How to have a Hostage Crisis

[Luke Cox]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Next time I'm an antag with access to toxins, I promise I'll try this. Smuggler's Satchels with bombs all over the station.

[Malkevin]

NT doesn't negotiate with terrorists

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I got taken hostage as Captain by a traitor while braindead once (he didn't notice)
I came back to find myself being interrogated which was pretty cool.

So I sold him the nuke disk for a tonne of spacebucks.

And he missed his shuttle because I spent so long haggling and he kept losing connection.

[Anonmare]

Here's an idea: Grab intent into chokehold on someone, get a gun in your other hand (has to be one handed) and combine gun with chokehold + harm intent while targeting the head to convert it into hostage gunpoint (takes a while, while you shift someone into shooting position). Shooting will delete the target's brain (Ballistic weapon and pulse weapons only, lasers don't have enough oomph to do it) and someone trying to use disarm intent/stun on you has a 50/50 chance of making your arm twitch and kill the target.
Downsides: Can't move, hostage can resist out of it, doesn't work if your hold on the target is broken, won't work if the target is backed up in a cloner, can only be done on living people, hostage can call for help over the radio and takes a fuckload of HUD juggling to pull off.
Upsides: Let's you seriously take someone hostage without the need for bombs and a good way of taking someone out of the round but has a high chance of failure (If you fuck up you're would-be hostage could end up with *your* gun).

[TheNightingale]

"Can only be done on living people"? Taking a dead body hostage is hilarious. If you can't move, and the target can resist out, how does that work?
(And they're not out of the round forever if you take a syringe and turn them into a podperson. Nobody ever does that.)

[Anonmare]

"Can only be done on living people"? Taking a dead body hostage is hilarious. If you can't move, and the target can resist out, how does that work?
(And they're not out of the round forever if you take a syringe and turn them into a podperson. Nobody ever does that.)

It works by making sure you're ready to take them hostage first (People tend to struggle when you put your wrist around their and it's hard to keep them still and move at the same time. Incidentally I'm no longer allowed to go to the market district anymore), and handcuffing them first is a pretty obvious 'to-do'. And if they're in a straightjacket then you straight up don't need to worry. It's more to stop people constantly taking each other hostage in combat as a go-to tactic

[TechnoAlchemist]

Next time I'm an antag with access to toxins, I promise I'll try this. Smuggler's Satchels with bombs all over the station.

Tried it before, I was either ignored or told to "do it you're bluffing" proceeded the do it and nobody cared to try to stop or negotiate.

[IcePacks]

hi

taking a hostage is impossible

an individual's already low value to the station drastically decreases the longer they're gone

your average crewmember would much rather disarm you if you pull a gun than comply with whatever you say, which you won't have time to do, because if you stop to talk, they'll disarm you and shoot you

anyone who actually cares about your hostage will gladly trade their life to take yours

[Reece]

I think the real clincher is that disarm mechanic, it's instant so if you're within a single tile of them and they're uncuffed you're getting your toy smacked out your hand. It's always annoyed me that disarm wasn't intent dependant, if you're holding a gun with harm intent than disarming the person should have the gun go off, not your nerdy scientist break out his krav magra and smack the 12 gauge out the spec ops murderers hands like he suddenly turned into freaking neo.

[Jazaen]

There is one being on the station that, theoretically, HAS to comply with a hostage situation. Everyone else doesn't care, since 1# "We can replace them" mentality (IC )and 2# "Round just lasts 2hrs at max, let's take my chances and disarm". Even getting human hostage with asimov AI has a GREAT chance of it sending entire sec force into maint, since it might just work. Spessmen life value is just so low that I can't imagine a hostage situation outside something admin-enforced.

[Cheimon]

I think the real clincher is that disarm mechanic, it's instant so if you're within a single tile of them and they're uncuffed you're getting your toy smacked out your hand. It's always annoyed me that disarm wasn't intent dependant, if you're holding a gun with harm intent than disarming the person should have the gun go off, not your nerdy scientist break out his krav magra and smack the 12 gauge out the spec ops murderers hands like he suddenly turned into freaking neo.

All nanotrasen crew were given hand-to-hand training after a spate of muggings a few years ago, but unfortunately this only increased the amount of crime.

[capi duffman]

There is one being on the station that, theoretically, HAS to comply with a hostage situation. Everyone else doesn't care, since 1# "We can replace them" mentality (IC )and 2# "Round just lasts 2hrs at max, let's take my chances and disarm". Even getting human hostage with asimov AI has a GREAT chance of it sending entire sec force into maint, since it might just work. Spessmen life value is just so low that I can't imagine a hostage situation outside something admin-enforced.

