New antagonist type: Saboteur

[FPK]

IC fluff, and a general overview of what saboteurs should be like:

Similar to traitors, saboteurs are Syndicate agents tasked with crippling Nanotrasen, but are on a lower rung than full blown Syndicate agents. Saboteurs are tasked with weakening NT from the inside through acts of terror and chaos, as to give the real agents an easier time with their objectives. Saboteurs are either on their way to becoming full fledged Syndicate agents, are being blackmailed into working for the Syndicate, or are brainwashed NT employees. Because saboteurs are considered far more expendable than the average Syndie (which really goes to show how little the Syndicate cares for these people's lives), saboteurs are given a lackluster selection of gear, given more risky (to themselves) objectives, and are frequently made into cannon fodder.

Saboteurs are given very little information as to who they're helping (assuming there even IS someone they're helping). Syndicate agents are given information about saboteurs in order to identify them: A name, a race, a job. Saboteurs are given nothing more but code words. While saboteurs are in the dark, agents may choose to reach out to them in order to gain an ally.

A saboteur's objectives are similar to a syndicate agent's, but with an emphasis on crippling the station. The Syndicate frequently tasks saboteurs with objectives similar to the following:

• Bomb a public area to seed chaos.
• Saboteurs are usually given a specific area to bomb: Department lobbies, the bar, in front of the bridge, brig cells, windows to space, ect. The extent of the bombing can be variable too: multiple minor bombings spread across the station, or a single major bombing in a specific location.
• Sabotage the station's power grid.
• A station without power is a station without hope. Saboteurs aren't expected to take down the entire power grid alone, but are instead tasked with dismantling or disabling parts of it. Cutting wires in maintenance, destroying APCs and SMES units, bombing solar arrays, sometimes even sabotaging the entire engine (but not releasing it! Remember, there could be other agents on board too).
• Hamper a department's work.
• Grinding the station's development to a halt will give agents more time before the crew can prepare tools to fight back. Preventing virology from releasing beneficial viruses (or curing said virus), stopping genetics from turning the crew into superheroes, stealing crates and ore from cargo, stealing the surgical tools from medbay, dismantling the R&D server, bombing robotics, burning medicine from medbay, killing botany's plants, breaking the chef's microwaves, freeing prisoners from the brig, spiking the cyrotube mix with toxins, welding departments shut, and so much more.
• And anything else the Syndicate wants them to do. Shut up and dance for us, monkey!

Actual mechanics of the saboteur role:

None of this is set in stone. This is just a WIP idea, please provide feedback.

Saboteurs will spawn during traitor, nukie, vampire, changeling, and wizard rounds.

Saboteurs should get some gear, depending on their objective. Most objectives can be fulfilled without traitor gear, but bombing objectives would work best with syndicate bombs and minibombs. I would like to avoid giving saboteurs items on round start, so that saboteurs will complete their objectives later in the round, and keep the tension up for longer into the round. Few ideas on how gear should work:

• A traitor or different saboteur has to unlock the saboteur's PDA, which starts off with less TC and a limited selection.
• The saboteur's PDA doesn't unlock until a certain point in the round.
• The saboteur has to find their items on the station, using their PDA to locate/reveal them.
• Saboteurs plain don't have traitor items. Not my first choice, but I don't want saboteurs to just be alt-traitor.

Saboteurs will affect the station by indirectly causing chaos. While antagonists get into fights with security, kill people, and steal important items, saboteurs will be tasked with hampering the station's efforts and causing trouble that antagonists are limited from doing.

 

This is something I've been toying around with in my head for awhile. It stems from multiple places, some of which I can actually point to! 

The point of adding saboteurs is to increase tension, promote teamwork between antagonists, hamper non-antagonists who think that it's their job to make antagonist's lives hell, and add to the feeling that the Syndicate really is a terrorist organization.

I would love to keep writing this, but I've got shit to do. I'll make another post explaining my justification later. For now, feedback is greatly appreciated.

[Enginseer-42]

I really like this idea, though bombing seems a bit much.

