New midround antag - Tigraki liquidator

[Ikea]

Throughout the history of frontier, we at Tigraki Contracting pride ourselves upon our ability to provide stability to outer space. From our roots helping fight off swarms of Martians to doing countless security work for over 100 companies and over 500 individuals we have always been to the aid of whoever requests it. Our team of highly trained and well equipped professionals is here to help you, no matter the task.

You continue to scroll down on your work computer until you reach the assignments tab. There's only one available, normally this scale of work isn't one you'd accept, but the payout is good, you click accept. You walk to the other side of your buoy and proceed to put on your work outfit. Hearing the click of your spacesuit, you once again get uncomfortable with the thought of being locked in a suit that's set to explode upon your death, but this is what you expect for this type of job. This overt of contracting on nanotrasen property doesn't normally get approved by the higher ups, but it isn't your job to think about what this kind of change implies.

Tigraki Liquidators aim to be a solo low stealth midround antag for both classic and roleplay whose goal is simple, assassinate someone on station. Unfortunately, all the intel that was provided was their name and that they work at space station 13. To do this task you are armed with the following:

A teleporter on the buoy that will teleport you onto a random tile on maint (you choose which maint).

Your trusty Tigraki spacesuit, this suit is an engineering marvel, managing to be both heavily armored and lightweight. With zero slowdown, the range and melee prot of sec gear, and a night vision hud, this suit will be of great aid to whatever the task is at hand. Unfortunately, you can't take it off and is set to explode with the force of 4 microbombs upon death, something about preserving liquidator integrity. 

A special cloaker, unfortunately this type of cloaker only works in low light levels. 

A self recharging energy pistol, and a self recharging baton with a lethal + stun and a only stun mode (lethal + stun by default)

An agent card that starts with maintenance access

A handheld teleporter that will teleport you back onto your work buoy

And finally, a few other small goodies scattered around the buoy. Some medical equipment, crushable telecrystal displacers that teleport you 7-10 tiles away immediately, etc.

Upon killing your target, you get 12 points and another target assigned, you can redeem these points at your vending machine to buy some more goodies to help with your job. The area in which Id like help fleshing out the antag most is in the toolkit, ideas of goodies to buy and stuff to have would be great

[Lord_earthfire]

I really like the idea. From an RP perspective, this adds quite a bit of escalation to the station, imo. Also, having a human antag that is uses quite some neat technological tools that are contraband is great. Might even get inspired by the space ninjas from other servers.

I think if, at the beginning, they are weak enough to be unable to rampage and robust all of security, i think it will work fine.

What i would be thinking about is handing something into the vendor that will benefit the station. Like being able to turn in 12 points for 10k credits. That way, the antag is able to bribe and has some kind of leverage to get something from the station and maybe even bargain with the captain for their victim to be delivered in front of them.

[Frank_Stein]

The fact the suit is rigged to explode...

What if they spawned with a timer going, say 10 minutes or less. If they don't kill their target in that time, they die.

Sort of a your Pizza in 30 minutes or less kinda thing.

[unfunnyperson]

I don't think this is really unique enough to be its own antag at the moment. It feels like a weird mix of being hunter but also spy and salvager? Not a fan of giving them security gear as part of their default toolkit either.

In addition, single randomly chosen targets are too restrictive. The liquidator could be pitted against a staffie or roll the head of security/some nerd about to leave for an azone.

I would rather hunter be fleshed out rather than add a new antagonist that's hunter but a syndicate agent.

[Ikea]

I don't think this is really unique enough to be its own antag at the moment. It feels like a weird mix of being hunter but also spy and salvager? Not a fan of giving them security gear as part of their default toolkit either.

In addition, single randomly chosen targets are too restrictive. The liquidator could be pitted against a staffie or roll the head of security/some nerd about to leave for an azone.

I would rather hunter be fleshed out rather than add a new antagonist that's hunter but a syndicate agent.

Its definitely important to note here that this antag in general still needs more time in the conceptual oven before any code work commences, major changes to some of these things are likely as a lot of it is still getting worked out in my head. Stuff like the toolkit for example needs major fleshing out and there are things that I want the liquidator to be (for example very slippery, good crowd control but minimal group damage), that just aren't fleshed out enough to be able to reflect in this forum post.

