Needful things (simple additions to improve the game)

[Khrysanth]

In a similar vein, you wouldn’t spot a town from a mile away and know which building is a gun store, or which one is a doctor’s office vs a lawyer’s office.

For this, I have to somewhat disagree. Being based on a modern northeastern city, future or not, means that there are plenty of things implied by this: Billboards, signs over the entrance, etc. You are also “from the area,” and I can assure you that I’m familiar enough with the immediate area to know what many places are even if I have never been in them.

Indeed, modern people are so used to travel that they think nothing of going 20+ miles to go to a specific store. A feat which, on foot, would have been a days march for the Roman legion (still considered to be one of the fastest infantry armies.)

[Datanazush]

[quote=“vache, post:200, topic:5570”]In a similar vein, you wouldn’t spot a town from a mile away and know which building is a gun store, or which one is a doctor’s office vs a lawyer’s office.

For this, I have to somewhat disagree. Being based on a modern northeastern city, future or not, means that there are plenty of things implied by this: Billboards, signs over the entrance, etc. You are also “from the area,” and I can assure you that I’m familiar enough with the immediate area to know what many places are even if I have never been in them.

Indeed, modern people are so used to travel that they think nothing of going 20+ miles to go to a specific store. A feat which, on foot, would have been a days march for the Roman legion (still considered to be one of the fastest infantry armies.)[/quote]

Just a side note here, an army moves a lot slower than a small group. Even the legendary Roman discipline didn’t mean much when you had to coordinate thousands of men walking in lockstep.

Although yeah, I agree that you’d be able to tell what’s what in a town at a distance. I know where to go to get food in towns 40+ kilometres away, despite having only passed through a couple of times. It’s about the same for other shops and the like.

[Khrysanth]

[quote=“Datanazush, post:202, topic:5570”]Just a side note here, an army moves a lot slower than a small group. Even the legendary Roman discipline didn’t mean much when you had to coordinate thousands of men walking in lockstep.

Although yeah, I agree that you’d be able to tell what’s what in a town at a distance. I know where to go to get food in towns 40+ kilometres away, despite having only passed through a couple of times. It’s about the same for other shops and the like.[/quote]
I was using the legion as a reference point on speed, rather than an absolute “this is the fastest you should be.” After all, the legion also set up encampments (including basic fortifications) every time they stopped for the night. Even so, the legion is still considered to be fast by infantry army standards, even in the modern era.

The point, though, was that we take travel for granted. In a few hours, I have a doctor’s appointment about 20 miles away. An individual walking (2-3mph) would cover that distance in 6 1/2 to 10 hours. I don’t even have to consider leaving for a fair bit of time.

On top of that, I’m not convinced that our view of the world in DDA is even at the level of “a mile”, given the time taken to travel to the edge of the view.

[KA101]

[quote=“dambuk1, post:198, topic:5570”]About mysterious items - to me it just doesn’t make sanse that a random guy with inteligence of 8 (which i assume is something like 100 IQ?(average)) would just walk into a lab, see a glass flask with some weird liquid and would go “Oh look, it’s a spider mutagen!”. Also, it doesn’t make sense if fruits of top-secret resarch would just have a stamp “Spider Mutagen” on them. They would probably have a weird codename, and descriptions of those codenames would be known by few and stored in research logs.
That’s the type of “mysterious” objects i had in mind :)[/quote]

Fair enough. Once Kevin’s code for tracking what books a character has read comes along, hooking mutagens/serums into that shouldn’t be too tricky. (Basically, knowing the recipe or having read the report would teach that “PE050” is Alpha mutagen, forex.)

Not sure whether wiki-solvable mystery is worth the bother, but wev.

[kevin.granade]

With the books, all you need to do is spend one read action to get the gist of the book and reveal the details. you can subvert it with a wiki crawl to look up e.g. which books have which recipes, but I don’t much like designing things around people actively subverting the game.

