I am extremely regretting the naming right about now. Confusing and makes people who want regular Paranoia-tabletop-mode sad. Though this + Malf/Traitor AI should be a pretty damn close thing, actually.
It's not purely coincidental, but the idea lifted from the Paranoia tabletop is not the most obvious association of the Friend Computer, but the part about silly conspiracies running around everywhere. Mostly literal, though - you cannot trust anyone even moreso than in regular traitor, because at least the traitor status has the decency not to change mid-round.
WHAT DIS?!It's a
three to four-team based mode that's quite similar to Rev or, especially, Gang in that the leaders spawn and recruit crewmembers. Unlike Rev, you don't have any beef with Command (unless some Head tries to eliminate you, I guess), but
the factions compete against each other.
In particular,
you can try recruit someone who is another faction's agent already, and if they accept, they first abandon their faction, then if they accept again (sorry, ugly, but it's been a technical code thing) they are flipped to your side - and since, as Glloyd said, the factions don't have an indicator for anyone but the leader, the original faction will be none the wiser. You may want to use gang colors to tell friendlies apart
You do get an uplink, albeit a custom one - with no combat-heavy items (with the silenced pistol, canesword and dart gun being the heaviest you can get; if you want someone DEAD dead, send in the goons or poison them or do something else fittingly seekrit) and, currently, one silly new item to replace C4 (AKA Jet Fuel, which may or may not melt steel beams). Oh, and I just ported the briefcase o' cash item early.
WHAT DO?!Eventually (the items are all done, but I didn't figure out to do regular spawns yet), the plan is that the factions will compete for Intel, inspired heavily by Sub Rosa. Intel is a black folder containing random valuable seekrit stuffs and is assigned to one of the factions.
If you're not that faction, you can upload it using a
special laptop the leaders get on spawn (or you can buy a replacement, if you lose it) to get more Telecrystals for the uplink, the amount dependent on the piece of intel (Confidential, Secret, Top Secret for 2, 4 and 6 TCs respectively, just for flavor) - if you have one on you, it's automagically added, otherwise you can hit the active laptop with something with an uplink innit to add the stored TCs to the uplink.
Uploading is done over-time, with 5% of upload progress being added per 5 seconds of immobility next to the computer, and stored, so if something happens but you keep the intel you can use the same file to resume the upload. Using a different one will abort the previous upload, though.
There is a random but decent chance that upon uploading that the
intel of the faction whose intel you uploaded will no longer be accepted for a while - if that's the case, you WILL be informed - that is intended to mix things up, so all four factions have a reason to interact and be balanced somewhat - if all the other teams get a piece of intel on you, they get a power boost relative to you since they can buy more shit, but at the same time you get a breather as, if you're very lucky, your intel becomes worthless to the other factions until they manage to upload some of another conspiracy's intel and overriding that faction over you as the 'safe' faction.
It's not a 100% chance so you're still on your guard. At the same time, you could deliberately trade your faction's intel or even give it away to get a temporary 'ally'. Just remember -
any deal can go wrong...
sorry for the Jack Chick bolding, but I wanted to break up the wall of text