Fire spread and bad loot

Game Talk The Bunker
1

I was recently clearing out a megastore, as I’d never explored one before, and it was taking a long time so I killed some animals and set about cooking the meat.

I set a shrub on fire, about three tiles from the building. I knew there was a possibility it would spread but didn’t really care as I had a canteen full of water I could douse with if things got out of hand.

Well it spread and by the time I reacted it had spread to the building. I immediately moved to put out the fire that was actually on the building, but each step I took had it spreading.

This really irked me because I would assume the building was made of concrete and it unfortunately spread at a rate of nearly one tile per tile I moved. This means the fire spread from concrete to concrete in a matter of seconds.

That really seems ridiculous to me. Is there a way to change the rate at which fire spreads based on the tile it’s spreading to? I totally understand this was my fault, I just don’t like the speed at which it spread.

And secondly, less importantly, I ran into the burning megastore in an effort to loot before it burned down. What was I rewarded with? A handful of clothing and a hand-drill. That’s it. That’s all that was in the megastore, which was absolutely packed with (standard, but still) zombies. What’s the point of this building if it spawns fewer items than a standard house?

I mean, the zombies are there because they died in the store, right? That means it probably wouldn’t have been thoroughly looted, because of the danger. What’s the point of the risk if there’s no reward?

I felt similarly about schools, which I found was literally shoulder to shoulder with kids (an unreasonable number of students for the school, by the way) but at least the school had books and the kids had drugs on them.

My point is that I think spawns need balancing to make sense in the confines of the game. And since it’s a game I think there should be a balance between risk and reward, even if it’s a slight skew of reality. IE: Yes, the building might have been mostly looted, but if you’re throwing 150 monsters at me and I deal with it, I should be rewarded.

TLDR, yeah, I know. I also know I’m complaining.

2

Sounds like probably mostly a lot of bad rng for the most part, I usually don’t havge fires spread at all, if I don’t put too many sticks on it, though it sounds like an update may have changed it to be faster than it probably should be. Were you running? (")

3

I was not running, no. I hadn’t noticed fire spreading, either, but then I saw some youtube videos where it did and sure enough the next day I ran into it.

I’m curious if it spreads at a fixed rate or if it would be easy to implement different spread rates based on materials.

EDIT: Unless you were saying that there probably is a difference in times already in place and I just had bad RNG in that it spread instantly from tile to tile.

4

How come the whole megastore has such poor loot? This can’t be, can it?

5

They really aren’t worth the trouble IMO, but sometimes you can find stuff in the back room in the crates(I think that’s the Megastore). Maybe I’ve also just had bad RNG whenever I’ve looted them though, as well.

6

They may just be bad spawn locations. Maybe they need an update after all. Mega store is kinda vauge though, whaat Kind of stuff is it SUPPOSED to have? everything? Like a mega wallmart but smaller?

I know groceery has crates in the back.

I think fire spreading is more of a more likely the bigger the pile of flamable material, so as long as you keeep it small, it usually doesn’t “fall” over or “blow” into another tile or something preventing the original chain reaction that dooms you.

I think that all the various tile aesthetics are meaningless as far as buildings go, they all burn the same, bassically everything (IRL) has wires and junk in the walls and I think almost all ceilings IRL are basically candle wicks. in waiting. Once supports get hot enough it doesn’t really matter what that they are metal bracings, they warp and collapse. Probably.

Could probably use more tweaking though.

7

Which are ALWAYS empty.

8

most are most of the time, but groceery store seems to be the most disappointing, especially since it will basically only ever be food if I remember.

9

Not positive, but you might be thinking about the Home Improvement Superstores. Those always have crates full of stuff in the top two or three overmap tiles, usually tools or tool belts.

On topic, personally, I’ve never felt that the contents of the Megastores are worth the effort of killing the small army of zombies, either. I’ve never heard of it being quite that bad, though.

I’ve sometimes found First-Aid Kits in Grocery Stores, and Disinfectant isn’t so uncommon in it that I feel it isn’t worth checking.

