Rubber bullets and their place

[metalgearsloth]

It's not possible to keep the following things in line with balance:

• Bolas
• Stun batons
• Disablers
• Rubber bullets.

The issue is guns are so varied in terms of firerate that you either get disablers being useless or rubber bullets being absurdly strong (the current balance being the latter). It would be better for stun choices to be fewer so they can be more tightly controlled.

At the time I just ported it because Eris had all of those bullet types but I don't foresee them being able to fit in nicely.

[LankLTE]

I think batons & disablers are mostly fine, tbh just remove rubbers and maybe make disablers consistently roundstart for secoffs instead of dependent on the map & warden

[UbaserB]

I agree with Lank

[SlamBamActionman]

Getting rid of rubbers would also remove some item bloat from the Secfab which would be desirable. (Why can you print individual bullets anyways?)

Would beanbag shotgun shells be on the chopping block? With the recent nerf they feel in line with disabler strength imo, plus Bartenders need to be able to refill their ammo somehow.

[Hmeister-real]

Rubbers should just, not work on people (or at least do very minimal stun damage) wearing armour with 35% or more pierce protection. This would mean that bulletproof vests would get more value since normal sec armour only has 30%, but that using non-lethal bullets on a Nuclear operative simply wouldn't be viable and using actual bullets would be more viable. (i would argue the same with tranqs, but thats off topic + they are hard enough to craft already)

[asperger-sind]

Bolas are pretty slept on considering how they currently are instant and deal 55 stamina damage as well as having a bola-specific slowdown and removal mechanic, while being relatively easy to produce and carry as well as not having any real counters.

I'm overall fine with rubbers (not beanbags) being removed, the niche of mk58 rubbers is already filled by disablers while rifles having rubber bullets is weird considering how you're only really handing these out on red alert and on red alert you typically need lethals rather than rubbers.

Beanbags should be kept in, though, could also do with a buff because 3 shots to stun is hilariously weak, especially for DBs.

[deltanedas]

Beanbags should be kept in, though, could also do with a buff because 3 shots to stun is hilariously weak, especially for DBs.

i love instant no counter stun :trollface:

[asperger-sind]

i love instant no counter stun :trollface:

yea its pretty dumb where 2 shots is arguably too strong and 3 shots is too weak to be considered

[SlamBamActionman]

yea its pretty dumb where 2 shots is arguably too strong and 3 shots is too weak to be considered

Buff Kammerer to hold 6 shots instead of 4 and ever so slightly increase firing speed? Normalize holding a beanbag shell in your offhand as bartender.

I don't know if shotgun balance discussion is on-thread for this discussion though.

[K-Dynamic]

Rubbers are gonna be tough to balance and should be removed tbh (except beanbags) - just use disabler for any ranged projectile stuns, and stingers should shoot disabler projectiles

[deltanedas]

Buff Kammerer to hold 6 shots instead of 4 and ever so slightly increase firing speed? Normalize holding a beanbag shell in your offhand as bartender.

now normal shotgun shells are really good with kammerer

[rosieposieeee]

could make disablers hitscan like lasers but easily blocked by eg firesuits to have them be different from rubbers in a more meaningful way

[LordCarve]

One aspect of non-lethals that hasn't been considered in balance yet is effectiveness against multiple targets.

You could make it so there is a class of weapons whose initial stamina damage is high but goes down the more consecutive hits you land in quick succession i.e.: 50 -> 30 -> 10 -> 5 -> 5 (these numbers are not representative, just serve as an example).

This way you can stun a single target in, say, 3 seconds, but you can stun two targets in 3.5 seconds, three in 4 seconds etc. Making it increasingly better against multiple targets, instead of scaling linearly like all other non-lethal weaponry.

Doing it right would require adding some sort of hidden "temporary stun resistance", so it doesn't lead to abusive synergies with other non-lethal weaponry, but I'm 100% positive this can be made balanced with enough number tweaking.

This way you can make the two classes of non-lethals (disablers and rubber bullets) mechanically distinct:

• One deals flat stamina damage, regardless of circumstance. This scales linearly with number of targets. Better 1-on-1, worse 1-vs-many
• The other deals high stamina damage with rapid time-based falloff for consecutive shots against the same target. This makes it worse 1-on-1, but much better 1-vs-many.

Which would be which though? At first I thought rubber bullets should be better 1-vs-many since they are "crowd control" weapon. But on the other hand, disablers with their energy-based ability to stun fit better the mechanics of "initial jolt hurts like hell, but each consecutive one feels weaker" (your body adapts to being shocked quickly). There's certainly arguments for either case.