Its just Dragging but Better.
I suggest making it only able to drag items, not whole constructions or bodies. Tail dragging is cool and all but can also be powergamed. I suggest it is set to low mass things only
How to become immortal
The Dragged locker now eats 90% of melee swings and projectiles.
Anything else is unlikely to get through your defense.
no hands object dragging is also a base feature in ss13 at least on the servers i’ve played.
Added space-station-14
Replace locker with a chair, put a monkey, rat or whatever and unlike locker your combat lizard deployable combat wagon is indestructible to anything but gibbing blunt/heat damage.
Keep a shield in hand while defending with tail should some nasty bastard decide to blow you up instead so you can’t crit instantly.
You can also use it to slip people either by throwing them and permanently stunning them on lube or simply drag banana peel or something stronger and if someone slips on it in melee they are as good as dead if there is nobody to save them, all without having to sacrifice a hand actions and bother with any item cooldowns other species would.
Lockers shouldn’t be impenetrable barriers in the first place. Like, this isn’t a problem with lizard tails.
Its issue with anything draggable that you can use to shield yourself from bullets, including things that you can’t move through UNLESS you drag.
Lockers and crates are yet another hellish can of worms especially secure variants with their damage resistances.
I remember one time I was an antag and was fighting Armok in cargo and they kept using secure crates like that and hiding in them. It was honestly pretty funny. I still killed them though in spite of that.
I’ve also seen Scraps, the most robust lizard on the Lizard server, use the locker trick exactly one time. They eventually just blasted through the locker and killed him though.
In practice the most powerful thing you can do with your tail is gib someone while you are dragging them with a bat. Borgs can do that too with their crowbar. That’s something you do after you’ve won a combat though, it isn’t something that actually wins combat. Like, there are other combat utility tricks you can do with your tail too, like dragging a duffle bag while you are invading the armory. Anyone can still just yoink that bag though. And you can yoink things players are dragging too away from them. It isn’t like there isn’t plenty of counterplay to anything a tail can do already.
With the new gun wielding change, this is even more insane. Lizards are now the only race able to effectivly drag something and shoot at the same time, unless its like a pistol or whatever.
To be honest im interested in seeing how this plays out in nukies, now that dragging the nuke is going to handicap one of them assuming they’re all using guns.
Lizards were already the “designated nuke dragger” in nukies. I don’t like the gun wielding change though, making every gun awkward like an L6 is not a good change and makes inventory management more cumbersome than it needs to be. I’m getting really tired of the only idea to balance things from people being to nerf everything into the ground. Its a very good way to make things miserable for everyone.
While tangential to this I believe these would kill the “locker shield” issue
Here’s how I would personally change tail dragging:
1: no more dragging anchorable objects with your tail like FungiFellow said (too much weight)
2: no dragging banana peels/soap (slips out of your tail cause no dexterity)
I think this could be good with some tuning, like still allowing you to pull items that are presumably wheeled (the nuke comes to mind)
Full support, please god merge it now.
You can literally just pick up soap and banana peels. They are free items to go in your inventory. If someone is having trouble with this, it is a major skill issue. They shouldn’t be able to be dragged while lubed though (Nothing should).
i’d like to see you try to grab soap/banana peel while managing a wielded gun while being shot at by a lizard who can wield the gun AND slip you
At the end of the day, you are going to be slipped while wielding those guns. That is definitely going to be the new meta because of wielding and unwielding being a little cumbersome, especially for new players who are more prone to being slipped and not understanding how to use the shift key to walk.
There is a feedback thread up about the wielding changes. I don’t think people should drop their guns while they are wielding them. Problem solved without assaulting lizards and making some weird whitelisting system for what tails can have and can’t.
even if you don’t drop your gun when it’s wielded you’re still stunned on the floor
Use the shift key. It will make you walk. Like, if they are in melee range of you, you can use the most powerful weapon in the game, the stun baton, and stun cuff them as a sec. Sec seriously need to learn how to use the shift key. Its a very powerful tool.
Surely I can calmly walk up to the Syndie Lizard Wielding a Bulldog with a Webvest and try to baton them :clueless:
I mean, if you are in melee range of someone with a bulldog, they are going to kill you before they manage to get the slip off. Shotguns are a pretty hard counter for the stun baton.
With the slips syndies get, they don’t (And really shouldn’t) tail drag anyways. Scraps killed me as an officer the other day by just placing a slip and switching to his lecter after while I was chasing him. If he had been tail dragging it, I would have been able to pick it up at least.
Lizards have several major disadvantages in game already. We can’t disguise ourselves, not even particularly well as other lizards, emergency EVA suits kill us faster than anyone, and we face extreme speciesism from the community that no other species faces to the same degree. Instead of ruining the cool thing about lizards, other species should be tuned to the point where they feel unique and in a good place. Slimes and Diona already have incredibly powerful abilities, but other species need them too.