New antag: Section 13 agents

[alexpkeaton]

 

So, we have plenty of objectives for agents of other organizations: the Syndicate, Wizard Federation, Changeling Hivemind, Shadowling... um... Shadowlings?

 

And yet the only objectives Nanotrasen ever gets is "Maximize Research" or "Build a Ripley/Cyborg."

 

What if that were to change?

 

Enter "Section 13."

 

If you are a Star Trek fan, you know exactly where I am going with this. My inspiration for this is the Star Trek universe's "Section 31." In a nutshell, Section 31 is the self-proclaimed defenders of the Federation, a completely off-book and secretive group of spies, typically adopting a career in Starfleet as a cover for their oftentimes brutal and illegal methods of achieving their goals.

 

Section 13 (the name being a bastardization of the Section 31 and a call-out to Space Station 13) would be this, but for Nanotrasen. A secret group of spies that have objectives that are intended to provide protection for the corporation. Just like your vanilla traitor, these agents can have theft objectives ("Obtain the Research Director's unique reactive teleport armor prototype for further study and mass production for Section 13 personnel"), assassination objectives ("Engineer X's spouse was responsible for the capture of a Section agent-teach them a lesson by killing him!"), perhaps even hijack objectives. Section 13 is ruthless in pursuit of their goals and will stop at nothing, and no one, to achieve them.

 

Section 13 agents would also have a PDA uplink, and their gear would focus more on very technologically advanced items and more covert means: x-ray lasers, an invisible ID decal that grants all-access without altering doors/computers, a "death beam gun" which I just made up now, the medical beam gun but does massive and continuous amounts of burn and toxin damage instead of healing, a glove with fake fingerprint impressions which can be coded to a specific crew member, in order to frame them for crimes, a head implant that is a subdermal transceiver that allows two-way comms communication without a headset (for when security inevitably confiscates your headset), etc.

 

And here's the best part: mindshields don't matter! The Captain or HoS could be a Section 13 agent, though objectives for such high level crew members should be carefully crafted to not plunge the whole round in chaos (i.e. no objectives that will allow Captain Murderbone or Head of Greytide but rather ones where the command cover can and should be maintained). And, security now has reason to suspect their own - that green box on the SecHUD is no longer your metagaming friend!

 

I can also see a game mode of Traitor+Agent, where there is the possibility of a double-agent for both the Syndicate and Section 13 (only non-mindshielded crew would qualify), with two separate uplink codes and pools of telecrystals.

 

Section 13 agents are not recognized by official Nanotrasen, will not be protected by it and can (and should) be apprehended for their transgressions.

 

What do you think?

 

[NethIafin]

 

Very good idea. I have a separate mode idea akin to that (prisoner retrieval) and it might use parts of this.

 

It will need a completely separate uplink thou

 

[Wheatley29]

Make the new gear obvious, if the beam causes burns and toxins perhaps indicate that through the color scheme. It would be nice if this gun could adapt its damage type, for example to brute and burn. Keep suffocation away from it however, it makes passing someone out with it far too easy.