Let's talk Antags (Those we have and those we don't)

[arcticmog]

With a slight modification to the spells available the wizard could work as an antag on RP and I dare say in the right hands it would be more interesting than a wraith.

Wizards would need a full rework to be viable on RP as their entire kit is built around rampages/mass murder. They would need a whole host of spells that work subtly, and there are other issues (namely, wizards are super bloody obvious, most rp antags are indistinguishable from a normal crew member until very carefully and closely inspected or they make use of their powers). Wizards are obvious the moment they arrive on station, sec can see the wizard gear is contraband etc, and for wizards to work in their Current form they need their contraband gear out. An RP wizard would need to be able to pass as a normal crew member with relative ease. There is far far more work here that would need to be done then just tweaking a few of their spells.

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Ok I‘ll bite.

Conspirators:

Do you like hard mode traitor? Do you like herding cats? Why not combine the two in an antag role guaranteed to make you headbutt through a glass wall in frustration when your other conspirators decide to not respond to their radio at round start, one cryos immediately, two decide to actually work together on your assigned plot, and the last player decides this is a great time to make a ttv and ruin 3 other antags rounds because haha bomb go boom.

It is the only antag role I have disabled because while I have had interesting conspirator rounds when all my team buys in to the idea, far too many have been utter trash because of the earlier examples.

Quite frankly the mode needs some love.onto the other category.

Probably should have done this in one post but im limited on time and didnt realise this was the same post (brain fart). Regardless. 

Conspirators are currently not a very good antagonist in RP. Team antagonists only really work when there is an enforced objective (like a mind hacked antagonist serving their master or zombie serving their vampire, or on classic, teams like nuke ops). However devs have stated out flat that hard/obligatory objectives rather then soft optional objectives (with the vampire/mindhack exceptions) are something they currently reject. Conspirators don't really work because most antag players are solo operatives, who prefer to choose to work with people at their own leisure (and the chance to betray them, which conspirators are on paper not allowed to do). Rps philosophy heavily reflects this as well which does not help conspirators not fitting in. There is also the issue that conspirators may have just completely conflicting ideas/desires or modus operandi, based on both meta desires (planned gimmick) or in character motivations.  Theres no easy way to obviously resolve this and I can see issues with admins imposing a solution on conspirators on per round basis in game at present. 

This also ties into a criticism of how antagonist selection mechanics works. Goonstation has it setup that your chances of rolling antagonist are mostly even no matter how many antagonist roles you have selected. If you only have traitor selected you are not anymore likely to get traitor when the game decides to spawn one vs someone who has all antags selected. Consequently this encourages people to select as many antagonist options as possible to have the most chances to perform a gimmick they have had planned for a while or to just be the evil person for the round (as for some people this is their favourite thing to do). While people abusing this by adding conspirator to their option are breaking rules when they refuse to cooperate or even attempt to plan (this is ahelpable), currently the game incentivises this behaviour meaning it will never stop being an issue under present circumstances. I have mixed feelings on a better solution for this subject but I do honestly think people should be able to lean towards antagonists they want to play especially if they have a decently well made character concept reflecting the antagonist version of themselves.