In the current system, the user has a choice of 3 standard set ups.
Vehicle based. The survivor lives and stores everything on their vehicle. Lifting and moving like a nomad.
Static bases. The survivor lives in their base and roams the immediate area.
Static and vehicle. The survivor has a vehicle for looting and brings their stuff back to their base.
Most (?) people tend to 1, because it lets to explore new places and loot without spending too much time traveling.
I would like to 3, but I am far too lazy to drive back to a base that could, after a while, be gigantic distances away.
In comes my proposal:
Using two portal generators / teleporters you can create a vehicle teleporter and a teleport target. These items are suitably rare to make this an end game system.
Constraints / features:
Target swaps place with your vehicle on use. Letting you return to your previous location.
Energy requirements of teleportation depend on the mass of the vehicle and everything in it.
Before the vehicle lands at the target a massive sound wave is released. Survivor is not deafened. However, it will summon every zombie in the area, if there is no horde near by, one will be generated.
Inertia is maintained after teleport
Vehicle teleports centering the vehicle generator on the target. Anything in the way is collided with causing potential !FUN!.
This lets players enjoy having a static base, whilst allowing them to venture long distances from it. The energy constraint forces the player to spend a long time recharging, preventing them from taking multiple jumps quickly.
You can’t jostle a fermenting vat, it’ll disrupt the process.[/quote]
Actually out of the two I would much prefer having just hydroponics. Mainly considering it takes as far as I’ve seen only about a day for your moonshine mashes and such to ferment.
First I’d like to propose an alternate solution to your problem.
Auto-driving. While driving, you pick a destination you can reach by following roads on the overmap view, and the game autopilot you to that destination, exiting that mode if it encounters hazards.
This matches the feel if the game better while still making long trips convenient, especially if you take the time to clear your route.
Code-wise this isn’t much of a problem, capturing all of the contents of a vehicle (including passengers), loading a new map area, and placing the vehicle is fairly easy.
Thematically it doesn’t make sense for a survivor, or even a community of survivors to build and operate this kind of thing.
Also I think that a problem related to static versus mobile bases that I’ve never seen addressed is the lack of density of the typical game map.
Interesting, looting worthy locales tend to be separate and far away from everything else, and its only very rarely that you find a spot that enough interesting stuff close by to be worth camping around. Which makes static livng very resource inefficient compared to being a motorized nomad.
What kind of thing specifically?[/quote]
This kind of thing.
Now that I have context to that I agree that seems a bit out of the realm of possibility for a survivor who at best with the help of notes knows how to power a teleporter (teleporter trap) but beyond that not much else.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:6, topic:14162”]First I’d like to propose an alternate solution to your problem.
Auto-driving. While driving, you pick a destination you can reach by following roads on the overmap view, and the game autopilot you to that destination, exiting that mode if it encounters hazards.
This matches the feel if the game better while still making long trips convenient, especially if you take the time to clear your route.
Code-wise this isn’t much of a problem, capturing all of the contents of a vehicle (including passengers), loading a new map area, and placing the vehicle is fairly easy.
Thematically it doesn’t make sense for a survivor, or even a community of survivors to build and operate this kind of thing.[/quote]
I like this idea. If the game doesn’t eventually have fast travel like Elder Scrolls or Fallout that teleports you to your destination, it should at least have faster travel. The fast travel system could be locked to a requirement that you have a vehicle. Once in the vehicle, you simply go into your map and, like you said, just pick your destination. Depending on the status of your vehicle and how much fuel you have left, you can then activate the fast travel. I imagine that you would then watch yourself move across the map at a certain pace along the roads in a fashion that is quicker than driving yourself, as time accelerates. If the road is blocked by, say, a minefield or a horde of zombies, then you are booted out of the fast travel and have to manually drive around it.
Maybe tie this to the driving skill somehow? A higher driving skill could mean that the autopilot automatically avoids hazards, or has a less chance of booting you out of autopilot mode. Or maybe a higher driving skill can allow you to drive faster in autopilot, making your trips even quicker.
Thank you everyone for your input. Initially, I like my idea because :science:. However, digging into it, Kevins proposal is much more logical.
Care would need to be had to make sure that survivors don’t exit auto drive mode next to a tank drone.
I very much like the idea of linking it to your driving skill level. All of those additions are great ideas!
Would it force you over roads or allow cross country? Would it stop for every zombie (like safe mode)? Would it bypass vehicles on the road or require the survivor clean the road thoroughly before continuing?
What kind of thing specifically?[/quote]
This kind of thing.
I agree that a whole-vehicle teleport would be a bit of a stretch for a post-Cataclsym survivor community to build. I love your auto-pilot idea, too.
What about also making it possible to calibrate existing teleporters to a specific location, though? You could have a “home” pad and a teleporter locked onto it (potentially with a failure chance for lols?). You could install a “home” pad in your vehicle, too, making it possible for a dedicated end-game player to warp themself and any equipment they are carrying between the two.
This is a much more minor leap from existing tech in game, and much more reasonable to imagine a skilled survivor being able to rig up.
I was going to say something else but I just remembered that what is probably the primary generator for the facility are the broken generators you see in those warehouse like rooms. However if the facility is running on some sort of backup power it would be surprisingly powerful if it is still capable of opening tears in reality which I imagine is not cheap on the electric bills. I would say something about the ice labs but I don’t remember if they are like that due to hvac malfunction or because of the sub prime plains environment or some such.
To make returning base a better experience, we need auto-drive - the car moving along the road, or along a straight line, the player making small adjustment to walk around obstacle.
Long distance teleport, if it did exist, would be a waste for a QoL feature. Worm hole chasing with zombie warper is thrilling.
[quote="§k, post:19, topic:14162"]To make returning base a better experience, we need auto-drive - the car moving along the road, or along a straight line, the player making small adjustment to walk around obstacle.
Long distance teleport, if it did exist, would be a waste for a QoL feature. Worm hole chasing with zombie warper is thrilling.[/quote]How about “cruise steering”, allow vehicles (the player’s character, really) to automatically drive, using the road-stripe tiles as guidance, until a safe mode violation occurs or an oncoming object is detected halfway in through the reality bubble?
We could even disallow it at lower morales, for fancy schmancy depth.