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SS13 ANTAG - THE PARADOX CLONE
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ABSTRACT
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The purpose of this antagonist is to add a less destructive, personalized antag with the
sole purpose of encouraging better crew coordination while also sowing distrust among
the crew.
This antag also rewards good detective work, giving the detective more to do than just
scanning the occasional piece of evidence with their forensics scanner.
This is a thinking person's antag, on both the side of the antag and the side of sec.
On one hand, there's the antag thinking of the best possible way to make a crew member
disapear for a while, and on the other, there's security and the detectives trying to
figure out if you're a clone or not.
GOALS
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1. Nurture better crew coordination.
2. Expand the need for detective/police work (other than just batoning people.)
3. Make it possible for Chrono Legionaires to possibly be re-added in the future.
4. Add variety. Whenever someone sees 2 of the same person, the first thought is
always "ling!". I want to add the possibility of there being something more to it than
that, giving the sec something to think about before they start to panic. Think of it as
someone confusing a cult rune that has just been sprayed on with a real cult rune.
NON-GOALS
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1. Free respawn. This antag isn't meant to soley act as a free respawn for a ghost
player to get back in the game as an antag, but rather as an opporitunity to blend in
and taking on their job responsibilities as the person they're impersonating,
possibly leading to some great IC moments.
2. Replace the changeling. I am under the impression that both of these antags can
co-exist beautifully, even with some of their similar features. Having a non-changeling
have the same appearence as someone else can take some pressure off of the changeling
as sec chases after the paradox clone instead. Or, alternatively, if the existance of a
changeling on the station is already known and a paradox clone is caught, sec will be
fully confident in thinking they've taken care of the changeling.
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Occasionally during a shift, an anomaly will occur, which spawns the paradox clone somewhere in maints where they won't be instantly spotted.
There will also be an announcement informing the crew that there may be a paradox clone aboard, unless it's a false alarm.
The antag takes on the appearence of any carbon crew member, even wearing their clothes and their ID, a perfect copy of the original to ensure that they don't get found out as a clone if caught. The antag is then tasked with hunting down the person they cloned and ensuring they stay dead until the end of the shift.
The antag spawns with their suit sensors set to off by default, this is to prevent anyone viewing a crew monitor from seeing two of the same person with their suit sensors on. Following that same logic, they spawn with their PDA off of message lists.
The antag also spawns with a mechanical toolbox (welder, wrench, screwdriver, crowbar, etc) to help them get out of maints if their ID doesn't have access to maints.
The basic gameplay loop of the paradox clone is this:
1. Escape maintenance
2. Find and kill your target
3. Ensure your clone nature isn't discovered/cover your tracks
4. Blend in until the end of the shift
Assassinating someone you look identical to while also not being discovered by them or security is a pretty hard task, which is exactly why they only spawn with one main objective. It can take a long time to form a plan of attack to replace your original and get away with it.
Alternatives
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- EVIL PARADOX CLONE!! If the current antag is not sufficiently dangerous enough/considered a waste of an antag roll, we could make the paradox clone into something with more objectives and more things to do. Lore wise, maybe they could come from a timeline where the station they're on is actually a syndicate station?
- If there are any worries about sec possibly executing an innocent person due to a very clever clone play, we could add a slight tell to the paradox clone, like having noticable bluespace dust in the whites of their eyes if you examine them closely. This would kind of defeat goal #2 though.
Potential Changes
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If there's ever a problem with the fact that someone has to be removed from the round permanently for this antag to succeed, we could make it so that once the clone has killed their original, the mind of the victim is transfered over to the clone. This would kill the whole idea of having to act like your original, however.