Make thieving gloves require the user to be behind the target #33154
Conversation
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What about target being unconscious (sleeping/crit/dead)? |
I didn't think about that, I'll add a check for this tomorrow. |
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I am not sure what I think of the feature; I agree having to constantly stay on your toes and metagame-y move around as Command is not fun gameplay, and someone grabbing an item off you while you are talking to them is a bit silly (which might be okay, SS14 is a silly game). What this PR does is set a precedent for directional actions. With something like this it's fairly easy to see a similar system in place for shields, reflect chances for energy swords and other directional stuff. Is this bad? Good? Idk, but it is different. So it's worth keeping in mind. I'm not entirely sure this PR will solve the issue or paranoid Captains though. Instead of moving you'll have them try to always face anyone who's near, move as soon as someone walks up behind them, or just always stand with their back to a wall. A pre-action indicator whether it will be a stealthy or non-stealthy action would be nice too, especially consiering latency stuff. Maybe something in the strip menu UI, like an cursor or icon change. |
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The thieving gloves in their current state are not fun at all to play against as crew since they require heads to either be always moving or staying out of interaction range or their items might be lost and most likely never found back due to the lack of any traces that are left behind.
This change means command has to worry much less about the person they are talking to trying to steal their things and makes heads much more likely to actually go and directly interact and roleplay with the crew due to them only having to keep their backs clear.
One big part of the game is intrigue and you're trying to lessen it? I don't think I can really agree with this rational.
Space, at its core, has huge intrigue and paranoia themes. As the state of the gloves are now, it follows those themes.
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Spin meta to make it so you can't be thief-gloved. Not any more points I can make the maintainers already made about this past how boring it would be to try and use this item. The thief's skill level would go up so much and its already so high. An item goes missing in your pocket or anywhere else on your person? It's someone behind you and it just got meta-gamed. Easier to check too, there is a good chance they have black gloves. Maybe just boost the tc cost, it's crazy they are only 4 tc for how strong they are. The visual system could be cool for other things though… weeping angles or something like that would be fun. |
In delta they are 8 and still purchased often |
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I think gloves are fine |
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yeah i think the way gloves work currently is fine, just don't keep important items in your pockets |
Game balance and if the gloves need a nerf aside, this is an important point. The player gets no feedback about when thieving gloves will show or hide the doafter bar. This is already a problem for them in their current version, maybe stealthy doafters should have a different color in general. But if we make them directional there will be a lot of players wondering why the gloves did not work correctly. |
The point of this PR is not to prevent paranoid captains from existing. The point of this PR is that now instead of having to make sure nobody is within interaction range they only have to make sure their backs are clear. This means heads are more likely to stay out of safe areas and interact with the crew.
Sure I can try to do that |
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This would go perfectly with actual vision cones |
With the current way this is implemented, spinning does not work to prevent being thief-gloved. The direction the target is looking is only checked when starting to steal. (that's technically not intended but I think it's better balanced like this)
Since the thief's entire gimmick is stealing I can make their gloves have a wider stealth range than the syndicate thieving gloves if needed.
To prevent this you just have to actually wait until there is a good opportunity and you are not the only person behind them and not just steal at any time.
Boosting the TC cost would probably be one of the worst ways to fix them as it just makes them worse for syndies while keeping all the problems they cause to command. |
I'm going to be honest I have no idea what this practically means. |
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not like stripping made 100% sense anyway, but it's kind of weird to have to be standing behind someone to take off, say, a pair of sunglasses |
Here:
This is gameplay we want to have. It's fine for command to be paranoid about the person they're talking to.
The PR won't stop this. Heads will still be, and should be, paranoid. They can still get ganked by revolvers and other weapons if they're not in a safe area or they're in interaction distance. The code itself could be good to have as its own ECS as a way to check direction for certain things if we need it (reflect and shields probably are the biggest one for these). As-is though, we're not looking to change this kind of behavior. If you plan on converting this PR to make an ECS direction check, cool. If not, it'll be closed. |
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I'm pretty sure directional interactions have been frowned upon in the past because they're prediction nightmares. |
Now that you mention it, I'm also remembering this. I don't know what exactly the prediction issue is or how to fix it but it was a concern. |
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this could also be trolled by someone turning around towards you just before you start stealing from them, before you can react and abort clicking the item you want to steal, ping makes this worse |
I don't think this is going to solve the problem of people constantly moving to avoid getting thief-gloved. It just means people are going to be standing in different spots to steal and command members standing with their backs to walls and doors more often. |
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Not sure I like this change for variety of reasons Pickpocketing IRL is not directional, and probably more likely to happen from someone "bumping" into you from in front of you. Not sure we have any directional actions in general, and this won't really address the shuffling metagaming. Now the heads will just need to occasionally spin or change where they "look". It will also increase the amount of frustrating "almost had it" failures where the target shifts a bit. |
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Hey, we discussed this internally with the maintainers and came to the conclusion not to merge this. To summarize the main reasons:
Anyways, we want to thank you for contributing and hope you continue to do so in the future! |
About the PR
I have made the thieving gloves require the user to be behind the target when starting to steal or they will fail to be stealthy.
This does not affect their speed.
Why / Balance
The thieving gloves in their current state are not fun at all to play against as crew since they require heads to either be always moving or staying out of interaction range or their items might be lost and most likely never found back due to the lack of any traces that are left behind.
This change means command has to worry much less about the person they are talking to trying to steal their things and makes heads much more likely to actually go and directly interact and roleplay with the crew due to them only having to keep their backs clear.
Thieving gloves will still be useful because they can still be used on a head that is focused on a task and does not notice you.
I can reduce the cost of thieving gloves if needed.
Technical details
Added a check before setting the stealth value of the before strip event that the difference between the user's direction relative to the target and the opposite of the target's visible direction is less than the defined maximum stealth angle.
This does not use Angle.EqualsApprox function because it just did not work.
Media
2024-11-04.00-39-40.mp4
Requirements
Breaking changes
Changelog
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