Either a cure or a proper end? Keeping people in cages as zombies is rather disrespectful as well.. what do you think happens when you "sell" them?
I'd say a "cure" that gives manufacturing project to turn zombies into... actually can't you produce soldiers? That'd be a cool way to get them. You give them back control over themselves but they're now strobger/faster/something because all their blood is this crazy substance, so they can't really go back to normal and they join you instead? Otherwise the cure could just give some blood plasma and cost money (you take the crazy blood out, replace it by proper blood and return the people as "well they got into a car accident and we just realized who they are, that's why they're so messed up".
Or just a project to give them "medical aid to die" because there's no cure and keeping people like that indefinitely isn't better. Then you return a corpse that's already "prepared" to the family, which usually includes removal of fluids any ways.
In fact, I think selling of most live (and even dead) specimen is pretty weird. It'd make sense for the accumulation of so much evidence of alien presence to become a problem for xcom and you either incinerate them or build more holding cells/cold storage for corpses. Selling them for a profit is weird. Who do you sell a live chupacabra to in good conscience? Unless it's fluffed as giving it to a government lab of a funding nation for money.. but then you should also be able to give "long term care" of zombies off to them too, which I guess is what selling them is..
Anyhow.. some rambling on the topic.. Maybe it helps somehow... I think a fluff article could be good.
About cure of zombiizm - it is a great idea indeed. Dont know about make them soldiers, though. Modern soldiers are more training results, than physical conditions.
About return to family - definitly no. I even say NOPE. Read something about quarantine, anti-epidemical measures, so on. Burn them to cinder is more realistic idea. Better burn twice.
About selling live aliens - dont be so soft. There is over 7000000 scientists in world (according to unesco). Lets say that 1000000 of them are biologist. Ok, 500 000. How many of them want to look at xenobiological species? I think more than half. And do you know how many military scientists exist? They definetly not in unesco list. 8)
By Lore, x-com strongly connected to secret services. These guys not bother about morale and feelings at all.
So, my opinion: if our world encountered an alien invasion, we must cut out antigrav implants from live floaters, recycle zombies for elerium-infused biomass and grow tamed chryssalids, trained to eat only their previous masters. As we, humans, do. And maybe create reaper chivalry. ;D
You mean a cured, self-aware person? Really? :PNo, i'm about dead body.
Just pointing out the question of what to do is vastly easier to answer when you're dealing with actual Zombies :D
(Manufacturing a useless "item" - cured zombie patient - which then can be sold for 0 or whatever.)And gain scores!
These infected humans have been completely overtaken by an alien parasite. They possess little cognitive capabilities and show no higher brain functions; in fact, their brains are mostly consumed by the parasite.
And gain scores!
Meanwhile, i look into your ufopaedia text:
So, even first grade zombies lost their humanity. If a brain is dead, then it's dead. Even if you remove parasits safely, they not become peoples they were before.
Instead of it i can propose only one recipe: gain control over parasites, force them to work as missing brainparts. So it will be not cure, but anti-symptome vaccine.
I don't want to spoil too muchYes, i looked inside .rul files and saw some odd things, waiting me in future... :-X
dumb like a caterpillar and doesn't evolve.Wow, wow, easy. Caterpillar now is pretty smart. I know many people more stupid than it. ;D
Wow, wow, easy. Caterpillar now is pretty smart. I know many people more stupid than it. ;D
In my opinion it's not really disrespectful, or at least not any more than in normal medical facilities. (A bit different due to, umm, special circumstances, but still.)Zombies are kept in animal cages, that's pretty hard to spin as respectful treatment. I imagine them aware and raging at the bars in there, worse than normal animals which will give up, because they have the need to sustain/grow their parasite. If they were kept in normal human people cells or med bays, then yes, it might be respectful.
Yeah, but these are agents, not soldiers. Which means they suck.
Still, a police agent at least knows how to shoot straight, so I agree.
Zombies are kept in animal cages, that's pretty hard to spin as respectful treatment. I imagine them aware and raging at the bars in there, worse than normal animals which will give up, because they have the need to sustain/grow their parasite. If they were kept in normal human people cells or med bays, then yes, it might be respectful.
Shitty starting stats (except good Stam, STR, HP and bravery since they went through being a zombie, have crazy adrenaline but are a bit disconnected, so hard to scare and can't aim), mediocre training caps (so you can't just fix the problem in the gym, because they don't learn very well in tame conditions, they need to be fired up), great stat caps (physically they're awesome, and when you get them to work up that crazy adrenaline, they can "reconnect" and learn/do great things)? That would be an interesting motivation to bring one bad agent per mission, just because if you keep them alive, they'll become really good. Also extra motivation to keep zombies alive instead of killing them all.
Other than that, I don't see much that adds to the game and keeping the selling as now is probably fine. Just a bit unfortunate that it gives an incentive to kill the zombies instead of the other way around.
