Discontinued Syndicate Items

This page is about discontinued content. The following information is not current. It is kept for historical purposes.

Over the years, a number of traitor items have been fundamentally overhauled, discontinued or are otherwise not available to the public anymore. This list is mostly for archival purposes, but there is a chance for some of them to show up in surplus crates. In addition, this list shows the old sprites for each item during the period it was available, for historical authenticity. In this way, you can also get a feel for how the game looked back then.

Before April 2019, the currency for Syndicate Items was named telecrystals (TC), hence everything here is in that and not [random interesting currency name]. It was changed to prevent confusion with the telecrystals dug up in mining.

Item	Image	Job Specific	Avail. as surplus?	Description
Revolver Ammo Box		All	(Yes)	Revolver ammunition used to be expensive! Initially, seven additional shots were priced at an outrageous 2 TC each; later on traitors could order a box of regular or AP ammo for 4 TC. In addition to 6 TC for the revolver itself, of course. Nowadays, the whole package (introduced in April 2013) fortunately includes a generous amount of speedloaders.
Rifle Box		All	No	An AK-744 with a couple of spare magazines. The box was available briefly in mid-2013, but was quickly removed for balancing and technical reasons.
Low-Yield Bomb		All	No	A predecessor of the pipe bomb. Basically a weak transfer valve bomb, so it was possible to swap the default timer for a different detonator. These lasted from early 2009 to May 2011 and, until the arrival of the RPG, were still standard equipment of Syndicate operatives.
Satanist Robes		Chaplain	(Yes)	Convert to Satanism! In return for 10 TC, the chaplain received a very evil-looking robe and a dagger for sacrificing people. Even better, wearing said robe allowed them to cast two powerful wizard spells at will: knock (basically an EMAG/all-access ID hybrid that can't be lost) and blind to evade any foolish pursuers. Was available for much of 2011 on Donut Station 2 before being superseded by His Grace. These days, an improved variant of the dagger can be found in surplus crates. The robes are also still around as a cool gimmick outfit that doesn't grant any spells.
Artistic Toolbox/ His Grace	/	Chaplain	No	His Grace was a very complicated, rampage-oriented item. It started off fairly weak, but once leveled up by feeding a couple of victims to the toolbox, the wielder arguably had the most devastating melee weapon in the game at their disposal. In addition to complete stun immunity and constant healing, it was even capable of smashing through normally indestructible objects like the MULE. If the user took too long to feed His Grace, they ended up as the next snack. Of course, the timer was very short for a fully leveled-up box. The item's primary issue and eventual downfall was the Memetic Kill Disorder (MKD), some sort of cult disease. A lot of players (HoS-approved ones included) were quick to gun after the still-vulnerable chaplain, examine His Grace on purpose to become a slave and start rampaging on their own. The other problem was that a top-tier toolbox was practically unstoppable, leading to the depopulation of entire stations and spawn-camping in arrivals. His Grace was added in early 2012 and quietly dropped in March 2014, perhaps in response to repeated negative feedback ingame and on the forum.
Heavy Horseshoe		Boxer	No	Cheaters don't play fair, and the same can be said about traitors. Punching somebody with rigged boxing gloves resulted in increased brute damage plus a guaranteed one-hit K.O. And compared to a stun baton or comparable weapon, disarms were and remain useless against gloves. This let the boxer dispatch sole targets or small groups with ease. Easter eggs sometimes contain a nerfed version of the horseshoe(you can also get one as an heirloom), but the real thing has been (for the most part) unavailable since early 2011.
Advanced Laser Gun	/	RD	Yes	Renamed to laser rifle, then to plasma rifle. A self-recharging, less powerful version of the laser gun. Used to be exclusive to the RD from April 2013 to February 2014, and is a surplus item these days. Its replacement is the teleporter gun.
FogMachine-3000		Chemist, Botanist	No	This generator was capable of emitting vast amounts of smoke of whatever chemical was in the tank. More of a gimmick item, but it could be used to good effect to fill entire hallways with deadly pre-revamp napalm or neurotoxins. Sadly, it more often than not slowed the server to a crawl in the process, hence the nickname LagMachine-3000. Made unavailable sometime in mid-2013.
Singularity Bomb		CE, Engineer	No	A SciFi weapon of mass destruction that spawned a singularity, just without any containment field. Considering that a mishap in engineering usually doomed the station, a strategically placed bomb had great potential to cause catastrophic damage...to the extend that it was almost impossible to call the emergency shuttle. Interestingly enough, the bomb survived for a bit longer than the engine design itself, but was eventually retired shortly after the arrival of Cogmap1 in early 2013. One of its redeeming qualities was the excellent sprite, with ominous flashing red lights and everything.
Hacked Mining Charge		Miner	No	Initially, the venerable does-it-all EMAG used to unlock charges. Somebody didn't like it, hence an update in September 2011 forced miners to order explosives (low- or high-yield) directly from their employer. The dedicated hacking device, new to the game in late 2012, rendered them obsolete.
RIG Suit		Electrician	No	Yes, the electrician's special item was once completely unrelated to what they are actually doing. The suit wasn't radiation- and blast-proof back then either, making this an even stranger choice. This was phased out as a traitor item on May 4th, 2012. The syndicate device analyzer, which was added on April 12, 2012, became its spiritual successor, as the iconic electrician syndicate item. The RIG suit is now known as the industrial space armor, and slightly-more resistant red version used to exist.
Port-a-Poo		Janitor	No	In the Brown Days, the janitor had access to this truly horrifying execution chamber. Unlike the Port-A-Brig it shared the sprite with, this device was self-locking and forced the unfortunate occupant to relieve themselves over and over again. The sweet release of death was generally inevitable and welcome. A handful of skilled players depopulated entire stations with nothing but a spray bottle and Port-a-Poo, providing an ample supply of shit (and sometimes poo tacos) in the process. It appeared on the janitor's PDA from about 2011 to mid-2012, when poo was finally exorcised from the code. The trash compactor, introduced in September of that year, is the spiritual successor and only slightly less shocking. The more modern Port-a-puke is almost exactly this, save that it uses puke instead of poo.
