Being A Better Traitor

From Space Station 13 Wiki
Revision as of 04:30, 5 July 2019 by Studenterhue (talk | contribs) (How to twirl your fake stache)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

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 a different name on your ID will make you appear as "X (as Y)" unless you have a mask or helmet that fully covers your face.
    • 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.
    • Wearing a face-concealing helmet is somewhat less suspicious than wearing a gas mask, if really only due to the stereotype of antags and other people up to no good wearing them.
    • More importantly, face-concealing helmets also hide your hairstyle, one of, if not the, most commons means by which people identify you.
  • 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.
    • Take off their headset so they can't speak into the radio.
  • Use wirecutters on a security camera to disable it. However, the AI is notified whenever someone cuts a camera, and it might send a shell over to check it out or re-enable it, so you may want to cut them well before you do your traitor business.

Social Stuff

  • Probably the #1 tip for not being caught as a traitor is to never pre-spawn your gear until you need it. If security finds you trying to hack into the AI upload and end up arresting and searching you, they're much more willing to let you go if they don't find any traitor gear on you.
  • Improvised weapons are a great alternative to traitor weapons when you don't need them. It also tends to confuse people.
  • Pretending to brawl with someone is a good idea, such as challenging them to a boxing match and pulling a knife on them, or slamming them against something. They'll think you're just cheating a little bit, as is typically to be expected in brawls, which gives you the element of surprise when you go into lethal methods of combat.
  • Pretense is powerful, if someone sees that you have authorization or authority, they will usually balk. It's especially effective if you have mindslaved/impersonated the HoS.
  • People are inclined to believe the AI, so unless you can damage it's credibility or get some people who think you are innocent no matter what, expect the AI to run you down like a rabid dog.
    • On the other hand, people can also be rather quick to proclaim that an AI has been subverted, so tricking it into doing something that gives the impression that someone's tampered with its laws can be a good way of shaking it off your tail.
  • Smoke a joint, murder someone, then lie on the floor beside them and scream for help on the radio. It'll come out as a stammered "HEEELLLPPP" due to being stoned, and more often than not, people will come faster to your aid (and faster into your trap) than if you were to say it without a stammer.
  • Got the AI on your side? Great! With it, You already know that it can open, shock, and lock doors for you. But the AI's capability for destruction and chaos extends well beyond its control of doors; if a welding fuel tank is directly under a light when said light is overloaded through the APC, the sparks will rupture the tank, causing it to explode into a sizable 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 rogue 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 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, like hiding a pipebomb mousetrap under the clown bop bag, or buying a freedom implant and getting security to search you with a backpack full of flashbangs (or pipebombs for all you die a glorious death guys).
  • Brain damage is extremely debilitating and lethal over time. If you can use poisons that directly do brain damage such as neurotoxins, then they are going to kill fast.
  • When a person is downed, only a passive grab is required to throw.
  • Try using the teleporter as a weapon! For example, you can drop a teleporter beacon in the engine's mixing room and throw people through a portal to their fiery demise.
  • Two laser shots from an energy gun will typically put unarmored targets into critical.

Random Acts Of Cruelty

  • Fashion together a igniter with a remote signaller. Grab an extra signaller. Find a large welding fluid tank and bring it into the maintenance under security. Place the rigged igniter under the welding fluid tank. You can do this by dropping the rigged igniter on the ground, then pushing the welding fluid tank on top of it. Get as reasonably far away as possible, then blow up the tank by spamming the send signal button. If there's security in the checkpoint above the improvised bomb, they'll get set on fire. If not, you've just made several weakened walls and might be able to break into security a bit faster. Be sure to wear some gloves to avoid leaving prints behind.
    • This also works if you stick the improvised tank explosive behind a bush if you're willing to just blow some random people up walking by.
    • The general concept should also work for drinking glasses or bottles filled with flammables. I'd add paper or cigarettes for more heat though.
  • 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.
    • Certain foods force people to fart.
  • You can inject lightbulbs with plasma. If you turn off the lights in a room and 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.
  • Hack a door such that all the wires are messed 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.
    • You can attach remote signalers to door-wires in order to bolt or electrify them from a distance. This is guarantied to make people think the AI is messing with them.
  • 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.
  • 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 Cogmap2 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.
    • Welding torches won't set anything on fire while they're inside the mail chute, even if there's flammables in there too.
    • Pitchers, all the drinking glasses, and some fruits break and spread and splash their content when they exit a mail chute.
  • Hack/emag the mulebot and send it around the station using a QM's PDA. It'll run over people that gets in the way.
    • Load the rogue mulebot with something tempting like a honey production crate. ...or a bomb.
  • Make a bunch of bees, and trick someone into punching you in front of them. The bees will defend you.
  • Tie people to conveyor belts using wire. They'll be permanently stuck unless someone uses a wirecutter on them.
    • Try out the conveyer belts in disposals if you want to go all Dick Dastardly on people.
  • The cloning tube can be loaded with chemicals from a beaker. Poison it when no one is looking.
  • Splash strange reagent on deadly critters to bring them back to life. Doesn't work on critters that gib on death, like zombies.
  • Refill vital supplies like oxygen tanks and fire extinguishers with flammable gas and welding fuel. Sabotage the oxygen supply in pods by opening them up with a crowbar and swapping tanks.
  • Use a syringe to spike food and drinks with poison.
  • Use lots of a benign reagent in flashy, showy smokes to hide the malignant ones. Silly chems like colorful reagent won't get a second thought from people... until they realize they're turning yellow from the Royal Initrobeedril you hid in it.
  • Capable with Telescience and bomb-making? Use your know-how to warp and detonate bombs all over the station quickly and easily. Just be prepared for the inevitable lynch mob, as it will be obvious what's happening after a few booms.
    • Also good with construction? Then you have an even better alternative: make a personal telescience lab! The teleporter will work so long as you have a wired connection that leads to the mainframe in the AI's server room, so if you're crafty with where and how you build it, then by the time people figure out how you've been tele-bombing them, there will barely be any of the station left.
      • Once you get your wired connection going, you can access the station's main teleport pad as well by using a screwdriver on your console and selecting it (it is in fact on Pad #1 by default, so you need to change this to #2 to use your own pad). Abuse this access by spamming invalid coordinates on the main pad to cause trouble. The AI will always be blamed for this.

