Pirate Ship Midround Event/Antag

[KrulPax]

What is this about?
I would like to propose the addition of a new type of mid-round antagonist, pirate, complete with a pirate ship and objectives that they have to complete.

Detailed Description:
This suggestion is inspired by the same event on the TG servers, and here is my take on how I believe it should work on the Scorpio:

• Station may randomly be notified about a pirate ransom: the pirates threaten the crew to give up 80% of their cargo points and materials from the ORM. (both the cargo console and the ORM are unavailable for the duration of the threat, to avoid abusing the system).
• The crew may choose to accept the demands and give up 80% of their cargo points and materials, which then causes the event to end. They may accept or decline the demands using the Communication Console in the bridge with an authorized ID.
• If they decline, or ignore the message for long enough, a team of 1-3 Skeleton Pirates pulled from the ghost volunteers appear in the spawning location - the Pirate Ship.
• Skeleton Pirates are lightly equipped - they each possess a laser gun and an energy sword (energy cutlasses even maybe?). They don't have any armor (they wear pirate outfits) and they don't possess any spacesuits and equipment - they won't need it since they will be skeletons.
• The spaceship has the ability to travel similarly to the Nuke Operatives shuttle - you will be able to choose where on the Space Station's level park the ship, allowing the pirates to creatively use their tools to complete their objectives (this ability has to have a cooldown, however). The ship will also send a constant GPS signal, similarly to the White Ship, so that the crew is always able to locate the pirates during the event.
• The matter of objectives for the pirates could be a bit of an issue. On TG, they are tasked with collecting enough funds, through stealing the items on board the station - everything has its own price that the pirates accumulate by transporting it to their ship. However, I suspect that trying to translate this system (aka putting a price on every single in-game item) would be a major chore. Therefore, I'd like to propose a few alternatives. Firstly, they could get a set of traitor-like objectives, focused on stealing certain items, for example, "steal 4 defibrillators" "steal 5 laser guns" "steal 50 gold". Alternatively, they could focus on materials only, having an objective to collect a certain amount of mining points by stealing the minerals (the mining points would be counted in the same fashion as the ORM mining points for miners to purchase equipment). Finally, they could be also equipped with a special tool that will allow them to steal R&D points and researched tech, cargo points, vendor items, and cash from IDs, Power, as well as other similarly cumulative numbers. Each of those I could see being utilized in one way or another, however, I would like to note the importance that the objectives have to be open enough so that pirates have to be a temporary threat only. They are not coming to the station to stay, but to steal and run away.
• The Pirates event will continue until pirates complete their objectives and escape from the Station's Level, or they all perish. They are not an antag that is there to harass the crew for the rest of the shift, as a ninja might be or a Xeno.
• Additionally, I would like to explain why the pirates should be skeletons since the choice is not (only) an aesthetical one. Skeletons are space proof, temperature proof, and have a very easy way of healing - milk. By making pirates skeletons, they will be quite modest in terms of equipment, and it'll simplify the interactions with the crew.

Why do we need this?
In the current state of the server, I fear that even with the antags dropping in and out from time to time, these gamemodes struggle with some temporary issues that we face on the server. Stealthy Traitors/Vampires/Changelings and similar have a difficult time blending in, while more forthcoming antagonists have a tendency of steamrolling the rest of the station, especially since they have a benefit of a surprise attack. I believe that the pirates gamemode would be perfect for both big pop but especially low pop games because it's extremely transparent and won't fire unless the crew decides to allow it to fire. It's voluntary, straight forward gamemode with clear cut roles and objectives - they are the enemy, they are here to steal our stuff, prevent them from stealing our stuff.

The data that I used to write this:

• Pirate ship event tgstation/tgstation#31947
• https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Pirate
• https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Guide_to_races#Skeletons
• https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Random_events#Pirates
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ_qJ7esLZo

[Sikroth]

Additionally, I would like to explain why the pirates should be skeletons since the choice is not (only) an aesthetical one. Skeletons are space proof, temperature proof, and have a very easy way of healing - milk. By making pirates skeletons, they will be quite modest in terms of equipment, and it'll simplify the interactions with the crew.

Personally against this. Just a bunch of random skeletons in space doesn't really make a lot of in-universe sense. TG can get away with it cause LRP but to me at least this is really out of place. Besides, everyone in ss13 works in space and noone's even spaceproof, I don't think a bunch of ragtag pirates should get to be the most mechanically broken species.

