Or a “Weekend-Long-Fallout-Binge”-mode. Where instead of starting the game 48 hours (or whatever the consensus is at the moment) into the Cataclysm, the game would start five years or more into the Cataclysm.
The few unlucky people that didn’t just drop dead at the start of the Cataclysm would have been eaten by zombies, been de-brained by Mi-Go, joined a fungal colony or worse. The few of them that survived would have either banded together into small, fortified settlements or abandoned civilization all together to survive in relative safety far away from others.
Being so far into the Cataclysm would present the player with additional challenges:
Expansive fungal colonies and Triffid groves, ant colonies that grew into hectares and most wildlife dead (and some back up again).
Most towns would have been sacked by survivors, leaving little more than junk to scavenge. The towns that haven’t been sacked in the five years prior would have been avoided for good reasons. [insert your good reasons here]
Five years of isolation and the constant threat of whatever is scratching at the doors would’ve taken it’s toll on people’s sanity, and weak willed survivors would’ve gone mad from it. Because the only thing worse than a psychopath is a well-equipped one.
Although in the end, I think a regular game of Cata should be able to progress into the Deep Cataclysm as a very late-game challenge, as opposed to having it be a separate mode.
[quote=“Adrian, post:1, topic:5416”]Or a “Weekend-Long-Fallout-Binge”-mode. Where instead of starting the game 48 hours (or whatever the consensus is at the moment) into the Cataclysm, the game would start five years or more into the Cataclysm.
The few unlucky people that didn’t just drop dead at the start of the Cataclysm would have been eaten by zombies, been de-brained by Mi-Go, joined a fungal colony or worse. The few of them that survived would have either banded together into small, fortified settlements or abandoned civilization all together to survive in relative safety far away from others.
Being so far into the Cataclysm would present the player with additional challenges:
Expansive fungal colonies and Triffid groves, ant colonies that grew into hectares and most wildlife dead (and some back up again).
Most towns would have been sacked by survivors, leaving little more than junk to scavenge. The towns that haven’t been sacked in the five years prior would have been avoided for good reasons. [insert your good reasons here]
Five years of isolation and the constant threat of whatever is scratching at the doors would’ve taken it’s toll on people’s sanity, and weak willed survivors would’ve gone mad from it. Because the only thing worse than a psychopath is a well-equipped one.
Although in the end, I think a regular game of Cata should be able to progress into the Deep Cataclysm as a very late-game challenge, as opposed to having it be a separate mode.[/quote]
This… would be really good, with having a lot more zombies everywhere and very few items, but also while giving the player survivor gear and some skills he supposedly won in those years.
I’m ok with this as a starting option, but it needs a lot of groundwork before it can happen. The good news is the groundwork will be cool too.
Starting location selection (soon)
Large-scale monster biome growth
Rudimentary NPC faction interaction (unless the scenario is you tried to wait it out on your own or you’re the sole survivor?)
large scale disaster shelter areas.
Simulated looting happening in the background.
Once the above are in, it’d simply be a matter of starting the player in a large shelter (optionally with faction connections) with all the biome, looting, etc clocks rolled forward.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:3, topic:5416”]I’m ok with this as a starting option, but it needs a lot of groundwork before it can happen. The good news is the groundwork will be cool too.
Starting location selection (soon)
Large-scale monster biome growth
Rudimentary NPC faction interaction (unless the scenario is you tried to wait it out on your own or you’re the sole survivor?)
large scale disaster shelter areas.
Simulated looting happening in the background.
Once the above are in, it’d simply be a matter of starting the player in a large shelter (optionally with faction connections) with all the biome, looting, etc clocks rolled forward.[/quote]
And, if you add the so awesome destroyed building, make them x3.
Great idea, I think moving from standard to deep cataclysm over time should be/is a long term goal, but starting their immediately would allow the testing of such late game systems and be very enjoyable. However, I imagine that it’d take a lot of work, as presumably a lot of things wouldn’t be able to be spawned which are now, and vice versa. Possibly the player could start with better equipment/skills though to balance out the difficulty.
Is that possible? To scale the spawns etc. with the progression of the in-game clock?
Because that would fix most of my issues with how Cata slowly becomes a sandbox game as the PC learns and grows.
And by slowly ramping up the difficulty the game world would feel much more like the Cataclysm is escalating, and generally just more alive.
Dependent on what scenario you’re playing i expect.
If the PC only just got out of a large shelter after having exhausted the food supply meant for 100 people, i’d expect he wouldn’t have learned much survivoring in those five years.
Sorry about that. When i try to search the forum i get 504 Gateway Timeouts.
[quote=“Adrian, post:7, topic:5416”]Is that possible? To scale the spawns etc. with the progression of the in-game clock?
Because that would fix most of my issues with how Cata slowly becomes a sandbox game as the PC learns and grows.
And by slowly ramping up the difficulty the game world would feel much more like the Cataclysm is escalating, and generally just more alive.[/quote]
Technically there are already monsters that simply don’t spawn until you’ve survived for a couple seasons, Zombears being the example that comes to mind, I ‘believe’ they don’t start showing up until the first winter?
I won’t.
Walls of Zs magically appearing while you’re escaping from another wall of Zs that magically appeared? I can totally miss that.
So long as there remains some kind of punishment for making loud noises or stinking the place up.
Maybe the horse can linger for a while where you’ve been stinking around.
