Ninja Improvement Ideas

[Miauw]

Ninjas are shit.

They're shit code-wise, they're shit gameplay-wise. That is a fact.
That's not the point of this thread.

Give ideas on how one could improve ninja.

[looping]

Nerf cloaking.
Give them a weak version of phase jaunt with a decent cooldown, that could replace whatever the power that allows telefragging is called.
Make it so that the battery drains really quickly when using powers and as such you need to be conservative.
Have them be actual ninjas, avoiding being seen, less murderboning.
Weaken combat abilities so that they're not really lethal, don't let a Ninja be a one man wizard deathsquad.
Bounty Hunting Objectives and Playstyle?

[Kelenius]

Here's a stupid idea I had for a while. Make them super-hackers instead of ninjas.

Remove all the shit they currently have, except suit with battery, stars and energy sword. Make stars a 'normal' weapon that stuns. Like energy gun, but shoots stars.

Give them ability to hack into airlocks and APCs. Takes a few seconds, after which it comes under ninja's hacker's control, not even AI can interface with it. He can operate hacked stuff on distance, much like an AI.

Remove instant AI subversion but allow them to hack cyborgs. Hacked cyborgs can use hacker's airlocks and APCs.

Make them able to hack other stuff. Dunno. Emag effects, cyborg all-access effects.

Make them able to launch delta once they hack enough APCs like malf AI okay, that's way too silly.

Code-wise, make them super-humans like changelings, not this stupid pieces of clothing with 10 verbs attached to each.

Something else for hacking. Dunno.

[Perakp]

I'm not sure if ninja gloves touch() is bad or not. It's like, every time you touch something adjacent without an item in your hand, touch() is called on your gloves and only does something if they are ninja gloves. Alternative would be checks in all the places where ninja gloves interact with items (apc, cables, servers, etc).

The other option would be a dedicated ninja touch bullshit proc on everything
which would probably more efficient, but ninjas are pretty rare.
This was mostly introduced to keep ninja code from contaminating other code;
with this in place it would be easier to untangle the rest of it.

[RG4]

Definitely make cloak disengage when you attempt to use any weapon of any sorts to basically prevent "Super death killer can't see homo!"
Cloak is similar to alien hunter's stalk ability, hard to see but not entirely invisible.
Telefragging is an INCREDIBILITY cheap tactic the ninja can use, I can cite an example where I was telefragged as a MALF AI because the ninja jaunted onto my tile, and I was actually winning too some how.
Consistent objectives no "KILL THIS GUY AND TAKE THIS DUDE'S BRAIN, BUT SAVE THE STATION!" those conflict with each other and is bound to make the ninja fail
Pirates vs Ninjas gamemode
"Good" ninjas get called Samurai and "Bad' ninjas are still ninjas.
Samurai get what you expect an armor that appears to look like a samurai while the ninja retains the same armor they had before.

[paprika]

Remove it.

[miggles]

Remove me.

[kosmos]

Are ninjas only admin-spawnable? Cos I've only seen a handful of ninjas during 2 years. Compared to them, xenos are very frequent.

Sounds like it's only a mild fun (because it's broken) for very very few guys (because it's so infrequent) AND if it's true what HG said that all humans check every tick if they're wearing a ninja mask, thus putting a load on performance, what are we waiting for? Remove that shit posthaste.

[Fatal]

Remove the auto aiming insta knock down ninja stars

Reduce the swords damage

That should go a long way to make them actually bearable in combat

[Steelpoint]

Several minor ideas I wish to put forward.

- Reduce Ninja's Sword to dealing 30 Brute per hit, currently it deals 70 Brute per hit.

- Remove the knockdown chance on the Sword, having a near 100% knock down chance is absurd.

- Ninja's Sword cannot cloak alongside the Ninja, so if you want to kill people while cloaked your sword will still be visible.

- Force the Ninja to move at the normal movement speeds, give the Ninja a special "Increased Movement" ability that draws from your power and disables cloaking. You can either run very fast, or cloak, but not both.

- Remove the Ninja Stars ability to auto seek targets, increase energy cost and make it a dumb fire ability.

- Introduce a very slow power recharge for the Ninja if its not using any abilities at all.

