Needful things (simple additions to improve the game)

[iceball3]

While stationary for more than a few minutes, have over encumberance vease causing pain? It should be much less painful to bear a load if you are sitting down, i’d think

[Murphy]

I miss the 100-charge lighters so much. Lighters in shops should have full charge.
Refillable lighter doesn’t cut it for me because of the submenu (inconvenient when rapid hotkey tapping).

[Logrin]

A non-ridged water tank for folding vehicles made from large waterskins or leather/melted plastic chunks.

Give foldable parts the ability to be folded/unfolded from the rest of a non-foldable vehicle’s structure, accessed through the controls. This would allow for things like wing mirrors, extra storage and solar panels to be deployed or tucked away as needed. If you’re REALLY ambitious you could add fold-out passenger space or a secondary set of controls for use in an emergency.

The range of thrown objects should be modified by strength and throwing skill. No reason you can’t throw a manhole cover like a frisbee with hydraulic muscles, the railgun CBM and an educated throwing arm.

SLINGS SHOULD BE ABLE TO THROW GRENADES!

[Murphy]

I’m not sure how you would throw a grenade with a sling.

Once you’ve pulled the pin, you don’t want to spend precious seconds whirling your arm around. It would need special, explode-on-impact grenades.

[Logrin]

OR a chance for failure…

[system]

There are reinforced wooden doors but not reinforced wooden walls, which should be A Thing. I’d also like to see iron-reinforced wooden doors which use scrap and are stronger than reinforced wooden doors, but not as strong as metal doors.

Castles used to have what were called “murder hole” in the walls to allow defenders to fire arrows or pour molten pitch on attackers. I’d like to be able to build something similar on my fort, a sort of window through which nothing can pass, but which allows anyone immediately in front of it (on either side) to attack through it. All chain link fences should count as all murder hole. As we know from the prison on Walking Dead, it’s a good way to take care of zombie hordes… until they pile deep enough to push it down.

This probably isn’t trivial to implement, but opening a door with furniture on the other side should require either a lot of strength or smashing the door. Smashing a door with furniture on the other side should also be somewhat harder. This would make opening houses with bookcases and such against the door more challenging (as it should be – I assume the residents were trying to block the doors). It would also allow players to push furniture against the door to help barricade against zombies.

I’m not sure how easy this is to implement in the tiles, but I’d like to see pits treated the same way water and blood tiles are, so that connecting pit tiles look like a single large pit and not a bunch of separate pits as if a giant went crazy with a hole punch. This should also mean that anyone in a pit should be able to move freely to an adjacent pit tile.

Is there any rationale for why you can’t drag things up and down stairs? At the very least, I’d like to be able to dump things down stairs. That shouldn’t be in the least difficult. In fact, you could steal a page from NetHack and have anything placed on a stair tile automagically tumble down the stairs.

Edit: Another suggestion while I’m here:

Fancy watches and diver’s watches should have a built-in thermometer. So should PDAs. On the subject of PDAs, is there any possibility of getting apps for it from USB sticks?

[dovla]

Make another type of socks, i.e. thick socks with same encumbrance but twice the warmth. It’s kind of silly to be wearing two pairs of socks and combat boots and still get frostnipped at -9 centergrade.

Make a mod to remove silly items such as cat ears that are cluttering the crafting menu. Even better, move them to a mod.

[Muaddib]

[quote=“Murphy, post:1184, topic:5570”]I’m not sure how you would throw a grenade with a sling.

Once you’ve pulled the pin, you don’t want to spend precious seconds whirling your arm around. It would need special, explode-on-impact grenades.[/quote]

Actually, that was common practice in WW1. Grenade slings. Not the ancient sling of course that you have to twirl. The bouncy Dennis the Menace sling.

[system]

Actually, that was common practice in WW1. Grenade slings. Not the ancient sling of course that you have to twirl. The bouncy Dennis the Menace sling.

I wonder if a staff sling and/or atlatl would make sense in Cataclysm. Fridge logic says they should work, but there must be a reason you don’t see them being used on the battlefield.

[Muaddib]

Because in WW2 the rifle-grenade was invented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle_grenade
And after that, the grenade-launcher was invented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenade_launcher#Standalone
And nowadays you have grenade-launcher attachments for rifles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenade_launcher#Attached

[i]And you know how modern armies work.

