ParadiseSS13
Exfiltration - Early Antag Escape
What Does This PR Do
Adds a new set of items that antagonists can use to extract early from a round. The traitors get a flare, the vampires get a blood chalice, mind flayers get a telepad, and changelings get an organ.
Upon exfiltration, all objectives are frozen in whatever state they were in at the time of the extraction. Your inventory is cleared and set to a curated loadout, implants and biochips are removed, and powers stripped as you are sent to a special antagonist portion of the ghost bar, with all the same restrictions. The loadout you receive depends on the type of antag you are.
A few things bar your extraction. Firstly, in order to extract, you must be in one of three randomly-selected rooms. Second, you need to activate your item, upon which it will take around 90 seconds for it to complete your portal. Then you must go through the portal, to complete the extraction. Certain objectives, such as hijack, nuclear core theft, and NAD theft, will deny your ability to extract. Likewise, if you are the target of an objective, your extraction will get "jammed" and you will receive a new objective regarding this. Extractions can only begin one hour after the round has started.
You only have one chance to extract. It is optional - failure to extract simply means having to take a shuttle or pod. Going through the portal when it is not yours will harm you greatly and teleport you someplace random on the station.
Why It's Good For The Game
One of the common issues for many antags completing their objectives, then spending a long time running from security, often causing excessive chaos over rather non-chaotic objectives. This allows for antagonists who have completed their objectives to attempt to mitigate this chaos and complete their tasks without needing to survive for an hour or more against a security team that will likely be escalating against a slippery antagonist.
Images of changes
Testing
Spawned as traitor, used flare, extracted. Tried to use flare early, was denied. Tried to use flare while a target, was denied. Tried to extract with restricted objectives, was denied. Extracted with thralls as a vampire, thralls were deconverted when the dantalion extracted. Went through portal as a secoff, got fucked up.
Declaration
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[x] I confirm that I either do not require pre-approval for this PR, or I have obtained such approval and have included a screenshot to demonstrate this below.
Changelog
:cl: add: Adds extraction items for traitors, vampires, mindflayers, and changelings. tweak: Added antag area to ghost bar /:cl:
does that mean people will drop equipment to other antags, making them stronger, then escape? I dont like that idea
Does this essentially turn all assassination objectives into teach a lesson objectives, since your target only needs to be dead when you extract?
More importantly, you say, "your inventory is cleared," does this mean you just delete grand theft items upon extraction, resulting in anyone who also has that objective being screwed?
The concept is interesting, but allowing someone to rush objectives and then extract in the span of possibly 5 minutes, seems bad. When this is done right before shuttle arrives everyone at least knows that the time is ticking down and to be on the lookout for any last minute antags, but antags being able to do this at any point in the last half of the round seems a bit much.
Does this essentially turn all assassination objectives into teach a lesson objectives, since your target only needs to be dead when you extract?
Your target needs to be dead when you extract, as that is when objective status is frozen. This can be changed to not freeze assassinate objectives, but it would further emphasize more permanent methods such as cremation since once you've left you cannot go back to finish the job if they were revived.
More importantly, you say, "your inventory is cleared," does this mean you just delete grand theft items upon extraction, resulting in anyone who also has that objective being screwed?
If you have any HVIs in your inventory, they are removed, yes, as presumably they are turned in to whoever employed you to retrieve them. Being "screwed" is already the case in 90% of overlapping theft objectives, as failing to get to it first means tracking down whoever does have it. Unless you are specifically a traitor that bought the advanced pinpointer, this is very difficult. Don't be late to the party, and if you hear someone call out that a portal item was activated somewhere, you should respond if your theft item was already stolen.
This does not factor in NAD or core theft, as those objectives are barred entirely from extraction.
If this is deemed too much of an issue, HVIs can be jaunted to random points around the station akin to the NAD on extraction, but I feel as if that would cheapen the whole "steal" bit to begin with.
The concept is interesting, but allowing someone to rush objectives and then extract in the span of possibly 5 minutes, seems bad. When this is done right before shuttle arrives everyone at least knows that the time is ticking down and to be on the lookout for any last minute antags, but antags being able to do this at any point in the last half of the round seems a bit much.
To do this, one would need a combination of objectives being close together, and incredible luck with where the portal generation device picked its locations. Combine that with the lengthy spool up time of the device itself, and the fairly public nature of the vast majority of the potential sites, I do not think we will see many attempted rushes that do not end in getting gunned down by security.
Your target needs to be dead when you extract, as that is when objective status is frozen. This can be changed to not freeze assassinate objectives, but it would further emphasize more permanent methods such as cremation since once you've left you cannot go back to finish the job if they were revived. It seems like regardless of which path you choose, freezing or not freezing the kill objective, its gonna have a detrimental impact. If its frozen it will result in assassinate objectives not working as intended, as you can just kill them temporarily, leave and then even if they are revived it counts towards your goal. If its not frozen then, as you said, this will encourage people to use permanent methods of killing before they leave, so instead of the possibility of being revived you are now round removed.
