Dead Body Overhaul

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and have slowly been fleshing it out…kinda.

The only dead bodies seen around are either scientists, soldiers or drug-dealers. While this is an interesting feature, it seems rather bland and boring.
Here is an excellent chance to put in some lore, flavor and even better loot spawns, but it isn’t capitalized! We should expand upon the bodies found, adding in new “types”. Instead of a wall of text, I’ll split my ideas into three categories: “Scientists/Medical”, “Military/Par-Military” and “Civilian”.

Scientists/Medical:

[ul][li]CDC Personnel: Emergency handlers of the Center for Disease Control, wearing HAZMAT suits and containing medical supplies, especially virus related medicinal. Usually found in groups of 3-4. Special equipment: CDC badge [/li]
[li]Paramedics: Ambulance drivers and first responders, wearing black khakis and a medic shirt. Carrying med kits, only spawn in groups of 2. Special Equipment: Medic shirt. [/li]
[li]Government Scientist: Very much the same as the normal scientist spawn, but with less medical equipment. Special Equipment: scientist card. [/li][/ul]

Military/Para-Military:

[ul][li]National Guard Soldiers: A squad of Army National Guard soldiers from a nearby unit. They wear ACU uniforms and carry basic assault rifles. Were the first deployed during the cataclysm and don’t carry much equipment. Spawn in groups of 3-6 [/li]
[li]Army CBRN:Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Specialist from the Army. They wear ACU uniforms and gas masks, wield basic assault rifles and carry scientific equipment like Geiger counters. Spawn in groups of 2-4 [/li]
[li]Army Special Forces: Advanced Army soldiers sent in specifically to combat the cataclysm. Outfitted with MARPART uniforms, kevlar vests, rucksacks and other military gear. Wielding advanced assault rifles with attachments. Low chance of medical supplies. Spawn in groups of 1-4 [/li]
[li]Police: City and town police wearing police uniforms and carrying a sidearm. Spawn in groups of 2-4 [/li][/ul]

Civilian:

[ul][li]Family: A family that tried to run away, probably got gunned down. Normal civilian items, sometimes a child corpse. Spawn in groups of 3-5[/li]
[li]Lone Survivor: A single person who tried to hold his own, didn’t make it. Carrying misc survivor gear, most might have been looted. Has a sidearm or melee weapon. Spawns in groups of 1.[/li]
[li]Redneck Rambos’: “Hey Earl, I saw we get our buddies together, get our shotguns and try and fight off them there zombies!” - Nuff said. Spawns in groups of 3-5[/li][/ul]

I’ll add more as I think of them. If this idea is liked enough, I will work on it personally.

Overall I want to add more flavor, depth and kind of paint a story of what happened during the first day of the cataclysm. I also want to add in a new collection and rare spawn system. Like the medic shirt, it would only be able to be found in certain places, or like the CDC card which might have a use later down the line.

Ideas/suggestions/feedback?

2

+1

3

Strictly paramedics & first responders? They can go 4-deep in the actual ambulance, at least in volunteer organizations. Driver, EMT & 2 crewmembers.
Families should be 2-5 if they only ‘sometimes’ include a child corpse. (‘children’ wear bras, which doesn’t leave much room for 3+ adult families)

4

wouldn’t this be anti-canon? i mean, people die + being exposed to stuff = zombies, not fresh bodies :slight_smile:
Scientists and military are exceptions, because they had access to the anti-stuff thingie ( very scientific descriptions here, you may not be qualified to understand them :P). That’s why i wonder about the drugs carrier i find from time to time, weren’t they exposed also? Or maybe they were passing through the area and they didn’t. But extending the list of exception would tax the core canon and the suspension of disbelief.

5

+1 (sort of). I do agree that we should have more bodies and random stuff to come across, like a campervan in the middle of nowhere with a few dead bodies in it. As Ferodaktyl says, this is kinda anti-canon, but we could justify it by saying that people outside of major areas hadn’t been slimed yet (this would require a way to make sure that these random occurrences appeared outside of major zones).

One of the big problems with these are that they’re pretty much just loads of free loot. This is fine occasionally, but all of the groups you’ve listed are really high value, and having them scattered about might be a bit too generous.

