Dynamic Item scaling

[gakm4]

It would be nice to see an item scaling mode that causes the quantity of items found to decrees over time down to x% of initial value which you can setup in world gen to simulate other survivors looting buildings. I wouldn’t have that affect special locations like labs or bunkers due to those needing special stuff to access them.

You could also have groups of enemies spawn pulped or burnt down buildings to simulate other survivors in the world.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Nice to see this idea again.

[DeWolf]

It would also be neat to see this system with an item prioritization system where certain items or item types are “picked up” more quickly than other items and it also depends on where the items are located with locked locations taking longer to empty than unlocked ones.

[gakm4]

Item prioritization like that would be harder to do and i doubt it would be worth the effort.

As a player i leave behind alot of items starting midgame that i would have been ecstatic to find early game and will have ignored items earlygame that i am hunting for mid to late game. Due to that i would say it would probably be best to just use the already built item scaling just add a dynamic element to it like the monster evolution.

That all being said it would be a good idea to use a dynamic element like that so you arent getting stuff like fresh milk or fruit in houses or grocery stores after a few years in the game.

[Wasylus]

Yes, that would be really great.

In addition being able to make certain type of buildings less affected by this mechanic would also be a step towards making a game start at different times after apocalypse possible which is something I would really like to see implemented one day. As it is now you can only set item spawn rate that applies equally to everything. If you set it very low to simulate years passed since cataclysm - even the secured, never-looted locations becomes empty.

[kevin.granade]

First, we should probably do the simplest thing that works right now, which is probably just making items disappear over time.
Once that’s in, it would be interesting to start having the disappearances make sense, and have them either go sonewhere or be expended instead of merely evaporating.
Probably the next step would be to evaluate a danger level for different areas, and have scavenging from less dangerous areas happen faster.
After that we could either try to factor in value of scavenged items in some absolute sense, or if factions exist we could have them try to enumerate and satisfy their needs for scavenged items.
If we get that last part in, it leads to them actually accumulating the scavenged goods at settlements or consuming them.

[Wojtek94]

There is a mod( I don’t remember its name) which creates a destroyed world. In this mod buildings are on fire, walls are collapsed, windows broken. Moreover, even with 1.0 item spawn items are basically like trash but you still can find something interesting. With this mod Cata is more like “The Road” than “I am legend”. Unfortunately, I usually play with ‘no monsters’ and without a map(m) so I don’t know how it looks when monsters are present

[dissociativity]

I feel like that this should extend to newly generated vehicles long-term
turrets missing or at least empty, solar panels, batteries, gas taken, ect

just to make vehicles a little less OP

[Wasylus]

Sounds very interesting. I need to find it.