Why use something a soldier can make with Y-shaped sticks, elbow grease and a string of rubber, when you can have a big military corporation spend billions of tax dollars on it?[/i]

[FunsizeNinja123]

…Because I’m sure modern grenade launchers with grenades specially made for said launcher are much more safer than using a lacrosse stick to launch grenades at your enemy.

[Datanazush]

…Because I’m sure modern grenade launchers with grenades specially made for said launcher are much more safer than using a lacrosse stick to launch grenades at your enemy.

Yeah, turns out being able to semi-reliably blow someone up at 300+ metres (commonly known as medium range) is far more valuable than not spending money.

[Muaddib]

Well, I don’t know about you guys, but in my CataDDA, sticks and bits of rubber are a lot more common than M203 grenade attachments.

[Robert_Boettcher]

There are reinforced wooden doors but not reinforced wooden walls, which should be A Thing. I’d also like to see iron-reinforced wooden doors which use scrap and are stronger than reinforced wooden doors, but not as strong as metal doors.

There are palisades which are realistically set up wooden walls. They just require ground to dig in.

Question: Can I actually dig into space in a parking lot, after removing the street surface material with a pickaxe?

Cause otherwise we would need something like that that could be build like a simple barricade, thrown together by all kinds of junk found in the road.
Perhaps we could draft vehicles into that as well.

NPCs should at the very least be able to be commanded to help pull a vehicle off the street and into a barricade.
That could then be crafted into a reinforced wooden barricade, which could be mounted with machine gunners and set fire too in case of a necessary retreat.

\Castles used to have what were called “murder hole” in the walls to allow defenders to fire arrows or pour molten pitch on attackers. I’d like to be able to build something similar on my fort, a sort of window through which nothing can pass, but which allows anyone immediately in front of it (on either side) to attack through it. All chain link fences should count as all murder hole. As we know from the prison on Walking Dead, it’s a good way to take care of zombie hordes… until they pile deep enough to push it down.

Its called fortifications in df. Liquids can pass through it, attackers can shoot through it if they stand immediately on the tile next to it. Shooting from it from a floor higher than the attacker is kinda bugger, as the game strangely removes distance from the defenders range when the attackers come.

But I imagine something like in Stronghold Crusader, where you were able to pour boiling tar on attacking units. You could also use fiery arrows to ignite tar pits you had before dug into the ground, though they are kinda expensive ingame.

This probably isn’t trivial to implement, but opening a door with furniture on the other side should require either a lot of strength or smashing the door. Smashing a door with furniture on the other side should also be somewhat harder. This would make opening houses with bookcases and such against the door more challenging (as it should be – I assume the residents were trying to block the doors). It would also allow players to push furniture against the door to help barricade against zombies.

Might not be what you are looking for, but this would be the other way around: A bookshelf hiding the access door to the hideout.

Bookcase HIdeout Entrance: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank#mediaviewer/File:AnneFrankHouse_Bookcase.jpg

[quote=“CarlStayBack!, post:1186, topic:5570”]I’m not sure how easy this is to implement in the tiles, but I’d like to see pits treated the same way water and blood tiles are, so that connecting pit tiles look like a single large pit and not a bunch of separate pits as if a giant went crazy with a hole punch. This should also mean that anyone in a pit should be able to move freely to an adjacent pit tile.[/quite]
That would be something like ramps in df.

What he does is calculating the flow of water in a river that goes over different z-tiles (and forms a waterfall for example) only in its entry and end points of the reality bubble.

The functions get expensive again when you also ask to be able to dig around with the water (and form your own little channel for your row boat or something) that things get complicated and much more detailed. To first look into ramps, that move units one tile up or down and then one to a side might be interesting now that you ask for this feature.

Is there any rationale for why you can’t drag things up and down stairs?

The hauling part of the code should be brought to the point that we are at least THEORETICALLY able to ask an NPC to fetch an item (PATH finding totally taken out of considering in the implementation[/quote]
That should be possible over ramps AND stairs (which should allow @ to travel up and down), but not vehicles. Vehicles should be able to traverse ramps though.

I’m not really sure how this would work out if you were trying to pull a shopping cart upstairs (maybe you drop it and all the items spill out? But then what about 28 Days Later where that father of the child build that highly efficient entrance barrier of stacked shopping mall carts? But thats for C:DDA 3 probably

At the very least, I’d like to be able to dump things down stairs. That shouldn’t be in the least difficult. In fact, you could steal a page from NetHack and have anything placed on a stair tile automagically tumble down the stairs.

