Firearm-wielding feral humans; Feral preppers & survivalists

[BioHazardSuit]

Summary

Content "Adds feral preppers and feral survivalists to city areas, mostly in prepper houses."

Purpose of change

Brings in firearm-using feral humans to the city areas, mostly found in the dead prepper houses. Survivors aren't able to become feral humans again after they de-convert, but preppers, who are there from the beginning of the cataclysm, would be stuck within their safehouses, killing their compatriots, and be left by the carnage outside for them to be enemies for the player.

Describe the solution

Added two types of gun wielding feral humans:

• Feral prepper: Uses a(n) 9mm-using weapon, follows a similar item drop and stats as the zombie survivor, weapon drop is picked by an item group-pool of 9mm and less firearms, and mimics the behavior of the feral security guard 9mm.
• Feral survivalist: A more expert prepper. Uses a(n) 9mm-using weapon, follows a similar item drop and stats as the veteran zombie survivor, also mimics the item group-pool of 9mm and less firearms, and also mimics the behavior of the feral security guard 9mm. They also mimic the behavior of the fallen survivor from l4d2, where they flee when in (critical) harm. This to show an illusion of self-awareness, where in theory it is the training and the leftover survival instincts kicking in for self preservation. Or maybe not, may need a better explanation for the self preservation trait for the survivalist.

Describe alternatives you've considered

If it is just to make so that there are firearm-wielding feral humans on the surface, we could also add the feral security guards to appropriate monster groups, like the office tower, but on the surface floors. Or the bank. Anywhere where they could logically be.

Testing

• Made debugged characters.
• Went into the big cities and find the dead prepper houses: At least one feral prepper should be found in each prepper house.
• Some feral preppers can appear on the city roads, since they follow the spawn frequency for the zombie survivors. May or may not need to be changed
• Debugged one year in and looked around, feral survivalists appear in the prepper houses, looks alright.
• Went to field, spawned friendly and hostile feral preppers and survivalists, made them fight. Their firearms seem to be working correctly, and injured feral survivalists start to flee from the fight.
• Checked the corpses for item drops, looks good, but may or may not need to be changed.
• realized that harvest is still zombie, changed it to human, and double checked by butchery.

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(2nd tests)

• Made a item group collection of 9mm and less guns for monster drop, similar to an older mod. Works well.
• Studied acid spitter spray dispersion, gave 2500 to prepper, shots will miss but will certainly hit at around 3/4 distance near you.
  (^ prepper now has ~2750 for dispersion)
• And gave 1500 to survivalist, shots will miss but will certainly hit at around 2-3/4-5 distance near you.

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(3rd tests)

• Tested melee lethality of both feral mobs: Too lethal for early-mid game, following the survivor zombie's skill set.
• Changed the melee skill, dice and stuff. Prepper now follows a similar melee to a mix of fire axe and pipe feral human, and survivalist follows the similar melee of the lab feral guard.
• Tests melee, looks good.

---

(4th tests)

• Changed their "handgun" skill with "pistol" skill, and changed their fakeguns with m9.
• They miss their shots, and also hit their shots (though not by much, 1:3 and 2:6), looks good.

Additional context

• Starting ammo for feral prepper is 3, while starting ammo for feral survivalist is 6.
• Following the "pistol" skill change from PR Give feral security guards the correct skill for their weapon #51916 , the feral prepper and survivalist will miss some or all their shots, without artificial dispersion needed.
  
• ^Looks good, though the spawn frequency may or may not be needed to be lower than zom_survivor for the prep-house.
• (^the frequency in prepper house for feral preppers are the same for tough zombie now)
• With a frequency of 1, cost multiplier of 25, and a "starts": of 540 (22 days) for surface areas around town, the spawning should be balanced and uncommon.
• Possible language-spelling mistakes in monster description.
• Added upgrade to survivalist for feral prepper (2 months into the game, 1440 in-game hours), to simulate less self-preserving feral preppers dying out.

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-(I am new to Git hub and pull requesting, this is the third times a charm, I have followed (hopefully correctly) the advices given to me, and hopefully this pull request will be following the correct form)

[Entity-y]

How accurate are these monsters at shooting? They would be pretty over powered creatures if they never miss. I'd imagine there would be a slight loss in muscle coordination or vision from being infected by blob.

