Abductors as a job

[PKPenguin321]

Okay, this is sketchy. There are a lot of reasons to absolutely hate, hate, hate this idea. "Having an antag position guaranteed every round from roundstart? Never, are you crazy?" I know, it sounds crazy, but please hear me out.
Abductors have already proven to not be enough as a game mode. They've proven to work well in conjunction with other rounds and are being considered as a midround antagonist like ninja. However, I feel that abductors, unlike ninjas or revenants, are not quite as consequential or as big of a playing factor in a round. They're less murderbone-y, they're more objective centered. After having a chance to play as an abductor for the first time, I did not feel like I was an antagonist; I felt like I was doing a station job, and a fairly fun one at that. Not to mention that the people we abducted were not murdered or anything, they were merely put through a quick surgery and immediately shipped back to the station, taking maybe a few minutes of their time at most.
What I propose is having abductor agents and scientists available on the job panel at roundstart where you can set them to low, medium, or high. To make them a more common and constant presence on the station. They're a very fun role and aren't quite as "antagonistic" as most other antags (however, policy could be put into effect to make it so they can't murderbone the station every round, grief, and make them have to uphold server rule 1 aside from abductions). Having a guaranteed slot every round that doesn't put you as a crewman working on-station would be a first for our server, and when I weigh the pros and cons in my head, I see more potential for fun than any kind of bad.

Thoughts on this idea?

[lumipharon]

Everyone they experiment on becomes antag so eh. They'd also able to be omegaXtreme antag hunter 9000, with the shit they get.

I think they'd be fine as mid round random event like ninja and alien, but them being there every round is just meh.

[John_Oxford]

I can see them abducting people essentially at the worst physical times
I can also see them getting meta gamed so hard, people will constantly be prepared for them

[Tokiko2]

2 of their 12 glands will gib you though. That's pretty damn murderous. The rest of them will turn you into antags.

I like abductors a lot, but don't underestimate their impact on a round, especially only based on rounds with unexperienced abduction players. If you get an experieced abductor team they can throw the station into complete chaos. They can easily steal the whole armory, AI subversion is incredibly easy for them, being stunned and cuffed is pretty much non consequencial since they can teleport out and they also get instant short term disguises that come complete with all clothes and items which makes even changelings jealous.

[Cheimon]

While I long for abductors to be a common late game antag, like a ninja but more frequent, I don't think having them every round would be fun. They're good, but not that good.

[Gun Hog]

They should just spawn in, based on events. Perhaps along the lines of spider rarity. They ARE antagonists though, and some can and do loot the armory and steal medical supplies as well. You could also consider tacking them into other long roundtypes, such as traitor and changeling. Abductors are impotent antags like changelings, so they can be safely added to traitor, DA, and changeling roundtypes.

[Miauw]

"yes hop i would like to be transferred to the abduction department"

[PKPenguin321]

"yes hop i would like to be transferred to the abduction department"

Not a job like that, silly. It would be on the job list before roundstart but wouldn't be recognized as a "job" by the crew.

Anyways, all good points made by everyone here. While I feel that we could tweak some things to work around a lot of the issues mentioned (remove the gibbing glands, make glands not make you a full on antagonist BUT tell you to try not to let the gland get removed), it's probably not be worth the effort. I did like the idea of sticking them into other gamemodes the same way Traitorling sticks traitors and changelings together.

I suppose this thread can be locked if there's no further discussion. Thanks for the input!

[Steelpoint]

No where else to post but abductors are fun and should be put on rotation.

[Scones]

This somehow reminds me of Archangel and how they have an antag job you can just set in your prefs.

[onleavedontatme]

No where else to post but abductors are fun and should be put on rotation.

Probably need to figure out a way to avoid them being able to instantly kill the AI with no resistance first.

[Scott]

The problem is that the AI is enough of a threat. Can't really blame them for wanting to silence the AI.

And I don't agree with making abductors a regular thing. Stop making everything common, things quickly loose their charm and fun when they happen every round.

[specyalic]

is there some magic balance zone between "never see them" and "every round"

[Steelpoint]

Abductors fall under the almost never seen role right now.

How about a blanket situation/code where there's a 10%/5% chance of abductors spawning in any round?

[One Seven One]

Abductors fall under the almost never seen role right now.

How about a blanket situation/code where there's a 10%/5% chance of abductors spawning in any round?

If we went with that we may get situations where a malf AI was taken out by an abductor team just because they didn't want to deal with it.
The only rounds they'd go well in without disrupting everything would be traitor and traitorling.

Anything else and they might just fuck up the entire round unintentionally or entirely intentionally as all powerful, all seeing valid hunters.
Got a gang? Let's abduct the leaders.
Got a cult? Let's abduct sec.
Got nuke ops? Let's Steal the captain with the disk.
Malf? Steal and wipe the AI.

But I would love the 5% chance in traitor/traitorling rounds. Maybe even as a possible spawn at 30 minutes just so it's they don't cause trouble for everyone immediately and so people might not expect them.

[Steelpoint]

We did have a awesome round with abductors in a nuke op round, but I do see the point that abductors could be a wild card in their influnce of certain antag modes, and I would imagine nothing would piss off a player such as their one ai malf chance being shot down by ayyliens teleporting to your core at round start.

Restricting Abductors from certain modes like Malf or Nuke Ops should work.

Also I have a PR up that changes some Abductor sprites around: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/10622

[Incomptinence]

Have abductor mode with 4 indirectly competing teams.

How can 8 teleporting antags not be a handful even if they don't murderbone?

[One Seven One]

We don't HAVE to put in four teams, I think more than two teams actually causes the other teams to spawn at arrivals right now.
Just one or two is more than enough.

I really like those new sprites Steelpoint.
But yeah that would be great for 'em, keep 'em out of the big modes. Maybe we can even have them as a possible mulligan for those rounds too.

[Phalanx300]

Don't make it guaranteed but adding a chance of them starting out at roundstart would be interesting. Would add some paranoia.

[Steelpoint]

As I said, around a 5% chance of a single team spawning in at rounds start, maybe a 1% of two teams spawning in, on most rounds.

Rounds like Malf and Nuke Ops should be excluded due to the opportunity for the abductors of throwing the round out of whack.