/tg/Station 13

An alternative traitor objective I came up with to bring some variety other than steal this/kill that, with some RP merit.

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You are the Traitor!
Objective 1: Acquire the [Blue Documents] held by Smith McGrey, the Syndicate Agent
Objective 2: Escape Alive

In your backpack is a folder containing [Red Documents] that Smith McGrey's employers want. We have set up an meeting with their agent to exchange these documents, but your objective is to acquire the other documents at any cost. Expect the worst, as the other agent cannot be trusted to cooperate.


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And if we want to add another layer of paranoia, there could be a small (~20%) chance that one or both of the agents will have an additional objective:

You are the Traitor!
Objective 1: Acquire the [Blue Documents] held by Smith McGrey, the Syndicate Agent.
Objective 2: Retain posession of the [Red Documents].
Objective 3: Escape alive

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Thoughts?

I like it. But what happens if someone has elected to spawn without a backpack/satchel?

That's a simple matter to resolve. It would just spawn in another slot, like rev flashes or cult items.

I love the idea, havent really got anymore feedback for improvement.

This is totally based off of Sub Rosa, isn't it.
I love it. Maybe Double Agents should be replaced with something similar to this?

This is a very cool idea.

Is there a way we could make sure that they don't always try to kill each other? Ideas?

You could add in something that your item needs to be made off the station with the other guy.

I was hoping they'd take measures against the other person stealing the docs by force, whether by stashing the papers somewhere else or otherwise. They are given the name of the other party up front, so they theoretically will be very hard to take by surprise.

I'd like to see scenarios such as agreeing to meet in a public place to make the exchange in plain sight, and exchanging folders/backpacks to make the exchange more discreet. But this also carries the risk of the other person stuffing the backpack with a decoy... or worse a bomb.

Honestly, though, I was more concerned about the players being too cooperative than the other way around.

subrosa is bomb as fuck
this sounds like a really interesting objective.

fuck.

Why would you just give your objective to security though? Why would you just out yourself like that?

Why do people do just that in double agent?

They're idiots, then. In this case they're screwin themselves in addition to dicking over the other guy. I'd consider it something worthy of admin attention.

To keep people from trying to get the documents really easily by calling the other guy out, maybe the documents could give a decent amount of points for cargo if they get shipped to Centcom, and maybe a few other goodies on the next delivery for free? That way, the station has a good reason to just not let traitors walk off with them if they can help it

Hows this for an idea? Three traitors, and each of them have a folder. One and Two both require Three's folder, but Three can take either of theirs.

Random search:
"Lieutenant, sir, we found red folder in his backpack!"
"My God... Harmbaton this son of a bitch, sergeant."
"Yes, sir. With pleasure, sir."

I think I have a solution.

You have to trade PDAs unlocked with a special code.

Random searches won't find it but a PDA swap will be a soft tell, as well as having to carry around someone else's PDA for the rest of the round.

They won't kill each other because they need it unlocked
Searches will be safe
No issues with spawning the item at roundstart.

I also think that Antons idea is awesome. It promotes both violence and espionage, and keeps everyone in the dark about who they can trust.

This is almost a complex enough idea to be a gamemode in itself, like a stealthy capture the flag/vip with an ever omnipresent security watching the greytide make their little deals.

Here's an idea: Give both agents the same uplink unlock code and let the unlocked PDA work as a pinpointer to your own documents. That gives even more incentive to betray the other agent, allows you to hide your documents somewhere on the station to be safe from random searches or find the documents of the other agent if they decided to hide them aswell.

Killing the other agent would enable the option to track their PDA in case they hid it somewhere. This would completely remove the possibility to meta this mode by tossing your own documents/pda into a very hard to find spot just to deny the other agent their greentext.

If we did this though, could we have their syndicate uplink be their radio, and the documents on their PDA?
Or would this just lead to more officers confiscating radios, and be bad news for anyone who ends up in Perma?

Anton's idea could be expanded into a gamemode replacing double agent. Here's the idea:

X spies with codenames. Mr. Blue Mr. Red, etc... ( the X number depends on the server population, minimum 5)
Each spy has a syndicate uplink (probably with the same items as double agent) from which it can spawn (for 0 TC and only once) their document.
Each spy's codename matches their own document (probably by adding color in document description, name or sprite) which can be used to identify the spy's codename (unless it's not his document of course).
Each spy knows their own uplink frequency (like regular traitors) but also have the uplink frequency of another spy which is only refered to by his codename. And lastly each spy knows the real name of another spy (but not their codename).

The goal of each spy is to get either one or two documents (50% chance) (doesn't matter which ones as long as it's not their own) and get out alive.

