Timeline Eradication Agent

JJRcop · Post by **JJRcop** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:58 pm #65910

PR: https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/7518

I'm implementing this thing in the game as a thing to maybe in the future but also maybe not, replace Space Ninja:

See this PR for more info on the equipment (which is already in-game): #7084

It's not called the Chrono Legionnaire, it's called the Timeline Eradication Agent, or TEA.
It currently has to erase one sixth of the population, maxing out at four people, but I want more things to do than just erase people, I also want those things to affect the round in a chaotic way, I can make more gadgets for him if necessary. (New gadgets, not expansions to the Chronosuit or TED gun)

Any ideas?
(No sticky, I won't make a capture mode.)

Post by **Jacquerel** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:24 pm #65912

I'm not going to lie, an antagonist who kills people by channeling them for 60 seconds during which they are completely helpless, who is tasked to just kill a bunch of people, sounds really boring.

That gun kills people very very slowly, during which time the person being killed is completely unable to do anything at all, but the antagonist is very vulnerable.
There's no counterplay except to disarm the guy before he can get you or stay in public places at all times, which (as the antagonist knows they are going to be sitting there for a while) they are going to minimise the chances of. You cannot act reactively to this antagonist at all.
This is fun for neither the victim, who once jumped now just has to twiddle their thumbs for ages in the hope that someone comes along, or the antagonist, who has to do the same thing but with the opposite hope.
And that's all that you do.

I don't really know that I have any suggestions for this, I just think the base concept is kind of flawed.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:25 pm #65913

Just for reference, it takes around 60 seconds to fully "erase" a target, you must remain stationary for the entire time. In addition the target cannot interact, or be interacted, with in any possible way.

The TED is a very unique individual from my limited times I've played as one on server. They are very difficult to stop as even if they are stunned they can teleportmove. However its hard for them to "erase" a target as they must get someone and hold them for 60 seconds alone without interaction from anyone else.

They would make a good side antagonist, but they would need to be fleshed out in order to become a full on antagonist.

(Also, you cannot disarm the TEA of his gun, its built into his backpack)

soulgamer · Post by **soulgamer** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:38 pm #65917

Deep Agent Insertion
They must find a specific crew member and (using some sort of tech) overwrite their mind with that of a TEA agent. The target becomes an antag with specific objectives one of which is always "Assist the TEA in further objectives)

Maybe have it ghost the body and then randomly select a ghost to be placed into the body? That would have a more unique feel than just antag-ing someone.

Temporal Escapee
A temporal creature spawns on the station that the TEA has been sent to hunt. This monster has been given the objective to devour as many crew members as possible. The TEA must subdue and destroy the creature as only their tech can permanently remove this beast...well singulo would work but that would just be crazy right?

This way TEA agents may actually have a legit mission so crew wont always go full murderbone on sight of them

Post by **Jacquerel** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:40 pm #65918

soulgamer wrote:Temporal Escapee
A temporal creature spawns on the station that the TEA has been sent to hunt. This monster has been given the objective to devour as many crew members as possible. The TEA must subdue and destroy the creature as only their tech can permanently remove this beast...well singulo would work but that would just be crazy right?

I actually quite like the idea of, instead of spawning a single ninja who fucks things up, creating a pair of people with big powers who mostly don't use them directly on the crew in favour of causing chaos by playing cat and mouse with each other. The "completely useless if there are two people in the room" gun makes a lot more sense if you're only meant to be hunting one guy.

JJRcop · Post by **JJRcop** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:19 pm #65929

soulgamer wrote:Temporal Escapee
A temporal creature spawns on the station that the TEA has been sent to hunt. This monster has been given the objective to devour as many crew members as possible. The TEA must subdue and destroy the creature as only their tech can permanently remove this beast...well singulo would work but that would just be crazy right?

This way TEA agents may actually have a legit mission so crew wont always go full murderbone on sight of them

I like this, a lot. Whole lot better than "wipe these 4 dudes".

EDIT: I came up with another objective: "Don't lose your equipment.". The thing behind it is the TE agency who made the tech don't want NT to get a hold of it because NT are the people who tried to stop them from making it in the first place.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:24 pm #65933

There would need to be some depth in combat between the Monster and the TEA players, it would be unfun for the Monster to lose from being hit once from the TEA.

Otherwise it seems like a good idea.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:35 pm

It could have something like the wizard's Repulse spell, so that the monster has to be caught from outside the repulse range, or you risk being thrown into a wall, which means you have to do it in a somewhat open area, which again increases the chance of being caught.

