Goonhub
12-28-2020, 01:25 PM
Addendum about Conspirators:
Conspiracy rounds are very hit or miss for a few reasons, but the two big ones are objectives and communication. In order for the conspirators to do anything worthwhile, they have to be able to talk to each other without being immediately outed as antags or metagamed against. Furthermore, none of the current Conspiracy objectives are really all that appropriate for antags. Most of the current Conspiracy objectives fall much deeper into the realm of "Organized Miscreants" than actual antags.
Example: "Convince the crew to abandon their posts and slack off." This isn't a very antagonist-y thing to do, but rather a miscreant thing. It takes a ton of effort by an experienced conspiracy lead to make this kind of objective fun as the driving antagonist force, and even then is usually by introducing some other gimmick that only achieves this as a byproduct.
Example (paraphrased): "Build a wrestling cage and hold a fighting tournament." This is something that a lot of non-antags will do for fun, and also more suited to a miscreant type role than an antags. How is a group of people trying to build a wrestling pit providing a driving opposing force for a station-wide narrative? It likely takes admin intervention with something like macho man before this consumes the entire station with a good story, rather than being a miscreant-level shenanigan.
Most of the objectives for Conspirator tend to go like this. I don't really feel like going through all of them or code-diving to get exact phrasing at the moment, but it leads me to make the following conclusion: Conspiracy in it's current form is not an Antagonist Game Mode. It is a Miscreant Game Mode that is mislabeled as an Antagonist. I would honestly be in favor of leaving Conspiracy unchanged, but moving it to be a random miscreant spawn rather than antagonist for this reason. This would also make it easier to let 'trusted' roles still have the potential to roll conspirator.
All of this leads to the second part of my thoughts: Team Antagonists can be very fun and engaging, especially with excellent players leading the charge. So without Conspiracy to provide an organized antagonist mode, what can be done? This leads to my second proposal: Establish a 'Covert Ops' Team-Based Antagonist Mode. This would function as a small team of Syndicate Members spawning on whatever Syndicate vessel is appropriate for the map, but to be given Syndicate Comms (:z) and more supervillain/heisty objectives. Example Covert Ops missions could be "Steal the AI and hold it for ransom." "Kidnap all the Department Heads." "Rescue Stirstir and bring him safely aboard our Assault Vessel." or even "Reports indicate a shapeshifting bioweapon is present aboard Space Station 13. Infiltrate the station and extract the bioweapon so that we can study and replicate it's effects. (Capture/Retrieve the Ling)" While the exact balance of traitor gear these teams would be given would take a fair bit of thought and balancing, it would provide a simple, easy-to-digest team based antagonist that would be fun for both new and experienced players. Working with a team to do your evil is often more fun than the chaos or murder you could cause on your own. With fun objectives, this would lead to some very interesting stories that are much more fitting of actual antagonists then having to choose between cooperating to cause a nuisance or venturing forth alone to cause some mayhem.
TL;DR
Conspiracy should be moved to a Miscreant Spawn instead of an Antagonist Mode.
Covert Ops would be a fun replacement for Conspiracy in the Antagonists Mode.
Conspiracy rounds are very hit or miss for a few reasons, but the two big ones are objectives and communication. In order for the conspirators to do anything worthwhile, they have to be able to talk to each other without being immediately outed as antags or metagamed against. Furthermore, none of the current Conspiracy objectives are really all that appropriate for antags. Most of the current Conspiracy objectives fall much deeper into the realm of "Organized Miscreants" than actual antags.
Example: "Convince the crew to abandon their posts and slack off." This isn't a very antagonist-y thing to do, but rather a miscreant thing. It takes a ton of effort by an experienced conspiracy lead to make this kind of objective fun as the driving antagonist force, and even then is usually by introducing some other gimmick that only achieves this as a byproduct.
Example (paraphrased): "Build a wrestling cage and hold a fighting tournament." This is something that a lot of non-antags will do for fun, and also more suited to a miscreant type role than an antags. How is a group of people trying to build a wrestling pit providing a driving opposing force for a station-wide narrative? It likely takes admin intervention with something like macho man before this consumes the entire station with a good story, rather than being a miscreant-level shenanigan.
Most of the objectives for Conspirator tend to go like this. I don't really feel like going through all of them or code-diving to get exact phrasing at the moment, but it leads me to make the following conclusion: Conspiracy in it's current form is not an Antagonist Game Mode. It is a Miscreant Game Mode that is mislabeled as an Antagonist. I would honestly be in favor of leaving Conspiracy unchanged, but moving it to be a random miscreant spawn rather than antagonist for this reason. This would also make it easier to let 'trusted' roles still have the potential to roll conspirator.
All of this leads to the second part of my thoughts: Team Antagonists can be very fun and engaging, especially with excellent players leading the charge. So without Conspiracy to provide an organized antagonist mode, what can be done? This leads to my second proposal: Establish a 'Covert Ops' Team-Based Antagonist Mode. This would function as a small team of Syndicate Members spawning on whatever Syndicate vessel is appropriate for the map, but to be given Syndicate Comms (:z) and more supervillain/heisty objectives. Example Covert Ops missions could be "Steal the AI and hold it for ransom." "Kidnap all the Department Heads." "Rescue Stirstir and bring him safely aboard our Assault Vessel." or even "Reports indicate a shapeshifting bioweapon is present aboard Space Station 13. Infiltrate the station and extract the bioweapon so that we can study and replicate it's effects. (Capture/Retrieve the Ling)" While the exact balance of traitor gear these teams would be given would take a fair bit of thought and balancing, it would provide a simple, easy-to-digest team based antagonist that would be fun for both new and experienced players. Working with a team to do your evil is often more fun than the chaos or murder you could cause on your own. With fun objectives, this would lead to some very interesting stories that are much more fitting of actual antagonists then having to choose between cooperating to cause a nuisance or venturing forth alone to cause some mayhem.
TL;DR
Conspiracy should be moved to a Miscreant Spawn instead of an Antagonist Mode.
Covert Ops would be a fun replacement for Conspiracy in the Antagonists Mode.