Instead of having hit points, have a system which models the basics of the human body. The human body does not have hit points, it has bones, flesh and blood. The long term goal here would be a major step towards realism, along with a major change in the way mutations are figured. Instead of has8legs〓true, you end up with legs 〓8 when the player acquires such a mutation. The same would hold for other body parts. If legs> 2, you cannot wear pants. If a creature has no eyes, it doesn’t see. Limbs could be destroyed/removed/mutated, and added through bionic replacements, or possibly clone parts.
The inspiration is from Dwarf Fortress, which has a system like this. Cataclysm dda seems to model a larger number of bodies than df, so less detail would probably work better. I can think of dozens of ways that a change like this could make for new challenges, tactics, item niches and character development.
Cataclysm is a game that doesn’t just tell a story, it makes up a new story every time you play. I have had characters taking off their pants in the back of a liquor store, cutting them into rags and constructing molotovs while a horde of z’s pounds down the front door. You just can’t write things like that. You create the world, and let the stories unfold.
Hmm not sure what I think of this. In dwarf fortress the system works well and I really like it, however I’m not convinced it would suit cataclysm. For one thing the difficulty would sky rocket and we already have a pain system that in gamey terms makes you weaker as you get hurt.
It would be a nice long term project, and I love the combat system in DF, and it adds so much when you’re character has a for example, an eye and a finger missing, but not a main development concern IMO. This would entail basically overhauling the combat mechanics, which isn’t a big problem for a lot of us.
In terms of difficulty, it could lead to a lot of insta-deaths where firearms are concerned, but that’s life with firearms. As for z’s, without infection, are they really that big of a threat? Scratches, bites… nothing a bandage won’t heal.
Dwarf Fortress’s health system is pretty awful when you compare the amount of meaningless text spew and anomalous results it produces to the amount of meaningful gameplay possibilities it adds, and I would not like to see it implemented. LCS, an earlier game by the same guy, manages to capture 80% of the value of the system and produce much more interesting messages and gameplay results than Dwarf Fortress typically does, without issuing dozens of identically formatted attack messages that have to be closely read to derive useful information.
Firearms shouldn’t be instant death just to correlate with real life, either.