I know I’m a new to the forum, I’m not the most attentive gamer, and I don’t how practical any of it would be code-wise either…but may I offer some suggestion? Spoiler tag’d for references to [Fun]
[spoiler]
One thing I can think of is altering minimum consumption to match a fairly generous supply. This can apply to food, raw materials, guns, ammo, bionics, ect. Like, one of the things I notice about burnt out bionics is that apparently you can wreck bionics by overcharging them. Yet there’s no risk to the player of losing an activated bionic when they’re facing down shocker zombies. Basically, there should be a more potential situations where they’ll have to use/risk their piles of stuff or end up rolling a new character.
Another partial solution would be to put some more locks on some of the higher tier gear. Take ID cards for example. While I know labs and posts have been overrun or evacuated by the time the game begins, it seems odd that these facilities are so easy to loot once you get past the critters. Like for labs, one swipe or electrohack/fingerhack will get you through the door. These are supposed to top secret facilities dedicated to defending against the Sino-Russian threat, right? Shouldn’t there be more than one locked door, some turrets, plus a password on the computers (the barracks is a good example of tighter security)? Maybe you could have ID cards with different clearance levels that would get you access to different kinds of gear, with each clearance level being more difficult to hack than the last. Or the ID cards are only good at certain labs or bunkers within a certain area.
Or the outposts and bunkers, shouldn’t there be minefields and other active denial systems? Like automated microwave guns (Basically an active denial weapon) to scare away the hippies? The bunkers also seem more like operational safe-houses for potential guerrilla warfare than proper armories. Maybe their entrance would instead be well disguised and finding them would require a high perception or a GPS from a dead soldier?
Or let’s talk about guns. It’s noted in the lore that the US encourages gun ownership, but that it’s fairly well regulated. Well maybe you could have it so that most fire arms require a biometric ID that’s registered at the store. The ID would be registered via a computer linked up to a national database but all of those would be down due to the end of the world. Maybe small handguns and hunting guns would be exempt, but in order to get some of the more modern guns you’d need a way of registering the gun to your ID. You could, through electronics + computers, build your own computer and software to crack it at the risk of triggering the ID’s fail-safe and turning the gun’s internals into a melted chunk; or you could use mechanics to simply rip the safety out at the risk of making the gun unusable. Maybe some soldier corpses would have an intact self-contained key to the biometric ID.
Additionally, shouldn’t military grade or non-commercial CBMs also require some sort of authorization or code to activate? Maybe some of the more invasive CBMs could be changed from a pickup at the bottom of the lab to a whole sequence. Like, instead of getting the CBM for Time Dilation, you find a research note on the pulped corpse of a scientist hinting at its potential and the lab that was making it. You hunt down the lab, fight your way down, and find a series of well equipped surgical chambers, each equipped with a different purpose with one potentially being the one that installs the bionic module (I guess it wouldn’t be so compact in that case). In order to access it you’d have to have either the ID card or a high enough computer skill, make sure the facility is powered or jerry-rig an alternative via electronics, and be able to input the proper procedures either via an instruction manual obtained in some prior situation or with a high enough medical skill so that the machine doesn’t end up tearing you to pieces. After that, you can finally have your 1000 move point granting power. And even once you’ve gotten, there’s still the risk of getting hit by six shockers and having the BM overload.
There’s also the possibility of a bunker, outpost, lab or what not to be completely trashed by the time you get there. Their front doors and security locks would be blown open. There’d be blast marks where the turrets should be, ect. Or you come up to a bunch of dead soldiers where one of them is wearing a suit of damaged power armor and a wrecked UPS and all of their guns are busted and there’s a Hulk nearby. I know the NPCs will be looting as they go along, but I’m thinking along the lines of black ops cleaners, foreign agents, guilt ridden scientists, escaped test subjects putting the torch to these places. Or they came for the loot themselves and you’ll have to pry it from their cold, dead, fingers/claws/talons/tendrils/stingers. That brings me to my next suggestion.
Maybe you could have enemies that run away, disappear, and then stalk you to the ends of the Earth. Or they spawn after you finish looting an area. Like a vengeful spirit coming after your artifact, or an agent planning to extract a top-secret CBM, or a very persistent self-repairing tank bot. If you manage to kill them, they’re gone, but if not they’ll keep stalking and reappearing when you’re vulnerable. Or if they barely escape with their lives they’ll try to loot other places you’ve passed over or haven’t found and they come back stronger.
Speaking of stronger enemies, maybe we could have more ranged foes? The spitter and shockers are nice, but what about spine-shooting enemies? Or spec-ops zombies that had time-dilation. bionic claws/monomolecular blades, fusion blasters and CQB CBMs where they have a chance to gain 1000 move points once at the beginning of combat or every ten minutes or so? [/spoiler]
Basically, the way I see it, since NPCs aren’t really a functional feature, we’re missing a major foundation for building the balance of the game. If you have some competition for looting and or someone hunting you once have the higher tier stuff (because you have higher tier stuff that the NPC wants), then it’s less a power trip and more of an arms race. Lowering the condition at which you find most gear, or requiring more effort to find higher tier gear can help delay an unstable equilibrium. More powerful enemies, or more demanding environmental effects (such as blizzards, heavy storms, dimensional anomalies) could also be used to suck up loot piles and make high tier gear seem like an equalizer instead of gravy.
Hopefully that wasn’t too much of a ramble.