Should Micros be allowed to use guns?

[Aces]

This debate keeps coming up but I've never bothered to actually ask the community how they would feel about this.

Damage nerfs are not practical due to the way the code works. We're discussing these two options only.

Should Micros be banned from being able to use guns? Yes or no?

Arguments Favoring of Micros Not Having Guns

• Micros are imbalanced as fuck in combat already
• Micros are hard to see, which is why they are imbalanced
• Micros are hard to hit with the game's current mechanics

Arguments Against of Micros Not Having Guns

• Micros not being able to use guns isn't fair to micro players
• Micros not being able to use guns doesn't make sense to some people, especially with guns that have no recoil like lasers
• Micros are able to use other tools and weapons, why not also guns?

Arguments and counter-arguments will be added as I see them. This poll will run for a month.

We are NOT discussing alternatives yet. That is not the goal of this thread. Do not vote based on the promise that some alternative will pop up; we're not talking about those right now.

[Scree]

If a micro wants to shoot shit on a gateway expedition they can ask robotics for a mech.

[Demicus_Maximus]

If we make a gun small enough for a micro, how is it gonna hurt?

This has always been my beef with micros and macros. If you want to be two inches tall (or whatever) then bloody well play as being your size.

[jollytjerry11]

I don't think they should use guns for when situations go aggro, because then it very much isn't fair, they'd be able to make run around dodging hits, being barely visible at all. Plus it is also hard to shift click and identify them and see they are armed, so one could run through the station armed, no one would no, and start laying havoc on some unsuspecting person. Until the weapons they use are nerfed I don't think they should, possibly means of needing though, maybe slow them down when they are using weapons. Tool wise that is little threat to anyone at all but imagine if you had a micro running around with an automatic shotgun, they could wipe out an entire crew all on their own easy because of mechanics.

[Aces]

Nerfing the damage of projectiles just for micros is outright not practical and cannot be done effectively, so this is the only alternative.

[Lobo-Branco]

If we make a gun small enough for a micro, how is it gonna hurt?

This has always been my beef with micros and macros. If you want to be two inches tall (or whatever) then bloody well play as being your size.

I totally agree, but it seems that not all micros would be happy with this... I personally would love to feel squishy (tiny, duh) and move at a snails pace (tiny legs after all).
I've already suggested nerfing micros before, the idea was shot down on sight...

[Blackjack]

To be honest. Im in agreement with the micros not having guns due to them being severely OP in combat already. Could have one robust you with a tool box and run off and hide. 9 times out of 10 you wont fuckin see em comin or goin. So having guns for the little guys is like adding napalm to a already burning forest.

[Nightwing]

I'm afraid I can't vote in favour of preventing micros from having guns. This would be trying to fix a balance problem by reversing it. Micros without guns would be forced into close range, where they could easily be stepped on and stunlocked, as the stomp mechanics were designed to discourage running up and punching giants. If we removed guns, micros would be almost helpless in any PVP fight.

Likewise, in a player-vs-mob fight, micros would now be at a severe disadvantage. Unlike players, mobs don't have to try to see and then click a micro in combat in order to hit them. A mob hits a player by scanning each tile in a radius around itself, and if any of the tiles contain a player, they attack that player. If a micro can't use ranged weapons on a mob, then they're forced to enter close combat, where the mob can autohit them, while normal-sized crew stay at range.

TL;DR: Micros are unbalanced right now, but removing something as major as the ability to use ranged weapons would serve no purpose but to even more severely unbalance them in the opposite direction, now being harshly underpowered instead of overpowered.

[Aces]

Like I said in private, that's fine. That's the point of this thread. I'm not promising any alternatives until we know what they are.

That said, it would be foolish not to give alternatives, but right now, assume for your vote we aren't getting any just to be safe. The actual situation is more complicated than that and we'll probably have alternatives.

[Silhouette]

So, as I stated in Space Lobby to the displeasure of some, I feel like this is a solution that completely avoids the source of the problem: Micros are too small, graphically speaking. That's not a new complaint, either - back when I was running around as a micro on the station, I heard about all the supposed evils of microkind plenty enough, and most of it boiled down to the same thing

I'm looking through the replies thus far and I don't see anything that indicates that this isn't the case, either. Let's review:

Micros are imbalanced as fuck in combat already
Micros are hard to see, which is why they are imbalanced
Micros are hard to hit with the game's current mechanics

I'm presuming the first statement is beget from the other two, honestly, especially since every instance it has ever come up in has ultimately culminated in one or both of the other complaints. Further, both of these complaints are symptoms of micro's sprite size and targetable area rather than from the presence of guns in the equation.

To me, this seems like we're really reaching out for more problems rather than solving the underlying problem that has been with us all along. Why can't we just look into finding a more appropriate sprite size for micros, getting them away from their ~4px size instead of introducing more and more restrictions on players and characters? Especially slippery restrictions like this. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you guys have the best of intents, but if we ban guns, then what? People who abuse micros for fighting with an advantage will then use Toolboxes. So we ban them from using those. Then they use crowbars. So we ban them from using those, so on and so forth. And to make a point, I want to mention that when I was on the server, neither Silver nor Mus never used a gun, but I still got to hear about how micros were overpowered or unfair plenty of times, even though I thought I played Silver and Mus relatively appropriately in-character. If we're catering to that sentiment, but not addressing the actual issue of the sprite size, then I feel like we're just going to have this come up again, and again, honestly.

I get all the RP concerns about this issue, but let's not fool ourselves - self-restraint is a powerful thing in the hands of those who are truly concerned for the purity of their character's IC/RP value, and Self-Restraint can be turned on and off whenever it is appropriate and allows for more flexibility for roleplay scenarios. Hard rules and mechanics do not.

There are also other issues that this causes with the shifty landscape of balancing characters based on their size, but trying to fix that with these methods only causes that to become even more of a mess and provides no immediate relief to the underlying issue, much like Nightwing pointed out.