6

I agree with more corpses beside scientist/military/drug dealer, maybe not much, essentially they should be “fresh” since old and goo-infected corpses would have turned into zombies.

7

I’ve been working under the canon that if a person wasn’t killed by the black goo then they don’t come back as zombies.

And it’s not a “loot fest”, the current body spawns are loot fests. It’s not like you’re going to go into a city and find every single new spawn lol. They’ll be under the frequency of the current body spawns, and most of the proposed new ones have less loot, anyways.

8

as long as you sort how and when dead people revive or not as zombies, i am fine with more diversity. Loot is not a problem, since it can be reduced or increased from the menu option.
One of the most exciting finds i’ve ever had in Cata (only once though) was a survivor map. Damn, was i happy :). On the other hand, i think now there are too many military/scientists/drug dealers spawns overall.

9

Lore nitpick: if you died whilst having a critical mass of goo in your system, it’ll rez you provided that there’s enough left to rez. Exact method of death doesn’t matter, unless it gibs you or something destructive on that scale. Pulping, butchering, burning, etc fix that “enough left” problem.

As for the critical mass, it’s an absolute quantity. Roughly 30% of human mass, distributed throughout the body, and (mostly) doesn’t affect bodily functioning. Most folks hit critical mass from drinking contaminated groundwater; corpse-spawns that didn’t rez managed to be on pre-Cata bottled water, distilled water, or otherwise kept insulated from the Blob.

10

Great idea +1 all

11

So, either you guys are saying that my understanding of the lore is wrong and the fact that there are already human corpses in the game is anti-canon…or…

Cause’ I’ve been working under the impression that if you weren’t killed by the goo, you don’t reanimate.

12

Yep. Critical mass, drug dealers are anti-canon.

13

Or perhaps they’ve been on prepackaged stuff (cola, etc) since the Blob got into the groundwater. It’s not healthy to stay on that stuff long-term but it can happen.

(And you might notice special zeds at corpse piles? Those are the folks who did drink the water.)

14

The way it works is:

1) Life form drinks goo-infested water/gets goo in them some other way
2) Goo reaches a critical threshold based on body mass (this has a few other exceptions on very small things, like insects)
3) When life form dies of anything (assuming the body isn’t extremely damaged), then the goo revives it

15

I think my idea is within canon and lore because not literately every single person is going to drink infested water.

Take into account the amount of water supplies that aren’t going to get contaminated: bottled water, contained water sources (military water tanks used in deployments and operations) and other things of those effects.

Of course there are going to be people who didn’t get infect; there are going to be bodies that weren’t infected when they died. My idea is bringing out those people.

16

If I drank a bunch of pre-packaged juice or water or what have you, and then sucked down some tapwater but didn’t reach that critical mass somehow, would I then be goo-tainted but not enough to reanimate? Because that seems a possibility too. Not sure how you’d distinguish that ingame.

17

[quote=“Clayton, post:15, topic:4692”]I think my idea is within canon and lore because not literately every single person is going to drink infested water.

Take into account the amount of water supplies that aren’t going to get contaminated: bottled water, contained water sources (military water tanks used in deployments and operations) and other things of those effects.

Of course there are going to be people who didn’t get infect; there are going to be bodies that weren’t infected when they died. My idea is bringing out those people.[/quote]

Case in point - you are alive when you start the game.

I think it’s fair to say that a few people should have avoided it - a lot of people do just drink bottled water/stuff, and if you’ve only used tap water in cooking/washing then perhaps you wouldn’t have reached critical mass.

18

looks like a (much) better explanation is offered by GlyphGryph in his topic about official canon, on the Library section.
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=4160.0
in the third reply of the topic you can see the canon mechanism enabling zombification.
you will see there that it requires no less than 1 pound/organism to be able to raise again as a zombie.

The substance seems to multiply within the body until it reaches a certain point
. So, once infected, people will become zombies unless the have access to some cure (from my understanding, teleporting will remove infection, and purifier also).

with this in mind, adding new bodies to DDA shall be consistent with the lore or be available as a separate option for those not caring about the lore.

19

How would it not be consistent with the lore?

There are…already…dead…bodies…in…

I propose simply adding more variety to them.

20

Yeah… Did I say +1 yet?