Alien Virus Mode (an alternative to Revolution)

[hellolion]

I always rather liked the Revolution game mode and I've been sorry to see it gone, although I fully understand why the mode has become such a problem. I was thinking about this and watching an episode of the X-Files featuring the Black Oil (go watch the show if you don't know what I'm talking about I am not about to spoil it) when the idea game to me for an Alien Virus game mode.

The Alien Virus mode would work similarly to a revolution; you start the game with several "carrier" players whose job it is to infect others with an Alien Mind Control Virus. Once infected, those players serve the carrier players, but cannot infect people themselves. Much like in revolution, the carrier players can be given specific goals to carry out (must infect x person, only infected can be on the escape shuttle, etc).

The advantage to this over revolution is that you have a way to verify if someone is bad or not: they will have a detectable virus in them if they are. Ideally there will be several ways to detect the virus, such as being able to detect it both through some medical equipment and through some chemical reaction or something. It's also possible a chemical or virus-based weapon could be built which only harms people with the virus in their system.

I don't know how hard it would be to implement something like this, but I hope that you'll at least consider this suggestion as a way to bring Revolution back without turning it into a grief party.

[Nurdock]

This sounds a bit like the cult gamemode other servers have, and unfortunately 9 times out of 10 that turns into a deathmatch too. With some careful tweaking it may work, but I wouldn't count on it.

[misto]

it sounds like a decent notion for a re-skinning of rev i guess, and its good that it uses an alternative conversion method to flashes, since hearing those suckers going off at round start used to be the biggest clue-in that some shit was up in the old days

but its kind of treading on the changeling's thing-ripoff toes, and may still suffer from the old problem with aliens/zombies that bored/bloodthirsty crew might basically volunteer themselves for conversion when the mode is based on the assumption that there would at least be some resistance

how do you envision the conversion process working? if it is too fast and quiet, it may be too simple to corrupt the crew, like changelings who make new changelings every time they give someone the suck. if its transmitted by feeding or injecting someone with some stuff, well, thats really easy, people pick up and eat/swallow/shoot up crap they find lying around all the time, especially in the bar. --> suggestion for this part: there should be noticeable, unpleasant symptoms, giving crew time and reason to run for medbay and try to get cured/try to deduce who is responsible for infecting them.

how do you envision detection and de-conversion efforts working? even in rev the minion players could have the brainwashing beaten out of them, even though in practice nobody gave a shit and everyone would wind up beaten to death anyway. --> suggestion for this part: give security and medical some cure shit they can inject ppl with, or jam into tranq-rifles and riot launchers if things get really bad. the originator crewmembers will of course be immune to the cure shit and can slink away to develop immunity and try again. converted crewmembers should have a small chance to resist its effects as well. pathology can then manufacture the next generation of cure shit, giving pathology a use/making it a target.

how will you make being infected not necessarily a completely attractive excuse to go wild and start shanking, making people line up to volunteer? this is probably the most difficult part! will being infected make you puke up gross goop and periodically sneeze and cough? people dont usually shy away from being turned into weird gross shit, so thats not promising. maybe it could cause the crewman to have a suddenly limited lifespan, like a mindslave implant with a guaranteed terminating function built in? after 15 minutes without being forcibly cured, theyll start to die out and probably burst into goop. if this proves to be too limiting, maybe the rev-head originator crewmen could have an ability to give them lifespan renewals. this is an intentionally unattractive limitation, and may help your average greysuit think twice before volunteering to be infected.

hmm.

maybe "the stuff" could be an alright source of inspiration?

[KikiMofo]

To be honest I like the very rare deathmatch that rev and spy mode gave. It gave the crew a time to let off steam so that way they could go back to not murdering each other horribly in other rounds. So I approve of any game mode that would help with bringing something like that back as long as it only happens very rarely. Like 4 or 5 times a day.

[Grek]

As far as making it something that people won't volunteer for, why not make the disease lethal? After 10 minutes of being infected, you explode into gibs.