Or hell, there could be two TEA with different gear, sent to destroy each other, either slinking around waiting for the jump on their opponent or rallying the crew against them

Feretal · Post by **Feretal** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:39 pm #65940

Recreate Evolve for ss13.

Post by **Jacquerel** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:42 pm #65941

yeah I think in terms of the TEA gun itself, there's still few situations where it's going to be a particularly fun device just from its design
I think the only way to fix it would make it much quicker to activate, but require some other form of setup before you can actually use it on anyone like a trap or device which you lay on the floor or something

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Feb 04, 2015 4:45 pm

Ghostbusters III: Assistant Busters

Luke Cox · Post by **Luke Cox** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 2:06 am #66121

Like Space Ninjas, these guys would make excellent side-antagonists. Maybe give them a 10% chance to spawn alongside the normal antagonist or something like that. Or, they could spawn with a team of two Space Ninjas. The ninjas capture targets, then this guy erases them.

soulgamer · Post by **soulgamer** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 2:19 am #66126

Steelpoint wrote:There would need to be some depth in combat between the Monster and the TEA players, it would be unfun for the Monster to lose from being hit once from the TEA.

Otherwise it seems like a good idea.

Maybe make the creature immune to the time freeze of the atom eraser gun. Have the escapee start with like 300 health and regen like 1.5 a second. At -100 they dont die just stop taking damage. AT this point the TEA needs to quickly step and elimnate the threat while he has a chance. This would let the TEA take out the creature by himself if he can deal it enough damage.

Duncdar · Post by **Duncdar** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:26 am #66132

Like using wish/miracle to kill an incapacitated Tarrasque, he needs to get to beast to -100 health, and use the !!unique!! gun to finish it off. honestly, he really shouldn't be an antag, just someone who's dropped off to kill some bluespace beast. This makes the round slightly more interesting without popping another person who has free reign and can kill people with impunity.

miggles · Post by **miggles** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 7:35 am #66193

i like the idea of having to trap someone to use the eradication thingy on them
also the time gun shouldnt require a full minute to erase someone. you can kill people normally in under a minute, having two people stand still and stare at eachother while one of them erases the other from existence is super boring.
perhaps what you would need to do is mark someone with some kind of trap like a tripwire or a mine of some kind that takes time to activate (in that it has to power up when being placed, and then you have to wait for them to trigger it) and once they're marked, THEN you can eradicate them.

i really like the monster idea. multiple monsters would be neat; you could have big ones that are hellbent on destruction and hard to take down, ones that can run away through vents and what not and take a lot of careful tracking and trap-laying to catch, or ones that can blend in with everyone else (like a changeling) that you have to figure out the identity of.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 7:41 am #66194

miggles wrote:having two people stand still and stare at eachother while one of them erases the other from existence is super boring.

Ninja energy net works about the same way.

Kinda awkward having that conversation of "Don't do this please I got kids" "SオRRY マAN IT'S JUST BUSイNESS"
...
...
"So uh, how's things over at spider clan?"
"CオMFY, WE HAVE ア HOLO-BEACH. OH, TIME'S UP."

Remie Richards · Thu Feb 05, 2015 3:39 pm

I like the sort of Evolve/Monster hunter on the station style objective/event idea of this.

Alex Crimson · Post by **Alex Crimson** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 5:44 pm #66311

Violaceus wrote:The "monster" should be Chrono-Ivan.

Jeez im glad someone remembers that awesome unit.

Post by **Vekter** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 7:25 pm #66342

I don't like anything about this. The TED stuff was designed as an admin-spawn gimmick item and isn't balanced to be any form of a non-admin event.

Unless it's tweaked I think it should stay as such.

Alex Crimson · Post by **Alex Crimson** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 7:38 pm #66343

The gun is weak and the armor is overpowered. It isnt really designed to be a normal automatic event. Its still very fun to watch though, and the gun is interesting enough to stop it being just another murderboner weapon.

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 9:28 pm #66365

Only add it if we can also add soundbytes from red alert two's chrono legeionaire. "Im gone!" "Never existed!" ect, they were pretty cool dudes.

Remie Richards · Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:59 pm

Vekter wrote:I don't like anything about this. The TED stuff was designed as an admin-spawn gimmick item and isn't balanced to be any form of a non-admin event.

Alex Crimson wrote: the armor is overpowered.

Actually, despite being acknowledged that it's main use would probably end up being admin spawnables, it's armour values were actually nerfed (As suggested by MrPerson with numbers suggested by myself)
With the values they're at, an anti-player antag doesn't seem a good role for the TEA no, but with specific bluespace/time related mini events as objectives for the TEA it's values would be fair.

