Transition Snow Map To "The Thing" Themed Map

[Fritigern]

My proposal is to swap our current Winter map out for a new genre and franchise, from a mostly Aliens themed game to something inspired more by The Thing.

THE BASIC LORE PITCH

On a remote and snowy planet far from the prying eyes of civilian oversight -- and far from rescue -- a small Colonial Marine garrison defends a research station co-funded by the Weyland-Yutani corporation. The civilian scientists are researching newer, more advanced terraforming technology. While drilling in the ice, a means of collecting seismic and geological data to better refine their process, they discover an alien vessel several hundred feet under the ice shelf. Under orders from Weyland-Yutani, an excavation process is organized and the upper portion of the ship is exposed, revealing an access hatch. Inside the ship, the scientists find frozen carcasses of its once frighteningly alien crew, long dead after crashing on the planet a millennia ago. Several days after bringing the first of these frozen corpses back to the research station for further analysis, the game begins.

GAMEPLAY

Changelings: 15%-20% (15-20 out of a hundred) players are selected at random to become monsters, henceforth called changelings for the sake of clarity. These changelings appear human and can interact with the world around them exactly as a human would, using weapons and armour. Their objective is to infect or kill everyone on the planet, and then spread across the stars to consume and destroy humanity. Changelings have the ability to transform into grotesque monsters at will, becoming incredibly resistant to physical harm (Only fire truly kills them), but severe brute damage will incapacitate them. While strong, they are small in number. They have the ability to 'infect' food and medical supplies (mainly blood bags used by surgeons), and anyone who consumes or is injected by this infected food/blood will quietly and unknowingly become a changeling over a long period of time. When transformed into their nightmare-fuel forms, their melee attacks have a chance to infect humans which will begin a very visible form of transformation in that person (their skin around the wound will start peeling and stretching, they will be in great pain, etc.), giving humans a chance to identify and eliminate them while they are still mostly human. Dead human bodies can be absorbed to heal, as well as to add biomass to the changeling, increasing their power and unlocking new abilities, such as the ability to expel escape pods. They can be shed off and hidden during a fight, or left somewhere for a long term safety plan if the main changeling body is destroyed (a dead body will need to be 'eaten' in order to provide the sufficient mass needed to become humanoid again).

Marines: The Marine garrison will be under equipped and poorly supplied compared to what we see in the base CM game. Standard marines will spawn on the map with submachineguns and pump shotguns firing slug ammunition. A secure armoury will be present on the map containing a limited number of M4A1 rifles and various ammunition, but it can only be opened once a clear and present danger has been presented to the marines and the scientists on the planet. Marines will be responsible for the overall security of the research station, but have no direct authority over the Weyland-Yutani civilians (aside from holding guns to their heads). Instead, the security staff will be directly contracted by Weyland-Yutani, and they will be responsible for keeping order amongst the scientists and policing what happens inside their research dome. Their loadouts will be what we see in CM already, with stunguns and handcuffs, with limited access to lethal weapons only in the case of emergencies (Probably MAR carbines because they're cool and different).

Researchers: They will have a much larger role to play in the game than before. At the start of the round, when the changelings are (hopefully) still unknown, their task will be to organize a small security force to escourt them to the crashed space ship to secure another biological sample for study. If they bring the new corpse back to their lab and perform the proper experiments, the can reveal the nature of the changelings and potentially warn the rest of the outpost of the risk. With this newfound knowledge they can begin researching and producing scanning kits to test for infected food and blood bags, as well as a chemical kit that can be used on a human to determine if they are a changeling or not. Basically, a good research team can jumpstart the discovery process of the changelings and activity work to negate their camouflage AND potential sabotage.

Map Features: The main winter map as we know it now will require reworking, ideally to eliminate or massively downscale the underground sections, leaving most action on the surface. All domes will need to be brought up to working order with functioning research, medical and military sections. Points of interest around the map will be the alien space ship, which may be contested early by the changelings to prevent the scientists from recovering an alien body early on that will fuel their research. The research dome itself, housing the scientists and their (fragile) equipment. A communication tower that allows for headset communication across the colony and controls the distress beacon. The engineering station will also power all lights and heaters on the map (insulated clothing will not be 100% effective against the elements, limiting travel in the open for humans).

Gameplay Features: Improvised weapons will be important, given the limited armament of both the marines and Weyland-Yutani security forces. Homemade flamethrowers, shotguns, etc. In lieu of relying on a compromised or incompetent research team, improvised blood tests can be done by anyone with a syringe of blood, a welding tool and some cable wire, assuming certain RP prerequisites have been met.

End Game: Once the marines have 100% confirmation of alien infiltration, the commander (assuming they aren't a changeling themselves) will be allowed to send an emergency transmission warning the military of the situation, but this will require 1 hour for the orbiting satellite to realign itself to receive and re-transmit the message. The changelings can either stop the process by manually working the command controls, disabling power for the colony (backup generators with limited fuel will be provided), or disabling the radio transmitter (it can be repaired with specialized parts). No matter how it is stopped, so long as the process is resumed, it will always continue where it last left off (There will always be 10 minutes on the clock, if that's where it was stopped before). If the signal is sent, it's a marine minor victory, as this likely means a war ship is coming to blow the colony and everyone on it back into the ice. This puts a shelf life on the round and encourages both sides to constantly be playing around objectives. It keeps marines and security stretched out to defend multiple objectives at once and requires key personnel to be kept alive at all times (command staff, and people who know how to fix broken shit).

