New syndie derringer, .38 dart & EMP bullets. Nerfs .38 specialty ammos.

[VickiMorris]

About The Pull Request

This adds an additional firearm to the Syndicate uplink, the 'Infiltrator' Coat Pistol, a double-barreled derringer chambered in .38-special (The best cartridge in existence) and available for 4 TC (loaded with Match ammo, with an additional speedloader. 2 + 6 shots for your purchase). It is small in size, has "60%" volume per shot (compared to the Stechkin at 80), cannot be silenced, and can be quickloaded using .38 speedloaders.

In addition to this, new .38 "Blisterpack" rounds have been added as a smaller equivalent to 12ga dart slugs. They hold 10 units each (compared to 30u), deal only 4 brute on hit (compared to 6 brute), and similarly do not have any piercing capabilities.

Now introducing .38 "BLK_OUT" rounds, a low damage specialized round that functions as a localized ranged EMP; weaker than most other Syndie EMP gear (Grenades & Implant), and not as stealthy (Flashlight), but allowing ranged applications similar to the ion rifle/carbine.

Four SIX ammo purchases are available in the uplink alongside the Coat Pistol; standard, Iceblox, Hot Shot, Blister, BLK_OUT, and Dumdum are all available for 1 TC each (6 shots on a ready-to-use speed loader.)

---

After discussing and reviewing the .38 ammo types available, the damage of Iceblox and Hot Shot rounds has been reduced, and the effect of Hot Shot rounds are heavily reduced. Iceblox still reduces the victim's temperature by 100 degrees, but deals 15 instead of 20 damage. Hot Shot now deals 12 instead of 20 damage, and only applies 2 fire stacks instead of 6 as the later is enough to husk with a single shot.

Why It's Good For The Game

This adds a cheaper "hold-out" style sidearm with a relatively easy to acquire ammo type on the station. The sheer variety of ammo available for the Detective's revolver gives it a lot of utility as a DoT or CC weapon, and having various types of bouncing ammunition can reward the user with landing trickshots. The tweaks to Iceblox and Hot Shot preserve their special qualities while not making them a straight upgrade to standard .38 bullets.

This also fixes embedding/shrapnel with any projectiles that utilize it, as there was no code that made use of projectile shrapnel actively. Any shrapnel type objects will also be deleted upon removal to prevent someone from throwing a loose bullet/frag grenade shard and having it embed as if it were fired from a gun. If this weapon/other changes are not wanted, I will happily move this fix onto its own PR so it isn't a forced bundle.

This has since been moved to a different PR, to not spread this one too thin --> #9820

Testing Photographs and Procedure

Screenshots&Videos

Coat.Pistol.mp4

BLK_OUT.Rounds.mp4

latest revision of Derringer spread, sound, and other tweaks shown in below video (12 MB, didn't want to upload to github). Used alongside Stechkin and Revolver to show comparable sound, damage, and spread while wielded and unwielded. Note, this video does not have the latest upsteam PRs, so Dumdum rounds do not embed in this video as they would in game.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1096069498529915012/1153306763483947018/Derringer_Compilation.mp4

Changelog

🆑Impish_Delights
add: Syndicate Coat Pistol; Cheap Sidearm w/ lots of utility focused ammo
add: Coat Pistol, .38 standard, DumDum, HotShot, Iceblox, Blister, and BLK_OUT ammo available in Syndie uplink
add: .38 Blister rounds; 10u dart projectiles, similar to shotgun dart rounds
add: .38 BLK_OUT rounds; low damage localized EMP rounds
imageadd: Added sprite for Coat Pistol & .38 Blister rounds
balance: Iceblox .38 deal less damage (20 -> 15)
balance: Hot Shot .38 deal less damage (20 -> 12) and less fire stacks (6 -> 2)
add: Adds 'Wild Spread' and 'Wild Factor' variables to guns, allows 'minimum' recoil to be set
add: Enables 'Wild Spread' on Coat Pistol only, all other guns unaffected
/:cl:

[Fronsis]

Hmm how many shots does it take to take down a regular officer, a hos and someone with bulletproof armor?

Also does this affect the hot-cold shots from the det damage wise?

[VickiMorris]

Hmm how many shots does it take to take down a regular officer, a hos and someone with bulletproof armor?

Also does this affect the hot-cold shots from the det damage wise?

For the HoS and Officer, they both took 18 damage per shot (standard/match .38) when targeting both the chest, and head (assuming default round-start armor) which is 6 shots to crit. A bullet proof vest lowers this damage to 10 per shot (chest only), requiring 10 shots to crit. This is identical to what it would be with the Detective's revolver.

Hot Shot will now do 12 brute base (originally 20), followed by 90 burn (originally enough to HUSK PEOPLE) if they're allowed to burn for the entirety of the duration. This is still enough to crit in a single shot as opposed to husking with a single shot, if not extinguished.

Iceblox will deal 15 brute base (originally 20), followed by 4 burn. Keep in mind, this drops the victim's body temperature to around -100, allowing you to land follow-up shots easier and prevent fleeing.