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 syndicate listening post where nuclear operatives hang out. 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 ages and does a little damage.

Barrel of Monkeys

  • Try putting a cache of weapons near the barrel, where the monkeys will spawn. Extinguishers/air tanks/toolboxes will do fine, as monkeys hit very fast. Knives are interesting, as they are apt to throw them; tasers and the like will produce hilarious results. Traitor weapons, even better.
  • The barrel of monkeys is very devastating on compact maps with small spaces, like Clarion and Destiny. If you're stuck on a larger map like Cogmap1, you can try narrowing space by welding/bolting closed doors, blocking things off with tables/racks/lockers, and building windows and walls.
  • Alternatively, instead of activating it in a public space and letting the monkeys come to the victims, build a death trap room in some tiny room somewhere (e.g. a simple double airlock room with welded/bolted doors) and throw the victims into the monkeys! You could then break into Mechanics and build a simple graviton-telepad trap, add a tracking beacon into the room and throw people into hand teleporter portals, or whatever method suits your fancy.

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.
  • The bowling balls themselves make for decent bludgeoning tools if you find yourself short on weapons.

Butcher's Knife

  • You may be tempted to serve your recently-butchered victims as food to the other crewmembers. However, due to the meat and any food you make using it bearing the name of the deceased, expect to get some suspicious glares. It's typically better to dispose of the meat in order to remove evidence.
    • Alternatively, put the man-meat through the mixer to get meat paste, which you can then make into meatloaf or Sloppy Joes. None of these will carry the name of the source of meat, so you can cover up your tracks by making your victims into these diner staples.
  • Beware throwing your knife around willy-nilly. Unlike some of the other thrown traitor weapons like the bowling ball or boomerang, there's nothing stopping someone with sufficient dexterity from picking the knife up from off the ground and tossing it straight back at you.

Chameleon Bomb

  • While leaving the bomb around for random passerby to pick up is funny in its own right, disguising the bomb as a pie or basketball or other object and throwing it at the target can be just as, if not more hilarious. People run from pipe bombs, but typically aren't quite as quick to run from things like banana peels.
  • If you decide to throw a disguised bomb at someone, beware; they may try throwing it back!

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!)
  • Even though any crew members who look at you will see you as whatever you've scanned, your voice will remain the same. Consider using the voice changer to rectify this for some fun shenanigans!
  • Scan your hat to disappear under your hat! Scan a bee and float around the station! Scan a mouse and infuriate the janitor! The chameleon projector has a potentially infinite array of fun uses, so don't be afraid to experiment.

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.

Chemistry Grenade Kit

  • Learn how the chemicals work. This cannot be stressed enough. The effectiveness of your chemical grenades is entirely dependent of what you load into them.
  • If you've survived and escaped on the shuttle enough times, you've more than likely seen the damage an unstable chemical foam/smoke can do. The ability to cause these powerful reactions and not be in the middle of them is not to be underestimated.
  • Stick a grenade in a mousetrap, arm it, and hide it in a storage of some sort like a bag or a box. Wait for someone to rifle through it; the grenade will go off when the storage is opened.
  • A lesser-known trick to grenades is that igniter assemblies can be applied to completed grenades for alternative detonation options, setting it off immediately after the igniter is triggered. Immensely handy if you prefer meticulous traps to the typical routine of throwing and running.
    • It's also very easy to hide grenade assemblies under other items like metal sheets.
  • For whatever reason, watering cans (with 120 unit capacity!) are accepted by grenade casings. Strangely, large beakers are not.
  • Smoke and foam will form after other chemicals mix. This is important because you can put ingredients into the beakers for the express purpose of reacting before the smoke/foam propagates, such as flash powder to stun people or liquid dark matter to suck people in, leaving them at the mercy of whatever horrible things actually made it into the smoke/foam.
  • Heavily consider whether or not your chemical concoction of choice really warrants a grenade. They are a must for effective foam bombs, but smoke can be done just as easily in a beaker assembly if it doesn't require the trick mentioned above. You can save your Syndicate currency for other stuff by subbing in some grenades for beaker bombs.
    • Beaker assemblies can also be done with the large beakers, if unit capacity is a problem.

ChemiCompiler

  • Do NOT try to use this item if you don't know how it works. Experiment with the stationary version in the chemistry lab and take a look at the wiki page for more information.
  • Similarly to chem grenades, it might be worth it to use beaker assemblies in order to save on Syndicate currency.
  • As with all chemical mixtures, firing them off from inside closets or vehicles doesn't harm you, but does harm people near you. A properly-configured ChemiCompiler is amazingly deadly while you hitch a ride in a Pod, the Janitor's floor buffer, the Clown Car (if you're lucky enough to have access to it), etc.
  • Since the ChemiCompiler takes beakers into itself, it's a massive space-saver for your inventory, and unlike grenades it doesn't outright consume the beakers after use. All you need to worry about is where you get your chemicals from.

Class Crate - Assault Trooper

  • As useless as the scope and other attachments are, they do make your rifle a surprisingly good bludgeon, though it's not as powerful as just shooting them point-blank.

