Syndicate Drop Troopers [Goodwheatley, Unapproved]

# Syndicate Drop Troopers [Goodwheatley, Unapproved] ~~Hope this goes better than heretic~~ will add more details soon:tm: ## the scrungly While nuke ops is a really fun gamemode, there's not really much opportunity for planning out your assault on the station. Sure, you'll have an initial idea of where you're going to enter, but after that everything kind of falls apart as you all run off shoot up the station for the disk or go stealth ops. Drop Troopers is an attempt to make a nukie-style antag that actually encourages the team to stick together and make a plan to follow to succeed in their mission. ### why not just make this a nukie thing I understand the reasoning for saying this should just be an alternate option for nuke ops, but besides being terrified of the feedback I might recieve if I radically changed the gamemode, I feel like the two ideas are way more different than Drop Troopers just being, as mirror said, "this is nukies". Nuke Ops differ fundamentally from Drop Troopers because of how they're meant to activate the nuke. Their entire strategy revolves around alpha striking one guy, the Captain. This means the time it can take to win wildly varies depending on how competent the Captain and the crew are. In this sense nuke ops is a very lethal version of Capture The Flag; the operatives have to go into the enemy base (the station), retrieve the "flag" (nuke disk), and get back to their base safely (reach the nuke and arm it). If that concept is compared to Drop Troopers, the differences become more evident. Unlike nukies, Drop Troopers have no "flag" to retrieve; they start with everything they need to win. There's a set amount of time it'll take for the Troopers to win the round, unlike nukies with any% disk get speedruns. Instead of having a nuke they can place anywhere they want, Drop Troopers have a set list of locations they'll have to defend to win the round. And instead of constantly playing offense up until the nuke is armed, Drop Troopers will be forced to play defense whenever they're defending a hacking site. Instead of being another version of Capture The Flag, Drop Troopers are a lethal version of King of the Hill. ## i can assure you officer these aren't reskinned nukies Instead of getting a TC balance to buy items, each of the 4 Drop Troopers get tokens to buy their gear. They each get one Sidearm Token, which lets them buy their pistol (an option of standard pistol, revolver, or smartgun), two Utility Tokens, which let them buy miscellaneous useful items, and one Loadout Token, which lets them buy their Loadout, which has a specialized set of gear for what role the Loadout is intended to be used for in combat. Each Loadout has strengths and weaknesses that are intended to be complemented by the other Loadouts, encouraging teamwork. Loadouts also have Subclasses that can alternatively be purchased, which add further variety to how the Loadout's main purpose works and interacts with other teammates. ### Each Loadout Type Grenadier: Blast your way through every problem. Frontliner: Point and shoot. Gunner: Lay down suppressive fire, fill everyone with bullets. Engineer: Build fortifications, destroy obstacles. Medic: Keep your team alive. Marksman: High-priority target elimination. Infiltrator: Take them down from the inside. Scout: Flank the enemy, attack where they least expect it. Duelist: Fight up close and personal. Biohazard: Take them down through their insides. Firebrand: Burn them to a crisp. ## The Battle Bus Strikes Back The Drop Troopers' main base of operations is the Dropship, a shuttle which contains everything they'll need to assault the station (no more having to wait for your nukie teammate to finish mixing lexorin so you can actually leave on the shuttle). The main features are the Planning Room, Armory, and Hangar. The Planning Room is a dimly-lit space with cool whiteboards to draw on, a map of the target station, detailed maps of the plant sites, VR Goggles that let the Troopers walk around the hacking sites, view and annotate a minimap of the station as a whole, make and test mock defenses, and test out all the weapons in their arsenal. Finally, it contains a Special Equipment uplink that lets the Drop Troopers use Points (which are given based on how many people are in the server, and are intended to give the Drop Troopers a fighting chance when they're vastly outnumbered) to buy unique equipment they can't get anywhere else. The Armory contains the vending machines the Troopers use to spend their Tokens, a bunch of lockers containing standard Syndicate EVA gear, pinpointers that point to where the nearest hacking sites are and where the EMP Bomb is, and a bunch of miscellaneous explosives, toolboxes, surplus rifles, and a MPRT-7 rocket launcher with limited ammo that can be used to blow stuff up. The Hangar contains the only entry point to the Dropship (the wall of blast doors on the east side), the Hacking Beacons, and the EMP Bomb. ## ok but how do they win The Drop Troopers' mission is simple, and yet more audacious than anything ever attempted in the history of the Syndicate; stealing a Nanotrasen space station. The path to pulling this off is through faking emergency shuttle signals and ultimately knocking out power to the station; if CentCom thinks that a shuttle has already arrived and departed at a station, they'll ignore the crew's cries for help, and once the station has gone fully dark it can be safely FTLed away. When the Drop Troopers spawn in on the Dropship, they'll have a list of potential sites on the station where the radio signal can be hacked to send these faked signals to CentCom, which can be accomplished by planting one of their 8 Hacking Beacons at that site. They'll need to plant and protect 3 Hacking Beacons at 3 different sites to move on to the next phase of the mission. The Hacking Beacons will take 3 minutes to complete their hack, at which point they'll detonate, knock out the power to the surrounding area, and send a corrupted shuttle message. However, every 60 seconds the beacon will stop the hack for "recalibration", where a Drop Trooper needs to play an Among Us-like minigame to get the beacon working again. This encourages at least one Trooper to stay near the bomb, since if the minigame isn't completed in 30 seconds the hack will fail and the timer has to be started over again, and it gives a crew member an opprtunity to attack if there's only one Trooper guarding the bomb. Once the first beacon detonates, a station announcement gets sent listing all the potential hacking sites the Drop Troopers can hit, and