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Midround nukies/syndicate strike force: Plans and community feedback
#1
Nukies! Everyone's favorite antag, unless you're a nerd who holes up in your department all round. But we don't talk about that.

Nukies, however unfortunately, aren't very common, and are uppity and disabled on RP, since uniquely to goon, nukies always go in guns blazing. But what if they didn't have to go in guns blazing, and were instead simply a compliment to your average round? Enter midround nukies.

The setting: You, and one to two of your fellow syndicate terrorist buddies made a horrible awful mistake (as you usually do) and lost the nuke (as you usually do), but survived and were able to escape the station. Stripped of your dignity, and given the worst of the worst of surplus equipment from before you were born, you have been given a second chance as a small strike force onboard NSS 13!

What I have so far: Thus far I've scraped together an event with the same spawn conditions as the now disabled SWORD drone that sends an alert to all ghosts, and picks up to three of them to be spawned as staff assistants onboard the cairngorm. I banged this code out today, though, so more is guaranteed to come.

What I have planned, and how it's going to work:

Loadouts: Unlike conventional nukeops, the up to three midround nukies will get access to a custom uplink that gives them a variety of options for surplus equipment. Each option will choose randomly from a hardcoded list of things that fall within the category. Beyond not being obviously admin-only, these lists will have whatever fits the description, even if it's from other gamemodes. 


Space suit- self explanatory

Long gun: any weapon that takes up two hands and isn't obviously breaking character or insanely OP, as well as ammunition. For sake of balance things like the SPES-12 will be in this category.

Sidearm: any one handed weapon, energy or kinetic, as well as ammunition. This'll include things like the podwars blasters and predator revolver.

Melee: any melee weapon, stationwide or otherwise. This'll probably draw the strongest from non-explicitly syndicate things, like circular saws, ratsticks, D-sabers, and spears, but of course will have the classics of katanas and c-sabers in the item pool.

Storage: Utility belts, secbelts, pouches, and fanny packs. 

Utility- Offensive: Grenades, sawflies, syndie pipe bombs, throwing weapons

Utility- Defensive: land mines, barriers, armor (nothing too overpowered), SWAT gloves

Utility- stealth: DNA scramblers, masks, cloakers. Mostly syndicate items and poisons.

Utility- Explosive: Breaching charges, MPRT ammo, maybe even just a large beaker full of black powder.

Utility- Misc: Anything that'd be good to have and doesn't fall within the other lottery categories- microbombs, emags, self-charging cells.

Utility- Healing: Automenders, autoinjectors, hyposprays, healing chems, white weed, med patches, and defibrillators.

Surprise me: One of each, then random choices purchases from the other categories until no more TC remains.


This will allow the operators to have access to a wider variety of equipment than what any other antag can get their hands on, and for re-use of assets which only see the light of day in incredibly rare circumstances, as well as more closely mimic traitors rather than full on nukeops- a decent portion of their gear will be stuff that spawns naturally onstation.

This will serve to both broaden the scope of possible interactions and force the nukies to rely more on teamwork- they will be forced to act as a cohesive unit. Furthermore, without the sole antagonists being nukies, this will broaden the approach strategy and allow for more interesting plays than the only really viable option that is guns blazing, especially since their equipment will not immediately signify that nukeops are out and about.

So, the nukies have toys, now what?

Rather than the sole objective being to blow up the station, the midround nukies will have a variety of sub-objectives they'll have to complete before they get a bomb. These will be fairly high difficulty, and may borrow mechanics from spy theives, namely stealing station equipment. I'll probably use a PDA app in order to allow them to track what has and hasn't been done yet.

Provided (Read: they romp sec and the round has to end) they succeed, they will be granted one a non-nuclear bomb similar in power to a maxcap TTV or artifact bomb, and tasked with detonating it, just like normal nukies, in a given department. Once the timer reaches halfway, the shuttle will be called. 




Reasons I want to make this gamemode:


-System interaction, mainly that of the ballistics system. Kinetic weapons are insanely rare ingame, and beyond printed .22 ammunition and the occasional AEX purchase, I don't think I've ever seen someone use ammunition for a gun beyond what it spawned with. Allowing otherwise gamemode-locked firearms to spawn in normal rounds opens this up, if only briefly, for wider usage.

- Given population sizes and equipment, stealth nukies are almost impossible, since so much of their toolkit immediately tells the crew that there's only one antag type onstation. 

- Antag-antag interaction. This opens up the possibilities for antags of varying allegiances to interact in more deep ways. Will a traitor kill the nukies for loot, or will they help out with the mission? What about a changeling? A wizard? Especially on RP, I can see this opening the doors for deeper and more engaging interactions.

-We need a SWORD-type event. Especially nowadays, I'll often find a ton of rounds where the crew just wins and there's barely anything to do for 40 minutes. Having a severe, but not guaranteed to be round-ending event to fill the niche will make things funner.


Drawbacks (those I can come up with):

New person fucks over the whole team. This'll be pretty easily solvable by giving the event a decent roundlock.

Midround nukies get separated and die one by one. Giving them a syndicate headset and potentially an ability to find where the other operatives are should fix this


Let me know what you think, what I can do to make this event engaging, and any odd ideas you have for equipment. Half of getting new features added to the game is community interaction and enthusiasm, so I'm fully open to input and criticism.
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#2
for RP specifically, the fact they would consistently be provided a bomb would mean that their arrival on RP would become a countdown until a bomb goes off, as the design implies that they need to use it. the accompanying scramble to fashion a 'roleplay-legal' narrative to do so would get fairly repetitive too, as they're given it to use it.

i think we'd see less experienced folks with this role do their job and roleplay normally until the bomb is dropped, then frequently fail to roleplay it or escalate something trivial to nuking, which will hamper a lot of roleplayers' rounds.
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#3
gets me worried about people antag fishing via spectating at round start and waiting for a midround nukie event to happen
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#4
waffle makes good actual consideration about this.

