Add the feral burner

[MNG-cataclysm]

Summary

Content "Add the feral burner"

Purpose of change

Add a new feral military soldier, the feral arsonist, and have it spawn with other feral soldiers.

Describe the solution

Adds a new monster, the feral arsonist. A military-clad zombie which holds a flamethrower and knows how to use it, the arsonist will spawn alongside zombie burners and feral soldiers wherever they occur. It is fairly uncommon, however.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Not adding the arsonist

Testing

Spawning the arsonist works as intended, they operate their weapon properly, and spawn in their monster groups.

Additional context

To prevent the random burning of buildings, the feral burner is required to target players before using their flamethrower.

[worm-girl]

Arsonist implies a criminal, not a rogue soldier. Why not call them a feral pyro or feral burner?

Also, there's a reason no existing enemies have flamethrower attacks - fire is way way too deadly right now, and it's stupidly easy to burn buildings down. I don't think we should be putting ambulatory flamethrower monsters into the world until we're at a point where even a single glancing blow from their weapon isn't an instant death sentence. Even a full set of fireproof gear barely helps.

[worm-girl]

"it/its" should be changed to "they/their" in the flamethrower attack messaging and the feral arsonist description for consistency with other feral enemies as they are human beings, not creatures like zombies.

edit: Github doesn't want to let me actually edit the suggested changes in on my phone. Oh well, you get the idea.

[Night-Pryanik]

If you're actively working on the PR, consider converting it into a draft.

[MNG-cataclysm]

If you're actively working on the PR, consider converting it into a draft.

I was just correcting some errors and made a minor description change. Otherwise, I'm not going to alter anything.

[Night-Pryanik]

In that case you need to made it spawn somewhere.

[MNG-cataclysm]

In that case you need to made it spawn somewhere.

I’ll go back and fix that.

[MNG-cataclysm]

The feral flamer now spawns in mass graves, starting 15 days in.

[LyleSY]

I see no issues with merging this after feature thaw

[MNG-cataclysm]

@LyleSY Do you happen to know when the feature thaw will occur?

[LyleSY]

The running joke is "SOON". I would guess between two and six months depending on dev availability and interest. I usually switch to Bright Nights content creation during content freeze, which should be pretty soon now

[Ilysen]

Didn't erk specifically want to exclude this from stable for a whole bunch of reasons earlier in the convo? Getting flamered right now is a guaranteed death sentence in a lot of circumstances.

[I-am-Erk]

Yeah this probably should be pulled from G-stable and then merged. My bad for not tagging it

[esotericist]

Yeah this probably should be pulled from G-stable and then merged. My bad for not tagging it

point of order, you did tag it, back in july.

[sonphantrung]

Uhm, should we "revert" it again, or keep this feral dude around and fixing the facing issues?

[MNG-cataclysm]

Uhm, should we "revert" it again, or keep this feral dude around and fixing the facing issues?

How hard would it be to fix the facing issue?

[I-am-Erk]

We probably should revert this. Stable is days off. We don't need any new chaos

[I-am-Erk]

Please reopen this PR once it's reverted. It's absolutely something we want and should be merged right after stable is out. Actually, don't, I'll just revert the revert, I have a list for that.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

If it has been established that fire is basically just death why would it be readded/desired for the game? It's basically a game over, starting 15 days into the game is too early for insta-death.

Moreover, flamethrowers would not be commonly in use, and while they make sense to appear at mass graves where they would indeed have burned corpses, it relies on those flamethrowers continuing to function/have fuel, and have a feral understand how to start and use the flamethrower. This is not as simple as having a gun and finding that pressing a single button kills whatever you point it at. It also requires them to not be afraid of fire, one of the few universal fears among basically every living thing.

I don't think these make sense from a realism/game lore perspective and I don't think they work for game balance in their current form.

[I-am-Erk]

See comments: the solution is then to fix the ongoing issue that fire is basically perma-death, not to avoid ever having fire in game.

Ferals are able to do pretty complex stuff, especially things they know how to do by rote.

[LyleSY]

Probably this will not be merged in the future given #62833 Thank you for working on it, I agree it was a reasonable progression given the game state at the time.