Needful things (simple additions to improve the game)

[AseaHeru]

I think that would depend on if they knew you where there. It could still be useful against, say, angry NPCs.

[Litppunk]

I think that would depend on if they new you where there. It could still be useful against, say, angry NPCs.

^ much more believable than the given scneario

[4R53N1C]

an option to disable permadeath and allow multiple saves. For bubble blowin’ babies like me xD

Also Twinkies.

Another thing: Cord saws/Kevlar string. Capable of cutting through wood and metal alike, can coil up and be stored in a pocket. Can be found in sporting goods stores or hardware stores.

[Coolthulhu]

an option to disable permadeath and allow multiple saves.

The save system is inherently anti-multiple-saves. Not because it’s “hardcore”, but because it assumes the world tries to be continuous. Going around that would require keeping multiple copies of the whole world, which would quickly get huge.
You can kill the game without saving your death by just closing it when you get the “do you want to see the last moments of your death” screen.

[Litppunk]

[quote=“4R53N1C, post:3543, topic:5570”]an option to disable permadeath and allow multiple saves.

The save system is inherently anti-multiple-saves. Not because it’s “hardcore”, but because it assumes the world tries to be continuous. Going around that would require keeping multiple copies of the whole world, which would quickly get huge.
You can kill the game without saving your death by just closing it when you get the “do you want to see the last moments of your death” screen.[/quote]

^ in addition to this the Devs feel that making non-perma deaths less “hacky” would make the game… to ill keeping with its rouge-like base.

Everyone-in-the-know aware that you can quit without saving and continue where you left off, + your body and all its loot. You can burn the body/ ignore it entirely if you feel you were somehow “cheated” to death and simply want to continue. This option is intentionally left open laregly for this reason, but streamlining cheating death is not something the devs have any interest in pursuing.

[4R53N1C]

Add a punt gun. I want to use one to take out a room full of zombies.

[digitCruncher]

I have a couple of suggestions that improve some of the more controversial elements of the game: Filthy Clothing and Nutrition.

[center]Filthy Clothing[/center]

According to the patch notes, in the most recent experimental’s, cutting up filthy clothing creates filthy rags. I don’t know the details, but I assume filthy rags either cannot be used until they are cleaned, or they create filthy clothing when used as crafting. I know that currently cleaning clothes uses one charge (out of the 10 soap charges a normal stack uses) of soap, regardless of whether it is a tuxedo or a pair of socks.

I propose two changes that make cleaning clothes available much earlier in the game, albeit using more time. Firstly, soap charges should be multiplied by 10, and (a)pplying a washboard should use the volume of the clothing (rounded up) charges. As an extreme example, a filthy go bag will require 143 charges (1.43 stacks of soap), a tuxedo will take 22 charges (2.2 old charges), and 10 charges of soap will clean something as large as a blanket. Socks would only take 1 charge, so you can clean 100 socks with one bar or soap, which sounds about right.

Secondly, you should be able to craft clean rags using a recipe: 1 filthy rag + 3 clean water + fire (or a lot of cooking charges) over 30 minutes using a tool with level 2 boiling = 1 clean rag. Batch crafting should take just 10 additional minutes (so cleaning 20 rags takes 20 filthy rag + 60 clean water + fire, and 3 hours 40 minutes of crafting time). This uses a vast amount of time and water, but notably doesn’t require soap. Rags, being 1 volume items that can be filthy, can also be cleaned quickly using 1 soap charge, one water and a washboard.

The first change means that what little soap the early game provides can be either used to clean one big item, or lots of little items (increasing player agency). The second change means that the player has a choice to look for a way to store a large amount of clean water for cleaning purposes, in addition to the current choices of finding soap, or sucking the penalties to filthy clothing. This change also increases player agency, without being strictly superior to soap.