Class Crate - Combat Engineer

  • Your turret is not invincible. If it takes too much damage, it'll just flat out break into a pile of scrap, rather than just deactivating like other machines. That's why you should fix it up with a welder whenever it takes damage as soon as possible.
    • On that note, keep away the turret away from the sightline of the MPRT-7 wielder and other sources of explosions. Be careful not to throw frag grenades and stingers near the turret.
  • The turret gun is smart; the bullets are not. More precisely: don't stand in front of the turret when there's a target in sight, or the turret'll shoot you trying to hit the target.
  • The turret can fire behind tables. Naturally, it's a good idea to deploy your turret behind them, particularly in the table-heavy Security and Cafeteria. If you have the time, you can even deconstruct any nearby tables and rearrange them into a lil' barricade.
  • Your high-capacity welder can do more than just fix your turret.
    • Weld entrances shut and force people to go through the one guarded by your turret.
    • Use the welder on regular walls (i.e. not reinforced). Repurpose the sheets you get for girders or rods for grilles to protect the nuke! Or, again, block off areas to force people to confront the turret!
    • Use the welder and wrench you get to deconstruct walls. Again, you can reuse the sheets created for nefarious purposes.

Class Crate - Combat Medic

  • Obviously, you should take a look at Doctoring so you can use the supplies you're given to the fullest.
  • If you go for an emergency oxygen tank instead of a jetpack, you can keep your medical shoulder bag.
  • Supplement your medicine suite with supplies from the Shuttle's Medical Bay. You'll be glad you did.
  • Supplement your cyanide with chems from Quik Noodles! How do you buy Quik Noodles when you have no account, you may ask? Well, notice that there's a snack machine in your shuttle's cockpit and wads of credits just sitting on the table nearby...

Class Crate - Grenadier

  • Your grenade launcher is ideal for deploying those sarin grenades in the corner of the shuttle's equipment room. You still need to be careful where you throw them, but you'll often gas more crew than if you just threw them, as the launched nades will detonate instantly after impact, without any warning.
  • Feel free to breach into the Armory and help yourself to its boxes of stinger grenades and flashbangs.

Cloaking Device

  • When activated, anyone who is able to see through the cloaking device (the AI, cyborgs, anyone with thermals) will see a unique and VERY visible overlay on your sprite, making it very obvious that you're using a cloaking device. Consider subverting the AI and/or removing the thermals available on station.
  • The cloaking device is hellishly effective when paired with a stunning weapon like security's batons or a flash. Pick out individual targets to stalk before going in for the kill.
  • Try to restrain yourself. Being invisible is entertaining, but the longer you remain invisible, the more chances you have to screw up and give yourself away to the crew.

Cloaking Field Generator

  • Cloaking field generators can be great fun when used with grenades + mousetrap assemblies, crushers, or plasma glass shards. Very good with a radio jammer and the powersink!
    • Hide a thin glass maze in the cloaking field, and watch the crew get hopelessly lost. For extra fiendishness, hide a radio jammer or some of the aforementioned traps in it!
    • Place the cloak field generator in the corridor and use the hand teleporter to lure unsuspecting crew into portals into Space or other areas.
  • The cloaking field generator also makes any and all MechComp components completely invisible, letting you place complex deathtraps in the middle of hallways!

Clown Car

  • The clown car is not a stealth item. Once you start abducting people, the station WILL know - if not due to the abducted victims radioing the crew from inside the trunk, then due to the meddling AI. Plan your attack accordingly.
  • You don't need to get out of the car to abduct a downed player, you can click-drag them into the car just by driving up beside them.
  • You must be wearing at least two pieces of the Clown ensemble to pilot the car, so if you need to take a trip into space (or want to be prepared for an unintentional trip into space), swap out the clown mask for something that works with internals. The clown car doesn't have its own oxygen supply!
  • On that note, the car can be driven in space.
  • Leave your slip-up items (the Clown PDA and the banana peel) in choke-points and ambush people after they fall on their ass.
    • If you can get your hands on Space Lube foam, this works even better, as you can foam it from inside the car without having to worry about slipping while driving.
    • For that matter, you can release all kinds of chemical foams and smokes from within the car and not be harmed by it, just like with the Floor Closet. A neat Plan B if you can't reach the victim with the car.
  • Be very careful with your driving. People can be run into just fine (which is the whole point), but crashing into a wall will leave you helpless on the floor and even has a chance to release all of your abductees.
    • Note that it is only walls that will evict you from the driver's seat. Anything that isn't explicitly a wall (glass, grilles, doors, etc.) can be driven into without issue.
  • 30 victims is the max the clown car can hold. Once the trunk is full, it's time to administer the coup de grace. Done easiest by sending the car into the crusher, but alternatives exist if you want to keep the car.
  • The clown car is NOT indestructible. A sufficiently powerful impact or explosion will destroy the car and release everyone who was in it, so watch out for bombs and the occasional loaf.
  • Surplus crates produce an entire clown suit to go along with the car, just in case you aren't a Clown yourself.

Conversion Chamber

  • Cyborgs are able to drag people into the chamber through a simple click-drag, making it perfect for building your robot army independently of resources or your location!
  • A quick-witted crew member can climb out of the chamber prior to activation, so it's typically a good idea to incapacitate or stun them before dragging them in.
  • In addition to the obvious benefits when combined with malicious AI laws, turning someone into a cyborg has major uses, even on the default law set. If an authority like the captain or the Head of Security is giving you trouble, throwing them into the chamber is a good way to strip them of their power, and since robots can't interface with a lot of station tools, it can cripple a crew member's effectiveness. Don't be surprised if you get ratted out, though.
  • The more hurt the victim is, the faster the chamber converts them. In fact, people in critical condition are often instantly converted. A little beating can go a long way!
    • That said, don't get too murderous. If they die, the chamber can't convert them!

