Raider

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ENEMY STAFF
Raider
Raider
Access: Only public
Qualifications: Not defined
Employers: Not defined
Supervisors: Your employers, or no one
Duties: BEING A PIRATE IS ALL RIGHT WITH ME DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE YOU ARE A PIRATE
Guides: This page, Uplink

You and your team are ragtag ne'er-do-wells and pirates, looting, shooting, and freebooting anything and anyone you came across. You've just stumbled across a ship in the sector; the famed SCCV Horizon! No doubt they've plenty of phoron, booze, and money to steal! Luckily for you, you have a wide variety of tools and tricks at your disposal to accomplish this task.

Setting Up

You start out in your base, which possesses a Quickee's Plastic Surgeon you can use to change your appearance, and myriad randomized equipment. Your fellow raiders (marked with a little parrot icon next to their sprite) spawn alongside you, and you can converse with them by using AOOC. If the gamemode is combined, other antagonist players will also show up in AOOC.

When you spawn in, start idea-lobbing with your fellow antag players. Discuss which alien species you possess the whitelists for, and settle on a "gimmick" and plan for the round. As off-ship antagonists, you have a fair amount of leeway in creating new characters to fulfill an antagonistic role, and you don't have to bend a crew character's personality to fit into antagonism. This means your gimmick can be as action-intense or peaceful as you like, so long as it engages the crew of the Horizon. Once you've settled on a plan, use the Set Ambition verb in the IC tab to describe your motive for the round. While not strictly necessary, your ambition shows up at the end of the round and enlightens other players on what your goal was.

Raiders have a private communications channel, which you can access by prefixing your message with :x. You also begin with a radio uplink in your pocket, which can be used to access exploitable information and purchase any weapons or gear not found in your base.

You also possess an Agent ID, what appears to be a regular ID card, which can be clicked on while in-hand to customize name, faction, and job title (by default, you're a "Mercenary"). This means that if you'd like to play a member of the Izharshan pirate fleet, it's easy to edit your ID to read "Ssszili Unathi, Izharshan Pirate". The most important quality of this ID, however, is that clicking on another ID with it in hand copies that ID's access, allowing you to copy even a Captain's ID and go wherever you want.

Your Ship

Once your team is ready to go, bring yourselves aboard the ship, the Skipjack. Strap in, and use the console to move to the points around the Horizon. Currently, you cannot move around the overmap in your shuttle, but that doesn't mean your team can't take one of the Horizon's shuttles in a pinch.

You'll also note a cloaking button on your shuttle console. If this option is disabled, the ship will receive an announcement about an unknown spacecraft entering the perimeter. Depending on your gimmick, this may complement or complicate matters.

Your ship spawns with some extra gear of its own, but cannot dock with the Horizon. However, you can use the space bikes in the Skipjack, as well as any jetpacks you have, to move EVA.

Roleplaying As An Antag

Playing an antagonist does not waive roleplay. While obviously you are perfectly allowed to injure, kill, and steal from other characters, you are expected to do so in an engaging fashion. Consider; if John McClane had been killed by Hans Gruber and his goons in the first ten minutes of Die Hard, would that be an interesting movie to watch? The same applies to you and your roleplay. While you're contemplating your merc gimmick, ask yourself some questions:

  1. What is my motive? The classic actor question. You have far more freedom to create a more unhinged or uninhibited character, given that they don't have to be employed with the SCC, but giving them even a basic personality or quirks helps to develop them and create for more engaging roleplay. Giving your character a reason to do what they do can bring a number of interesting variables into play.
  2. Who do I engage with? Your actions threaten the integrity of the ship and its crew, so naturally the Security department will be given to interact with you in any round. But who else is going to be involved in your gimmick? Does this gimmick hinge on the merc team's faction? Are you targeting a specific crewmember, or is the Horizon in general a target of your wrath?
  3. How will I complete my objective? Whether or not you "win" or "lose", your gimmick will change vastly if you change your methods. Your goal can be to kill Captain Jane Coalition because NanoTrasen has decided she knows too much, but do you kidnap Dr. Muhammad Elyra to convince her to turn herself over? Do you hold the ship ransom with a nuclear bomb? Or do you opt to blackmail Jane Coalition into giving up the information to a higher bidder?

