Zombies with mutations?

Inquisitor_Dust · 2013-07-06T06:27:41.000Z

Pretty much what the title says. What if rarely you could find zombies with the same mutations as players in labs, near radioactive areas, and some other places. They would gain all the advantages and disadvantages as players and add a little bit of randomization to the zombies.

Zireael · 2013-07-06T07:14:30.000Z

Cool idea!

ArgusTheCat · 2013-07-06T10:36:20.000Z

But we already HAVE zombies with a variety of mutations. Maybe they don’t line up with what the player can get, but the shockers, spitters, shirkers, hulks, brutes, and necromancers all have unique abilities and strategies already. Adding in player mutations that we wouldn’t be able to easily spot without examining every single shambling corpse in the hoard doesn’t add anything to the gameplay, it just creates busywork that you have to do if you don’t want to get surprised by the one zombie that can swallow your entire arm and has shark teeth.

Inquisitor_Dust · 2013-07-06T15:32:48.000Z

ArgusTheCat:

But we already HAVE zombies with a variety of mutations. Maybe they don’t line up with what the player can get, but the shockers, spitters, shirkers, hulks, brutes, and necromancers all have unique abilities and strategies already. Adding in player mutations that we wouldn’t be able to easily spot without examining every single shambling corpse in the hoard doesn’t add anything to the gameplay, it just creates busywork that you have to do if you don’t want to get surprised by the one zombie that can swallow your entire arm and has shark teeth.

I realize that the other zombies have their own mutations, but I still think it’d be cool to find a zombie with tentacles for arms or one with bark skin. What if zombies had prefixes based on what mutation they have like “Shark-toothed Zombie” or “Tentacle-armed Zombie” to avoid confusion and having to look at every zombie in detail.

Zireael · 2013-07-06T16:12:56.000Z

Inquisitor Dust:

[quote=“ArgusTheCat, post:3, topic:2116”]But we already HAVE zombies with a variety of mutations. Maybe they don’t line up with what the player can get, but the shockers, spitters, shirkers, hulks, brutes, and necromancers all have unique abilities and strategies already. Adding in player mutations that we wouldn’t be able to easily spot without examining every single shambling corpse in the hoard doesn’t add anything to the gameplay, it just creates busywork that you have to do if you don’t want to get surprised by the one zombie that can swallow your entire arm and has shark teeth.

I realize that the other zombies have their own mutations, but I still think it’d be cool to find a zombie with tentacles for arms or one with bark skin. What if zombies had prefixes based on what mutation they have like “Shark-toothed Zombie” or “Tentacle-armed Zombie” to avoid confusion and having to look at every zombie in detail.[/quote]

Agreed.

KA101 · 2013-07-06T16:19:37.000Z

How did they acquire these mutations? Since the Blob makes its own adjustments (the specials we already have) I’d presume that they were exposed to radiation/mutagen pre-mortem. As such, I’d expect them around the toxic dump/hazmat sarcophagus. Maybe in the Lab experiment cells.

Not generally around, though, or at least not for a while.

Inquisitor_Dust · 2013-07-06T16:27:43.000Z

[quote=“KA101, post:6, topic:2116”]How did they acquire these mutations? Since the Blob makes its own adjustments (the specials we already have) I’d presume that they were exposed to radiation/mutagen pre-mortem. As such, I’d expect them around the toxic dump/hazmat sarcophagus. Maybe in the Lab experiment cells.

Not generally around, though, or at least not for a while.[/quote]
I was assuming they got them pre-mortem too, so they’d (usually) only be found in places with radiation/mutagen and maybe very rarely in cities.

And to help further differentiate mutated zombies from each other visually without making you look at every one, their color could be based on what branch of mutation they have.

Belteshazzar · 2013-07-07T02:02:38.000Z

I think this is actually a very good idea, more ‘organic’ (if I may make a pun given the context) method of creating the ‘special’ zombies than our current spawn ratios. (aside from technological or fungal variants of course)

Applying mutations over time could help ease up the early game a little while making any zombies that survive your initial purges potentially (they could get a really bad luck of the draw too) dangerous in the long run.

Spoilers Ahead:

Personally I’d suggest that the zombie mutation be based primarily on time, and possibly their extent to which they’ve managed to recover and concentrate the contagion The Goo/Netherium in their bodies through http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=2099.0
Remember, the player can refine his own mutagen from tainted meat and I think if our Unfriendly Neighborhood Hyperspace Slime realized that it’s forces were getting fucked up in any significant numbers it would try and switch up the game a bit.

Then again we could always place this idea in the category of ‘humanoid mutants’ rather than proper ‘zombies’? Perhaps gibbering, ghoulish ‘survivors’ who refused to die and were driven mad from mutations as they survived on tainted flesh? Now I think, this apocalypse is rather up to it’s gills in zombies, we could probably use horrible mutants as a more varied and potentially challenging ‘second wave’.