Colfer antagonist selection QoL

[Colfer]

Heres the setup; Sometimes, certain antagonists don't jive well with the slot you want to play at that moment, but maybe you have an idea for that antagonist, and just don't think that round will have them

Now heres the idea;
Add a button to the character menu that; if set to on, will change your slot to that character and give you the antagonist roles that character has, with the occupation you set, IF the antagonist is available and not already taken. Let me explain a bit better

Lets say you have a human character called John, you want to play john as a vampire, and you WOULD play john if there was a large chance that he'd be a vampire, but at the moment, you don't want to play John because theres no guaranteed chance he'll be a vampire when you ready up, and your just not in the mood to play his character. You flick this "Antagonist switchslot" button on for this character.

Now lets say you have another character you want to play right now, this is X**Q)b(*#mPL the skrell, a research director, you want to play X**Q)b(*#mPL right now, but you don't have any antagonist preferences set for them since you don't have any good ideas for how to go about antagonizing the crew on THIS character, but you do on John.

Now, lets propose that the round is just about to begin, everybody is readied up, and the game choses vampire, but nobody on their current slots is valid for this position, However, One of your slots, John, has switchslot enabled, so the game switches your character to John instead of your skrell when the round begins, spawns you in as whatever johns occupation is, and lets you be a vampire, now you get re-invigorated to play that character, because now you have the role you wanted without having to take the risk of joining as a character you won't enjoy playing at the moment without said role

Obviously this would need some kind of ALERT in chat that one of your slots has "Switchslot" enabled so you dont accidentally play a role you dont want, as well as things like catching the system so during multi-antagonist gamemodes like veil party, you don't accidentally eat up two+ slots, play a character thats impossible for the role, like traitor AI, and preventing this system from working if you've deleted a character.

[Fluffy]

• How do you avoid the inevitable "every time I see John, it's a vampire"? Because I can totally see people having slots they don't really play having this on, so that it will end up with "every time I see X character, it's an antag"
• How do you decide that it's time for John to spawn? The gamemode selector might decide to roll vampire, however everyone else has set mercenary on and left vampire off on purpose, should the game exhaust all the normal possibilities before starting to dig in this switchslot? Or just roll with it? And why
• Extension of the above, you also have set mercenary because it's time for the return of the Solarian Clone Corps, however the gamemode rolls vampire again, should it just ignore it as you have other antags enabled in your current slot, or go ahead and start vampire because you have the switchslot enabled? And why
• Should this also work for midround rolls like eg. ling, so that you pick Susanne, click on the FR slot, and it decides to spawn you as John instead?
• What role would the switchslot spawns you in, and how does it know? If you ready up as ZI-Caligula the Warden, and the system decides that you roll John the Botanist vampire, do you become John the Warden? Or how does it know that it's a Botanist?

Just off the top of my head

[Colfer]

1. You don't, aurora downright has mechanics to stop players from making throwaway characters or obfuscate their characters name when joining as an antagonist, and that's not in scope for this suggestion. The issue isn't with the player playing the same antag on the same slot multiple times, its with the players who recognize this pattern and then purposely seek to ruin, metagame, or put that player under a microscope when he joins. If the player is a good vampire player, this is like reading a draft for a movie script which gets better as they slowly refine their craft, try new gimmicks, test abilities, and so on

2. How I think it would work is that when the gamemode is rolled the game will check for things in this order; (People who have the antagonist setting on > People who have the antagonist switchslot setting on, also with that setting on > Alert theres not enough, and try again for another gamemode), though this is more how I think the code might inevitably work rather than intending the code to work this way.

In your example, if everybody is purposely selecting mercenary, but someone has switchslot on for vampire, the vampire is ALERTED to the fact they have switchslot on when readying up specifically so they dont accidentally play something they don't want to, so that player would want to play vampire, and if it rolls vampire before it rolls mercenary, and theres enough vampires, then its a vampire round. Why I think it should work this way is that the game shouldn't be biased and skip over switchslot people, that player probably has a reason for wanting to play that antagonist, and thats the antagonist the game choose at random first, better luck next time mercs.

4 hours ago, Fluffy said:

Extension of the above, you also have set mercenary because it's time for the return of the Solarian Clone Corps, however the gamemode rolls vampire again, should it just ignore it as you have other antags enabled in your current slot, or go ahead and start vampire because you have the switchslot enabled? And why

3. It could have a preference for the slot your currently playing and its antagonists preferences when searching for an antagonist, if not enough players meet the antagonist requirements, then it searches for players with switchslot enabled to fill the remaining open antag slots for the gamemode, if theres still not enough, then the game checks for another gamemode. The "Preference for the slot your currently playing" would only really account for multi-antagonist gamemodes, like veilparty (CULT+VAMP) or Tower defence (PIRATE+MERC). Your alerted to the fact that you might be drafted for vampire due to having "John Vampire" with switchslot enabled, so you cant complain when the game rolls vampire and your readied up for mercenary on your current slot

4. No, this would be for roundstart only

 

4 hours ago, Fluffy said:

What role would the switchslot spawns you in, and how does it know? If you ready up as ZI-Caligula the Warden, and the system decides that you roll John the Botanist vampire, do you become John the Warden? Or how does it know that it's a Botanist?

5. It goes by the occupation settings of the slot is pulling from, if John has no occupation settings, then he cant join, and therefor the game skips over that slot, if the occupation is full, same thing, the slot is skipped, also if the player is banned from that slot or the slot has CCIA action or what have you.

Edited February 1 by Colfer
I forgot to address the whole point of #2

[Sniblet]

This feature would solve a problem that I have had two times until I eventually just wanted to play the character normally

I could imagine the most extreme of inscrutable TG migrants using this to functionally have up to 100 times the antag odds, but… that would be funny to see so why design against it

and it wouldn’t really work because they’d still be the only one with antag on

Edited February 1 by Sniblet
TG migrants

[NerdyVampire]

I love when the game becomes a little more dynamic and smart, and I do think it is a real issue you are describing - people want to play certain characters when antagging and certain characters when not antagging, that's just the way it is.

I'd definitely want to see this come true. The selection logic becomes more complex, but if it can be made so it doesn't take too long to compute, then why not?