Parisitic Tumbleweed

[Hunterdyl]

I had this idea while taking a hike around my local hills. What if when a tumbleweed encounters a living organism it attempts to take control of it? I thought this would fit into the story and setting of RimWorld. It could cause the local fauna to become increasingly aggressive or it could infest a colonist and cause him to lose his mind. Please let me know what you all think and feel free to suggest further ideas!

[Tynan]

This could be an interesting random event. Some parasite forcing behavior changes in a colonist. But what would he do? Just go insane and start shooting? Seems dull... I'd want something more nuanced, that presents choices to the player and lasts over time.

[Noxmutagen]

This could be an interesting random event. Some parasite forcing behavior changes in a colonist. But what would he do? Just go insane and start shooting? Seems dull... I'd want something more nuanced, that presents choices to the player and lasts over time.

I'd like the BLOB, basically, it comes to the map, if it eats one of your colonists it begins to grow uncontrollably. Only way to stop it is to blow it up or set it on fire or use some kind of researched solvent. So maybe you could send colonist to collect samples and or blow it up, or wall it in to contain it and have a game of how fast can you rebuild these walls before the end.

Make it even more fun with its ability to spawn more creatures from clouds of spores or something lol.

[ElcomeSoft]

This could be an interesting random event. Some parasite forcing behavior changes in a colonist. But what would he do? Just go insane and start shooting? Seems dull... I'd want something more nuanced, that presents choices to the player and lasts over time.

• Colonist gets infected but doesn't notice.
  Colonist is slowly subverted by the alien organism/parasite
  Colonist begins to change (possibly more mad, losing skill in areas, sleeping during the day, running around faster, pissing off other colonists)
  Colonist could morph into another lifeform and start attacking your colony.

At stage #3 the colonist could also start infecting the food (crops or paste dispenser) which would in turn start to affect your colony. They could all start to become less like they were and more erratic until they refuse to do what you want them to do and you lose control of the colony.

If the user spots this kind of behaviour starting to happen, they could choose to arrest/quarantine the infected colonist and a doctor would have to be dedicated the learning about it and solving the issue. Once a cause has been found the doctor might suggest that he screens every colonist and checks the food/water dispensers for signs of infection too. In the end your infected colonist may be cured and reintegrated into society, or they may take their own lives in quarantine feeling like there is no hope for a cure or that the 'infection' has failed in it's duty. You might even find the cure, save the colonist but fail to spot the infection is still present in Colonist Y and Z, or still in the paste dispenser, or has infected your prisoners.

It's a complicated thing but could become a monumental random event from which you may slip into an irrecoverable state or lose your colony entirely, or if you're on the ball, stem before it gets out of hand.

[Tynan]

This could be an interesting random event. Some parasite forcing behavior changes in a colonist. But what would he do? Just go insane and start shooting? Seems dull... I'd want something more nuanced, that presents choices to the player and lasts over time.

• Colonist gets infected but doesn't notice.
  Colonist is slowly subverted by the alien organism/parasite
  Colonist begins to change (possibly more mad, losing skill in areas, sleeping during the day, running around faster, pissing off other colonists)
  Colonist could morph into another lifeform and start attacking your colony.

At stage #3 the colonist could also start infecting the food (crops or paste dispenser) which would in turn start to affect your colony. They could all start to become less like they were and more erratic until they refuse to do what you want them to do and you lose control of the colony.

If the user spots this kind of behaviour starting to happen, they could choose to arrest/quarantine the infected colonist and a doctor would have to be dedicated the learning about it and solving the issue. Once a cause has been found the doctor might suggest that he screens every colonist and checks the food/water dispensers for signs of infection too. In the end your infected colonist may be cured and reintegrated into society, or they may take their own lives in quarantine feeling like there is no hope for a cure or that the 'infection' has failed in it's duty. You might even find the cure, save the colonist but fail to spot the infection is still present in Colonist Y and Z, or still in the paste dispenser, or has infected your prisoners.

It's a complicated thing but could become a monumental random event from which you may slip into an irrecoverable state or lose your colony entirely, or if you're on the ball, stem before it gets out of hand.

Can you condense that into one mechanic? One unambiguous change or event that makes this work?

[ElcomeSoft]

Can you condense that into one mechanic? One unambiguous change or event that makes this work?

As we spoke briefly on IRC, condensing this into one starting mechanic which could be built upon...

I am thinking 'random event' in which a colonist gets hurt whilst doing some sort of job and needs to see the doctor to get it checked out. The doctor treats the patient and either they recover and live or don't recover and die over time? I think that is as simple as I can make it as a starting point, at this time of the morning anyway.

One proviso I might suggest would be that the colonist that suffers from the injury should have to be told to prioritise visiting the doctor otherwise they'll pass it up as just something they can work through.

Hopefully this would be enough to get the ball rolling.

[Noxmutagen]

This could be an interesting random event. Some parasite forcing behavior changes in a colonist. But what would he do? Just go insane and start shooting? Seems dull... I'd want something more nuanced, that presents choices to the player and lasts over time.

• Colonist gets infected but doesn't notice.
  Colonist is slowly subverted by the alien organism/parasite
  Colonist begins to change (possibly more mad, losing skill in areas, sleeping during the day, running around faster, pissing off other colonists)
  Colonist could morph into another lifeform and start attacking your colony.

At stage #3 the colonist could also start infecting the food (crops or paste dispenser) which would in turn start to affect your colony. They could all start to become less like they were and more erratic until they refuse to do what you want them to do and you lose control of the colony.

