As it is right now, sleep effects are quite possibly the most broken thing in this game, and do so in ways that are incredibly unfun and boring. Things like Nocturine and Nitrous Oxide are the undisputed best tools for accomplishing quite literally any antagonist goal. Kill objective? Just noct+hypopen the target, drag them into maints, and then do whatever to permakill them. Revolution? Just lure whoever you need dead into atmos, flood the room with Nitrous, and unless they're wearing internals for no reason, they're instantly asleep and basically dead.
There is no counterplay outside of metagaming, it actively makes the game less interesting and disincentivizes creativity on the user's part, and it makes syndie rounds boring as fuck for security. Things like agents going loud never happen because any option that isn't a sleep is just hilariously obsolete in comparison.
As for how this could be nerfed, that's simple: taking damage should wake you up and make you immune to sleep effects for a few seconds (most likely somewhere around 10 seconds). This would mean that sleep is only a temporary tool used to get a bit of time in order to acquire an advantage (such as stealing a weapon, running away, or moving their body). As well as this, I think a nerf to how quickly Nitrous puts people to sleep should go into affect, possibly giving the victim about 5 seconds before being slept while they get warnings that they're feeling a bit drowsy or something. As for noct+hypopen, I think it would be good if the hypopen had its time between injections reduced, which could make going loud worse, but would also allow for significantly more counterplay when used for its most boring use.
Overall, the current state of sleep is boring, uninteresting, and makes syndie rounds into a complete snoozefest (hehe) as security. Nerfing the completely overpowered state of what is currently the best syndie tool in the game would almost exclusively make the game better while also allowing for more creativity, more interesting gimmicks, and more fun rounds.
