Zombie Rules

[Oldman Robustin]

So as the only person who still coordinates to buy Romerol, I've noticed some issues popping up as people learn the zombie metagame:

1) Zombies waking up and immediately fleeing to medbay to beg for surgery

2) Zombies attacking other zombies out of spite and/or trying to win a human's favor so they can get someone to do surgery on them

3) Basically carrying on like nothing happened and avoiding any kind of hostility because zombies suck at 1v1 and with most of the zombies running to medbay for surgery you won't ever have the numbers to overwhelm people with weapons


I'm not a fan of any of these. #1 was rare at first so I didn't mind, but as people learned about the surgery cure it quickly became the default behavior for anyone important who got zombied against their will. It's pretty shitty when you use 40TC and manage to carefully ambush the HOS and zombify him just to have him sell you out on radio and immediately flee to surgery so they're back in perfect condition (literally faster than cloning) 60 seconds later.

I didn't refactor zombies or make Romerol but coders seem intent on keeping zombies useless, so I might not be able to rework them for these issues, until then it would help if we actually had a policy for how zombies are allowed to behave.

[Shaps-cloud]

Expecting players to waste time getting killed twice just to carry out the will of the person who killed them the first time was very naive

[PKPenguin321]

working opposite to your purpose as a zombie is pretty fuckin lame so i guess ahelp these things when you see them

[cedarbridge]

working opposite to your purpose as a zombie is pretty fuckin lame so i guess ahelp these things when you see them

They did and were told by several admins on at the time that zombies are not bound to their creators or their creator's will or intention. Especially since zombies don't always have a way of knowing their creator, but also because they're zombies. They're not owned or controlled creations based on any in-game notation. Its literally a disease spread through zombie contact instated by the antagonist. Don't play with zombies unless you're ok with getting eaten by your zombies.

[D&B]

I feel like the worst part in general is zombies attacking other zombies.

[Qbopper]

speaking from my epxerience as a player and not in the larger picture:

man I fucking hate zombies, they're so goddamn unfun - they could be enjoyable but with the way our playerbase is 9/10 times those experiences don't happen and I wouldn't mind zombies getting significant changes

point #1 is likely tied into how comically unfun zombies and romerol are

I could be in the minority here and if I am I won't fight this but my god do I ever hate zombies

[Dr_bee]

Remove their ability to talk to humans (possibly via a language that appears as moaning to non-zombies), give them a directive to infect non-zombies, treat them like a team antag.

Problem kinda solved I guess, they wont be slaved to their creator, but that is kind of the point. You start a zombie outbreak you take the risk of getting your brains eaten.

[cedarbridge]

Remove their ability to talk to humans (possibly via a language that appears as moaning to non-zombies), give them a directive to infect non-zombies, treat them like a team antag.

Problem kinda solved I guess, they wont be slaved to their creator, but that is kind of the point. You start a zombie outbreak you take the risk of getting your brains eaten.

This is easy as giving them a langauge during their time as a zombie and removing the zombie language when they lose their zombie state.

[Qbopper]

Remove their ability to talk to humans (possibly via a language that appears as moaning to non-zombies), give them a directive to infect non-zombies, treat them like a team antag.

Problem kinda solved I guess, they wont be slaved to their creator, but that is kind of the point. You start a zombie outbreak you take the risk of getting your brains eaten.

This is easy as giving them a langauge during their time as a zombie and removing the zombie language when they lose their zombie state.

based language system

this alone might make zombies more interesting imo, please PR

[Cobby]

I treat zombies [the ones with claws] as a conversion antag.

[cedarbridge]

I complained about it in a different thread, but this thread's main complaint goes both ways. Players regularly find zombies an excuse to self-antag because the only thing you have to do successfully is get attacked and die. This has lead to rounds where I've forcefully deconverted players, had them tell me to "fuck off" for the effort and immediately run back out to find a zombie to get reinfected.

Fuck zombies.

[Dr_bee]

I complained about it in a different thread, but this thread's main complaint goes both ways. Players regularly find zombies an excuse to self-antag because the only thing you have to do successfully is get attacked and die. This has lead to rounds where I've forcefully deconverted players, had them tell me to "fuck off" for the effort and immediately run back out to find a zombie to get reinfected.

Fuck zombies.

Did you adminhelp? I mean that is basically textbook rulebreaking.

[Jacough]

Wouldn't it make sense for zombies to have a goal telling them to kill and eat anyone who isn't a zombie since you know, that's generally what zombies do?

Remove their ability to talk to humans (possibly via a language that appears as moaning to non-zombies), give them a directive to infect non-zombies, treat them like a team antag.

Problem kinda solved I guess, they wont be slaved to their creator, but that is kind of the point. You start a zombie outbreak you take the risk of getting your brains eaten.

