Reworks infiltrators and converts them into a midround antagonist

[Oblisk234]

Fixes #22462
Fixes #19057

Document the changes in your pull request

Will be updated whenever possible, but the current list of changes:

• Reenables syndicate infiltrators, but converts them into a midround antagonist instead of a roundstart antagonist.
• Syndicate infiltrators are now given 10TC per infiltrator instead of 20TC each (30-40TC total instead of 60-80TC). They're also given full chameleon kit (was previously missing the chameleon hat, suit, and eyewear).
• Fixes issues with the chameleon hardsuit and PDAs that infiltrators are given.
• Moves the infiltrator event's earliest occurrence to 50 minutes (previously 30 minutes).
• Adds a surgery dufflebag in the infiltrator cutter's medbay instead of the tools being laid out on the table.
• Fixes the infiltrator cutter's airlock bolt buttons
• Adds a new potential objective: Infiltrators will need to escape on the emergency shuttle or an escape pod while impersonating a crewmember and wearing their ID.
• Adds a new function to chameleon clothing, chameleon copying: You can now disguise as someone nearby after 10 seconds of standing still with a chameleon kit (Note: This correlates to only how much chameleon clothing you are wearing. If you are only wearing a chameleon hat, you will only copy their hat).
• Infiltrators now have the break machinery objective as part of their sabotage objectives.

Why is this good for the game?

Why make them a midround?

Infiltrators were a good gamemode in theory, but in practice were not a good gamemode. That is why I think making them into a midround antag will improve most of the issues which I know they have, which are:

• Infiltrators either died or completed all of their objectives at the start of the round, leading to a greenshift.
• Infiltrators are only fun for the infiltrators themselves, security, and anyone being kidnapped or killed.
• Infiltrators were excessively cautious to avoid being caught and didn't stay on station for much time at all, leading to them either staying on the ship or not doing their objectives.

Infiltrators dying or completing all of their objectives roundstart is mitigated with making them a midround antagonist instead. This means they have usually 30-45 mins to attempt their objectives, at maximum nearly 1 hour. This also is paired with the fact that it's more likely to be with other antagonists present doing stuff, instead of the infiltrators being the sole antagonists in the round.

Infiltrators being only fun for infiltrators, security, and the infiltrators' targets is a hard challenge to resolve. While there would be other antagonists working within the round, it's difficult to make them interesting for everyone, as their main objective above all is to be stealthy and infiltrate the station, not to kill everyone or cause widespread chaos. This is mostly why I'm making this a draft currently, since it's hard to balance interesting for station with interesting for the antags, and would like opinions on how to resolve this.

Infiltrators being excessively cautious and not doing anything is another challenge, since it's also a problem with antagonists in general. It's not uncommon to see antagonists either doing all of their objectives roundstart and then calling the shuttle, or waiting for the shuttle to be called then rushing to complete every objective. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be ignored as an issue, since infiltrators have their own ship and base available to them, as well as having their own hardsuits that they don't need to steal from the station. This is why I am giving them a new objective to have them escape while impersonating a crewmember, although this doesn't solve the root of the issue.

Why the TC reduction?

In my opinion, infiltrators having 60-80TC total (the gamemode had a limit of 5 infiltrators, so they could have 100TC total potentially) is unbalanced. Infiltrators are already provided with multiple weapons, chameleon kits and hardsuits, an entire ship and base, radio and uplink implants, along with rechargers and spare pistol magazines.

With 30-40TC, or 10TC per infiltrator, it's more reasonable as they can still buy things from their uplink which they want, while accounting for their pre-existing items they have available to them. They can also use their TC combined to buy something which is over 10TC total.

Testing

Chameleon kit copying:

2024-12-15.00-06-07.mp4

Chameleon hardsuit and PDA wifi:

2024-12-15.00-18-27.mp4

Infiltrator cutter airlock bolt buttons:

2024-12-15.00-30-43.mp4

New objective:

2024-12-15.00-49-18.mp4

Uplink and new TC amount

Surgery dufflebag

Syndicate infiltrator in preferences menu

Spriting

Wiki Documentation

Ah yes, the fun part.

Infiltrators don't seem to have ever had a wiki page, whatsoever.

Syndicate items:

• Infiltrator implants are different in how you access them compared to other uplinks and uplink implants.
• Chameleon kit doesn't mention the toggleable voice changer function.
• New chameleon copy function would need to be added to the chameleon kit description.

Changelog

🆑
rscadd: Enabled the infiltrators event to spawn syndicate infiltrators.
tweak: Syndicate infiltrators now have 10TC per infiltrator instead of 20TC.
bugfix: Fixed issues with the chameleon hardsuit not working.
bugfix: Syndicate PDAs can now download apps from both the infiltrator and nuclear operative bases.
rscadd: Chameleon kits can now copy other people.
mapping: Adds a surgery dufflebag in the infiltrator cutter.
/:cl:

[AMyriad]

map good