- Remove the Scouter Vision, its literally a ability that lets the Ninja kill off all the rounds antagonists. Give the Scouter ability to the admins and/or ghosted players.

- Double the cost to phase jaunt to a exact square, making it cost 40 or even 50 power instead of 20.

[RG4]

To expand my idea on non-station killing ninjas with completely protective objs.
Samurai (Good ninjas with non-murder objs and protecting the station's objs):
- Katana instead of an EMAG energy sword.
*Has a damage of around 20-40 brute, 30 seems like a good idea
*Can be held in two hands for increased damage
*Can block e-swords,ninja blades
*Cannot block lasers or stuns
*Potentially idea for magnetic grip(?), reduces greyshirts running up to the Samurai and taking his katana
*Ancient Power that prevents anyone but the Samurai from using his sword
- Armor stylized to fuck being a Space Samurai, give red and white I guess.
*Acts as a hard suit, reduced movement speed due it being armor and not a body suit.
*Users powercells like ninja armor,can upgrade the cells,maybe something like an energy relay so he doesn't sap the stations power(?)
*70% Brute res and 40-50% Burn res
*No scouter, the Samurai is a honorable man and never willing attacks an unaware enemy
*Built in NVGs or Thermals to offset his non-scouter
* Magnetic grip, this is designed so non-antag greyshirts or any non-antag can't disarm,kill, and strip the Samurai to get his armor/weapons, he is station defender a
leg up on that shit.
-Weapons
* Katana already outlined
* Energy bow, similar to an e-bow but has the appearance of ronin bow, fires non-lethal arrows that deliver an e-bow stun
* I dunno else could be added
-Objectives
* RP oriented jobs for fun and practicality.
* The Samurai is a special role, not antag so all his objectives would be on the level of keeping the station safe, helping sec out, capturing antags,so forth.
* Samurai's main enemy is the Ninja, they have an eternal blood feud, if there are Samurais and Ninjas in the same round expect an amazing duel between the two.
* His warrior code prevents him from harming the innocents but he can take down attackers non-lethaly and antagonist lethally. Allowing harm to come to anyone or killing
someone that isn't a threat will dishonor him. (Grey tiders are exempt from this.)

[miggles]

samurai should be immune to ninja throwing stars
so hes like a japanese van helsing except instead of vampires its ninjas

[RG4]

samurai should be immune to ninja throwing stars
so hes like a japanese van helsing except instead of vampires its ninjas

I guess, it would be helluva more fun considering you got a protag and an antag type deal going on between the two different dudes. Ninja can't take a samurai on in a head-on attack, while the Samurai can't rely on being sneaky to take down a Ninja.

[Munchlax]

Make them more stealth focused instead of demigodnoscope360 mode.

[iyaerP]

FORCE ninjas to be nonlethal to anyone other than their target by perma-jobbanning anyone who goes murderboner ninja

[Lo6a4evskiy]

FORCE ninjas to be nonlethal to anyone other than their target by perma-jobbanning anyone who goes murderboner ninja

That's kind of silly, makes little sense IC or OOC.

The problem is, stealth is not a viable option if you wear a suit that everybody can recognize. Ninjas could wait for hours to get their target, climb walls and use bags with air to stay underwater. It's not really all that fun. And there's no real stealth apart from darkness (very limited) and invisibility (kind of OP). I guess if you give ninja invisibility when it's not enough light, that could count for something. Some way to remove light sources that is not just smashing all lights. There's still not much you can do in terms of game mechanics. May be a blink from shadow to shadow if it's possible?

[Konork]

FORCE ninjas to be nonlethal to anyone other than their target by perma-jobbanning anyone who goes murderboner ninja

It MIGHT be better if we could make ninja weapons explicitly not do any damage against people that aren't targets of the ninja. No idea how it could be done without snowflake checks in the damage code, though.

[Psyentific]

Replace all instances of Ninja with Wizard. There, done.

[Kraso]

my god, this thread reeks of hugbox

[Munchlax]

do you even know what hugbox means

[paprika]

Cloaking should be more effective. Ninja stars less so. Cloaking should be the same as an alien hunter's cloak and have a much lesser power drain so ninjas can actually sanic stealth around and not have to kill people who try to valid lynch them.