How much can I change at World Generation without breaking intended balance?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

I can’t really think of another way to state it.

When I make a new world I want as much stuff as possible in it. Deadleaves’ Fictional Guns, Icecoon’s Arsenal, The More Locations, and Tall Buildings, and The Vehicle Parts, and Tanks mods.

How much of this can be added while still keeping it more “Silent Hill” than “Silent Hill Book of Memories”

I realize that’s not entirely accurate, but it’s the best I have on short notice.

The tanks mod has armor plated vehicles everywhere, and while I like the idea of taking the military composite armor, it seems to me that there’s a ton of it around, and pretty much all intact since it doesn’t seem to break easily. I’m not so much concerned about using the armor (since I could easily not use it) as I am the availability of it making the game different than it was intended. Not just the tanks, though. All the mods.

What can I turn on to add as much to the game as possible without turning it into a diluted version?

The Arcana and Magic Items, and StatsthroughSkills mods in particular look interesting, but also most concerning.

Another thing I’m curious about is the season length. I want to make them longer, and I have periodically in 0.C Stable, but how long can they be without being too long?

2

Big thing to remember that this isn’t your typical ‘zombie survival game’

This is a game that goes from L4D2 on steroids -> Xcom 2 on steroids really fast.

If you feel like the game is too easy, next world just speed up zombie evolution.

I’ve stopped worrying about ‘intended balance’ in CDDA since in its default state it is highly customizeable. So, you’ll eventually figure out what you enjoy and dont enjoy.

Ex: I turn off corossive zombies because they’re very frustrating and cheap to fight, but I also turn off power armor because it’s way too OP. I also don’t make Battle Busses as a self limiter.

I crank up NPC spawns which is way more dangerous than it sounds, and then I increase season length to 60 days.

I also crank up zombie spawns a little, turn on wander spawns, and then lower item spawns by about 25%

I do not use PK’s mod because while it does make the end game more interesting, it makes the early game absolutely horrible for people who aren’t like… Captain Fantastic at the game.

think of CDDA as more of an engine than it is a game. It is what you make of it, so change the settings to what you like.

I’ve also got a world where cities are super small and extremely far apart, because I wanted to play a wilderness character. This is difficult because supplies are hard to come by and starvation is a thing now.

You can also go straight up judge dredd and crank the city size to max and lower the distance, which is a hectic, combat focused style.

Really, it’s what you like. You may not know what you like, but just play on default settings for a while and then get a feel for it.

CDDA is all about roleplaying and self limiting.

There is no ‘right’ way to play.

Unless you turn off zombie entirely, in which case… uh… okay.

3

Intended balance doesn’t cover mods that add strong stuff (either strong enemies or strong items).
But the intended balance isn’t really that tight. It is rather vague, mostly formulated like “character with x/x/x/x stats and y in all skills and set of clothing craftable at those skills can beat a hulk in 90% of cases without using drugs”.

Some people play with 90 day seasons. This places more stress on food gathering, but food gathering can’t really be expressed in terms of balance. I prefer 14 day ones because of the variety.

Arcana mod and PK do change a lot of things. They’re closer to total conversions than just tweaks.

4

Intended balance isn’t really a thing since cata is highly customizable.

I play on 0.25 item spawn rate with 90 day seasons and mods like tanks, weapon pack, PK’s mod, etc. with statsthroughskills and all the !!FUN!! stuff.

Also, I recommend updating to the latest experimental. Experimental versions are usually less buggy then the stable versions because it gets updated every 15 - an hour or so. Also, new dakka for your games.

5

I haven’t tried PKs mod, which bills itself as a major rebalance and looks like a near-total conversion (so many monsters get powered up!).

But I play with Arcana mod all the time, and it’s really not that big a change. It adds some new items, most of which I find only situational in usefulness, and it adds some nice “boss monster” locations, all of which are marked on the map and easily avoided if you’re not ready for nasty death incarnate (well, two of them are nasty death incarnate - the other two are nifty but not too crazy).

