SHARP Resharpening: Design Improvements

[MPhonks]

About the pull request

This PR was split into #12748 and TBD.

This PR aims to fix the design flaws of the P9 Sonic Harpoon Artillery Remote Projectile (SHARP) Rifle. It replaces the different timers (2.5s, 5s, defaults to 2.5s) with three modes of mine operation: DANGER, DIRECTED, SAFE. The properties are as follows:

MODE	Description
DANGER	Similar to how mines and direct hits worked before.
DIRECTED	Detonations are now slightly stronger (explosive force of 90 instead of 60, incendiary reagent set to B-Gel instead of Phosphorus) and have much less radius. Direct hits are more devastating, less-so for neighboring tiles. Mines in this mode only trigger when directly stepped on.
SAFE	Detonations can never occur when an IFF-tagged mob is in the radius of the potential explosion. Direct hits simply fizzle out. Mines will disarm instead of triggering.

In addition:

• It is now possible for the mines to be rearmed with a multitool, returning their previous properties to them. This can only be done by the SHARP specialist.
• Clamped down mine explosions (3x3/5x5) and incendiary flames (3x3).

Explain why it's good for the game

As it stands right now, the SHARP contains fundamental design flaws. SHARP has been stamped off as a "xenoagent" role in the game which does more harm to the marine force than good. This PR does not aim to handhold the kit into becoming "the new meta", but rather addresses scenarios where the usage of the SHARP would be more helpful to aliens than to the marine force.

With DIRECTED mode, Xenomorph can no longer entirely ignore the timer of an explosion put on them, and can not turn the explosion against the marines as easily when they themselves are immune to the knockback. Similarly, due to the nature of explosions and the new B-Gel reagent used, T2 and T3 now have to very much react to the armor stripping effects of both explosions and incendiaries.

With SAFE mode, placing mines directly where marines walk and push becomes a reliable tool of both securing the backline and ensuring that marines do not suffer fatalities to the mines when pushed back. The mines refuse to detonate when anyone with IFF can be hurt by them, at the cost of potentially fizzling out when hitting xenomorphs directly, or missing out on kills from the potentially obtained stun they cause.

Testing Photographs and Procedure

Screenshots & Videos

Modes and explosives demonstration:

sharp_mode_demo.mov

Incendiary demonstration:

sharp_inc_demo.mov

Bullet demonstration:

sharp_bullet_demo.mov

Chain explosion demonstration:

sharp_chain_demo.mov

Changelog

🆑 MarpleJones
balance: resharpens the P9 sonic harpoon artillery remote projectile (SHARP) rifle
del: SHARP timer modes (5s, 2.5s) removed, default at 2.5s
add: adds SHARP mine modes, which are DANGER, DIRECTED and SAFE. DANGER mode works very similarly to how the rifle worked before. DIRECTED forces the mine to be more concentrated on a single spot. SAFE has greater IFF logic and prevents the mine from detonating when near friendlies.
add: you can now rearm SHARP mines as the SHARP specialist with a security access tuner (multitool), resetting them once they are disarmed either due to IFF or when their timer runs out.
add: adds a security access tuner to the specialist kit
qol: firemodes as a specialist ability, extended description for mine timers and modes, magazine autoejection
balance: small xenomorph no longer trigger sharp mines
/:cl:

[MPhonks]

think it... should be good to go! 👍

[Detective-Google]

hello sorry this was left so long

From the testing on the server, the main thoughts I was able to get was that the "safe mode" is a good addition that allows the spec to play in more of a chill low stress role like sniper and kinda makes it feel like a "safer" version of GL, which people find intimidating. That part was good

the directed/danger modes were kinda all over the place during testing and the damage and scaling was inconsistent, that part didn't really work, I feel.

My suggestion for going forward on this project would be to separate out the safe mode into it's own PR/remove all the non-safe mode stuff from this PR, get that merged in, then go for another try at rebalancing the damage modes for the weapon to feel better.