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New team based antagonist - Scrappers
#1
Alright, i've been thinking about a big project for a good long while and i'd like dev and community input ahead of time before anything happens so that effort isnt wasted.

General idea: A new antagonist type, the space raiders, or "Scrappers". A team-based antagonist that would spawn together on a shuttle and be free to go on station to achieve whatever objective they make up for themselves with the possibility of doing it together as a team, while not being forced to, similar to wizards. The general aesthetic is a patchwork of cobbled together scrap, imagine "madmax but in space" in terms of general outfits and gear. The idea behind the items they have access to is that it's easy to produce, efficient, disposable, very much unsafe and is pretty much always based of stolen and/or scrapped items. While the items have a general run-down look and tend to deteriorate, they are nonetheless efficient at what they do, and arent just discount versions of the gear the syndicate provides, instead being focused on different goals and means of causing trouble. They are not affiliated to any factions, being an essentially free-willed anarchic group that tries to give hell to the "corporate overlords" by free-loading off their hard-produced goods and services.

Gameplay: The group spawns on a shuttle that looks like an NT shuttle patched up with various pieces of random metals adorned with a frankly garish amount of spikes and skulls. The bandits have very little in terms of starting gear and may go to the station on some customized pods (which are also very distinctly stolen and repurposed with an equally ridiculous amount of spiky parts and skulls). Their main gameplay loop revolves around two items:


- The scrapping tool: A hacked together grip-like tool that is solely intended to tear down electronics and turn it into usable scrap. Using it on an electronic machinery will cause it to spark and begin an action bar that slowly tears it apart, producing scrap and rendering the machine unusable at the end of the process. The bar takes longer for more essential machinery. Exemples of valid machinery would be: Vending machines, sec scanners and gear, Loudspeakers, the cloner, arcade machines, consoles, manufacturers, sleepers and so on... General idea being that since they are scavengers, they just repurpose and steal whatever they can get their hands on. Which brings me to the second tool:

- The makeshift satchel: A satchel which can be stuffed with scrap. Using it in hand brings up a menu with recipes which can be crafted for varying amounts of scrap. Those recipes may also include other minor materials such as steel or glass, but the vast majority of recipes would involve some amount of scrap. The items that are available to be crafted are exclusive and not reused syndicate items, with a general idea of being unsafe, unstable and ruthlessly efficient. Examples would include: Scrap armor and shields, scrapped together melee weapons made of sharp edges and moving parts, scrapped bots, general gimmickery, and in particular craftable, modular guns.
The modular guns would have their parts crafted individually with the idea of having a few choices to make. A gun is made up of four parts, the trigger, the barrel, the magazine and the stock. The player has to decide which parts they want, as they each have upsides and downsides. For instance you may craft a trigger that allows you to shoot faster but deteriorates faster. Or a magazine that accepts .22 in large amounts but slows rate of fire. The idea being that if you found ammo, you can craft a gun around it and adapt it to your desires. I'm still debating wether to allow scrap-ammo or not. The guns also deteriorate and eventually break down after enough use, giving back a minor amount of scrap.

So the general gameplay idea is to land on station, start scraping machinery and gather unique gear which lets you accomplish whatever nefarious intent you may have. I've been trying to make it distinct from other antagonists so that they may be a fresh alternatives to the team-based ones we got. This antagonist has no game-ending condition unlike nukies and may accept mid-round antag spawns.

My current biggest issue is finding a way to make the early game viable. Currently we have two antag types:
-Antags which start off weak but possess stealth which allows them to take on crewmates one at a time and slowly build up power (see vampires, changelings, spy thief...)
-Antags which are overt and easily spotted but possess enough up-front firepower to deter or at least dissuade a small group of crewmates (see nukies, wizards, werewolf...).
I'd like to have the crew be aware that bandits are on board, but this would likely gather an immediate response from the crew as it may be considered a station-wide threat. If i give them too much firepower off the get-go, crafting and scraping is irrelevant and it'll make it seem like discount nukies, which i really want to avoid. On the opposite, i'm not sure i want it to be a purely stealth based antag until they are powerful enough, as i believe it would be too close to spy thief and i think the idea of bandits roaming among the crew and generally being a nuisance is fun. I'd love ideas on this aspect.

Any suggestions, feedback or ideas would be more than welcome.

This was meant to be posted into suggestions and ideas. Apologies.
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New team based antagonist - Scrappers - by Bartimeus - 10-05-2022, 09:48 AM

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