If hardsuit slowdowns or any other mechanics are a concern it'd be easy to create a light hardsuit with no armor and no slowdown as part of their loadout, just needs a sprite. Would also make for an interesting and unique loot to get from them, no-slowdown suits with unique looks.

About the healing part, just give them a sleeper and a cryotube, I think.

In my opinion the event will always end up with people denying the 80% tax because everyone wants to pew pew baddies even if they're a janitor. And considering we rarely even have any sec it's just mean everyone raids the armory or otherwise gets to use the emergency to arm up "legally". Which is already a problem in the server without this. But that is just my opinion. The event itself I am not entirely against. Having an antag whose goals are not specifically murder is always good in my eyes, and stealing random shit can be interesting. Just I expect it to end in a battle royale every time. But there is potential there.

[KrulPax]

In my opinion the event will always end up with people denying the 80% tax because everyone wants to pew pew baddies even if they're a janitor. And considering we rarely even have any sec it's just mean everyone raids the armory or otherwise gets to use the emergency to arm up "legally". Which is already a problem in the server without this. But that is just my opinion.

No no, you have a good point here. While it would solve the problem of rounds not really having a clear cut fair antagonist, it would introduce the issue of breaking the balance of role systems in the game, which is key to maintaining order - we cannot rely on meta trust, especially if we wish to expand this server for newcomers. I think that therefore... maybe locking the event to fire only if certain conditions are met, that is at least one member of the command and one member of security? This wouldn't of course eliminate the "legal arms up" but it would make it an effort mobilized by the personnel authorized to make calls like this, and it would then follow up on in character attempts to manage the crisis response while also not letting the armed crew go too wild. At least I hope that's how it would work. I am uh, open to feedback on that issue since it's difficult to tackle I'm afraid.

The event itself I am not entirely against. Having an antag whose goals are not specifically murder is always good in my eyes, and stealing random shit can be interesting. Just I expect it to end in a battle royale every time. But there is potential there.

Yeah! The fact that the game mode is non-lethal is one of the qualities of it I believe because it allows the less confrontational players to simply, in the best-case scenario, ignore it, and in the worst-case scenario, simply give in to the demands even in the case of the open conflict. Other qualities for which I picked this mode to propose here were it's transparency which will allow the players to properly set up and prepare for the confrontation, which will be much better than the cases when a traitor builds up their influence until it's too late, and it's optionality, which will allow the crew to more or less decide for themselves if they wish to engage in such conflict, possibly weight their chances and consider their position at the moment. What I proposed above is still a bit clunky, it is hard to translate something from one server to another after all, but I believe that we can freely change up a lot of these points so that they would fit our server, and as long as they'll work to benefit these three qualities that I just presented, I feel like we will hit the jackpot with it creating a fun event that doesn't engulf the server in flames (hopefully).

Personally against this. Just a bunch of random skeletons in space doesn't really make a lot of in-universe sense. TG can get away with it cause LRP but to me at least this is really out of place. Besides, everyone in ss13 works in space and noone's even spaceproof, I don't think a bunch of ragtag pirates should get to be the most mechanically broken species.

I see where you're coming from with this, but to be fair, I don't see this as much of a problem. I played with the "skeleton pirates" on servers that use TG as a base, while also being MRP and even HRP servers involve wizards in them. It's a very wacky game, after all, it's premise is that there's literally a lot of possibilities in space for your day to become a nightmare, and just as easily it is to justify the existence of The Wizard Federation, I feel like designing lore for a Skeleton Pirate Armada would be just as fitting. To add to the reasons why I feel like skeletons would be fitting, pirates are already taking on a whole station, which will be very unbalanced for them, so they'll have to make up with some special qualities. Skeletons are a bit "broken", I suppose you could call it that because they take on the whole station and (usually) organized team of security officers, for which they make up with their simple system of healing, immunity to some extremely disabling status effects and ability to reconnect their limbs on a go, which doesn't give them many advantages, rather than a proper fighting chance against the station I believe. Additionally, those qualities further the point of transparency - the fact that you can just take a look at them, and note them as the enemy, while also alienating the skeletons from usual methods of healing will play into the whole idea of "us vs them", which would become a bit blurred if they looked and could attempt to blend in as the normal crew.

With that being said, I do feel like it's a secondary, or even tertiary issue here. I would not mind much if we'd go in another way with them, spacesuits proposed by you included. I do like skeletons because of the qualities mentioned above and because they are a really fun concept, but in the end, I suppose it's the matter of what will the administrative team consider more fitting for the general theme of the server, but that's, of course, a discussion for another day.