Regarding Infection

[Hulkamania]

Well, Infection is officially a game mode according to the changelog and I think it's time to have a discussion about it.

This thread is open to anything regarding Infection as a game type, what you like and what you don't like, but I felt I had to share a few thoughts.

It's one sided. This is pretty obvious to anyone playing, and it's built into the game that the marines are at a disadvantage, but in this case it's inordinately so. Xeno's win most of the time, that's all well and good, but there is no realistic way an infection round can end other than total marine annihilation. No matter how much work the marines put in, no matter how well their containment protocols are, Infection always ends in defeat.

Defeat isn't necessarily the problem, after all the game is more about the experience more than the end goal, but marines don't even have a fighting chance for a few reasons:

The Cure (Vaccine)

The vaccine is admin spawn only, and this is a massive problem. Meta-gaming is an issue and it's something to be avoided, no one wants a roundstart where the researcher "happens" to discover a working vaccine right away, but as it is now you're entirely at the will of the admins if you even GET a vaccine and I've absolutely seen some events where it was never provided in the first place. It needs to be made accessible in some shape or form to the marines, or at least once made available able to be produced. Last night the cure was given to the marines, but only enough for 20 doses. This is the ONLY way for marines to keep a zombie down permanently outside of destroying the corpse and 20 doses ain't much. Then you think about how that 20 doses is not only to be used for keeping zombies down, but for inoculating marines and staff against turning themselves and it becomes a much larger problem. Without an effective way to produce more of the vaccine, the marines are doomed in the most literal sense. There can be no victory.

The Staff

Obviously this is a heavy "work in progress" mode that has a lot of hiccups and development underway, I totally understand that. But the amount of admintervention occuring tends to get out of hand in these rounds. I've seen things such as the crematorium being completely removed (the only other reliable way to dispose of a zombie permanently), the vaccine straight up never being given to the crew, additional zombie spawns beyond what was already ongoing, and ARES deciding when the shuttles can and cannot leave the Almayer. There comes a point where the staff go beyond making the round interesting, and making it downright frustrating. With so few tools given out to actually fight back, it's not a fun experience to essentially have your entire experience hijacked.

The Players

People like getting themselves infected. It's insanely frustrating knowing that your odds of survival just went down because John Balderson bum rushed the zombies with the express purpose of becoming one. There is no easy solution to this other than admintervention, but it's still worth noting that it's a massive downside to the game type.

The Bugs
There is a well known bug that's been around since before the official inclusion of the game mode, which is infected players being unable to see once they rise. I found a quick-fix for this, which is ghosting then re-entering your corpse before you stand up but this isn't well known knowledge as I've had to walk many many players through the process. There's a myriad of bugs running around, like the zombie mouth item falling off of the infected once they die, claws being unable to open certain types of door, and I'm sure there are plenty of others laying around that I'm unaware of.

In conclusion the gamemode is interesting to shake things up, but the complete lack of autonomy on the marines part is a huge downside. Having to rely on outside help which may or may not occur is a huge problem and it can make the mode more frustrating than it is fun. I'm sure all these things will change as it becomes more fleshed out, but as it stands I nearly don't want to play if it's on infection because of the hassles that come along with it. For a server that was founded based on less admintervention and letting the round play out naturally, this game mode is completely opposite of that principle.

[MrJJJ]

As a fellow man who played infection...here we go:

Its really, and i REALLY do mean it, frustrating as hell that so many people join the mode and decide "ITS TIME TO BE A ZOMBIE", drink the whole fucking bottle, smash it on others, before either getting banned or shot to death for being a danger to everyone, its like...come the fuck on, i don't see these same people rushing to get infected as a xeno, yet they instantly down bottles to become a zombie despite them being MUCH, MUCH less interesting than xenomorphs are right now, fuck some of these guys even FIRE back at their comrades, especially at medics and engineers...this is why we can't have nice things.