[I-am-Erk]

I am very leery of gun-toting ferals at this stage of our monster development. Unless these folks are shooting wildly and missing a lot, it is probably too early for them. The sort of ferals that use monster (rather than being hostile NPCs) are the sort that should also mostly wildly wave a gun in your direction and pull the trigger, they're not taking a breath and focusing on you to aim.

Additionally, I don't think they should be able to reload, and should have very limited shots. That's a feature, not a bug, it gives you a way to outmaneuver them by getting them to waste their ammo.

[FoolsGold45]

Ranged ferals still have perfect accuracy if they have direct LOS, right? If so, I agree that it's too punishing to throw that type of enemy into the general spawn pool wielding anything stronger than the feral humans' thrown rocks. The ferals with firearms in labs are contained and in late-game locations where the player doesn't have to encounter them until they're ready. The noise created by a feral's gun going off in the middle of the city also creates an entire other layer of danger to them, and arguably one that invalidates the abilities of the screamer zombies.

If anything, they would be better placed in LMOE shelters to add some risk to exploring those usually safe locations.

[Entity-y]

Maybe you could make a feral carpenter that wields a nail gun.

Or maybe a solution is you could add a gun that has poor accuracy that the ferals use but then drop the normal version of the gun.

[BioHazardSuit]

You're right guys, didn't thought of that. I'll try to make a similar fake-gun with bad-to-low accuracy, decrease the bullets too.
I'm not (too) good at coding, but I'll try. thanks guys.

[Termineitor244]

I'm excited to find these enemies in the game!

[Termineitor244]

You need double spaces after every non-final point.

[BioHazardSuit]

Alright I studied the acid spray dispersion, and was able to code in shots missing, woohoo!
Preppers will have a certainty of hitting their shot when they are 3/4 distance near you, and survivalists will have a certainty of hitting their shots when they are 2-3/4-5 distance near you.
If you guys want to, we could just make it so that the prepper will certainly miss all their shots, making them a design enemy of a horde-bringer, following I-Am-Erk's comment on them waving around their gun and missing shots.

[BioHazardSuit]

Im now tempted ( I keep going back and forth) on making the survivalist have a different item collection drop of .45 handguns now that I re-read the Json data and see other hanguns with .45 caliber bullet. Theres the m1911, the mac-10 (could be a counter part to the ksub2000 already in the item group pool), smg_45, usp_45, and the walther_ppq_45, and the hptjhp (Hi-point pistol). Since the .45 is a little bigger than 9mm, I would assume it would be a little better, and they are also still small enough (I think) to quote:

It depends of what is more survivable, I feel more bullets of low caliber are easier than a handful of deadlier ones that could kill you with a lucky shot.

Help me on this one, I don't know a lot on firearms and calibers, and the .45 could be actually a downgrade than 9mm, which would kinda go reverse on the enemy evolution upgrade-scarier over time aspect.

Let's start with both the low end gun and a low pistols skill. I think that could work well. Most shots go wide and then as they evolve they become way more menacing and maybe kept ahold of better guns. Starting at the bottom is always best to give yourself room to grow.

[Termineitor244]

Some testing would be better, I'm not a fan of guns so I'm not the most appropriate to differentiate between weapons calibers, but I suggest to look at the data of the items while in game, they should list their differences (armor penetration, range, damage...), and you can more easily compare them with the compare command.

THAT said, a lower caliber is a good way to balance a more precise and with more bullets enemy.

[ISuckM8]

Im now tempted ( I keep going back and forth) on making the survivalist have a different item collection drop of .45 handguns now that I re-read the Json data and see other hanguns with .45 caliber bullet. Theres the m1911, the mac-10 (could be a counter part to the ksub2000 already in the item group pool), smg_45, usp_45, and the walther_ppq_45, and the hptjhp (Hi-point pistol). Since the .45 is a little bigger than 9mm, I would assume it would be a little better, and they are also still small enough (I think) to quote:

It depends of what is more survivable, I feel more bullets of low caliber are easier than a handful of deadlier ones that could kill you with a lucky shot.

Help me on this one, I don't know a lot on firearms and calibers, and the .45 could be actually a downgrade than 9mm, which would kinda go reverse on the enemy evolution upgrade-scarier over time aspect.

