Double Agent: Something's Gotta Give

[Cheridan]

According to polls, Double Agent is considered by some degree to be the worst game mode (though this was probably before i added monkey :^) ). While it was conceived as a The Ship-style mode where each hunter is being hunted by another in a rotation, in action it has always boiled down to IF I BLOW UP THE ENTIRE STATION, THEN I WILL PROBABLY GET MY TARGET TOO! The mode simply has too many antags for the station to support them. Basically, they need their claws filed down, and there are only a couple real ways to do this:

Codewise: Nerf Everything.
Just like how syndicate bombs were removed from DA for making every DA round a 5 minute shitfest, we go the next step and remove other high-power items from the mode, especially WMDs like singularity beacons and powersinks.

An argument could be made for removing all aggressive/weapon tools, which would leave utility devices like emags, camera bugs, chameleon jumpsuits. Agents would have to be more cunning than clicking a couple times with a gun.

This is probably the most obvious solution but after thinking about it a bit, I'm not too fond of it, because I think those choices should still be available to an agent if the situation calls for it.
also tears flow anytime people perceive something as a 'nerf' but that's a secondary consideration tbh

Codewise + Policywise: Objective limitations
All Double Agents get another objective, to Minimize Civilian Casualties. After all, DAs are on the station to eliminate one target, not to rampage with a dual-esword like a lunatic.
This would be an RP objective which would default to Success, but admins could toggle it to Failed if they feel that Agent has exceeded his boundaries.
For example, an agent shooting one crewmember who saw him hiding his target's body in order to maintain his cover would be acceptable.
An agent using a bomb against the AI who is tracking him would be fine, using the same bomb to blow up the bar or a main hallway would be a fail.
An agent hacking the AI to kill his target is fine, having the AI incinerate every room on the station would be a fail.

This would have the benefit of allowing all the tools to remain available. However, it requires admins to actually flick it off if someone is murderboning. This has been an issue with Ninja objectives, although those default to Failed, are more retarded like "lol force the lawyer to cooperate w/ u", and half the time as an admin I won't even notice that a ninja was spawned. If it's not enforced, then I expect it to have little effect.
Of course, it also requires the blessing of the admins. If they don't want to enforce this, then I guess Option A wins by default.

[Ikarrus]

I don't think the objective is ever going to work. Just look at how successful it's been with ninjas. Especially if admins have to manually toggle it (Not like it will stop players who murderboner regardless of objectives)

That said, removing all WMDs and bombs are definitely a must. Removing all aggressive items sounds interesting, too. I'd be up for a test run of that just to see how it plays out.

[Konork]

Nerfing everything sounds like the better option, but it may also just be that Double Agent just won't work well with our playerbase as it is. I don't think most people who go on murderboners do so to be able to easily accomplish their objectives, they do it because they're allowed to, like traitors who have to steal . Any policy changes would require restricting antag actions to have an effect, and there's no way most of the players are going to willingly take that.

[Arete]

This could be done alongside removing some items, I suppose, but how about adjusting telecrystal costs to encourage stealthier behavior? Loud items cost more, quiet items cost less. Maybe even add some new high-power stealth-type items so that when people get DA, they want to take the opportunity to play with them.

Or, for a completely different type of solution, how about making double agents start with fewer telecrystals, but generate telecrystals over the course of the round? I think this would be better for DA than for any other mode, because double agents won't just be sitting on their thumbs until they get enough telecrystals - rather, they'll have incentive to strike early and try risky things in order to take down their target before he generates enough telecrystals to enact his own plans.

[Reimoo]

Nerf everything is really the only sensible option. Anything that isn't a weapon/tool designed to target a single victim should be removed.

Granted, that means probably every DA will go esword+ebow as a result, but that's another issue entirely. We have been in need of some more creative weapons added to the uplink for quite some time.

[Scott]

This has been my opinion for awhile: make DA purely stealth or remove DA. Bombing and mass killing has no place in a game mode that tells you to kill other antags. If every DA decides to go on a rampage then nobody is having fun, since there are a lot of them.

Or, for a completely different type of solution, how about making double agents start with fewer telecrystals.

I like this idea, but I still think the weapons need to go, or as you said, cost a lot more so they can't be bought easily. A new item suggestion for DA is a device that lets you unlock other agents uplinks.

Regarding the poll options, what exactly is a High Power item? I don't want to vote for removing all aggressive items, because I think DAs should be able to buy the revolver or/and the stechkin pistol to actually make their kill instead of relying on makeshift weaponry.

