Hmm i always use 20.00 spawnrate. Cant melee my way out 
Add wandering hordes and fungi for mooar fun.
Hi, Badger, welcome to the game! Glad to have you aboard and glad that you already care enough about the game to want it to be better by adding your feedback. You are definitely right that the game play depends on your philosophy for the game, and striking a balance between fun and realism is hard. I think most of us could agree that pure realism, like if we were in that situation, would be pretty awful and we would rather be playing video games than struggling to survive.
Luckily, there are a lot of things you can do to adjust the game to your playstyle. Survivor armor, scifi equipment, and mutagens are all blacklistable during world creation, as are most types of creatures. If you decide you don’t want fungal monsters or only want classic Romero-ish zombies, those are selectable. They are even addable after you start the game by editing the .json file, though you may have to move to a different area or kill the ones that have already spawned.
Melee can be pretty powerful, but as it isn’t a competitive game, it is only as powerful as you let it be. I have made plenty of archer builds that have less melee than a six year old playing putt-putt, and I have made stealthy ninjas that consider it dishonorable to do anything less than face your enemy. This game is amazing because both are perfectly valid playstyles that you get to pick from. You will find the same is true for starting perks, like nightvision or packmule. You might find them inappropriate for your survivor, but they may be very useful if you are playing a skilled hunter or traveling salesman still trying to get rid of Tupperware even in the apoclypse.
The game is exceptionally good at providing perks with natural variance and then allowing for even better versions through advanced items and super science. If you find you prefer a more difficult experience, you can certainly up the spawn rates, start later in the year, or advance the rate at which the zombies evolve. You may find yourself playing a character that never gets beyond wearing a leather touring outfit, giving you whole body leather armor, and that can make for a really exciting playthrough. If you check YouTube, for a while there was quite a lot of fun to be had by spawning into the forest and running around naked. It’s really challenging to work your way up, and all those monsters that seemed so easy to take care of via melee or to protect yourself from with armor are entirely new and frightening when you’re naked and wielding a stout branch.
Vehicles are not a particularly optional mechanic, unless you really have your lust on for a hard mode, but they don’t have to be converted and armored RVs. You can have a lot of fun with a folding bicycle, a backpack, and a desire to tour the countryside grazing from town to town. If you are playing with NPCs on, you may even find yourself involved in quests. Gasoline does seem pretty plentiful, but maybe that means you would prefer a diesel vehicle. You will find fuel less frequently, but it is fairly efficient. You could even mark your map that there is a cache of fuel there and bypass it. Days later, when you’re out of fuel, now you have a good reason to make your way back there.
In a freeform game like this, being able to choose your playstyle and goals is of paramount importance. Luckily, this game is pretty friendly to mod and it does a great job of allowing for multiple playstyles. Take some time and try different starts and different builds and you may find what you are hoping for. It might not feel too bad to be a melee master when you start out in a cold, dark prison full of zombies and sentry-bots bent on keeping you from escaping.
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This game already has some of the most severe encumbrance penalties I’ve seen in an RPG - I don’t think I’d take the approach of nerfing melee through making them even worse.
Widening the result range so that block/dodge rolls don’t come to dominate attack results at high skill levels would keep them from being dependable. Making armor coverage spottier, such that even the better armors have gaps (90-95% rather than 100%) would introduce more risk to melee combat. Of course you can potentially reduce the actual armor values of the stronger armors.
I’d suggest you consider adding a new ‘ballistic’ armor category though - even as it stands, you have to stack a LOT of armor to have any real chance of surviving even modest firearms attacks, and that will become even more difficult if armor is nerfed across the board to hurt melee. Right now putting on a bulletproof vest is anything but - you need a LOT more than that to mitigate firearm damage in most cases.
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I just don’t see how nerfing melee offense will help at all. It’s treating the symptoms and not the disease.
You still ignore damage in decent armor and gunplay is still subpar due to reasons stated above.
Ideally I’d like to see bash and cut damage handled differently. I believe the long-term plan is to mostly do away with HP and use a more injury oriented system, in which case the realistic way to handle armor is cut armor can convert cutting damage to bashing damage, then bashing armor flatly reduces bash damage. Cut damage would be far more dangerous though, since it would cause serious wounds. That way a bulletproof vest can stop a bullet (doing it’s job) but it won’t actually protect you from the energy of the hit, for which you need actual padded/heavy armor.
That would sort a lot of balance issues out really, since enemies would slowly cause minor bruises in combat, which would add up and slowly debilitate the character without having to make an individual melee attack capable of penetrating military grade armor or some other such weirdness.
