Some changes to bite infection mechanics suggestion

I think what I’d really like to do is make melee more damaging and quicker. I think right now it takes about the same amount of time to ready and fire an arrow as it does to whack something, which is a bit silly to be honest. And most of the ranged damage values, especially for throwing, escalate a wee bit too quickly, though it’s much better now than it was before. Throwing should definitely remain viable - A cautious throwing character will obviously be safer - but there should honestly be more effective reasons to use melee combat, something which doesn’t really apply right now. Guns have overwhelming power, throwing has safety and stealth, while melee has… ?

But that’s really a topic for another thread!

There’s some excellent ideas in here. I’d really like to see a slightly more complex wound/infection and treatment system. Gives you something to do with all these medical supplies.

The trick will always be making it intuitive enough that it doesn’t confound a new player, but also deep enough that someone who understands it and is prepared can very effectively treat their infections.

Simply bandaging a wound can help prevent it from becoming infected… but using alcohol to sterilize a bandage before applying it is better. Iodine pills could be dissolved in water to create an iodine solution that can be applied to a wound to virtually nullify the infection chance on the next check (but that doesn’t mean it will heal, and it may still infect on the check after). Cauterizing a wound can help normal wounds from getting infected, but a zombie bite comes with infection included, and cauterizing maaaay actually be a very bad idea for zombie bites. And if a zombie bite gets infected you should have the option of cutting the infected flesh out. It hurts like a mother.

On a related note, I’d like to propose that you can’t cauterize or cut a wound without a certain amount of painkillers, the pain tolerant perk, or the masochist perk. Most people can’t just cut on themselves or hold a red-hot chunk of metal to their skin long enough to cook it closed. Despite what the movies show us.

I amreading through opics on this and i havent seen anyone mention the wound systems from either Neo Scavenger or The Long Dark. Both good refferences imo

I always believed that implementation would he hard due to HP system getting in the way, but after giving it some thought I now think it’s not the case.
Now I believe that it can be either independent from HP entirely, or HP system inheriting HP “loss” impact from wound system.

In the first case both HP + wound system could work simultaneously untill wound system matures into a state where HP is no longer needed.

In second case each wound would carry information about it’s impact of limb HP and limb and total HP would deduct this number to track overall health of the limb. If HP goes to 0 limb is lost irrecoverably (prosthetics would be handy here). This would mean no abstract HP gain possible, but progressing indpenedent wound’s status towards health and/or healing the wound completely would mean improving the limb’s HP value.
I’m in favor of ideas going towards the second case, since there would be need for tracking of how wound’s stacking wold impact general health if the character. Aka death by the 1000 cuts. Or in other words, your limb can be shot right off with .50 Cal or be mangled beyond repair by 100 cumulative cuts/bashes/etc.