Space Ninja V2 #353
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| # Space Ninja V2 | ||
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| | Designers | Implemented | GitHub Links | | ||
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| | Warpzoned, Doru991 | :warning: Partially | TBD | | ||
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| ## Overview | ||
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| 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. | ||
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| ## Background | ||
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| 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. | ||
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| ## Spider Clan Code | ||
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| 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. | ||
| - 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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There was a problem hiding this comment. 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. There was a problem hiding this comment.
This will be something on the character itself, the suit can only do so much.
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. |
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| ## New Items & Mechanics | ||
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| ### Flavour Additions | ||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. Another possible suggestion is a special Ninja PDA instead of just having an ID card in their pocket willy nilly. There was a problem hiding this comment.
agreed! I was also thinking of making the station pinpointer built into it, it's just that it'd probably be kind of a much bigger hurdle to implement than other more aesthethic-focused apparel like the sheath or satchel, hence why I didn't include it. Edit: PDA has been added |
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| - The Space Ninja now comes with an adequately themed satchel, as well as a katana sheath. | ||
| - Equipping the space ninja helmet is now an instantaneous toggle action that comes with the space ninja suit. | ||
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| ### 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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There was a problem hiding this comment. Extremely cool, I like the idea. It would also be cool if it told the Ninja that the caltrops had been activated (stepped on) There was a problem hiding this comment.
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! |
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| - The ninja visor can now alternate between normal vision and night vision. | ||
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| ### Objective Mechanics | ||
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| - 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. | ||
| - A strongbox for Cargo containing all their deposited spesos, can be the target of one of the Space Ninja's objectives, located in the vault - An alternative to "Steal X technologies". | ||
| - An AI law board that can be used for one of the Space Ninja's objectives - An alternative to "Detonate your spider charge". | ||
| - The criminal records computer now only announces the error locally in the Security channel, instead of it being broadcasted as a Central Command announcement station-wide. | ||
| - 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. Life 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 unlocks Spider Clan as an announcement sender. | ||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. Does this completely remove calling in a threat? I would still like to see calling in threats. Part of the whole sabotage thing. There was a problem hiding this comment.
honestly? I'm not too sure myself. personally I'd rather not, but then it'd break a bit survival's round-flow, so I'm a bit on a limbo, and whilst I do agree that one of the ninja's strongest points is being a saboteur, they also exceed in many other areas (doorjacking for engi, tech/strongbox for science/cargo), calling in a threat would pretty much be to sec what ninja stealing tech is to sci, but ninja himself is an issue sec has to deal with, I'll leave it to people's choice whether to maintain it's threat-calling functionality or not |
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| ## Balance Changes | ||
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| ### Nerfs | ||
| - [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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There was a problem hiding this comment. 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. There was a problem hiding this comment.
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. There was a problem hiding this comment. B-b-b-but... spider... spider clan... There was a problem hiding this comment. 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. There was a problem hiding this comment.
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") |
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| - The space ninja gloves have lost their EMAG interactions with lathes and printers. | ||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. oh really? that's great to hear, I had an interaction with a ninja once as a syndicate agent where I asked them to emag the lathe and since they agreed to it I've always thought they could, my bad! There was a problem hiding this comment. its whitelisted to airlocks so ninja was just trolling you |
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| - Removes the survival box from the ninja's satchel, as there's no longer any use for it. | ||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. Should the ninja get advanced tools? They are a hyper advanced, bio-engineered clan after all. It seems silly they have their crazy powerful suit but you're still spending 13 minutes doorhacking. There was a problem hiding this comment.
I think they should yes, the problem is that the direct upgrade to some tools (like crowbars) are immediately the highest grade, unlike the welding tool that has 4 different tiers (normal, industrial, advanced, experimental), so until that is taken care of, I think the current tools are fine (plus, a big thing about ninjas is them climbing up the ladder in terms of cells, keys, and tools) |
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| - 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. | ||
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| ### Buffs | ||
| - 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. | ||
| - To compensate for the newly removed EMAG interactions with lathes and printers, the space ninja gloves can now unlock access-restricted lockers and crates. | ||
| - The katana dash is considerably quieter, at the cost of a longer recharge duration. | ||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. 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. There was a problem hiding this comment.
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 |
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| - 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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There was a problem hiding this comment. So the DPS is unchanged, or is it still less? There was a problem hiding this comment.
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) |
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| - Grants the ability to wield the energy katana for a hard-hitting swing, at the cost of a slower slash rate. | ||
| - The ninja throwing stars and ninja caltrops can be stacked, as well as thrown in spreads. | ||
| - When phased, the Space Ninja is able to discreetly steal from people, at the cost of a longer action duration. | ||
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There was a problem hiding this comment. I'd like to see the ninja's phase cloak be significantly buffed to near-invisibility when cloaked given the ninja is moving stupidly slow in order to better enable this interaction. I feel like giving ninjas their cloak similar to how stealth boxes behave could be something interesting to look at, but have it be tuned to reflect their role better. Speedy ninja = not as cloaked, slow and steady ninja = very cloaked, extremely hard to see. There was a problem hiding this comment.
same here! I think it'd be super cool if the ninja had a system similar to that of loneops' cardboard boxes, just a tad afraid of how meta it could become for the ninja to just walk super slowly everywhere There was a problem hiding this comment. Ninja lives and dies off of speed. Part of the ninja's survivability is the ability to get in and out of basically any situation lightning quick before someone can even radio security, whether they are cloaked or not. The proposed change can put players in a different mindset: Do I slowly sneak up to captain and copy their ID, or steal their bag, concealing myself to make my presence unaware to security, or do I go in loud and make a mess, allowing security to know that I exist and cause them to gear up? There's a lot of different ways you could play this. There was a problem hiding this comment.
this sold me on it, sounds super fun to be able to change your strategy depending on the go with something simple like this too, I'll put it in in a bit👍 |
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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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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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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"