Zombie outbreak design doc

[PeakPerformance]

heya I made a zombie outbreak design doc, would love to hear your feedback on it here or at  https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/discussions/23131

This suggestion is of a rather large scope.

I've been rummaging on how to make a zombie outbreak as a mid-round a fun major event for the station, here's what I came up with :

**The outbreak :**
The event would start with one-three "Alpha Zombies" (edgy name subject to change) who are pooled from ghosts, spawned randomly in maint, and stronger in many ways to regular zombies (details below). They'll be the prime vector of the zombie outbreak, dolling out the first wave of infections.

The infection starts with a disease which takes 3.5 minutes to reach maturity (doesn't affect IPC) : 
- First stage lasts two and a half minutes - no symptoms, shows up on body scanner (not hud/healthanalyzer) but has no known cure.
- Second stage lasts the remainder of the one minute  - symptoms are : confusion, blood vomiting, projectile vomiting, necrotizing fasciitis and itching. Some on-brand kinda stuff
- Third stage the disease "cures" itself and instead spawns a tumor in the host's torso, that heals them to full and makes them turn into a zombie giving them a notice of their new antag status. 

The tumor is basically what makes them be a zombie, removing it, or having the brain/head of the host be transplanted onto a new body will cure it. Removing the tumor out of an alpha zombie makes it gib/dust or any other way to make them unrevivable.

If an infected person's blood (while they're still within the "diseased" stage and before the tumor shows up) is put in a pandemic machine, it starts a 5 minutes timer after which it'll produce a cure which can be replicated and given out to the crew to prevent further infection (but it won't cure current zombies who need their tumors removed).

Edit : Zombies always show up dead on medhuds, (maybe not on examine though) allowing them to play dead, as well as helping identify zombies who are running around in fully covering clothes like modsuits.

**The Zombies :**

Alpha Zombies are naked random race carbons (or a custom sprite if people are interested), can't wear clothes and have the following traits :

- They are a dark shade of green, and glowing red eyes.
- They have two no-drops in hand items that represent a claw and a set of teeth for clawing/biting. Clawing makes them do 21-30 brute and lets them bash or pry open doors like jol/fireaxe, biting does only 15 but infects people, and doing so heals 15 brute/burn. This is both to give them weapons that can break doors/windows and prevents them from using anything a regular carbon could use. Clawing could make the sound faithlesses do, biting terror's spider sound and animation. (No armor penetration. 15-10.5/7.5 damage on riot armor)
- They Revive upon death with a full aheal akin to a cling after 30 seconds unless they're beheaded/gibbed/incinerated/their tumor has been removed.
- they ignore slowdown, don't require oxygen, and can't be stunned.
- They regenerate -4 brute/burn/toxins per cycle, twice salglu healing rate + toxins.
- Their speech pattern is changed into gurgle (and/or with random shouts as they hit people like hulk) to non-zombies, letting them give orders/coordinate with nearby alpha/regular zeds.
- They can leap like the genetic power with twice the cooldown as long as they're not bola'd (which should apply to the jump power in general frankly).

 

Basic Zombies are regular carbon whatever species of the person who got turned and their gear but : 

- They are a lighter shade of green.
- Clawing makes them do 15-21 brute (barely enough to slowly wittle doors) and lets them pry open doors like jol/fireaxe, biting does only 10 but infects people, and makes the zombie heal 10 brute/burn upon doing so. (10.5-7.5/5 damage on riot armor)
- They Revive upon death with a full aheal after a minute unless they're beheaded//gibbed/incinerated/their tumor has been removed.
- They ignore slowdown, don't require oxygen, and can't be stunned.
- They regenerate -2 brute/burn/toxins per cycle, like salglu would + toxins.
- Their speech pattern is changed into gurgles (and/or with random shouts as they hit people like hulk).

**Why I think it'd work and extra tidbits :**

Having ghost roles be part of the infection is fun for observers, and it having both a disease/tumor phase gives a lot of flexibility for incorporation into events, as well as multiple ways to deal with the outbreak depending on the station's state of disarray.

First you might just decapitate bodies and preserve them while you work on getting the tumor out, reattach the heads to new bodies, or run the risk of removing a tumor on a potentially soon reviving zombie. You can also quarantine people who've been bit but survived their encounter with the zeds. Then when the cure is out, vaccinated doctors can operate more easily on zombie without decapitating them while having armed supervision.

Decapitating all fallen zombies might seem like an easy way out but it might be very risky to get so close to one before you have the vaccine, and you'll quickly widdle out able bodies to fight back against the outbreak. And them being carbons mean that, first - people keep their characters, bolas and aiming to cripple the legs are very effective ways to deal with the zombies, as well as using defenses like sandbags or tables.

The vaccine will take some time to develop even after a blood sample has been provided, giving time for the infection to take place a little more. If the outbreak is thwarted early, there'll be no or very little damage to the station/crew. If it takes a while, the damage could be interesting, bring a lot of RP, and change the round's flow without removing people permanently (I'm thinking a full crew of different species' heads on human bodies, sounds like peak ss13 to me !). If it isn't containable, though, it'll be a glorious fight for survival akin to massive xeno/t-spider outbreak, worthy of a nuke or DS.

