Antagonist Directives questions

[Longestarmlonglaw]

If we take a look at the rules page and the antagonist directives section, we will see this:

Brainwashing/construct orders/Silicon Laws -> Cult -> Revs -> Blood Brother -> Wizard Apprentice/Abductor Teams/Other niche antags -> Nuke Ops -> Traitors

Hypnotic flashing is already covered under "brainwashing"
However i have one thing to ask:

Why were the directives priorities written that way? why are certain antagonists above others? what makes them so special?

[Itseasytosee2me]

Antags where you are loyal to some being but they aren't loyal to you are the highest. Then come team antags, then solo antags. The way its set up your old objectives may as well disappear when you are converted or whatever. Its kinda dumb but I suppose that's within the scope of code and not policy.

[Timberpoes]

There's some minor logic to it in general.

Basically brainwashing/construct orders/silicon laws are at the top because they're stuff that basically overrides your ability to even make decisions when it comes to your objective, goal or commandment. Brainwashing orders are laws for carbons and construct orders are laws for golems.

Cult comes next because it's a corrupted conversion, with Nar'sie's will and machinations driving your motivations. Nar'sie isn't directly controlling your decisions, but you are being influenced to do anything necessary to help the cult.

Revs is next because it falls short of actual brainwashing. It just changes your loyalty from being crew-sided to being revs-sided, but doesn't change your motivations or anything like that. Alternatively, it's arbitrarily below cult because something has to come out on top else it's an administrative nightmare when the two conversion antags meet.

Blood Brothers are bound to eachother by loyalty. So a Blood Brother that becomes obsessed with their co-blood-brother and has objectives to kill them, should not because their blood-bond is thicker.

Wizard apprentice allegiance, abductor allegiance and other niche antags just have a set of goals and nothing really binding them to those goals that warrant them overriding being converted/applied to a higher level antag.

Nuke ops is basically arbitrary. It could sit at the Blood Brothers level but it's probably more fun to allow Nukies to be subverted away from their team.

Traitors sit at the bottom because you're just a normal dude with an uplink. If you get converted to another antag type, you should really prioritise that.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Solo antags come below conversion antags because being betrayed by a team member fucking sucks in those modes, and if it was the other way around traitors would be able to maxcap their own summoning ritual.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Why is it when multiple conversion antagonists meet, the amount of tickets increases and it becomes an administrative nightmare?

[Timberpoes]

Why is it when multiple conversion antagonists meet, the amount of tickets increases and it becomes an administrative nightmare?

Because things start to get messy when Cultists are killing other Cultists because they've just been flashed to the revolution, and Revs are killing other Revs because they've just been converted to the cult. You can end up with a lot of mutually conflicting objectives. A traitor-rev may have an objective to kill a revhead or other revolutionary. A rev-cultist may discover their sacrifice to Nar'sie is a revhead.

By-and-large, players generally expect their own team members won't kill them. When they get killed by someone they think should be on their team, ahelps happen.

The truth of the matter is that some antagonists were never intended to be played together. Prior to us switching to Dynamic, we used to have Game Modes instead.

These Game Modes selected rulesets, and these rulesets defined how the shift would progress. Cult, Wizard and Revolution existed in their own exclusive rulesets where only that specific antagonist would roll and they would be the singular threat for that shift. You wouldn't need to worry about what happened if a Wizard's Apprentice got flashed by a Headrev and converted, then got stun-armed by a Cultist and converted again, because the two antag types would never be in the same shift together.

So ultimately Antag Directives is a band-aid over Dynamic, the system which replaced Game Modes. Dynamic randomly selects antags to jam into the shift with very little rhyme nor reason, cramming solo antags in with conversion team antags and on rare occasions mixing multiple conversion antags together. Antag Directives try to square the circle by making it reasonably clear to everyone which objectives you should prioritise when you're multiple antags at once.

[kieth4]

There's some minor logic to it in general.

Basically brainwashing/construct orders/silicon laws are at the top because they're stuff that basically overrides your ability to even make decisions when it comes to your objective, goal or commandment. Brainwashing orders are laws for carbons and construct orders are laws for golems.

Cult comes next because it's a corrupted conversion, with Nar'sie's will and machinations driving your motivations. Nar'sie isn't directly controlling your decisions, but you are being influenced to do anything necessary to help the cult.

Revs is next because it falls short of actual brainwashing. It just changes your loyalty from being crew-sided to being revs-sided, but doesn't change your motivations or anything like that. Alternatively, it's arbitrarily below cult because something has to come out on top else it's an administrative nightmare when the two conversion antags meet.

Blood Brothers are bound to eachother by loyalty. So a Blood Brother that becomes obsessed with their co-blood-brother and has objectives to kill them, should not because their blood-bond is thicker.

Wizard apprentice allegiance, abductor allegiance and other niche antags just have a set of goals and nothing really binding them to those goals that warrant them overriding being converted/applied to a higher level antag.

Nuke ops is basically arbitrary. It could sit at the Blood Brothers level but it's probably more fun to allow Nukies to be subverted away from their team.

Traitors sit at the bottom because you're just a normal dude with an uplink. If you get converted to another antag type, you should really prioritise that.

Explains it well.