Outrunning taser bolts was retarded and GOOD RIDDANCE.
It was literally the sole fucking solution for saxxing. Saxxing was caused solely by the insane movement speed, and only reducing the movement speed fixes it.
Also, hyperzine actually has a use now!
Slowdown by other effects can be reduced.
Was it really the only solution though? I've had a quick brainstorm and come up with some ideas. These are just quick thoughts off the top of my head and doubtless mostly not very good, but a whole community full of intelligent people can surely put their heads together and come up with something? How about:
- Instead of slowing movement, dramatically speed up projectiles
- Increase the availability/usefulness of AOE stuns - saxing isn't useful against a flashbang.
- Some sort of middle ground between the powerful but tricky to use flashbang and the taser. For example a taser-type projectile that explodes when it get adjacent to someone with a radius-1 stun. That way firing down the centre of a 3-tile hallway would be undodgable.
- Homing projectiles. Maybe require the shooter to actually click on the target (to prevent spamming like a ninja can do) but then have the projectile home in on them. It may sound OP, but if the intent is to make it impossible to dodge a projectile then essentially what you want is a 'first shot = first stun' situation.
If these are all rubbish ideas and no-one can come up with better ones, then maybe slowing movement is the only option. But why slow movement for everyone? Why not experiment with ways to slow it only in combat situations?
For example, you could add a new item to sec that can be toggled with a UI icon like flashlights. When active it slows down everyone including the user within a certain distance (or maybe in LOS). Make it available to antags via cargo/R&D/uplinks as well. That way the sec player can click the 'slowdown device' icon when they want to make an arrest and don't want dodging, but keep it off for normal movement. Plus, I suspect people will still be able to dodge tasers to some extent even with a 1-point slowdown - this would allow you to implement higher slowdowns for combat that would be unacceptable for normal movement.