Clearly communicate antag status

[Chief-Engineer]

Need this as part of the rule rewrite so that people can very easily tell what they're supposed to be doing instead of seeing a role description that says "do (name of role) things" and thinking that means one thing then an admin bwoinks them and says (name of role) is/isn't supposed to be friendly.

PJB's idea I think is having something in the character status screen thing where objectives are normally displayed that shows up for everyone, antag or not. I think that's a good idea.

Here are the requirements for this issue:

• Every playable entity can have an AntagOrOtherSpecialRole thing or something assigned to it
• Every playable entity that doesn't have an explicit assignment defaults to non-antagonist
• Prototypes can easily be made to add new AntagOrOtherSpecialRole types. They can probably be as simple as having an ID and a name string that's shown to players
• Players are clearly informed of their AntagOrOtherSpecialRole if it is not non-antagonist at the time that they take the role and at the time that AntagOrOtherSpecialRole changes. This includes informing round start antags, delayed antag assignments, and ghost role antags.

In the interest of getting this issue completed as fast as possible, here are things that are not required but I will probably immediately make issues about if they are not done:

• Players can check their AntagOrOtherSpecialRole status at any time (the character status screen thing is a way to accomplish this)
• Admins can easily check the AntagOrOtherSpecialRole status of a specific player at any time
• Changes to AntagOrOtherSpecialRole status are logged in admin logs

Here are the different types of AntagOrOtherSpecialRole that currently exist afaik, and examples of the roles that fit under them:

• Non-antagonist/crew aligned
  • Most crew
• Solo Antagonist
  • Traitors
  • Thiefs
• Team Antagonist
  • Nuclear Operatives
  • Zombies
  • Revolutionaries
  • Ghost role mobs (their team is other ghost roles, at least of the same type)
  • Dragons and their carp
• Free Agents
  • Rat King
  • Closet Skeleton?
• Familiar
  • Remilia
  • Cerberus
  • Holoparasite
• Silicons
  • Borgs
  • Drones

AntagOrOtherSpecialRole only needs to go one level deep, meaning non-antagonist, solo antagonist, team antagonist, etc.

[mirrorcult]

was working on this more or less

[Errant-4]

How do we expect this to behave when, for example, an antag is put in a borg, so should be Solo Antag and Silicon at the same time.

Should there be a weight system and the "most important" category takes precedent? Or should cases where someone can fall into multiple categories be investigated and eliminated individually?

[mirrorcult]

why would it not just work? it just shows both at the same time

in the UI/refactor i posted non-antag/antag briefings are separate and antag ones are shown with precedence at the end, as you can already see in the image

[Errant-4]

(I changed the verb "work" because it was too ambiguous about what I mean)

[mirrorcult]

im still not sure what youre asking, i feel like the chain of precedence is pretty clear, antag roles > everything else

[Errant-4]

Okay I guess what I'm asking is, exactly what do we expect for this to show if a Thief becomes a Sleeper Agent, then a Revolutionary, then is Borged? (Yes this is a ridiculous scenario but its only a matter of time until it occurs). If it lists all of these, I dont think it will look very clear to the player?

I'm asking in particular because _the premise says "it should be easy to tell what you are expected to be doing" _ , which cant be guaranteed if descriptions add over each other
But I guess maybe convoluted role pileups are their own issue that should be investigated separately

[Chief-Engineer]

I'm not sure exactly what should be done in overlap scenarios, but you're right that whatever happens should keep it clear to players what rules apply to them. Specifically stuff like "am I an antagonist?" "do I have a team that I can't work against?" "do I have silicon laws that I'm required to follow?" "can I choose to be friendly?" These are all questions with extremely unclear answers when multiple roles overlap.

My personal opinion is that a borged syndicate agent should be told that they're a silicon, but should still be shown their objectives. Presumably for RP reasons silicon laws supersede everything else. If you want an antag borg then I think it needs laws that allow that, that's the clearest way that I can think of to communicate things to players. That said, any borg could still have completable objectives, even if those objectives are traditionally for antagonists.

For the more complicated situation, I'm not sure. Thief and sleeper agent are both solo antags, so no issue there other than just figuring out how to merge or prioritize objectives if that's something that's intended to be possible. If they become a revolutionary, then presumably they are not intended to be allowed to subvert the revolution to accomplish their agent/thief goals, so for as long as they are a revolutionary, they're considered a team antagonist. If they then get borged, then things go back to my thoughts from earlier about borging

[Errant-4]

I guess my question is more : should there actually be multiple of these roles added to the same character, at all?
If it is always a singular state, then it could be communicated truly clearly right at the top of the character page and in admin UI, keeping things clear and straightforward*. Putting the burden instead on the game design side, of figuring out the few scenarios where overlapping roles may be required, if there are any.

(*) The one example I can immediately think of is Silicon, which could both mean "crew aligned" and "Shodan", based on what the specific rules are. And admins would not see this difference as easily as with other traitor situations. But that could be addressed simply by the addition of a new "Atypical Silicon" role, which is essentially identical rules-wise to Silicon, deferring to the Laws, but indicates clearly and at a glance to both the admins and the player that extra attention should be paid to exactly what their laws say

edit: Having reread the entire topic, I think I missed the point and this was already the intention, so I should be fine prototyping based on singular antagEtcRoles