Experimental Features: Zombie slave derail

Game Talk The Bunker
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Yes.

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Now all we have to do is make a zombie motor. Giant hamster wheel maybe?

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Do you still need to have the psycopath trait to create one?

That seemed like a good tradeoff for a zombie backpack. Or if thats no longer the case, do you need to pass a certain milestone before attempting it? I mean having it just skill dpendent sounds kinda easy considering that you can have (completely safe?) infinite storage space following you around town.

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Limitations:
There’s a super heavy morale penalty at the moment unless you’re a psychopath or similar.
It has very high skill requirements (firstaid 2, survival 2 to even try, about 5/5 for it to be reliable with even a regular zombie)
Failure by a little bit means the zombie gets back up and is hostile. (on the usual schedule, not faster)
It’s a fairly high time investment.
I was considering having it consume more materials. (thread or wire for stitching, charges for cauterization)
The zombie is slower than you, so you have to worry about losing it. (due to a technical issue, losing it means losing it forever, though surprisingly it does follow you up and down stairs correctly, go figure.)

I really didn’t like the “psychopath only” limitation, it just further reinforces psychopath as a super good trait to have.

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Its like a crafting recipe that requires a neutral or better mood then? And I do think having some extra materials could be a good change.

Anyhow I think something should happen if the zombie slave sees normal zombies near it, perhaps have it create a lot of sound or have it attempt to tackle you. I think that would make some sense plotwise, and would make them unfit if you are attempting to do sneaky night looting.

I really do think that there should be some risk to having these guys following you around.

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[quote=“John Candlebury, post:25, topic:6900”]Its like a crafting recipe that requires a neutral or better mood then? And I do think having some extra materials could be a good change.

Anyhow I think something should happen if the zombie slave sees normal zombies near it, perhaps have it create a lot of sound or have it attempt to tackle you. I think that would make some sense plotwise, and would make them unfit if you are attempting to do sneaky night looting.

I really do think that there should be some risk to having these guys following you around.[/quote]

Concur re cauterization/charges and having 'em make noise if they see zeds. Might be annoying to code, but both do make sense. (Might not be a LOT of noise depending on the modifications, but they could certainly walk Noisily (noise 10) if they saw other zeds.)

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If they had the tiniest shred of intelligence, I’d agree, but they don’t. I’m planning on adding random vocalizations to most if not all zombies so they naturally attract each other when tracking something, but it would be well within the bounds of the process to silence that as well.

From a game design point of view, I don’t like going out of our way to turn things that look like benefits into a poison pill. Having these guys develop noise making capability, but ONLY if they are under the player’s control definitely crosses that line IMO. OTOH if they had that capability already, then it’s something the player would reasonably account for.

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[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:27, topic:6900”]If they had the tiniest shred of intelligence, I’d agree, but they don’t. I’m planning on adding random vocalizations to most if not all zombies so they naturally attract each other when tracking something, but it would be well within the bounds of the process to silence that as well.

From a game design point of view, I don’t like going out of our way to turn things that look like benefits into a poison pill. Having these guys develop noise making capability, but ONLY if they are under the player’s control definitely crosses that line IMO. OTOH if they had that capability already, then it’s something the player would reasonably account for.[/quote]

OK, not intelligent enough to signal others. Fair enough.

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Am I seriously the only one who sees how this can be kind of weird and creepy?

e: Like I want to treat it seriously, and it’s a cool idea but the whole thing seems off in a way that’s very hard to explain.

e2: I also have issues with the concept, but whatever I can’t tell other people how to play their game, I can at least have it so when I play, people aren’t going “Is that a craft slave command?”

“No, see it’s a zombie and I make him into a walking suitcase.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“No it’s different honest!”

e3: You just want to cut a persons arms off, call them a slave and tie a pretty leash with a jingly bell on them.
Not creepy or fetishistic at all.

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The bell thing is what one person wants, not all of us. And I highly suggest you don’t play Cata in front of people, in any case.

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I liked the bell idea.

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Is there a reason we can’t throw a backpack on a dog?

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[quote=“Turtlicious, post:29, topic:6900”]“Is that a craft slave command?”

“No, see it’s a zombie and I make him into a walking suitcase.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“No it’s different honest!”[/quote]

No, that’s not how anyone sane would respond. Stop using strawmen.

“Is that a craft slave command?”

“Yeah. You turn the zombie into a walking storage container. Kinda creepy- it’ll make your morale drop.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“You play video games where you massacre hundreds of people and think it’s justified. And these aren’t living human slaves, even- and if they were, this is an adult game. You don’t see (sensible) people harping on books about the history of slavery, because they’re presenting it in an unbiased light. This does too. It drops your morale and it’s a pretty horrible thing, but it’s a legitimate strategy in-game.”