Cyalume Saber

  • Target a limb when hitting someone with a saber, it is one of the few weapons that will delimb someone upon impact!
  • A c-saber stuns even when off, so you can use its nearly-invisible 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!

Derringer

  • Stronger than you think. One shot will instacrit someone at close enough range. Pity you only get two.
  • The bullets also pierce most types of body armour, which makes this weapon a relatively cheap and reliable choice for taking down security officers or the captain.
  • 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 generally won't remove from you when you are arrested, like headsets.

Detomatix Cartridge

  • The MISSILE program is the one that makes other PDAs detonate. The BOMB program makes your PDA detonate. Don't confuse the two.
  • Detomatix cartridges are the most effective early on. If you started as a doctor, try sending out some PDA bombs. You now have victims patients in medbay to kill treat! 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. By ordering extra PDAs from a CartyParty and/or mugging people from them, 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.
  • Insert the cartridge into your PDA, scan for peeps, and activate the program. Then, minimize the window and drag it to the up-right corner. Put the PDA in your belt slot. Now, you don't have to take it out to take out your people, for 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 scanners and space pods.
  • Better yet, hitch a ride on a pod, drop a stolen PDA, and plant pods around the station, outside key areas. Improvised car bombs, space style!

DNA Scrambler

  • The DNA scrambler is hilarious for changing the ID of someone else (like the captain) rather than yourself.
    • Buy a voice changer and a DNA scrambler. Stun your target with a flash or similar weapon, inject him with the scrambler, take his ID and his jumpsuit. You now have his identity. If he cried for help during the theft, you can frame him for being the attacker and probably get him arrested.

Electromagnetic Card

  • Smack a door with the Emag to open it permanently.
    • Or, 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!
  • Emagging a Hypospray will disable its security features (along with giving its item sprite a clear electric short-out), allowing you to load whatever you want into it for a cheap Sleepypen alternative.
  • Whack Officer Beepsky with the emag to send him on a justice rampage! While emagged, he'll stun and arrest everyone in sight. Whack him a second time to make him go absolutely nuts and bring the baton down on his targets several times, leaving them prone for quite a while.
  • Emagging a cyborg completely removes its laws, which is fun for spreading chaos. Note that they are under no obligation to listen to you, and may decide to repay your favor with a scalpel through the chest.
  • Experiment! There are a vast number of things that the emag can work on, some you might not even expect it to!

EMP Grenades

  • The EMP grenades are super useful against the AI's turrets if you can't be bothered to get a lethal gun to shoot them with.
  • If a Cyborg is bothering you, this will ruin its day. The light- and standard-chassis borgs in particular are heavily crippled by just one, letting you finish them off fairly easily.
  • And of course, EMP blast the half dozen guard buddies in science for a good time.
  • EMP grenades ruin a lot of stuff, such as batons, tasers, thermals, radios, and doors. Try building a smoke buddy, naming it The Shitty Scientist and giving it the ol' EMP grenade for some good laughs. You can name guard buddies by using a pen on the main board before you build it.

Fake Moustache

  • Tying people to conveyor belts, as mentioned above, is never really complete without clicking on yourself on Grab intent to maniacally laugh and twirl your 'stache.
  • Due to being incredibly silly in nature, it can be worthwhile to set yourself up as a cartoonishly ineffectual villain to lower the station's expectations of you while you plan something extremely dangerous in the background.
  • Fake Moustaches take up your mask slot, meaning that they're incompatible with internals. Be prepared to suffer the consequences for your villainous style.

Faustian Bargain Kit

  • Monkeys have souls, which means they can sell them too! Unlike regular crew, they can't refuse and usually won't fight back, so if you're itching to get your next soul or want to get rid of a contract you don't like, consider signing over a monkey or two.
  • Those pens aren't just for stabbing and signing! They're great throwing weapons too. Same for the briefcase.

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 plasma glass shards, open it just as someone is about to walk over it.
  • If you keep a currency unit in your PDA 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 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.

Freedom Implant

  • Timing is everything. Breaking out of handcuffs can either lead to a successful escape or a stun and another arrest depending on the circumstance.
  • Escaping prison doesn't mean much if the rest of your gear is taken by security beforehand, and the station will almost undoubtedly be on the hunt for you once they realize you've gotten away. Make sure you have a backup plan.

Jug of Moonshine

  • While they're very few and far between, there are brews more potent than moonshine, the two secret cocktails being among them. If you aren't in a hurry to get people fucked up and know how to make these drinks, it can save you some Syndicate currency in the long run.
  • If you combine moonshine (or any other alcoholic beverage, for that matter) with a poison, the ethanol it decays into will automatically mix with any charcoal to form antihol, which can stop basic anti-tox treatments very effectively. The disoriented movement and other symptoms of a booze overdose can be hard to differentiate from the symptoms of poison, to boot.
  • Some station members are glad to get themselves godawfully drunk if given the chance. It might be worthwhile to leave some glasses of moonshine laying around and waiting for your targets to pass out.

Katana

  • Target a specific limb (using the Targeting next to your box of intents) when hitting someone with a katana to instantly delimb them!
    • For faster delimbing, use the limb targeting shortcuts. Press 7 & 8 for the arms, 9 & 0 for the legs, and 5 for the head.
  • Amusingly, Beepsky and the GuardBuddies will ignore you if you have your katana sheathed. Yes, even if you're wearing the sheath on your belt, and your sprite makes it clear that you're ready to pull out Level 5 Contraband at a moment's notice.
  • Due to wonky mechanics, sometimes, when you slice someone's arm off, and they were holding an item in their hand, instead of both the item and arm dropping, the limb will drop, but the item will be completely unusable until the limb is replaced. As a result, the katana is good at disarming people, in both the literal and conventional sense. Which is good, because unlike the c-saber, the katana does not stun.