About cure of zombiizm - it is a great idea indeed. Dont know about make them soldiers, though. Modern soldiers are more training results, than physical conditions.Consider it a field experiment: You have someone with great physical capabilities that need high adrenalin/excitement to perform. Where do you get more of that than in the field? And over time they might become skilled like a soldier (they might well never make as good of a sniper through lower acc caps, but could make better breachers from better reactions/str/HP for example)
About return to family - definitly no. I even say NOPE. Read something about quarantine, anti-epidemical measures, so on. Burn them to cinder is more realistic idea. Better burn twice.Well, Solarius seemed to imply he thought there could be a cure. If you can make the person their former self, then why wouldn't you return them? I'm more than happy for there to not be a cure though.
About selling live aliens - dont be so soft. There is over 7000000 scientists in world (according to unesco). Lets say that 1000000 of them are biologist. Ok, 500 000. How many of them want to look at xenobiological species? I think more than half. And do you know how many military scientists exist? They definetly not in unesco list. 8)Well, it takes a LOT to go through and believe me, universities (where a good chunk of "free" researchers who could just jump onto the next interesting thing are, don't have the facilities to handle alien species and the risk they represent. Let alone during the XComFiles time where the alien invasion isn't well known. Government scientists usually have a specific mandate and they don't have the freedom to deviate from it. Sure, some governments will dedicate resources to investigating aliens if they can, which I always believed to be what happened when XCom sells aliens: You get money from one of the founding nations as a reward for providing them with a research subject. But it kinda sucks too as an explanation: if the funding nations are researching aliens, why don't they ever come up with something useful? So in the end we're left with my cousin's explanation: They're sold to fancy sushi restaurants. That's why I asked Solarius about it, I wanted to know his view.
By Lore, x-com strongly connected to secret services. These guys not bother about morale and feelings at all.There we need to find out which vision of XCom we want to portray:
So, my opinion: if our world encountered an alien invasion, we must cut out antigrav implants from live floaters, recycle zombies for elerium-infused biomass and grow tamed chryssalids, trained to eat only their previous masters. As we, humans, do. And maybe create reaper chivalry. ;D
I don't want Zombies that Feel. Zombies that Think. Zombies that elicit sympathy.Well, I certainly agree with #2 needing to change.. As for zombies, they should fall in a similar category as orcs/orks and other fantasy monsters which are totally fine to kill because they're totally evil.
Wanton Destruction, Overt Annihilation, Cruel levels of hate and malice directed and focused upon them... Ground to dust, without a shred of remorse....
Really, when it boils down to it - there's so few things you can basically do that to, in real life OR, in video games...
1) Zombies.
2) Nazis.
And even these days, 2) is a point that's starting to change (for the weirder, really... But still...)
Even Aliens, well, aliens are sentient beings and all, and we're supposed to respect that concept - even if we do mow them down all the same - there's an implication there... That is what makes the ALIEN HORROR trope work - because they are *no different to us*, and they started it...
If we're supposed to feel sympathy for them, don't call them Zombies. Call them Infects, or Rotters, or Drippys, or something other than Zombies.
Zombies exist in trope to be a tireless, endless horde, whose capability is only proportional to its hordesqueness... Otherwise, they are something to be trampled under boots.
Besides,
In the immortal Words of Munchkin:
"LEVEL UP: Kill some Nazis! Because every game is better when you can kill some Nazis!"
It should apply to Zombies, too.
...I find this hard to argue with.Indeed, so let's just drain them and be done with this! :P
That's why I put them in, dammit!
EDIT:Fair enough, and they do keep alien affected humans in those too. It's easy to make your own vision of something in this game, which is why I was asking/challenging yours. No I know! :D
I meant animal cages which look like this:
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/17/d0/e5/17d0e51fffee2a38163a84ce48e92e66.jpg)
Torchwood
(Not really a Zombie, but pretty close.)
Don't zombies provide you with more Blood Plasma when taken alive? That should be reason enough to try to keep them alive :)
I just realized: since we have Zombie troopers now (thanks to Nord), then maybe we can actually use the Zombies for ourselves? Zombie defence squad, anyone?
Do you have to pay them in advance in Brains, or do they get to eat what they kill, mercenary style?
Zombies (here) don't have to eat people, and especially not their brains. They need Elerium, which is generally found in other Zombies.
If they can use advanced weapons, you need to make some large debuff. E.g. large hp, but very low tu.
I shall endeavour to refer to them from this point on as NotZombies :D
If you're looking for a lore which fits the mechanisms that you put in the mod, possessed people are a good alternative for zombies. It fits the existing graphics and sounds, and justifies that they can be taken alive. It's also less of a surprise that XCOM can research a way to cure the victims.
For example the disfigured monsters in Evil Dead movies are not reanimated corpses, but living people who get possessed. Ash himself gets briefly possessed at a time, and luckily recovers.
https://evildead.wikia.com/wiki/Deadite#Possession
If zombies are actually possessed, it justifies making them a bit faster (probably more challenging), and holding improvised weapons, especially horror-themed weapons like meat cleaver and the occasional chainsaw or molotov cocktail.
