Latest experimental features: tangent and new feature discussion

Subhazard · 2016-10-20T04:18:55.000Z

Who gave corossive zombies a pistol?

tatara · 2016-10-20T07:38:40.000Z

[quote=“Subhazard, post:81, topic:12750”]Who gave corossive zombies a pistol?

That’s hilarious. Hey, look at it this way: Now you have a reason to use that CBM which lets you yank metal weapons from a target.
(Really though. Why even?)

Subhazard · 2016-10-20T17:34:26.000Z

Is my money no good here?

Profugo_Barbatus · 2016-10-20T17:37:05.000Z

[quote=“Subhazard, post:83, topic:12750”]Is my money no good here?

https://i.imgur.com/E86kqjh.jpg[/quote]

My first guess would be you have too much money, as stupid as it sounds. Individual cash cards cap out at two million dollars or something like that, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the game were to have an edge-case bug where 42 million breaks something. Try putting most of the cards away, and purchasing with just one card on you that has enough to cover it.

Where the hell did you find that much money though.

Subhazard · 2016-10-20T17:46:51.000Z

I pick up literally every cash card I see.

They weigh almost nothing

I basically have a wallet that is thicker than it is wide.

Subhazard · 2016-10-20T17:49:27.000Z

Now that I think of it, money loot needs to be properly balanced.

It’s only summer time, and I wasn’t even trying. Just casually picking up money cards.

sure, money is abundant in the apocalypse, but because of that, the prices of goods goes up.

I have never ever EVER been hurting for cash in this game, and it doesn’t make sense that everyone would be so ready and willing to give up all their wordly possessions for a couple dollars, when I have 4 million in my pocket.

Profugo_Barbatus · 2016-10-20T17:58:42.000Z

[quote=“Subhazard, post:86, topic:12750”]Now that I think of it, money loot needs to be properly balanced.

It’s only summer time, and I wasn’t even trying. Just casually picking up money cards.

sure, money is abundant in the apocalypse, but because of that, the prices of goods goes up.

I have never ever EVER been hurting for cash in this game, and it doesn’t make sense that everyone would be so ready and willing to give up all their wordly possessions for a couple dollars, when I have 4 million in my pocket.[/quote]

Really what it comes down to, is that survivors as a whole haven’t been fleshed out very much. NPC interactions are pretty wonky and bare bone (when their heads aren’t exploding) and overall don’t change a huge amount about the game. There’s no reason to really care about balancing cash or the economy yet, because the economy doesn’t really exist. If we had things like, avoiding police bots by paying fines, money would be a bit more useful. If we had NPC factions actually creating even a bare bones economy, beyond just the one camp that I’m aware of, then money would be even more useful. Think like, finding a trader or scavenger camp, just a couple of tents and a few merchants/guards. Something for players to raid/trade with that have faction relations.

Once money become so useful that its highly desired, then we can worry about balancing its spawns. As it is, I’m rarely interested in what NPCs have, Fuel isn’t particularly scarce, and I’ve never found much of a reason to not just smash a vending machine instead of buying from it.

Subhazard · 2016-10-20T18:07:28.000Z

TBH, money should be removed all together.

It’s the apocalypse, banking systems wouldn’t even be functional.

Just have value measurements. Anything left over in a transaction gets poured into NPC opinion of you, with a maximum limit.

Like, you buy 4 molotov cocktails for 1 .50 caliber sniper rifle, there’s still a lot of value left over, but instead of making change, the npc likes you more. Create a small maximum and minimum so that you can’t just exploit this and buy cigarette butts with gameboys or something.

BeerBeer · 2016-10-20T19:35:16.000Z

Subhazard:

Like, you buy 4 molotov cocktails for 1 .50 caliber sniper rifle, there’s still a lot of value left over, but instead of making change, the npc likes you more.

You mean like… some sort of credit system?

Subhazard · 2016-10-20T19:44:43.000Z

No. I’m talking about a rough bartering system, which is more likely in the apocalypse.

I’m saying like ‘hey I got way more for this than I wanted, I like this guy a little more. I mean he can’t marry my daughter, but I look forward to talking to him again’

But you put a maximum on that effect so that you can’t birbe someone out of hating you for murdering their daughter.

And you put a minimum on the proc of that effect so you don’t have people feeling elated by getting an extra saltine cracker

Coolthulhu · 2016-10-20T20:16:35.000Z

There was an effect like that, but I removed it because it made recruiting NPCs involve scummy behavior: give someone a bar of post-apocalyptic equivalent of gold, recruit, grab stuff back.
It could potentially work with effects like NPC mugging or letting you go in where you aren’t supposed to be, but those behaviors aren’t implemented well enough for any diplomacy to happen.