[center]Nutrition[/center]

Currently, I struggle to keep my health stat high, as most highly nutritious foods now provide large amounts of nutrition, rather than health. I propose that the current system of levels (eg. calcium deficency; normal calcium levels, excessive calcium levels) are replaced with five levels for each vitamin and mineral (eg. calcium deficency, low calcium, normal calcium, high calcium, excessive calcium). As long as all vitamin and mineral levels are at normal values (as they are at the start of the game), the ‘health modifier’ stat is increased by 33 every time the ‘health’ stat is recalculated (which effectively makes the ‘resting’ point for health 25, not 0). Having high or low levels of any vitamin or mineral negates this benefit; but provides no other penalties. Having a deficiency or excessive levels of a vitamin or mineral reduces the ‘health modifier’ stat by 16 every time the ‘health’ stat is recalculated (which effectively reduces the ‘resting’ point for health by 12 per deficency/excessive level), as well as providing the stat penalties that it already has.

This has a raft of benefits: It means that if you have an otherwise healthy lifestyle, you can indulge in a few luxuries without getting stuck with negative health (the current system means that if you have a negative ‘health modifier’ stat, you will always have negative health). It gives players a bit of warning before they get stuck with a B12 deficiency and the large penalties that that entails, and it means that players can eat tons of one type of food for a prolonged period with minor penalties, increasing flexibility.

[YourCompanionCube]

-snip-

wow i think these are both very good suggestions and also the first time I’ve seen someone come up with a real solution, or at least a step in the right direction, very well thought-out and i would love to see these implemented.

[AseaHeru]

The readdition of being able to save when sleeping. Because the autosaves are a PITA when doing anything involved(Particularly with slower computers, I have had it take a quarter of an hour for a small save), not remembering to save often results in the game crashing when doing alot of exploring, and, well, I ound that the save before sleeping struck a nice balance.

[netzenk]

[quote=“digitCruncher, post:3547, topic:5570”]-snip-

wow i think these are both very good suggestions and also the first time I’ve seen someone come up with a real solution, or at least a step in the right direction, very well thought-out and i would love to see these implemented.[/quote]

Seconded

[RAM]

volume of the clothing (rounded up) charges. As an extreme example, a filthy go bag will require 143 charges (1.43 stacks of soap), a tuxedo will take 22 charges (2.2 old charges), and 10 charges of soap will clean something as large as a blanket. Socks would only take 1 charge, so you can clean 100 socks with one bar or soap, which sounds about right.

I cannot help but think that weight may be more relevant than volume. Many high-volume items can be compacted while low-volume items may need to be expanded to get at their innards. Also, it seems to me that heavy fabric will eat up your soapy water regardless of how dirty they actually are.

I also wonder if cleanliness should be separated between hygiene and tangible. The heated chair looks clean and feel luxurious but tends to attract human oils and cells at a human-like temperature just right for breeding things that can live in a human. Meanwhile ash from a burnt building can get in your socks and on your glasses and in your hair and make your shirt crusty and ruin that lovely floral pattern on your skirt leaving you all sorts of uncomfortable, but the fire probably killed everything that was living there and ate all the food, leaving the ashscape about as hygienic a place as the cataclysm will provide…

[daeam]

Wet and rotten wood. Without getting too complicated.
It’s just way too easy to start a fire. Especially in the rain.

Decreasing the spawn rate of wood may help. Or adding a ‘seasoned’ flag that is activated at a lower percentage.

[RedPine]

[quote=“digitCruncher, post:3547, topic:5570”]I have a couple of suggestions that improve some of the more controversial elements of the game: Filthy Clothing and Nutrition.

[center]Filthy Clothing[/center]

-snip-

[center]Nutrition[/center]

-snip-[/quote]

Clothing is mainly an early game problem, as by mid to late game I make my own clothes or raid clothing stores. As such I have no strong preferences, but allowing washing clothes with hot water and time makes sense to me.

Nutrition, on the other hand, is a mid to late game problem and a bit of a pain. If I only had to eat a little meat it would be fine, but as far as I can tell fruit, grains, meat, and bones all need to be consumed in exactly equal proportions - or eat food with zero vitamins and just take a multivitamin a day to avoid hypervitamin problems. The latter solution is unrealistic, bland, and practical.

