Syndicate Drone: A Pacifist Antagonist.

[Lady Birb]

For a while I had the idea of an antagonist that was worse at killing than even a normal player, outright forcing them to use stealth, while still being enough of a threat/annoyance that the crew will feel motivated to deal with them. Meet the syndicate drone.

Wait, what is that drone doing to the quantum telescope?

Syndicate drones would look identical to normal drones normally, but they lack an RCD or any of a normal drone's laws. They must use their abilities to avoid drawing the suspicion of the crew while stealing Nanotransen data.

A Drone's Tools

Syndiedrones, as mentioned above, lack an RCD. In exchange, they have larger batteries and more importantly, proper hands rather than the inconvenient and clunky magtractors. Don't think they can use this for murder though, their small hands mean they can't use guns and may drop items if they are using them as melee weapons and deal less melee damage, and even their built-in tools deal next to no damage and no stamina damage. They can also speak but that is rather useless in most cases as anyone will be able to tell you are a syndiedrone if you talk.

For self defense, they have a radio-jamming pulse they can use to shut off the headsets of anyone nearby for a few seconds, and a single-shot taser that stuns in one hit, but takes thirty seconds to recharge and makes a VERY obvious noise when used compared to normal tasers. These things are slippery bastards, but don't expect one to actually kill you.

Corporate espionage

A Syndicate drone's objective is to steal data from various consoles across the station. To do this, it is equipped with a USB drive tool that it can use to begin downloading data from a terminal or computer. As the drone transfers the data from the terminal to itself, the terminal will slowly become corrupted in increasingly visible ways, first experiencing a slight lag when receiving commands, then randomly not registering commands, then suffering from visible glitches, and finally wiping the terminal's mainboard, rendering the computer useless.

As you download data, you would gather data points, or "DP", with wiping a computer getting you around 100 DP. DP is split into six categories based on the terminal you collect from: Engineering(Mineral magnet controls and basically anything related to the power grid), Medical(Medical consoles, surgical computers, cloning/genetics computers, and the pathology terminal), Robotics(AI upload, robotics control, and the module rewriter), Research(The quantum telescope, the mainframe, and the different teleport computers), Customs(ID terminals, bank records, and supply computers), and Security(secmate and camera terminals).

Upgrades and unlocks

As a syndiedrone collects DP, it will unlock new powers depending on the type of points it has so far. In general, drones get a "Single target" power for self defense and fleeing at 100 DP of a type, and a single-use "Chaos" that has the syndicate using the data and access you got them to have some fun with the station at 1000 DP of a type(could be a different amount depending on the map) .

• Medical single-target: Nerve Shock. One minute cooldown. Melee range. Different effect depending on body part targeted. Targeting a limb will render it useless for 30 seconds. Targeting the torso will cause a large amount of stamina loss and stop their stamina from regenerating for ten seconds. Targeting the head will blur their vision and cause screenshake and braindamage-like symptoms for ten seconds.
  
• Medical chaos: Mass Equipment Malfunction. Causes the cloner, enzymatic reclaimer, and all defibrillators and hyposprays to spontaneously and permanently become emagged. Maybe if we want to keep syndiedrones as useless in actual combat even after they reach their endgame make them take damage if they pick up an emagged item because the sparks hurt them or whatever.
  
• Engineering single target: Battery Drain. one minute cooldown. Disables the targets PDA for thirty seconds, as well as any items they have that can be toggled on/off like flashlights, mesons, t-ray scanners or siren helmets.
  
• Engineering chaos: SMES Unit Overload. Causes all SMES units expect the one targeted to have their power redirected to this one, while every APC connected to this particular SMES unit to behave like it is connected to a hardwired engine, shocking people, electrifying doors, and blowing out lights.
  
• Robotics single target: Borg Powercell Sabotage: 30 seconds cooldown. Basically your taser but for borgs, instantly draining the target's powercell to zero and stunning them.
  
• Robotics chaos: Ion Artillery Strike. Instantly causes the equivalent of three ion storms hitting the station at once and fries the killswitch and upload terminal. Good luck getting enough points for this with how few robotics terminals there are on the station, but if you can get that many the mayhem will be worth it.
  
• Research single target: Stealth Teleport Gun. One minute cooldown. Teleports the target to a random nearby location. Target can only be sent to areas that have atmosphere.
  
• Research chaos: Chemistry Flood. Causes all chemistry dispensers to start dispensing random chemicals before foaming them every minute. Hope you are not standing anywhere near research when you use this.
  
• Customs single target: Access Download. One minute cooldown. Wipes the target's ID card for thirty seconds, and permanently gives you any access they had. 
  
• Customs chaos: Anarchy Protocol. Removes all access requirements from every door, terminal, and locker, and send an announcement to the station along the lines of "This is the syndicate speaking. We just wiped the stations ID records, effectively gaving everyone all access. Have fun."
  
• Security single target: ziptie fabricator. Not a skill, but an upgrade to your taser. Now anyone you stun with it will also instantly have a pair of weak ziptie cuffs applied. They can be broken out of very quickly once the stun wears off, but still makes syndiedrones an even bigger pain in the ass to catch than they already were.
  
• Security chaos: Beepsky's Wrath. Permanently sets everyone on the station to arrest and double-emags any securitrons on the station. Time for justice to be delivered!
  

Feel free to point out any balance tweaks you would like to see.

Your Actual Objectives
No antagonist would be complete without busywork you can do if you want greentext, Here are some idea I thought up:

• Acquire X total DP (X depends on the map and the number of wipeable terminals available)
  
• Acquire X DP of a specific type
  
• Wipe a specific "High Risk" terminal (High risk terminals are ones that are one-of-a-kind and frequently used, like the AI upload, ID computer, or cloning console. Something that everyone will notice if it is wiped)
  
• Survive until the end/escape on the shuttle alive (Self-explanatory)
  

In conclusion

Whew, this was a lot to type. Anyone who happened to read "Worst moments ever" around march and april would know about my woes with repeatedly losing all my work on this particular suggestion.  Once again, feedback is appreciated and encouraged, and hope you all had a great time reading this! <3