Disaster Antagonist: Wraith

[I-Sett]

With the introduction of Wraith and after watching a few recent post-solarium rounds in which between 10-20 people escaped on the shuttle, I think a single player-controlled wraith would go a long way towards making the round more challenging for survivors.

Sure, wraiths are vulnerable to a single guy intent on Salting The Universe but a disaster round doesn't often allow for that sort sodium-mania lifestyle.
The main challenge to a wraith in a Disaster round would be the high number of trigger-happy laser-toting nerds roaming the halls, balanced against a shorter than average crewmember lifespan (so many corpses) and a great potential for life threatening mayhem if the wraith times his various abilities to coincide with NPC assaults. Wraith is the only antagonist that really fits both the round atmosphere and cooperative culture (living antagonists run against the 'we're in this together' nature of the round-type).

To recap: Add a high chance for a single wraith to spawn on post-solarium rounds (or possibly all Disaster rounds).

Pros: Greater challenge for the intrepid grey shirts as well as the wraith (way more guns than usual)
Cons: May be unbalanced in one direction or the other resulting in either no survivors ever or near-instant wraith destruction

I propose a few test rounds with an admin spawned/controlled wraith to explore the potential.

[BaneOfGiygas]

One of the biggest problems I see happening with this is, to be quite frank, there's already a FUCKTON of things people have to worry about in disaster rounds. Furthermore, this would easily incite the unholy torment of the "lol solarium nerds" people, with a bunch of people hopping on board a disaster round with the explicit purpose of having a shot at messing with people trying to figure out secrets and such. Aforemenrioned solarium nerds probably wouldn't appreciate this.

Also I've only seen 8 people escape on the shuttle maximum, and that was both out of like fifteen and almost entirely comprised of veteran players. To try to imply that 10-20 people escaping alive is the NORM is, while perhaps not completely inacurrate, a bit hyperbolic.

[Ali0en]

It'd be cool during normal disaster rounds and not solarium ones. Those are already a pain for us nerds.

[atomic1fire]

At first I thought wraith might be a stupid addition to disaster, given that disaster is basically chill with peeps and kill martians.

But then I realized that some of the original ideas of the wraith being able to bargin with people and possess items would be pretty fun in disaster.

Imagine a wraith looking for the weakest link in team smash zombies, and convincing them to leave the group for safety or reward.

Also imagine the wraith taking control of a martian, or a zombie to cause more trouble for the crew.

Disaster would basically be wraith's playground.

[Berrik]

I'd be fine with this if the spawn rate of critters during disaster was reduced.

[Houka]

Supernatural portals are ripping open to infest the station with awful baddy critters. I think it would be entirely sensible for a Wraith to exist on these rounds, because then it doesn't necessarily need another antagonist to get a corpse snack or three and begin building its powers. If it does end up existing, there may need to be some sort of difficult way to get rid of those wormholes to render areas temporarily safe for people, just for the false sense of security.

Some sort of... clown magic or something. Everyone knows evil ghosts are afraid of clowns.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Also, bear in mind that Martians and Zombies actually aren't part of the spawn pool in the Solarium disaster rounds. All that shows up are freaky robots and some weird extradimensional shit; Nothing that a Wraith could feasibly possess.

[Amuys]

I had an idea that if we had a post disaster salvage round, a wraith would be cool as a spooky haunt in an abandoned station.

[Marquesas]

Even post-solarium rounds are quite tame, let alone disaster which is a fucking joke. I directed a couple of rounds of actual disaster where people actually die (yet miraculously you arsewigs keep surviving somehow???). You most likely witnessed one of these. (A post-solarium is a normal void of space, I usually used red void for distinction)

Point is unless disaster is made exponentially more dangerous and part of any kind of rotation, this idea is really not worth considering. But I'm not aware of any plans for either (may be subject to change, although admittedly, disaster is more of a punishment round than anything atm, and we have enough PvE elements without actually forcing it on people, not to mention it'd run itself into the ground and get old PRETTY FAST)

[DyssalC]

Point is unless disaster is made exponentially more dangerous and part of any kind of rotation, this idea is really not worth considering. But I'm not aware of any plans for either (may be subject to change, although admittedly, disaster is more of a punishment round than anything atm, and we have enough PvE elements without actually forcing it on people, not to mention it'd run itself into the ground and get old PRETTY FAST)

Not to derail the thread, but could this be subject to change under certain parameters? As in, would a proposition along the lines of adding disaster in some way to rotation be even remotely considered in any way?

[BaneOfGiygas]

I'm personally against the inclusion of disaster in the normal round rotation, because it would make disaster rounds lose some of the...impact that they have. Like, my first disaster round, I was utterly in awe at how completely and utterly everything was going to shit.

Also, as to why disaster rounds are such a joke now: It's because the enemy critters are simple. They rush at you, you hit them a bunch, they die. Just about all of the critters die to either one or two laser shots or a little bit of fire extinguisher bludgeoning, and the only thing that's liable to do any actual damage is the cutter drone, solely because of how damn durable it is. Furthermore, I've found that basically no monsters spawn at escape, seeing as I was able to camp out there for literally the ENTIRE ROUND and not so much as get poked, so perhaps switching the spawning algorithms to spawn more mobs in hotspots would ramp things up a bit.

[Marquesas]

Bane basically tallied up the main problem with disaster. Since it has to be babysat by an admin anyway I'm fairly confident there's little point fixing it let alone introducing it into the rotation. If you feel the need to fight for your life against endless waves of critters, that's what the gauntlet is (and soon the colosseum will be) for.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Furthermore, post-solarium disaster rounds more serve as a vehicle for the good ending than anything else, and admin-made disaster rounds typically have some sort of special thing exclusive to them that sets them apart from the standard formula.

[Paineframe]

Disaster might be better if there's no warning that the round is disaster, or if there's an antag to stir things up. The main problem I see is that since everyone knows it's disaster, they all arm up, huddle together in one place and watch each other's backs.