[VickiMorris]

I am stuck in hell, bullets only embed in your chest, no matter where you're shot

[VickiMorris]

Hot Shot will now do 12 brute base (originally 20), followed by 90 burn (originally enough to HUSK PEOPLE) if they're allowed to burn for the entirety of the duration. This is still enough to crit in a single shot as opposed to husking with a single shot, if not extinguished.

I was curious how much damage is actually done by 6 fire stacks if left to burn for the entirety of the duration and it's bad; from ignition to extinguish is ~380 burn damage, finalizing on 388 after returning to normal body temperature (assuming no armor, in a room temperature space station, while standing still).

[Fronsis]

I believe it would be cool if the empty casing/shrapnel would be able to fall from the body, it helps with evidence, i'm still a little worried the different ammo types would end up surpassing the .357 and 10mm in terms of meta, even if it's 2 bullets

Do they still retain the spread from having one item on the other hand (as showcased in the testing evidence it doesn't seem to have too much spread) or you tweaked the spread values?

Also this is very nitpicky but could you maybe re-size the speedloader to be a little smaller so it ''matches'' the derringer size and it looks a lil different from det/.357?

[VickiMorris]

I am planning on moving the shrapnel/embedding code changes to a second PR, as it is more a separate bug-fix that should be implemented even if these other additions aren't wanted, but I could see about having the shrapnel lose the ability to embed after falling out of the person/being removed. That's the main reason to have it be deleted after removal, so you can't throw bullets into people.

I have tweaked the spread since that first video (which was a proof to show it working/in the shop), as seen below. The Derringer has a base spread of 20 (0 to 20 degrees) while wielded, and 40 when 1-handed. The Stechkin is 0 while wielded and 40 when 1-handed. I may bump this up further to 30 base spread, 50 one-handed spread; 60 is the spread for any "Medium Weight" gun, such as energy guns (laser guns have spread equivalent to the Stechkin while one-handed, for some reason)

(On a different topic of balance, the fact that spread gives the shot a chance to still be perfectly accurate is absurd, I feel there should be a floor based off the ceiling value, but that's not here nor there.)

Pistol.Spread.mp4

I could make special 2-bullet speedloaders for the Derringer to use, but this runs into a problem with how guns with internal magazines function (i.e. derringers, revolvers, and shotguns). The "speedloader" has no special functions and is identical to the 10mm boxes of ammo that can be printed from the lathe and used to instantly fill Stechkin clips. For the Derringer and Revolvers, because they have an internal magazine, it refills that instantly instead. I could write special code that has the Derringer refuse to load ammo from ammo boxes/speedloaders if that's preferred/wanted. (I presume this is also why there are not shotgun ammo boxes, as auto-loading a shotgun sounds monstrous.)

[VickiMorris]

Minimum spread test on the derringer, at 25% of maximum spread. After re-reading how spread is calculated, this does not change based off of handedness as that is calculated separately then added to gun spread.

Minimum.Spread.mp4

[VickiMorris]

Playing around with a very high minimum spread (~75%) has been very fruitful in balancing one-handed and two-handed differences in spread. With how spread is calculated (the final amount of spread is then multiplied by the dual_wield modifier and a random number from -0.5 to 0.5), this still can result in very low spread, but is much less likely.

Min.Spread.10.Wild.75.mp4

The example above is a test with 10 base spread, 40 unwielded spread, and a 75% minimum spread. The latest values (in current commit) are with 18 base spread, 48 unwielded spread, and a 70% minimum spread.

[PowerfulBacon]

As a difficult to code but potentially cool suggestion, being able to hide this inside a suit or something so you can sneak it into prison with you would be cool. Of course this is only a suggestion and doesn't need to be completed before merging as it may need us to make the suit attachment thing a component.

[VickiMorris]

I was debating on making a special set of plain black gloves that can store it, akin to a wrist sling or something. If I wanted to make it attachable to a jumpsuit, I could see about poking around with accessory code and if it's possible to make it not display on examine text.

[VickiMorris]

Damage as it stands for ammo types across the board, compared to an unarmored assistant, a security officer, and a seccie wearing a bulletproof vest. This assumes the shot was taken to the chest.

Standard / Match: 25 / 18 / 10
Rubber: 10 / 6 / 3
TRAC: 10 / 7 / 4
DumDum: 15 / 9 / 5 (No Embed)
Iceblox: 15 + 4 Burn / 11 + 4 / 6 + 1 (Effect Mitigated by Armor)
Hot Shot: 12 / 8 / 5 | + 6 Burn (~4 seconds of Burning)
Blister: 4 + Injection / 3 / 2
BLK_OUT: 8 / 6 / 3
BLK_OUT (IPC): 12 Brute, 60 Burn, 15 Toxin, Organ Damage (Heavy EMP Effect)
BLK_OUT (IPC AoE): 10 Brute, 30 Burn, 5 Toxin, Organ Damage (Light EMP Effect)

[VickiMorris]

Why is it runtiming AHHHHH (I will look at this when I'm back home)

[PowerfulBacon]

Not sure why the test was failing

[PowerfulBacon]

If you are ready for a merge, I will merge it. If you wan't to add more things then let me know

[VickiMorris]

Should be good to merge, I'll look into attachment as a component on a later PR and I don't wanna scope creep this any further. The accessory slot idea came up a bit fruitless in my poking around.