Add nanostraps to the Space Ninja + equipment tweaks

[SlamBamActionman]

About the PR

This PR adds a new item to the Space Ninja antag: the nanostraps. They have the following properties:

• Can be spawned by the ninja by spending a small amount of battery charge.
• Has a faster cuffing time (2.5 vs 3.5), which is further sped up against a prone target.
• Muzzles the target, reducing emote sounds and masking speech.
• Despawns after 60 seconds.
• Breaks if the target takes a total of 15 damage while wearing the cuffs, or if an execution is started.
• Takes 8 seconds to uncuff from (longer if held)

In conjunction with this change, the following changes have been made:

• The Energy Katana now deals 23 slashing damage (previously 30)
• The throwing stars can now be spawned every 1 second (previously 0.5)
• The throwing stars now deal 40 stamina damage (previously 55)
• Guidebook has been updated regarding summonable weaponry

This is to align with space-wizards/docs#547 which, while not yet merged at time of this submission, seems to be up for being accepted.

This PR also, incidentally, adds support for species sprites for cuffs.

Why / Balance

The nanostraps are intended to allow the ninja to more easily rob players without having to resort to lethal means. Some ninja players already do this using improvised cuffs but this requires some forethought and isn't communicated to less experienced ninja players.

The choice to make them break upon damage is to avoid the ninja using this new tool to easily kill people. This includes the threshold of 2 damage (note: it's not total damage, but per damage instance) to prevent death via spacing. The uncuff time is not as high as a pair of cuffs since the ninja shouldn't hold the person for extended periods of time, and the cuffs despawns eventually anyhow.

In addition of this, the ninja has received some changes to de-emphasize its lethality. The Energy Katana has had its damage reduced but is still very strong. This is to make the ninja less lethal in direct combat while still giving the role the ability to defend itself if necessary (or do some cheeky ambushes in maints).

The throwing stars were also reduced in effectiveness; this is a hold-over from #39707 where the throwing stars weren't touched because... No one really used them when the stun gloves were at their prime, hiding how strong they actually are. This should make them less oppressive against multiple targets and not require as finnicky mechanical execution to be utilized to their full potential.

Technical details

ItemCreatorComponent did not support multiple spawn options, so a bunch of stuff was changed into being a struct that can be put in a list instead.

SharedCuffableSystem was not filescoped; now it is.

Content.Client CuffableSystem now supports species sprites for cuffs.

Two new events CuffsAddedEvent and CuffsRemovedEvent have been included. Of note, CuffsRemovedEvent is placed when the cuffs are removed from the container, in case the cuffs get deleted somehow (like despawning).

Media

2025-11-06.16-17-40.mp4

Requirements

• I have read and am following the Pull Request and Changelog Guidelines.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.

Breaking changes

Content.Shared/Execution/DoAfterEvent.cs have had its contents moved to Content.Shared/Execution/ExecutionEvents.cs.

ItemCreatorComponent have a new property List<ItemCreatorEntry> Entries. The struct ItemCreatorEntry contains the Action, ActionEntity and SpawnedPrototype properties that previously used to be in the component directly.

Changelog

🆑

• add: Added nanostraps to the Space Ninja's arsenal, a pair of instantly summonable cuffs that muzzle the target and break upon the wearer taking damage.
• tweak: Changed the Energy Katana to deal slightly less damage.
• tweak: Changed throwing stars to deal slightly less stamina damage and tweaked the spawn delay.

[github-actions]

RSI Diff Bot; head commit 594b682 merging into 1fceb74
This PR makes changes to 1 or more RSIs. Here is a summary of all changes:

Resources/Textures/Objects/Misc/nanocuffs.rsi

State	Old	New	Status
body-overlay-2-vox			Added
body-overlay-2-vulpkanin			Added
body-overlay-2			Added
body-overlay-4			Added
equipped-BELT			Added
inhand-left			Added
inhand-right			Added
nanocuff			Added

Edit: diff updated after 594b682

[K-Dynamic]

I would've been against this except we made ninjas unable to teleport with the entity they're pulling #33252, so it's a good change overall.

[SirWarock]

Can they not just insta-kill their prisoner with an execution?

[Errant-4]

Can they not just insta-kill their prisoner with an execution?