The objectives would look like this:

You are the Spy!
Your codename is Agent Green. Your employers have cunningly disguised a Syndicate Uplink as your PDA. Simply dial the frequency "206 Alpha". You can use the uplink to receive a document for trading purposes. Intelligence reports state that the uplink frequency of Agent Blue is "331 Omega" and that Sally Greyshirt is a spy. Code Phrase: Beepsky, watermelon, blabla.
Objective 1: Acquire a document from another Spy.
Objective 2: Acquire a second document from another Spy.
Objective 3: Escape alive.


Pros:

* Not starting directly with your document reduces possible metagaming/security finding your document.
* The backstab potential is reasonnable: it's impossible for every spy to win (unless no spies has to steal two documents) but too many spies killed might mean you might no be able to unlock more than one PDA uplink and get documents.
* Knowing another spy's uplink frequency prevents mass spy deaths from automatically ruining the round.
* codenames prevent spies from automatically killing the spy whose uplink activation code they know. It also allows impersonation.
* The objective not requiring a specific document prevent a spy from being fucked when their target document is taken by security, launched in space or destroyed.
* You have a good incentive to only spawn your document right before an exchange as only one spy knows your activation code
* Each spy doesn't know how many spies there are, or who has their uplink frequency or knows their name.


Cons:

* Hiding or spacing your PDA and documents can become a problem.
* lots of potential metagaming and murder on the escape pods/shuttle.

phil235 wrote: lots of potential metagaming and murder on the escape pods/shuttle.

So... the usual?

One suggestion that was on IRC is to have meeting points established in people's objectives so they already know where, just not who to exchange with; and then in SubRosa style two people might turn up and one of them tries to kill you etc. Also have it so the meetings are organized to occur at a specific time or after a certain event, like the death of Ian. I prefer the latter since that means someone has to go off an actually make that event happen rather than waiting around like a bum.

As much as I love that idea, it doesn't account for one of the parties not being interested enough to show up to the meeting, or going AFK.

I do want to keep the objective simple for now and not have to code in a bunch of safeguards just yet. Not until I can get some live testing first, at least. Even then, I'd prefer elegant solutions that doesn't require too much mechanical knowledge from the player.

What if the agent only got the department (Service, Cargo, Medical, etc.) their partner was in, not their names? That way they'd actually have to use the code words and RP, and it'd add more leeway for backstabbing.

It might also be useful to have an optional objective to retrieve the roundstart confidential CentComm intel report and attach it to the documents. Again, for fluff, and to make things a little more interesting.

bandit wrote:What if the agent only got the department (Service, Cargo, Medical, etc.) their partner was in, not their names? That way they'd actually have to use the code words and RP, and it'd add more leeway for backstabbing.

It might also be useful to have an optional objective to retrieve the roundstart confidential CentComm intel report and attach it to the documents. Again, for fluff, and to make things a little more interesting.

Your Spybuddy is in Medbay!
>Spend 30m in medbay chatting up various doctors
>Flirt with the anime-haired stutternurse
>Ask about the CMO's family dog
>Take drugs with the chemist
>Subtley drop codewords the whole time
>Nobody picks up on them
>Round-end comes along, you still haven't made contact
>It was the Virologist
>"We had a virologist?"

Psyentific wrote:

bandit wrote:What if the agent only got the department (Service, Cargo, Medical, etc.) their partner was in, not their names? That way they'd actually have to use the code words and RP, and it'd add more leeway for backstabbing.

It might also be useful to have an optional objective to retrieve the roundstart confidential CentComm intel report and attach it to the documents. Again, for fluff, and to make things a little more interesting.

Your Spybuddy is in Medbay!
>Spend 30m in medbay chatting up various doctors
>Flirt with the anime-haired stutternurse
>Ask about the CMO's family dog
>Take drugs with the chemist
>Subtley drop codewords the whole time
>Nobody picks up on them
>Round-end comes along, you still haven't made contact
>It was the Virologist
>"We had a virologist?"

Alternately
>He has been waiting for you at your department.

Kelenius wrote: Alternately
>He has been waiting for you at your department.

>You would have passed each other in the halls but you each took the other hall to be more roundabout and less obvious.

Would it be possible for the documents to give you secondary objectives? That way getting together would be a higher priority, because the faster you get the documents, the more likely you'll succeed at your objectives.

This would work a lot better if we got rid of that auto blue security level bullshit at round start.

Maybe potentially possibly spawn them at different spots on the station randomly at round start, maybe even outside of tator rounds.

Or maybe even on random people including non antags?

Point is, with this player base, you need to do something to shake the meta up.

I like the idea of people having a chance to spawn outside there department in public areas.