The problem is that we are yet to improve different z-levels. We can look at df and see how they handle it. They handle it pretty well considering how deep down generated abandoned sites and former fortresses go.

Edit: Another suggestion while I’m here:

Fancy watches and diver’s watches should have a built-in thermometer. So should PDAs. On the subject of PDAs, is there any possibility of getting apps for it from USB sticks?

There are diving watches I’ve seen recently in a diving utility shop in Maldives. They could between 200+ USD to have measure depth, pressure and stuff.

A thermometer can be an app for the PDA, but then it has to be as unreliable as the Compass I have in my smartphone and.

But I think we should definitely check what App was there in a PDA.

And you know what I think? The First Handset they used in Matrix had a very interesting, simple interface. That might be nice to display the infos you want for the C:DDA, like temperature and all.

We gotta be careful not to create a god item in the PDA though…

[Coolthulhu]

[quote=“Murphy, post:1184, topic:5570”]I’m not sure how you would throw a grenade with a sling.

Once you’ve pulled the pin, you don’t want to spend precious seconds whirling your arm around. It would need special, explode-on-impact grenades.[/quote]

You don’t actually whirl the sling like depicted in common culture. It is more of a simple swing, like throwing.

Question: Can I actually dig into space in a parking lot, after removing the street surface material with a pickaxe?

Yes, it transforms into generic dirt surface.

[quote=“Robert_Boettcher, post:1180, topic:5570”]gas stations have fuel only dumped on ground next to pump

also i would like to be able to burn cob webd with a lighter. ever seen what happens to spider den irl if you do that?[/quote]
Gas stations are fixed, I think. Ones already bugged won’t work, but the ones generated in new versions should.

You can burn webs, it’s just that at the moment you need to drop a flammable item on them first.

[Logrin]

Working/Fighting/Crafting/Constructing with your bare hands for long enough should give you heavy callouses and a very very minor amount of cut resist to your hands–a bonus you lose if you then decide to wear gloves for an extended period of time.

Most attacks should cause creatures/the player to bleed. With severity based on damage and aggravated by subsequent blows–making bandages even more vital than they are now. Maybe even have blood be a meter like hunger and thirst? I could see giant mosquitos doing very little in the way of outward harm but draining players dry incredibly fast.

More injuries like zombie bites should exist–in that there should be more consequences to being hurt than just losing HP. Concussions, sprains, dislocations, fractures, burns, etc. Some of which require more than simply a first-aid kit or time to heal. Bonus points if the medical skill can be used to McGuyver out early treatment.

All existing drugs should be able to be concentrated into high-quality versions of themselves using a chemistry set, the cooking skill and more of themselves as an ingredient. High-quality drugs would be much more potent–promising both higher highs and lower lows.

Farms should have cows. Cows should be milkable/herdable. Goats as well.

[RAM]

Mmmmm, tainted cheese…

[Jarlaxle]

[quote=“Logrin, post:1196, topic:5570”]Working/Fighting/Crafting/Constructing with your bare hands for long enough should give you heavy callouses and a very very minor amount of cut resist to your hands–a bonus you lose if you then decide to wear gloves for an extended period of time.

Most attacks should cause creatures/the player to bleed. With severity based on damage and aggravated by subsequent blows–making bandages even more vital than they are now. Maybe even have blood be a meter like hunger and thirst? I could see giant mosquitos doing very little in the way of outward harm but draining players dry incredibly fast.

More injuries like zombie bites should exist–in that there should be more consequences to being hurt than just losing HP. Concussions, sprains, dislocations, fractures, burns, etc. Some of which require more than simply a first-aid kit or time to heal. Bonus points if the medical skill can be used to McGuyver out early treatment.

All existing drugs should be able to be concentrated into high-quality versions of themselves using a chemistry set, the cooking skill and more of themselves as an ingredient. High-quality drugs would be much more potent–promising both higher highs and lower lows.

Farms should have cows. Cows should be milkable/herdable. Goats as well.[/quote]

Pretty much all of this.

[Catfoodbob]

Big Book of Biggotography

raises speaking from 8 to 12
takes an hour to read

and -5 moral penalty

[Goombah]

Disassembling boots ought to give long string.

Because shoe laces.