At no point, anywhere, could execution "insta-kill", because it is on a doafter. But this seems like a somewhat fair concern. The ninja can in fact execute people with this, because it essentially "channels" the damage of multiple melee attacks, without letting the person escape as intended. Holocuffs should disappear when an execution is initiated

[SlamBamActionman]

I intend to make the following changes:

• Make the holocuffs break on a set of total damage rather than damage ticks
  • It was pointed out that someone could just punch a cuffed person to break them free which seems a bit iffy. It's also not guaranteed that the cuffing will happen under ideal circumstances so this should give the ninja a bit more leewya.
• Break if attempting to execute
  • See comments above
• Add to guidebook entry

[ThatGuyUSA]

I don't see why ninja has to get all around nerfed when we're already adding a non lethal option. Can't we just have both? I mean there's nothing wrong with ninja being strong, the equipment can just be good. Adding built in cuffs isn't going to make me want to fight any less than I already do. Not that everyone thinks like I do but this is just going to make the fights I must take, even harder for no reason!

I mean most of the fights I take are either on NPCs who can't be cuffed, or on officers who's whole job is to stop me, of which lethality is an acceptable approach to since they usually meet you with the intentions to shoot! At that point I can just get regular cuffs from them and just forego the holo cuffs, no?

It just seems like a ninja nerf in disguise.

Any officer walking around on their own when a ninja is called out is begging to be solo'd and no amount of non lethal options is going to 'fix' that problem. Even just 2 officers standing next to each other is enough to dissuade a ninja from approaching. Because even if you do get the stun + shuriken combo off, you'd have to deal enough damage to crit 2 officers who are most likely in armor. And if you mess up the timing, it'll result in you fleeing, taking a few hits, wasting your time or just straight up death!

[EthanQix]

I don't see why ninja has to get all around nerfed when we're already adding a non lethal option. Can't we just have both? I mean there's nothing wrong with ninja being strong, the equipment can just be good. Adding built in cuffs isn't going to make me want to fight any less than I already do. Not that everyone thinks like I do but this is just going to make the fights I must take, even harder for no reason!

The point of Space Ninja, according to his new design doc, is that it's supposed to be a stealthy saboteur and not the combat monster it is right now. The cuffs make it so they can effectively disable a lone target for a while after an ambush. If they have to take a fair fight, their goal is to GTFO.

Honestly I'd just replace their sword with a hypospray and a bottle of spider clan venom so they can kill sometimes but not engage in murderboning the whole station.

[mememaster15-web]

The cuffs seem like a cool addition, but dislike the lowering of ninjas lethality. Ninja in itself is already a glass cannon and having its lethality lessened whilst keeping the threats the ninja is likely to encounter the same seems like an uninteresting move. Security are going to arm and move to red as soon as ninja is called out and attempt to kill them, this simply makes them an easier target to kill for security.

[SirWarock]

At no point, anywhere, could execution "insta-kill", because it is on a doafter.

With instakill, I'm referring to killing someone in one-hit, I guess I should've just said one-hit.
The concern behind it is that you simply skip the "breaks on damage" safety measure with that.

[SlamBamActionman]

The PR has been updated to replace holocuffs with nanostraps.

Nanostraps work like the holocuffs previously (summonable, fast cuffing, disappear upon damage) but also muzzle the user. The straps last for 60 seconds with a 15 damage threshold.

The reason for changing it to straps was because cuffs wouldn't account for the muzzling, and also the sprites didn't really match the space ninja theme anyways.

[K-Dynamic]

Nanostraps should be renamed to spiderwebs

[SlamBamActionman]

I mean most of the fights I take are either on NPCs who can't be cuffed, or on officers who's whole job is to stop me, of which lethality is an acceptable approach to since they usually meet you with the intentions to shoot! At that point I can just get regular cuffs from them and just forego the holo cuffs, no?

I think this is a fair criticism of the holocuffs, so I've updated the cuffs nanostraps to muzzle the target as well, making them unable to call out their position. Should give more time to loot them and provide a benefit that regular cuffs can't provide.

[Entvari]

I don't like the reduced katana damage, all else is okay though.

[EthanQix]

I mean most of the fights I take are either on NPCs who can't be cuffed, or on officers who's whole job is to stop me, of which lethality is an acceptable approach to since they usually meet you with the intentions to shoot! At that point I can just get regular cuffs from them and just forego the holo cuffs, no?

I think this is a fair criticism of the holocuffs, so I've updated the cuffs nanostraps to muzzle the target as well, making them unable to call out their position. Should give more time to loot them and provide a benefit that regular cuffs can't provide.

I must say, cocooning the target to make them helpless sounds very on brand for the Spider Clan.

