[Alpha]Friendly Fire Mechanics

[Thrain]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
A toggle setting that will in some way reduce the damage to marines when turned off, but can be turned on if for whatever reason marines are the target of marines. I am thinking either reduce the chance of hitting a marine when friendly fire is off, or deal less damage to them if you do it.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
Because of I guess the large population of players the round often has a mild lag. I think this mechanic would help to counteract some of the lag caused problems without making it so that marines can wildly shoot everywhere and not have to worry about hitting their own people.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Under preferences have a button titled "friendly fire". It would start by default off. When the setting is set to off the probability that a bullet will hit a marine is reduced (or the chance of missing is increased, however the code works). There is still a good chance of hitting the marine, and every hit is just as lethal as it would be normally. The point of this is to reduce some of the damage friendly fire causes for marines (such as myself) who often deal with a bit of lag, and will find a marine has suddenly warped in front of them, or that they have moved forwards two or three tiles farther than they thought and run into the line of fire. Neither of these things are something that the player can directly resolve, and I think it would overall be helpful to help ease that problem.

EDIT - IC wise I would explain it as you seeing the marine in front of you, and doing your best to avoid shooting the person, but you can't guarantee that he wont be hit since he is in fact right in front of you.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
I'm not really sure, I've never looked at the damage mechanics for ss13 code. I know smartguns can identify friendlies and not deal damage to them, so I was hoping something in that code can be used to identify friendlies and only increase the miss chance for them instead.

[HalfdeadKiller]

Maybe have a base chance for all marines? Generally friendly fire is deadlier to marines than the actual aliens. And sometimes that fact is why marines lose. I don't know if deadly friendly fire in it's current form is a feature or a problem honestly.

[TopHatPenguin]

I'm gonna be neutral on this as i understand that FF can kill marines in a split second and can ruin rounds but at the end of the day that's what cm is about ( Besides the killing aliens bit) well maybe not shooting your fellow comrade but more about learning from your mistakes i.e

You shoot your SL on accident (not due to lag but just because you are focusing on getting that pesky alien kill) so anyway he/she gets pissed and is injured so you drag the SL to a medic and you go a kill some more aliens with him/her and overall have a better experience as you aren't focusing anymore on that one kill you are more orientated around helping others and etc.

( I'll probably look at this in the morning and be like " The hell did i write this for ?!?!" but i'll take that risk. )

[Thrain]

I do think that friendly fire is an important part of the game-play and should be kept. But because of lag mostly, and the fact that the game is entirely 2d, I think that there should be a way to try to minimize your damage to friendly forces. Not remove all friendly fire, never that, just a way to offset some of the damage that is caused during the lag generated by having so many players.

[Desolane900]

Smartguns avoid hitting Marines. Just use one of those if you suck that bad

[Thrain]

Smartguns avoid hitting Marines. Just use one of those if you suck that bad

I considered that, but that only resolves a portion of it. I still am liable to end up warping 2-3 tiles and finding myself in front of people who've run backwards suddenly or something else unexpected. Not only that I hate to take up a very limited position with someone who is normally sub-par combat wise.

[Derpislav]

Perhaps make it so when you click on an actual person, not just floor tile, the bullet will have a chance to miss the person you've clicked on while having a chance to hit someone that got in it's way? That would promote actually "aiming" than clicking like crazy in the very general direction called "heard something from that side".

[Kinrany]

Radical suggestion: remove friendly fire altogether when on help intent, make bullets pass through marines.
Currently FF feels just like an unavoidable nuisance.

[K0NFL1QT]

This already exists. If you aim at the chest, Marines armor will severely reduce the damage they take if friendly fire occurs. I don't know if head shots actually do any more damage to Aliens though, or if there's any reason to ever aim elsewhere than the chest.

[Steelpoint]

Its not guaranteed though, yesterday I got hit once in the chest with a bullet and I suffered a fracture that killed me not long after.

[Steelpoint]

I think armour needs a ballistic defence buff, in the past week ALL of my deaths have been from a single bullet fucking me over (usually involving fractures in my chest) and its just not acceptable that one or two bullets can essentially kill or knock a Marine out of a fight, especially where in many cases this means the Marine will die to the Aliens due to him kneeling over for them. Its just not fun when you die to friendly fire more than to the actual Aliens.

You can harp on about "just watch your fire" which is a shit argument considering Beyond being crappy and that close quarters combat is a mess to fight in. You can't expect Marines to be highly reserved when there's aliens two tiles from you at all times in a very cramped cave.

[apophis775]

Try not to hit people?