One single mechanic causes most of the balancing problems in HVH - the Adrenaline grace period.

General Discussion
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TL;DR: The adrenaline grace period creates a situation where both players end up dead, even if one of them clearly got the upper hand in the fight. It undermines the idea that a lethal shot should give the shooter a decisive victory in a firefight.

This weird mechanic is the root cause of a lot of the awkward, clunky balance issues we see in these rounds.

So, if you’re not familiar, when you take a huge amount of damage all at once that would normally kill you, such as perhaps being magdumped by a rifle, or being shot at point-blank range by a shotgun, instead of dying immediately, you get this little grace period that lasts for about 1-2 seconds where you’re still technically alive before you just fall over dead. This is meant to represent the last moments where a human might cling to life for a few more seconds before they finally expire. The problem is that in HvH, this mechanic means that even if you win a 1v1 fight, you’re probably going to die too. Realistically, this means that both combatants almost always kill each other,

It just feels ridiculous. It’s like, oh, you took a full shotgun blast to the face? No problem, you’ve got a few seconds to keep fighting before you actually drop dead.

I think that this grace period is supposed to add tension and give you a chance to get to safety if you’re mortally wounded, but it doesn’t work like that in HvH at all. When two people go head-to-head, the only thing it does is ensure both players end up dead. It completely ruins any sense of skillful engagement. You could win a fight fair and square, but because of this mechanic, you still end up face-down on the ground right next to the guy you just shot. It doesn’t reward good aim, positioning, or tactics—just some weird limbo state where you get to drag the other person down with you.

Let’s talk about the impact on gameplay. You can’t even use close-range weapons or point-blank tactics properly because you know that, no matter how perfectly you execute it, the enemy is still going to have those few precious seconds to pump you full of bullets before they keel over. It’s just not satisfying at all. You can’t win a fight with skill or positioning if the game is always going to give the other guy a free second or two to kill you back before dying.

I get that there’s some logic behind this mechanic, it works in HvX, but it’s making HVH combat feel off. It’s not rewarding good plays, it’s not allowing for clutch moments where one person barely comes out on top, and it’s just making every firefight feel like a Loose-Loose situation where no one really wins.

Honestly, if it was toned down or even removed entirely for HvH, I think we’d see a lot more strategic gameplay. People would actually focus on outmaneuvering their opponents, taking advantage of cover and squad play instead of just charging in because they know they can drag their enemy down with them if they die. Right now, it’s just a chaotic mess where even if you play perfectly, you still have a 50/50 chance of ending up dead because of this mechanic.

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I think it should be based on the damage your receive. For example if you barely crossed the damage threshold to death I think it’s fine. If you however nearly got your head blown off I think instant death.

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this isnt actually an ‘intentional’ martyrdom type thing it’s a side effect of how byond works, effectively, every 1 second and change the Life() proc ticks on all living things, and this is when the game realizes you’re over the damage threshold and you die, this is also why its not consistent, sometimes it’s instant sometimes its almost 2 seconds, it just depends on where the damage lands relative to the ticks.

It’s theoretically possible to code this out of the game but imo not worth the effort for HvH being such a niche mode.

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CM is the only server where this happens, this isn’t a thing on any other SS13 server I’ve played.

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Yeah cause the base framework for CM is bay code, the worst most unoptimized piece of shit SS13 code in existence.

Not my words, words of a few coders I interacted with back when I still contributed to /tg/ and TGMC respectively.

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This is the answer. Its inherent with the game code.

You can notice the same thing with humans but its a bit harder since xenos don’t generally output as high damage as humans do when killing them. But sometimes if you see xenos dogpile someone then the human might take a LOT more damage before dying than normal, that’s due to the code issue as noted.

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The delay is now intentional, afaik there was a test where insta-death/crit was tested where instead of waiting for the next game tick (~2 seconds), it would kill/crit you instantly if you met the requirements, this was tried for both marines and xenos and was disliked.

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That would mean its not nececarily hard to add as a “toggle” for HvH. Same as with all the other modifiers we have on it already.

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Wait its intentional now?

Should be removed, but then it would expose a lot of issues of balancing on xeno side, since ive lost a LOT of xeno kills as a marine because of the grace period letting them escape behind a resin door / cover to get help from a fellow xeno instead of insta critting then being focus fired.

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This is also caused by warding pheros btw

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I have never seen warding pheremones up when this phenomenon happens, so that is not the case.

I say this as someone who occasionally dabbles in xeno gameplay (then rage quits and stops playing it for a bit when I realize a marine can die 5 times and only needs to crit me once to kill me then I cannot respawn for hours if not the ENTIRE game).

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warding pheros adds an EXTRA grace period on top of the preexisting grace period.

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