10

The Megastore I explored did not have crates, it was literally a giant square with various shelves/aisles.

I may have undersold when I said ‘handful of clothes’. It was around a dozen items of clothing, but they were all very basic clothes with nothing of note. IE: I remember a camisole and jeans.

My issue with fire isn’t that it spreads in general, I think it SHOULD spread. I also understand that the amount of material on fire affects how long it burns and presumably how likely it is to spread. My issue is that not all walls are created equal.

IE: In the game, if I burn down a wooden structure I get nails and that’s it. If I burn down a concrete building I get nails AND rocks. This means that not all walls/floors are identical and therefore it should be possible to differentiate the materials and adjust the rate at which they will spread fire.

When I think of a megastore I think of wallmart. (does wallmart have two l’s?) I live in a very rural area and the nearest wallmart is still ENORMOUS. They sell clothing, electronics, have an entire grocery store, a pharmacy, and guns/camping equipment.

That’s sort of what I expected when I headed to the megastore, thinking it would be a big store broken into different sections with each area offering different types of loot.

I probably won’t be looting one again unless something changes, I just wondered if it was supposed to be that bad.

EDIT: There may have been a downstairs to the store (which wouldn’t make sense to me) because when I returned it was still burning and most of the crashes were ‘to the west and below’, leading me to believe there was something underground.

11

Ah yes that’s what I was thinking of, home improvement, but I still think the megastores are more trouble than they are worth… by the time you have no trouble clearing them out, you don’t really need what’s in them most of the time. I’ve only cleared out a handful though, so maybe I’m wrong.

Yeah I’ve never found anything in the single crate at the back of grocery stores either, but sometimes there is medical stuff on the counters on the same side of the store that the ATMs are on.

I think it kind of makes sense to not find much at a megastore though… when I go to Walmart before it’s supposed to snow, or before we have a hurricane, there is barely anything left on the shelves.
People are greedy and love free stuff, so after an apocalypse I’d image it to almost be picked clean. Though it still sucks to do all that work for minimal reward.

12

All the zombies in there are all those greedy people trying to grab as much has they can. Thus, if you kill them, you get what they supposedly picked up in store. If need be, we can make a shopper zombie or something, which would kinda amuse.

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13

Megastores have pretty mediocre loot to begin with. They should be repositories of mundayne but uncommon stuff.

The vehicles in the parking lot are the real prize, if you can save them from the other resource of a megatsore, the zeds. The zeds drops are ironically more usual in more cases than the chance to find a canopener inside.

14

Black Friday Shopper! lol

15

Would that mean that the end of the world was on Black Friday? Friday the 13th would be more fitting.

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16

Black Friday the Thirteenth. The WORST day for humanity. It all makes sense now.

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17

Giving zombies heavy loot will recreate the lawnmower problem again. What if shopping carts within and outside the megastore spawned with loot instead?

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18

Sorry, was away for several days. For the record, I don’t think there was a parking lot, instead it was inside of a circle of road. Admittedly there were at least eight cars there, including a bandit dozer with treads. Only one of them worked (always the shitty little car, am I right?) but that’s still pretty neat.

As for the loot, I think if you readdressed the loot within the store it would be fine. I think it’s possible to specify different loot spawns in different areas of the same building (IE: Bathrooms spawn bathroom items, kitchens spawn kitchen items, etc.) I believe the megastore should be multiple ‘stores’ in one.

In other words, designate one line of shelving as ‘kitchen spawned’ items, one row with what you’d find in a sporting goods store, one row for home improvement, etc. etc.

This is how real megastores are laid out, and it’s what I was expecting when I headed in to loot. Specifically, I thought ‘Some Wallmarts have a place to buy guns’, and so I was looking for that area of the store. That being said, I’ll probably never loot one again because of the risk/reward ratio that I’ve already complained about.

19

I’m working on two megastore variants: One two-story 3x3 megastore with first floor parking garage; one 3x5 megastore with parking lot.

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20

nice! Thanks Bork Bork.