[shamblestf]

The cuffs seem like a cool addition, but dislike the lowering of ninjas lethality. Ninja in itself is already a glass cannon and having its lethality lessened whilst keeping the threats the ninja is likely to encounter the same seems like an uninteresting move. Security are going to arm and move to red as soon as ninja is called out and attempt to kill them, this simply makes them an easier target to kill for security.

ninja is NOT a glass cannon, armor and evasion are both equally as strong, ninja has +30 move speed + instant teleport + invisibility

That level of speed and the cloak have the same effect as 60 brute/burn resistance, you simply do not take damage.

[NoreUhh]

I think everything about this PR is great and it fits the ninja's playstyle really well. There is only one thing that bothers me and that's the katana damage nerf. More often then not, I get my ass beat by vent critters as ninja and taking away even that 7 extra damage is pretty detrimental but that's just me.

[SaulMidman]

The straps are a nice addition, especially for any ninja looking to go down a more pacifistic route, the nerfs on the other hand put ninja into an incredibly weak position for pretty much all combat scenarios.

The katana damage nerf takes it from being one of the best melee weapons to a far more mediocre one. If a ninja takes a knife fight with a roundstart secoff, who is armed with only their standard issue combat knife and armour vest, the dps of the two is roughly equal. After resistances are applied the ninja is at ~16 dps and the secoff at ~14. The highly trained elite assassin isn't so scary when you can kinda just throw hands and have a very good chance at winning with nothing but an armour vest and knife.

The shurikens also have a similar issue wherein they're kinda just useless if they get a stamina damage and slower spawn speed nerf. They're aleady a heavily underutilised aspect of the ninja's kit and most forget they even exist. Since they're a thrown weapon they are going to miss. A lot. Having a slower spawn speed and less stam damage on them makes them way more punishing to miss and kinda just rules them out for any fight, since why bother taking the risk when you could've just gotten 3-4 katana hits in rather than MAYBE hitting them with 3 shurikens.

I get the idea of making ninja weaker in 1 vs many scenarios but it already had that done when the glove shock was given a 10 second cooldown after shocking 1 person so you can no longer shock multiple people at once. These nerfs would pretty much remove any ability ninja has to take a fight or run away, even against a single target. Your only option would be glove shock because your combat options are so incredibly weak that they're just not worth using. I would unironically take a baton as a main weapon as ninja at that point.

If ninja truly needs a nerf to make them weaker in 1v2s and more, dropping the actual damage of the shurikens would be more fitting. If the katana is the only real damage option, then the ninja has to engage in melee against groups and that's enough of a disadvantage already. If an armed group of 2 or more are losing against one ninja with an exclusively slash damage sword, that's not a problem with the antag.

[SnappingOpossum]

In raw DPS this puts the energy katana below a crusher dagger.

[LevitatingTree]

I really like the addition (and the change from holo-cuffs to the nanostraps) but I agree that such a direct nerf would be unneeded and, if anything, detremental. I don't know enough about balancing damage-wise but I definitely think the throwing stars could be reworked to incentivize their use and a stamina damage nerf would give people even less of a reason to do so (specially for non-lethal playstyles)

[SlamBamActionman]

The straps are a nice addition, especially for any ninja looking to go down a more pacifistic route, the nerfs on the other hand put ninja into an incredibly weak position for pretty much all combat scenarios.

The katana damage nerf takes it from being one of the best melee weapons to a far more mediocre one. If a ninja takes a knife fight with a roundstart secoff, who is armed with only their standard issue combat knife and armour vest, the dps of the two is roughly equal. After resistances are applied the ninja is at ~16 dps and the secoff at ~14. The highly trained elite assassin isn't so scary when you can kinda just throw hands and have a very good chance at winning with nothing but an armour vest and knife.

Look at it this way; you would not go for pacifistic tactics if lethal combat is always the most viable option. Yes, you're going to be pretty badly roughed up if you try to 1v1 a SecOff with a knife... and not using your other tools. You can't just look at the raw DPS when judging the Ninja's lethality but the kit as a whole; teleport + stun + high movement speed makes for an incredibly potent initiator tool.

The shurikens also have a similar issue wherein they're kinda just useless if they get a stamina damage and slower spawn speed nerf. They're aleady a heavily underutilised aspect of the ninja's kit and most forget they even exist.

There has been a remarkable uptick in throwing star use since the glove stun cooldown was reduced.