If this is deemed too much of an issue, HVIs can be jaunted to random points around the station akin to the NAD on extraction, but I feel as if that would cheapen the whole "steal" bit to begin with. This has the same issue as kill objectives, regardless of which way you choose to go it will also have a negative impact, if you remove it upon extraction then any counter play that other antags would have had to try to steal the objective back is gone, meanwhile if you leave it on station it cheapens steal objectives as you said.
Adding exfiltration would essentially reward antags who go loud and rush objectives, while punishing antags who stay inactive for a while to asses the round and happen to get the same steal objective as a loud antag who exfiltrates. Adding something that tells you if someone shares your objective might help, but it would still basically turn it into a race to see who can steal the objective the fastest, while also making your only item for finding who stole your objective, the advanced pinpointer, less capable of doing so as it no would only work as long as they were still on station.
This just sounds like a feature that turns most types of shifts in to green shifts after the 1 hour mark, because after the antags leave and theres nobody besides midround antags or a event happy admin to make a plot for the shift, antags point is making a story on the station so people can rp around that. With them leaving early you’re making most shifts in to green shifts with low to no rp
My thoughts:
- I do think it would be neat to give security one last chance to catch you through a station announcement or something.
- Adding some different threat to the station once an antag exfiltrates would be nice, both to incentivize sec to catch someone exfiltrating, and to prevents the round from becoming uneventful.
Bugs I found:
- You retain knowledge of CQC, and probably all martial arts.
- Exfiltration does not count as escaping in a pod/shuttle (I was a ghost with a body in the antag ghost bar when the round ended).
- As you already saw, wizard spells.
- IDs in PDAs are kept.
- You don't have access to the medical vendor.
- This section uses the wrong wall type.
Also noticed the merch vendor requires money, but that sounds fine as you get money when you exfiltrate.
Sorry for editing my comment so much, but I think that was my final edit.
Personally, I'm not that big of a fan of this, it's incentifying antags to drop any amount of RP that could happen just to achieve a greentext (not like this isn't done already), antags would also benefit from working together even more, since they can just group and all extract together. Leaving security with nothing to do if they get out, medbay being even more slow in terms of stuff happening (because everyone who was killing is already gone). I also see it causing escalation to spirral out of control, knowing OOCly or ICly (depending how this is told in the story) that an antag can jump (or will jump) as soon as they have done their objectives, well I can see it causing officers to jump steps of escalation to catch them quicker.
Antags exist (from what I've gathered) to tell a story on the station, not to leave as soon as their objectives are done. Cause a chase on the station, keep it red alert, let people develop stories that they watched security detain a syndicate, or a changeling murdering all of security for even making an attempt whilst not being prepared for it.
I personally do not like this feature. antagonists are what breathes life into this game. adversity is what brings interest and action. removing the antagonists at the hour mark is just a roundabout way to have paradise rounds end an hour early.
When an antagonist ceases to exist several things happen and its all indirectly tied to every department in the game. Antagonist leaves and immediately you see security no longer has anything to do, later medical is now bored because no one is injured or dying. This leads people to get restless and beat each other just for something to do and that brings down RP quality. Science now has nothing to do because why print things for security or upgrade chemistry when there is nothing to use it on/for. engineering has less things to fix for explosive or other destructive based antags. Cargo has nothing to spend money on now except pizza crates and that puts chef in the hole. Mining no longer needs to gather ores because science and robotics has no use for them.
Its a whole line of things that gets effected by having our antagonists, our reason for doing anything, our adversity just leaves an hour in.
I can agree on the side of changelings however as all of our antags have the ability to be detained or subdued in various ways EXCEPT changeling. Changeling its either kill and be as lethal or stealthy as possible and there is no in between. I'd personally advocate for this feature to be changeling only as leaving it in is detrimental to our rounds in almost every aspect.
Why It's Good For The Game One of the common issues for many antags completing their objectives, then spending a long time running from security, often causing excessive chaos over rather non-chaotic objectives.
Isn't that like, good? What's the alternative? Antags evac, and then sec twiddle their thumbs and pray for a major midround roll?
Causing chaos means Sec, and sometimes Med and Engi, actually have something to do. And if it's "too much" then you get to get ghosts into the game through an ERT too. If the antag eventually gets caught I feel like that's still going to be a more interesting story than "and then the antag left", even if it changes the color of their line of text at the end of the round.
And, if somehow someone's gaming too hard to the point noone else is having fun, well, that sounds to me like a player issue, really.
I am not saying that having a way for antagonists to more safely "lay low" is necessarily bad, but having them just poof away and secure their round greentext doesn't seem like it to me. It's not "reducing the chaos", it's "eliminating counterplay". I'm sure most antag players aren't going to go "oh, this round is plenty hectic already, better extract to give sec a break", instead they'll do it to not deal with sec if sec can actually be a threat to their greentext.
This also leaves the issue of "well, we never captured the antag so the shift is going to be at red alarm forever" unless there's a way for sec to know a threat is gone, which would probably be too meta
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