I have my subjective little bubble of experience and I dont personally think nukies fits well on RP and that we have two action servers with nukies in rotation specifically for people who want to play those gamemodes.

Also MAMA MIA, sword balancing and arrivals killing, I dont wanna go back, I dont wanna go back
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#5
I like nukies sprinkled in from time to time just to shake things up. For example if Bill is online I almost come to expect some kind of wild madness on the rp server that I don't normally see. And that is GOOD a palate cleanser can do wonders for round after round of the same old game type/antag groups you find on the RP servers.

That being said this has some merit but the fishing problem alone makes me hesitant. What are the other antag types allowed in the round beforehand? Is it the standrad rp burrito of vampire, changeling, traitor? Then we get into ok the nukies are defeated does the round continue like nothing happened?

Then we get into the time crunch problem. They not only start late, but have to do additional objectives before they get to do their final objective? It just screams yeah midround nukies are never even going to get to set up their bomb and if they do we come to another point of contention. Up to 3 nukies with non nukie gear defending the bomb if by some miracle they get it setup is just kind of destined to fail.
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#6
I agree with the sentiment of others here,
Mid round nukies sounds like a bad idea for several reasons....

I still think the admins have it right to do RP regulated Nukies.
Nukies are infact the most KILL HEAVY antagonists in the game.

You might say Wizards can do the same... and yes THEY CAN! Wich is why they aren't turned on and also admin regulated and the few I seen just do funny tricks or do boss battles only. (Heck one was a DM for a large group)

Werewolves are also removed unless you get a lucky random mutation, but aren't as kill heavy in my opinion..but eh I don't know the reason for that one.

But Nukies.. a coordinated group that can kill half the staff by just spitting out bullets, exploding parts of the station and their objective ends the round early in SUCCESS OR FAILURE?! You can see why people in RP are hesitated.
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#7
Like I mentioned in discord when we were throwing the idea around, I like the idea of a midround antagonist that is *similar* to nukies, but I think nukies should stay in their own game mode, as that is how they are meant to work within the game design. Said antagonist team should be geared towards teamwork in completing an objective, this shouldn't be the same objective as nukies have, and should have their own visual identity separate from nukeops altogether. A previous antag I was working on was going to be a team of Mercs that were hired by an unnamed competitor to cause chaos/do sabotage on the station, but not outright destroy it (rather if they inflict enough damage/cannot be stopped, it'd be shuttle call rather than a cutscene ending).
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#8
(06-23-2022, 04:04 AM)virvatuli Wrote: Like I mentioned in discord when we were throwing the idea around, I like the idea of a midround antagonist that is *similar* to nukies, but I think nukies should stay in their own game mode, as that is how they are meant to work within the game design. Said antagonist team should be geared towards teamwork in completing an objective, this shouldn't be the same objective as nukies have, and should have their own visual identity separate from nukeops altogether. A previous antag I was working on was going to be a team of Mercs that were hired by an unnamed competitor to cause chaos/do sabotage on the station, but not outright destroy it (rather if they inflict enough damage/cannot be stopped, it'd be shuttle call rather than a cutscene ending).

Sounds more like mid round Conspirators at 1st XD

But I gotta a sillier idea. "Inflitrator Tourists"
Wich would be the mid round antagonists. We know tourists can spawn as late joiners. So insted we get a group of tourists join and start but they are these "mercs"

For RP their job is to lower the tourist rating, complaining to managers or damaging things.

For Classic it can litterly be "*Cocks shotgun* We're in" and then your idea applies.

Just the fact they are disguised when they arrive is such an action movie thing... also it's just hilarious to see a bunch of people in hawaiin shirts and sunglasses cause mayhem!
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#9
(06-23-2022, 04:04 AM)virvatuli Wrote: Like I mentioned in discord when we were throwing the idea around, I like the idea of a midround antagonist that is *similar* to nukies, but I think nukies should stay in their own game mode, as that is how they are meant to work within the game design. Said antagonist team should be geared towards teamwork in completing an objective, this shouldn't be the same objective as nukies have, and should have their own visual identity separate from nukeops altogether. A previous antag I was working on was going to be a team of Mercs that were hired by an unnamed competitor to cause chaos/do sabotage on the station, but not outright destroy it (rather if they inflict enough damage/cannot be stopped, it'd be shuttle call rather than a cutscene ending).

space pirates. plunder/destroy the items or areas on their list, and escape. or die to the crew.
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#10
I think this would be a neat opportunity to not only have them use nukie guns, but some of the admin spawned (not the insta kill) guns as well
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#11
opinion:

no to actual nukies, i dont want rpers (or worse, sec) dangling around nukie toys as trophies

if you wanna spawn a midround antag infiltrator guy with the snake suit and a heavily modified kit tho that's possibly ok
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#12
what about pirates
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#13
(06-22-2022, 08:22 PM)Waffleloffle Wrote: gets me worried about people antag fishing via spectating at round start and waiting for a midround nukie event to happen

that happens anyway when a midround antag gets changed or another is added, its inevitable
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#14
I’m still worried about the high skill ceiling and the design philosophy that “they get a good reward (a nerfed nuclear bomb) but to balance that they can’t achieve their objectives unless they play a perfect game”. Stuff like having to get to the station with fire extinguishers etc. IMO it would be weird to have all the other antags with purposefully easy to grasp mechanics and then this, which relies heavily by your own admittance on player skill. Basically, looks cool, but worried about the reliance on hard objectives to gate the ultimate goal
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