Kudzu Seed

  • The kudzu can't kill, but it is great at annoying and/or distracting people of all apathy levels. Plant it somewhere, go far away, wait a while, and call "KUDZU!" over the radio (which will hopefully attract people to the kudzu.) While people are distracted cutting down the kudzu, bomb a room, murder the Captain, make off with the station's budget--do whatever Syndicate shenanigans you were planning on doing.
  • Plant the kudzu near a power sink. Not only will the kudzu make it difficult to get to the sink, but it'll also block the light coming out of it.
  • Hide traps for people cutting through kudzu to stumble into. You could use a pipebomb with a proximity sensor, a graviton-telepad to Arrivals (or worse), a mousetrap bomb--the list goes on.

Lawn Darts

  • Keep a scalpel/knife/glass shard/suitable scalpel substitute on you if you want to recover your lawn darts. They lodge in victims like shrapnel, so you just have to use the sharp item on their chest to remove the dart.

Microbomb Implant

  • Implant OTHER people. Preferably unconscious ones you then deliver to medbay.
  • The explosiveness of microbombs stack for every one you have. 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 moustache when monkey dies.
  • Microbombs will roll a chance to not detonate if you use the "Suicide" command. They will not, however, roll this chance for the "Succumb" command that can only be used if you're in crit. If someone has beaten you into crit and you know it's the end of your traitor round, punch in Succumb and laugh as the aggressor goes to hell with you.
  • Everything that applies to Microbombs also applies to the Macrobomb.

Mindslave Cloning Module

  • This item was designed to encourage building secret cloning labs hidden in nefarious places and doing all the mechanics work that entails. Here are a few tips on building and maintaining one:
    • Remember: to build a clone lab, you need to scan a clonepod, an enzymatic reclaimer, a cloning scanner, and a board for the cloning console in Tech Storage. The latter is "restricted" to Staff Assistants and Mechanics, but it's nothing a little door hacking can't handle.
    • The Tech Outpost in the Mining Outpost (or the sea above Medbay if you're on Oshan Lab) has all the tools and machinery you need to copy, build, and deploy the above machinery, all in a relatively hidden location to boot.
    • Generally, the more isolated your lab it is, the harder getting corpses for biomatter will be. You can kinda ignore the issue if you've just one or two mindslaves, but you'll still run out eventually if you can't find/make enough dead bodies, raw meat, viscerite, and/or beakers of synthflesh.
    • Clone data disks are your best friend. Not only do they allow you to clandestinely transfer cloning data from the on-station cloning lab to your secret one, but they also allow you to clone people without actually killing them yourself or dragging their corpse. All for the better, because mindslaved clones of your murder victims are sometimes less than cooperative.

Mindslave Implant

Tips for the traitor:

  • Keep track of the 25 minute limit of the implant. Once that amount of time passes, they aren't your slave anymore, and you need to be prepared for a reprisal. (This doesn't apply to the Deluxe Mindslave Implant, which doesn't wear off.)
  • Implant your assassination target(s) and have them go out in a blaze of glory. They'll end up dead and you'll go entirely unsuspected.
  • Try to implant people who actually know what they're doing. This is very important if your orders for the mindslave are anything other than "go hog wild".
  • Consider arming your mindslaves with weapons, and make sure they return them before their implant wears off. Armed minions are a lot more effective at terrorizing the station, but you don't want them to terrorize you when they realize they've been had. (Again, doesn't apply to the Deluxe version.)
  • If you plan for your mindslave to be dead when their work is done, you can simply tell them to commit suicide on the spot. This will save you the trouble of them running their mouth later.
  • Players are under no obligation to reveal secrets of the game to you unless entirely necessary, even while mindslaved (trying to force this can get you reported!). What they can do is create/fulfill the secret for you and hand over the results; say you want Initropidril but don't know how to make it or can't get a lucky Poison Bottle, you can mindslave a competent Scientist and get him to create it for you.
  • Beware if your mindslave ends up in surgery, as a doctor might end up removing the implant!
  • If your mindslave is blatantly ignoring your orders, adminhelp it.

Tips for the mindslave:

  • As a mindslave, you must follow your master's orders to the letter. Always remember this. If he asks you to commit suicide, then you must commit suicide.
    • The exceptions are doing creepy/obscene shit and, as stated above, handing out secrets. If your master is trying to force this, adminhelp it immediately!
  • As a mindslave, you now have an antagonist role, so feel free to stick it to anyone who isn't your master. Most masters don't give a damn about the hell you raise as long as 1) you do it within their orders, 2) you don't give their identity away, and 3) they don't get caught up in it. Otherwise, go nuts!
  • Remember, you aren't an antagonist anymore when your implant wears off/is removed, so you can't attack people willy-nilly anymore, your former master included. However, there's nothing stopping you from ratting him out...
  • Speaking of which, you'll when your mindslave status ends, because you'll get a popup saying something like "You are no longer a mindslave!" When your status is about to expire, you'll see this message:
Your will begins to return. What is this strange compulsion [name] has over you? Yet you must obey.

Miniature Bible

  • If you lay down, the miniature bible will be completely hidden by your character sprite. Anyone who tries farting in your face will be in for a nasty surprise.
    • The more of a nuisance you become, the more eager people will be to try and mess with you. Of course, this can also be a double-edged sword.
  • The mini-bible's utility as a pocket-sized container can be very useful, though it only fits small- and tiny-sized objects.

Miniature Crossbow

  • Anyone shot with the bow still sees an Irradiated status icon, so savvy players can still put two and two together and realize you have a radbow.
    • That said, they're often too incapacitated by the crossbow bolt or preoccupied with all the radiation damage to fight back.
  • Want to really cripple your target but not kill them for some reason? The miniature crossbow 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.
  • Make sure your aiming skills are up to par; whiffing the shot from this weapon can alert the crew to your intentions very quickly if you're not careful, and the long recharge time means you'll normally only get one shot in a pinch.