[Vitatroll]

Rev had tons of problems. The main problem is it's creator didn't account for people getting flashed on purpose. This is a problem any mob-creation round is gonna have. Another major problem lies in the end-goal; if it's too easy for a mob to accomplish (like killing all heads, or anything really) then the round is gonna be predictable and boring.

Basically what I'm saying is that this needs to be elaborated on. I mean, "a way to bring Revolution back without turning it into a grief party" is hard to accomplish when Rev was practically designed to be a grief party. Most people who want Rev back want it for that exact reason, generally. In that case we might as well ditch the Rev pretense and start fresh with an eye towards balance of power between groups.

[misto]

perhaps the ai and borgs could have secret NT quarantine protocols that kick in in this game mode, producing a "third side" to the conflict. then again lazy ais and borgs could spill the beans on what gamemode it is if these protocols kick in too early.

well it'd be more like 2 and a half sides since the ais should ideally still try to help the uninfected win and exterminate the infected, but blocking early escape attempts by trying to only allow escape if all survivors test clean. but that might be a recipe for nasty dragged-out rounds under current circumstances

maybe itd be best to leave quarantine/emergency law rewriting for players to do

[Fishanchips]

This sounds like it could be a good thing if it was very carefully handled. The gibbing thing sounds like a good measure, but maybe more is needed.

[misto]

i have a hard time thinking of a tradeoff harsher for the infectee than a suddenly limited lifespan followed by probable permadeath via gibbing. the gibs should probably have a chance to infect people splattered by them, turning players into not just minions, but also bio-cruise missiles. this will also give the janitor a chance to shine and be a hero.

coming up with an infection vector that hasnt been done before, or which isnt too simple and easy, is the hardest part in my mind. the vampire already has a brainwashing ability, so we dont want something too similar to that. the ling and vamp already hold most of the moves that would be good for this sort of thing, and it would be lame to just steal them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sklqvDSGjCA

maybe the "patient zero" players don't really need special moves at all. a little bit of creativity and they can still easily infect tons of ppl, if its delivered via reagent. a barman, a chef, a medic, a chemist, players have tons of ways to deliver bad shit into each other. but even then it sounds too easy, people eat, drink, swallow and inject tons of shit without a second thought. i guess the risk only comes into play when they start feeling symptoms and start pointing fingers at patient zero while mobbing medbay looking for cures before theyre converted. however, this idea also has an additional downside, in that the patient zero players will need at least an ability to produce their infecting reagent into a container... and that can conjure up kind of unpleasant, gross imagery

trying to come up with original and interesting mechanics for infection and transmission, and how the crew could counteract the infection and combat/cure the infected minions, is challenging.

maybe the originator players could power up kind of like the blob does, upgrading the infection thru disease phases, less noticeable symptoms, faster conversion rate, longer minion lifespan, more infectious minion gibs, resistance to antibiotics, eventually becoming airborne, etc. their upgrade points should obviously be linked to how many ppl theyve infected, to reflect the disease becoming more robust as it encounters and conquers new immune systems.

[hellolion]

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.

[misto]

martian bodysnatchers, huh? kind of like a nuke ops team, but with takeover in mind rather than destruction? thats a cool alternative, and less gross. its more akin to the usual mindslave implanting mechanic than an infection, but whatever.

i think there is already a pod attachment/part lying around somewhere in the game that enables beaming ppl up and abducting them.

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.

maybe it could just generally reduce max health and stamina caps, and lessen the host's max blood supply due to its parasitic nature, rather than anything as complicated and situational as causing hemophilia and addictions and the sniffles.

but the fact still stands that since they've been handed an honorary antag-card, some ppl will inevitably get bloodthirsty, although they may make some token effort to drag their dying victims somewhere for their alien masters to pick up and brainwash.

[atomic1fire]

Give the Virevs an instant suicide button that makes them self gib.

I want to be a human cruise missile, speeding on a stolen segway into a crowd of unsuspecting crewmen.

[Grek]

Give the Virevs an instant suicide button that makes them self gib.

I want to be a human cruise missile, speeding on a stolen segway into a crowd of unsuspecting crewmen.

No. Give the alien controllers a button that makes the virev explode. Is one if your minions being shitty and unsubtle? Explode him early!