Advice on being a good traitor?

[SomeoneOutTher3]

I originally brought this up in OOC after a round where I made threats over comms and demanded that the crew either hand over the Nuclear Authentication Disk and had bombs set up near the big atmospherics tanks. Needless to say,it went horribly wrong when someone in space charged at me with a spear and forced me to blow up the engine and the atmospherics supply tanks.When I poked Alberyk about properly attacking atmospherics,I was told that blowing up the large air tanks would only start to affect other people and cause suffocation in a few hours. I got a few topics for discussion regarding being a better traitor. One: What is the best way to sabotage atmospherics after getting a greenlight from a staff (Breaking waste filters to suck out oxygen? Breaking the pipe so it vents out all the air into space? Putting poison gas in the distro? (Apparently too slow to be effective, and is also reversible)). Two: What would be the best way to get the crew to hand over a valuable item without me having to steal it? It seems that people tend to not care about hostages.

Edit: Have only played tator a few times,please don't judge.

[DatBerry]

someone in space charged at me with a spear

 

I hope he had a good reason or that you ahelped it, thats some extreme valid hunting.

As for crew, they wont care till you actually start blowing things up, if you just shout over comms they will ignore you and continue to work, blow up their work and force them to listen or deal with you, besides, most crew arent in a position to give you the disk, it has to be a head who's acting captain or the captain himself.

There isn't much you can threaten the crew to give you as you can easily take it yourself, and taking hostages is extremely hard, make sure you have the upperhand with more than just the hostage and the gun to their head.

[Carver]

Two: What would be the best way to get the crew to hand over a valuable item without me having to steal it? It seems that people tend to not care about hostages.

Expect people never to give you what you want, unless the hostage themself can provide it.

My advice in general for doing well as a traitor, pretty simple.

1: Be polite.

2: Be efficient.

3: Have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

[Xelnagahunter]

Oh, and for the love of GOD! If you take a player hostage who is ready and willing to play along, give them some leeway. I got taken hostage once with plenty of chance to fight back from a meta standpoint. I elected not to because my character is that against conflict that even with a drill in hand he didn't want to have to fight. I was captured and dragged through space (without a suit) to the skipjack. I was then bucklecuffed to a chair and punched whenever I tried to talk saying that I was willing to help them if they'd let me go when they left, which was honest. I didn't want to be free right away, I just wanted to be able to interact rather than sit there and get beaten. If I recall I just ghosted because I was tired of being bored and later joined the ERT, at which point I was OOCly pissed off enough to not give any shits.

If you take hostages, then at least make it fun.

[The Stryker]

(snip) It seems that people tend to not care about hostages.

Edit: Have only played tator a few times,please don't judge.

Speaking from experience, anything that isn't completely mechanic-backed will be fudged if the people don't want to RP.

Always check who's in security before engaging in parley.

[Skull132]

And note that even if you want to "RP", security listening to a single hostage taker wit ha single hostage is unlikely. In such a situation, you very rarely have the ability to back up your claims, and prying the hostage out from within your hands is stupid simple.

Remember the following:

• Two guards per one hostage minimum
• Have an escape route or an amazing plan B
  
• Have a way to know if security is advancing on you, and have a way to counter it

[Carver]

And note that even if you want to "RP", security listening to a single hostage taker wit ha single hostage is unlikely. In such a situation, you very rarely have the ability to back up your claims, and prying the hostage out from within your hands is stupid simple.

I've managed 2-3 hostages once as a traitor. It's a matter of having a weapon that will kill them almost instantly if they try to disobey you, so they have an incentive to do what you say. Unfortunately at that time it was Security/ERT disobeying me, so I had to shoot both hostages and replace them with wounded ERT. This wasn't very useful in the end because I'd actually captured or executed most anyone who I could make demands from considering the Captain was among the first of my hostages and he wasn't playing along... Though his brutal death did make the two others play along.

In short, you can manage a handful of hostages on your own but it just gets progressively more difficult. Two maximum is recommended, and they need to know that they will die very horribly if they resist. Threat of death is your greatest tool to maintaining order.