It is good to remember when being an antagonist that losing is fun. You are four people up against a security team that can number up to ten, plus an entire ship of people willing to shout out your location over communications once the jig is up. Dying, being imprisoned, or even being cyborgified can all be part of the fun, so roll with the punches.

Contracts and Exploitable Information

Contracts are player-submitted antagonist prompts from unscrupulous sorts that involve theft, murder, vandalism, and other such crimes. If you are particularly in a bind for ideas, you can use these as a jumping-off point for your gimmick.

Exploitable information is player-written dirty little secrets about crew characters that can be looked up using your uplink. It isn't a hard and fast rule that all of the information is canonical; merely that the information about a character is plausible enough to give you, the antagonist, something to act on.

Keep in mind that this information doesn't always need to be something painting a target on said character's back; you can do a lot with the mere fact that a character can be bribed. Also note that if your plan is to kill a character for their compromising information, make sure to roleplay with them first.

Tips and Tricks

  • If you think your gimmick could be improved by a smidgen of adminbus, feel free to send an admin help and ask for something to be spawned. Whether or not it's allowed is up to the discretion of the admin in question, so don't lean on it too heavily. Examples include spawning Lii'dra gear and black k'ois, miscellaneous xenowear, and special faction gear.
  • Taking hostages can be a mixed bag, so use them with due caution. Rounds where the entire gimmick is centred around taking a hostage can quickly get tedious for everyone who isn't Security or the aforementioned hostage, particularly when you make excessive demands such as "I want all of the ship's funds" or "please give me the Captain in exchange for this Hangar Technician".
  • Hostages work best when you're using them for brief periods of time as leverage to get out of a sticky situation. If Cindi Kate grabs Urist McStation and uses him as a human shield while John Sol has a gun pointed at her, Cindi Kate can slowly back out of the room and put some distance between herself and security. The longer you stay in a position bogged down with a hostage, the further the scales tip out of your favor.
  • Human Wildlands gimmicks and Einstein Engines gimmicks are very, very common. They can be well done, but generally speaking, the more creative you are the better the experience for yourself and others and relatively rarely seen gimmicks such as members of the Scarab fleets can be quite interesting. If you can't think of anything, though, don't be afraid to fall back on them.
Antagonist roles
Antagonists Odyssey - Traitor - Mercenary - Ninja - Changeling - Vampire - Revolutionary - Raider - Cultist - Cortical Borer - Loner - Technomancer
Guides of the Horizon
General Getting Started - Guide to Combat - Guide to EVA - Guide to Piloting - Guide to Gunnery - Guide to Communication - Corporate Regulations - Stellar Corporate Conglomerate Occupation Qualifications
Command Guide to Command - Guide to Paperwork - Guide to Standard Procedure - Guide to Faxes - Chain of Command
Security Guide to Security - Guide to Contraband - Corporate Regulations - Guide to Cadavers
Engineering Guide to Construction - Guide to Advanced Construction - Hacking - Guide to Atmospherics - Supermatter Engine - INDRA Engine - Setting up the Solar Array - Telecommunications - Shields
Medical Guide to Medicine - Guide to Surgery - Guide to Chemistry
Research Guide to Research and Development - Guide to Xenobiology - Guide to Xenobotany - Guide to Xenoarchaeology - Guide to Robotics - Guide to Telescience
Operations Guide to Mining - Guide to Robotics
Civilian Guide to Food - Guide to Drinks - Guide to Hydroponics - Guide to Piloting
Non-human cyborg - AI - Guide to Psionics
Special Odyssey - Mercenary - Ninja - Changeling - Vampire - Raider - Revolutionary - Cultist - Technomancer - Guide to Improvised Weapons - Uplink