Syndicate Infiltrators

[Zonespace]

For a while now, a Nukie-type gamemode for the RP servers has been a desire of multiple players, so I thought I'd give a shot at creating one.

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Currently, the gamemode (Syndicate Infiltrators) is an RP-only gamemode which features up to 5 agents, spawning on the cairngorm. They are highly encouraged to stay stealthy, as they don't have the gear to have an extended engagement. Their objectives are some high-risk ones, that the syndicate would logically entrust to special operatives. The objectives are to assassinate both the Captain, and Head of Security, and then steal 3 (5 on manta) high value items, such as the authentication disk or the CE's belt.

The infiltrator's armaments are slightly different than the nuclear operative's. The infiltrators start out with a modified token that lets them purchase a utility item, and one of four special loadouts, or a modified uplink, exclusive to this gamemode. These loadouts are fairly diverse, each covering a different area of expertise. Currently, there is the stealth agent, a fairly "normal" loadout for what you'd expect out of a stealthy traitor, the diversion agent, who is able to draw attention away from key areas when necessary, the saboteur, who is able to cripple parts of the station with ease, and the wetwork agent, meant for the more lethal parts of the job. Additionally, the MRPT-7 and breaching charges have been removed from the cairngorm during Infiltrator rounds. (The MRPT-7 used to always spawn, now it only does during nukeop rounds)

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The biggest distinction I'd make between this and nukeops is that Infiltrators don't have to make themselves obvious and force themselves to be the centerpiece, and in fact they're encouraged to do the opposite. I don't believe turning a consistently 2 hour round into something focused on one small group of people is a good thing, so I tried to find a balance between stealthy traitoring and the loud nukeops, and I hope I hit that on the mark.

Notes:

• Balance is by no means my strong suit, so please give feedback on that, if possible.
  
• Currently, this is meant to be RP-only and is only in intrigue's rotation, but that could change in the future once balancing is out of the way.
  
• The specific info on loadouts can be seen here.
  
• The uplink is the same as the generic nukeop one, with the rampage-y weapons removed.
  
• The round is like normal, no sudden round-ends.
  
  

If anybody would like to play around with the gamemode, you can get it here. Any and all feedback would be appreciated!

[Drewmajor11]

oh hey i was one of the people that kept talking about this, i dunno if its an idea thats been around for a while or if me talking about it for too long did that lol. I would point out that assassinating both the cap and HoS could severely cripple the station as well as stealing other items. I'd say make it so they either have to assassinate a head, steal an high value hard to get to item which possibly has an alert when somethings going on with it so its not just gonna get stolen without any trace of them. As well as I think making it possible for it to be a late spawn could be interesting. Also it shouldn't be round ending, unsure if you said either way if it is as I honestly just skimmed some parts, as well as possibly putting some crew member assassinations in the objectives so its not all security and command centric. I was way too lazy to go and make this so I'm pretty happy someone did.

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Oh I also forgot to mention if your not just using the normal nukie custom uplink you should probably tweak it a bit, as well as if you are using the normal custom uplink it should probably be more RP oriented items, possibly with less TC and maybe even being able to buy 1 temp mindslave or something.

[DimWhat]

I feel like this will run into the same issue other game modes on RP have in which the antagonists are set to "sneak in the background" causing nobody to really interact with the antags until the shuttle where there is a surprise bomb. Nuclear's big appeal to me was that it was a BIG BAD that the entire crew gets to involved in dealing with rather than a "security thing." This here seems like it is an antag that will get to interact with sec and pretty much nobody else.

[Drewmajor11]

I feel like this will run into the same issue other game modes on RP have in which the antagonists are set to "sneak in the background" causing nobody to really interact with the antags until the shuttle where there is a surprise bomb. Nuclear's big appeal to me was that it was a BIG BAD that the entire crew gets to involved in dealing with rather than a "security thing." This here seems like it is an antag that will get to interact with sec and pretty much nobody else.

Thats one of the things I was saying, make it so they can roll some objectives to fight crew or steal something specific/kidnap a crew member, something so more people could get involved. Also I think making it an possible event as a late strike team could also be something interesting.

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So I'm looking through syndicate items wiki rn.
It could be a decent idea to give all or some of them stealth storages so they can keep contra on them while fully embedded in the crew.
The disguiser device I'm guessing is the holo disguiser which means they should probably get a voice changer as well, a pda too to keep the cover. With the agent card they would start with typically this would make a decent sneaking into the crew combo.
Kudzu seed might be a bit much for one diversion guy, it could end with all 5 going diversion and just trying to kudzu the entire station.
I'm also looking at the syndicate dagger which I feel might not be that useful, but the thing is they also have the emag and some other powerful items so I feel like a decent thing could maybe be like a rad poison crossbow? That might be a bit too lethal.
I'd say the wetwork one looks pretty good, an geared assassin thats lethal with the cloaker and garrote.
Maybe give the diversion some kind of fake explosive that seems like it'd do damage but it doesn't, maybe an emagged hypospray with LSD or something? Except that it'd probably be dumped to use sarin or something if people want to not RP and just murder which would be against this I would say.
I would say a chameleon bomb for the diversion but from my experience those do a bit much on damage, maybe just a normal pipe bomb but its low power while making a lot of sound?
I think that trick cigarettes could be decent on one of the kits to set little traps without doing much damage.
Also space cleaner grenades could be decent for crowd control without being too lethal.
This is just the random thoughts I had going through loadouts and syndie items, a lot of them are probably horribly wrong.

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Ah, idea for syndicate dagger replacement for saboteur as well, possibly the .22 silenced could be a good stand in, maybe lower the amount of starting mags though, its a decent concealed weapon thats a good last resort or silent weapon to take someone down a bit and disable them.

[nefarious6th]

I'm more interested to see/understand how this works in practice.

1.) Given we have problems/concerns with teamwork on conspiracy and nukies already (both on Classic and on RP, both in antag-antag relationships and crew-antag relationships), what on this would ensure good cooperation and teamwork between players granted that this is a playstyle where teamwork is pretty mandatory?

2.) What prevents this from being "a better version of conspirators" that might eventually replace that gamemode? Does this necessarily mean that the trending of RP server antags will have to be forced to "faster-paced" stuff when people could go play on Classic for pace changes instead?

3.) How does a strictly objective-based gamemode interact with the RP server gamemodes where, though antags have objectives, they are not obligated to follow them and greentext is not mandatory? This seems counter to that since greentext is the primary driving force here.

4.) Does this lose the intrigue of Goon Nukies by using other traitor gear from normal uplinks and mimicking other codebases's style of nukies too much? To some extent, Dim is right, the appeal of Goon Nukies is that it's a teamfight mode and is in fact consistently developed to push players on either team towards that when those rounds do occur. Does this really satisfy the requests RP players had after getting rare admin-event nukies, granted that?

5.) Other people brought it up already, so I won't harp on too much here; but rounds on RP usually go the full 2 hours; our nukies rounds on the admin events Bill would run were closer to 40-60 minutes. Does this account for that in order to help alleviate some of the pacing concerns RP players might have? Truthfully, 60-minute rounds are really almost kind of outliers for when something egregious happens. What happens once the syndicate completes their objectives? Fighting back for the remaining 60 minutes doesn't sound terribly fun to me.

I would be interested to see this tested; if it were something to become a part of the permanent rotation, I would prefer it was its own gamemode and not part of intrigue, because I would still like to see a slower-pace classic-intrigue RP server without this gamemode included. Nothing about the balance or quality of the work here, everything about the pacing of certain roundtypes, and I think this doesn't necessarily fit everyone's preferences for that.