just a quick thought how about moving the characters starting position, the benches, and the computer downstairs, move some of the more useful starting supplies upstairs in the lockers and on the counters, removing the windows from upstairs or making them closed from the start. or would that be a wast of time? i just find it hard to believe that they the government any one would make a shelter that would be a location for any one to go in case of a emergency that would be easy to see inside of and leaves a ton of supplies scattered randomly across the floor and said “well we did the best we could, time to go make another 10!”
Windows currently start closed and curtained, agreed that proper supply storage would enhance verisimilitude but removes the need to hit the basement (and potentially any zeds there), and yeah, the shelters are supposed to be a crock.
As KA101 noted, curtains start closed now. I’d be in favor of organizing the stuff downstairs into shelves or similar storage, and also enlarging it a bit if someone were interested.
The main issue with making downstairs more livable by default is the technical issue that it isolates you from above-ground creatures.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:3, topic:6039”]As KA101 noted, curtains start closed now. I’d be in favor of organizing the stuff downstairs into shelves or similar storage, and also enlarging it a bit if someone were interested.
The main issue with making downstairs more livable by default is the technical issue that it isolates you from above-ground creatures.[/quote]
make the building smaller and less useable, removing the windows and making the entrance 1 metal door to make it safer and the downstairs maybe a 5*5 room which is mostly consisted of benches, storage spaces, and the computer?
this is kind of what im thinking of
downstairs
upstairs
design makes every thing fit where it should, counters and lockers for misc or tools, cupboard top right for the limited food, dresser (probably needs to be changed) in the bottom right for emergency clothes, computer room to the right with a desk for any electronics spawns.
upstairs is a simple 2x3 room with the stairs and a door.
I’d like to drop just a bit of lore here:
The evac shelters were built as part of a government program to help improve both the morale of the populace at large (by convincing them the government was looking out for them) while also increasing the general sense of fear and danger (by convincing the populace such shelters were needed). They approved effective at these goals. The shelters were not, however, ever actually stocked - the funding fell out when the military realized both goals had been effectively accomplished, and no more money needed to be wasted on them. After all, in the event that the shelters would ever actually be needed, it is unlikely they would end up very useful - any major military attack was unlikely to leave many survivors. Standing as empty unstocked, relatively insecure buildings on the outskirts of the city reminding people of what could happen was the only service they were ever actually expected to provide.As such I'd still probably vote for a fairly large above-ground presence. They weren't designed as bunkers afterall, they were designed as something that should be seen by the populace to convince them they are safe. And while this lore could certainly be changed, IMO building fairly useless shelters simply for the purpose of morale support would both be cheaper and more in-character for the pre-cata government than building actual functional bomb shelters.
What are you trying to achieve here? Your design looks like a personal bomb shelter, which is not what the building is.
If anything, it should be much larger, because it’s supposed to be a shelter for quite a number of people.
I believe according to lore the government is mostly concentrating overseas in China, not really in the USA.
The Evac shelters were just some easy public morale boost. so it would not make much sense to have them stocked with anything at all.
(Correct me if im wrong)
(Actually now that im thinking of it the lore says most troops are in south Korea correct, does that mean Korea and china are the last areas to fall to the inter dimensional invaders?)
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:7, topic:6039”]What are you trying to achieve here? Your design looks like a personal bomb shelter, which is not what the building is.
If anything, it should be much larger, because it’s supposed to be a shelter for quite a number of people.[/quote]
your right, let me try again, ill be back in five 
Edit: im trying to think of a design that would be used in reality but make the player want to move away from the Evac shelter, 12 people max and 6 people comfortably is the max space for the shelter that i designed earlier, making a design that isn’t unpractical and at the same time holds people, but in a manor that makes the player want to move away from the shelter is a little challenging
Still feels a bit small… perhaps doubling it in size would make it work?
i don’t know, doubling the size would make the shelter bigger than the original evac shelter
Bigger isn’t really a problem, the concept is that most of the stuff is gone because the other survivors already looted the place and split (except in scenarios where they interred some corpses in the basement, which came back, preventing looting).
Your original premise of making them better organized and more “shelter-like” is fine, but they’re supposed to be fairly large.
How about taking the current evac shelter, removing the lockers (leaving only benches and counters), and the underground from this thread?
[quote=“i2amroy, post:6, topic:6039”]I’d like to drop just a bit of lore here:
The evac shelters were built as part of a government program to help improve both the morale of the populace at large (by convincing them the government was looking out for them) while also increasing the general sense of fear and danger (by convincing the populace such shelters were needed). They approved effective at these goals. The shelters were not, however, ever actually stocked - the funding fell out when the military realized both goals had been effectively accomplished, and no more money needed to be wasted on them. After all, in the event that the shelters would ever actually be needed, it is unlikely they would end up very useful - any major military attack was unlikely to leave many survivors. Standing as empty unstocked, relatively insecure buildings on the outskirts of the city reminding people of what could happen was the only service they were ever actually expected to provide.As such I'd still probably vote for a fairly large above-ground presence. They weren't designed as bunkers afterall, they were designed as something that should be seen by the populace to convince them they are safe. And while this lore could certainly be changed, IMO building fairly useless shelters simply for the purpose of morale support would both be cheaper and more in-character for the pre-cata government than building actual functional bomb shelters.[/quote]
That’s what I meant by “the shelters are a crock”. Thanks.
