# Morph Rework Design Doc
### Morphs to Mimics: How I learned to love the Prey 2017

### Issues: Why Morphs Suck
Imagine this, you're a morph antagonist, the way you can interact with the game is limited as all you can do is consume items, copy items, smack things, and ventcrawl. What interesting gameplay loops or gimmicks can be accomplished with this?
1. You can consume a large number of station-critical items, the classic example is eating the silo, and then being validhunted by the 40+ people who can no longer do their jobs.
2. You can pretend to be something/someone, which will spook people or prank people a little, though this isn't very antagonistic
3. You can murder/attack people, or to into the SM room and break a pipe to delam the SM, this isn't very interesting.

Frankly, the most problematic part of Morph is the consumption of items, having your job cancelled because you can't print new objects by a morph currently sitting in pipes, untouchable, isn't fun.

### Thoughts: So what do we do?

I believe that we need to take the ways that morphs can interact with the station, make those interactions strictly antagonistic, and remove the unenjoyable interactions.

The new morphs would not be able to consume items, as this does not necessarily make the game interestng. Nobody likes the silo/all of their departmental gear being consumed and then later looted by the assistant that kills the morph.

We would instead want to double down on the mechanics that lead to interesting antagonistic and stealthy gameplay. Sneaking around, copying items, and attacking people is good antagonistic behaviour that should be prioritized.

Namely, I would be bringing morphs in line with this: morphs should be pretending to be objects, waiting for targets to touch them, and then attacking them when they've been immobilized.

### Solution: What does this look like?

#### The Fluff

Meet the new morph, a biological weapon launched at the station by Interdyne. The morph are small, formless creatures that feed off of living sapient tissue, with their natural instinct to blend into their environment, and a gland within their body that creates chemicals to inject into their targets.

The main goal of this antags is to get people to walk over them, or to touch them with an open hand, with a few different ways of accomplishing this.

#### The Crunch

##### Prop Hunt 2022
A new morph can copy items, and with a reduced movespeed, position themselves in tempting areas, begging for someone to pick them up, when touched with an open hand, they can inject a choice chemical into their target!

A new morph can copy an item or decal, and with a severely reduced movespeed can act as a floor-trap, injecting anyone who passes over them with a chosen chemical, this option would be far weaker than having someone touch the morph with an open hand.

Undisguised, a new morph is a fast but fragile creature, taking only a few hits to die, but they have the advantage of a ventcrawl.

Once a target is in a critical or sleeping state, the morph can retrieve tissue from them, severely damaging their organs and giving the morph some kind of upgrade progress. Dead creatures still have their organs damaged, but far less "upgrade progress" is given.

##### Chems?

Having the midround be more than just hardstunning people who touch or step over them sounds like a way to make an antagonist hated. I believe that giving the morph a number of counterable chemical effects would be far more interesting. Perhaps they have semi-lethal options like chloral hydrate/tirimol, or maybe they want to be a more lethal force with Amatoxin? Perhaps a randomized system of available chems to force the morph to adapt to what they're given.

##### Level Up

I believe that at some point, midrounds should be able to gracefully die after they've their damage. That's why I propose when their "progress bar" is full, new morphs should transform into a more combat-heavy and stealthless role, giving them some time to rampage before they inevitably die.

Morphs should not be ending the round, they realistically should enter the situation, cause chaos, force medbay and security to do their jobs, force janitors to clean up easy-to-copy blood splatters, and then leave the round once they're discovered, or when they upgrade and die.

This upgraded form is some shambling mass without the ability to destroy walls, but a method of opening doors (like jaws of life) and a decent melee attack. Some kind of loud noise they periodically make, any ranged attacks or cool abilities to make players want to play as this force-of-nature would be awesome too.

#### Why this is good

Morphs suck because the primary ways they have of interacting with the game in an antagonistic way are boring and unenjoyable to counter. A midround that maims and kills without causing damage is far more interesting than silo access randomly being cut off because a miner decided to self-antag.

Please give feedback!