Being A Better Traitor

Have you played a few rounds as an antagonist of some stripe? Did you even win? Doesn't matter, there are some things that'll make your traitorous existence more enjoyable for everyone, and that's what counts.

Stealth Stuff

• Putting things in containers shows a message. Putting things in your pockets doesn't.
• There are three parts to your identity: Face, ID and voice.
  • Having one name on your ID and showing your face while actually being another person will show you as "X (as Y)".
  • Being masked means people just see your ID's name mousing over you, but if you speak, you're still busted.
  • Speaking over the radio just shows the name assigned to your voice. Changelings and traitors with voice changers can have fun with this.
• There are ways to prevent people from screaming out your entire name and position over the radio as you kill them. The most straightforward would be:
  • Wear a mask, take off your ID and don't speak. As noted above, this will hide your identity from them.
    • Destroy or subvert the AI, or wear an Agent Card to prevent it from helping people track you.
  • Buy the Radio Jammer. Duh.
  • Pump in some Perfluorodecalin with your injector of choice. Now they can't scream anything at all while you murder them.
• Got an objective to steal five helmets and you have three, but the rest on the station are being worn by security, and you for whatever reason don't want to steal them from their heads? Don't fret! On the Mining Z-level, there is an old prison transport ship. Inside are three rooms: A small bedroom area that is breached exposing it to space, a middle storage area with a recharger and two lockers, and the control room, with a sweet hat and orange-tinted glasses, which work just like thermals. What you want is in the lockers. Grab an Id with access or just emag them, and grab the helmet in each of them, easy! Now you have all the helmets you need, and you didn't have to murder anyone! Note the ship is guarded by some saw drones, so you may want to watch out for those...

Social Stuff

• Probably the #1 tip for not being caught is to never pre spawn your gear until you need it, i used to do this all the time and it got me caught and permabrigged/killed a lot, if security finds you trying to hack into the AI upload but you never spawned that revolver for killing that dude later then they will 99% of the time let you go with a 3 minute brig time.
• Improvised weapons are a great alternative to traitor weapons when you don't need them, it also confuses people slightly.
• Pretending to brawl with someone is a good idea, challenge them to a boxing match and pull a knife on them, or better yet slam them against something, they'll think you're just cheating a little bit, when in fact you are gonna kill them.
• Pretense is powerful, if someone sees that you have authorization or authority they will balk, especially good if you have mindslaved/impersonated the HoS.
• People will pretty much always believe the AI, unless you can damage it's credibility or have some people who think you are innocent no matter what, expect the AI to run you down like a rabid dog.
• Smoke a joint, murder someone, then lie on the floor beside them and scream for help on the radio. It'll come out as stammers (due to the fact you're stoned) "HEEELLLPPP" and more often than not people will come faster to your aid (and faster into the trap) than if you were to say it without a stammer
• Got the AI on your side? Great! With it, I'm sure you already know that it can open doors for you, shock doors for you, and lock doors for you. But did you know the AI can do something other than be master of all doors? Well, if welding fuel tank is directly under a light when said light is overloaded, the sparks will rupture the tank, causing it to explode into a massive fireball! With this knowledge, and some teamwork with your robotic friends, try and place any fuel tanks you find under lights in key areas, and have the AI blow them up when your foes are nearby.
  • If you are just a rouge AI with no master at all, there are a few tanks already under lights in a few areas, such as in Robotics, EVA, in most pod bays, and in the Engineering storage room. Feel like bombing the exact area you want? Use your shells to push and pull tanks right to them!
    • Don't feel like blowing people up yourself? That's OK! Just set the telepoter in the science wing to random numbers, and start spamming "receive". Doing this will result in many things happening, almost all of them bad, such as: Creating a giant flash which stuns anyone in the area, catching the area around the teleporter on fire, irradiating the area around the teleporter, teleporting people nearby randomly, or warping in a plethora of NPC monsters, like drones, pigs, cockroaches, and even revolver wielding syndicates! When you feel like you have teleported in enough creatures, you can open the blast door leading to the hall on the other side, letting the monsters loose on anyone nearby!

Robusting

• Hiding a bunch of nasty traps around the station is great fun, for example hide a pipebomb mousetrap under the clown bop bag, or buy a freedom implant and get security to search you with a backpack full of flashbangs (or better yet a pipebomb for all you die a glorious death guys)
• BRAIN damage is what kills you in the end, if you can use poisons that directly do BRAIN then they are going to kill fast.
• When a person is down only a passive grab is required to throw.
• Try using the teleporter as a weapon, for example drop a teleporter beacon in the mixing room and throw people through a portal.
• Two shots from a laser gun will put unarmored targets into critical.