If the user spots this kind of behaviour starting to happen, they could choose to arrest/quarantine the infected colonist and a doctor would have to be dedicated the learning about it and solving the issue. Once a cause has been found the doctor might suggest that he screens every colonist and checks the food/water dispensers for signs of infection too. In the end your infected colonist may be cured and reintegrated into society, or they may take their own lives in quarantine feeling like there is no hope for a cure or that the 'infection' has failed in it's duty. You might even find the cure, save the colonist but fail to spot the infection is still present in Colonist Y and Z, or still in the paste dispenser, or has infected your prisoners.

It's a complicated thing but could become a monumental random event from which you may slip into an irrecoverable state or lose your colony entirely, or if you're on the ball, stem before it gets out of hand.

Can you condense that into one mechanic? One unambiguous change or event that makes this work?

Yeah a random npc monster that operates like a squirrel but is infact a tumbleweed. It bounces towards the beds of your colony and punishes you for not walling it in. Or it simply wanders around the map in a random like patrol pattern. if it touches your NPC, it triggers this event. The event itself could be triggered on maps through a weather event like

"We've got some strange clouds on the horizon!" - setting these npc monster infection triggers out onto the map. Maybe you get lucky and squirrels eat them.

[Blitz]

This would be a very good story situation to implement. My first thought was a FTL style blue choice where the game would choose if it was a helpful parasite or a bad parasite. The helpful parasite would allow the colonist to function normally, but would have obvious deformities - like a face crab. The bad parasite would cause the guy to go crazy.

[Aerouge]

Infection when touching the plant, damage over time till death if not treated by an doctor and available medical supplies?

So not the complex behaviour changeing brain-parasite but simply a poisonous plant?

[ElcomeSoft]

Infection when touching the plant, damage over time till death if not treated by an doctor and available medical supplies?

So not the complex behaviour changeing brain-parasite but simply a poisonous plant?

The latter is possible but Tynan asked me to condense it so that we have a starting base mechanic to build from.

Basically, take my ordered brain musings and attempt to structure it into various different stages of implementation into the game. The former whole psychological effect thing would be something to try maybe on a 4th or 5th step, depending on how the alpha progresses by itself as other mechanics introduced for other reasons might hook in nicely with this one.

[GC13]

If I were doing it, I'd make it increment up against their hit points (hidden). Once it equals their current hit points, they're contagious and start losing HP as they go about their day, infecting things they touch with spores and losing HP.

You'd really need to implement this with a full-on Disease module though, or else the ticking health will be a dead giveaway. Also, the coding you use to check whether an object is contaminated will be accessible to all diseases, and each disease can have a base "transmission chance" for touching an object and being near the colonist. Bonus points if you make it so that diseases can affect AI. ^_^

[Hunterdyl]

Sorry for taking a while to respond! Thank you all for posting your ideas!

Along the lines of the different stages you have been talking about maybe the host can start gaining certain stats(becoming stronger etc.) while his mind slowly deteriorates while the parasite takes over (loses intelligence and common sense etc.) which all become more prevalent as the different stages set in.

As for choices the player can make. Possibly choose specific people to infect with the parasite to gain those stats and try to keep it under control to make a strong yet dumb peons. Maybe once the parasite gains full control of the host it gains the abilities to communicate and the player can discuss the terms of a symbiotic relationship within the host or to release the host completely!

Another possibility is that the player can potentially harvest these parasites and modify them to cause a  near instantaneous coma like state. Useful for subduing madmen or thrown at raiders to take them prisoner

[Aerouge]

Infection when touching the plant, damage over time till death if not treated by an doctor and available medical supplies?

So not the complex behaviour changeing brain-parasite but simply a poisonous plant?

The latter is possible but Tynan asked me to condense it so that we have a starting base mechanic to build from.

Basically, take my ordered brain musings and attempt to structure it into various different stages of implementation into the game. The former whole psychological effect thing would be something to try maybe on a 4th or 5th step, depending on how the alpha progresses by itself as other mechanics introduced for other reasons might hook in nicely with this one.

Okay trying to make this into game stages

• 
  1. Infection: Colonist touches the parasitic tumbleweed as it moves randomly across the map. There could be a hidden dice role to see if the infectionction is sucessfull
  
• 
  2. Outbreak: Short message that a colonist is infected by an unknown disease and needs to be treated urgently.
  
• 
  3. Decay: After the outbreake the colonist will enter his bed and sleep, while losing healthpoints
  Different methods for curing him:
  3.a. Buy a cure from a passing science vessel (Those mediacl supplies already in game). For ammount X of medical supplies the colonist is healed and returns to work and recovers the lost HP as he recovers from gunshots right now.
  3.b. Have a scientis find a cure yourself!
  Create a new researchtopic. Either "Find a cure for [colonist name]" or "Find an antidote agains parasitic tumbleweed". The second option would be a much bigger research-job but would cure the thread of the tumbleweed for good.
  
• 
  4. If the colonist is not cured before his HP reach zero, he turns into a "zombie" (Lack of better name here) and starts meele-attacking everything he sees. So he would break down the door of his living-quarter and start meeleing all other colonists he meets (And each sucessfull atack would pose the danger of infection again).
  
• 
  5. When put out of his misery the dead body could still pose the thread of infection for everyone passing by or carrying the corpse. Thus there would still be a thread to the colony in case the colonist got gunned down by an turret, and still it would make sense to get rid of the corpse instead of having a never ending diseaseherd in your colony.
  

And to have different game stages for Tynan to develope:

• Develope an event that gives colonists a new / hidden attribute "infected" after comming in contact with a plant
• Messages are already developed
• Develop a dmg over time effect
• Develop a mechanism to add new / specific reasearchtopics ("Find a cure for Jonny")
• Develop a new colonist state "sick" where that colonists stays in bed indefinately. Have him get dmg from starvation as well if he is not doctored by other colonists
• Develop a method to replace a colonists character with a differenct character and "melee" behaviour

The rest of the stages seems to be already included in the current prototype.