights. However, despite this change, I still think a very robust player can still escape 99% of situations.

this is more as a way to give the ninja a proper quieter way to move around, this time along the dashes are made to be more silent, as the "loud" action is the EMAG (as it's also the more overpowered one), so the ninja can pick between either having AA access but going loud, or dashing from window to window stealthily

- Grants the ability to wield the energy katana for a hard-hitting swing, at the cost of a slower slash rate. *When wielding the energy katana, the Space Ninja's reflect probability also increases.

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There's a lot of different things you could do with this:

Have the sword reflect an insane amount if the ninja keeps pointing at the attacker. Because, you know, the ninja can parry. The downside to this is that the ninja is exposed from all other sides: shooting the ninja is no longer just a gamble on whether you score a hit or not.

I think the reflect system could also be refactored to determine the reflect chance of lasers versus bullets, that way you could give the sword a much higher chance to reflect bullets as they travel slower than lasers that travel at the speed of light. This could also make balancing items that can reflect easier.

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@Warpzoned Warpzoned Dec 4, 2024

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There's a lot of different things you could do with this:

Have the sword reflect an insane amount if the ninja keeps pointing at the attacker. Because, you know, the ninja can parry. The downside to this is that the ninja is exposed from all other sides: shooting the ninja is no longer just a gamble on whether you score a hit or not.

Interesting way to go about it, but it'd probably require some heavy changes to the reflect system in general to add things related to orientation. I'll think about it, however.

I think the reflect system could also be refactored to determine the reflect chance of lasers versus bullets, that way you could give the sword a much higher chance to reflect bullets as they travel slower than lasers that travel at the speed of light. This could also make balancing items that can reflect easier.

Speaking of heavy changes, I agree with this wholeheartedly, lasers should be prone to reflection via stuff like appropriate vests or mirrors, and blades should also have an absorb chance when it comes to bullets, the latter which I think would work wonderfully for the ninja (basically cutting bullets in half)

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Have the sword reflect an insane amount if the ninja keeps pointing at the attacker.

100% bullet reflect while moving max speed so you can pretend you're playing mgrr :trollface:

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@Warpzoned Warpzoned Dec 5, 2024

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Have the sword reflect an insane amount if the ninja keeps pointing at the attacker.

100% bullet reflect while moving max speed so you can pretend you're playing mgrr :trollface:

.1% probability for the ninja to have one of jetstream sam's voicelines after a successful reflection :godo:

- When phasing, the Space Ninja's cloak will act similarly to that of stealth boxes', but in a much more potent manner - Running will slightly weaken the stealth field by increasing the distortion's strength, whereas staying still will fade it to the point of near-full invisibility, walking won't weaken nor strengthen the distortion's effect.
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