Vampire tracker

[imatsoup]

Getting a fun event ready for the spooky season. Here's an issue to track all of the things that needs to get done before we can allow it into the wild (a minimum viable product if you will). Everything in this list is subject to change and discussion is encouraged:

• [] Objectives - Currently they only need to survive. Ideas for suitable objectives could include borrowing generic kill objectives, having objectives to feed a certain amount or on specific people. Will likely be easier to envision when we work out what a Vampire should be able to do and how they can do it.
• [] Abilities - Below are a couple that have been discussed that I believe don't require any sort of extra animation, sprites, artwork etc
  • The ability to feed upon their fellow spessmen, which should probably only work when the target is incapacitated.
    • With this they may need an ability that lets them easily incapacitate lone spessmen, something like Hypnotize from 13.
  • The ability to have thralls, probably no more than one at a time to avoid too much similarity to revolutionaries. Could recruit a dying or critical crew member through an action, and could probably be cured through a mind-shield like revolutionaries. Maybe make being a thrall something that can be opted-into and have an ability that can check if the target is available to recruit to scout out potential evil minions?
  • The ability to shapeshift into a form to get through airlocks, windows, and generally be evasive. I believe in 13 this was a bat form, which would be appropriate, though if we go that route we probably need to change Remalia to let them slip under airlocks and such as well.
• [] Blood should probably have a healing effect on them or some other unique interaction. One individual suggested they use blood like mana for their abilities, ala Revenant with their essence.
• [] They should probably have some sort of inherent resistances and weaknesses apart from their species weaknesses by virtue of being an undead monster. For gameplay reasons (and honestly to help combat metagaming), I'd be against making them space immune/not need to breathe even if it would make some in-world sense.
• [] They should probably have some interactions with the chaplain - I like the idea of holy water being toxic to them/damaging them when they get splashed

[arenaconspiracy]

Having a magica bar in the form of blood sounds good. It should probably be tied to a drain action on humanoids instead of just blood reagents; avoiding roundstart BloodBathVariationPass puddles being Free Power, bypassing the need to either add a datafield to blood reagents or hardcode accepted reagents, and bypassing blood being toxic to most metabolizer groups.

[arenaconspiracy]

A drain/feed action could probably use target validation by checking for HumanoidAppearanceComponent and BloodstreamComponent at the same time? Making vamps unable to feed on station pets/mice in maints, or skeletons who have no blood by virtue of being skeletonized.
Imagining it I immediately thought of a repeating action with like a 0.7 second doafter. Like ninja transformer sapping but with mobs.
Feeding should probably deal direct bloodloss damage (something small like 0.5) and remove a bit of blood reagent from the mob's solutions, but I don't know how the latter would interact with the soon-to-be metabolizing bloodstream PR upstream (space-wizards#35071) though I think that has some form of blood reagent check for charcoal purposes.

[arenaconspiracy]

Instead of abilities being unlocked through a store (like revenants (boring)) they could have set unlocks through 2 different methods. One unlock path for overall blood consumed (successful drain actions) and one for maximum amount of blood/magica/score/whatever accrued.
Ergo, you unlock 2 different abilities for having drained 15 blood total, and having 15 blood currently stocked up. So you grow in power both for Doing Your Thing and for rationing your use of abilities.
Though this system may or may not encourage round stalling / being boring so if it proves to suck ass in gameplay we can just use a normal store.

Can't decide if it's better to call the score or power meter whatever "blood" (slime and sap exist) "magica" (i've been playing morrowind (big mistake) and isn't that word in particular trademarked?) or "power" (snore. surely there's a more interesting name)

[imatsoup]

Instead of abilities being unlocked through a store (like revenants (boring)) they could have set unlocks through 2 different methods. One unlock path for overall blood consumed (successful drain actions) and one for maximum amount of blood/magica/score/whatever accrued. Ergo, you unlock 2 different abilities for having drained 15 blood total, and having 15 blood currently stocked up. So you grow in power both for Doing Your Thing and for rationing your use of abilities. Though this system may or may not encourage round stalling / being boring so if it proves to suck ass in gameplay we can just use a normal store.

