Brainstorming a Conspirator Rework?

[SirSwagmeyer]

I've noticed that this has been a constant back-and-forth topic of debate for a while - Conspirators kind of suck now. I mean, they've always been kind of lackluster, but with the addition of Salvagers, they're almost completely overshadowed by them. 

So, the main problem is that Salvagers do nearly everything Conspirators do, but just tenfold better (fancy gadgets, ability to actually hold their own with tools, a proper gameplay loop, etc). All Conspirators have got going for them at this point is the fact that the Conspirators get to keep their own characters when they roll it, and their fancy headset channel (which are allegedly notoriously meta'd on Classic). 

Additionally, a lot of people just... don't really seem to have fun playing Conspirators. Whether it's one of your fellow conspirators going off on their own to bomb medbay, or just never really being able to agree on a plan together, it's just a little disappointing to play sometimes. I mean, heck, I've heard a lot of people tell me they have Conspirators off and just don't bother. Conspirators just isn't in a good place right now. 

I mean, I'm fully aware that having multiple people coordinating as a group antag is a powerful thing, but with Salvagers rolling around, Conspirators don't even really have that going for them anymore. It's just really sad to see it overshadowed like this. I love Conspirators, but it's just not really that fun compared to Salvagers. 

So! I believe a rework is long due for Conspirators - I just don't know what we could rework, which is why I'm more or less posting here. Now, I don't want Conspirators to end up being dubbed another "budget nukies", but I mean, imagine if Conspirators had some actual gear to work with for once

So, with that in mind, I ask you all - what IS the "Core Aspect" of Conspirators, and how can we rework that so Conspirators can hold their own again as a unique antag?

[Lord_earthfire]

I personally... don't agree that conspirator are overshadowed by salvager.

Salvager got the problem of a set gameplay loop. They need to salvage and need to board the station and will be seen woth a sliver of distrust. Their communication is downright lackluster in comparison to conspirator.

And that is problematic with salvagers. In my salvager rounds people rarely coordinate. And it's especially problematic that you are visible. Once a salavager is caught, the headset will inevitably fall into securities hands. That is not true with conspirators.

What i found is people struggle with freedom of choice as antags. And conspirator does give that.

This is why I don't agree at all that conspirators suck. I don't even thing that their gameplay mechanics does need to change at all. Their strenght comes from having key positions, like command staff, and being mostly invisible.

It's just a very niche antagonist that require communication and coordination to fluorish. That's not everyones taste and that is fine.

The only thing i am not happy with conspirators are the objectives. They... simply suck. And there comes to problem with players and freedom again. People want to stick to them.

My best experiences with conspirator rounds were enabled by being a conspirator and NOT following the objectives. My most boring rounds were conspirator rounds where people tried to do objectives they simply were not experienced/prepared enough to do and devolved into apathy.

[Kotlol]

Basicly yes.. my best conspirator round was when we didn't had a command in charge, but I was a detective conspirator and we decided to make an AI cult (since we had a robotcist and before the blueprint was locked behind MD)

So what we did...was....have empty AI shell appear across the station while I kept security busy with "Security glitches" and such.
Then we wrote down: "Our lord will awaken" near these empty AI cores and shells.

Then when we aree able to secure AA.. we installed a law that makes the AI a god. We didn't specifiy what kinda god and thus..the AI was a benevolant round.
The Science guy on our team teleported the AI to the chapel where we made our altar and then the whole station devolved into joining this cult and command allowing our conspirator law to stay put since the AI was being nice.

We all had fun!

[Dhaidburt]

I just had my first conspirator round last night, and now I can actually talk about this stuff! Hooray!

I agree that there needs to be some change to objectives, at least in comparison to how many people are in the conspiracy. 6 people working together to... change the station's material to a shiny metal. 2 people though? I'm sure that'd be a nice bit to have, and keep people interacting at lower populations.

I also think that there should be 2 different objectives given, one hard objective (Replace station materials to X and Y) and one soft optional objective that would be short and open to interpretation.
Such as:
Free them all.
Remake.
Punish.
Restore.
Devour.

Stuff like that. We spent a good 5-10 minutes just discussing what to do once we knew that we didn't want to do the objective, and that little nudge could have helped us get things sorted out faster.

[Lord_earthfire]

Ohh, i like the idea to give out multiple objectives and go like "well, decide which one you want to run".

This makes people talk about which objective they want to pick and go along with. Or gets the ball rolling to decide on "yeah, let's better do our own thing"

6 people working together to... change the station's material to a shiny metal.

Oh yeah, i had that objective as conspirator with telecrytals and koshmarite. With noone being experienced in mining, so we weren't able to figure out how to do it properly. And we didnt jumped away from it, so yeah. Thats kinda what i mean this can cause.

[Emimiyu]

A weird suggestion, I wish each conspirators spawn with one item that is related to their conspiracy objectives. Cult objective? Cultish accessory or stuff like weird hats. Move station ownership to discount dan or others? Discount dan pins, diner stuff, or i dunno syndicate stickers. Or maybe a kit of aesthetic items that fit the objective. Maybe it will push people to do their conspiracy thing more and get the crew to know there is a gimmick going on.

Though, I feel like this can't be applied to all objective and may restrict the players' freedom

[glowbold]

i think i actually preferred the bug when each conspirator had a different objective because once people realized that, it made them talk about what to do.

[Dhaidburt]

A weird suggestion, I wish each conspirators spawn with one item that is related to their conspiracy objectives. Cult objective? Cultish accessory or stuff like weird hats. Move station ownership to discount dan or others? Discount dan pins, diner stuff, or i dunno syndicate stickers. Or maybe a kit of aesthetic items that fit the objective. Maybe it will push people to do their conspiracy thing more and get the crew to know there is a gimmick going on.