[Conservatron]

taking hostages never works because the station is full of rambos who will gladly let any hostage die for their chance to be the 'hero' because cloning is so easy.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

The first rule is to accept the fact that the majority of the crew are psychopaths who's entire purpose to exist is to defeat the antagonist. The longer your presence is known, or the more dangerous you appear, the more justified the crew is in assembling make-shift weaponry. I've been rushed by IAA with spears. I've had security cadets run and baton my hostage to knock them out to get to me. I've had janitors appear in space and fire an SMG at my nuke op shuttle window. I've seen ERT shoot through crew used as human shields in order to kill the traitor holding them. Hostages themselves you need to keep handcuffed, because they will disarm you at a split second's notice.

If you ever take hostages as an antag you need to accept that the crew is going to kill them. Accept that you cannot negotiate with the crew under hardly any circumstances until you wipe out the entire chain of command and incoming ERT. Never trust ERT, ever. They are ghosts of the people you killed and they want vengeance.

I just focus on trying to make murder/mystery as an antag. The only real ways to be an antagonist without having the entire station on your ass is to keep it a mystery. If they don't know who you can do more stuff.

[hivefleetchicken]

Never keep an open space between sec and you.

The second you enter their screen space they will try to lob a flashbang at you and then harm baton you to death.

Always have a hand teleporter and EVA suit on so you can jump into space if the civilian crew starts trying to murder you.

[Guest]

1.) Keep the focus on fun.

2.) Brutally destroy and annihilate anyone that gets into your path.

3.) Memetext > Greentext

4.) If anyone gets angry at the end of round, reply with "salt" and nothing other than "salt", for that is all that anyone will give you aside from critical acclaim.

5.) Make sure you know baseline mechanics of antagonists, if you don't know them, learn them!

[Bokaza]

Misdirection. If you do something bad, don't leave no evidence, plant it instead. You will actually involve other people regardless if they want it or not. To help you figure out what's incriminating and what is not, try playing command for a while. You will start to see behavior patterns. Then just avoid those patterns to avoid getting cought. Most common one is antags being non-responsive to orders and rolecalls. They think if no one thinks they exist no one will bother them, when all the heads need to do is make a head-count of their department to see who is absent and not SSD. Then you become an OOC suspect, making your work much harder.

One time I dressed as an assistant, changed my ID then robbed the vault. It took security surprisingly long to figure it out and I was sloppy as hell. Interestingly enough, the assistant was another traitor so I accidentally blamed another traitor for it.

[Carver]

Most common one is antags being non-responsive to orders and rolecalls. They think if no one thinks they exist no one will bother them, when all the heads need to do is make a head-count of their department to see who is absent and not SSD. Then you become an OOC suspect, making your work much harder.

The way I got around people getting suspicious was just being gone and unnoticed for so long that they would assume I was dead... Or fake a death by spacing/murder/etc.

Speaking of faking, either with a good bit of cleverness or the help of another traitor to play 'witness', you can fake having been assaulted/parapenned by a third party to frame them. It relies on getting the other party to hold the item in question, say for signing a piece of paper, or taking something they had, then injuring yourself badly with it (Or in the case of the parapen injecting yourself). This is MUCH easier with a second traitor's help, because it means you have a 'witness'.

Faking a death is much more difficult and it relies on being able to mimic the text style of paincrit so people are convinced, ICly and OOCly, that you're dying from whatever you say over the radio. Your 'death' has to be something that makes you difficult to find. So pretend to get spaced or 'die' on the asteroid, or if you somehow gain access to a humonkey (I don't know how you'll do this without genetics) you can sufficiently burn up and make the corpse unidentifiable.

If you're a Detective, this is all much easier. As a Detective I've even faked being kidnapped and set up a faux crime scene in a maintenance closet that I tied myself up in. Your ability to fuck with medical and security records combined with your gloves means that you can generally frame people easily enough assuming noone is smart enough to read the back of the perp's ID card to see what their prints/DNA/etc actually are.

Finally, there's utility in faking your death if you just happen to want some peace and quiet as a non-traitor. Don't do it too much.

[The Stryker]

Play to their meta-sense, like get a voice changer, ID card, and go

AI states, ";b Begin stealing EMP weapons." and then watch the emitters warm up.

