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?
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