As for “making people want to move away”, why? I don’t think we need to actively chase people out of the starting shelter; if it happens to be a good place to start, then that’s one less hurdle for new players. Further, not every shelter is in a good spot itself (next to the swamp? within Horde hearing? 20 tiles away from the nearest sign of civilization? hey, lookit those fungal spores?), so those might be good reasons to leave.
[spoiler][quote=“KA101, post:15, topic:6039”][quote=“i2amroy, post:6, topic:6039”]I’d like to drop just a bit of lore here:
The evac shelters were built as part of a government program to help improve both the morale of the populace at large (by convincing them the government was looking out for them) while also increasing the general sense of fear and danger (by convincing the populace such shelters were needed). They approved effective at these goals. The shelters were not, however, ever actually stocked - the funding fell out when the military realized both goals had been effectively accomplished, and no more money needed to be wasted on them. After all, in the event that the shelters would ever actually be needed, it is unlikely they would end up very useful - any major military attack was unlikely to leave many survivors. Standing as empty unstocked, relatively insecure buildings on the outskirts of the city reminding people of what could happen was the only service they were ever actually expected to provide.As such I'd still probably vote for a fairly large above-ground presence. They weren't designed as bunkers afterall, they were designed as something that should be seen by the populace to convince them they are safe. And while this lore could certainly be changed, IMO building fairly useless shelters simply for the purpose of morale support would both be cheaper and more in-character for the pre-cata government than building actual functional bomb shelters.[/quote]
That’s what I meant by “the shelters are a crock”. Thanks.
As for “making people want to move away”, why? I don’t think we need to actively chase people out of the starting shelter; if it happens to be a good place to start, then that’s one less hurdle for new players. Further, not every shelter is in a good spot itself (next to the swamp? within Horde hearing? 20 tiles away from the nearest sign of civilization? hey, lookit those fungal spores?), so those might be good reasons to leave.[/quote][/spoiler]
good point, never mind about the new shelter then 
I kinda like your idea, though, Keyreper, to an extent. Making the building that is the shelter less “window filled square” and more “this place LOOKS like it’d be a shelter despite utterly failing at being an actual shelter” is kinda a cool idea. See, if the shelters had originally been designed as, say, points of actual evacuation, rather than points to evacuate TO (ie, if they were gathering places for an organized government evacuation rather than a shelter to hide in), I’d say they needed a carport of some kind. As it stands, though, I still think a building organized with one door on each side and eight windows spaced equidistant around its edges from the doors is a kind of dull design. It works, in a lot of ways, of course, and it’s technically functional (thus meeting the requirement of “technically a shelter but not actually a shelter”), but in my opinion doesn’t really reassure people very much that it’d be actually safe in the event of any disaster.
More accurately, it lacks “psychological security”, which is the purpose. They don’t have to be ACTUALLY defensible, or sheltering, they just have to LOOK that way to the average untrained person. So while they aren’t bunkers, they might well be designed with stronger metal doors, reinforced or barred windows, and maybe only two ways in rather than one in every cardinal direction.
Then again, one in every cardinal direction DOES smack of “governmental planning” in the sense that each building was actually just made directly off a template with no need to adjust to local conditions: build every one exactly the same, it’s cheaper that way, you only ever have to hire one guy to make one set of plans that then fit every location.
Wow I’m arguing with myself over here. Sorry.
Having the computer in the basement would be wayyy too much of an advantage. That gives you an infinite source of light in an area safe from monsters, weather, etc etc with which you could craft and read well past sunset. You’d only ever need to emerge to get food and water, making it pretty easy to grind out levels by reading/crafting, etc.
Keyreaper: To be clear, I don’t have a problem with overhauling the shelter a bit, I was just trying to get straight where we’re going with it.
Just a thought, if you have a burning desire to make a personal-sized shelter, we can stash one of those in people’s back yards, it’d be a pretty cool find.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:19, topic:6039”]Keyreaper: To be clear, I don’t have a problem with overhauling the shelter a bit, I was just trying to get straight where we’re going with it.
Just a thought, if you have a burning desire to make a personal-sized shelter, we can stash one of those in people’s back yards, it’d be a pretty cool find.[/quote]
Or we could overhaul the current “bomb shelter” basement (the one with beds in the corners and shelf down the middle). That’s kinda bland and could use some attention.