6

Thank you all for the suggestions. I’ll keep them in mind.

I wouldn’t say the game is too easy by any means. 8 characters out of 10 still meet a grisly death, usually by moose. That said it’s not too hard either, it really is a fantastic game.

The only thing that still gets me is the nutrition system, but that’s probably more to do with my compulsion to eat the perishables first. Guess who gets cold Bologna everyday for 5 days straight while he’s forced to read mechanics textbooks and not sleep. I don’t want to do simplified nutrition though, I’ll figure it out eventually.

I did make a world with the arcana mod, and used the debug menu to check out some of the items, honestly I thought they’d be more useful.

That’s not to say I’m disappointed. They still seem fun, but making the essence looks quite impractical, especially in the early game. It looks like you have to cut yourself with the silver athane or otherwise bleed a total of nine times to make one essence. On a completely unrelated note, has anyone considered making a Hemophilia trait where bleeding doesn’t stop on it’s own? The books I found, The Sanguine Codex, and To Master The Unknown, also impose morale penalties that are five times higher than the description says effectively preventing one from reading enough to level up arcana all at once. On a whim I created a character with the “Spiritual” trait and the Sanguine Codex increased morale instead, I didn’t really test it beyond that though, so it might have been a fluke.

I know it’s not on the same topic anymore, but I’d rather not waste forum space, so I’ll just ask here.

Can someone explain the artifacts?

What I mean is how to find them, how to tell what they do, or if they’ll reload via sharp pain from nowhere. I’ve found two or three, and they’ve all either been apparently useless like the dead napkin, which creates blood all around, and for some reason stepping on the rubble around where it was found saps your life force, or very dangerous such as the crackling spiral, which creates a fiery explosion, something I found out after I aimed it one square away from the character, oddly enough it wasn’t enough to kill him, and I got to use it on two moose (it was glorious!). Then I saw the sharp pain message, and thought “Wow, it recharges”.

I took it to the shelter, and the character started losing health, so I saved the game and opened the .sav. It was radiation poisoning.

So where should I look to find the artifacts, how can I tell if they recharge or what is necessary to recharge them and how do I know which ones will instantly kill you by force stopping your heart when you pick them up, or otherwise kill you slowly and painfully?

One more thing, the Zombie Cops on 0.C 5814 are all dropping cash cards that are either empty or completely full (that’s some serious hazard pay).

Other zombies might be doing it to. I wasn’t paying too much attention once I saw all those zeroes (zeros?).

7

As has been stated already, this game is almost completely customizable. I like to scale the world difficulty with to (hopefully) line up with how powerful my character is at generation. A character who is very powerful right off the bat but also spawns in to an extremely challenging world is a great way to try out builds which would normally be considered OP and still give yourself a challenge.

The only thing I personally don’t recommend is lowering item generation too much, as this can make finding certain necessary items incredibly difficult, which IMO becomes more a source of frustration than an actual challenge. But that’s a matter of personal preference.

8
What I mean is how to find them, how to tell what they do, or if they'll reload via sharp pain from nowhere. I've found two or three, and they've all either been apparently useless like the dead napkin, which creates blood all around, and for some reason stepping on the rubble around where it was found saps your life force, or very dangerous such as the crackling spiral, which creates a fiery explosion, something I found out after I aimed it one square away from the character, oddly enough it wasn't enough to kill him, and I got to use it on two moose (it was glorious!). Then I saw the sharp pain message, and thought "Wow, it recharges".

http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Artifacts

Try this. It’s correct for the most part. There are spoilers though. Be warned.

9

I don’t think it’s something to worry about.

Part of the beauty of this game is the plethora of included mods, the tons of options, and all the different ways you can tweak the game (right out of the box) to either create a game experience you enjoy or to mix things up a bit if you’re feeling rowdy.

So figure out if it’s balanced to your won tastes, style, and desires. There’s plenty of ways to dial up or down the carnage if you think the game feels too easy/hard.