Random Acts Of Cruelty

• Grab the Bible and something big enough to cover it. Drop both and lie on the floor on top of them. Wait for someone to fart on you.
• You can inject lightbulbs with plasma. If you turn off the lights in a room then inject the lightbulb, whoever is standing near it when it gets turned on is in for a nasty surprise. Also works with power cells.
  • Make a bunch of superflash flash-cell assemblies with rigged power cells, scatter them around for bystanders to find. Or rig all the power cells in robotics. Or steal the cell out of an APC, rig it, and reinstall it with the main breaker turned off and wait for some poor schmuck to try and turn it back on.
    • Erebite power cells are even meaner.
• Fuck with a door such that all the wires are fucked up except the bolts, and make damn sure it's electrified. Nothing will appear to be wrong with the door but it won't respond when walked into, which often encourages someone to touch it. Touching it is bad. The AI will almost always be blamed.
• Build an rwall under a door/fire door combo and weld both of them shut. It's funny when they pry the second door open only to find a wall.
• Weld doors open. Not a lot of people know about that one. Using it for fire doors right before fire-related crime is best. Likewise snipping fire alarm panels is often overlooked and wildly effective when you need to start a fire.
• Hard-wire the engine when nobody's looking, then make a big to-do about starting up an awesome hellburn. See if you can get people to help you and then blame them for the wiring issue.
• Disposal chutes are one of the best hiding places on the station. You don't have to flush yourself; you can always climb out. Good for breaking into an area and hiding inside while he heat dies down, then going back and robbing the place after everyone loses interest.
  • Flush yourself and watch the route you take. Many of the pipes pass under sensitive areas, so with proper bomb timing you could blast something as the bomb is in transit. Likewise a few areas can be reached by reversing or reorienting pipe junctions. This lets you flush yourself into an area, and if you jump back in and flush yourself you'll normally end up somewhere else.
  • If you breach a pipe, anything that passes it will be spat out at the breach. Good way to harvest stuff being flushed, although on Cogmap it isn't normally necessary as you can generally just harvest stuff from Disposals. Similarly if you're very sadistic you can reroute everything to a one-way T-Junction and a trio of corner pipes; anyone flushed into this will spin around in an endless circle and there is almost nothing they can do to get out.
  • Speaking of the pipes, if you're planning to escape quietly and want to avoid potential murderous chaos in the escape arm, go hide up in the Chapel/Janitor area and flush yourself to the Morgue at the last second.
• Mail chutes are often close to where people are standing.

Traitor item specific tricks

Most of this is adapted from this forum thread

Agent Card

Besides the obvious use of giving you a custom name/title and hiding you from the AI, the Agent Card also gives you access to the Listening Post - a Syndicate Outpost in the Mining z-level. There's a trader there with some fun stuff.

Amplified Vuvuzela

• The vuvuzela gun's largest advantage is that it doesn't look like a gun. you can carry it out in the open without anyone noticing, and maybe even carry a real vuvuzela for bonus points.
• The vuvuzela gun stuns for a fuckload of time and does a little damage.

Electromagnetic Card

• Weld and bolt doors shut, then emag them. They wont open ever again.
• If you are a miner, and you want to be a huge douche to your co-workers, you can emag the mining charges to make them explode instantly, instead of exploding in five seconds, when placed on an asteroid. Just make sure not to use the emagged charges yourself!
• For the people who like to explore space, mainly miners, I'm assuming that you have come across, and lost a few legs to, abandoned crates. These crates have a safety lock on them, being that it has a set number between one and ten, and whoever tries to open the crate will have three chances to guess the number currently to open up the crate. If all three chances are failed, the crate will explode violently, easily ripping off limbs from people caught in the blast. You can use a multitool to see if the last guessed number was higher or lower than the correct answer, but it's still very dangerous trying to open the crate. Want to remove any and all danger? Just use an emag on said crate, and it's lock will instantly be disabled, and the crate will be free to open. Doing this is normally worth it, as you can find great items like phasers, money, medical supplies, weed, advanced laser guns, and even the awesome voltron (No, not the giant robot from that TV show).

Bowling Suit

• The bowling kit is very good, especially when you are wearing an exosuit like a biosuit that completely hides your jumpsuit.
• People who try to throw bowling balls without the bowling suit can't harm you! Only the suit wearer can throw them effectively. Bowling balls keep going until they hit something so throwing them down long corridors can be fun.