I'd love to hear what you guys think about this, I've been thinking of maybe having armor reduce the chance of bites contaminating the victim, but i'm not sure if it's necessary as i've tried to make it as balanced as my mind can project, numbers would likely have to be tested and tweaked.

I've also tried to keep it to mechanics that are somewhat in the game (white t-spider infestation, tumors, vampiric claws, cling rejuv (which it could literally be that), the jump power, very little to sprite) so that it can be implemented as easily as possible.

Edited November 5, 2023 by PeakPerformance

[Autocephalophagy]

Some thoughts. Rather than randomly spawn in maints maybe a ghost could just take over a random corpse on the station. Could create funny coroner RP or an instance in which the body of someone an antag killed returns for revenge (they would still count as dead for purposes of the objective though). I think having zombies revive on death is a bit too much, as there really aren't that many things that can reliably behead someone (like a fire axe). Normal zombies being able to pry open doors also seems a bit op and sounds like something that should be reserved to the starter zombies, and normal zombies need to break them down (like some terror spiders). I'm conflicted on the virus causing death. On TG the infection doesn't kill on its own, it just activates upon the host's normal death, usually at the hands of the zombies. If the infection itself caused death it would incentivize zombies to do hit and run maneuvers, which doesn't really fit with the mindless zombie thing as compared to someone getting ripped to shreds. The idea of a vaccine is very interesting and gives something for medical to do other than despair. It does sound like a blob equivalent, manageable if caught early but deadly if they get rolling. 

[PeakPerformance]

On 11/3/2023 at 10:58 AM, Autocephalophagy said:

Some thoughts. Rather than randomly spawn in maints maybe a ghost could just take over a random corpse on the station. Could create funny coroner RP or an instance in which the body of someone an antag killed returns for revenge (they would still count as dead for purposes of the objective though). 

I really like that idea, it could check if there are valid non-revivable bodies on station - It'd have to be only suicide/DNR's though as to not rob someone's body who's been dead past defib timer but still might be LR revived, and if no/not enough bodies are found it spawns them in maint as a fallback.
 

On 11/3/2023 at 10:58 AM, Autocephalophagy said:

I think having zombies revive on death is a bit too much, as there really aren't that many things that can reliably behead someone (like a fire axe). 

Without preparation, yes it can be quite hard to decapitate someone, however (arching back to the decap-clings days) all it takes is to have a scalpel, surgical saw (or ghetto equivalent), and table to do it in some 20-30 seconds. To me, zombies reviving is the core of what makes them dangerous and interesting to handle.

 

On 11/3/2023 at 10:58 AM, Autocephalophagy said:

Normal zombies being able to pry open doors also seems a bit op and sounds like something that should be reserved to the starter zombies, and normal zombies need to break them down (like some terror spiders). 

Bolting could still prevent this, but I agree that it might be something to tweak/experiment with !

 

On 11/3/2023 at 10:58 AM, Autocephalophagy said:

 I'm conflicted on the virus causing death. On TG the infection doesn't kill on its own, it just activates upon the host's normal death, usually at the hands of the zombies. If the infection itself caused death it would incentivize zombies to do hit and run maneuvers, which doesn't really fit with the mindless zombie thing as compared to someone getting ripped to shreds. 

 

That's where the virus part comes into play, zombies are incentivized to fully kill the people they bite instead of doing bite and run maneuvers, to prevent the infected from reaching medbay before the tumor develops and getting the vaccine rolling, as well as turning people into zombies much faster (1 minute revive time instead of the 3.5 minutes the infection takes)

 

Thanks for your feedback, updated the design doc with some of these ideas !

Edited November 5, 2023 by PeakPerformance

[mbreton101]

On 11/5/2023 at 9:38 AM, PeakPerformance said:

I really like that idea, it could check if there are valid non-revivable bodies on station - It'd have to be only suicide/DNR's though as to not rob someone's body who's been dead past defib timer but still might be LR revived, and if no/not enough bodies are found it spawns them in maint as a fallback.

when the events triggers it should prioritize players who have been dead pasted the defib timer and are still linked to the body, turning them into Alpha zombies. this would allow for people killed to still play the game in and not just spectate. To make this fair make it so that Alpha zombies once they are dead dead [aka decapitated or tumor removed] cant be turned back into normal crew, thus allowing antag's who kill their target to not feel scammed for kills.

Also i suggest that a new Zombie language could be created, they should still be able to understand common but make them only able to talk zombie. This allows zombies to communicate with the crew being alerted. They could also be able to radios, thus allowing them to communicate across the station and also acting as a indicator to crew that theirs zombies on station.

I would also suggest you make the Chaplin immune to the zombie infections, a big part of holy figures is smiting undead' s. Adding a Chaplin weapon that's gamic is allowing them to speak zombie could adding role play.

maybe contemplate having holy water affect them, I'm iffy on the idea because holy water already does so much different thing, maybe making it not hurt the zombies but insted slows their movement speed. Nothing worse then playing vampire and being shot by holy water by a syringe gun, i do not think zombies should be affected by holy water to severally.