New Minor Antag: Vampire

[Rainfey]

About the PR

Design doc https://github.com/space-wizards/docs/pull/131 Add a new vampire minior antag I'm requesting feedback on tweaking of mechanics, ideas for abilities and insight on potential balance issues

Vampire Traits

• Pressure Immune
• Immune to cold temperatures (but not heat)
• Cannot rot
• Will heal (even from death) when placed inside a closed Coffin (Rate of 2 per second, burn at 1 per second)
• New abilities are gained for possessing certain amounts of blood
• Being exposed to starlight burns the vampire (ISSUE: Currently im checking if the tile is empty, any better way of checking for space?)
• Cannot digest normal foods, must subsist on blood (Still able to consume Pills)
• Drinking blood will heal the vampire by 3 brute and 1.25 burn (reused bloodsucker metabolism)
• Will be burned by holy water (splash and ingestion/injecton) and the bible
• Attempting to pick up the bible will severely burn and stun the foolish vampire
• (Not Done) Abilities are blocked when in the chapel
• (Not Done) Draining the vampire of blood will prevent them from using abilities (and being teleported to their coffin if you are fast enough)
• Increased melee damage, 10 slash per hit

Vampire Abilities

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Toggle Fangs	Starting Ability	0 blood	0 seconds

The vampire extends their fangs so they may drink from their victim (by interacting with them at close range) While drinking blood others will hear the drinking sound and a blood pool will begin to form around the victim (messy eaters) Blood can be drank from any humanoid - living or dead, but not those who have rotted A uninjured body provides 300u of blood, but the vampire is limited by their stomach capacity Drinking the blood of the Chaplain will instead burn the Vampire. Others at close range will be able to see a vampires fangs (when examining)

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Glare	Starting Ability	0 blood	60 seconds

The vampire releases a powerful flash from their eyes, stunning any victim without eye protection for 10 seconds This has no effect on the Chaplain

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Hypnotise	Starting Ability	0 Blood	60 seconds

The vampire stares into its victims eyes for 5 seconds, forcing them to sleep for 60 seconds. Has no effect on the chaplain.

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Stellar Weakness	Starting Ability

Vampires are burnt by the light of the sun, or to be specific - the few billion stars they are exposed to outside the station.

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Polymorph: Bat	30 blood	20 blood	30 seconds

The vampire changes into the form of a bat (QUESTION: Should this bat be able to go through doors like mice? SS13 implementations of this allow vent crawling)

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Blood Steal	30 blood	20 blood	60 seconds

The vampire forcibly extracts blood from all humanoids in the area (3 tiles) Has no effect on the chaplain.

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Chiropteran Screech	50 Blood	10 Blood	60 seconds

The vampire shrieks and stuns nearby (3 tiles) humanoids for 3 seconds (QUESTION: Should this include an EMP effect to block radios?)

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Deaths Embrace	150 Blood	100 Blood	0 seconds

Upon death if the vampire has enough blood stored - their body will be teleported to the last coffin they slept in.

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Cloak of Darkness	300 Blood	20 Blood	10 seconds

The vampire activates a stealth, similar to that of a ninja.

Icon	Name	Unlock Requirement	Use Cost	Cooldown
	Full Potential	600 Blood

The vampire reaches their full potential, rendering them immune to Holy damage. May the Gods have mercy upon your souls, para bellum

Other ideas for abilities

Summoning bat minions Private vampire radio channel (intrinsic radio?) Converting the dead into thralls Regeneration - Passive healing Direct attack methods - Some kind of necrotic touch ability

Provisions are coded for players being able to choose their bloodline, which can alter when abilities are unlocked, their costs and cooldowns - along with other parameters. I havent implemented the above yet (i suck at UI's) and so all vampires get the 'Default' bloodline.

[github-actions[bot]]

RSI Diff Bot; head commit da2504fb5598782d338b56fb248b3d56a868c29a merging into a97eb8dcdcf8cef67a8f2de4b4cfe375da509276 This PR makes changes to 1 or more RSIs. Here is a summary of all changes:

Resources/Textures/Interface/Actions/actions_vampire.rsi

State	Old	New	Status
batform			Added
bloodsteal			Added
cloakofdarkness			Added
fangs_extended			Added
fangs_retracted			Added
glare			Added
hypnotise			Added
screech			Added
summonheirloom			Added
supernaturalstrength			Added
unholystrength			Added

Edit: diff updated after da2504fb5598782d338b56fb248b3d56a868c29a

[mirrorcult]

this will need a doc at https://github.com/space-wizards/docs

[Rainfey]

Understood, once details are finalized i'll do a writeup. Are do you mean as a proposal?

[LordEclipse]

You couod have the abilities unlocked through an antag store as they drain blood from their victims

[LordCarve]

QUESTION: Should this bat be able to go through doors like mice? SS13 implementations of this allow vent crawling

No. Being a flyer is a huge benefit already (slipping immunity, launching resistance via CanMoveInAir). SmallMob collision layer is very powerful and should be used with scrutiny. Regular bats don't have it for a reason: SmallMob + flyer = a nasty combo. If there is a design direction to give vampires that ability, make that a separate "transform into a rat" or something that's appropriately more costly. This way at least you can have either flying or crawling under doors, not both at the same time.

Other ideas for abilities

I'd like to see the classic "spirit touch" ability that lets a vampire peer into an inanimate object's past and learn who handled it (basically forensics). But I'm not sure how to justify its existence from antag role perspective as it brings virtually nothing of use to a vampire. So yeah - probably not.

[icekot8]

I like this draft, actually. But I think you could avoid the 3 second stan by wearing earplugs or maybe headphones? That should give debuffs. But 9 seconds of stasis for a humanoid for a corpse.... That doesn't seem right to me, at least it shouldn't affect the chaplain since he's above that. The rest of the abilities are actually pretty well balanced and will provide gameplay for both the antagonist and the chaplain.

