Fire, Dead Things, and Items and Tile Volume

Fire
It would appear that the issue of zombie corpses not burning is still outstanding, and it would be great if this could be fixed. There is nothing more satisfying than lighting a pile of vanquished foes on fire and burning them to a crisp.

In real life this is caused by the wick effect, with clothing or other absorbent materials soaking up melting fat and catching fire. Given time, this often leads to the destruction of nearly all soft tissue in the affected areas.

Enhancing the current in-game system, corpses and other fire-vulnerable items in-game would go from “burnt” to “badly burnt” to “charred” to “incinerated”. After this point, items would leave some kind of residue such as charred plastic, charcoal, ashes, or burned zombie remains which would have far less mass than the original item and in the case of zombies could not reanimate for obvious reasons. Items such as charcoal and ashes could also be used in new crafting recipes such as creating charcoal filters.

Items, Volume, and Tiles
This system would be enhanced by overhauling the volume system. It makes very little sense that 64 zombie corpses, shotguns, bottles of water, etc. are all treated as taking up a single tile. As evidenced by my desk at home, five or six plastic bottles take up a considerable amount of space. In the case of things like gallon jugs, fifteen or so take up about nine square feet of floor space if they are not stacked somehow. Moving on to ammunition, several thousand rounds of assorted ammo boxes, a LAW or three, etc. should not be able to fit on a single counter tile without being improbably and precariously stacked.

Moving on to larger items, two or three zombie corpses would present a considerable obstacle for anything trying to pass over them, to say nothing of twenty which are currently all allowed in the same tile. Situations like this should logically create a pile of stuff which would create penalties to movement speed. In addition, this system creates the ability to do Fun things like building a wall of corpses around your base instead of resorting to traditional techniques and adds to realism.

For example, who ever uses the cellar in the emergency shelter for storage when you can stick over two thousand items on the benches and countertops regardless of volume? In reality, dozens of MREs, water containers, the inevitable pile of flashlights, spare clothing, car parts, pieces of scrap metal and electronic parts, tools, solar panels, firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, your pet elephant, and a partridge in a pear tree take up a considerable amount of space. A several hundred pound metal frame is many times larger than a zombie corpse, which is in turn much larger than a gallon jug of water, which is several times the size of a flashlight, which takes up far more space than three feet of string, should be treated as such. And if you do stuff all of these things into such a small space, you can stride through this teetering pile of miscellaneous possessions as if you were walking through a park. Believe you me, a few dozen boxes, a counter, a pile of random canned food and a bicycle or three can turn a room that size into a maze with mousetraps hiding in the corners just waiting to take your toes off, as evidenced by my parents’ basement.

To look at it another way, inventory management is always an issue in survival games and RPGs. In a game such as this where one often has a long-term shelter, does it not make sense that inventory management would apply to the base itself? And come on, who doesn’t want to make a wall of zombie corpses and light them on fire?

Other Related Ideas

It would be cool if a blank tile had X amount of volume and you could increase the amount of volume the tile had by building a metal rack, desk, fridge, etc. making construction much more useful.

That would make a certain amount of sense, I’m going to quote that in the OP.

Bodies just don’t burn that well though. Too much water content, you can’t expect something that is 85% water to burn very well with just some asshole with a pocket lighter. You’d need a full fledged funeral pyre or a dedicated furnace to destroy a body with fire. Otherwise you just get one that is kinda charred pretty badly, like in all those famous gulf war ‘highway of death’ photos.

Getting a fire hot enough to burn bodies takes a bit more than lightning a couple two by fours on fire, but I’m not sure what would constitute a “full fledged funeral pyre”.

Considering how often I ‘accidentally’ burn down houses, stores (note to self: pillage, then burn), gas stations, bunkers, FEMA camps, and forests, getting a good strong fire going is pretty easy in this game.

That’s what 2x4s are for. However, bodies that are exposed to enough heat should not be able to reanimate due to whatever animating them being cooked beyond repair.

Another idea I may have suggested here before is throwable matches. Combined with gasoline, this could cause great Fun for all.

Throwable matches? Like a molotov cocktail?

I agree dead zombies should be able to be cremated en masse in certain circumstances, but not just with a jerry can of gas and some two by fours. In game terms, a ‘raging fire’ would be needed, like you get when you burn down houses. It probably does this already, not sure. There should be a way to render masses of zombie corpses harmless, without the tedium of butchering each and every one. (Acid bombs might work for this though.)

But maybe you should’nt need to burn the body to ashes to prevent resurrection, just cook the goo in the zombie sufficiently that it kills it.

[quote=“DWC, post:7, topic:1758”]Throwable matches? Like a molotov cocktail?

I agree dead zombies should be able to be cremated en masse in certain circumstances, but not just with a jerry can of gas and some two by fours. In game terms, a ‘raging fire’ would be needed, like you get when you burn down houses. It probably does this already, not sure. There should be a way to render masses of zombie corpses harmless, without the tedium of butchering each and every one. (Acid bombs might work for this though.)

But maybe you should’nt need to burn the body to ashes to prevent resurrection, just cook the goo in the zombie sufficiently that it kills it.[/quote]

  1. About 20 2x4s will create a raging fire, if I remember correctly
  2. True. In the new github versions you can (s)mash the corpses, but this is rather tedious as well.
  3. Makes sense to me, in the new versions corpses have damage values - normal, bruised, damaged, mangled, pulped
    Each successive damage level reduces the chances that it will reanimate, and it wouldn’t be rocket science to adapt that system for fire damage.