New antag: Stinkbug

[Glamurio]

The only comment I think I have on this isn't positive or negative, and basically speculation: I think this antag would move right to the top of the "most likely to get attacked by the crew en-masse" list. I'm making that guess on the basis that the suggest outline so far is geared almost entirely towards direct-player antagonism. There's currently not a lot of graduated or stealthier stuff aside from I suppose laying down toxic clouds, so players are going to know pretty fast, and be directly "Attacked" by this antagonist.

I suppose the same can be said of vampires. I would suggest though that vampires possess both a utility ability (batform), have an indrect method of power accrual (blood bags) and so on. I wonder if there are ways to either embrace this concept for the suggestion, or offer some kind of utility or stealthier options. Use of air pumps or pressurizers? Grungifying a maints room? spiking janitor's abandoned buckets and buffers? I don't know.

The other thing that I think would make this antagonist a high-priority target is that its effects essentially have two solutions: one palliative, one direct. The palliative is "Well go wash" for players afflicted. The direct is "Kill them" I think some countermeasures involving departments would make sense here. There's already some fairly obvious avenues from Janitorial, Botany, and Genetics, perhaps chemistry if you give them a little ambergris, but a bit like the blob, the suggestion as it stands doesn't have a lot of methods to deal with it beyond ignoring or killing.

This is no means saying the idea is good or bad. I'll be honest I actually don't know how I feel about it. But I also get that putting an idea out there is essentially the first draft so why not go "Here's what I think right now" and seeing if it leads anywhere.

Fair worries, but also kind of dispelled by your own arguments. All antagonists are geared toward player antagonism, that is their role. Yes, changelings can feed off of recent corpses, and vampires can do the blood bag shtick, and while arcfiends rarely directly attack, their actions can shut down entire departments if unchecked. But their job is to disrupt other players to mix things up, so it's a good thing.
 
I don't see a reason why we can't add equally neutral options to engage the crew with the stinkbug. Maybe just having dirty surroundings can give a benefit, it just so happens that most of our "dirt" tends to be blood or vomit, though there's certainly ways to improve that. We could have stinkbugs eat trashy food, maybe ants in particular, leaving food on the ground everywhere, things like that.

As for it not being stealthy enough, neither are changeling stings or vampires. The former makes the victim make a death gurgle, and both have a giant skill bar above their head. The stealth comes from acting stealthy. Yeah, if you stink up a player, that player will now know that there's a stinkbug, but the important part is that other players won't know until you see stink lines, which can be sometime mid-round. You don't necessarily need a counter beyond "go wash", and "clean the stinkbug". Vampires have a dedicated job against them and you rarely see this play out in rounds. Arcfiends and Changelings, let alone Wizards have nothing focused against them. And much like any other antag active on RP, elimination is only on the menu when they are disrupting the round actively, so I'm not particularly worried.

And I appreciate the feedback. Much like you said, this was a random idea tossed in here to see what sticks, no harm to break it down or reject certain aspects of it, far from it, it can only help.