[Zsword]

I like the idea of removing most High Lethality items to DA, making it more based on subterfuge and 'just the right moment' shinaniganry. (Although I"m a person who thinks the Ebow just needs to be removed from the game period. It's an insanely effective I-win button, like any other stun item, except it's nigh on invisible.) Sadly, though, the Server just doesn't have the kind of people that would appreciate the Chef/bartender and a botanist/chemist working together to poison their respective targets. The only time I've EVER had someone respond to my code phrases or use them was a 'trade items' traitor round, and dear lord the guy had no idea what he was doing with them. The game has a lot of potential for very interesting 'who dunnit' type murders, but sadly Murder Boning is SOOO Rampant in the fan base it's just, depressing and uninteresting.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

I'm not sure why is it even here. What's the idea behind the objective? How does letting people know that their target is also a traitor make it more interesting? It's just silly.

[bandit]

Another option: Add a Protect objective. This could either be another DA or a civilian. It discourages mass bombing/sabotage because the more you fuck the station up, the less likely your buddy is to survive, especially if they're a civilian. It also fits the Double Agent theme, if you think about it.

If you want things to get reeeaaaalllly fun and spy vs. spy and whatever, your protect objective can also have you as his target.

[Kuraudo]

Another option: Add a Protect objective. This could either be another DA or a civilian. It discourages mass bombing/sabotage because the more you fuck the station up, the less likely your buddy is to survive, especially if they're a civilian. It also fits the Double Agent theme, if you think about it.

If you want things to get reeeaaaalllly fun and spy vs. spy and whatever, your protect objective can also have you as his target.

This.
And stop talking about nerfing shit. It seems like that's the only update/coding topic nowadays.

[Cheridan]

Protect objective is an interesting idea, but I feel it might detract from the cyclic-targeting feature of DA that's supposed to be the core of the mode.

And stop talking about nerfing shit. It seems like that's the only update/coding topic nowadays.

i wish i could nerf your tears

[Incomptinence]

DA is pretty stable about one in five DAs crawls to the top of the corpse pile. The mass destruction weapons are poor choices anyway but removing all traitor weapons just encourages mundane mass destruction. There are still varieties of explosive and fire to use, and the more conventional will just raid the armoury or duel with stun prods. This just exacerbates the traitor but worse issue DA has.

Making DAs have their hands tied to only kill their target or witnesses is an absolutely terrible idea since they are already someone's target and will assume any other DA they encounter is the one out for them (I have tried being legit friendly). The entire round is geared to make them extremely paranoid and violent. The DA has an excellent reason to kill many civilians, one of them is 100% certain out to get them.

We can't have a pure spy vs spy mode because of the crew, even if you do make it work between the antagonists everyone else gets extended except for the absolute worst valid hunters who receive a most delectable and hesitant prey item.

Abstain voting because all the vote options are just ways to make a bad round type worse and a "No" option is too harsh apparently. Traitor derivatives are stupid anyway, better to remove or revamp it to the point of barely being related, like modern nuke.

[Cheridan]

Making DAs have their hands tied to only kill their target or witnesses is an absolutely terrible idea since they are already someone's target and will assume any other DA they encounter is the one out for them (I have tried being legit friendly). The entire round is geared to make them extremely paranoid and violent. The DA has an excellent reason to kill many civilians, one of them is 100% certain out to get them. We can't have a pure spy vs spy mode because of the crew, even if you do make it work everyone gets extended except for the absolute worst valid hunters who receive a most delectable and hesitant prey item.

Abstain voting because all the vote options are just ways to make a bad round type worse and a "No" option is too harsh apparently. Traitor derivatives are stupid anyway, better to remove or revamp it to the point of barely being related, like modern nuke.

Read "Minimize Civilian Casualties" as "Don't Murderbone Everyone". If you honestly think someone is trying to take you out, go ahead and shoot them. There has to be some restraint though. The game just can't support a mode where there's a greater-than-usual amount of traitors and all those traitors are trying to blow up the entire station, instead of trying to steal the captain's panties.

There's no status quo option because it's agreed that the mode isn't good in its current state, so inactivity isn't an option.


Anyway, I've thought about the Protect objective idea some.
If there's, say
Traitor A, B , C , D.

A has objective to kill B, B -> C, C -> D, D -> A
Let's say D gets objective to protect B, B protects D, C protects A, A protects C. They all have to protect another agent who isn't aware of their activity, the agent chosen being chosen in a circular fashion similar to the assassination target, but skipping ahead one. The dynamic would change a lot, agents would be teaming up in pairs often. There's danger to it though, since whoever is hunting you could just walk up to you, say the codewords, and claim he's on your side.

Sounds neat.
I guess if there's only 2 or 3 DAs then the protect rotation won't work, in that scenario random protects could be assigned.