This is easy as giving them a langauge during their time as a zombie and removing the zombie language when they lose their zombie state.

Eh, as long as it sounds like moans and cries for brains to humans. The few times I managed to become an infectious zombie in the past I kind of enjoyed going around screaming "braaaaains" and "joooooin ussss" while stumbling after crew members.

[cedarbridge]

I complained about it in a different thread, but this thread's main complaint goes both ways. Players regularly find zombies an excuse to self-antag because the only thing you have to do successfully is get attacked and die. This has lead to rounds where I've forcefully deconverted players, had them tell me to "fuck off" for the effort and immediately run back out to find a zombie to get reinfected.

Fuck zombies.

Did you adminhelp? I mean that is basically textbook rulebreaking.

I don't remember. I just decapitated him and threw the head into space.

[kevinz000]

This is a code thing but it NEVER SHOULD OF BEEN MOVED FROM AN ADMIN EVENT TO AN IN GAME THING.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Yeah i watched that round you're referring to Robustin.

I sent out a ahelp and Cedar pretty much told me zombies could because they are not team-antagonist (???), the entire gimmick was completely fucking pointless if zombies are not compelled to cause chaos because somehow the meaning was lost on this server full of new non experienced players who didn't really recognize what their role was because its not implicitly put in text they are antag or authorised by overseeing administration. If it was zombie slime mutation gas i would understand, but this is the direct affect of Romerol, and im pretty sure zombies from experience of playing the simple animal have big chatbox red-text telling you have risen from the dead to feed on the flesh of the living.

The only person to actually 'die' was a geneticist monkey who got gibbed, everyone else just moaned, griefed a little but generally tried to act human and ignore the effects of romerol. Half the station were zombies but besides from being restless or occasionally attacking people, nobody was inconvenienced by it and all mass seeked out surgery.

> Ok fair enough robustin shouldn't have co-operated then and started eating the traitor dragging him around & feeding him opponents stunned with a ebow if you want to round it out. Full feral romerol zombie, as much a danger as a traitor as to anybody else ok.

- If this is the new attitude to zombies & romerol it should be removed because it makes a traitors life harder when the intended rare event of a zombie tide can't' occur, and killing people becomes irrelevant becausee hugboxxy attitudes in that you'll just rise again but actually sort of inconvenienced by the whole ordeal. (with a sweet revenge/griefing weapon you'll never use in its intended way)

[Atlanta-Ned]

This is a code thing but it NEVER SHOULD OF HAVE BEEN MOVED FROM AN ADMIN EVENT TO AN IN GAME THING.

[Aloraydrel]

zombies was a mistake

[Wyzack]

It feels like Romerol on the server has been a case study in why all the people who thought it was a shit idea in the first place are right

[bandit]

Zombies were a mistake and the only "rules" we need are to remove them.

[Nilons]

This sounds really lame tbh, there should be a lawset that says something to the effect of "don't immediately try to cure yourself" because who is this fun for, is it fun for the people who spend half the round waiting for/getting surgery? How about the traitor who worked his ass off to get the romerol in the first place? It's not fun for anyone. I'm not saying you should make zombies obey the traitor, but they should be forbidden from actively trying to cure themselves. It's like an emagged borg asking the RD to blow him except even gayer because then they just continue their round having hindered the traitor effortlessly. Or even having the crew be predisposed against them in some way, like it being risky to perform the surgery and no one would want to. Cosmic mentioned a really good way to motivate them to cause havoc, just make it so they get hungry really quickly and can only eat by grab intenting people.

[Cobby]

Make the disease only curable if they've recently turned someone :^)

[cedarbridge]

This sounds really lame tbh, there should be a lawset that says something to the effect of "don't immediately try to cure yourself" because who is this fun for, is it fun for the people who spend half the round waiting for/getting surgery? How about the traitor who worked his ass off to get the romerol in the first place? It's not fun for anyone. I'm not saying you should make zombies obey the traitor, but they should be forbidden from actively trying to cure themselves. It's like an emagged borg asking the RD to blow him except even gayer because then they just continue their round having hindered the traitor effortlessly. Or even having the crew be predisposed against them in some way, like it being risky to perform the surgery and no one would want to. Cosmic mentioned a really good way to motivate them to cause havoc, just make it so they get hungry really quickly and can only eat by grab intenting people.

Crew are already predisposed against curing zombies.
1) The zombie might just decide to infect you too.
2) It involves going to fight the zombie in the first place
3) It require surgery which many players just don't do anyway.
4) I means less times you get to click on a prone body until dismemberment happens

There's only a dedicated few players I've seen actively go out of their way to try to cure zombie epidemics.