[keronshb]

I have a shop PR in the works that will give it action upgrade functionality. Once #24005 is merged, I'll be doing that PR soon after. Not sure if Vampire will need this, but just giving you a heads up that it could be something you'd be using.

[Rainfey]

QUESTION: Should this bat be able to go through doors like mice? SS13 implementations of this allow vent crawling

No. Being a flyer is a huge benefit already (slipping immunity, launching resistance via CanMoveInAir). SmallMob collision layer is very powerful and should be used with scrutiny. Regular bats don't have it for a reason: SmallMob + flyer = a nasty combo. If there is a design direction to give vampires that ability, make that a separate "transform into a rat" or something that's appropriately more costly. This way at least you can have either flying or crawling under doors, not both at the same time.

There is no design directive to require going through doors as a bat - only that SS13 had the functionality. The only issue with not having it is that bats cant open doors - full stop. But i do like the idea for polymorph rat as a later evolution, some versions of vampire on SS13 had an upgraded bat form.

I like this draft, actually. But I think you could avoid the 3 second stan by wearing earplugs or maybe headphones?

There is currently no such thing as hearing protection in game, technically headphones are just neck items. But yes if hearing protection is added (besides hardcoding specific items) then it should protect from this ability

You couod have the abilities unlocked through an antag store as they drain blood from their victims

I considered a store, but i like the idea of vampire bloodlines - where each bloodline has a focus (such as melee, ranged, stealth etc), and thats the direction i would like to explore. The problem with vampire + store is the currency would be blood - they could practically infinitely generate currency.

[LordCarve]

bats cant open doors

Bats are bump openers (I think?), so powered doors are no problem (if not - the vampire-morph bat specifically can be a bump opener). NT stations are designed to be pet-friendly (Remilia included), so lore-wise we're covered. Unpowered doors are another matter, but we are talking about unpowered doors here. If you need to use a crowbar to pry a door... it only seems appropriate that you can't do that in bat form. Can't imagine a bat handling a crowbar.

In any case - a vampire cannot get stuck as they always have the option to morph back into humanoid form (right?).

Pretty sure it'll be fine without SmallMob.

[Rainfey]

Ah looks like Remilia specifically is a DoorBumpOpener - and i just chose MobBat as the polymorph target I'll create a dedicated vampire bat type

[Carolyn3114]

can you use bloodpacks to gain blood?

[Rainfey]

Not currently, you can drink blood for hunger and thirst - but it must come from a humanoid for you to gain Blood for abilities. You can however drain a person, then use a bloodpack to refill their blood - and then drain them again.

[thelittleskeleton]

would be kind of cool if the vampire could convert people into thralls by dragging them into maints and using an ability with a long doafter on them/their corpse - you could make it an antag objective to create x number of thralls or something

[Rainfey]

I have shied away from any conversion mechanics - i fear they may push this beyond the bounds of a minior antagonist. Not exactly minor anymore when i have an army of thralls prowling the halls.

Still willing to get feedback on the idea however, SS13 has both converting others to vampires or converting them into thralls.

[K-Dynamic]

Probably hardlimit the numbers of thralls they can have then, like 2 per vampire

Werebat form when

[kurokoTurbo]

I think vampire should be able to heal with the blood he drank

[Rainfey]

Updated with the blood healing, luckily thats already in the game (for shark's)

[Kadeo64]

hmm.. what if, wooden bullets, makeshift shotgun shells crafted from plastic, steel, and wood, they deal a minimal amount of damage normally, cause bleed, and most importantly, deal a lot of damage to vampires.

[UbaserB]

YOOO VAMPIRE!?!?!

[albatrossrus]

that some good PR right there

[BreadyToad]

Would be cool if vampires not only had their abilities blocked when in chapel but started burning alive like it was in SS13. Plus, if you want to explore vampire bloodlines than you could look at paradise's implementation, they did an amazing job with vampire specialisation

[keronshb]

Added Frozen due to the antag freeze. Please still feel free to work on the doc & PR as needed. https://github.com/space-wizards/space-station-14/issues/8524

[Rainfey]

I pivoted my design a little, since i am horrible at UI stuff and adding multiple bloodlines was proving to be a coding mess -

I'm trying out the store idea instead, hopefully i can balance it based on the cost of abilities and with blacklists (ie you can only buy one polymoph form)

@keronshb Once this PR is ready for review - do i proceed as normal or are there additional steps? (like discussing it with maintainers)

[metalgearsloth]

I pivoted my design a little, since i am horrible at UI stuff and adding multiple bloodlines was proving to be a coding mess -

I'm trying out the store idea instead, hopefully i can balance it based on the cost of abilities and with blacklists (ie you can only buy one polymoph form)

@keronshb Once this PR is ready for review - do i proceed as normal or are there additional steps? (like discussing it with maintainers)

The PR will get reviewed at some point but much more stringently than a normal PR, I think ninja had over 200 comments and even that felt short.

[deltanedas]

200 on first pr :trollface:

[RedNiloc]

I have an idea, that maybe vampires can pry doors with bare hands and even powered ones (Like zombie) since they are extremally strong creatures.

[github-actions[bot]]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[Xkallubar]

Add thralls but make it so that initially vampires have a cap of like 1-2 thralls, and depending on their bloodline, or if they get the final upgrade, they gain extra thrall slots.

[tutoumi]

i think lizards and spiders species should not be able to be vampire cause its praticly normal to see them drink blood on the ground for exemple

[Aisu9]

i think lizards and spiders species should not be able to be vampire cause its praticly normal to see them drink blood on the ground for exemple

no specism, even more if it's to metacheck them(also gender/specie loc antags is lame as fuck)