Ghosting and Suicide
Created by: nuklearcellphoneg
tl;dr version
Suiciding should be limited to certain items. It would be easier to suicide with a gun, low chance with a air bubble needle because that's horrifying, and biting your tongue off, if even still a thing, should have a very low chance and looooong cool down after attempting.
Ghosting should be reserved for people who are dead.
Instead of deathgasp, give everyone one statement per crit session and limit the characters(maybe on the 2nd part). .
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Normal free people could still very easily suicide and ghost if they want to. Plastic bags, needles, etc are plentiful or they can jump out an airlock.
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Nonantag greytide shitters wouldn't have access to suicide because of these limited items, when put in perma or jail- because of this, they can't suicide, ghost, then rejoin as a borer, borg, etc
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If above causes sec to perma over execute more often, antags will be perma'd more often making jailbreaks for feasible as long as you don't commit too extreme of a crime. This helps encourage riots, breaking out of perma, etc, Perma is not a perfect prison.
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It would cause people who are converted or kidnapped to have a more difficult time ghosting or suiciding. This would encourage salty converts to at least think about suiciding, especially if they have to attempt it multiple times and would prevent a kidnap victim from simply ghosting rerolling a secondary spawn(pai borg etc).
This causes a wide range of issues but I'll stick with the obvious and well known. Security arrests a greytiding shitter... or heck, an antag. They ghost. Or they suicide. Then they ghost. A lot of times people ghost when things don't go their way, and that can lead to admins and players at odds as well as divided on what to do- like if someone converts someone to rev/thrall/cult/greytide et al, and then they ghost, we have to punish them.
This does no one any favors and everyone loses out.
If you punish someone for ghosting after conversion, antags lose their convert, admin and the player is bitter, etc. and the player may be vaguely unaware of why this is bad, or blinded by salt because they 'lost'.
Rather, if you removed the ability to magically ghost or suicide while alive, this could be curbed. Consider the concept of using a game's design to teach a concept. In this case, since they can't simply suicide and ghost via quickly typing out a frustrating word, 'Well fuck I am might as well help them.'
Now as it is, you can get special suicide flavor text via having certain items in hand, right? Okay, so people would obviously be upset at losing the ability to suicide- relegate it to the aforementioned items being necessary to do so. This way, suicide is an option, but requires forethought and a smidgen of prep.
Oh, but you can suicide with needles, bags, guns, it will be easy for people to get these, right?
Set a probability for each item to be successful. A gun would be fairly easy to use to kill yourself- it's just a trigger pull, after all). Suffocating yourself with a bag? Low chance to work. Air bubble in a needle? That sounds like a spooky way to die.
So, back to the bit about jail. It's possible to escape from Perma. So, antags being put in Perma is a good thing- like if you arrest five cultists and put them in perma, they can totes do a prison riot. People can break in, they can break out yadda yadda, antag in general.
Consider the greytide: Not restricted to assistants necessarily, people who just muck about and break laws and eventually either get executed or perma'd, clown, mime, assistant, and so on. If they grey tide a bunch and get caught, whoopedy doo perma: suicide-ghost. However, if in perma they didn't have anything with which to kill themselves, they would either have to sit around, break out, or go do something else- something other than just roll respawn to be a borer, diona, xeno, wizard, borg, pai, y'know, whatever is available really.
Of course, if your average joe wanted to commit suicide and ghost, they could- if they got frustrated nibbling their tongue they could always leap out an airlock. But it would be a slightly more deliberate thing, and in some cases ghosting/suicide could be preventable- similarly, if someone kidnaps someone, they might ghost, and this would prevent that. Because, assuming someone doesn't outright kill someone else and have made an effort to stun and restrain them, they are actively restraining their ability to commit suicide.