[FantasticFwoosh]

> Romerol zombies (specifically infected real zombies, not fake racechange mutant halloween or xenobio zombies with human hands) having free will of choice to not be antagonists

> Zombies are expected to be hostile since you're going to fight it, not form a support group to crowdfund surgery during this difficult time of un-death.

Because you're meant to strap the zombie down to do it to stop it mauling you hence its a risky maneuver. Literally what is this this you're saying.

[cedarbridge]

Fwoosh, I think your posts would be more coherent if you used sentences instead of incorrectly using meme arrows.

[Slignerd]

> Expecting Fwoosh to use meme arrows correctly

That being said, I think zombies should generally be hostile to the living and infect them to create more zombies.

[FantasticFwoosh]

>> Fwoosh, I think your posts would be more coherent if you used sentences instead of incorrectly using meme arrows. <<

Is what i think to petty grammar scapegoating to throw away a response lol.

> Expecting Fwoosh to use meme arrows correctly

That being said, I think zombies should generally be hostile to the living and infect them to create more zombies.

The simple animals in their purest form used to have a simple directionary bit of text when they have spawned, why not just adopt something similar to free-golem & slaved golems in distinction with different rules to act, follow the direction of the zombie who bit you etc.

[Screemonster]

Immediately running to medbay to get cured, or immediately running to the zombies to get zombied again after being cured, should be treated exactly the same as cultists/revs/gangs who immediately charge to sec to get deconverted, or deconverted crewmembers who run back to the cultists/revs/gangs to beg for their loyalty implant to be taken out.

[Oldman Robustin]

Letting Coiax turn zombies into humans was the biggest mistake. I preferred my zombies (not to be confused with the oldest zombie form which instantly converted anyone crit and moved at full speed) because while you were still slower and vulnerable to range damage, stun immunity meant that nobody wanted to go toe-to-toe unless they had armor and a strong melee weapon. This fit my "zombie lore" and was relatively balanced. If zombies got momentum they could overtake undefended areas like medbay but would struggle against chokepoints where the crew could get access to weapons.

Making zombies into slow humans with harmhands made them too much of a joke. This has created the outcome where theres no fun in being a zombie since you now lose to everything on the station that isn't a complete moron, and recruiting only complete morons into your ranks doesn't really do anything to help you beat competent foes.

I'll probably revisit Romerol zombies and bring them closer to where I left them. I'll make them squishier, stun immune, and make their instructions clear. I don't think removing communications is even a decent solution since zombies saying stupid shit on radio is hilarious and removing it wont even solve the problem. Instead of verbally begging for surgery the metagame will adjust and people will do stuff like lie down outside medbay, to signal they want to be deconverted. Giving them explicit instructions to hunt the living is the best solution.

Zombies have so much potential. There's already been so many bastardized attempts at a non-human conversion antag but they all fall victim to poor balancing and bad changes. I've seen some fantastic zombie rounds but it was only for a brief period last year when zombies were formidable foes but weren't being brought in from mining like 25% of rounds.

[FantasticFwoosh]

I like carbon romerol zombies but they aren't laden enough with features. (partially due to the now passing code freeze, and xeniobio slime zombies are civilised) To contest your point and we have other direction driven carbon mobs like ashwalkers who are fully valid antagonists with instructions they can atleast follow & are given the general rule that if you grief your own role then that's ahelpable even if nothing else regarding your role is. Stops zombie detrimental (getting cured) or zombie on zombie combat.

Give em features, some big bold text expressing they are free antag and let em rip. I mean this zombie issue is actually partially rooted in a current player issue, as many of the people playing your round Robustin were new and weren't even aware they were going to transition into zombies. Being able to cut simple animal zombies into chunks permanently removed them from the round despite being strong, surgically operating the tumour out though is a more intuitive way of doing it & doesn't cheapen Romerols effects into carrying a riot shield & a high force edged weapon to mass butcher a zombietide.

[PKPenguin321]

working opposite to your purpose as a zombie is pretty fuckin lame so i guess ahelp these things when you see them

They did and were told by several admins on at the time that zombies are not bound to their creators or their creator's will or intention. Especially since zombies don't always have a way of knowing their creator, but also because they're zombies. They're not owned or controlled creations based on any in-game notation. Its literally a disease spread through zombie contact instated by the antagonist. Don't play with zombies unless you're ok with getting eaten by your zombies.

Yeah but this thread is about zombies killing other zombies or just not doing anything even remotely antagonistic and getting deliberately cured as soon as they wake up as a zombie

[PKPenguin321]

I treat zombies [the ones with claws] as a conversion antag.

this basically, if you wouldn't go out of your way to kill fellow revs and get loyalty implanted as a rev, you wouldn't go around trying to get cured and killing fellow zombies.

like i said, ahelp this where you see it. other headmins can post here despite the lock or even unlock if both of them disagree.