Implementing Space Ninjas

[Luke Cox]

Currently, Space Ninjas happen only as admin-enabled events. In my opinion, this is a tragic waste. Space Ninjas look like they could be a very interesting sort of antagonist. When I was reading the wiki article on them a few things struck me, including the fact that they're the only antagonist aside from maybe Xenos that have a strong emphasis on stealth, have and sometimes have crew-friendly objectives. They're basically Space Batman. I think there are a lot of ways that an anti-hero role could be implemented. Here's what I had in mind:

• The Space Ninja would have a small chance to spawn in addition to the regular antagonist (maybe 10%, it would take some tweaking). Neither the crew or antagonists would be aware of this; they are basically a third party. Their objectives may or may not relate to the antagonist (i.e. assassinate the nuke ops, but make sure the nuke goes off, kill X number of revolutionaries, just steal something and protect the HoS, etc).
• There would be a 50/50 chance of the Ninja being either tasked with protecting or sabotaging the station. However, they will always have to retrieve a high risk item. They can either demand it as payment for their services or steal it, regardless of their alignment (i.e. weed out agents in exchange for the RCD, assassinate an agent's target in return for the hypospray, etc.)
• The Space Ninja could either choose to either announce themselves to ally with/deceive the crew, announce themselves to a select few, or operate in secret. It is up to the ninja.
• It is also up to the heads to decide if they trust Ninjas who claim to be crew friendly. They may choose to treat them as antagonists if they don't believe them.
• Ultimately, the Ninja's only alliance is to the Spider Clan. They may steal or kill to achieve their objectives. Heads could use ninjas that claim to be crew friendly to do less than legal things that they believe to be in the interest of the station (i.e. "dispose" of dipshits). Traitors could task them with killing people who get in their way. Ninjas can play both sides. Their only goal in the end is to fulfill their objectives by the means of their choice. They're the only characters with a gray area.
• A fair bit of RP would be expected. After all, you are Space Batman.

I'm sure there are plenty of flaws in that, but it's a general idea of how I imagine them working: elusive characters that are equally likely to help the station as they are to sabotage it.

[Konork]

I'm pretty sure ninjas are rarely admin-spawned anymore, and they usually spawn through a random event that can only occur after some period of time that I don't care enough to look up right now. I'm also pretty sure that some of the code behind ninjas is pretty shitty, so making them occur more often isn't something the coders are particularly willing to do right now.

[Steelpoint]

Ninja's did see some rebalancing before the feature freeze, such as not being able to gib people with their teleportation ability and whatnot.

I would actually be interested in seeing the Space Ninja being used more often in a more official capacity. It would be easy to create a Space Ninja space ship to allow a Ninja to go to the station and leave once their mission is complete.

Perhaps having a Ninja Subtype that is stripped of all offensive weapons (barring the ninja stars for stunning) that emphasises the compleating of non-murder objectives. So kidnapping, stealing research or items and whatnot. As a potentional sub-antag. Or just a full on killing ninja with several objectives.

[Luke Cox]

Ninja's did see some rebalancing before the feature freeze, such as not being able to gib people with their teleportation ability and whatnot.

I would actually be interested in seeing the Space Ninja being used more often in a more official capacity. It would be easy to create a Space Ninja space ship to allow a Ninja to go to the station and leave once their mission is complete.

Perhaps having a Ninja Subtype that is stripped of all offensive weapons (barring the ninja stars for stunning) that emphasises the compleating of non-murder objectives. So kidnapping, stealing research or items and whatnot. As a potentional sub-antag. Or just a full on killing ninja with several objectives.

I like this. Kidnapping could also play into the deception angle. For example, if the ninja is tasked with helping an antagonist, he could claim that he needs to abduct them when they're captured, then turn around and let them loose when nobody is looking. Or they could tell the crew that they're tasked with protecting someone, make up some threat as an excuse to whisk them away to some remote area, then abduct them.

Less lethal weaponry would also be a must to make this work. However, I do think that the current arsenal is mostly fine. They're powerful, but they will die if ganged up on, and there's only one. Perhaps ninjas could have a choice of a few loadouts (i.e. one for staying out of sight, one for blending in)