Profugo_Barbatus · 2016-10-20T20:26:47.000Z

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:91, topic:12750”]There was an effect like that, but I removed it because it made recruiting NPCs involve scummy behavior: give someone a bar of post-apocalyptic equivalent of gold, recruit, grab stuff back.
It could potentially work with effects like NPC mugging or letting you go in where you aren’t supposed to be, but those behaviors aren’t implemented well enough for any diplomacy to happen.[/quote]

Would it be possible to have NPC’s flag items that are payment for recruiting as stuff they aren’t willing to trade? Similar to how they already know to not sell you the pants they are wearing. Could expand the system to let them refuse to trade items that the NPC ‘wants’.

Pthalocy · 2016-10-20T22:55:28.000Z

this is the best npc discussion i’ve seen in a long time tbh.

Coolthulhu · 2016-10-20T23:35:30.000Z

Profugo Barbatus:

Would it be possible to have NPC’s flag items that are payment for recruiting as stuff they aren’t willing to trade?

No.

That would require heavily restricting the orders you can give them.
For example, you can make the newly recruited NPC wear heavy, protective armor with no storage capability, then put a wrecked backpack on top. The NPC will have enough carrying capacity with the backpack, but as soon as the backpack takes few hits, it will fall apart, making the NPC drop all the items.
This is easier to do with big items, like expensive rifles.

Plus, this feature itself would be detrimental in any form: it means you’d have to give up a degree of control over NPCs to recruit them reliably. And since NPCs aren’t all that smart, the degree of control over them shouldn’t be restricted.

The only way I can see this working is if you could buy slaves/mercenaries from a faction. There you could leave some items in NPC’s “home” and there would be no way to regain them without buying them back or pissing off the faction.

Subhazard · 2016-10-21T03:35:42.000Z

Sounds like the feature would be problematic and difficult, but not impossible.

Worth it? No probably not.

So yeah, with all that info, it’s probably a bad idea.

Still, current money system is a bit of a joke without a punchline.

I imagine in the apocalypse people would mint coins out of materials that are useful, like titanium, OR go the metro route: Bullets.

Everything is ‘BV’ or ‘Bullet value’

Certain bullets have certain value. 9mm could be 1 ‘BV’ .50 BMG would be say, 25 ‘BV’

Sloppy, considering all the different ammo out there, but it’s an idea that could be played with and brainstormed

I’ll be contributing more than ideas after I start and finish my C++ course.

mlangsdorf · 2016-10-21T11:36:04.000Z

I’d like to see two currencies: pre-Zombie dollars and post-Zombie trade credits.

pre-Zombie dollars are the things on cash cards and in your bank account. You can use them to pay police fines and buy things from vending machines.

post-Zombie trade credits are what you get from NPCs, especially the free traders. They don’t take pre-Zombie dollars because no one is going to trade you actual food and ammunition for a bunch of plastic you get from murdering zeds.

I think this split would improve gameplay. Usually by the time I reach the refugee center I’ve got several thousand dollars in my bank account from cash cards and the prospect of trading valuable meat jerky to the merchants for more cash doesn’t appeal. If I couldn’t do that - if I had to trade them actual goods of value - then I’d have more to do with that quest line. But cash cards should still be useful for vending machines.

BeerBeer · 2016-10-21T12:12:03.000Z

mlangsdorf:

They don’t take pre-Zombie dollars because no one is going to trade you actual food and ammunition for a bunch of plastic you get from murdering zeds.

The pre-Z currency would still hold value to capable scavengers. If you can get stuff with it from vending machines deep in the z-infested areas, so can someone else.

Pthalocy · 2016-10-21T16:16:02.000Z

haha, potential new questline to recover vending goods for npc’s not interested in doing a city run?

mlangsdorf · 2016-10-21T20:59:37.000Z

BeerBeer:

The pre-Z currency would still hold value to capable scavengers. If you can get stuff with it from vending machines deep in the z-infested areas, so can someone else.

Exactly how often do you buy cash cards off NPCs? Basically never, because they’re nearly worthless.

Cash cards could probably trade at 1/1000th their face value. So even if a player aggressively scavenged cash cards, the balance of $50K would only be worth 50 trade credits - that’s less than a dozen pieces of jerky. Seems fair.

And, yes there’s obviously an arbitrage opportunity for PCs to buy nearly worthless cash cards from NPCs, go find a subway station and buy out the vending machines, and then sell the NPC snack food at an enormous profit. I think that’s okay, and more interesting story than just buying everything the NPC has with cash cards looted from zombies.

Litppunk · 2016-10-25T19:41:03.000Z

seems like makeshift jack should lift a tad less, previously it was 1/2 of normal jack. Modifying the coding so that jacks don’t have to support the FULL weight of the vehichle would be nice, especially for those that need to do work on those crazy death-mobiles. This sounds like a GREAT improvement over how they were though, especially given the time efficient nature of the solution. ^.^