Though, I feel like this can't be applied to all objective and may restrict the players' freedom

I think you hit the nail on the head, as well as if the items are too obvious then people will know exactly what's up. MD spawned in with a cult's cloak? Well I sure can't trust em for now.

i think i actually preferred the bug when each conspirator had a different objective because once people realized that, it made them talk about what to do.

People don't already talk about what to do as conspirators? Then what's the point of being a conspirator?
Also, if people were talking more with different objectives then maybe we're going about this wrong. Maybe no objectives would be better?

[AlyasGrey]

I think conspirators is an absolutely amazing concept for roleplay, but also agree that it comes up short in a lot of ways.  People have done some work on them relatively recently, but I'm in full support of changing things up.

My main issues are that there is a lack of motivation to follow conspirator goals, and that it suffers from identical problems to non-antagonist collectives of players in round do... specifically that it's easy to fall into the trap of collective decision making where so much time is spent discussing the thing and trying to get a consensus that people either get tired or the most cautious approach wins out due to a fear of upsetting someone.  We should absolutely be considerate of other people's feelings, but the number of times I've seen security paralyzed with indecision...  well, it's a lot.

If I were doing a from the ground up redesign here's what I would do... and I'm going to put these into tiers based on the complexity and impact of the changes.

First Tier
Either assign a randomly selected player as the leader of the conspiracy... or, preferably, allow the conspirators to elect a leader.

Remove most of the conspirator goals and focus on a core list of maybe a dozen possible objectives, that are very clearly interesting and offer a level of flexibility to the conspirators.  They should be goals that can be used to drive a narrative across an entire round and don't end up leaving the rest of the crew out of the fun by just happening in some maintenance tunnel or in the darkest corners of botany.

Second Tier
Rework the objectives in a similar way to above, but for the sake of variety include some procedural generation content when it comes to objectives.    Write the base objectives up in such a way that it allows for the insertion of relevant in-game items and concepts procedurally as part of the goal without breaking things.

Third Tier
Evolving goals with completion checking and some sort of endgame state for the conspirators.  That's a massive lift, but it would admittedly be interesting if your "get 20 people to attend the clown's party in the bar" goal checked for 20 people in the bar with the clown wearing a birthday hat and led directly to hilarious consequences like an outbreak of clowning around.

[Dhaidburt]

I think conspirators is an absolutely amazing concept for roleplay, but also agree that it comes up short in a lot of ways.  People have done some work on them relatively recently, but I'm in full support of changing things up.

My main issues are that there is a lack of motivation to follow conspirator goals, and that it suffers from identical problems to non-antagonist collectives of players in round do... specifically that it's easy to fall into the trap of collective decision making where so much time is spent discussing the thing and trying to get a consensus that people either get tired or the most cautious approach wins out due to a fear of upsetting someone.  We should absolutely be considerate of other people's feelings, but the number of times I've seen security paralyzed with indecision...  well, it's a lot.

If I were doing a from the ground up redesign here's what I would do... and I'm going to put these into tiers based on the complexity and impact of the changes.

First Tier
Either assign a randomly selected player as the leader of the conspiracy... or, preferably, allow the conspirators to elect a leader.

Remove most of the conspirator goals and focus on a core list of maybe a dozen possible objectives, that are very clearly interesting and offer a level of flexibility to the conspirators.  They should be goals that can be used to drive a narrative across an entire round and don't end up leaving the rest of the crew out of the fun by just happening in some maintenance tunnel or in the darkest corners of botany.

Second Tier
Rework the objectives in a similar way to above, but for the sake of variety include some procedural generation content when it comes to objectives.    Write the base objectives up in such a way that it allows for the insertion of relevant in-game items and concepts procedurally as part of the goal without breaking things.

Third Tier
Evolving goals with completion checking and some sort of endgame state for the conspirators.  That's a massive lift, but it would admittedly be interesting if your "get 20 people to attend the clown's party in the bar" goal checked for 20 people in the bar with the clown wearing a birthday hat and led directly to hilarious consequences like an outbreak of clowning around.

If I could thumbs up or like a post, I would this one. 100% agree with most things, though an election for a leader would probably eat up more time than it'd be worth at times, since nobody could step forward to be said leader. I'd prefer it being a role, barring that have it randomly assigned to the highest ranking personnel in the conspiracy. They already signed up to be more important, makes more sense they'd want to lead and they'd do a better job at it.

[TDHooligan]

Third Tier
Evolving goals with completion checking and some sort of endgame state for the conspirators.  That's a massive lift, but it would admittedly be interesting if your "get 20 people to attend the clown's party in the bar" goal checked for 20 people in the bar with the clown wearing a birthday hat and led directly to hilarious consequences like an outbreak of clowning around.

honestly i think some sort of special end result like this is what's necessary to push conspirators.

I reckon one of conspirators' big problems is that they don't actually have a reward, they're just 'oh yeah griefing rules dont apply to you 3 folks this shift'.

Their whole schtick of 'having no special powers or gear' leaves them in a pretty awkward spot, as it becomes their wits versus the crews'.
Generally speaking, it's safe to bet the crew are better at everything than you. Conspirators have no special powers to fall back on, and can't guarantee the folk they're working with are remotely capable of handling an experienced SecOff. 

So, why risk doing something huge when you don't even have a trusty sleepypen/sting/teleport/anti-stun/gun when things go wrong?
Spies, who start naked, can select their risk level accordingly and choose what they're willing to give to take what they want.
Sleeper agents are not regularly expected to do anything serious (and rarely do unless they're primed for chaos for some reason)

With some sort of end result, conspirators could at least be safe in the knowledge that the extreme risk is for something special to happen. If they fancy doing something else they can do that instead. Alternatively they repurpose their gimmick around the special objective. Who knows?