Zombie Tweaks

[ReadThisNamePlz]

Hey! Thanks for those of you who played the zombies round. 
 

A few changes that I think are needed are 

1. Reduced slowdown.

2. Damage decrease on the bite.

3. A way to counter IPCs/Diona.

4. Zombie Vaurca and Bulwarks.

5. Decreased time to Transform

6. Zombie simple mob with variants, so the admin can do waves without relying on players. 
 

7. Sound changes. I have a friend that I’m working with on new sounds. 
 

Please, feel free to discuss and chip in ideas/proposals! Thanks! 

 

[Fluffy]

36 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

A way to counter IPCs/Diona.

Robusting them so that their punches and hits damage them more than they do with other species could be a solution for it, after all in the movies/games/tv series they can overcome even tanks

39 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

Damage decrease on the bite.

Maybe have two attack modes? One where they claw, one where they bite, the bite does less damage and can infect the victim, the clawing robust the victim but does not infect it

41 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

Zombie simple mob with variants, so the admin can do waves without relying on players. 

On infection and death, you could get two options:

- Become a zombie, you play as a zombie
- Succumb, you can come back with the ERT or respawn or whatever, the corpse is taken over by a simple mob "AI"

Maybe?

[limette]

2 hours ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

5. Decreased time to Transform

I'm fairly strongly opposed to this because it cuts down on the possible 'oh god I'm infected' roleplay in favor of 'sprint in the opposite direction 0 delay' roleplay. The fear of being infected is IMO one of the most compelling parts of any zombie story, and making it more difficult to roleplay around this doesn't seem desirable at all for a roleplay server, even though I understand the balance concerns.

[Carver]

Reasonable changes, though I agree that transformation still shouldn't be a quick affair.
 

2 hours ago, Fluffy said:

Robusting them so that their punches and hits damage them more than they do with other species could be a solution for it, after all in the movies/games/tv series they can overcome even tanks

Maybe have two attack modes? One where they claw, one where they bite, the bite does less damage and can infect the victim, the clawing robust the victim but does not infect it

I don't know what movies you've been watching where they beat tanks, lol. Every zombie film, show and game I've seen - sitting in a tank is the safe option but you'll just be surrounded and eventually starve to death if you're out of fuel. As for clawing, maybe if it's ONLY for attacking IPCs - but they should never be 'robusting' a human, it goes against the point of an infection mode.

[Fluffy]

6 minutes ago, Carver said:

I don't know what movies you've been watching where they beat tanks, lol.

I think it was in the first season of the walking dead, 28 days later, day of the dead(?), patient zero and probably some others I can't recall the name of right now shows overrun tanks in streets/bases/evacuation points etc. that fell prey to them one way or another, even in a short timespan (I remember a movie where they manage to overcome a fortified city, I think it was in israel? and the army within it, which had tanks as well as helicopters and an entire wall around them with checkpoints), they can in number tear down reinforced doors, walls and whatnot after all, lol.

[Gem]

2 hours ago, Fluffy said:

[...] One where they claw, one where they bite [...]

already the case. use the "check attacks" verb as a zombie.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

Yeah, clawing is already a thing. Maybe I’ll be able to make it so that they do extra damage against IPCs.

[La Villa Strangiato]

A HUD icon so that you can tell as a zombie who's infected and who isn't.

IMHO, you don't really need a "counter" to IPCs and diona. If zombies are already incredibly dangerous to all organic species, it makes sense to deploy robots and drones against them. As a zombie I could already "counter" IPCs fairly effectively just by ganging up on them and hitting them.

I also think that voidsuits, hazmat suits, and suits in general should protect against any infection initially, but if you rip a suit and attack the same area again as a zombie, it should allow infection.