[Amelius]

DA is pretty stable about one in five DAs crawls to the top of the corpse pile. The mass destruction weapons are poor choices anyway but removing all traitor weapons just encourages mundane mass destruction. There are still varieties of explosive and fire to use, and the more conventional will just raid the armoury or duel with stun prods. This just exacerbates the traitor but worse issue DA has.

Making DAs have their hands tied to only kill their target or witnesses is an absolutely terrible idea since they are already someone's target and will assume any other DA they encounter is the one out for them (I have tried being legit friendly). The entire round is geared to make them extremely paranoid and violent. The DA has an excellent reason to kill many civilians, one of them is 100% certain out to get them.

We can't have a pure spy vs spy mode because of the crew, even if you do make it work between the antagonists everyone else gets extended except for the absolute worst valid hunters who receive a most delectable and hesitant prey item.

Abstain voting because all the vote options are just ways to make a bad round type worse and a "No" option is too harsh apparently. Traitor derivatives are stupid anyway, better to remove or revamp it to the point of barely being related, like modern nuke.

This. As-is, DA is fast, explosive, and murderbone-heavy. /tg/ is a light RP server, not full-on like Bay, and so it's always been server policy that non team-based antagonists can do almost anything they want. There's no reason to change that - if the server base wants to murderbone, as a whole with the tools they receive, then either you can remove the fanbase, or improve and incentivize usage of the tools you want them to use. Add more unique, job-specific non-obvious DA-exclusive items. Remove the powersink and beacon from DA. Add those fancy mind-slave implants that Goon has, so that DAs can enslave normal crewmembers. Turn it into Highlander: spy edition, and make every DA start with the name of a single other DA. Tone down the number of DAs. Essentially, turn DA into the Goon Spy mode.

If you try to tie antags hands with rules and regulations, then either they will go unenforced, or most of the crew will be unengaged in the round. Both are shitty choices.

Also, I believe upping the crystal count for DA only, should only be done solely to reusable weapons, like eswords. Decrease the cost of sketchkins to 2-3 TC (they're unbelieveably ineffective for their cost in their current state, and have difficult-to-replace ammunition).

[Jalleo]

Just make double agents the actual sub type of actual antags which are targeting the actual traitors. They should be a sub proantaginist of the traitor mode not a whole seperate game mode.

Having one or two double agents fighting against specific traitors at actual points could become spectacular especially if a traitor starts breaking into somewhere to kill or get their objective when suddenly the double agents comes onto them.

Double agent should never be a true seperate gamemode whoever made it its own gamemode anyhow? GIAAAAA!

[cedarbridge]

First step should be removing the "Kill Griff McGrifferson the double agent" bit that actually announces that the other guy is an agent. It would cut down on meta "oh so its DA" mentality. It would also cut down on antags running to security and having sec hunt their antag target for them because "I'm an agent too hurr."

[Incomptinence]

They would know they are DA from the exclusions in their gear list since traitor but worse is their thing.

[leibniz]

Just remove DA (and monkey too)
a poll option for that would have been nice

[Man_Shroom]

On Artyom and a few other servers we solved this problem by not telling the DAs that they were DAs, with their antag text telling them they were a traitor, and a kill objective that didn't tell them that their target was a traitor. It cut down on 5 minute shitfests of bombing, by [insert made up percentage].

[bandit]

Anyway, I've thought about the Protect objective idea some.
If there's, say
Traitor A, B , C , D.

A has objective to kill B, B -> C, C -> D, D -> A
Let's say D gets objective to protect B, B protects D, C protects A, A protects C. They all have to protect another agent who isn't aware of their activity, the agent chosen being chosen in a circular fashion similar to the assassination target, but skipping ahead one. The dynamic would change a lot, agents would be teaming up in pairs often. There's danger to it though, since whoever is hunting you could just walk up to you, say the codewords, and claim he's on your side.

Sounds neat.
I guess if there's only 2 or 3 DAs then the protect rotation won't work, in that scenario random protects could be assigned.

Yeah, this is pretty much what I had in mind, except without the Protect targets being strict pairs (i.e. A protects C and C protects A), and with a small chance of the guy you have to protect needing to take you out (probably the same chance as Exchange objectives). You could probably add fluff in there -- A is a member of the Waffle Corporation who has to take out B who is part of Donk, or whatever.

[Ikarrus]

While we're at this, can we either increase the cost of Traitor Syndicate Bombs so they can't buy two, or outright remove them for traitors? They were originally designed to replace the bre-built TTV bombs that nuke ops started off with, but it was given over to Traitors as well.

I feel they shorten the round far too much, and too easily. Every other round we find the same locations bombed-- SMES and telecoms.

[Conagher]

How about we just remove DA?

It gives the innocents of the station a literally impossible job as it is.