I always comply as AI to such threats, that does not stop security and others to try to law 2 me to give up the hostage.

Stupid fleshlings.

[1g88a]

Steal someone's PDA and hold yourself hostage

[Lumbermancer]

That's how I done it once, out of few attempts, because chances of people cooperating are low.

Get valve bomb. Make it voice activated. Try to arrange 1v1 with Captain in his office, for whatever reason. Tell him you have a voice-activated bomb in your backpack, show some tator item so he knows you mean business.

Then two things may happen, if he cooperates, then ask for his headset and spare id. Or he will try to run away or shoot you, meaning you have to detonate bomb, and Cap will be enough outside the blast to get cloned.

I remember one guy trying to pull something similar against me. I was chemist, he was a doctor. He entered in Chemistry, sat at the second station and passed me a piece of paper saying "I have a gun, put your radio and pda into disposals".So I simply ran away and he went after me trying to shoot me. He failed.

Given the nature of byond engine, it's really hard top pull off anything, and the fact that cloning/defib is easy makes death meaningless, unless you manage to gib/space/hide the body.

If we had the stuff vg has, where you can point your weapon at someone and if they move you fire automatically, you could try and play around with it.

[Cheimon]

It'd probably have to be an auto-hit though, because the way aiming works is it fires at where you were, not where you move to IIRC.

So, for example, if victim at East is held at gunpoint by antag at West, victim can just run North or South and avoid the shot, then run away normally.

Having said that aiming would be cool anyway for the rare times it might work as security and you wouldn't have to tase someone just to safely arrest them.

[cancer_engine]

>say you have a hostage in maint
>fill maint with airlock charges and proximity-triggered bombs

[MMMiracles]

Last time I tried something similar to a demands/hostage situation, I literally had several maxcap bombs hidden around the station in keypoints (EVA, medbay, SMES, comms, ect). When I made demands for my steal objective, I was immediately met with a wave of 'DO IT FAGGOT' and 'FUCK OFF' over comms. I did it and eventually had to find the objective myself amongst the wreckage.

To be fair this was back in like late 2014 but I don't think the mindset has changed much. People literally just do not care because at worst, they're removed from the round for the next hour, or at best, they become the station hero for disarm-spamming the bad guy to get their gun.

[Luke Cox]

The thing is, you can't just blow up random stuff. You have to blow up things that people care about. If you want to ransom science, put bombs in smuggler's satchels in the R&D server room, Xenobio, genetics, robotics, etc. Sneak into the armory and hide a bomb in there. Hide one in the cargo bay. Nobody gives a shit if you blow up dorms or the locker room. Tailor your acts of terrorism. It's one thing to target key systems like comms, but it's another to destroy something that takes a whole round to create.

[Jazaen]

Luke is right, you really do have to be a dick about this whole thing. The worst part is that you can't really do a demonstration - the second you blow up medbay and announce you have more bombs people will either take crowbars and start prying every single tile up looking for them or ignore you. The thing about bombs that is that they WILL force shuttle call, and if you take care to blow up both comms consoles (bomb near bridge), tech storage, research and robotics it will give you a nice ammount of time to do all work. If you want to kill everyone, detonate every (EVERY) place holding a hardsuit (for box: EVA, armory, HoS office, CE office, Engineering, Atmos, both cargonia consoles, CMO office, RD office, bomb test range, captains office, the most glorious subderpartment of Genetics, that mini-storage near perma), and even then you still have to be wary of engineers, CE and miners (as they are the only jobs that keep their hardsuit on all of the time).

Oh, and relase tesla or singularity too, just to make sure pockets of air won't save people. With the bomb cap, you CAN'T blow everything up unless you try really, really hard, and Urist McTraitortarget always finds a way to survive.
In other words, making sure that people comply with your hostage request is a strategy in itself.

[TheNightingale]

Remember to have a voice analyzer too if you're going the bomb route, or else someone will pop you with a perfluorodecalin syringe and you'll get executed. When you announce there are bombs, people will probably start searching anyway - hide them as best you can (satchels underneath floor tiles underneath reinforced tables or windows, for example).

[IcePacks]

you can cream your pants over a heath legder-esque chain of explosions on the station but at that point you're just blowing shit up

nobody's going to give into your demands and they're just gonna call the shuttle for a clean slate, oh well

[Helios]

The real way to do a hostage crisis is escape shuttle ping pong. Tell them to give in to your demands or you'll recall from a comm console they can't find until they do

[kevinz000]

Seems to me like the best way to stop a bomber is another bomb
Honk.
They can't trigger a deadman switch if they're knocked out from an explosion (50-50 chance at the very least from explosions)
Their health analyzer won't trigger if they're gibbed, if you really hate them