[Design/Antagonist] New biohazard Fungus Zombies.

[Venuska1117]

Fungus Zombies

Inspiration:

First of all, this inspiration comes from a documentary I once watched on YouTube about Fungi with infect ants and make them behave like "zombies", in short, fungi infect the ant exoskeleton, next process is spreading their "roots" inside the ant's body and taking control of it, after successful infection fungus order ant to find a high and suitable place, anchor to it and then fungus consume hosts insides to "flower" and the whole cycle repeats.

Introduction:

The "Fungus" event only contain 3 entities:

• First one is "Monolit" with is main source of fungus and buffs.
• Second one is "Spores" with are clouds of "seeds" with high infection risk.
• Third one is "Infected People" (aka Fungus Zombies) with are infected carbon mobs.

Functionality:

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Monolith:
(Example image)

Monolith has a chance to spawn during meteor storms, but it would only appear in predicted spots (which would require edit maps), like maintenance, when monolith spawn it will go through 5 stages before becoming "full power".

When monolith lands it would start counter, and the time between stages would be longer but each step gives fungus and its entities different powers and the sprite would change depending on the stage (like become more covered in moss, on the last stage runes will glow under the cover of moss)

On stage 0, it would change the sprite to "cracking" where one of its rocks on the base would crack and fungus would start growing.
In Stage 1, the fungus will start spreading a "mossy carpet" around the monolith and start producing spores.
In Stage 2, fungus "spores" will gain increased "longevity" which means they can travel further away from Monolisk before dying.
In Stage 3, fungus zombies will gain faster movement speed.
In Stage 4, the fungus will produce more spores from 3 to 5.
On Final Stage 5, the monolith will become "Full power" and will grant some "Increased fire immunity" to fungus. (increase their resistance to fire, which is their weakness.)

Destroying Monolith will not Kill Fungus, but it will remove bonuses and decrease their efficiency by 30% (like damage, speed, ressurection time and infection speed)

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Fungus

Fungus and Fungus Spores are sources of infection, when fungus spores spawn, they have a limited lifespan but they can use vents for fast travel through the station to get someone infected before death.

Fungus:
Fungus is a carpet appearing on tiles around Monolisk and "sacrificed" zombies, its main purpose is to slow down people who try to walk on it, any skin touching fungus carpet can cause infection (like feet, if you walk on it without boots) or laying on fungus carpet (you are laying on fungus with a lot of spores on it, so you have high chance to get infected from it)

Fungus Spores:
A Cloud of living spores with the purpose is to infecting carbons, they attack any nearby living carbons by "buckling" themself on target, spores infect by "breathing" them, so the longer they are "buckled" to a person, the faster person "infection" progress, if a person doesn't get surgery in time, fungi seeds inside their chest will burst out of their mouth changing them to "fungus zombies".

Fungus Spores can infect dead bodies, but they need an alive person when infecting to work, so when you infect a dead body they will change straight to "Flowering Host"

What is "Flowering Host" ?
Flowering Host is a term used for "Fungus Zombies Sacrifice", it will consume "host" body nutrients and change it to "sub-monolith" which would produce spores and fungus carpet around it. (it's a way to spread fungus further away from the monolith, something like "checkpoints" where you can spawn as fungus cloud instead of needing to run all this way to a specific point)

Fungus Zombies:
Fungus zombies are the next stage of the fungus, after the spore cloud successfully infects a person, and the infection has gone to the last stage, it will take control over the host body, and now the person is changed to a Fungus Zombie, The fungus zombie objective is to attack people to help spores cloud infecting them, even if you die is not the end of your play, your source of fungus is "spores nest" inside your chest, so even if you get killed, after centra in the amount of time your spores inside chest will burst out again allowing you to rise from dead and continue your terror.

Of course, that's not all, fungus zombies gain an ability called "Sacrifice", activating this ability will drive out all fungus in the chest outside, which causes the host to densely overgrow in fungus, thanks to that you create a new respawn point for spores cloud and fungus carpet start to spread, but it make fungus zombie "die" for this (seeds metamorphose to change from infectious type to spreading type), this ability is useful for spreading range of fungus and its part of the gameplay as fungus.

Death is not end of terror but beginning of it.

Important Stuff that I missed:

• Person infection caused by spore cloud will be visible on medic HUD's
• To Stop a Zombie from resurrection, first need to "temporarily" kill it, and do surgery to remove the "Spore Nest" located in its chest.
• By Default, Fungus and other are fragile to fire, fire make them burn down easily, and it will be harder after the monolith goes to stage 5.
• The only way to kill spore clouds is by using "fire" sources like welders or fire, they are highly resistant to brute damage.
• Spore cloud mechanics would be similar to slimes, they can jump on a person to "buckle" themselves to them, and if you don't have welders or anything, you can use "shove" interaction to "shove" them from the person they are trying to infect.
• Zombies using "sacrifice" change to "Flowering Host".
• Spore Clouds spawning from monolith/"Flowering Host" are AI-driven, they share slime AI attacking (but more aggressive instead of passive)
• Players can spawn as Spore Cloud by pressing on monolith or "Flowering Host", they will get a window asking if they want to play as spore cloud (you can't be clonned!)
• If the AI Spore cloud successfully infects a person, there will be a Ghost roll "Do you want to play as Fungus Zombie", after the roll goes out, you will become this person with fancy animation of transformation.
• If player successfully infects a person with a Spore cloud will claim the person's body they infected.
• The main focus on zombies is to attack people, and drag them in critical to spore clouds so they will get infected, and even if they die after infection, they will become zombies, but it will take them longer because the host died.