Chameleon Projector

• The chameleon projector is very useful for escaping security chasing after you.
• The chameleon projector can act as a shield from attacks: gunshots of any type will pass over you, and if someone touches you in projected form, you can usually hit them as soon as you pop out if you're ready.
• It also protects you from space, as long as you wear internals. It's easiest if you use it with the hotkey.
• You can also disguise as any moving animal on the station. If you disguise as something inconspicuous like a roach and sit next to a door, you can crawl inside when someone else opens the door without attracting any suspicion. (just make sure to walk slowly, like roaches do!)
• Playing a rogue captain? Scan your hat; " the captain disappeared under his hat!" Scan your butt, now you can be your own butt! Scan the birthday cake hat, the fun never ends!

Chameleon Suit

• Frame people! Convince the crew that the HoS is on a justice rampage!
• Security Chasing you? Jump in a closet or behind a bush, change your chameleon jumpsuit and your hat. 90% of the time if they didn't see you do it you can run right past them.
• No, you can't be a smart-ass and use a Chameleon Jumpsuit to complete the "steal a head's jumpsuit" objective.

Cyalume Saber

• A C saber stuns even when off, so you can use it's very hard to see off sprite to your advantage, hit a guy once with it off when he doesn't notice it in your hand and then go in for the kill while he is stunned!
• Target a limb when hitting someone with a saber, it is one of the few weapons that will delimb someone upon impact!

Derringer

• Stronger than you think. One shot will instacrit someone. Pity you only get two.
• Hover your mouse over your target and use the the CTRL+W shortcut to instantly wink and draw your weapon! This is probably the quickest way to draw a weapon in the game!
• Try hiding it in things that people wont remove from you when you are arrested, like headsets. Remember, it's against Space Law to remove headsets from arrested individuals as security!

Detomax Cartridge

• Detomax cartridges are the most effective early on, if you are a bad doctor try sending out some pda bombs. You now have victims, er patients in medbay to play with! If you are a head of staff you can read the manifest to see who the heads and security are.
• You can still use the Bomb program after you're out of Missiles. With a quick stop at the Carty Party and/or stealing some PDAs, you can copy/paste your way to multiple quick, dirty, little explosives. When you huck a pipe bomb at someone, they run. When you throw a PDA at them, they usually don't.
• The timer on that bomb is 0.5 seconds. Enough time to chuck the PDA at someone if you pressed BOMB while already in throw mode.
• Detomatrix cartridge, insert it in, scan for peeps, activate and minimize the window and drag the window to the up-right corner. Put it on your belt slot. You don't have to take it out to take out your people, you can literally blow people up while walking.
• Detomatixing a target who is inside something will mess that thing up too. Try it with cloning pods and space pods.
• Better yet, go inside a pod, drop a stolen PDA, and plant pods around the station, outside key areas. Improvised car bombs, space style!

DNA Scrambler

• Dna scrambler is hilarious for changing the ID of someone else rather than yourself, for example the captain.
  • Buy a voice-changer and a DNA scrambler. Stun the victim with a flash or whatever, inject him with the scrambler, take his ID and his jumpsuit. You are now him. If he cried for help during the theft, you can frame him for being the attacker and probably get him arrested.

EMP Grenades

• The EMP grenades are super useful against the AI's turrets if you can't be bothered to get a laser gun to shoot them with.
• And of course, EMP blast the half dozen guard buddies in Science for a good time.
• EMP grenades ruin a lot of stuff, batons, tasers, thermals, radios, doors. Try building a smoke buddy, name it "The Fucking Chemist" and giving it the ol' EMP grenade. Some good laughs. You can name guard buddies by using a pen on the main board before you build it.

Floor Closet

• Hide bombs all over the station, out of sight.
• Hide yourself.
• Hide in it with a weapon, leap out at passerby like a jumping spider. Pairs very well with wet floors nearby.
• Use it as a stash for any gear that won't fit in your bag, it'll be unlikely to ever get found by anyone else.
• Deploy smokes, foams, or area-effect chemical reactions from inside it. They won't hurt you!
  • Why is sarin gas pouring out of the floor? WHO KNOWS
  • Explosions might destroy the closet though, dumping you out
• Fill it with banana peels or crystal shards, open it just as someone is about to walk over it.
• If you keep a crystal shard around for emergencies, you could use a floor closet to disappear if you're cornered in a bolted room and people are breaking in to get you.
• Weld people inside, laugh as nobody can find them.
• Inside, you are immune to thermals, flashbangs, smoke, guns, fire, and much, much more.
• For things that can't fit in a closet, you can often hide them by dragging the closet on top of them.

