So I know this is from two weeks ago, but I feel bad about wandering off and forgetting about it.
Oh, don't worry too much, already lost most of my interest for it. Which, you don't need to be alarmed about because I've let a lot of ideas fade away so far. I won't be horrified if you never respond, I'll just think things up for myself.
Isn't SS13 rife with drama and bans and trolling and so on? I've never played it, but from what I've heard it's a decidedly unique experience.
Well, honestly I haven't played the game myself. Most of my knowledge is from
PlumpHelmetPunk's videos, so I honestly don't know besides that. Though the only time I've seen a ban was once, for a really stupid response from a player to a silly thing. Haven't seen much argument in their chat either even after the game ends. Really, I actually remember seeing compliments there many times after the end of the round.
In any case, I have no doubt players will do something they consider interesting, but that won't necessarily be what you or the other players consider interesting, especially if it's something you haven't prepared for. If one player decides to overload the power core and blow up the whole base, and that turns out easier to do than you intended because you thought overloading the power core was a bad thing, I suspect you'd consider that a net loss unless it was appropriately dramatic.
Easier to do what, exactly?
And either way, blowing up the whole base is... kinda an objective in the game, actually. Dem aliens man, can't let them out. Or something. Well, you need to blow up the base regardless of why. Though that comes secondary to surviving, of course.
(also, fun note, I made an interesting typo in the thing you quoted. Cookies for anyone who managed to see it)
My advice would be to pull from the other end, as it were. Give benefits for accomplishing objectives...
There's only so much I can give for, say, priming an anti-vehicle gun to blow itself up and such without being unrealistic and somewhat silly. It's not like they'll be hiding their prototype guns in there rather than, say, an armory or an actual research place for prototype guns. I am giving rewards for other objectives that do have valid possible rewards (such as research labs), but for others there's not much I can reward.
...penalties for failing them if absolutely necessary.
Waitlist position or starting character strength next time might be good places to start, or maybe some sort of system where the winner of a given round can suggest features or a setting or similar for the next round. Or maybe random events/hitherto undefined details about how the wiring works or something, if you foresee the game being fairly long.
Waitlist position is a little harsh, though it is a valid suggestion. And so is starting character strength. Though... this relies on them still wanting to play after they die.
"Rounds" aren't going to be a thing. I don't plan on this to be a multi-thousand turn game. It'll likely already take you enough time to fight and move places, so multiple goes in the same, long campaign is not going to happen. If anything, I'll do reboots.
And I don't think it's a good idea to bottle up ideas for improvements to players who happen to win rather than those who happened to have a good idea. The latter are far more valuable in pretty much any single game. I'm definitely against that.
Anyway, I can't really think of any real punishments for failing objectives (besides not getting something) that don't look blatantly like a game mechanic (when actually in the game, as opposed to when waiting to get into the game as above). I don't want blatant mechanics inside the game, I'd prefer mechanics that have some explanation in-context/character.
As an example, suppose you've got ten humans each with a nonvital profession that determines their abilities, and one alien that works on different mechanics. For the humans, immediately claiming their profession is a great idea, since it tells them all what they have to work with and what they can expect. For the alien, it's ruinous, because now they have to make up a name and abilities despite not knowing what's normal for a human, while making sure that whatever they're inventing and however they act from now on fits into what a normal human could do.
Nah, not really. In character the aliens are spies, they know a decent bit about their fake identity, otherwise they wouldn't have made it for long in a secret military research installation with more than one, two, or maybe even three dozen military guards (who might just be a
little bit weary of human spies!). And as for the players, they have no idea if they're going to be aliens before they are one, and thus they will give me the same sheet as human players. They will also be able to have the same professions as humans because... it's not like they can just sit around at the base and do nothing. As for abilities, only "special" humans will get abilities (if they ever do), and the rest of the humans will get no special abilities, so aliens claiming they are regular humans with no special abilities will be no more suspicious than humans with no abilities claiming they are so. And if they even lie and claim they are special humans with a believable secret profession instead, that might actually help the aliens in some cases because they will either discredit the legitimate revealing special humans, or conceal themselves further.
Though, that still assumes humans get special abilities from their profession. Which isn't a guaranteed possibility.
The counterexample, of course, would be that there's one alien who needs to kill the only human pilot, while there's ten humans, one of whom is the pilot they need alive. The vast majority doesn't want an immediate claim, because that just tells the alien who they need to murder.
It should be pretty obvious when I mentioned aliens possibly having objectives to murder someone else that this is definitely a possible thing, heh.