Alex Crimson · Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:12 pm

Well i didnt really mean the values. More the ability to jaunt with virtually no cooldown, and even when stunned.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 3:04 am #66492

So long as the TEA can not pick up weapons and can only use the equipment he spawns with, it would be balanced.

Atticat · Post by **Atticat** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 3:43 am #66509

I think the TEA should be a PROTAGONIST instead of antogonist. Make it so a horrifying creature arrives on the station at the same time as the TEA agent and they start battling it out.

JJRcop · Post by **JJRcop** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 4:04 am #66515

Vekter wrote:I don't like anything about this. The TED stuff was designed as an admin-spawn gimmick item and isn't balanced to be any form of a non-admin event.

Unless it's tweaked I think it should stay as such.

I'm actually the dude who made the TED stuff you know... I "didn't balance it properly" because I don't know what "good balance" is, it seems to be overwhelmingly very different to each person, and I tried my best.

And this monster idea is really cool, but it won't happen overnight, I designed the TED gun to be where the target is pretty boned but the guy who is using it can get boned too if they get attacked in the middle of it. Now there's this whole setting up a trap idea thing and I am going to have to figure this out. I'll probably make a child TED gun for the event and let the parent keep the current functionality and stuff.

Also the chronosuit doesn't work if the user is knocked unconscious, and if it is hit with a strong EMP it has a 100% chance to disengage and you can remove it with no extra strip delay.

Alex Crimson · Post by **Alex Crimson** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 4:19 am #66519

I dont think the monster thing should have anything to do with the TED. If yall want to add it then fine, but make it something different. The TED imo is fine as it is, it just needs a little balance. Id suggest lowering the time required to disintegrate by 20-30 seconds, and make the suit unable to jaunt/move when stunned.

Remie Richards · Fri Feb 06, 2015 11:57 am

Atticat wrote:I think the TEA should be a PROTAGONIST instead of antogonist. Make it so a horrifying creature arrives on the station at the same time as the TEA agent and they start battling it out.

The issue with Protagonists in SS13 is that code wise they would be 100% identical to an Antagonist, so there's no point differentiating the two.
Heck, Even players inside simple_animals (this includes drones I believe!) are listed as "ANTAG" on the Admin version of the "Who" verb.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 12:00 pm #66612

Leave who is the good guy and who is the bad guy ambiguous, it really should be more of a grey area as both entities (TED and the Monster) have their own reasons for doing what they have to do.

JJRcop · Post by **JJRcop** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 2:29 pm #66628

So... What will the monster look like?

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Fri Feb 06, 2015 2:46 pm #66633

There are a few sprites in the game that might be suitable for a monster, or different variants of one. Here's some that might be interesting.

You can find them here in the code: icons\mob\mob.dmi

Remie Richards · Sat Feb 07, 2015 12:21 am

Steelpoint wrote:There are a few sprites in the game that might be suitable for a monster, or different variants of one. Here's some that might be interesting.

You can find them here in the code: icons\mob\mob.dmi

1. That's a fine icon, I used it a few time for events, but it has pretty much zero ties to time or bluespace.
2. That's supposed to be God iirc. it also has some really fucking weird stuff on certain directions (East or west is literally just an animation of it glowing?)
3. That's a cult construct suit with glowing lights.

This really needs to be something new, Time and beings being outside of a physical law of the universe (time) makes me think of Eldritch creatures.
As in, lots of tentacles and unnecessary spooky bits.

Cipher3 · Post by **Cipher3** » Sat Feb 07, 2015 1:29 am #66793

But Eldritch creatures seem evil, so if we use those there's no blue-orange morality as previously suggested.

Fayrik · Post by **Fayrik** » Sat Feb 07, 2015 9:42 am #66851

Violaceus wrote:The "monster" should be Chrono-Ivan.

This, this, a million times this.
A TEA vs TEA event, whereby one is tasked with bombing as much of the station as possible, and the other one has to stop him.
Perhaps have points scored by having the "Ivan" destroy tiles rather than people, and the "Commando" scores by evacing people, not tiles. It could create some interesting asynchronous gameplay.

I think it'd have to only occur after x amount of minutes into the round, since it entirely relies on a shuttle call, so having it occur half an hour into the round would kinda suck.

Drynwyn · Post by **Drynwyn** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 4:41 pm #75524

Skorvold spawned one of these to erase a player who named himself Adolf Hilter from the timeline.

10/10 would be admin abused by again.

Post by **lumipharon** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 9:10 am #75699

Since you bumped the thread, I thought I would tell you about the one and only time I saw a TEA in game. It was fucking horrifying.