I like this suggestion a lot actually as something that can differentiate it from the Other Undead Monster that Feed On People

Can't decide if it's better to call the score or power meter whatever "blood" (slime and sap exist) "magica" (i've been playing morrowind (big mistake) and isn't that word in particular trademarked?) or "power" (snore. surely there's a more interesting name)

Vampre the Masquerade used 'vitae' I think. We could just steal that term. Sounds vaguely vampire-y

[imatsoup]

A drain/feed action could probably use target validation by checking for HumanoidAppearanceComponent and BloodstreamComponent at the same time? Making vamps unable to feed on station pets/mice in maints, or skeletons who have no blood by virtue of being skeletonized. Imagining it I immediately thought of a repeating action with like a 0.7 second doafter. Like ninja transformer sapping but with mobs. Feeding should probably deal direct bloodloss damage (something small like 0.5) and remove a bit of blood reagent from the mob's solutions, but I don't know how the latter would interact with the soon-to-be metabolizing bloodstream PR upstream (space-wizards#35071) though I think that has some form of blood reagent check for charcoal purposes.

Also seems like a good suggestion, it is rather unfortunate that the metabolizing bloodstream pr happened right when we were going to start working on an antagonist that cares about blood lol. I also want to consider the implications of someone just uh, kidnapping a player and feeding on them repeatedly. Maybe if the target gets crit or killed by it you can't target them with the feed action again for a while through some component on the victim?

[arenaconspiracy]

I FUCKING LOVE METABOLIZING BLOODSTREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The solution to the repeated feeding thing is probably to have draining remove a significant amount of blood reagent (ergo 5 per tick) & instakill the target once their blood volume drops below a certain threshold (ergo 250 / 300 (enough to drain 10 times) (if someone is already below that threshold through bleeding wounds i guess they just? die? jank)) (saline might blow a hole in this solution)
We can make vampires not ingest unrelated reagents from targets because something something advanced bloodsucking techniques / sanguine magics filter the bloodstream also avoids having to do a bit of math to convert blood into vitae which can get annoying

[arenaconspiracy]

(ergo 5 per tick) [...] (ergo 250/300)

Could toy with the numbers here to make feeding both more lethal & less rewarding & harder to combo with saline & avoid having bled out being instakill vamp denial.

15 per drain -> 150/300 threshold
10 feedings on a perfectly healthy target & assuming 0.5 doafter that's 30 seconds to kill someone

currently 1 unit of saline adds 12 units of blood in 2 seconds which feeding should theoretically outpace (it's very very late here it's getting hard to think) and it will be less effective once metabolizing bloodstream drops

[arenaconspiracy]

I think in terms of abilities, vampires should start out as stealth antags with the gradual unlocks allowing both continuing via stealth and going loud(er).
Also I think it's funnier if the vampirism is less like the classical Ancient Undead variety less like Those Feratus, and more like just a side thing like lycanthropy is i guess, the same way one is a traitor or a thief, hence vamps on station starting basically from square zero.

Also I find the mental image of a vampire starting out by beating the shit out of people with baseball bats very funny :godo:
Ergo they can't / don't rely entirely on their powers in the beginning. Beating people with a baseball bat is a perfectly servicable way to get vitae, the same way beating people with a baseball bat is a perfectly servicable way to Kill And Maroon.

[arenaconspiracy]

As for objectives, I'm not sure how "feed on specific person" could reasonably be justified in character, nor kill specific person. Because with traitors it's The Syndicate That Wants Them Dead, and who knows what the syndicate thinks? The traitor character doesn't need to know the target character because it's Nothing Personnel, Kid. Vampires inherently knowing "this guy tastes good" or "this guy should stay dead" is hard to justify without a xenonid like hivemind or something which just, i won't go there right now.