I definitely agree that the game should give you a pass on having 1 or 2 minor deficiencies as long as you’re eating home cooked food that has all the other vitamins. I’m unsure of how vitamins are currently coded, but I would imagine vitamins would drain slower the less you have and faster the more you have to make hypervitaminosis and deficiencies easier to avoid even if you aren’t eating a perfectly balanced diet. Vitamins that represent food groups the body doesn’t need much of, like meat, would have a lower threshold for deficiency compared to more common vitamins like B12 that are found in staple foods like bread.

This could also open up more interesting diet perks/mutations as they could change how much of a vitamin you need instead of prohibiting you from eating a food group entirely. For example, even carnivorous dogs need a tiny bit of veggies.

[Szara]

These suggestions are all autopickup/inventory related, because autopickup is fantastic, but sometimes also a pain in the arse.

First, a way to exclude specific item types from being assigned a character in the inventory, mostly because I really really really do not need every gorram cash card eating up all of my letters. It’s the same story every time I play, I gather all the cashcards for arrows/plastic/money/etc and there’s dozens of them in the tools section of my inventory. I don’t even need to see all of them in my inventory really, since they’re nil weight/volume, but since ATMs can be so scarce, they take up a lot of screen space and characters. Plenty of other items would benefit from this, but cash cards are, to me, the main culprits.

Second, a keybinding to enable/disable autopickup and/or autopickup safe mode, which I’ll talk about with the

Third, a autopickup safe mode radius independent of the safe mode radius. So, yes, there’s a zombie 40 tiles away, I probably don’t care, I just want to pick up all of my throwing sticks / arrows / materials / etc and be done with it. On the other hand, and related to number two up there, fighting and moving around in an area rife with stuff you’re picking up (say plastic chunks, or arrows/thrown weapons) can be a trial of frustration, with prompts EVERY step you take because you are trying to pick up everything but there are critters near and you can see them OR they’re on the other side of a line-of-sight impairing object but you can hear them.

I would imagine the keybindings and radius would be fairly simple to implement, since the radius is practically just a copy of another function, safemode, with a different name. But just having hotkeys to toggle autopickup or its safe mode would be handy enough even without the added bonus of the independent radius.

Finally, a repeat last inventory interaction button, sort of like resuming for crafting. It would be particularly useful for stuffing 20-30 pieces of bologna down your gullet with less key spam, or drinking a quarter of that gallon of cheap wine because because you stubbed your toe on the zombie child you just put out of your misery in the rain. Or popping aspirin like there is no tomorrow (but really who doesn’t have aspirin assigned a key?). Anything that tends to lose its assigned key or have that be changed often (food being most susceptible) would benefit the most from this.

[bisousbisous]

I noticed when looking through a school building that you cannot peek into a solid tile. Obviously this makes sense for stuff like walls, but can you make it so we can peek through transparent things like windows? Imagine it as your character pressing his face up against the window and cupping his hands so he can see inside better.

[Azrad]

Coffee vending machines. Use cash card, vending machine puts hot coffee in a cup (though in this game, you can opt to just fill a container with them). Or simply bash the machine and steal the coffee powder stored inside.

[AseaHeru]

^Also includes instant hot chocolate.

[Inconspicuous]

That is a great idea. You have my vote (Not that it matters).

[Azrad]

The zombie lich. A nastier version of the zombie necromancer; has more health, can revive zombies, and like the zombie master can evolve zombie, and has an ability like the fault in the Amigahara horror mine which prevents survivors from moving away from the lich. And maybe some sort of “magical” attack; which drags the survivor closer to the lich - like the zombie grappler/wrestler grab attack, but has a far bigger range.

[Logiwonk]

Illegal toxic waste dumping site in the woods complete with small guard shack with possible military loot, some buried canisters, a pit for new canisters, broken down flatbed truck, and unburied canisters leaking toxic waste. Some corp saving money by burying toxic waste in the woods is very consistent with CDDA world.