Closing thoughts: I think this will really diversify our beloved CM server and provide a much needed alternative to standard play. There will be more opportunities for roleplay for those who are interested, and the gameplay will be wildly different and, in my opinion, more tense than what we are used to. There could be issues with metagaming the mode of course, but no more than we see in regular CM play today. Feel free to ask questions if you're fuzzy on some of the gameplay ideas I brought up -- I have it all pretty well thought out, but I didn't want to bore everyone with the minutia of who spawns where and how many magazines marines get, etc.

[Boltersam]

I like it. It's new, and it offers a nice change in gameplay and it provides a new enemy for the Marines to fight.

Though, can ALL roles be infected? That would make things difficult if the Researchers are changelings and won't complete the objective, or on lowpop if Command are changelings.

Also, what's to stop the Changelings rushing the Marines early on, before they can RP learning that they're weak to fire, or even know of their existence?

[Deus Dactyl]

Lovely suggestion. I think there needs to be additional content to keep people occupied and prevent them from meta-rushing the whole research process, maybe mining and other exploration missions/events. For example, "distress calls" as side-events from researchers/security out in the snow, that can be either real or faked; communications blackouts, hostiles from elsewhere, maybe even other research parties like the Norwegians. In the end I'm not entirely confident that a more RP-intensive game mode is suited to this server, as the fun of the mode is in the tension, sustained by RP.

[Egorkor]

I'd like to see it happen provided it won't stretch the devs too thin. Believe they've a lot of work on their hands as is.

[Fritigern]

-Snip-

In my mind the game would start with everyone having the potential of being the changeling, yes even the Commander. It'd suck if he started out a changeling, but he'd also be under a lot of scrutiny from those around him, limiting his ability to actively fuck people over without getting busted. And because researchers are so much more important in this round compared to regular CM gameplay, ideally there would be multiple members of the team, a minimum of 2 with a max of 4 at round start. So one changeling researcher could undermine the process, or he could try and kill the others early, it's up to the player and how they went gamble with their life.

During high pop gameplay, changelings revealing themselves too early would be pretty bad for them I think. While I see them as being very durable, they will still be vulnerable to conventional weapons. They will also be spread out over the entire map at the beginning of the round, and the only way to cluster together would likely mean having people ditching their posts and going where they aren't supposed to be, which would likely give them all away.

Low pop is difficult to balance any game mode around, even CM has major issues with it once things get under the 40-50 player mark and there isn't much you can do about that, one side is just always going to have an advantage then.

-Snip-

Side objectives and competing threats are still possible, all suggestions are valid. As to the point about RP and the server? Well I mostly agree with you, I don't think CM is a very good RP environment, but I think what I have presented here will provide a roughly equivalent experience to what we have now. People will be doing their jobs and giving orders, some will be better at RP than others, but as the round goes on things will become more and more chaotic and robustness will become more important. Basically how it is already, I think.

I'd like to see it happen provided it won't stretch the devs too thin. Believe they've a lot of work on their hands as is.

Yeah I have no expectation of this happening overnight, I would just like this to be a long term stretch goal for the server.

[Jroinc1]

+1.
I like it.

[Bigchilly]

I think the whole idea of infecting people should be taken out, and the ablility to send more marines/pmc's in without ending the round (similar to the ERT) should replace it. So once a bunch of normies (not changelings) die and the hostiles are confirmed the commander can send in a pod full of W-Y PMC's or more marines. But the commander can only call in reinforcements once aliens are confirmed (sorta like a admin on switch) and every 30 minutes or hour.

[Martzin]

Was always interested in The Thing. Agree with Bigchilly that people shouldn't be infected, instead I think the Thing should be able to absorb players' bodies, letting it mimic the person they've assimilated and probably make the Thing more powerful in some way through absorbing people. Other than that I like the idea, +1.

[coroneljones]

Sounds pretty good and its a change of pace
+1

[northcote4]

This does sound absolutely amazing if it's possible. The Thing has always held a top spot amongst my favourite films, so I would be thrilled if this were a possibility.

+1.

[Jay Burns]

+1 TAKE MY MONEY!

[Clarkeh]

Im onboard with this but it has to be done right otherwise it will just devolve into a meta/power gaming competition.

[Fritigern]

This does sound absolutely amazing if it's possible. The Thing has always held a top spot amongst my favourite films, so I would be thrilled if this were a possibility.

+1.

Looking at other ss13 source codes and even CM's (I peaked when it got leaked, sorry), I would say everything I described is very much doable with existing code, with sufficient edits of course.

[Carprillo]

If it can be worked in from a lore perspective...Yes!

[YungCuz]

Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme. +1

[arty23]

I'm for anything that changes things up. +1 from me.

[Dogar]

Sounds awesome. +1

[Eenkogneeto]

I would be all for this but I would prefer the ratio be much lower, Like 5 out of 100 low. Make it less likely someone is a ling near you.

[forwardslashN]

I remember playing The Thing themed maps in Starcraft back in the day, and that was the coolest thing ever. Would be neat to replicate that here, but the work required would likely be huge.

[McRipfist]

+1 Its a great idea.

[Karmac]

+1 INTENSE ARRRRR PEEEEEE

[Fuppy]

+1, take my money too!

[Marcus Jackson]

My body is ready to receive your divine semen my lord Fritigern. +10000000!

Also paradise station has pretty similar rules with their changelings, and it's always fun and stressful to play.

(All the mechanics are made, someone just needs to make edits and BOOM! we are in business.)

[Sadokist]

JC's The Thing, best horror movie, wanted this for a long time +1 x 10

[Sad_Corn]

This would make CM reach to 150 players every single day.

+1