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# System prepended metadata

title: Orb Traitor / Traitor Escalation

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# Orb Traitor / Traitor Escalation

## Problem Statement

Orbstation players have expressed a general dissatisfaction with the effect of Progression Traitor on the pacing of rounds and actions of antagonist players.
A particular issue is the tasks of lesser impact provided by the progression system, which encourage people to accidentally expose themselves early and then create confusion amongst the crew about how to treat them from that point onwards; knowing that they are probably going to become exceedingly dangerous in the future OOC but unable to particularly justify acting on it IC.
Additionally, the breakneck pace of task accomplishment encouraged by the infinite treadmill of secondary objectives (with a strong incentive to do as much as possible) could seem overwhelming and stretch belief in terms of what one person is doing. On a low population environment, this can often be quite difficult to detect or to stop even if it is detected, allowing players to "snowball" in a way that isn't that satisfying.

Other players have expressed that they benefit personally from the mechanical guidelines and reward structure giving them a framework on which to base their play.
Additionally, some few of the tasks presented by Progression Traitor are both very cool but also undesirable to give to a player as soon as the round starts (weakpoint exposure, final objectives).

We need to attempt to solve the issues of the former while still maintaining some elements enjoyed by the latter group.
In terms of Final Objectives we also want to preserve some concept of scarcity for them, such that they do not occur in every available round as traitors themselves appear in most rounds (1 in 4 or 5 may be more appropriate).

## Solution

Increase the number of Primary Objectives provided to 5 (plus escape alive/hijack).
At least one of the objectives is always an assassination task.
The following two objectives are mechanical tasks which require some form of player interaction (assassination, kidnapping, or theft/destruction of items which are being carried around by players).
The final two objectives are more freeform "ideas" for ways to antagonist the crew which may not be possible to actually track, allowing the generation of a large pool of suggestions without needing any coding effort.

If reasonably possible, the first three "mechanical" objectives should work similarly to secondary ones in that they can be "completed" during a round for a minor reward (likely a fixed 2 TC) in order to give players the satisfaction of definitively having achieved something.

As always, players are free to do as many (including "none") of their objectives as they want, ignore ones they don't like, and use Contract Negotiation to replace the entire list.

Removal of the progression system of secondary objectives entirely (simply hiding the tab which allows you to accept them). Reputation remains but progresses globally for all players at the same rate.
Players assigned to a traitor role midround will be immediately bumped to the same progression level of all other players. Reputation becomes an uninteractive time lock.

Instead, we have a new system called "Traitor Escalation".
This is essentially composed of a series of random events which will begin to fire at random intervals during a round (independent of normal Dynamic or Event system timers) after a certain point (likely about 30 minutes in), which will make contact with *one* Traitor picked at random from those present and offer them a choice of three options.
Upon receipt of this signal the traitor in question will receive a chat message and sound effect and be granted an action button which they can press in order to respond to the Syndicate signal, which pops up a UI containing their available choices.

The options available will generally be:
- Immediate additional telecrystals, no strings attached.
- A random item and an accompanying objective (A weapon and a murder objective, a nonlethal tool and a kidnapping objective, a break-in tool and a theft)
- Either a second instance of the above, or an objective which is independently rewarding to complete due to the nature of what happens when it is completed (weak point exposure, for the fun of causing a big explosion), this list will likely require expanding because the base system does not provide many candidates

Options which come with objectives do not necessarily need to be mechanically enforced in any particular way because we no longer track success, so we could potentially offer an item with a complex suggestion of how it should be used which is not *possible* for the game to track.

The value of TC/items provided will increase over time, and after a certain amount of time (60-70 minutes) has passed in a round it can begin offering as one of the choices an objective which unlocks a Final Objective upon completion. The pre-objective should generally inform the crew of what is about to happen in some manner, so they can be prepared.
The fact that this is only assigned to one person who may not choose it, and requires a prerequsite, will hopefully ensure that Final Objectives remain as something which is not the most common way for a round to end.

## Goals

- Any task that a traitor is mechanically rewarded for completing should be one that the crew can react to in the full knowledge that this person means them harm and may cause trouble, removing the weird metaknowledge layer.
- Traitors should have only quite a small checklist of guaranteed tasks to complete which they are expected to stretch over an entire round, leaving them more time to RP with other players without the sword of "I could be doing something more efficient right now" dangling over them.
- The overall deadliness of traitors will come down slightly as a result of the reduction in overall TC availability and prevalence of Final Objectives.
- Preserve exciting events like malware upload and supermatter cascades without seeing them every single round.
- As a side-benefit, make primary traitor objectives rapidly expandable by people with limited coding experience by reducing some of them to simple lines of text.

## Non-Goals

- Traitor escalation should not feel like it is "forcing" you to abandon your existing gimmick, so temptation from other objectives should generally be balanced against the "free" offer of some more TC you can use for whatever it was you were already doing.
- This includes if your existing gimmick is "I've been defeated", you can use the additional call as the helping hand you need to get one over on the crew but it should be considered valid for a player to completely ignore it if desired for some reason.
- Limit traitors into being "minor" or non-threatening antagonists. As the baseline for threats that can be found on the station, we still want it to be within the remit of any individual traitor to be the force that causes the round to end, as sometimes there might not be anything else.
- Pigeonhole traitors into specific roles, it should still be a very freeform antagonist that can largely do what it pleases using a large toolbox.
- Tying traitor escalation into Dynamic: this was avoided specifically because spending threat on upgrading an existing antagonist further reduces the chance for dead players to be returned to the round by ghost roles or for threat to be allocated to new players if the traitor selected has already been mostly disarmed as a problem.

## Potential Problems and Alternate Solutions

It is possible that the reduction in availability of deadly items will make rounds longer and slower, however there is some indication that this may be desirable among groups of our players. If this is noted to be the case it should be dealt with administratively, and also by moving forward on other pre-existing plans to end rounds non-explosively (though preferably, three rounds in four should still probably end after some form of dramatic violence).

This solution still front-loads a group of the traitor objectives. While they can only gain more widely destructive ones later on and randomly, it may still be that having the full checklist from the beginning leaves people with the goal of ticking it off as fast as possible so that they're done before the 30 minute mark. 
Multiple players have expressed that they find this effect dissatisfying, and if it doesn't seem to be resolved by removing the "infinite treadmill" component we can investigate further forms of objective timelock.

## Future Expansion

There has been a strong communication of desire to be able to more specifically tailor the kind of tasks you are offered.
Some form of contract negotiation to position you as specifically a murderer, kidnapper, or something quieter would likely be appreciated by many.

Additionally, as always, more objectives are always appreciated.

An audit of TC costs for items is likely required, many tools or gadgets (and even some weapons) are somewhat overpriced for their actual effect and having things be cheaper will be less of a problem if the total available pool is more limited.