There is also the fact with the entire quarantine stuff and all that, you would think it would be easy by just designating a room and blocking it with plasteel barricades, and then making a disposal chute or otherwise to get zombies inside safely, and when they get up to flamer them, and should they damage barricades to quickly repair them, but nope, people fuck the quarantine up somehow and i have no idea how, we had quarantines to the point that it relied on "Convincing people inside" instead of FORCING them inside as soon as they were up back on Almayer...god dammit guys, its easy to make a quarantine and control it...why do you fuck it up.

Okay the infection itself...i am actually really curious how on earth does it work, because i seen people complain about being infected despite the zombie hit being blocked, i know it has a RNG chance to infect you each time it hits, but i would think armor would play a role in that and nullify the infection if you block the damage...you also can get infected by blood if i believe right...which just gives you more the reason to Stunbaton the ever loving shit out of that one marine who decided to drag a zombie corpse through 10 mines and everyone else.

Oh yeah i just remembered...people that played the gamemode so far LOVE to remove the zombies gear, like shoes and whatnot, which can be frustrating for the other side, and i don't mean as in *Removing their gear once they are a zombie* i mean as in *before*, because you can still do that...RIP poor zombos with no shoes as a baldie stacks 300000000 pieces of glass and they launch into the next dimension of pain.

In TLDR: Gamemode is fun somewhat (for me atleast), has issues that need to be addressed when possible, keep up the good work devs.
(Inb4 the infection mode forever becomes more popular than xenomorphs)

[taketheshot56]

There is also the fact with the entire quarantine stuff and all that, you would think it would be easy by just designating a room and blocking it with plasteel barricades, and then making a disposal chute or otherwise to get zombies inside safely, and when they get up to flamer them, and should they damage barricades to quickly repair them, but nope, people fuck the quarantine up somehow and i have no idea how, we had quarantines to the point that it relied on "Convincing people inside" instead of FORCING them inside as soon as they were up back on Almayer...god dammit guys, its easy to make a quarantine and control it...why do you fuck it up.

As MT/MP I have played almost every infection round and almost every round Ive either constructed or guarded quarantine, here is the issue. We can build super secure ones, but there is no real way to prevent them from not charging in, we have to rely on marine cooperation and knowing standard marines its....difficult for them to listen, to make matters worse marines freak the FUCK out. For example, as MP I was guarding the medbay quarantine, this one marine who was visibly infected (throwing up, pale etc) Approached the scanner and was quickly secured by the docs to be taken upstairs to research, but his squadmates in all their infinite wisdom, say "FUCK THAT" And open up with their pulse rifles, at this point the MPs and other guards return fire and it descends into chaos with several infected charging through quarantine unscanned. On another occasion we had around 15 marines in line to be examined and one of them turned into a zombie, now instead of orderly shooting him the marines flip the fuck out, get slashed and infected then charge through medbay leaving all the doors open and zombies spread across the ship. In real life marines and every member of an armed forces in general is taught mission/team/self where soldiers will sacrifice themselves for the objective. Now on CM which is a game veryyyyyy few players have that mission/team/self mentality, and so the moment their life comes into danger they scramble to either escape or have their misfortune kill someone else. A drowning man will drag down those nearest. Now to fix quarantine i feel the only real solution would be to add a toggle able lock to doors that marine engineers cannot bypass, perhaps a key to allow marine to proceed slowly through a set of doors, Im not sure.

TLDR: quarantine always fails because "Unga dunga I dont wanna die"

[Steelpoint]

I don't recall the vaccine being admin only. Last time I played the Pandemic machine in Research could crate a bottle of Vaccine every few minutes so long as a bottle of the virus was inside it.

The biggest issue facing Marines in Infection is incompetence, having the XO rush into RnD, smash a virus bottle over his head, only to run out and spout crap on the radio, helps no one.

In rare instances of everyone (MPs, Command, Medical, Medics, Engineers) being on point the Marines can maintain a strong hold/quarantine for a long time and even win the round.

[Renomaki]

The whole "marines deliberately infecting themselves" thing is.. Very strange indeed.

