# Ballistics Proposal, Draft, 20 Aug 2022

## Abstract
This document describes a proposal to reintroduce ballistics to the crew beyond shotguns. Primary justifications include allowing players to more, but not too, easily access off station content (lavaland, space, gateways), and give players a side-grade to laser guns with a focus on sustained damage.

Limitations include keeping ballistics balanced versus existing weapons, ensuring that people cannot go 'one-man-army', keeping requirements for lines of supply and teamwork, and keeping some degree of lore justification.

The proposal is to add a new ammo and magazine type for the currently existing WT autorifle to meet the justifications and limitations. Overall, this proposal should make it easier to access PvE content after sufficent investment, while maintaining balance with other existing weapons such as thermal pistols and laser guns.

## Assumptions
The laser gun is used as a baseline lethal weapon.
- Stats go here

## Justifications
The first justification is to allow players to access off-station content more easily.
- As content such as gateways gets worked on, more difficult gateways may require players to be able to sustain longer fights against PvE enemies. Reloadable weapons would be of use here, as depending on the gateway map there might not be power to use rechargers with.
- The same applies to space ruins.
- It would also help recovery of persons on lavaland/icebox, where someone might get killed or be trapped near a group of fauna. Laser weapons have a damage malus (verify) against lavaland fauna making rescue and recovery more difficult. A ballistic weapon would help with this.

The second justification is that reworked crew ballistics could be a useful sidegrade while still not overshadowing laser guns or the new thermal pistols.
- By the nature of using magazines to reload, ballistics are easier to sustain in combat. The idea is to make this sustainability the main draw of ballistics to the detriment of burst & short term damage. A player can therefore make the choice between raw upfront damage, or sustainability depending on the needs of the situation or their play style.

The last justification is that ballistics are operator as fuck.
- They are, come on now.
- (This justification not meant to be taken seriously.)

## Limitations
The first limitation is to ensure that ease-of-access to off-station content requires significant investment.
- People shouldn't be able to, for example, casually order a dozen crates from cargo. Ballistics should be a significant investment to counter the ability to, for example, allow a single person to farm space ruins or the gateway without economic assistance from others or the station. Ballistics off-station should ideally be used for emergencies, such as the rescue of miners near fauna, or for group activities such as gateway exploration.

The second limitation is to prevent 'one-man-armies' against other players.
- Old ballistics were objectively overpowered, dealing 20 brute damage (similar to the laser gun's 20 burn damage) but being able to fire much more shots without needing to go back to a base of supply, such as Cargo or a lathe printing ammo, in contrast to the laser gun which needs a recharge after 12 shots.
- Armor-piercing ammunition would also neuter armor, again making weapons such as the laser gun irrelevant in comparison.

The third limitation is to rebalance crew ballistics such that weapons do not become independent of supply lines and logistics to the same degree as old crew ballistics
- While it should be easier to go without resupply for some time, a player using crew ballistics should still require a base of supply to recieve supplies from or retreat back to in the same manner that one recharges a energy weapon.

The fourth limitation is to keep crew-ballistics within the lore as much as possible
- The coderbus seems to be wanting to try and keep things in-lore as much as possible

## Proposal
The proposal is to add a new ammo and magazine type for the currently existing WT autorifle.

The ammo, fluffwise, will be under-pressure, hollow point, and more brittle. Crunchwise, means the ammo does lower damage and has a armor penetration malus, and has a more difficult time damaging structures such as windows. All of this means that against unarmored players victims still have a chance to get away. Armored players, be they ops, armored antags, or security, will be much more resistant to damage in contrast to damage from energy guns or thermal revolvers, but it will not be 100% negligible.

The magazine will be pinned to 10 bullets, 2 less than a fully charged laser gun. This means that more magazines, and therefore storage space, is required for longer operations or firefights.

The WT will still be used in order to make my job easier and for efficent code reuse. However it must be ordered from Cargo, and it should be significantly more expensive than other weapons

Lore wise, this could be justified. A bottom-line focused corp like Nanotrasen might still lean or at least make use of ballistics in order to keep costs down due to the preexisting and ubiquitous assembly lines producing ballistics lowering the price. Energy weapons in contrast might be (or be made to be) more expensive in comparison.

However due to the destructive potental of ballistics to stations and equipment (NT don't give a damn about the crew [dubious-discuss]) stations ordering autorifles face a NT-imposed markup as a measure to control proliferation. The cost for NT to purchase or assemble a rifle is low, it's the station that needs to pony up due to an artifical markup. NT might also want to encourage use of energy weapons for marketing reasons while still allowing ballistics for off-station exploration or emergencies.

The use of low-power brittle ammo is also used for the same reasons - this way stray bullets don't break windows and cause breaches into space, or break expensive machinery.