Miniature Crossbow

• The radiaton dosage from this no longer gives a big obvious RADIATION alert at the top of the screen.
  • Want to really cripple your target but not kill them for some reason? The miniature crossbow due to the RADIATION will cause the target to mutate erratically. Hit them with the crossbow, wait a bit, then give him some potassium iodide and/or charcoal. They'll live, but may be a deaf swedish mute.

Microbomb Implant

• Implant OTHER people. Preferably unconscious ones you then deliver to Medbay.
• Microbomb's explosiveness stack. You'll light up the station like the 4th of July if you have 10 inside you.
• Implant a monkey. Inject with a fast or slow acting poison. Put monkey in a high populated place like the bar. Laugh manically and twiddle your fake mustache when monkey dies.

Power Sink

• A nicely placed powersink often means people will go and send out search parties so that their beloved station isn't powerless. Use this to your advantage; plant booby traps around the power sink. This works doubly well due to the fact that it is dark, and triply well if you combine this with the Prototype Cloak Field Generator.
  • The Powersink also explodes when it reaches maximum capacity. If you are using the above tactic, consider placing a plasma canister on-top of it for full measure.
• If you're a detective, combine the powersink plus the stun rounds you can get in the GM. With your thermals you can hunt in the dark and people can't hunt you. Smash them red alert lights. Pretty devastating. If you're not the detective, then murder him for his thermals.

Prototype Cloak Field Generator

• Cloaking field generators can be great fun when used with grenades + mousetrap assemblies, crushers, or crystal glass. Very good with a radio jammer, and the powersink!
  • Place the prototype cloak field generator in the corridor and use the hand teleporter to create portals on unsuspecting crew to area's of interest such as the middle of space.

Revolver

• Buying a second revolver is an excellent way to ensure that you have plenty of ammo and a backup weapon, giving you a huge advantage in the event that someone disarms you, since you can just pull out your spare rather than scrambling around trying to pick it up off the floor before they do.
• An empty revolver also makes for great bait on the floor, and doubles as a safe way to set a trap by taunting people into disarming you - now they're at point blank range and holding an empty gun.
  • This all applies to the derringer as well.

Shotgun

• If you are one of the heads you can steal the station money and buy explosive rounds for the shotgun
• Due to the kickback, is the one gun that can do significant damage, and blow targets away, causing them to drop their weapons. It is a very effective weapon against security, but be wary that it is not subtle, and the resident HoS may kit out his officers with blast armor which will soak up a significant amount of damage.
• The shotgun (and other things) fits in the bible.

Silenced .22

The suppressed .22 is sorta similar to the derringer but has some key differences:

• It's WAY weaker. The .22 shots are weaker than the detective's revolver. Derringer shots, up close, insta-crit people.
• It can be refilled, and more .22 ammo can be manufactured from a hacked fabricator.
• It won't tell anyone who fired it. They'll hear the gunshot, but there's no "HEY THIS GUY JUST SHOT A GUN" chat panel warning.
• People can still see it in your hand, but they might not notice.

Sonic Grenades

• They are 'not' like flashbangs. More like a vampire's Chiropteran Screech. Plug your ears and blow out all the windows.
• Consider wearing insulated gloves and having a wirecutter ready. Blowing out all the windows leaves the grill. Cutting the grill leaves room for space. Chucking out a downed target from the window leaves no room for oxygen.

Stealth Container

• Disguise your stealth storage as a gun. Throw it at people. Murder them as they try to figure out why it won't fire.
• Rig a mousetrap and pipebomb inside a stealth storage box, disguise it as a revolver or shotgun box, and leave it laying in plain sight.
  • Or you know, just use a real revolver or shotgun box.

Mining Charge Hacker

• In the hands of a capable traitor, the mining charge hacker can be the most destructive piece of gear the Syndicate has to offer. If you wish to wield the full power of this awesome tool, follow these tips:
  • One, since this god-like weapon can only be ordered by miners, I expect that you are already one, and thus have access to the normal mining gear. Being a miner, you can build very valuable tools, such as a the extremely resistant industrial armor, and the lightning fast mechanized boots. Make them. Do not start your rampage on the station without these items, as the armor will allow you to simply shrug-off most kinds of damage, even your own blasts if you get caught in them, and the boots let you move so fast that you can easily outrun bullets and taser shots, as well as letting you get away from your planted bombs, and they make you hard to track via camera. Another thing you will want to make before you start is a fuck-load of concussive charges, which can be made with even the lest amount of time and effort mining, or can be ordered outright in a mining crate from QM. These bombs are a huge upgrade to your starting low-yield charges, and will badly injurer anyone caught in their large blast zone.
    • Tip number two: Do not blow up the mining shuttle console; You will need this to get back to the mining station if you require more charges or oxygen for you jet pack (Mechanized boots drain a jet pack's fuel very quickly), and it's also a fairly good place to hide from the mob of angry people who are lacking half their limbs thanks to you.
      • Tip number three: Get a stealth container with your last telecrystal, and keep it in your pocket. With the combined storage power of the stealth container, a mining belt, and you backpack, you can hold a grand total of twenty one concussive charges at once. You can guess for yourself why this is a great thing.

