Skill based values for the identification of item types and info.
Identification of items should be dependent on skills.
For example the mechanics skill:
0- Engine
1- 2/4/6/8/ect engine
2- Rough power and other stat estimation
3- Engine size and enhanced estimation
4- Ect
Electronics – Should also tie in with mechanics skills when constructing various electronics associated with vehicles.
0. Circuit Board – Radio – Flashlight
Power board – radio board – ect
Battery storage and rough estimation of amount left – High Medium Low
Enhanced battery size and charge estimation
Ect
The introduction of a literacy skill.
Increases slightly upon reading a book or accessing a computer, Grants a small bonus to comprehension and with higher levels allows you to read higher level books at lower comprehension.
For example if the player had high enough skills in literacy, he/she should be able to read say, mechanical mastery even though they were level 0 in mechanics, but at a slower rate.
Get rid of NPCs for good.
I know there is a setting to turn them off, but for the time being all they do is take up compiling time and result in countless bugs, not that whales original contribution of the npcs (not to mention the game itself) is terrible, it requires a lot of work and quite possibly a rewrite to make it functional
A functional power system.
Since cataclysm has no power system I think it would be wise to flesh out a new basic idea that can be adjusted to suit the development process.
Let’s say the map is divided up into power regions, with a region that contains 18X18 tiles.
If there is a power plant within the 18X18 grid it increases the value of the region by say, 100.
Knowing this, power plants should be rare, say 1 per large city.
The amount of houses/buildings within a certain area reduce said value, let’s say 1 per house and 2 per square of a larger establishments eg mansions hospitals or megamalls.
Power should be able to be transmitted across power regions at a cost of 5 per region.
Some areas would be switched off by default, for example sewerage treatment plants which can make clean water at a cost of quite a bit of power, other systems could also be valuable resources for the survivor, machine shops, various factories and such.
Every few power regions, a substation may exist, allowing the player to interact with the power grid on an extended basis, say redirecting power, or switching off specific regions.
I despise item-ID in roguelikes; it’s one of the reasons I only enjoy Nethack if I’m in wizmode. Restricting item info based on skill may be realistic, but given the restrictions on player inventory & tile storage capacity, seems likely to cause more headaches than it’s worth. I strongly oppose it.
NPCs: I really want to help NPCs, and was disconcerted when one showed up waving her Five-seveN around and claiming that she was Lady of all she surveyed (which happened to be the parking lot two map squares from my Lab.) If you’d let me introduce myself, ma’am, I’d have given you the CBMs for 4 points of battery & two power sources, with the option to trade me for the Utilities and possibly a Combat Augs/Construction capsule. Stick around to swap skills and I’ll throw in a few glass bottles of Science! for your trouble, maybe even a fur coat. (I can understand not wanting to let some guy you’ve never met do the install, but 12 IN, 6 Elec, 4 FA, & 6 Mech are pretty good stats for bionic installation.)
But no. Had to demand I drop the CBM and get off what I’d held as my home ground for the better part of the year. Protip: next time you can shoot the martial artist, do so. Don’t let him walk right up to you because he’ll get off about 6 criticals to your eyes before you even get a shot off. And I still can’t properly bury NPCs because they just float up to ground level as I fill the pit back in.
Moral of that story? NPCs add interest to the game and IMO are worth fixing. I oppose their outright removal.
Power grid: as the TC for the Power plants! thread, that’s an interesting idea and I’d ask that you join us over there. We’d be interested in a more detailed thought process on those numbers, but the basic plan seems worth thinking about.
I’m with KA on the npc front. While i currenly hold a kill on sight order for all npcs that would quickly go away (unless it is a bad habbit that’s hard to drop) if they get fixed.
Its the rest, the partial identifications stuff I’m not fond of. I can look at and (at the very least) guess how many cylinders an engine has. Like wise considering electrical recipes use power converters and other little electrical parts from the start it would be annoying if they asked for something that was labelled something else in your inventory. “You need 9 scrap metal, 3 power converters 2…” But all i have is electrical doohickies I can’t identify but magically know which one goes where to make a tazer.