'Oxygen Is Toxic To Humans' AI Module		All	N/A	This module gave the AI a law that declared oxygen harmful to humans and mandated them to purge it from the station, empowering them to ignore laws 1-3 if necessary. Not only did it frequently backfire on the uploader, but it also paled in comparison to the much more versatile freeform module. With no reason to justify its existence, this waste of telecrystals was quietly made unavailable in late 2009, not too long after its debut in April 24th, 2009.
Syndicate Pipe Bomb		All	No	A pipebomb with plenty of explosive power and a modest 4-TC cost. Doesn't seem bad on paper, but there's a reason the explosives traitors can order tend to either be relatively weak (e.g. Detomatix) or require certain conditions to go off (e.g. microbombs). Being able to wreak so much destruction so quickly and with so little windup proved unfair for those on the receiving end. For instance, a traitor HoP could bomb the Captain within ten seconds of roundstart, especially if the latter had a bad connection. While this item and its effect were not nearly as hated as other entries, it was still replaced in April 2019 by a toned-down variant with...nonstandard effects.
Loot Crate		All	No	A 8-TC crate guaranteed to have 10x bars each of pharosium, mauxite, and molitz, as well as 24-42 various other items, such as Easter eggs, big wads (10k+) of space cash, bitcoins/buttcoins/coins, sheets of cotton, uqill nuggets, raw cerenkite ore, raw erebite ore, unproccessed miracle matter and bars of basically every ore besides ice, rock, char, and viscerite. In theory, you could use the materials for matsci shenanigans, take the money and buy fancy gear, or use the materials in fabricators to scan and manufacture lots of weapons and other dangerous stuff for you and/or others. In practice, because matsci and said fancy gear are underused, few people bought the crate, and the ones that did often bought it thinking it was some variant on the surplus crate. The exact loot provided was tweaked at least twice after the release following complaints, and it was quietly removed from the buylist years later. And for your information, this was made several months before loot crate mechanics became so infamous.
Assault Rucksack		N/A	No	For a brief time, the tactical assault rucksack was something you had to buy rather than something you started with. The rucksack debuted on the same day as the Syndicate Weapons Vendor,June 27, 2020, it as part of a "Storage" category consisting of it, the syndicate satchel, and the syndicate fanny pack, aka the syndicate tactical espionage belt pack. A little over a week afterwards, on July 5, 2020, the fanny pack become part of a new Utility category, and the assault rucksack became starting gear for every Nuclear Operative. The reasoning was actually quite simple: the game was supposed to give cyanide pills in op's starting satchels, but because the update that added the weapons vendor also removed the satchel from their starting inventory, the game ran into issues. Since the rucksack was overwhelmingly the most popular option, and inventory space was still an recurring issue, the rucksack became the starting operative storage item over all other options.
Syndicate Satchel		N/A	No	One of the very first pull requests that appeared after Goonstation became open source added this here syndicate satchel and made it starting gear for every Nuclear Operative, replacing the previous standard grey one. It was created on April 7, 2020 and was merged the day after. On June 27, 2020, the satchel was removed from the operatives' starter gear, and it was moved to the freshly-debuted Syndicate Weapons Vendor as part of the "Storage" category, alongside the new tactical assault rucksack and syndicate fanny pack. The other two options overshadowed the satchel, and it was somewhat useless since the Syndicate Battlecruiser had a uniform manufacturer that could make an otherwise functionally identical satchel. Later, on July 5, 2020, the satchel was removed from the vendor. It languished in the code before finding a new life as equipment for Syndicate operatives in Pod Wars, which was added on May 25, 2021. Soon after, on June 9, 2021, it got a new sprite.
Cyanide Pill		N/A	No	For a long time, Nuclear Operatives used to spawn with these pills containing 50 units of cyanide. They were quite decent if you didn't want to waste ammo on somebody (or committing suicide if you were wuss), and field medics (which were called "combat medics" back then) found them a serviceable poison back when they used syringe guns, but they usually ended up littering the floor of the Syndicate Battlecruiser. They got quietly removed in an update to Nuclear Operative gear in January 2021.
Lawn Darts Box		Assistant, Bartender, Clown	No	A box of three lawn darts that could be thrown for bleeding, 3 seconds of stun, and up to 20 BRUTE (armor-piercing) brute damage. They also embedded in people, causing similar effects to shrapnel. Darts were added on June 15th, 2017, as a part of larger patch that also added the dartboard in the Bar and paper planes. While there was no strong support for its removal, they were often considered rather weak and had somewhat of a reputation as a mediocre Spy Thief bounty reward. For a long time, they also suffered a bug where they could not actually stun (which luckily later was fixed). On February 7th, 2021, these were removed from the traitor buylist, though they still remain in the code. There was nothing to replace it, though its spiritual successor arguably is the pizza sharpener.
Police Baton		N/A	No	Worked like a standard issue baton except for two important distinctions. It didn't require power to function, and beating somebody while using the Harm intent delivered heavy stamina drain along with the brute damage. These could not be bought directly but instead were found in the surplus crate. On July 12th, 2021, these were removed from the traitor buylist as well as the code, for offending coders and for being a highly desirable item.
Macrobomb Implant		All	No	Worked like (a slightly weaker version of) 12 microbombs, and was used to save time. Removed on March 30th, 2022 for being functionally inferior to 12 micros and encouraging traitors who were low on time to lazily explode a department/the shuttle.

---