Antag Types on Destiny

[BaneOfGiygas]

Recently, on the Destiny server SgtBriar and I were given temporary moderator status and worked with Fresh Lemon (and later SpyGuy) to keep watch of people's RP and come up with fun events for the round. We bounced some ideas around, and eventually, we decided that we would have what basically amounted to a traditional changeling round, but with an RP edge and a twist on the escape shuttle. It was an extremely enjoyable experience and our two changelings did very well, acting as believably aliens-as-humans.

Traitors are currently the only real antagonist type on Destiny, but I think that round was proof that quite a few other antagonist types could conceivably work on Destiny if given a few tweaks and RP guidelines.

Changeling
The round above worked for multiple reasons. For one, the participants actually played...well, an alien. As a changeling, you aren't a human but are rather an alien acting as a human. Consequently, there should be some kind of tics that can serve as warning bells to the crew, be they in the form of odd verbal tics, wearing odd things, a distinct lack of knowledge of human culture, and so on and so forth. Not only that, but the changeling's objectives need to be less about "murder [x] duders" and more about subtle sabotage and fucking up the station without just killing everyone. With Destiny's focus on RP, getting particular departments depopulated can severely stunt the station's ability to fight back against antagonists.

The original changeling round gave the two changers objectives that revolved around sabotaging the station but keeping the majority of the crew alive for experimentation. The idea is that the changelings basically fuck the ship up to the point that the crew can be easily abducted by the changeling "mothership", which might be a bit beyond reasonable expectations coding-wise, but makes a lot more sense thematically.

Here's my idea. Each changeling is tasked with eliminating one or more core components to the station (the engine, the comms dishes, the solars, the AI, etc.) Their second objective would be something along the lines of "Make sure [x] crew members remain on board the ship for extraction." See, once the aforementioned components have been disabled, a Centcom announcement rolls in about the systems of the Destiny ship malfunctioning, and sensors detecting the presence of alien activity on the vessel. From here, the shuttle is auto-called and the crew must hold out until the ship arrives, while the changelings ensure that the least number of people possible are able to escape. It's a tentative suggestion and there's definitely room for improvement, but it incorporates all of the things that make changeling rounds fun and engaging: Suspense, tension, paranoia, and the sense of lingering dread.


Wizards
Rather notorious for being exclusively focused towards rampaging, I have a simple suggestion to make wizards more focused towards RP and more interesting as an antagonist type: Bring back the corruption mechanic. The ship is small enough that it very well might work without lagging everything up to hell and back, and the loadout of the wizards could be completely overhauled in order to better mesh with the corruption mechanic, i.e. they might cast from a mana system that slowly builds, the regen rate dependent on how much corruption they've got going on. The Destiny-Wizard's loadout should probably also have a more subtle focus, like creature-summoning and confusion-inducing effects. RPing a wizard has every likelihood to be fun and entertaining, it's just a matter of being able to do it and not have to worry about getting your brains blown out on sight mid-sentence.


Nuke Ops
This is another game mode wildly different from the present incarnation, the nuke ops on destiny should be much more stealth-oriented and less a game of beat up the nuke and blow things up and more a game of infiltration and holding down the fort. Essentially, the job of the nuke ops comes in three steps: Get the disk from the Captain, get the nuclear charge from a syndicate-only location, use the nuke disk to detonate the nuke and blow up the station. The nuke has a countdown that is activated merely by smacking it with the disk. However, the catch is, if the disk toggles the countdown for the nuke: putting it in while the countdown is going stops it. So, in essence, the game revolves around a tug-o-war for the nuke disk, with the syndies attempting to swipe the disk and activate the nuke on station while the crew tries to also get the disk and stop the nuke from exploding.


I'll get back to vampires when it isn't almost midnight, but yeah those are my initial thoughts on the matter! Feel free to leave any ideas or concerns regarding these suggestions below.

[ZeWaka]

In my changeling round today, the admins and I explored a really cool concept with how changelings work.

Short Overview:
A diseased man came through the teleporter, he turned into a mutant and then died.
A quarantine was put in place and nobody was allowed to leave.
I became 'infected' and sowed chaos throughout the station.
Later, I infected the MD and we escaped on the shuttle to infect Centcom after lifting the quarantine.

Basically, what if changelings had a different toolkit designed around spreading chaos & distrust instead of absorbing individuals?
You could potentially 'infect' humans once you accumulate enough chaos(or something similar).
The old system of acid spit and killgrab does not really work on a RP server. We definitely need something more involved.

I really love your ideas for Nuke Ops and Wizards. The changeling objectives are nifty as well.