Anyway, that brings up a good point, I should probably turn the ‘books read’ list into an ‘items identified’ list, and we can use it for other things as well.
Still want to turn ‘Glock 19’ into a ‘handgun’ if you have 0 firearms/pistol skills.

[vache]

Then once you use it for a while and get handguns level 1, you instantly divine that it is a glock 19! Or you could read the stamp on the gun

[medikohl]

Just wanted to suggest that we need a source of swords.
I propose a comic book shop as being a realistic source of these.

[vache]

I’d like to suggest that we don’t and that they should be exceedingly rare, except for fakes, but they can already be found sometimes in museums and antique shops I think.

[kevin.granade]

Then once you use it for a while and get handguns level 1, you instantly divine that it is a glock 19! Or you could read the stamp on the gun

More like you get the knowledge “grandfathered in” if you have gun skills at the start, otherwise you only learn them from reading gun skill books.
You might know the name, but not the stats.

[system]

Yes, a nethack style identification system.

[KA101]

I’d like to suggest that we don’t and that they should be exceedingly rare, except for fakes, but they can already be found sometimes in museums and antique shops I think.

Museums have fakes. You want Mansions or pawnshops, and I think the pawnshops can be fake too.

[Khrysanth]

Hrm. I am suddenly tempted to see what I can come up with through JSONs for making a mod of SCAdian items and such.

[bugsniper]

Renaming the books Engineering 301 and Computer Science 101 and 301 to more detailed textbook names. Perhaps CAD for Architecture, Intro to C++, and Guide to Reverse Engineering. The reason is that the names would otherwise be unrealistically bland.

[AseaHeru]

CAD is computer though…

Perhaps a guide to drafting?

[KA101]

Hrm. I am suddenly tempted to see what I can come up with through JSONs for making a mod of SCAdian items and such.

Congrats on making NPC, don’t eat any lighters, here’s your mininuke (activate before giving it away), and if it were solely my call I’d put 'em in mainline. As is, they’d likely end up in the Medieval Weapons pack.

[randomone]

I want to post this simplified idea here before creating a new topic to gauge the responses, but how feasible would it be to implement a trap based wire cable that interacts with both adjacent wires and vehicle control panels in order to deal shock damage to whatever moves onto the wire in accordance with however much energy is stored in the “connected” vehicle, and draining the energy accordingly? I know the trap system can be used for complex operations, such as draining rain into a funnel or creating a temporary multi-tile structure (tent), but I’m not sure how well it plays with vehicles.

If this idea is feasible enough to implement, than I’ll create another topic expanding the idea into a rudimentary wiring system that shouldn’t require a major rewrite of the game mechanics. I also have a bit of experience with coding too so I may be able to contribute a bit.

Edit: Fixed some grammar

[kevin.granade]

My first impression is that it’d be a pain in the ass, but it’s definitely possible, and should be relatively self-contained, as in all the gnarly code to do it would just get stuck in the trap definition.

One caveat, if you’re talking about having it be mounted on the vehicle itself, there’s currently no support for that, though it’s probably not too terribly hard to add.

[kilozombie]

Yeah, actual traps mounted on vehicles would be different. Making an “electric fence” vehicle item that can’t be avoided and powered with a generator wouldn’t be… AS hard, IMO. Another use for the wire you get from disassembling barbed wire and fences.

[Womble]

Stuffed animals. I want a teddy bear for my survivors to cuddle as they struggle to sleep at night. Could be crafted or found.

edit: Also, ersatz coffee. No caffeine hit, little nutritional value, but a nice change from water. Could be crafted from grain and a sweetener (sugar or honey).

edit2: I should have compiled a list before contributing. But now that I think about it (without having looked at the code!) - hobby crafts should be fairly easy to implement, as they’re kin to reading books for pleasure/morale. The hermit stereotype is whittling, which can be added without new materials, but I don’t see why juggling or sketching should be out of the scope of the game.

[Jakers]

A little more presence of useless but good items in houses would be quite nice, such as vases with flowers in them, plastic bowls and general junk + ornaments. Although most if it may seem useless, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.