The conceptualization for this antag started out as me thinking about roleplay hunter, so the similarities aren't a coincidence. I think hunter can fill a really cool niche for roleplay (Stalking someone down is always fun), but I dont really think it fits roleplay just because it's just murder for the sake of murder and also its literally just the predator from the movie predator (Not to mention its toolkit is a bit too rampagey). 

Im not opposed to this replacing hunter outright with this as in my unbiased opinion I think it just fits the game better. Thematically, its something more unique to the setting (Space blackwater gets hired to claim bounties on NT employees) instead of just the predator still from the movie predator, thus making it roleplayable (you can invent reasons why you're doing what your doing and why there's a bounty on someone), and mechanically, it actually has a gameplay loop instead of just killing for the sake of killing (you can technically allow you to buy stuff with skull points or whatever but that just seems blegh). Im not gonna push this as a hunter revamp because I think I'll have in general a harder time with that, but if people are interested in this replacing hunter outright Im definitely not opposed as I think its currently one of our more meh antags.

The reskinned baton is mostly there just so roleplay peeps can kidnap people + I want this antag to be very strong on single targets without giving them a syndie knife reskin and I think the lethal baton is a way of doing this. The toolkit in general though is definitely pretty fluid and can change, if there's a better way of doing this I won't say no. 

The bounty system is still pretty fluid right now in general. Im not opposed giving two or so bounties roundstart but I do want it to be small so you're actually focusing on someone instead of rampaging and just going oh neat some extra vendor points. How much of a problem this is is also partially something that just needs playtesting to dictate. I like the core idea of having basically no info on the target as it can force you to do things like raid hop/hack to get the manifest, but that may prove to be too harsh as well. My idea for the guy getting hos thing was to just blacklist certain jobs from being bounty targets early on (probably blacklist mining, sec, and heads). Later on you can roll bounties for these jobs but these offer extra bounty points. 

I am definitely struggling with how to deal with people off station though + the rewarding of bounties (ie someone dies without your involvement). My main idea for the former is some sort of player tracker that only works when people are off z level. The latter is still something Im dealing with as cloning can throw it into whack. My main idea at the moment is rewarding half the points when your target dies (only works once), and rewarding the other half of points when the liquidator uses a tool on the corpse that makes them unclonable. Ideas on how to deal with these things would be highly appreciated, I dont think theyre dealbreakers but I do think they are challenges.

[Cherman0]

Overall, i like it. Still needs a bit of fleshing out but it seems like if hunter was generally less shit and also not just wholesale stolen intellectual property. In terms of dealing with the issue of "your target is John Science in the VR Dungeon", either giving you a certain number of rerolls or a reroll every 10 minutes or so could let you skip terrible/impossible bounties.

[Kateaclysm]

Well, if you're being sent to assassinate a certain person, you would be working under a contract, yeah? Maybe your equipment is given to you at round-start based on the role of your target? While this is an idea for a latejoin/mid round antag, it won't give you say - the HoS - at the start. Maybe a roboticist or something. if you do enough contract killings, you move up to the big guns, and your employer opens up new options for your kit.

[Chasu]

I think this is a very good idea that, in theory, offers an intriguing challenge to both sides involved. However, I am afraid that this could end in situations like this:
>Staffie sees a guy in a liquidator suit
>Knows that they‘re a solo antag
>Immiediately begins to alert the crew
>Everyone gathers in one space to avoid being killed
>Antag gives up

But, as you already mentioned, this is all still a concept. I‘m really looking forward to how this might be implemented and love the idea of being able to collect points by fulfilling contracts.

[Frank_Stein]

Well, if you're being sent to assassinate a certain person, you would be working under a contract, yeah? Maybe your equipment is given to you at round-start based on the role of your target? While this is an idea for a latejoin/mid round antag, it won't give you say - the HoS - at the start. Maybe a roboticist or something. if you do enough contract killings, you move up to the big guns, and your employer opens up new options for your kit.

Could be fun to sort of have a list of available tools to pick from at the start of the job, then swap.

Maybe take on optional handicaps that make the job harder but give you extra rewards for fulfilling the requirement. Stuff like "Do the job but be wearing clown shoes the entire time" or "Kill your target while being 30 tiles away from their location"