[atamusvaleo]

I really like the infecting other players concept. I can see this applying to vampires as well. Absorb blood as usual but have the ability to make someone drink your blood after being sucked almost dry and become a fellow vamp. With the ling, it could play into the hive mind where once "absorbed" the person essentially becomes a mindslave and you have the ability to talk on a private channel (like the machine speak where it's not audible to those around you).

Imagine, being trapped in a room with three other people during a ling round, people banging on the glass outside to be let in... suddenly the banging stops. Someone calmly steps forward, opening the door and you are faced with the sudden realization that you're the last human left. Or with vampires.. the hilarity that would ensue with someone begging the vampire to convert them.

[atamusvaleo]

It occurred to me right after submitting it... the ling objective could remain, absorb x amount of DNA but could have additional objectives, such as: Absorb all department heads.

[BaneOfGiygas]

While the idea of a changeling infection is badass and helps contribute to the atmosphere, without the DNA absorption mechanic playing so heavily into the changeling's moveset, there'd need to be some kind of a system in place to prevent the 'lings from infecting everyone on the station right off the bat. The problem is that "chaos", as mentioned before, is abstract and somewhat hard to accurately tie into a power system. Still taking ideas there.

Another idea is that maybe the hallucinogen sting could be altered so that the person starts seeing people making violent gestures, or perhaps the changeling could also induce a berserker state in its victims! Hell, why not give it a rajaijah sting? It works perfectly with the creature's MO, and might also be useful over on normal goon.

It occurred to me right after submitting it... the ling objective could remain, absorb x amount of DNA but could have additional objectives, such as: Absorb all department heads.

Eliminating the department heads could be one of the objectives along the lines of disrupting the station, but the thing is, absorbing DNA should not be the primary focus of the changeling on Destiny, because that makes their primary focus murder. Basically, on this server, I'm wanting changelings to be less stealthy murderers and more stealthy saboteurs, so changing their toolset to give them less combat options and more mostly harmless yet terrifying and paranoia-inducing abilities is only natural.

[atamusvaleo]

Makes sense! And either way it's great to have the discussion and get these ideas out there. I like where your mind is going with this.

To clarify what I meant by absorbing and infecting with the ling, the victim would still be alive and you would simply have "taken control" (mindslaved) their body. Similar to how it was in "the thing" where multiple people are essentially infected by the same creature and function as separate parts of a whole. The need for murder in the case of infection would only be in situations where the person is fat and can't be absorbed or as a means of escaping a dangerous situation. But I can see where you're coming from.

My hopes would be that it would force people together and to actually perform tests on folks to see who is a ling. And the situations where someone has been tested but now comes back infected and is trusted into the group... etc. I can, however, see it being exploited and turned into a killing spree.

Getting away from that and back toward your sabotage ideas. Would the objectives need to be job specific? Otherwise, it would be obvious right away when you've got a doctor attempting to break into the engine and clip wires, smash things, or leak plasma. Perhaps I'm just not knowledgeable enough with the game mechanics but I feel like a lot of this would require tools and would eliminate the need to be a changeling.

[ZeWaka]

Similar to how it was in "the thing" where multiple people are essentially infected by the same creature and function as separate parts of a whole.

Another idea is that maybe the hallucinogen sting could be altered so that the person starts seeing people making violent gestures, or perhaps the changeling could also induce a berserker state in its victims! Hell, why not give it a rajaijah sting? It works perfectly with the creature's MO, and might also be useful over on normal goon... -snip- Mostly harmless yet terrifying and paranoia-inducing abilities is only natural.

I really like the idea of inducing paranoia. The raj sting sounds amazing for that. Imagine if someone freaked out and randomly started going crazy in a public place like the bar. Then security would intervene and then you could sting them and perhaps put the blame on the raj'd person.

I like the mindslave-esque idea of infecting people. It would have to be more complicated then an 'infect' sting, that would be too easy for the ling. Maybe you have to split something off of you like the headspider and it has to crawl down their mouth and grow in them?

[BaneOfGiygas]

Getting away from that and back toward your sabotage ideas. Would the objectives need to be job specific? Otherwise, it would be obvious right away when you've got a doctor attempting to break into the engine and clip wires, smash things, or leak plasma. Perhaps I'm just not knowledgeable enough with the game mechanics but I feel like a lot of this would require tools and would eliminate the need to be a changeling.

Not necessarily, and as a matter of fact, it's very likely that you might get a different objective from your job! The thing is, as a changeling, you gain the memories and knowledge of everyone you absorb. So if you're a doctor ling and get an objective to smash up the engine, you'll probably need to absorb one of the engineers in order to do so!

As for the infecting thing, I agree that the changeling's infection mechanic would need to be blatantly obvious to both the person being infected and observers. It's a risky move but with a substantial payoff.