 

Perhaps as a contrast to traitors give them a storage implant with two items appropriate to their mission?

For example. One who's goal is to break traitors out of the brig could have a boxed space suit and suspicious toolbox.

[McRamon]

This could be interesting if it was side-antag character during not-cyndi rounds.

For example:

"Cyndicate has a relaible information about cult activity onboard this station. Your mission is to gather XYZ cult artefacts, and not get yourself converted. Cult success doesnt matter." Or "changling activity. Gather changling brain/dna/whatever mechanically possible"

[FPK]

Alright, lets call this part one of my reasoning for saboteurs, or at least the saboteur objectives. I'll be going over how these objectives will increase tension.

First of all, what makes a round of SS13 tense or suspenseful? From personal experience with the game, I know that actively hostile threats that directly affect me make me feel anxious. During shadowling rounds, the atmosphere in surgery is tense, because of its close proximity to maintenance and its critical importance in the game mode. Being so close to maintenance, many patients and doctors keep a watchful eye on the south wall, expecting shadowling thralls to burst through at any second. Security almost always has an officer or two posted at the doors, to make sure no thralls escape surgery and to protect the doctors. This is the kind of atmosphere we're looking for on Paradise, one of suspense and paranoia, where mechanical play and roleplaying can meet to create memorable experiences. 

Cultists, shadowlings, revolutionaries, and abductors all create an atmosphere of tension. Their presence can be felt across the entire station. No location is secure from assault, no players are out of their grasp. They keep the station on its toes, which makes combating them all the more satisfying (when they're balanced of course, but lets not get into that). The feeling that nowhere and no one is safe is one that we should strive to encourage on Paradise. However, only the few antagonists that I've listed give this feeling.

Why don't traitors make people anxious? Traitors are the classic SS13 antagonist, yet it seems like we've nerfed the ability for them to strike terror into the heart of the station, unless they have an objective that lets them rampage in the hallways. For the most part, traitors combat security while actively avoiding the crew, with the exception of kill objectives and people they need to steal from. For a station population of even 60 players, this affects very few people. With 120 players, the traitors might as well be some distant enemy across the ocean, for most of the crew. The sabotage objectives I've listed above seek to fix the lack of tension that traitors bring to the table. 

What's says "terrorist organization" more directly than an antagonist tasked with bombing the station? The purpose of the bombing objectives is to bring antagonistic chaos to the masses. Bombs are fairly underutilized on Paradise, with antagonists being limited in where they can bomb, and for what purpose. However, bombings (with an emphasis on the plural) increase tension in a way that no other method can. Bombings create environmental hazards, cause direct harm to players caught in the blast, and disable parts of the station. Forcing players to navigate around a breach, or to acquire space-worthy gear, adds to the feeling that the station really is a metal deathtrap in space.

Cutting off the station's power gives depth to a system that normally goes untouched, with the exception of engine releases or power sinks. Once solars has been set up, the only that that could possibly undo it is a meteor shower, or some catastrophic event that overshadows the loss of solars. Cutting wires to departments like medical or science would force engineers to actually go into maintenance to preform maintenance, as well as hampering departments that are only hampered through their own incompetence or lack of cooperation. The power grid in general just goes untouched for a majority of rounds, eliminating the need for back-up power, additonal SMES units, or all that extra wire we just have laying around.

Hampering a department's work through sabotage again brings an active threat to places where there wasn't one before. Several departments can "finish" their work by locking themselves off from the rest of the station, never leaving unless it's to gather supplies or to reveal their finished products. These departments are safe place, with no natural antagonistic behavior to pose a threat. Virology, botany, genetics, RnD, chemistry, scichem, mining (to a lesser extent), cargo, all of these departments can do their jobs without worrying about external or internal threats. When these departments are allowed to do their jobs without interruption, it causes an imbalance in the level of chaos vs order on the station. As I've said before, SS13 is a game about entropy. These departments can produce products or provide services that greatly increase the level of order on station, making inherently chaotic beings like antagonists have an even harder time than before. Sabotaging these department's efforts will go a long ways in bringing the game back to it's roots of tension and paranoia.