How to fix Monkey

[Helios]

It's a bunch of work to fix monkey, or is it. This is for ideas on how to fix Monkey.
My idea is, replace it with Zombies. Have the round end when 80% of the station is zombified. Zombies are basically Monkey, except instead of biting to turn them into a monkey you are biting them and turning them into a zombie.

[FantasticFwoosh]

But the problem is that zombies can down and just gib a monkey (unless we put in text and bwoinkable team antag status not to attack plague carrier/carriers)

Sumatran rat monkey mode confirmed.



(while we are at it, if it becomes its own simple mob or a monkey variant, we can take zombies out of direct xenobio cores and give justification to make them a little smarter *prone to dropping items, slurred and obvious speech on telecommunications* while still strong.)

[Incoming]

Monkey mode works fine. The only problem is its at the whim of other modes in terms of game balance because it's fucking monkey mode.

[LiamLime]

Here's the problem with monkey:
- One monkey needs to be able to fairly reliably infect at least one other player.
- Once the second player is infected, you now have two, equally powerful monkeys. As we established, the first monkey is powerful enough to reliably infect another players, two monkeys with this power level literally doubles the monkey team's power.
- From here growth is exponential. The monkey team's chance of success starts at "fairly reliably infect" and only gets better from there.

There are other game modes which start with a few infection starters where the infection spreads to other players: Revolution, cult and gangs (the infection being rev, cultism or gang status). The difference between these and monkey is that there are several infection starters, not one, meaning each individual one can be less powerful, since if one fails the initial infection, others have an equal chance of success (So the balance is "Between all the rev heads, at least one must fairly reliably spread the infection" as opposed to "This one player must fairly reliably spread the infection".

The other difference is that players who did not start the infection - meaning players who were converted to rev/cult/gang do not in turn posses the ability to convert, meaning they can be much weaker than the original infection starters, so a team with a rev head and a rev member is not twice as powerful as a rev head alone, it's more than 1x powerful and less than 2x powerful. In monkey, the converted monkey is as powerful as the original one, meaning two monkeys are 2x as powerful as one.


The solutions to fix monkey are either to make them more similar to the ever-growing roster of infection game modes and make converted monkeys inferior to the original one, or change it into more or a "tag" mechanic, where once a monkey converts another monkey, that new one needs to convert from that point on and the original one loses this power.

There are more ways to do the infection round types and monkey could be the flavour for it, but the way monkey works currently cannot be made fun because of the reasons I explained.

inb4 monkey changed since I last played it and this whole post is outdated

[Cobby]

Or just make it so being bit by one doesn't INSTANTLY turn you into a monkey, but repeated bites speed up the disease.

[Zilenan91]

Or just make it so being bit by one doesn't INSTANTLY turn you into a monkey, but repeated bites speed up the disease.

That's not what it does though, if you get bit, you have the disease, and it takes time to take action. Due to how disease code works, if you get bit then immediately eat a banana, you can never be given Jungle Fever again so you basically win at space.

[Incomptinence]

BRING BACK GUN MONKEYS GONNA POP A CHIMP IN THAT ASS!

[Steelpoint]

Just replace Monkey mode with Zombie mode, at this point Zombies have gotten far more balancing work done on them than Monkey ever will.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Just replace Monkey mode with Zombie mode, at this point Zombies have gotten far more balancing work done on them than Monkey ever will.

Small issues with that are that for one, zombies are not manueverable with vents like monkeys are, so unless they start in a public place, people are going to find them and either freak out/cuck them immediately, everyone gets too much prior warning.

This is unless we moved more into the scope of specialised modern zombies rather than the classic romero version we have today for this mode especially, castrating current xenobio zombies as lower tier zombies, up towards almost hulked zombies and stealthy vent crawlers that both can be killed on the first instance as a balancing caveat but are both strong in each right.

[Incomptinence]

Have felled zombies generate worms to vent crawl for them and spread the virus.

[Steelpoint]

You could look into creating a subtype of Zombie used for a game mode, and not the normal Zombies from RnD and whatever else.

Sort of akin to 28 Days Later, except maybe replacing the 5 second conversion time with a minute or so, so there's a window for a cure administration.

If we ever get dismemberment (a meme at this point) you could look into allowing people to cut off a infected limb before the conversion finishes.

Maybe even expand the Zombies from individual power into making them mob spawners of sorts, so Players as Zombies can expend resources to spawns less powerful Zombies, or other creatures.

[LiamLime]

I don't think that would solve the issues from my previous post. An infection mode where each subsequent clone is as powerful as the original, with only one infection starter and no ability to hide in sight (like revs, cultists, gang members or changelings), cannot work. See my previous post for more detail.

When rev-heads start off, they aren't all that much powerful than regular crew members. They are just looking for an opportune moment to expand their ranks. They only grow become powerful once they hit a critical mass. Same with cult and gangs (which is basically multifactioned rev anyway).

What I propose is to drop the idea of a monkey mode altogether and focus on other flavours, which don't limit the mechanics quite as much as monkey mode does.

Examples of mechanics:
- Tag (one player infects another then loses this ability, the newly infected player has to convert the next one) - beekeeper mode?
- Time-limited infections (Each newly infected player only has a certain amount of time in which they can infect other players. This amount of time scales down with either the number of infected players or the number of steps from the infection starter (So infection starter has 20 minutes, those he converts have 10 minutes, those they convert have 5 minutes, etc.) )
- Privileged infection spreaders (similar to how in gang mode, the gang leader may give infection-spreading tools to certain individuals, basically the spreader decides who can spread the infection, and he can't give the power to everyone)
- Coordinated infection spreading (similar to cult, but there are many more ways of doing this. In cult, you have to have a rune and then coordinate with other infected players to have the conversion pre-requisites.)

Just a few ideas. I have to leave now, otherwise this list would've been longer.

[Shadowlight213]

I see monkeys get dunked all the time though since they can't carry guns.
Also, new ventcrawl fucked monkey mode hard. All you have to do as an engineer is over pressurize distro and make sure waste is empty, and gg monkeys. Since unlike xenos, swarmers, drones, etc.. monkeys need to breath meaning that ventcrawling is constantly damaging them.
Yeah, also if botany gets bananas monkeys baaically lose as cured people can't be re-infected and then viro can just shit out vaccines.
Nerfing monkeys is terrible as new ventcrawl and disease infection majorly nerfed them already.

[Shaps-cloud]

The monkey gamemode seizes up and falls limp, it's eyes dead and lifeless...

Keep the monkey dead

[Super Aggro Crag]

zombies are gay

[Shadowlight213]

The monkey gamemode seizes up and falls limp, it's eyes dead and lifeless...

Keep the monkey dead

Time 2 set 2 meteor. :^D

[Helios]

The monkey gamemode seizes up and falls limp, it's eyes dead and lifeless...

Keep the monkey dead

JC Denton fires the staff of healing!
The monkey gamemode is hit by a bolt of resurrection in the chest!

[PKPenguin321]

monkey subtype that can shoot guns/use consoles and shit/have super more bites/be less vulnerable to getting KO'd and can smash down walls with an ability that's on a delay
add it to monkeymode
mode = fixed

[FantasticFwoosh]

monkey subtype that can shoot guns/use consoles and shit/have super more bites/be less vulnerable to getting KO'd and can smash down walls with an ability that's on a delay
add it to monkeymode
mode = fixed

Gorilla's with punchstuns and door prying abilities. (really just a sprited human, or a human constrained inside a gorilla suit if spriting is too hard)

[DemonFiren]

Finally, I may soon be able to make a gorilla warfare pun in-game.