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I do think, from a mechanical perspective, there needs to be some risk involved at some point. The whole point of the substance infecting the zombie is that it’s adaptive - hence the mutant zombies.

Eventually, your pack-zombie should have a chance, perhaps situational, of escape.

Can Zombie Masters mutate pack zombies into other zombie types? That might be enough on it’s own. Maybe also have the pack-zombie have a chance of developing adaptations every day, a quick low-skill maintenance task will keep it in line but if you neglect it for several days or aren’t around to respond to and suppress some particularly nasty attempt at a mutation, it works around the limitations.

Hopefully the logic here will allow players to use more traditional pack animals and even pack robots as well.

It is a bit weird that we’d be getting these before we get those, don’t you think?

If we add those options as well, I’d prefer it keep the “psychopath only” limitation or at least a severe morale hit for non psychopaths. It’s a pretty messed up thing to do no matter how you slice it.

(Also, I imagine requiring materials, perhaps wire and lots of metal bits to stick into various bits of the body and brain to prevent healing, should definitely be required)

Basically, it should the “desperation” pack-animal, unless you’re a skilled psychopath in which case it might be the first choice. But different characters will still have perfectly valid choices. Animal Empaths would have an easier time acquiring pack animals, robotics knowledge characters could build themselves a pack-animal follower, etc. and so on. Having limitations coupled with alternatives is a good thing, and it means people won’t feel like they need to be a psychopath to benefit from some new mechanic. (they only need to be a psychopath to benefit from it in a way that would require one to be callous or crazy or both)

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[quote=“kilozombie, post:33, topic:6900”][quote=“Turtlicious, post:29, topic:6900”]“Is that a craft slave command?”

“No, see it’s a zombie and I make him into a walking suitcase.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“No it’s different honest!”[/quote]

No, that’s not how anyone sane would respond. Stop using strawmen.

“Is that a craft slave command?”

“Yeah. You turn the zombie into a walking storage container. Kinda creepy- it’ll make your morale drop.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“You play video games where you massacre hundreds of people and think it’s justified. And these aren’t living human slaves, even- and if they were, this is an adult game. You don’t see (sensible) people harping on books about the history of slavery, because they’re presenting it in an unbiased light. This does too. It drops your morale and it’s a pretty horrible thing, but it’s a legitimate strategy in-game.”[/quote]

Read that out loud, is that a thing you would say to like anybody?

Besides, it doesn’t change the fact that slavery has a weird connotation in the US, and seems needlessly edgy. I’m not even saying remove the feature, (I personally don’t like it, but it should be in.) I’m just saying it has a weird connotation and should probably be thought out a bit more.

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Also, we should definitely be able to at least ride horses before this gets expanded to let us ride hulks.

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[quote=“Turtlicious, post:35, topic:6900”][quote=“kilozombie, post:33, topic:6900”][quote=“Turtlicious, post:29, topic:6900”]“Is that a craft slave command?”

“No, see it’s a zombie and I make him into a walking suitcase.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“No it’s different honest!”[/quote]

No, that’s not how anyone sane would respond. Stop using strawmen.

“Is that a craft slave command?”

“Yeah. You turn the zombie into a walking storage container. Kinda creepy- it’ll make your morale drop.”

“You play a video game where you make slaves?”

“You play video games where you massacre hundreds of people and think it’s justified. And these aren’t living human slaves, even- and if they were, this is an adult game. You don’t see (sensible) people harping on books about the history of slavery, because they’re presenting it in an unbiased light. This does too. It drops your morale and it’s a pretty horrible thing, but it’s a legitimate strategy in-game.”[/quote]

Read that out loud, is that a thing you would say to like anybody?

Besides, it doesn’t change the fact that slavery has a weird connotation in the US, and seems needlessly edgy. I’m not even saying remove the feature, (I personally don’t like it, but it should be in.) I’m just saying it has a weird connotation and should probably be thought out a bit more.[/quote]

As somebody who regularly textwalls my friends, yes, especially on the Internet.

When you say “weird connotation” you’re giving zero details. Explain more in depth as to what puts you off, or propose a solution. It’s useless criticism otherwise.

38

Yup.

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Slave has multiple meanings in American culture, and is tied to our history in a negative way, when we say slave we’re either talking about people our ruling class literally enslaved, and didn’t have equal rights as of 50 years ago, or we’re talking about dressing up in leather and whipping each other. The word slave is charged and most people when being reasonable, try to steer clear of that vernacular. A simple name change can go a long way if you’re trying to maintain good faith.

I’ll be honest, I’m not the best at explaining myself at times, mostly because my mastery of the English language can be tenuous at best.

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