"get [random number 1] of vitae total" and "stock up [random number 2] vitae at once" could work for encouraging progression, the latter would probably need logic for being Done Forever after you hit the required number and drop back down through using magic, and I doubt this sort of behavior is currently defined in the game.
"feed on [random number 3] distinct people" is good for driving conflict, because if the vamp has to feed on 15 of the 40 crew to greentext, 'well, someone is ought to catch on eventually, right?', the number should probably scale dynamically with the population count (pop / ratio + rand / ratio)

[arenaconspiracy]

I'm not sure how to feel about thralls as a mechanic, probably because i'm not in a state to think about thralls at this hour of the night; but I would probably strive to omit the concept from the MVP because That's Extra Design Work and is subject to the classic Conversion Antagonist Folly.
Also i'm having ideas in my head on what a minor antag vampire is/could/should be and the quasi-lore on Space Vampire Phenomenon and thralls work in neither of those contexts 👎 I'm eager to hear what you think though.

[imatsoup]

I'm not sure how to feel about thralls as a mechanic, probably because i'm not in a state to think about thralls at this hour of the night; but I would probably strive to omit the concept from the MVP because That's Extra Design Work and is subject to the classic Conversion Antagonist Folly. Also i'm having ideas in my head on what a minor antag vampire is/could/should be and the quasi-lore on Space Vampire Phenomenon and thralls work in neither of those contexts 👎 I'm eager to hear what you think though.

eh, vampires having minions is a thing that vampires do and its an idea. I am curious what specific Conversion Antagonist Folly you mean, but maybe we should wait until you are more awake

[arenaconspiracy]

Also, how would multiple vampires interact? Should they be incentivised to cooperate? Compete? Care at all?

Once again comes the mental image of a vampire mafia going around beating the shit out of people with baseball bats. Together.

[imatsoup]

Also, how would multiple vampires interact? Should they be incentivised to cooperate? Compete? Care at all?

Once again comes the mental image of a vampire mafia going around beating the shit out of people with baseball bats. Together.

i think them being open ended solo antagonists is a good thing. sorta lets them go either way depending on how things are going.

[imatsoup]

As for objectives, I'm not sure how "feed on specific person" could reasonably be justified in character, nor kill specific person. Because with traitors it's The Syndicate That Wants Them Dead, and who knows what the syndicate thinks? The traitor character doesn't need to know the target character because it's Nothing Personnel, Kid. Vampires inherently knowing "this guy tastes good" or "this guy should stay dead" is hard to justify without a xenonid like hivemind or something which just, i won't go there right now.

Yeah, this does tie more into the 'lore' behind vampires in the setting than I initially thought. I was more thinking about how sometimes vampires in different settings have a preference for who they snack on. Could be changed to like, 'Feed on specific Head of Staff' to drive more conflict and make More sense (higher class = richer = tastier blood or some shit). Something like a kill objective or more targeted objectives ala traitor again depend on the underlying lore, like if there are vampire clans or organizations of some kind that might give them some kind of mission ala Vtmb. If we're going with lore thats more on the side of a random space curse, genetic experimentation gone wrong, or etc, then yeah those objectives wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Obviously whatever the 'lore' of vampire is doesn't matter a whole lot outside of these design considerations, cause the player in round is probably just going to do their own thing regardless.

"get [random number 1] of vitae total" and "stock up [random number 2] vitae at once" could work for encouraging progression, the latter would probably need logic for being Done Forever after you hit the required number and drop back down through using magic, and I doubt this sort of behavior is currently defined in the game. "feed on [random number 3] distinct people" is good for driving conflict, because if the vamp has to feed on 15 of the 40 crew to greentext, 'well, someone is ought to catch on eventually, right?', the number should probably scale dynamically with the population count (pop / ratio + rand / ratio)

I think the only issue with driving the number up that high is you may run into an issue of the vampire being tempted to 'go loud' earlier rather than try to maintain their cover for as long as possible in order to meet the high demand. That is probably something that can be designed around though. Tweaking the ratio and the abilities of the creature to emphasize picking off lone crewmembers in the darkness of maints.