That said, I still think melee damage is a bit low for the player character, considering how long most melee fights go on for when the average person could easily smash a persons skull in with a baseball bat in one, maybe two hits. Perhaps it would be useful to add a “ready strike” button that bumps up your melee damage substantially (2x or 3x), but requires a turn or so, maybe eats a chunk of stamina, etc. That way killing a single zombie could take a hit or two, whereas larger fights where you still want to dodge/block enemy attacks would only allow smaller strikes.
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Perhaps all weapons could have a form of the ‘steadiness’ mechanic that firearms use?
It’s possible, but it would have to be a bonus rather than a necessity. Add steadiness for extra accuracy and damage on top of current melee mechanics as-is, rather than make it impossible to hit anything without being at max steadiness like firearms are/were.
Thanks man, it’s a great game. I appreciate all the points you’re making regarding the ability to customize the experience. I have been doing that and it will take some time to get a sweet spot for settings.
@darktoes - I like the idea of an injury based system. I generally don’t like HP based systems where you function at 100% effectiveness until it hits zero, or in this case until a body part hits zero. I’d love to see CDDA implement a damage system something along the lines of Neo-Scavenger. Combat in that game was very unforgiving, but exciting, as getting an unlucky hit could start a death spiral fast. More true to life.
Try jacking up the world settings like make the enemies deal 400 percent more damage or go supersonic speeds if you find it too easy.
the game is fairly hard up til the player reaches a certain point is the issue, after which everything is a breeze and it gets boring.
It’s not lack of difficulty that’s an issue, it’s lack of end-game content.
More monster evolutions tying into the rot system too, and even tying the monster evolution system into worldgen (portal map specials getting bigger tears into reality, more dangerous nether creatures spawning perhaps?)
Cities aging, rats and other sewer creatures scurrying around the surface and evolving for it, eventually evolving into some kinda giant rats perhaps, too far gone powerful mutant monsters spawning around labs that the player has not yet entered?
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@dissociativity I agree. The dangers don’t keep up with the increase in player power through cbms, mutations, etc.
@Eastwardrope91 This is hardly an ideal or fun way to fix balance issues.
Yes I know but it works and can be be pretty silly.
This isn’t really the case in CDDA - both pain and exhaustion can seriously hamper combat effectiveness long before you lose the use of a limb.
Pain currently acts as a general catch all for ‘injury debilitation’ in combat, which you can partially counteract with painkillers of course.
It would certainly be interesting to have a more comprehensive injury system, but this aspect of it works pretty well at the moment.
True enough, the pain system is better.
well melee is rather weak as if they get a grab in or strike you once your speed tanks and the rest of the horde can catch up and strike more often combat is always stilted loss begets loss and so forth
as for power armor there is a scifi blacklist mod upheld by the devs from experimental to experimental also they are powered by ups a rather rare tool that can either chew through your battery stock or charge from your vehicle which will chew through it’s battery at an even more ludicrous rate also it comes with the drawback of only wearing power armor with power armor not even a backpack to go with it plus it’s just power armor it’s a heavy steel suit that holds itself up little in stat boosting magic
ok just to be clear you realize the “nightvision” extends your dark vision by one tile correct?
so the ability to see two feet in front of you instead of one in say an unlit basement. this far less overpowered than you think. perhaps you mistook it for the mutation only full nightvision?
Perhaps it’s just me, but I REALLY fail to see how ranged combat is “underpowered”.
A crossbow with, like, 20 metal bolts (something you can craft within the first week with most characters) is going to kill pretty much anything (well, juggernauts aside), a crossbow with 200+ bolts in stock is enough to clear cities.
In late game replace crossbow with a strong bow with metal arrows for much higher ROF.
Just come during daytime, draw in small chunks and keep your distance.
It takes time, but it’s VERY safe if you know what you are doing. And you can carry all the duffel bags you want, too, as torso encumbrance is largely irrelevant.
I mean, sure, melee combat with appropriate skills vs normal Z’s is faster, I guess, but that’s what special Z’s are for.
The in game benefits of the nightvision trait are far superior to being able to see a foot further in total darkness and it’s not comparable. Also in night darkness without moonlight humans can’t see well enough to do anything of note. In the game you can function fairly well without the trait, with it you might as well be a cat.
Not sure what’s you point, the trait indeed just adds an extra tile of range to night-vision.
The point is that extra tile is valuable and doesn’t make sense to be achievable, on top of base nightvision that is already too good.