Suggestion:20090326 Plague

20090326 Plague

A Big F'ing Dog 16:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion type
Skill

Suggestion scope
Infectious Bite skill tree

Suggestion description
I like the Necrotech skills but there's one thing that bothers me - they're too altruistic. I want there to be a choice between helping revive others and hoarding syringes for yourself.

Plague would be a zombie subskill of Infectious Bite. Biting an already infected survivor who has less than 25hp would make them plagued, a new condition.

The plague is a more potent version of the zombie infection that can linger in weak immune systems. A plagued survivor loses 1hp per turn just like infection, but only when they have less than 25HP. While a survivor can be infected and plagued at the same time the damage doesn't stack, even with both only 1hp is lost per turn.

Healing the survivor to 25HP or higher would stop the health drain, but they'd still have the plagued condition. When their health is reduced to 24 or lower it'll start draining their HP again. So FAKs are effective treatment, but they can only put plague into remission.

Only a revivification syringe would cure plague. Injecting a living human being (including yourself) would only cost 1AP, because they wouldn't struggle, but still use up the syringe. Being revived from the dead would also cure any plague you had while living.

Theoretically someone could live with plague forever, but you'd want to cure it to make yourself less vulnerable if you're ever injured. It'd give people a reason to be selfish with syringes, appropriate for the zombie apocalypse.

Implementation issues:

• Revivification syringes are labeled 10AP. To avoid confusion, there would need to be a separate button labeled 1AP to inject survivors with the cure. Perhaps just a single "Inject" button and drop down menu on top would be best to avoid clutter.
• Survivors should be able to see plague somehow, since plague is independent of health. People will heal an injured survivor who may not be infected. They won't risk a syringe on a survivor unless they KNOW they are plagued. Diagnosis should probably make plague visible somehow (but not infection of course).
• For fairness issues, perhaps even survivors without necrotech skills should be able to cure themselves with a syringe. They wouldn't be able to treat other people though.

Overall effects vs. Game balance issues:

• Makes getting reduced to low health more dangerous for survivors, because one FAK won't stop health drain if you can't heal to 25. However carrying two FAKs will probably get you to 25, and even one FAK will give you ten moves to find other survivors to ask for help. Or, just carry a single syringe for yourself.
• Potentially makes revive queues slower by making syringes rarer. But syringes aren't too hard to find. And survivors could always choose to live with plague and focus on reviving if there's a huge wait. The way I see it, forcing people to make tactical choices is always good for the game.

Voting Section

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Keep Votes

1. Keep Makes it harder for survivors, but not too hard. This just makes carrying one syringe in case of plague the new carrying one FAK in case of infection. And I like that it gives survivors the choice of ignoring it, to their later peril, or treating it now but in doing so give up reviving someone. --A Big F'ing Dog 16:34, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Kill Votes

Spam/Dupe Votes