Bloodlings!

[Rex9001]

About The Pull Request

This pull request adds in the heavily requested bloodling from NSV. This pull request does not use any code from said server and it has instead been constructed from the ground up.

Bloodlings are a vile form of space parasite that spread throughout the galaxy and one sample has recently made it to the station aboard an infected crewmate.

Starting

When you start as a bloodling you will be assigned to your regular job but you will gain the "infect" ability, the infect ability allows you to burst out as a proper bloodling after strangling someone, this gibs your human form and turns the person you strangled into a loyal changeling thrall.

Evolution level 1

Congrats! You are now a bloodling mob, bloodlings have a special resource called "biomass", biomass represents well how much biological matter you have claimed, biomass is your health and spell casting resource, when you take damage its subtracted from your biomass amount and if that biomass amount reaches 0 you die. Biomass also increases your melee damage. Falling below the biomass needed to reach your current evolution level will devolve you, reverting you to a previous form, for example if a bloodling level 2 at 75 biomass loses 1 biomass they revert to a level 1 bloodling. Each bloodling phase makes the mob progressively slower.

The goal of the bloodling is to obtain 500 biomass and then start the cocoon phase until you ascend.

So how do you gain more biomass? Well you use one of the 3 new abilities you have gained:

Absorb biomass:
Your bread and butter, target a mob, a dead rat, blood/gibs or a dead carbon to begin absorbing it, after a short delay you will gibb the mob and gain biomass roughly equal to its max health.

Hide:
Makes you less visable.

Hivespeak:
Lets you communicate with all your thralls.

Small tip: In evolution level one you are able to ventcrawl.

After reaching 75 biomass you will gain:

Evolution level 2

You gain 2 new abilities:

Build - costs 30 biomass:
Lets you create minions (soulless mobs that can be given souls in a later form or can be absorbed to regain 30 biomass) and ratwarrens which will periodically create rats you can absorb and leave behind puddles of unstable mutagen which will damage and mutate humans that fall in it.

Infest - costs 75 biomass:
Allows you to infest a living creature, turning them into a thrall. Can be used on mindshielded people but it takes longer. Note that this ability also works on non-carbons, all they need is a mind, they wont be as powerful but it can prove helpful.

After reaching 125 biomass you will gain:

Evolution level 3

You lose the ability to hide and ventcrawl.

In exchange you gain the new ability:

Devour:
Devour: Puts all your abilities to on a 10 second cooldown, but instantly amputates one non-head limb off whoever you target with the ability (in melee range ofc) and gains you 15 biomass.

After reaching 175 biomass you will gain:

Evolution level 4

You gain 5 abilities:

Dissonant shriek - costs 30 biomass:
Like the changeling ability, emps stuff around you.

Whiplash - costs 25 biomass:
Grow a bunch of tentacles which knockback nearby mobs and objects.

Heal - costs 50 biomass:
Allows you to heal or revive a carbon thrall in melee range.

Transfer Biomass:
Allows you to transfer any amount of biomass to a bloodling or minion in melee range.

Give Life - costs 20 biomass:
Allows you to offer an alive non-carbon mob to ghosts, if it gets possessed it will become your thrall. THIS ABILITY ALLOWS YOU TO MAKE YOUR MINIONS GHOST CONTROLLED!

Minions

Minions use biomass but not as health instead its simply a spell casting resource. All minions have the following abilities:
Absorb Biomass, Devour, Transfer Biomass, Whiplash, and Hivespeak

Harvester:
A more nimble Minion, can vent crawl, wound and is fairly fast but fragile at around only 100 health.

Wall of Flesh:
A slower minion which is tougher at 200 health.

Evolution level 5

Above 225 biomass you will reach this level.

You only gain the ascension ability in at this level.

Ascension - requires 500 biomass:
This is your end goal as a bloodling, using this ability will announce your location to the entire crew and a 5 minute timer to your finishing ascension will begin. For the duration of the timer you will be unable to move or be moved. Assuming you survive the onslaught you will have ascended, you will crawl out of your cocoon at whatever biomass you end at and ready to wreck havoc. Finishing ascension will call the shuttle and start converting the station to flesh.

And that should be everything!

Balance stuff for the future

Here are some potential changes I may do after seeing the result of a TM

• Make monkecube spawned humans/monkeys unable to be absorbed, or absorbed at a lot smaller rate, this may be needed if people are using it every round to rush the ascension and spawning legions of minions but this may not be an issue if the bloodling cannot survive ascension without more than 1 thrall
• Shuffle around powers, maybe move Heal or some other evolution 4 level abilities to evolution level 3
• Devour, if this power is way too busted for the instant delimb it may need tweaking, like increasing the cooldown on all your abilities further or something else
• Adding cooldowns, this is a more extreme solution to me, since most every ability has a restriction purely from biomass and not cooldowns
• Add the ability for the bloodling to make walls, didnt add this one as it felt a bit too "xeno" but might be good
• New ability to remotely detonate thralls, might add this one after the TM or during, since people seem to like that idea
• More timer announcements, imma see how this plays out for the first TM, if it works out with 1 I'll keep that

Special thanks

Credit to the following people for just general code help:
RikuTheKiller
ThePooba
Wraith
Gboster
Anyone who answered one of my many questions in codertank

Credit to the following people for sprites:
CannibalHunter - Bloodling ascension tiles and Rat Warren structure sprites, and redoing most other sprites! Including the mob icons and ability backgrounds.
ancient-engineer - Absorb and hivemind button icons
Brunoute25 - Build/Mold Flesh and transfer button icons, tentacle_effect
Bieyes - Ability background (bg_bloodling) and devour/give life/infest/whiplash button icons as well as infested_thrall and bloodling antag hud sprites
LeafBladeX - Ascend/Heal button icons
ThePooba - Wall of flesh, Harvester, and in collaboration with Fern bloodling stage 2-4
Syndicat_Meow (credited as Roland in one of the commit messages) - Bloodling stage 1

Lastly, special thanks to Ook for making this bounty!

Why It's Good For The Game

Bloodlings are to me a perfect mesh of threat, you can really speedrun to the ascension BUT then the crew will instantly kill you, so choosing a slower playstyle in which you build up an army of thralls to then spring upon the crew with that ascension announcement may prove to be better. I think it provides a cool take on a conversion antag too since you do convert people but its more like bloodsuckers in that the convertees are very much so of not equal standing to yourself, and though a single thrall is powerful they are still just a weaker form of changeling.

All in all the bloodling is an antag not to similar to anything we have and I think it will provide the game with a fun and fresh threat every round it appears in.

This is also a HIGHLY requested bounty, if that is any justification.

Changelog

🆑
add: A horrific monster has crawled inside of a crewmate, escaped all NT bio scans and is now in an ideal position to burst out of its host and start wrecking havoc. The bloodling has arrived!
/:cl:

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[github-actions]

This PR has been inactive for long enough to be automatically marked as stale. This means it is at risk of being auto closed in ~ 7 days, please address any outstanding review items and ensure your PR is finished, if these are all true and you are auto-staled anyway, you need to actively ask maintainers if your PR will be merged. Once you have done any of the previous actions then you should request a maintainer remove the stale label on your PR, to reset the stale timer. If you feel no maintainer will respond in that time, you may wish to close this PR youself, while you seek maintainer comment, as you will then be able to reopen the PR yourself