New team based antagonist - Scrappers

[Ikea]

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.

I'd recommend focusing on mobility with minimal power early game, that way they can get out of dangerous situations however they wont excel in them. Stuff like telecrystal dust that you can crunch to instantly teleport you somewhere nearby, shock implants that will cancel stuns at the cost of damage, the ability to set up hidden teleporters in the station, etc. The main focus early game would be on mostly out of sight low risk targets (things like public tool storage). Later on you get more stuff towards crowd control, stuff like telecrystal coated frag grenades that teleport people away and large inflatable barricades. This allows you to play more cocky, allowing you to do things like break into sec and quickly break down there stuff while sec bashes down the barricade. Middle game would be more focused on you collecting your more visible and risky machinery (stuff like upload, sec stuff, etc.). Only lategame do you get good weaponry, and this is where you enter the final phase of scrapper, collecting items from people. Your primary source of scrap at this point is through deconstructing and collecting batons, automenders and all other sorts of stuff from people through violent means. This should hopefully have natural escalation to where the scrappers start of a nuisance and slowly become more of a threat. 

I'd recommend instead of a satchel they have to reconfigure there scrap at the base they spawned in. This way instead of them being ever present at the station, they're only seen on station occasionally, this gives them good downtime to plan and also makes the crew less on edge. I think a good way of doing this would be to have scrappers incredibly focused on consumables, that way they have to return to restock if they want to stand a chance early on. It should probably be pretty easy for them to do so, probably something as simple as a handheld device with a five second stun and movement cancellable action bar. 

I think the things that would be really useful to have as scrapper should also be really good scrap materials. Making batons and ruckt kit really rewarding to scrap would introduce far more interesting gameplay then scrappers sit in mechanics outpost for 20 minutes before they rampage. It would introduce an interesting immediate loss in return for long term gain that would be sick.