Goonhub
07-22-2015, 12:25 PM
I've given some thought to all the questions and suggestions in this thread and I've come up with a much crazier version of the idea that really stands out from other game modes.
So, what if the originators of the disease are actually aliens, and unlike changelings they can't really disguise their appearance. Like the space wizards or syndies they'd have their own spaceship and teleportation technology. They'd have very advanced technology, but overall infecting people would not be simple; each infection would take effort. The process should be a medical procedure on par with any other surgery; so not amazingly hard but harder than just stuffing something in someone's mouth. Maybe they actually have to implant some kind of parasitic creature in you. The aliens could do this on the station somewhere (riskier) or abduct people back to their ship (safer, much slower).
As far as the overall goal of the aliens is concerned, maybe their goals could be around takeover of the station rather than death or destruction. So they could have goals like at least "x" number of infected, but also things like adding a small amount of a non-toxic gas to the air mix so they can breathe without space suits, or changing something about a certain number or type of station computers so they're usable by the aliens. Basically, have creative goals that lead towards the aliens taking over the station. This makes the game mode different/interesting and also insures that mind slaves aren't just given the ability to run around killing and causing chaos with abandon; they have jobs to do and keeping quiet/keeping the station intact are both important priorities. It's possible large scale conflict between the mind slaves and the non-infected station members could break out still but it would happen through gameplay and roleplaying not through nonsense.
Perhaps if the mind slaves knew they'd have a hard/non-chaos job working for the aliens people would be less likely to try and get infected. If a deterrent was needed though, rather than making the virus/parasite deadly you could just make it generally weaken the player; bleed more when they bleed, more likely to catch other diseases and get worse symptoms, more likely to become addicted to stuff, etc, etc.
If it were a parasite inserted into the chest (for instance) that could present several interesting methods of removal. It could be crudely destroyed just by bashing and/or stabbing the chest a lot, but this method would be neither guaranteed to work nor safe. It could also be removed by surgery, or possibly killed by a drug (probably a longish treatment so the mind slave has a chance to escape). Perhaps certain genetics could be discovered to make you immune (or just resistant in some way), and also a genetic sequence could be unlocked to make people easier to convert in some way (so if you mind slave genetics you could try to get them to inject the station with the gene). There's lots of possibilities here.
Anyway, that's some things I've been thinking about to make the game mode more interesting/balanced.
So, what if the originators of the disease are actually aliens, and unlike changelings they can't really disguise their appearance. Like the space wizards or syndies they'd have their own spaceship and teleportation technology. They'd have very advanced technology, but overall infecting people would not be simple; each infection would take effort. The process should be a medical procedure on par with any other surgery; so not amazingly hard but harder than just stuffing something in someone's mouth. Maybe they actually have to implant some kind of parasitic creature in you. The aliens could do this on the station somewhere (riskier) or abduct people back to their ship (safer, much slower).
As far as the overall goal of the aliens is concerned, maybe their goals could be around takeover of the station rather than death or destruction. So they could have goals like at least "x" number of infected, but also things like adding a small amount of a non-toxic gas to the air mix so they can breathe without space suits, or changing something about a certain number or type of station computers so they're usable by the aliens. Basically, have creative goals that lead towards the aliens taking over the station. This makes the game mode different/interesting and also insures that mind slaves aren't just given the ability to run around killing and causing chaos with abandon; they have jobs to do and keeping quiet/keeping the station intact are both important priorities. It's possible large scale conflict between the mind slaves and the non-infected station members could break out still but it would happen through gameplay and roleplaying not through nonsense.
Perhaps if the mind slaves knew they'd have a hard/non-chaos job working for the aliens people would be less likely to try and get infected. If a deterrent was needed though, rather than making the virus/parasite deadly you could just make it generally weaken the player; bleed more when they bleed, more likely to catch other diseases and get worse symptoms, more likely to become addicted to stuff, etc, etc.
If it were a parasite inserted into the chest (for instance) that could present several interesting methods of removal. It could be crudely destroyed just by bashing and/or stabbing the chest a lot, but this method would be neither guaranteed to work nor safe. It could also be removed by surgery, or possibly killed by a drug (probably a longish treatment so the mind slave has a chance to escape). Perhaps certain genetics could be discovered to make you immune (or just resistant in some way), and also a genetic sequence could be unlocked to make people easier to convert in some way (so if you mind slave genetics you could try to get them to inject the station with the gene). There's lots of possibilities here.
Anyway, that's some things I've been thinking about to make the game mode more interesting/balanced.