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 metric truck-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 injure anyone caught in their large blast zone.
      • Tip number two: The derelict (though still functional) mining outpost makes for a decent base of operation, so don't blow up the mining shuttle console. You will need this to get back if you require more explosive charges or oxygen for your 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 as well, and keep it in your pocket. With the combined storage power of the stealth container, a mining belt, and your 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.

Moustache Grenade

  • The timer for this grenade is much higher than that of any other grenade, and also features an incredibly obvious startup noise. Plan accordingly.
  • The moustaches affixed to anyone in the blast radius are permanently affixed to the individual's face. This seems harmless until you realize that the moustaches occupy the same slot at breath masks, which are necessary for breathing in oxygen-less environments.

Poison Bottle

  • Familiarizing yourself with the different poisons you can receive out of bottles can go a long way in their effectiveness. Try mixing your poisons with other poisons that complement each other for maximum effectiveness!
  • Some chemicals you can get out of poison bottles have (oftentimes difficult) recipes, so consider making the poisons yourself before buying.
  • Poison bottles work wonders when combined with the syringe gun, as you can deliver the chemicals remotely and with much more ease than with a syringe or the like.

Old Hunting Rifle

  • Rejoice if this pops out of your Surplus Crate, because this is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Its point-blank power is on par with the derringer with significantly less damage falloff with range. You get four shots, and two are almost guaranteed to put someone into deep crit.
  • Rifle rounds do not have armor-piercing properties. They'll still hurt like all hell on armored foes, but it may take the whole clip to actually bring them down.
  • Unlike most heavy firearms, the rifle fits in your backpack.
  • An ammo cartridge is well-hidden in the game world somewhere, as well as another rifle, but neither of them are easy to get to. However, it's usually worth the effort since most people know the rifle only has four shots; if some wise guy tries to advance on you after you've went through the first cartridge, punish them by reloading/taking out the second rifle.
  • If all else fails, the rifle is a decent bludgeon.

Power Gloves

  • Overcharge the engine!!! This item is next to useless if you don't do this! The more wattage, the better!
  • Meddle with the engine wires so that its pumping power directly into the station instead of the SMES Units. With a direct path to the engine, the electricity from the power gloves can gib people at a distance. It's one of the few ways in the game to instakill with a single click!
  • Slip an active t-ray scanner into your pocket. The power gloves only work when you're standing on a live wire, and this will tell you where they are.
  • Be patient as the voltage rises. The engine wattage isn't going to just climb into GW instantly, and you're highly unlikely to be suspected as a traitor in the beginning since making the engine go crazy is what's expected of a competent engineer, so you have time to kill. Wait a few minutes after the APCs have been harassing people, and then start your Zeus-inspired rampage.
    • While on the subject of killing time and making the engine to go bananas, consider subverting the AI with a secret law, and before you're ready to start zapping people, make the AI shock doors in the path of wandering crew members. The shocker systems gain more power from a hotwired engine, so a crew member who gets shocked by a door will simultaneously get blasted backward/die/get a funny hair-do if they don't outright gib. This is doubly effective because it means whoever survives will be distracted by the rogue AI while you go about your own dastardly deeds and can readily instagib anyone who catches on.
  • Be wary of people wearing insulated/stun gloves. The power gloves will still stun these wiseguys, but they won't take much actual damage from the electric shock. Finish them off with a sidearm instead.
  • Try not to use the gloves on people too close to where you're standing, as higher voltages can cause explosions. Aim for people at the edge of your line of sight.
  • For the love of god, do not click yourself with the power gloves. Despite that they look like insulated gloves, they actually aren't, so a misclick on yourself will kill you quite readily.

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 Cloaking 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 the Detective, feel free to stand by the sink and shoot anybody who tries to remove it or go on a murder spree in the darkness. If you're not the detective, then murder him for his gun or order a gun of your own.
    • Consider stealing night vision goggles from the Armory to see people to kill in the dark more easily. It's easiest to steal them after you've deployed the sink and the power's gone out, when you can break in simply by prying the doors open with a crowbar.
    • Even better, consider using a cloaking device to enhance your hunting, as the low lighting makes it harder for people to notice you when you disrupt your cloak.

Red Chainsaw

  • The in-hand sprite, while not completely indistinguishable (red vs. green) from that of a normal chainsaw from botany, is still similar enough and can be mistaken for one at a glance. Botanists running around the station with chainsaws is also more commonplace than you may think. Your first hit may very well be be unexpected, so make it count!
  • Consider mindslaving a doctor or roboticist to permanently affix the chainsaw to your arm, making it completely unremovable. Note that this will render you unable to use that hand, however.
    • If you're particularly insane, you can even get a second, green chainsaw and replace it with your other arm. You won't be able to pick anything up, but it's effective in freaking out the station.
  • Unlike the saber, the chainsaw cannot be put into a backpack, meaning that hiding it will be significantly more difficult. This tends to make the chainsaw an all-or-nothing weapon, so keep that in mind.

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 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.
  • In the rare event that you're facing down a weaponized Pod, using AP rounds in the revolver will tear it apart very quickly.

Safari Kit

  • Like the bowling kit, using an exosuit that completely covers your jumpsuit such as a biosuit can help reduce the glaring obviousness of the outfit, though the hat will still be visible.
  • The boomerang's ability to fly back to you means that it can be surprisingly good at clearing crowds. Be careful that you don't get knocked prone when it's midflight, or it will fall to the ground.
  • The custom darts you can load into your rifle are essentially sleepy pens, though their lack of stealthiness makes them rather dodgy if you don't have good aim, and the delayed reaction of the darts means that your victim can typically shout out what's going on unless you move quickly.