Worked once when a traitor told me shape-shifting monsters boarded. Played right to my meta gaming.

[Conservatron]

best advice i can give is only be a 'social' traitor if people who will play along are on.

[Bedshaped]

With hostages, buckle them to an office chair so even if security blast them; they can still be used as cover.

[Carver]

Play to their meta-sense, like get a voice changer, ID card, and go

AI states, ";b Begin stealing EMP weapons." and then watch the emitters warm up.

Worked once when a traitor told me shape-shifting monsters boarded. Played right to my meta gaming.

If they're smart, this won't play to their meta sense at all. It shows the sprites of the specific radio used by the name, including bounced/headsets/synth headsets/comms/etc.

[NebulaFlare]

Play to their meta-sense, like get a voice changer, ID card, and go

AI states, ";b Begin stealing EMP weapons." and then watch the emitters warm up.

Worked once when a traitor told me shape-shifting monsters boarded. Played right to my meta gaming.

If they're smart, this won't play to their meta sense at all. It shows the sprites of the specific radio used by the name, including bounced/headsets/synth headsets/comms/etc.

 

Which is why you steal a normal headset to do anything over the radio. Then no one will know.

At least. As long as you don't pretend to be a station unit. Yeah. You can't mimic those.

[Guest]

metabaiting is shit and does not encourage roleplay, don't do that.

[Carver]

metabaiting is shit and does not encourage roleplay, don't do that.

Metabaiting is fun. The librarian's computer can print tomes and a suit cycler can make any voidsuit resemble that of a nuke op. Sadly you can't make crayon runes that resemble actual runes anymore.

[Conservatron]

metabaiting is shit and does not encourage roleplay, don't do that.

metabaiting won't change anything if security doesn't metagame.

[SierraKomodo]

metabaiting is shit and does not encourage roleplay, don't do that.

metabaiting won't change anything if security doesn't metagame.

 

I've used it to good effect during a traitor AI round where I distracted security from the actual antags by making them thing there was an attack on the opposite end of the station.

[Guest]

metabaiting is shit and does not encourage roleplay, don't do that.

metabaiting won't change anything if security doesn't metagame.

 

I've used it to good effect during a traitor AI round where I distracted security from the actual antags by making them thing there was an attack on the opposite end of the station.

 

this is fine if you're not explicitly baiting existence of specific antagonists, but

 

Urist McGasmasktater says, "g Absorbing captain,"

 

and

 

Metabaiting is fun. The librarian's computer can print tomes and a suit cycler can make any voidsuit resemble that of a nuke op. Sadly you can't make crayon runes that resemble actual runes anymore.

 

is not fine. You flick on antagonist with the sole agreement that you are playing the role to further a plot of antagonism in some manner, not to chucklefuck, meme and contribute to the issue of a constant metagame between antagonists and the crew. Go take that to Hippiestation, where it is actually valid.

Other people being rotted asscancer does not justify you being so in return. Uphold a better standard than that.

I will usher no blame or upset regarding powergaming if you're actively attempting to establish yourself as an opposing force for the station to react to, I will not participate in any butthurt regarding individual or collective antagonist robustness. Not everyone can win every time, and it's not like "winning" matters much anyway.

Do it for the wrong reasons and you deserve every bit of criticism that you get.

[Bokaza]

Other people being rotted asscancer does not justify you being so in return. Uphold a better standard than that.

I will usher no blame or upset regarding powergaming if you're actively attempting to establish yourself as an opposing force for the station to react to, I will not participate in any butthurt regarding individual or collective antagonist robustness. Not everyone can win every time, and it's not like "winning" matters much anyway.

Do it for the wrong reasons and you deserve every bit of criticism that you get.

 

Being an antagonist should not be about upholding standards, it should be about defying them, being creative. Regardless of metabaiting being common or not it fucks with people's expectations. Which is good.

It should not be the antag's responsibility to account for people's metagaming. If people want to metagame, go ahead. If you don't metagame, you completely avoid the trap.

[sonicgotnuked]

I remember one round I got a admin to remove ceti basic from my languages when I was playing my taj and auto-tator got me... I acted like a freedom implant did it to me, Just be creative and ask admins, you will be surprised on the ability's the gods have