On The Jabberwock

[kevin.granade]

Most of the planned “vehicle nerfs” will only seriously effect the default vehicles like the default cars, trucks etc, because they won’t be off-road capable, or tough enough to ram monsters with impuny, or large enough to push aside other vehicles clogging the road.

The problem we’re trying to address isn’t “players are too successful when they have a vehicle”, it’s “vehicles are unrealisticly tough and powerful”. Again, that’s the default vehicles…

If you go to all the trouble to make a ginormous deathmobile, we aren’t going to get into an arms race with you. Other than other buildings, trees, etc, yea it’s just a matter of how big to make the vehicle in order to smash your target. Even with vehicle hulks, it should be doable to make a deathmobile that can shove them aside without being itself destroyed. If you put in the time to make something like that, you’ve earned your rampage.

[Belteshazzar]

Regarding the Charge: Construction of Vehicular Atrocities
The fedense would like to like to offer their rebuttal;
“Utinni!”

[SirTeabottom]

Yeah. I think Jabberwocks are faaar 2 stronk 4 me. Found one that seems to have removed part of the world.

I’m gonna do it. Or maybe ride my ruck into it. Wish me luck!

Update: The moment I resumed my game after posting this a squirrel corpse materialized in the top left corner. Drove my pickup into it. Front wheels rammed into “The ledge” and broke instantly. Fucking Jabberwocks. Even in non-existence they ruin my life.

Update Dos: Walked into it. Fell down into a single tile pit. Fuck me, right?

[Bladerock]

Most of the planned “vehicle nerfs” will only seriously effect the default vehicles like the default cars, trucks etc, because they won’t be off-road capable, or tough enough to ram monsters with impuny, or large enough to push aside other vehicles clogging the road.

The default car isn’t really a death machine. It’s tires go out as soon as they touch near anything solid. And flatbed trucks shouldn’t be all over the streets (Because nobody just drives a freaking flatbed around on a daily basis.).

[prytoclasm]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:63, topic:1878”]Most of the planned “vehicle nerfs” will only seriously effect the default vehicles like the default cars, trucks etc, because they won’t be off-road capable, or tough enough to ram monsters with impuny, or large enough to push aside other vehicles clogging the road.

The default car isn’t really a death machine. It’s tires go out as soon as they touch near anything solid. And flatbed trucks shouldn’t be all over the streets (Because nobody just drives a freaking flatbed around on a daily basis.).[/quote]

But as soon as you find a Semi Truck, it’s kinda I WIN, for vehicles. If you find some more and put more and more engines and gasoline tanks in it … even better. All you finally need is ammonia, tin/alu cans and maybe some luck while killing off turrets. Or you’re lucky enough to have the integrated tool set and a big load of Power Storage MK II + internal furnace. Then … nothing can really stop you. Except maybe some lucky headshots against you.

[Bladerock]

If you have the cans and ammonia or integrated tool set w/ a big load of power storage and good cbm generator as in your example… then you can make a death machine out of anything, you don’t even need the semi. Even with massive nerfs, the player would have the resources to just build bigger and more powerful.

Which is why i say that the aim should be to either: have locations worth visiting that you can’t take the car into, or limit how much you can edit a vehicle. As just reducing stats won’t really deal with the problem, and will most likely just lead to unrealistically silly underpowered default vehicles.

[KA101]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:35, topic:1878”]Re: Design direction, if the jabberwock had been billed as an anti-elf measure, it would have given me pause, because I don’t think that overall strategies should be “countered” by additions to the game.

I’m wondering about this whole idea of “anti-blah” things - I mean, at it’s core, it seems to be about insuring their are sufficient challenges to make a variety of playstyles exciting and risky and potentially dangerous, right?[/quote]

As I said earlier, “exciting” is subjective. Not every player has the time to read up, spend time planning the next 100 moves (let alone counting individual moves–I can’t honestly do that) and make progress. Especially when half the game is “keep up with the commit log”, it helps if there’s a baseline safe enough way to live.

Players can always go exploring and seek out challenges. There are plenty out there already.

[halberdsturgeon]

I don’t have anything against jabberwocks in principle, though a better way of providing challenge for woodsman characters in my opinion would’ve been via roaming zombie groups and/or crazy isolationist NPCs.