Shotgun

  • If you are one of the heads you can steal the station money and buy explosive rounds for the shotgun.
  • The kickback from being hit by a shot from this blows people away, knocks them down and (most importantly) causes them to drop their items. If one of those items was a weapon, you can steal it and finish them off with it. It saves ammo!
  • Be warned that the shotgun is not subtle; as soon as the HoS knows you're rampaging with one, he'll rush to equip himself and his fellow officers with blast armor that will soak up a lot of the damage. Either have a backup plan if this happens, or take out the security detail first and foremost.
  • The shotgun (among other things) fits in the bible.
  • Should you run out of ammo, smacking people with the gun does surprisingly decent damage.

Signal Jammer

  • Having a signal jammer near the AI's core chamber completely nullifies its radios, meaning that it can't speak to the crew.
  • The signal jammer is best used when taking out your victims, as having the jammer eliminates the need to remove their headsets so you aren't found out.
  • You may be tempted to hide a signal jammer in a room; this doesn't work out as well as you'd expect, since it won't take long for people to realize that their messages aren't getting through and figure out what the problem is.

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 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.

Sleepy Pen

  • Once the initial reservoir is depleted, sleepy pens can be filled with any chemical mixture. This paves the way for an infinite number of nasty combinations.
    • Fill the pen with chemicals from a poison bottle! Fill it with self-igniting mixtures to discreetly light people on fire! Fill it with chemicals to mutate the hell out of people, or booze to get them godawfully drunk!
  • Most players are hesitant to let people near them, and this item is one of the major reasons why. Approaching someone who's alone will have them get suspicious, so penning people you pass by in the hallways or people in a tight group is much more effective.

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.

Spy Stickers

  • Stick one on a Security Officer (and successfully persuade them not to burn it off). Enjoy being one step ahead of Security since you'll know exactly where they are and what they're planning over the Security frequency.
  • Stick one on Beepsky or Ol' Harner. Now you've another set of eyes and ears roaming about the station!
  • Stick one on an assassination target (and, once again, successfully persuade them not to burn the sticker off), as an alternative (or even a supplement) to the ID tracker. It's nowhere near as convenient as a tracker, and it's much easier for them to counter, but now you'll know exactly where they are and what they're saying.

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.

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

  • A lot 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 maneater's worst enemy. Consider hoarding welders and sabotaging General Manufacturers that make them.

Syndicate Cargo Transporter

  • This can permanently remove things other than people, too. Sabotage the AI and transport the reset module to space, send the janitor on a quest to retrieve his mop bucket, hold the captain's cat ransom!
  • The AI core can be put in lockers. While transporting the AI to space won't remove its ability to interact with the station, it will force it to start relying on its internal battery. In addition to being an indirect and clever method of removing the AI, this can distract the crew as they scramble to retrieve it.

Syndicate Cleaner Grenades

  • These are indistinguishable from normal cleaner grenades, so use this to your advantage. Find some place with an obscene amount of blood and bile, throw a cleaner grenade, and run off before people figure out what's up.
  • Stunning someone and throwing a grenade at them can be incredibly lethal, as the acid will deal major damage before they can get up, and the lube will make attempts to get out of the epicenter of the blast difficult.

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 Mailman Suit

  • Since the suit is of identical appearance to your normal mailman suit, there's no need to cover it up with a biosuit or the like. Wear the blue with pride!
  • Getting ejected from a mail chute results in going prone and a short stun, so it's better for quick getaways and expediting travel across the station as opposed to ambushes.

Syndicate Robot Frame

Tips for the traitor roboticist:

  • Syndieframes are indistinguishable from regular frames. Use this to your advantage, but make sure you don't mix them up yourself!
  • 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 or corrupting it.
  • 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.
    • If the borg doesn't cooperate for reasons that aren't law conflicts and is just ignoring you, adminhelp it. All their laws are modified to obey traitors, so they should listen to you.
  • 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.
  • Do not use robotic talk to stay in touch with the syndiebots, contact it through its PDA. If you use robotic talk and the AI isn't subverted, then you can fully expect to be ratted out.
    • Even if the AI is subverted, people can get machine translator implants to listen in on robotchat anyways, making it rather dodgy regardless.
  • Use syndiebots to identify other traitors. Try to coordinate with them if at all possible, and if it falls through you'll at least know who to watch out for.
  • Not a Roboticist yourself? You don't need to be: there's a fully functional Robotics Fabricator in QM you can get cyborg parts from, and dead people don't need an operating table to be de-brained, any old table will do. If you can stealthily rack up a bodycount on top of your first syndiebot, creating an army of personal robot slaves should be trivial, and as a non-Roboticist you will never be suspected until it's too late.

Tips for the syndiebot:

  • DO NOT ATTACK OTHER TRAITORS!!! THIS IS AGAINST YOUR LAWS!!! Traitors are considered the only humans, so harming them is a HUGE no-no. If your master tells you to kill a traitor, belay the order and slap him upside the head--BZZT tell him of the law conflict.
    • If he refuses to listen, adminhelp it.
  • Just because only traitors are human does NOT mean that you should go around purging every non-human in sight! This paints a target on your master, and that is very, very bad. Only kill when you master orders you to kill.
  • If your master is building an army out of syndicate robot frames, bring him dead or almost-dead people to de-brain.
  • If you're questioned by someone about doing something that is blatantly against a cyborg's regular laws (like actively attacking people), blame it on your laws. This puts the heat on the AI instead of on you and your master. Inform your master if you have to do this, and if the AI is reset, pretend you were reset too unless your master tells you otherwise so people don't figure out what you both are.
  • Tell your master of any other traitors you find. Your fourth "maintain secrecy" law requires you to keep traitor identities a secret from the crew, but not from each other.
  • Like your master should be, maintain contact with him through your PDA, not robotic talk, if the AI has not been subverted.

