Batons aren't viable because of disarming. If you're disarmed of a baton you're dead. With this change you can reasonably batonstun somebody.
Reducing the runspeed causes the least other issues of everything, and it also solves other problems like the map not loading fast enough.
It's by far the best solution.
Well, I'm not entirely convinced. After all, the only benefit of homing projectiles over non-homing ones is that they can't be dodged. The entire point of the runspeed change is to stop people dodging projectiles. So, I don't really see how they'd be too powerful seeing as 'no more dodging' is the entire point of the change.
I also question whether a 'saxing' player can both run away from a sec officer before they click a UI icon and also dodge from side to side to avoid taser shots at the same time. Also, a lot of saxing isn't done in open corridors where a player can run away completely, but in rooms where they can evade an officer for a long time despite not being able to get away without stopping to open a door.
As for batons and disarming - I don't see how the speed change makes batons stronger against disarming than garf's auto-attack idea? I mean, basically it still boils down to who gets the first attack which with equal skill players is a 50/50 chance. Of course, disarm doesn't work every time so the baton person has an advantage because their hit is a guaranteed win, but that's always been the case. Garf's melee autoattack suggestion actually sounds like a good idea for stopping the 'sax while clicking wildly' approach that melee currently can boil down to.
I'm also not convinced that a 1 point slowdown will stop saxing and silly melee dodging. After all, didn't armour give that same slowdown in the old version? Were sec officers in armour really unable to dodge?
Maybe your playstyle is very different from mine. I get involved in a fight with saxing perhaps 1 round in 10. I get involved in a situation where I have to deal with slowdowns etc maybe 8 or 9 rounds from 10. I also often play roles like miner (in particular) or engineer that involve lots of moving round the station. I kinda feel that this is a change that will add more tedium to my play experience almost all the time, just to give a minority of players in each round less frustration during a relatively rare situation.
Imagine the total time spent by players dealing with saxing in the current system in an average round. Is that really more than the total extra movement time this change will require in a round across all players?
Runspeed is a very wide-ranging change to deal with a specific problem, so it seems like it has a lot of knock on effects:
- Reduces fun for every player who has to move long distances. I mean, I'm surely not a crazy outsider when I say that walking from one side of the station to another is not a part of the game I take active enjoyment from. For people who want to experience what this change is like, play an entire round without shoes.
- Stacks with other speed nerfs to make them even worse. Mining and Engi hardsuits in particular are already a pain to move distances in and yet there are important jobs that often require players to do so. This also makes space exploration even more tedious.
- Slows down how quickly people (e.g. security, medics) can respond to threats and issues. Makes it more likely critted people will die before they can be dragged to medbay.
- Generally slows down how much a player can do in a given amount of time. This will have an impact on e.g. traitors trying to rush their objectives because someone's called the shuttle early. Also reduces what people can do in a shift if they take breaks to walk around the station and roleplay with other people. For busy jobs like xenobio or genetics research, that might encourage a 'sit in my lab all shift' approach even more.
- Makes it harder to do quick 'in and out' raids for players who want to e.g. perform a theft while an antag-hunter AI is looking for criminals
- Makes persistent AOE threats stronger. Fire, smoke grenades, hull breaches, gas flooding will all take longer to run away from, making them more deadly
- Buffs borgs. Borg speed has not been affected so they are now stronger compared to human players.
- Makes the AI stronger, as it has more time to react to movement and shock/bolt doors
- Buffs aliens.
- Buffs carp, slimes and other mobs
- Probably other stuff I haven't thought of - this is just off the top of my head.
That's a lot of potential issues. Now, given that the opinion on the tg forums seems dead-set against this change, I'm hoping that it will be reverted. If it isn't, then please:
- Cut the slowdown for all clothing items by 1 across the board. Even in the pre-nerf world hardsuits are dull to walk around in all the time and this contributes to problems getting people out mining. Even bio-suits are kind of annoying as your main clothing item unless you're not leaving one room very much.
- Consider a cap on slowdown. For example, when I first encountered gibtonite it exploded next to me and took me down to about 5% health. The damage slowdown combined with the hardsuit made movement so slow I seriously considered just logging off for that round instead of walking back to the outpost to use the medkit there. At the moment I believe slowdowns all stack which can get very bad in some situations
- Consider reducing hunger/damage/cold slowdowns.
- I remember some changes to mechs in this PR. I'd like to point out that the ripley was already too slow to be fun to mine with - I'm not going to say 'just make it faster' though because the ripley probably needs a proper overhaul.
- Revisit alien/borg balance. These are probably already too strong even without a boost to their comparative movement rates.
- Nerf mob movement: well you already said you were doing this and I agree it seems to be needed.