A Guide to Prince of Terror
Abilities -
* Can smash through normal walls in one hit, reinforced walls take a bit of smashing but will give way. Nowhere on station is difficult for you to get to, and this is the most important tool in your arsenal. There is NO cool-down for breaking through walls.
* Webs can block line of sight. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t waste time with spinning webs unless I have some serious down-time. You’re not a Queen of Terror, and being stationary will not just hurt you, it will be the death of you.
* You cannot vent crawl. But you won’t have to.
* A shit-ton of health (but not that much health) Don’t get cocky kid. Don’t tank hits. I would straight up recommend just not attacking people carrying multiple AEGs on them. They only want to kill you.
Phase 1 - Mindset and Attitude.
So you rolled for Prince of Terror and now you’ve found yourself spawned next to a vent randomly chosen on the station. You’re probably thinking of who you’re going to kill and who’s shift you’re going to ruin, but as PoT we can do a whole lot more damage to the station than a pile of bodies to be revived by Med-bay.
Consider this; an antagonist in SS13 is meant to give excitement to the round, and how you decide to do this can make or break a round. If you die suddenly and without purpose as an antagonist, you’re not just hurting your own experience, you’re hurting the experience of other players too. It’s our responsibility as PoT or any other antagonist to give purpose to the crew through hardship and pain. Going out of your way to hunt down players and get yourself killed early is boring for everyone. Hopefully you understand the sort of message I wanna get across here.
Phase 2 - An actual plan.
Now that you’ve realized what the stakes are, it’s time to come up with a plan. This plan should be spear-headed by “Key-targets”. Key-targets are the points on the station that you should be visiting and doing critical damage to before moving on.
Key-points in order of most important to least.
* R&D
* Robotics
* Engineering
* Cloning
* Cargo
* Bar
The Science Department is crucial due to the fact that they spend the entire shift preparing for a problem like you to appear. As soon as you appear anywhere else on the station, command will be calling R&D and Robotics to mass-produce weaponry and Mech-suits to hand out like its Halloween. You want a fight, but you don’t want to straight up die, and you can’t expect the crew to hold themselves back from utterly annihilating you via strength of armed massed. You can and should upon spawning immediately rush Toxins Storage and start smacking the first Plasma Container you see until it starts leaking. Once you've done that use the power of smashing walls to spread the plasma easily into the surrounding departments. For bonus points, leak all the containers. Just remember to finish the job, you need to make sure R&D has no more access to weaponry.
Next stop on the list is Engineering. We’ll be visiting them so that we can have fun smashing stuff. It’s that simple, just smash every important piece of machinery you see, or just smash all of it. Don’t bother destroying engine containment; It's lame and will end up just making the damage you do pointless, we want the station to survive and experience the damage you have done. It’s also important to visit Engineering just to give them a fight or two. Some players have not interacted with an antagonist all round, and you’re an opportunity to make the round more interesting for them by showing up.
Cloning is required in order to cause panic and to keep Med-bay on their toes. As we did with Engineering, smash it all to bits. I recommend smashing it from inside CMO’s Office, as people won’t have easy access to stopping you from inside it. It's up to you whether or not you should make a return trip to deal with the inevitable Cloning station they rebuild. Hitting it once is often enough to spice things up, hitting it a second time might turn things sour.
Following all of that, let’s remember that SS13 is a very flexible game that often presents many variables to a round. If anything prohibits you from getting to any of these key-points, then feel free to steer away! Perhaps a blob has spawned and is eating Engineering!
You might also notice that I have left AI Satellite and Telecoms out of the key-points. This is a matter of personal preference, but I think that it escalates the enjoyment for players to have a moment to moment report on the status of the station as you slowly dismantle it out from underneath them. You can always smash cameras that are a pain, and most of the time you’ll be running through maintenance anyways.
Phase 3 - All good things must come to an end.
At this point in your life, most of the station is on fire. People are panicking, Command is contemplating calling the departures shuttle. Everyone is blood-thirsty. Throughout the length of your tour through the station it would have been inevitable that you got nicked a few, or even quite a few times. That’s okay! Because it’s our job to give the station a fight to the death. It is incredibly important that you die in a direct confrontation with the station. This is important because the fact is, you were going to die at some point anyways, and you have nowhere to go besides towards bloodshed. So make the most of it and die to a fortunate crew-member so that the crew can properly digest the damage you’ve done to them.
Tips, tricks, and things to keep in mind.
* Smash and drag water-tanks for protection and as a weapon to slip up those who are hunting you. Water-tanks are one of your most important tools.
* Because you will most likely be smashing through every wall in sight, it also comes with the penalty of crew being able to follow you practically wherever you run to. Try to minimize smashing through walls and open doors instead so that crew have to fight for access.
* Don’t chase people, don’t even make it your mission to specifically kill people. You’re going to end up killing people, but don’t go out your way to kill people.
* Do not nest. Nesting does not work as PoT.
* Do not go into space. You’ll probably get stuck and look silly.
* Do not be-friend crew. You’re a blood-thirsty spider. It’s not cute or funny to stop attacking people and start trying to be some sort of diplomat.