[KA101]

I don’t have anything against jabberwocks in principle, though a better way of providing challenge for woodsman characters in my opinion would’ve been via roaming zombie groups and/or crazy isolationist NPCs.

Yeah, there was some sort of legendary cannibal guy or somesuch running around for a while, but I think they removed him again. Having a hunter-type (possibly with some buried-beartrap spawns, etc?) looking for YOU seems a little better way to make the woods threatening than a massive corpse-heap roaming around an area where there aren’t likely* to be that many corpses.

*Absent a FEMA camp or other player-visible mass grave–linking Jabberwocks/Legions to FEMA camps would make sense, but I advocated that already–where are all the bodies coming from?

That said, I still don’t think the woods need to be threatening, but if for some reason they must be, sometimes a human can still be a credible threat.

[halberdsturgeon]

It would at least be interesting, and rewarding if you managed to kill a murderous isolationist.

Where are the people that actually built all the LMOE shelters?

[prytoclasm]

Where are the people that actually built all the LMOE shelters?

Eaten by the Jabberwocks.

[halberdsturgeon]

Touché.

[Rivet]

Eaten by the Jabberwocks.

That or the jubjub birds and bandersnatches.

[sub]I couldn’t resist.[/sub]

[Iosyn]

Been a bit busy to post lately but personally I feel it’s a bit of a wash. It’s nice to see more monsters haunting the otherwise rather peaceful forests (unless you have a fungal tower or triffid grove nearby) but the spawn rate was a bit ridiculous.

Personally I’m of the opinion that they should be made stronger, slightly slower but have the spawn rate decreased quite a bit further, so you shouldn’t meet them unless you really spend a lot of time roaming through the forests.

[i2amroy]

Been a bit busy to post lately but personally I feel it’s a bit of a wash. It’s nice to see more monsters haunting the otherwise rather peaceful forests (unless you have a fungal tower or triffid grove nearby) but the spawn rate was a bit ridiculous.

This has already been fixed. Spawn rate has been dropped from one every 300 forest tiles to about 1-2 every overmap (10000 tiles). It was a mistake on our part that let that spawn rate slip through with the .6 update.

[vache]

Is there a way to get that pushed as some sort of hotfix for 0.6 without having to play experimental builds? The experimentals always seem to crash on me, and I really hate dealing with the jabberwocks in regular 0.6.

[i2amroy]

Is there a way to get that pushed as some sort of hotfix for 0.6 without having to play experimental builds? The experimentals always seem to crash on me, and I really hate dealing with the jabberwocks in regular 0.6.

I’m not sure why the experimentals would crash much more often then the normal build, since the normal build is literally just an experimental that we labeled and saved.

That said you are probably safe downloading the experimental right now and just keeping it, AFAIK there are no serious bugs in that one that aren’t also in .6, and there really haven’t been any serious expansions merged in (with the exception of lots of bug fixes).

[Iosyn]

[quote=“Iosyn, post:76, topic:1878”]Been a bit busy to post lately but personally I feel it’s a bit of a wash. It’s nice to see more monsters haunting the otherwise rather peaceful forests (unless you have a fungal tower or triffid grove nearby) but the spawn rate was a bit ridiculous.

This has already been fixed. Spawn rate has been dropped from one every 300 forest tiles to about 1-2 every overmap (10000 tiles). It was a mistake on our part that let that spawn rate slip through with the .6 update.[/quote]

ah yeah, that sounds much better.

[Tee]

It’d also be nice if the Jabberwock had some sort of decent loot. Meat that’s super filling, maybe? Or claws that can be made into weapons?

[kilozombie]

Yeah, Tee, we need more incentive to kill these really high-level creatures.

Like, what’s the point of killing an Amigara Horror? Why would you ever fight nether creatures unless you were completing a challenge?

Each one should give you something interesting- not game-breaking, but interesting.

[code]Jabberwock Claw Sword

Wg: 2 Vol: 12

A blade retrieved from the ungodly abomination that is the Jabberwock. It is near weightless and seems accustomed to the hand. You do not feel entirely sane wielding it.[/code]

Possibly give you hallucinations periodically (much more horrible than schizophrenic ones) or increase the jabberwock spawn rate? Both would happen when it’s in your inventory/within 10 tiles of you or something.