Since they're a thrown weapon they are going to miss. A lot. Having a slower spawn speed and less stam damage on them makes them way more punishing to miss and kinda just rules them out for any fight, since why bother taking the risk when you could've just gotten 3-4 katana hits in rather than MAYBE hitting them with 3 shurikens.

It has been stated on Discord but is worth stating here as well: 0.5 seconds for both a spawning and throwing input to use to the stars to their fullest extent is more than we should demand of a player physically. Admins have noted that some players have resorted to using macros to spam the stars as fast as possible.

If you are in a position where getting katana hits in, then yes, you should go for the katana. The stars are a ranged weapon and can be used at range, which makes them better as an option when retreating, moving in space or dealing with melee attackers (e.g. vent spawns).

I get the idea of making ninja weaker in 1 vs many scenarios but it already had that done when the glove shock was given a 10 second cooldown after shocking 1 person so you can no longer shock multiple people at once. These nerfs would pretty much remove any ability ninja has to take a fight or run away, even against a single target.

I plain disagree and think this is incorrect hyperbole. The ninja is still going to be the most successful 1v1 role in the game, even after these nerfs.

If ninja truly needs a nerf to make them weaker in 1v2s and more, dropping the actual damage of the shurikens would be more fitting. If the katana is the only real damage option, then the ninja has to engage in melee against groups and that's enough of a disadvantage already. If an armed group of 2 or more are losing against one ninja with an exclusively slash damage sword, that's not a problem with the antag.

The intent of the damage is not to make the ninja weaker against groups (if anything, that is the goal of the shuriken stun reduction), but to make lethality less optimal, including against single targets.

---

In raw DPS this puts the energy katana below a crusher dagger.

By 1 damage per second, making them effectively equal. Please consider that the Ninja has other tools in their toolkit that augment their combat abilities and lethality.

[SaulMidman]

Look at it this way; you would not go for pacifistic tactics if lethal combat is always the most viable option.

Achieving that less optimal lethal combat doesn't necessitate decreasing it's effectiveness by so much, it just means there's needs to be an actual reasonable way of ninja engaging in non-lethal combat. Previously you could just infinitely stunlock someone with the gloves while you robbed them blind, which plenty did. No blood shed. Just adding the straps alone is enough incentive for a ninja to use pacifism because they are already A) quicker than just outright killing your victim, and B) quieter.

Yes, you're going to be pretty badly roughed up if you try to 1v1 a SecOff with a knife... and not using your other tools. You can't just look at the raw DPS when judging the Ninja's lethality but the kit as a whole; teleport + stun + high movement speed makes for an incredibly potent initiator tool.

Yes, while I agree that you can't look purely at the raw DPS since it does have other tools to the kit for combat, it still plays a major part since (and quite often) a ninja will get caught out while their abilities are on cooldown, and or find themselves in a situation where they have to kill the person(s) chasing them/guarding their objective. If a ninja decides to take a "fair" knife fight I agree they should be roughed up pretty badly but not to the extent that the fight can be decided by a single missed melee swing from either side.

It has been stated on Discord but is worth stating here as well: 0.5 seconds for both a spawning and throwing input to use to the stars to their fullest extent is more than we should demand of a player physically. Admins have noted that some players have resorted to using macros to spam the stars as fast as possible.

The 0.5 second spawn time isn't demanding of anything. All it does is provide a more generous window of opportunity for a ninja to actually spawn the star and allows for a bit of skill expression, if a player isn't able to spawn them at the maximum speed why should that then punish those who can and force them to the same speed. Slowing this down would be like adding a delay to loading magazines into guns. I'm sure some do use macros, but there's also a lot of people who are able to just spawn and throw them at good speeds simply by making use of decent action bar management and keybinds (just put throw on a mouse button and it's free).

If you are in a position where getting katana hits in, then yes, you should go for the katana. The stars are a ranged weapon and can be used at range, which makes them better as an option when retreating, moving in space or dealing with melee attackers (e.g. vent spawns).

Vent spawns would pretty much be their only use. Currently they're great for retreating since a 2 hit stamcrit is an amazing deterrent. but with it needing 3, if someone manages to eat 2 and can still keep shooting, retreating is going to be a whole lot more painful. Moving in space it's already enough of a headache trying to land bullets let alone a throwing weapon, and as for melee, if the combatant is anything other than simplemob they usually just strafe a little and dodge them.

I plain disagree and think this is incorrect hyperbole. The ninja is still going to be the most successful 1v1 role in the game, even after these nerfs.

