User talk:Lrhyme

<Draft Vampire Tactic>

Vampire Tactics:Overview

A Trans-Mortal tactic synthesizing the Imagine/DIRT:NAP, Rat_tactics, and ZK, tactics. Vampire tactics allows a coordinated survivor group to conduct extended (up to 25 days) operations completely self sufficiently without ANY local assistance from other survivors, groups or suburb infrastructure. It is suitable for use by a group either in their 'home' suburb if overrun by a horde, or as an offensive operation to retake or assault a zombie held area.

Summary

A major survivor challenge in zombie horde attacks or in zombie held areas is to survive a sleep cycle. Once killed a survivor must rise as a zombie and arrange for a revive. This takes an increasing amount of time as the balance of power in an area shifts toward zombies, becoming virtually impossible as zombies gain overwhelming numeric superiority. Zombies enjoy the significant advantage of being able to maintain continuous operations when killed (stand in place for 1-6AP) while the dead survivor's operations are interrupted to search for revives. Vampire tactics address this imbalance and allow a survivor team to maintain near continuous operations at the cost of one survivors daily AP balance.

Vampire tactics rely on the UD life cycle of Human, death, zombie, revival and Human again. After receiving the revive, yet before standing as a human again, the player is protected from attack. A survivor can stay in this SUSPENDED state between Zombie and human indefinitely. Use of this SUSPENDED state can allow a survivor team to ensure near instantaneous team revives are available allowing a survivor team to maintain continuous operations even in the most hostile environments.

The tactic begins with a variation of Imagine/DIRT:NAP and ALWAYS maintains a survivor, with ample revive resources for the team, in SUSPENDED state. In this way even if the rest of the team is killed one team member will be able to stand up and revive the others at a pre-determined time and location ensuring that the team continues day to day operations employing applicable Rat_tactics. This approach accepts death rather than tries to avoid it. The team expects to sleep, and quite possible to die, but be certain that they will be able to rise the next day.

Details

Teams of from 1 to 7 are formed with minimal tool loads (Toolbox, Axe or Knife, optionally a DNA scanner, and spray can, and no more than 5-6 FAKs) The rest of the inventory load is used to carry upwards of 30 revive sticks. The team then sends a scout into a target area who will scout out the area and locate a ruined building, ideally tall enough to jump out of, to serve as base of operations. The scout will then COMMIT SUICIDE by jumping out the window and standing up and entering the base building before they use up their AP. The rest of the team then follows beginning first by reviving the original, now zombie, scout. The scout STAYS down (becoming the team's undead vampire) and the rest of the team employs RAT tactics to barricade and disperse through the area. As the team dies they return to the base where the vampire lies sleeping. The vampire will rise, revive those needing revives, and use the rest of his AP in RAT tactic objectives. The team rotates through the vampire role making sure at least one team member is always in SUSPENDED state at all times to act as resurrector for the rest of the team.

The team can extend operations duration or team size by either avoiding death through team dispersal, per RAT tactics, or by spending periods of time conducting offensive operations during the zombie life cycle phase using ZK tactics to clear a key objective before allowing the vampire to rise, dump bodies, and potentially barricade, ensuring that a new vampire enters SUSPENDED mode before his AP is exhausted. Since his death is expected he can use up to 49 AP for offensive operations before performing a negative AP revive to hand off to the next vampire.

Minimum Skills: Zombie Skills: Lurching Gait, Ankle Grab, Scent Death. (Zombie attack skills if offensive ZK operations are planned) Human: NecroTech Employment, Lab Experience, Construction, Hand to hand Combat, Knife proficiency or Axe Proficiency. Per RAT tactics, firearms are too costly to inventory and AP use to be practical.

Inventory: Toolbox, Axe or Knife, FAKs (6), Revive Needles(25-30) optionally DNA scanner, and spray can (for zombie taunting or coded messages).

Disadvantages

Long lead time required to acquire the needed inventory for the extended operations run.

Strong coordination required. Meta-gaming seems the only way to ensure communication and scheduling that are a must to ensure that the team maintains a vampire at all times.

Complexity of execution runs the risk of ending up with a team of plain old dead zombies if a vampire relay hand-off is missed.