Also, Evil Dead uses the Necronomicon, so that's one more thing linked with the Cthulhu mythos.
In case you didn't know it already, you can right-click your prison to enter a management screen.Well, selling living monsters would be weird, so I have only one option: "dispose" them by "converting" to dead tissue (ex-specimens, yeah). That's why I asked.
- If "live alien sale", you have the option to sell prisoners
- Otherwise, you have the option to, err, convert them to non-live prisoners.
Well, selling living monsters would be weird
Maybe, but very much justified, considering how much scientific institutions would scramble to get their hands on one. :) Especially military ones.Well, I mean zombies actually. Even if common and fat zombies are relatively "safe" (they can't infect humans), Infectors are not.
What if, just a random idea, curing them would give you a chance to either generate one engineer, scientist or agent. I mean, as you said not everyone is cut out to be a soldier, but certainly they could benefit the X-Com organization in some way or another, and having the possibility for them to become either a scientist, engineer, or agent would give an element of random chance and some incentive (other than morals) to actually save them.
I've found that the Biological side of the X-Com Files is a touch under developed.Woah, woah, I almost heard Deus Ex main theme while reading your post 8) But hell yeah, it would be a nice way to face aliens much more better prepared.
Zombies are one of the things that I feel should be a serious resource that we should be striving and excited about collecting instead of a hassle that I kill for points and corpse money. Blood plasma is pretty meh. Cool, but not exactly super useful when compared to other options especially since it relies on killing monsters and then processing them so call it 3 steps. KIll, Bioextract, fabricate for a meh reward. Plus, the damage resistance of zombies being what it is often means you have tons of live ones that just piss you off by not dying because they are so useless.
I would propose there simply needs to be more bioextractions from different monsters and aliens that take advantage of the resources of corpses. Soldier buffs that increase stamina, strength, Reactions, etc that in general make a soldier better.
Imagine a soldier with a moderate amount of regeneration, say 1 fatal wound a turn and 5 health. It would mean Rookies stand a better chance of not dying from blood loss utilizing a transfusion of energetic blood plasma and alien electronics
Imagine having a trooper with spliced in artifical muscles that enhance strength or change the rate in which they improve via training.
I think we haven't even scratched the surface :)
Let's think a little deeper into this "zombie cure" topic.
Even if we could cure common zombies, what should we do with more mutated forms? Yep, it would be somewhat nice to have additional personnel virtually for free, but I'm not sure that fat zombie or mutator could become engineer or scientist. And remember - even cured mutator is still dangerous because of parasites he's breeding inside of him. I can tolerate cured fat zombies as janitors but not infectors roaming free in my base and turning my staff into zombies - no matter if he does it unintentionally. Yeah, do you think that any cured "alternatively-alive" will be nice person? What if he/she will be a nihilistic asshole, superhuman-wannabe or yet another mad-scientist-type who will start a zombie outbreak just FOR SCIENCE?
I shall admit that my point may be arguable (and controversial a bit) but I just wonder how the one could be so naive about zombies. Once they are infected, there is no way back for them, sorry.
I don't think these dangers apply in this case; the parasites are reasonably big (the size of a large bean) and easy to isolate, and they keep their offspring inside their bodies, not all over the zombie's system.Oh, that's good.
However, the problem is, that the zombified human is completely dead. Their higher brain functions are completely, physically destroyed. These brain parts can be regrown, using parasite abilities (and enough Elerium), making the person human-like again, but it won't be the same person. The former human is dead, their memories are gone, their psi signature is gone, their soul is no longer present.Yes, that's why I think that "zombie cure" is ridiculous. The best analogy I can use for this would be Half-Life "headcrabed" zombies - the human whose brain was destroyed and body was completely overtaken by alien parasite and heavily mutated by its presence.
So, a hypothetical "cured" zombie will effectively be an alien hybrid, with generally human brain (and psychology) but alien metabolism and no memories.No human psychology at all, I'm afraid. The alien metabolism will require completely different brain structure and functions just to control all new Ellerium-based body processes. And yes, different brain structure means no human mind because... argh, look, the human mind is the product of long evolution of human brain AND human (or mammalian at least) metabolism. And we have a human body with almost no brain AND altered metabolism. Obviously, this human is no more (
Instead of having zombies be rescued, what if you could develop a sort of hormonal CONTROL of zombies, and produce them as replacements for dogs?
Instead of having zombies be rescued, what if you could develop a sort of hormonal CONTROL of zombies, and produce them as replacements for dogs?
Yes, it's sort of planned, when I don't have anything better to do. ;)Oh man, we all know that we'll can control them using tweaked X-Com Psiclone someday :P
This sounds like a good avenue for the less moral, and more results based leaders of the world to fight invasion. Reuse the victims as shock troops.biodrones? biodrones.
Mission with zombies too boring just a shooting gallery. No dangerouse from them. Did any changes since 0.6.8?
Everything has changed since 0.6.8. ;) Also with Zombies, though the changes are subtle.
Please update to 0.7.1 and have fun!
You mean 0.8.1? .-.