[Carver]

8 hours ago, Fluffy said:

I think it was in the first season of the walking dead, 28 days later, day of the dead(?), patient zero and probably some others I can't recall the name of right now shows overrun tanks in streets/bases/evacuation points etc. that fell prey to them one way or another, even in a short timespan (I remember a movie where they manage to overcome a fortified city, I think it was in israel? and the army within it, which had tanks as well as helicopters and an entire wall around them with checkpoints), they can in number tear down reinforced doors, walls and whatnot after all, lol.

With the first season of the Walking Dead, Rick was entirely safe inside of the tank. Entirely surrounded, but safe. That's not really overcoming a tank because if it had fuel (or if Rick knew how to drive it) it could just run them over and nothing could particularly stop it.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

6 hours ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

A HUD icon so that you can tell as a zombie who's infected and who isn't.

IMHO, you don't really need a "counter" to IPCs and diona. If zombies are already incredibly dangerous to all organic species, it makes sense to deploy robots and drones against them. As a zombie I could already "counter" IPCs fairly effectively just by ganging up on them and hitting them.

I also think that voidsuits, hazmat suits, and suits in general should protect against any infection initially, but if you rip a suit and attack the same area again as a zombie, it should allow infection.

I will see if I can make it so that if a voidsuit is punctured, it will have a lower chance of being infected. 
 

I’m more worried about IPCs from a gameplay perspective because Zombies are basically told to just spread the infection, not really kill. They are almost always able to be stonewalled by ipcs. 

[Scheveningen]

Personally, I think the last thing I want to see is Aurora seem anything like Project Zomboid in terms of a round pacing. I would certainly not want to see this as a round type, because this is one of those types of "internal threat" type game modes identical to changeling, except the nature of zombies in trope fiction means they don't communicate or interact with the crew in any meaningful or interesting fashion aside from groaning about brains and eating people.

My personal assessment for what qualifies as an antagonist is they must be still able to roleplay with people if this is going to be a consistent round type. Someone might bring up the geist as a counter-argument and I'm just going to flat out say there are major differences and issues with that which doesn't merit explaining.

Changelings, vampires, traitors, mercenaries, pirates, revolutionaries, all these that we have in the game mode rotation can talk to you and justify their motivations prior to engaging in combat and killing you violently. Zombies don't do this. I hate to insult the amount of effort Read is trying to put into this but I don't think there's much gameplay or roleplay value that can be extracted from this because of how predictably it'll end. 

[ReadThisNamePlz]

3 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

. I hate to insult the amount of effort Read is trying to put into this but I don't think there's much gameplay or roleplay value that can be extracted from this because of how predictably it'll end. 

No insult taken, you have decent concerns. 
 

This rework isn’t for a round type or antagonist type to be put into rotation. This is purely for events and admin usage only. Hence why I want to make a simple mob with random sprite variants that can be used to “spawn waves”. 
 

Events - at least my own - can be story driven without the main threat (zombies in this case) being able to talk. I have tons of tools at my disposal to make that happen. I appreciate the input however. Zombie would not make a good round-type. Thanks! 

[Scheveningen]

I appreciate that this isn't being considered for a game mode, at least. This is definitely one of those things that would cause burnout from Aurora if it was implemented that way -- I genuinely don't mind if this is for adminbus reasons only.

If this is the case, though, I'd probably suggest adding zombie variants a la the L4D style (or something similar). Anyone that opts for adminbus of this nature should at least be subject to the referential sovl that comes with the package of the most famous case of zombies in fiction.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

11 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

I appreciate that this isn't being considered for a game mode, at least. This is definitely one of those things that would cause burnout from Aurora if it was implemented that way -- I genuinely don't mind if this is for adminbus reasons only.

If this is the case, though, I'd probably suggest adding zombie variants a la the L4D style (or something similar). Anyone that opts for adminbus of this nature should at least be subject to the referential sovl that comes with the package of the most famous case of zombies in fiction.

Variants would be a later feature, just because I am not sure if I can implement that on my own right now. 

[ReadThisNamePlz]

Still working on this. It's on the back burner atm.