Stimulants

• Stimulants are perfect for if you are doing bad things and you know security is coming, you don't even need a weapon to start with. Just crime, inject, disarm a baton or taser, and go to town. Be wary that you will be stunned for a time when the stimulants wear off so deal with all the rude red dudes or get somewhere safe before then.
• Goes great with a wrestling belt.

Strange Seeds

• Alot of traitor botanists attempt to bring the maneater plants to people. Be the smart botanist and find a way to bring people to the maneater plant. Reroute disposals to a small inescapable room filled with maneaters. Or use a hand teleporter. Or both.
• Fire is a maneaters worst enemy. Consider hoarding welders and sabotaging GM that make them.

Syringe Gun

• Guide to Chemistry. Just saying.
• It might be worth your while to scan the beans that might start in the candy bag at the bar.
• Lube can be extremely deadly, just bolt open the escape doors and watch people fling themselves into deep space while screaming "FFFUUUUCKING LLL-URK"
• Syringe guns can be pretty devastating with any half decent cocktail of poison, you don't need to be a pro chemist to put morphine, neurotoxin, embalming fluid, and unstable mutagen in a syringe gun. All it needs is reagant, it generates the syringes for you.

Syndicate Donk Pockets

• Donk pockets will reduce the effectiveness of stuns on you for a brief time, combine with coffee, sugar, meth, nicotine or other drugs and you have a cheap substitute for stimpacks and some very good healing to boot.
  
• As a chef, try ordering some donk pockets and some syndicate sauce, and putting said sauce on said donks, then give the poison-filled snacks to your target or the captain. Shadow them after they eat it, and when they start having a seizure, loot them and throw their body in the gibber! Alternatively, you can just put the poison-donks out on a table in a public area, and hide nearby in a garbage chute waiting for someone to eat it them.

Syndicate Pipe Bomb

• Make a couple pipebombs in tool storage. Go look for rooms that have their APCs in maintenance, rig a pipebomb to a mousetrap, drop it on the floor under the APC and hide it under a jumpsuit or some sheets of paper or something. Disable the main breaker to that room, run away.
• Pipebombs rigged up to mousetraps and stuck in a container will blow up. People can't resist rifling through abandoned bags. Or medpacks. Draw your own conclusions.

Syndicate Robot

• A syndicate robot, while they can be killed or debrained, is unable to be killswitched. Consider this if you feel like targeting the interfering AI, by killing him or corrupting him.
• The syndicate robot is not just an emagged borg. It is a permanently mindslaved borg, that will attempt to fulfill your objectives for you if you are unable to do so for whatever reason. Consider helping your robot best friend out by reinforcing his body.
• Having a robot army is very easy if you know how. Combine using syndicate robots, your near-infinite supply of flashes, with corrupting the AI, and forcefeeding players roburgers (or nanites if you know how), and you'll quickly become a force to be reckoned with.

Trash Compactor

• This looks overpriced until you realize that as the Janitor, you have a ready supply of water, and a pair of galoshes.
• Beware metagamers looking askance at any Janitor actually using their trash cart, which legitimate Janitors never do.
• Keep the Trash compactor closed in a firefight. It will act as a shield to any projectiles. Open it when and if you have a gun to return fire!

Trick Cigarettes

• Syndicate cig's are fantastic for getting rid of bodies.
• Area of high population density? Don't light the cigs just yet. Just drop them all over the place. Light a real cig in your mouth and run around the place. Due to the fact the way combustion works, the cigs will ignite as you pass. Very effective cluster bombing technique.

Voice Changer

• If you have a way to change your ID, imitate the AI with a voice changer! Make sure to use an intercom for authenticity.
• If you have access to the ID computer and some ID cards, you can have alot of fun with the voice changer, upload an AI law that causes it to support your misinformation! Watch the crew scramble and panic with just the power of words.