Syndicate Sauce

  • The primary ingredient in this sauce takes longer to activate depending on how much is in the bloodstream, but also does more damage. Varying dosages may fit some situations better than others.
  • You'd be surprised what kind of stuff people are willing to eat if you leave it out in the open. People willingly dying due to chef-cooked food isn't a very uncommon occurrence.

Syringe Gun

  • Guide to chemistry. Just saying.
  • Syringe guns can be pretty devastating with any half decent cocktail of poison, and 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 reagent; it generates the syringes for you.
  • As mentioned before, goes great with poison bottles.
  • Fill the syringe gun with healing chemicals. If you enter critical condition or get poisoned, you can shoot yourself to heal up. You can shoot allies/mindslaves to heal them, too!

Tactical Grenades

  • While this box gives you quick and cheap access to some very powerful weapons, there are other ways of acquiring equivalent firepower.
  • Be strategic with your grenade-throwing. Try to hit explosives such as fuel tanks and plasma canisters with incendiary grenades for some additional punch, use cryo grenades to form choke points in the hallways. You can even not throw the grenade at all and rush people if you're going for the "die a glorious death" route!

Teleport Gun

  • You can even teleport people to the debris field Z-Level if you manage to go all the way out there to place the beacon! There's a lot of nasty stuff out there that will gladly dispose of your foes for you.
  • The teleport gun doesn't have to be used for lethal purposes! Getting shot with a teleport gun is disorienting and oftentimes places people a very far distance away from you, letting you flee pursuers a lot more easily.

Trash Compactor

  • This looks overpriced until you realize that, as the janitor, you have a ready supply of water to slip and stun people, and a pair of galoshes so you don't slip yourself. The stun is brief, but more than enough to cram the poor sap into the compactor if you're quick.
  • Beware metagamers looking askance at any Janitor actually using their trash cart, which legitimate janitors often don't do.
  • You cannot be crushed by your own compactor, so you can climb in yourself to fool people into thinking it's a real cart.
  • 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!
  • Try to keep the meat cube'd victims out of sight. There are only two normal ways to make meat cubes in this game, and tricking a witness into thinking a Scientist made the meat cube will only work once, if at all.

Trick Cigarettes

  • Syndicate cigs 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 a handheld radio 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.

Wrestling Belt

  • Although the belt has a sprite now, oversuits can still cover it, but don't forget that you can occasionally and involuntarily flex your muscles while wearing it, which can tip people off to your wrestling nature.
  • The belt can be stolen, and more than likely will be stolen if you're not careful.
  • While just about no one will be able to stand up to you in one-on-one melee combat, be wary of gang-ups and ranged weapons like Security's tasers.
  • Yes, you can store things in the belt. Yes, that includes all your favorite grenade types.

Traitor Gimmicks

Adapted from this forum thread

Erebite Hostage Victims

Build a room from erebite walls in space with no exit, only an oxygen tank and the detective's remote TV. Put a remote triggered, tank transfer bomb in an adjacent room with a signal jammer. Essentially it's a very explosive place that if sparks fly in it (i.e: If someone tried to RCD it or weld down the walls) it would be very explosive. Leave a teleport beacon on the ground. Kidnap people by stunning them and teleporting them in. Demand a ransom. Send a helmet camera in there if people don't believe the hostage room is real. Detonate the bomb if the negotiations fail. (Nowadays, this strategy may be less effective due to erebite's new, very intense, radioactivity, thus creating the possibility that your captive would die from the radiation before they could even try to blow themselves up)

Battle Royale

Mindslave all three of your targets, arm them and force them to fight each other to death.

Borg Royale

Give the cyborgs a law to fight eachother to the death for the title of champion.

Rogue Fish

Steal a fish from the chef's freezer, fill a spray bottle with water or space lube. Use a chameleon projector to turn into said fish. Run around wetting floors.

The Guardian Angel

Order a cloak, an agent card and a voice changer. Selected a random person, and became their guardian angel. Follow them around whispering cryptic words into their ear discussing how you would never let harm come to them and how you would kill anybody who threatened or crossed them.

Spider Farm

Buy poison bottles until you get spider eggs. Sabotage the disposal pipes so they eject people into the chapel. Set up a valuechimp in the chapel and buy a bunch of monkeys. Infect the monkeys with spider eggs. Barricade the room. Throw people into disposal chutes that lead to the spider farm.

Who's your best friend?

Requires: Syndie ID, a means to annoy a target (anything non lethal), full face mask/hat (don't let yourhead show at all if able), a full change of clothes (including shoes, gloves, and headset type; you lazy bum), your original ID and a med-kit. A chameleon projector makes like much easier for this as well. Microbombs from the remainder.

The idea here is to pick someone, then switch personas between your syndie ID of beating them up and robbing them, and your crewman identity of being a helpful-crew-buddy that patches them up and defends them when others attack them.

This person should be your entire shift. You are either helping them as your normal unmasked or partially masked self, or stealing their shoes as your masked villain counterpart. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU KILL THIS PERSON. Others are generally of no consequence, except that you might end up getting forced into a murder spree otherwise.

Do the Mario

Requires a syndicate mailman outfit(for extra effect, if you're lucky with the clothing crates, an actual plumber's outfit, though you'll need to swap it out now and then with the mailman suit). Grab a hat from the routing depot if it doesn't come with the suit. Paint it all red using paint from the cargo bay. Get the plunger from crew quarters. Load up on spaghetti from the kitchen or space diner(with extra sauce). Go around the station piping, popping out of a mail-chutes yelling "IT'S-A-ME MARIO!" before giving them spaghetti/murdering them.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.ss13.co/index.php?title=Being_A_Better_Traitor&oldid=23874"