Change Objectives to Steer Greentext

[Hapsburg_Chin]

 

Consider the following - The effects of an antagonist on the round are largely defined by his objectives. That is, that any antag is strongly encouraged to pursue his objectives, and discouraged from doing things unrelated to his objectives. Also consider that this is reciprocated by most players - antagonists seek greentext, security seeks redtext.

 

Consider the following - By changing both the quantity and type of objectives, we can encourage players to do certain things and, in turn, manipulate the overall 'tone' of the game. We can steer antagonists into more conflict with crew and more widespread effects thereof by using greentext to direct them.

 

Most objectives are pretty easily accomplished. Stealing, in particular, frequently targets items that won't be missed (ex. jetpack), and murder is as simple as getting the target alone then stun-gag-cuff-kill-dispose-clean. I think we can do better.

 

What if we changed 'murder' to 'mutilate'? So you'd have a spaceman or two as a target, and in order to accomplish the objective one would need to break or sever two of his limbs. Say, cut off both his arms, specify that he must remain alive. This makes the antag's presence felt, but more importantly it makes him an enemy, rather than removing someone from the round. For good sportsmanship alone, we should avoid things that remove players from the round and especially encourage permanent round removal. Old Changelings were absolutely awful for this, but generally murder objectives necessitate this. It's much better to have someone alive, crippled, and baying for the Traitor's blood.

 

What if we changed 'steal' to 'steal and grief'? You could do this with a simple string change - "Steal [object]" to "Steal [object] and cause trouble with it" in objectives.dm or whatever the file is. Steal is by far the easiest objective to greentext, just smash, grab, and lay low. It's pitiful - unless he's physically taking the item off someone's body, the antag isn't coming into conflict with anyone. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to check whether or not an antag used an item to griff - thus, just change the objective text and hope the player plays along.

 

What if we added a new objective to sabotage a piece of vital equipment? The Gibber, the Cryotubes or Sleepers, the Chem Dispenser, the SMESes, the Brig Timers, the Comms Console, the ID Console, the Robotics Fabricators, the Protolathe, the Cargo Ordering Computer, the Autolathe. Generally, most jobs require some certain piece of equipment to function properly, so if a traitor was to destroy them it would cripple the department. At the end of the round, check if this equipment exists, if not, greentext. Again, this creates conflict and makes enemies - the afflicted department will want this guy's head.

 

What if we added an objective to vandalize an area? Kitchen, medbay, science, cargo, captain, engineering, etc, somewhere that requires breaking in. At the end of the round, check for crayon graffiti, ripped up floor tiles, blood splatters, egg splats, tomato splats, papers, et cetera. If it's past a certain high number, greentext. Basically, break into somewhere and make a big fucking mess of it. Guarantee, the Chef is not gonna be happy about some greytiding arsefuck climbing over the tables and wrecking up the joint - bam, conflict.

 

What if we added a lot more interesting things to the objectives list? Magboots and jumpsuits are boring, captain's ID is more like it. We want stuff that people will miss, and ideally stuff that people will actively be using. How about two eguns? That'd mean breaking into the armory for sure. What about the Warden's hat? How about body parts? Organs? Steal four appendixes. Steal three right legs. Steal eight Insulated Gloves - that'd mean taking *all* of engineering's gloves. Steal the Janitor's keys. Steal the Paramedic's keys. Steal the surgical tools - two scalpels. Steal an Antimov law board.

 

Does Paradise have 'Die a Glorious Death'? Because that is, bar none, the single best objective in all of SS13. If you don't have this, what are you even doing with your life?

 

What if we gave antags, traitors especially, more objectives? Changelings and Vampires are in a good spot - they've got three plus escape. Traitors typically only have one plus escape, so they could do with a few more to make them comparably difficult to full greentext.

 

[necaladun]

 

One thing is whether or not objectives can be greentexted, code wise.

 

Mutilate used to be an objective but was basically bugged for that - it could only check at the end of the round, so you had to mutilate them and make sure they don't get healed. The simple way is ofc, to kill them, so that was pretty tough. I'd like to see a working version of it, something along the lines of, "Send X a message from the Syndicate. Make sure they leave the station alive, but suffer injury X in the course of the shift."

 

Steal + grief is obviously not really able to be checked by the code.

 

Sabotage I really like as an objective, and I've been sometimes giving "Sabotage X department" as an objective to players I think will do it in an interesting way (Eg, not just bombing the place or killing everyone in it.). Making that specific to some equipment could be checked by code and quite good. Easy enough to do once. Harder to keep it from being repaired.

 

I love the idea of checking areas for mess/vandalism. +1 pt per graffiti, +5 per for blood, etc. Great for conflict, doesn't scream "EXECUTE THIS PERSON HE"S A SYNDIE.". Also, conflict for the janitor!

 

Steal objectives are pretty good now, especially as a secondary objective - jumpsuits and magboots are gone. Each head has an item to be stolen that's usually on them. Jetpacks and the void suit are the only ones left I dislike.

 

Die a glorious death I love in theory. Kill the Captain+Die a glorious death is the perfect opportunity to suicide bomb. In practice, a lot of people have used it badly. It's also impossible for the code to check how glorious something is.

 

Atm Traitors have 2+escape, which is working well.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Mutilate used to be an objective, and while the face repair portion of it could net you a redtext so long as you managed to blow off a limb and break something you'd greentext. The issue with mutilate is that it's doable from a distance for 3TC, IE: A detomax cartridge.

 

I do think we need more variety though.

 

[Hapsburg_Chin]

 

One thing is whether or not objectives can be greentexted, code wise.

 

Not necessarily. Consider the case of 'Steal & Grief' or 'Die Gloriously'. There's no real way to quantify grief or glory for the code to measure and then flag greentext. Couldn't you simply set it to complete based on the pre-requisite conditions (ie item stolen, person dead), and then trust the antag to do the rest?

 

[MickyD47]

You could just combine this idea with another suggested in the past and that is just removing green/red text. You could just have the objectives show up at the end and if the antag made it out alive. Why leave something cool out just because it's impossible for the game to detect if they completed it or not?

[improvedname]

 

Who cares about greentext redtext

Its about the RP traitors are not made to greentext for 100% or redtext they are made to spice up the round if you done a objective succesfully then you know it