suggestions to improve spy rounds (aka spydeas hehehe)

[AffableGiraffe]

so i understand that the coders are working on other projects right now, as we can see with the amount of big updates on the servers, but i thought it would be nice to have a discussion on things that could improve spy rounds so that we can stop having rounds where spies just implant the heads and murder the whole station rather than actually doing something stealthy and fun.

here are some ideas deadchat came up with one spy round where, surprise surprise, a small gang just started beating the shit out of everyone:

1. less mindslave implants (because, frankly, having four permanent mindslaves is a little bit absurd)
   
2. passive objectives
   
   1. job based?: engineers have to make sure oxygen is in the hot loop, mechanics have to smuggle blueprints for certain items, etc (my thought is that having this kind of objective would force the spymaster to designate jobs to their mindslave(s), making it less efficient to just have small gangs wandering around.)
      
   2. subvert and escort key individuals
      
   3. steal important items, such as the master tape, a head's PDA, or the RD's wead
3. an emphasis on keeping civilians alive, such as a goal being to avoid killing x or less amount of civilians

look basically i just want some cool super agent shit, not just some shitty gang round. if you guys have any other ideas or want to discuss what i laid out here, feel free! keep in mind that traitors are supposed to be pretty OP, what i'm aiming for is less focused on balance and more focused on just making a more entertaining round type

[david2222121]

I'd love to see Spy mode be about being a super sneaky team that sabotages the station, rather than rampage and ruin everything. One reason that I think it always turns into rampages is because the main objective for the spymasters are to find and murder the other spymasters. Pretty much everything else is secondary. This causes a prisoner dilemma-esque scenario, where if everyone is sneaking about and quietly assassinating people, its challenging, yet fun for everyone; however people want to be the winner so they murderize everyone else who's sneaking about. And with everyone doing that, the round leaves a bad taste in almost everyone's mouths.

I'd like to see objectives that involve indirectly messing with various departments or the station as a whole. Like ensuring that the engine isn't producing power, or prevent genetics from obtaining any new mutations. Kidnapping/subverting heads or stealing important things is great too.

[RAWK_LAWBSTAR]

Personally, I'd prefer spies have to actually kidnap someone and drag them off to a special locker or pod for pickup. Though, I've chatted with Daeren about the idea and it's still got a lot of holes in it.

[Paineframe]

I'd honestly prefer spies to have a lot fewer implants. Regular traitors do just fine with murder objectives, even though they usually ignore them and just try to kill as many people as possible anyway. The problem is that in a traitor round, there'll usually only be 1-6 traitors, and things get a little too messy if its at the upper end of the scale anyway. In spy, however, there's four traitors and up to sixteen mindslaves, resulting in twenty potential murderers roaming the halls trying to figure out how to kill as many people as possible. The number of people permitted or forced to work on either wide-scale destruction or raw violence is staggering, and it's no surprise that the station goes to hell when literally half the crew has been recruited to the war between spymasters.

[mozi]

I'd love to see Spy mode be about being a super sneaky team that sabotages the station, rather than rampage and ruin everything. One reason that I think it always turns into rampages is because the main objective for the spymasters are to find and murder the other spymasters. Pretty much everything else is secondary. This causes a prisoner dilemma-esque scenario, where if everyone is sneaking about and quietly assassinating people, its challenging,

alSO THERE aren't any in-game mechanics for determining who is a spy. which is kind of a problem

[Weavel]

alSO THERE aren't any in-game mechanics for determining who is a spy. which is kind of a problem

This is my issue with spy; the best way to find who the other spies are is to brutally murder them and see if they have an implanter or something on them, which is fucking dumb

What about blood samples? Fingerprints? Get given a partial sample of someone who is a spy, and you can try determine out of the listings, rather than just dumb murder.
I think spies should have an alternate objective, too. Data! DNA! Anything that isn't murder.

Objective #1: Ensure the authorization disk is carried by you or your mindslaves on the Emergency Shuttle. Failed
Objective #2: Ensure a genetic sample of Batte Maen, the Chief Engineer, is carried by you or your mindslaves on the Emergency Shuttle. Success
Objective #3: Ensure the AI's Neural Net Processor is carried by you or your mindslaves on the Emergency Shuttle. Success

[david2222121]

What if we drop the implanters shtick that spymasters get? Hell, let's get rid of spymaster all together.

What if, instead, we just have a team of spies? It'd be like a nuke op team that starts already on the station, who all have the same objectives and work together to complete them, while doing their best to not be uncovered. Whether or not they know who the other spies are, and if they can communicate with each other from the get go, iunno. But drop the "kill the other spies" aspect. Just ugh.

Objective #2: Ensure a genetic sample of Batte Maen, the Chief Engineer, is carried by you or your mindslaves on the Emergency Shuttle. Success

I hope this includes not only genetics disks, but syringes of blood, or even severed limbs or butts.

[Zadeon]

Give each spy team codewords to help find out who is on their team.

[Haine]

my spydea* is: remove it as a round type and make the multi-use implanter a regular, high-TC traitor item

* aka an idea I think I blatantly stole from SpyGuy

[Spy_Guy]

my spydea* is: remove it as a round type and make the multi-use implanter a regular, high-TC traitor item

* aka an idea I think I blatantly stole from SpyGuy

My idea was to remove Spy from the rotation, then keep the multi-use implanter as something you'd give a hardmode traitor with the objective to become a supervillain.
The implanter itself is a great tool if you want to run gimmicks without the threat of getting murdered by a vigilante or if you've got grander plans that takes more people to make happen within a reasonable timeframe (and where your minions need enough autonomy that you can't babysit them to renew the implant).

The implanter could be used for such amazing things, but in the end it's stuck in a round type where it will only ever be used to cause (lame) death and destruction.