Potential spief improvements.

[CalliopeSoups]

I've got some thoughts on spy thief right now, entirely based around how it feels on classic. I think it's a very fun antag, but in my opinion it suffers from bounties not inviting enough conflict. I feel like spiefs often spend 30 to 40 minutes gearing up with no resistance, then go on to rampage with their arsenal. It's true that spiefs are encouraged to infight for these bounties, but I don't feel like that happens enough to make the round interesting.

The biggest causes of this in my opinion are bounties focused around mundane, missable objects like bottles of wine, along with heirloom bounties. Crew are unlikely to either notice or care that a spief is taking a bottle of wine from the bridge, or a book from medbay, even if it might get them some good gear. Then there's heirloom items, which I'm not a fan of at all personally. It's very easy for these items to be destroyed or lost either accidentally or on purpose, which locks a whole reward out for 15 minutes.

I'd like to see these small bounties made less common and for more bounties to show up focused on objects such as the bartender's still, botany's UV lamps or seed vendors, full size objects that provide some sort of job interaction should invite crew to care a little more, I think. That's just my thoughts though let me know if you have any.

[trollbreeder]

Maybe we could have some global bounties. Scramble for the spiefs to compete to get the requested thing first and only the first to do so takes the prize

[Kotlol]

Maybe we could have some global bounties. Scramble for the spiefs to compete to get the requested thing first and only the first to do so takes the prize

This is already a thing.


IN MY OPINION. Spiefing is hard... especially if the Spief is a head and you as staff assistant spief will be heavily impacted by this.
Want a fun gun? Oops the engineer who has the tools to hack easily already got it.
Want the sword? The HoP already got it.

That's problem number 1 with Spiefs:
"Your rank can make it much easier/harder and you got no control over it."

Problem number 2:
Bounties won't line up to what you think is fun.

You want to go guns blazing, but there are no real guns... maybe a deringer but that sucks. Nothing to make your missions fun so you gotta rely on TTVs.
Or you want to do something goofy like a clown car run, but there is no clown car.... So you are stuck on the random selection the game offers and HOPE no one with better access beats you to it.

Problem number 3:
Difficulty =/= As good as a reward.

Nothing says more frustration then somehting as silly as something that is worth 1 TC be something like: "Steal Rocko from the CE's office and trait it in at the HoS's office." Reward: "Stealth Storage"
These bounties do nothing more then "WASTE SLOTS" since only those who want to do it for the challange will do it, but otherwise NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WILL DO THIS! They rather steal a random fabricator for something similiar.

The opposite is also true. "Steal a fire extguinisher and sell it at the space diner for a katana" ....You mean an item anyone can get their hands on in a location no one else wil see but another spy/thief? Basicly this invites the 1st to arrive and take it to murder the other spy thieves for advantages or to band together I guess?

Problem Number 4:
Unwilling to escalate

This problem is defintally the worst one since as a spy thief you feel very scared and vunerable unlike a traitor. Cause while traitors can kill eachother, most of the time they won't do it as their goals allign. With Spy thieves you are more likely to kill another spy cause they might have the gear you want.
While I love this style of playing A LOT... I just notice most spy thieves avoid eachother or don't escalate anything cause they want to avoid being caught more then a traitor does... cause they don't have the backup of having AWESOME BATTLE GEAR.

So how do we fix this?

I recommend 3 changes to Spy Thieves.

Number 1: 
Change the rewards to "Traitor Credits" and allow the spy thief to have access to these.
Now there is no more rushing for the gun and no more ignoring harder objectives cause all objectives are benefical to whatever you want.

Number 2:
Balance the type of mission to reflect in credits. The harder the mission, the more pay out you get.

Number 3:
Give all of them a "Spy Deringer" A gun that is hidden on their person, but have one twist with it.
The spy deringer instantly kills other spy's, while it does standard damage to non spy's.
Doing so will give you a lot of credits and increase the inner fighting and hunting of your fellow spy's.
Alliances can be fickle in name of that sweet sweet loot.

[Lord_earthfire]

From my experience, you need to play spief like hard mode traitor. So you need to have a plan before getting spief loot. You look at what bounties you get and only deviate if some of these fit in your gimmick.

The problem, from my point of view, is appearent when you divide up spief items into 3 categories:

1. Rampage items: Spief got access to tons of those. If you want to go on a rampage, you got enough items

2. Utility/Stealth items: The problem is with these: you need multiple. A single stealth storage won't cut it, a voice changer alone is almost useless, the same applies to chameleon projector. You need multiple of these items and be lucky to get it to work. The only exception is the agent card, because C.A.R.L. is just the best.

3. Gimmick items: Most of these are role locked to a degree you don't got access to them. No mining charge hacker, maneater seeds or clown car. I really enjoy the barrel of monkeys though i get sometimes.

From my experience, if you don't got a good plan without your gear, the gear you most often will get access to will be small parts that hardly fit together and rampage items. It would go a long way if bounties would come up bundled. A radbow bounty really doesn't need to appear besides a voice changer.