This motherfucker vaporised like 20 people, holy shit it's retardedly overpowered.
In maint, you are almost unbeatable, regardless of how many people are trying to kill you.

This is what happens.

Chucklefuck Mctime agent hides in a locker in maint, after zapping some people in engineering.
Three of us go into maint, he pops out of the locker and zaps the first guy. The first shot like that, with any weapon is basially impossible to avoid. With the TED, not only is it impossible to avoid, it's also a completel ggnore.
He zaps the front guy, which blocks the 1 wide maint corridor, so the other two can't get past. By the time the other two navigate through engineering (fires and no access etc) and get into maint the long way, person one is gone.

Then an entire ERT comes to hunt him down in maint.
One guy opens a door.
Zapped
ERT goes around since that path is now blocked and cannot be bypassed.
Other door opens.
Zapped.
Both paths are now blocked by guys that are slowly vanishing, while the time agent stands their picking his nose, and the ERT is stuck scratching their balls.
Eventually one of the ERT has the bright idea of apparently c4'ing one of the dissolving ERT members, which as well as blasting an entrance, also detonated a nearby welding tank, stunning the time agent.

TL;DR Make dissolving people not dense, otherwise the TED makes you unbeatable in narrow spaces.

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:01 am #75704

The ERT have access to Pulse guns, they could have just blasted their way through the walls.

Also the TEA can only use his gun on a single person at any time, if he fires on multiple people he'll never erase anyone.

Post by **lumipharon** » Sun Mar 15, 2015 11:08 am #75705

That's what the ghosts said. Until he did just that.

Supermichael777 · Sun Mar 15, 2015 5:37 pm

This suit has one use and one use only killing space Hitlers

Man_Shroom · Post by **Man_Shroom** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 7:39 pm #75961

>Two teams of 3 TEA agents fighting each other
>Each one has to destroy the other team
>As they fight, serious problems happen to the station
>It's in the station's best interest to keep them contained and alive so they can hand them over to centcomm
>One chronoteam wins if they kill the others, if they all die no one wins, if the crew brings even numbers of both teams back to centcomm in the shuttle brig they win (EG 1 from each team, 2 from each team, 3 from each team, so that the crew doesn't bring back more of one team than the other
>Chronoteams have special time-themed tools such as

>tools that make everything about a person faster or slower, like runspeed, clickspeed, chemical processing
>force-fields
>paralyzing grenades
>A bomb that makes everything in, say, a 5 tile radius get reset to how it was at roundstart.

I think these changes would make for a balanced mode. Plus, we don't really have a team 1 vs team 2 with station in-between mode.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:12 pm #75971

TEA Agents?
Timeline Eradication Agent Agents?

Man_Shroom · Post by **Man_Shroom** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:43 pm #75978

I thought it was Timeline Eradication Association, honestly.

JJRcop · Post by **JJRcop** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:50 pm #82180

So, if in the future I were to possibly take interest in implementing the TEA in-game as an event/mode (no promises), what would I need to change? Do you think the TEA should stay an admin-only spawn?
(I would like a more fleshed out concept for this, like either expanding on the monster idea or something new)

I already gathered that the people being erased shouldn't be dense, which is a good idea. I made them dense because I was thinking it would make a good dynamic in the 3-wide hallways, but I didn't think about maint.

One thing I was thinking about was that when you use the suit, every item that would be considered "outside of the suit" besides the TED would not come with you.

Also the idea with the TEA is that all their abilities were individual gadgets, instead of all rolled into one item like the TED or something. If I want them to have a way to stun people in an area it wold be a separate gadget they keep in a special belt to hold all their gadgets. (Although personally I think that the TEA is well equipped already even just having the suit and gun.)

Alex Crimson · Post by **Alex Crimson** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:56 pm #82182

Half the time it takes to delete someone. Currently its way too long imo. Boring just sitting there waiting for the target to die, and for the guy being deleted.

Time-freeze grenades would be neat. Temp stuns everyone but they dont fall over. But yeah, i dont think the TEA needs more gear.

Rather than a game-mode i think it would be better as a mini-antag like Ninja.

peoplearestrange · Tue Apr 14, 2015 3:14 pm

You could make it so the TEA always has to take out another antag, making them a sort of self righteous warrior, like the Inquisitor from Red Dwarf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inquis ... d_Dwarf%29) getting the antag to justify there mission during the time they are erased or something. Maybe something thats a little more RP orientated?

Also needs to be a recursion joke somewhere in the wiki/item descriptions, because humour.