This is the same community that has a large number of "marine mains" who refuse to play and outright HATE xenos, even if it means sitting out a 2-3 hour round after an early death. Most other people who are willing to play xeno, on the other hand, don't get all that excited to play it. I myself am not much of a xeno player, but I still enjoy hopping into a larva during a mid-round game to get some xeno-action in.

Zombies, on the other hand, are strange... Compared to xenos, with all their abilities and killing power, zombies are quite mediocre. Yet I constantly hear about players going out of their way to CHUG down bottles of the virus the moment they come across it, even if it makes no sense for a NORMAL HUMAN BEING to do that. Why is it marine players are so excited about the idea of becoming a zombie?

Maybe it is because, unlike xeno, you are immortal. Zombies can almost NEVER die (in a sense), constantly shambling forward towards mortal marines as they soak countless bullets. They fall over, only to get back up in a few minutes... Meaning that being a zombie is very easy and requires no real thought or tactics. Just slash as many people as you can before you 'die', then get back up and do it again.. and again... and again...

Honestly, I think being a zombie needs WAY more downsides. We need to make it so that being a zombie is an upsetting event, not one where players go "OH BOI, ME CANNOT WAIT TO ZAMBEE!11!". Maybe then it'll reduce or outright cease the nonsense of marines infecting themselves on purpose just so they can go on a casual killing spree.

[Hulkamania]

I don't recall the vaccine being admin only. Last time I played the Pandemic machine in Research could crate a bottle of Vaccine every few minutes so long as a bottle of the virus was inside it.

The biggest issue facing Marines in Infection is incompetence, having the XO rush into RnD, smash a virus bottle over his head, only to run out and spout crap on the radio, helps no one.

In rare instances of everyone (MPs, Command, Medical, Medics, Engineers) being on point the Marines can maintain a strong hold/quarantine for a long time and even win the round.

In the changelog it's stated that the vaccine is only available via admin/cent-comm

In my experience all instances of the vaccine have been limited to whatever was given to us.

[Snypehunter007]

Trust me, if we didn't moderate this shit, we would have problems like the first infection test did.

[Wubs4Scrubs]

All special events or gamemodes would completely fall apart without constant admin attention. The only reason they flow or work as well as they do right now is because a head admin is sitting there behind the scenes deciding what happens and when.

I think that the distinction between infection being a game-mode and an event is pretty arbitrary. Currently infection cannot work as a hands off type round given that balancing around the game-mode isn't really there. As you touched on, marines are prevented from doing logical things to destroy the bodies like using C4 or the crematory because it would ruin those player's rounds. Since marines aren't really allowed to apply IC logic to combat the infection and the only way for them to win is up to the admins I think infection is completely centered around RP and zombies are supposed to win every time. Since RP is the focus of the game-mode I'm just not a huge fan of the ways the admins have to maintain order. Seeing constant OOC messages yelling about not using C4 on bodies or deleting the crematory impacts RP pretty hard for me personally.

[Robotonic]

Some of the things people do in special events can be down-right ridiculous, so having us baby sit the event is unfortunately a necessity. It'd be great if it weren't, but so's how it goes. You've got two groups of people, the ones who want to become zombies and revel in the chaos, and those who want to stay alive whilst they can. I still remember the first infection round, it was incredible how much miscommunication and disorder was caused by people being so confused by what was going on.

Players all have their way of reacting to the event, whether they uphold the survival of the unit as a whole or simply their own, they'll always play in a different manner. For the game to work you need a good deal of competency and the ability to curb incompetent members quickly if they prove to be dragging down the operation. A CO's ability to battlefield execute definitely comes in handy here, and a proper CMP and MP staffing along-side medical personnel who actually wish to do their best to get through the round and take as many people as they can from the throes of death back to fighting condition, and who wish to defend the ship and it's crew rather than just themselves, can give you a good chance aboard the Almayer.

Although that's looking into it a bit much. In the end, people do some really unusual and down-right terrible ideas that result in either the round being ruined or someone else's round being seriously affected. If the entire Almayer crew works together as a solid team they can prove themselves to be exceptionally useful towards their continued survival, but unfortunately there's not an awful lot you can do for the crazy ones who run off into the hordes of infected and die to them.