The intent of the damage is not to make the ninja weaker against groups (if anything, that is the goal of the shuriken stun reduction), but to make lethality less optimal, including against single targets.

It will still be fine in 1v1s, but it will be so heavily reliant upon the teleport and glove stun + straps that you might as well not bother considering the other tools in the kit. Making pacifism/stealth the optimal choice doesn't have to come at the cost of reducing the viability of combat by so much. If pacifism is easier than going loud and fighting, players will take that choice.

[InClearField]

It has been stated on Discord but is worth stating here as well: 0.5 seconds for both a spawning and throwing input to use to the stars to their fullest extent is more than we should demand of a player physically. Admins have noted that some players have resorted to using macros to spam the stars as fast as possible.

There is literally a button to spawn it in, thats how the ability works. Can you show an example of macros? What would be even the point of doing a macro of generating it and throwing it if the throwing delay is also around 0.5s clientside? I dont know to me this sounds made up just to trash it in even more. Wouldnt a disabler be more effective at that point?

[SlamBamActionman]

With macro, 0.5s:

2025-11-07.11-51-38.mp4

Without macro where I try my fastest, 0.5s:

2025-11-07.11-52-45.mp4

Without macro where I try my fastest (save for a hickup on 3rd guy), 1s:

2025-11-07.12-00-06.mp4

Keep in mind that in both those cases, I have my left hand fully dedicated to throwing and not doing any sort of dodging or other action that would result in a longer execution time (and therefore make the delay less punishing).

[abadaba695]

With macro, 0.5s:

2025-11-07.11-51-38.mp4
Without macro where I try my fastest, 0.5s:

2025-11-07.11-52-45.mp4
Without macro where I try my fastest (save for a hickup on 3rd guy), 1s:

2025-11-07.12-00-06.mp4
Keep in mind that in both those cases, I have my left hand fully dedicated to throwing and not doing any sort of dodging or other action that would result in a longer execution time.

2025-11-07.22-19-31.mp4

its also easily achievable if you just rebind throw to the same button that spawns the stars

[ThatGuyUSA]

Admins have noted that some players have resorted to using macros to spam the stars as fast as possible.

Look I get that using macros to demonstrate how bad something could be is to show it's potential highest lethality at its worse.
But we have to acknowledge that use of macros is explicitly a violation of Core Rule 8. It's against the rules and shouldn't be used to reinforce a point, not because it's unrealistic, but because it's shifts the point you're trying to make.

It goes from real concerns to: "This is bad because its extra exploitable by cheaters should they get their hands on it."
A lot of powerful items or abilities in the hands of bad actors are going to be terrible for anyone on the receiving end of the exploitation. This hasn't stopped them from being added anyways.

All of these users who participate in these macros are in violation of a CORE rule, and by no means should we be using them as a factor in how things are created because they shouldn't even exist in the Wizden Servers. You can call it naivety but I hold this belief to be true.

If you think the reason they're only resorting to macros is because the skill is susceptible to temptation, or its an emergent behavior as result of the cool down. Keep in mind that making and using macros is a conscious decision by the user. In doing so they are KNOWINGLY violating rules to gain an unfair advantage. It's either that or they didn't read the rules!

It doesn't say macros are 0 tolerance, since I can imagine it's hard to discern what is and isn't a macro from an outside perspective of an admin. I'd much rather trust that no one breaks the rules than develop our items around the rules, to make the rule breaking impossible from the get-go would make for a dull arrangement of abilities and items.

Tangential bit:
Hell, a ton of craftable items can lead to rule breaking behavior. Like makeshift cuffs and stun prods!
(Even if they are offset with them being solely inferior to the normal counterparts, and it can be dealt with IC through kidnapping as an extreme crime, non-antags shouldn't be kidnapping people or getting perma!)

The solution isn't to make things so unappealing that they go unused, that's preventative rule enforcing! We should be held accountable for our bad behavior should we fall into temptation to cheat/macro/exploit!

[slarticodefast]

I'll freeze this PR until #41379 is merged since it touches battery powered ninja code and would conflict.

[SlamBamActionman]

I've done some further testing both on live and local servers, and tweaked values slightly:

• Throwing star cooldown: 1s -> 0.75s
• Katana damage: 23 slash -> 25 slash

The new throwing star cooldown feels smoother without being so low as to enable/encourage spam throwing, and the katana damage should set the crit threshold such that it requires one additional hit over the 30 damage version (when accounting for the glove stun zap damage) but still highly effective against unarmored targets, especially when considering the bleed damage.