[Kuraudo]

i wish i could nerf your tears

The destruction coming from the Double Agent game mode, is a result of the very nature of the objective given: Killing another antag. If you do this with conventional means, it equals, engaging a battle with someone who have the means to defend himself in a superior fashion than security or a head. Double Agents know that and just take no risk. They go for the shortcut that mass destruction is.
A way to stop this: More diversity in objectives; Protecting someone is a start and an example.
Think about that instead of trying to be witty toward the people who are giving advices to improve the game.

[Whoisthere]

I like DA. I don't know how it's different from TRAITOR BUT INSTEAD OF 5 TRAITORS THERE'S TEN OF THEM.

But, since you people want to discourage agents from killing erryone, here are my suggestions:

a) encourage them to hunt down other DAs. You kill your target? You get 5 points. You kill your would be assassin? You get 5 points. Killed another DA not related to you? 3 points. Killed an innocent? -3 points. You greentext if you accumulate 10 points. This is probably impossible to implement because I don't even know if you can check who murdered who directly, with a gun or a cleaver, and tracking indirect deaths, like an innocent dying from spess exposure due to the DA bombing a hallway, is even worse. So maybe death of an innocent would mean -2 points for each and every DA. This is very dumb.

b) DAs start with 3-5 TCs and get more if they kill their target. Once their target is dead, the identity of the target's target is revealed, and they get an objective to kill the target's target, until they end up with the identity of their assassin. Last survivor ends up with a metric fuckton of TCs and gets an objective to hijack the shuttle. This hypothetically will lead to agents trying to keep the round going until they kill all other agents so they can greentext, get a ton of TCs and go on a final murderbone/hijacking/whatever. If you bomb the station into calling the shuttle, odds are some of the agents will escape, and you redtext. I personally would like to see this change. A lot. It might even encourage murderbone, but it seems like it'll be fun to me.

c) DAs don't get an uplink, and only the robust survive.

d) DAs only get DA specific bundles that feature no WMDs (syndibomb, singubeacon, powersink, hacked freeform)

e) DAs don't know they are DAs, like it was proposed.

f) Turn DA into a game of protect/assasinate: every DA has to protect some guy, while another DA has to kill that same guy, and protect some other dude.

[Scott]

Minus 3 points is too big a punishment. Sometimes you just gotta take someone out and being punished for it is not fair.

I like the idea of being given bundles and working with them. Include all bundles, but bombing/murderbone bundles should be really really hard to get. I think this one could prove to be fun.

[Reimoo]

b) DAs start with 3-5 TCs and get more if they kill their target. Once their target is dead, the identity of the target's target is revealed, and they get an objective to kill the target's target, until they end up with the identity of their assassin. Last survivor ends up with a metric fuckton of TCs and gets an objective to hijack the shuttle. This hypothetically will lead to agents trying to keep the round going until they kill all other agents so they can greentext, get a ton of TCs and go on a final murderbone/hijacking/whatever. If you bomb the station into calling the shuttle, odds are some of the agents will escape, and you redtext. I personally would like to see this change. A lot. It might even encourage murderbone, but it seems like it'll be fun to me.

f) Turn DA into a game of protect/assasinate: every DA has to protect some guy, while another DA has to kill that same guy, and protect some other dude.

I like these two. Anything that involves keeping the DA murderchain going equals more fun, in my opinion.

[cedarbridge]

b) DAs start with 3-5 TCs and get more if they kill their target. Once their target is dead, the identity of the target's target is revealed, and they get an objective to kill the target's target, until they end up with the identity of their assassin. Last survivor ends up with a metric fuckton of TCs and gets an objective to hijack the shuttle. This hypothetically will lead to agents trying to keep the round going until they kill all other agents so they can greentext, get a ton of TCs and go on a final murderbone/hijacking/whatever. If you bomb the station into calling the shuttle, odds are some of the agents will escape, and you redtext. I personally would like to see this change. A lot. It might even encourage murderbone, but it seems like it'll be fun to me.

f) Turn DA into a game of protect/assasinate: every DA has to protect some guy, while another DA has to kill that same guy, and protect some other dude.

I like these two. Anything that involves keeping the DA murderchain going equals more fun, in my opinion.

In a normal traitor round I produced something similar to F. I subverted the AI as the mime and gave the AI instructions to protect me (the only human because only mimes are human) but to also protect the clown against harm because clowns and mimes should be bros. I had no idea but it turned out that the clown actually was a target so there was a bit of strange interaction where the clown was getting attacked while the AI actively protected him (whilst subverted) and still went about dealing with my bullshit. Granted, the whole thing got ruined by lings that refused to die, but that's beside the point.

[mrpain]

No. Stop removing shit. Just stop already. Stop removing content. Add it. Move it.

I like the idea of a "protect" objective.