Let's start with both the low end gun and a low pistols skill. I think that could work well. Most shots go wide and then as they evolve they become way more menacing and maybe kept ahold of better guns. Starting at the bottom is always best to give yourself room to grow.

45 ACP is slightly better than 9mm but not much better

[BioHazardSuit]

THAT said, a lower caliber is a good way to balance a more precise and with more bullets enemy.

45 ACP is slightly better than 9mm but not much better

Alright, the 45 acp is only a little better (maybe) than 9mm, and that the survivalist is already more accurate and ammo-er than the prepper, than everything is already a-ok; Thanks guys.
Alright, I keep going back and forth, this should be the last time I type about using 45_acp, enough about the 45_acp.
Now I just need to double-check using the CDDA linting machine, and maybe adjust a spawning frequency.

[BioHazardSuit]

I have noticed that the item group drop for the feral security guards have the
"magazine": 100, and "ammo": 20 in their item drop collection.
This makes it so that it is possible for their firearms m9 to drop either empty, or loaded (If I remember correctly, fully loaded)
Should we make it too so that it is possible to have a loaded firearm as a reward for defeating the feral gunner (and the zombie horde it may bring), or should we leave it as it is empty, because they have most likely emptied their firearms, in context?

[Termineitor244]

I have noticed that the item group drop for the feral security guards have the "magazine": 100, and "ammo": 20 in their item drop collection. This makes it so that it is possible for their firearms m9 to drop either empty, or loaded (If I remember correctly, fully loaded) Should we make it too so that it is possible to have a loaded firearm as a reward for defeating the feral gunner (and the zombie horde it may bring), or should we leave it as it is empty, because they have most likely emptied their firearms, in context?

It sounds good, the normal ferals drop their ammo (rocks) too so it would fit with the rest.

[BioHazardSuit]

It sounds good, the normal ferals drop their ammo (rocks) too so it would fit with the rest.

Alright will do, but Im gonna make it "ammo": 10 instead of 20 to see if I could maybe make the gun drop not loaded to full, but half(?).

[BioHazardSuit]

Alright everything looks complete and a-ok, i wait for further instructions from Devs.

[ISuckM8]

Requested someone to start the tests for ya, wait for a few hours til' they're all done.

[BioHazardSuit]

Requested someone to start the tests for ya, wait for a few hours til' they're all done.

Thank you
Ok, only one mistake: Text Changes Analyzer. I think i can fix this

[BioHazardSuit]

ok, I'm not sure on how to fix this. The commit applying says that the patch 0049(th) patch commit was unable to be applied. The 049th commit was the commit where I change the monster fake-guns and the pistol skill. I also changed the pistol skill of the sec-guard because the repository fork I am using right now is now outdated (before the pistol skill change). I'm not so sure, but i think the patch failed because the 49 commit changes the handgun skill of the sec-guard to pistol, while the now updated real file Cdda data already has the skill as pistol (i think this is the problem im not sure). I need help, what should i do to fix this problem?
(Also, im trying to study on how git-am commands work, but it is a bit confusing and intimidating with the mailbox and other things.)

[Maleclypse]

I've requested someone with more knowledge of LGTM to look at this so hopefully you'll hear something back soon. When you test this on your local machine do you get any errors?

[Maleclypse]

Not your fault test is faulty today.

[BioHazardSuit]

I've requested someone with more knowledge of LGTM to look at this so hopefully you'll hear something back soon.

Oh ok; Thank you.

When you test this on your local machine do you get any errors?

I should-will check again.

[BioHazardSuit]

Sorry for whole-day delay, I have been slacking again. I can't check the downloaded game for me recently, the other device I usually use is slowly deteriorating and falling apart, and this device doesn't do well with zip files and Json it seems.
I've been thinking: The unsuccessful check happens because (i think) of the lots of commits i have of trial and error. So i think a solution: I close the pull request, wait for the neighbor, #51782 to enter the game first, then I create a new pull request with the new updated repository, then add the finished result commits of this one, so there will be no long 62 commits. Is this a good idea?

[BioHazardSuit]

I will make a new pull request with a new updated repository, commites that are minimal in amount with the final produce, after the neigbouring PR feral humans are also done, so it doesn't mix and break(?)
Thanks for the help guys