the shuttle becomes unable to be called. The list of hacking sites gives the crew not only the ability to make defenses at each of the sites beforehand, but lets them guess which site they're going to next. Preventing a shuttle call eliminates the potential crew strategy of instantly calling the shuttle once the Troopers are on the station for a free win and a new antag roll. Once a Hacking Beacon activates, it announces the area it's in to the entire station, so the crew won't have to run around guessing before running into a Trooper and dying, and the Drop Troopers can't go to the most obscure site possible and face no resistance whatsoever. Once all 3 necessary Hacking Beacons have been planted, protected, and detonated, the Troopers have one last step to complete their mission; detonate the EMP Bomb. This is a massive piece of machinery that's bolted next to where the Hacking Beacons are stored, and only unbolts itself once all 3 Beacons have detonated. Both the Troopers and the crew are now informed of where the EMP Bomb needs to be placed and detonated (always in a high-security location like the Vault or the Armory) for the Troopers to win, so while the Troopers run back to the Dropship for the bomb the crew has time to rally and make one last effort to save the station. The EMP Bomb will take 5 minutes to detonate once planted, but doesn't need to be recalibrated midway. All the surviving Troopers need to do is detonate it to win. Once it detonates it releases a station-wide EMP that gives anyone standing by it severe burns, and the Drop Troopers win the round. Miscellaneous Notes: - Both the Hacking Beacons and the EMP Bomb are destructible, and the Hacking Beacon can be disarmed. - The nuke disk, when inserted into a Hacking Beacon or the EMP Bomb, has two different functions depending on who inserted it. If a Drop Trooper inserts it, it reduces the Beacon/Bomb's timer by 3 minutes, but if a crew member inserts it, it increases the timer by 3 minutes. This is a one-time use ability. (The fact that it can only be used once is intended to add some thought to when the Troopers want to use it, do we want to skip this annoying plant site instantly, or do we want to save it for the EMP?) - The Drop Troopers are able to opt to create a physical wired connection between the Hacking Servers on the Dropship and the Beacon/Bomb. This makes the timer count down twice as fast, but if the cable is severed, the timer stops. High risk, high reward. - Drop Troopers can declare war by sending a list of the hacking sites and waiting 30 minutes to attack, each Trooper gets an Elite Loadout Token (Allows you to buy an Elite Loadout, which has much higher quantity and quality than standard Loadouts.) in exchange (any reinforcements bought after this will also get an Elite Loadout Token), and the Special Equipment uplink gets 2 extra points (bypasses point cap). Possible variations of delivering plant site locations: No Crew Transparency, Rigid: Drop Troopers get a set list of locations they need to plant at, crew doesn’t until the first Beacon detonates No Crew Transparency, Flexible: Drop Troopers get a list of several locations they can plant a beacon at, crew doesn't until the first Beacon detonates Full Transparency: The crew and Drop Troopers each get a list of the locations at round-start Progressive Transparency: The Drop Troopers and the crew only know what the next hacking site is once the hack has been completed at the current site (Side option is that Drop Troopers get 2 possible locations to go to and the crew is informed of both of them) ### ok but what if the antags don't actually want to win #### hmmmm today I will take the space terrorists' assault corvette for a joyride In the future the Dropship will also have an integrated AI Core that guards the ship while the Troopers are away and will McMurder:tm: anyone who tries to board, but for now slapping a bunch of turrets in the Hangar trained on the entryway and a Syndicate-level ID requirement to use the shuttle controls should stop any upstart salvage tech from waltzing in and stealing the entire shuttle. It's not impossible to steal it, as you could just go through the walls, and unlike the Infiltrator you're perfectly safe sitting on the outside of the ship, but it's probably going to be about as hard as stealing the Infiltrator. #### alright guys we detonated the first beacon time to take a break There are two countermeasures to preventing the Drop Troopers from just sitting on the shuttle and stalling after the first Hacking Beacon detonates, which prevents the crew from calling the shuttle and ending the round. Firstly, once the first beacon explodes, the Drop Troopers have only 30ish minutes to detonate the rest of the beacons and the EMP Bomb before the faked shuttle signal gets discovered and an ERT is dispatched, which is the crew's win condition. And secondly, the cargo shuttle still works even if the shuttle can't be called. Any Drop team who thinks they can stall for time is going to be met with an angry mob armed with WT550s and Retro Laser Guns when they head back to the station. #### egads my bomb has absconded Skill issue. If you lost a hacking beacon you can always get another on the Dropship if you didn't plan ahead and put an extra in your bag, but if you lost the bomb that's the only one you're going to get. You do have a pinpointer that points to where the bomb is though. #### my teammate just shocked himself on a grille and died Unlike operatives, troopers do not have microbombs implanted. This is beacuse it's extremely likely they're going to die at least once in their mission, and it's not really fun for the Medic for their patient to explode while they're trying to save them. If your teammate's already dead, there's a full cloning setup on the Dropship you can use if you really want to get him back into fighting shape. ## why is this good It's an antag that requires a bit more planning and forethought than "shoot everything that moves/we are clowns now" or "break into chem make lexorin hypo your target profit". Having to head to specific areas instead of grabbing an item on a moving target can cause interesting gameplay; should the sec officer rush the plant site now, or wait at another site for an ambush? The crew has the option to build static defenses at an area the Troopers have to head to, something that's never been an option before, or gear up at the Armory and attack the area they're at now. Having a reduced amount of team members further places a priority on staying together, so making a detour to blow up Medbay is a decision that requires a bit more thought.