The Central hub ( Lore Idea )

[farawayparadise]

mabye make several hubs based of the NE capitals (ex Boston,Montpelier). And only one out of them all have a chance of spawning?

[Mr.Denton]

I heard the devs don’t want to make the places specific, like a specific geographic country, so putting real-life cities in would break that

[mlangsdorf]

Uhm, no, we’re trying to figure out how to integrate Geographic Information Service maps of New England into the game. The game is set is New England, we’d map Boston if we could.

[Mr.Denton]

Ah okay, thanks for letting me know, i’m a bit outdattef on cdda info at the momment

[QuietCoyote]

Haha, it’s been made to be in New England since the beginning, don’t blame you though, “Temperate Forests”, can be a little broad in terms of the world, and most city names are usually from different states too.

[bostltch]

Crazy idea about adding various USA states

Well this doesn’t do quite what you’re asking for, but it’s kind of similar: [image] Well, that’s Boston. There’s been a “secret” project running for about a month to do a test import of GIS data for the state of Massachusetts, the whole thing, roads, building zones, forests, railways, hiking trails, beaches, subways, airports, cranberry bogs, rivers, islands, lakes, hospitals, city halls, everything. We’re trying to figure out how to handle roads, they end up really messy right now, but we …

I feel as if there was an actual post about it at some point but this is a thread where Kevin reveled his “secret project” of mapping Boston and all the rest of Mass.

[kevin.granade]

I think you’re overestimating how big the old guard is, I dont plan on it being bigger than the other factions.

However, yes we will want to make some kind of main settlement for them, and it would be roughly as you outline, but I think smaller than you are expecting.

In particular the kind of settlement you describe is going to take months if not years to construct, so theres no sensical way to add it to the game without it being something that develops over time and slowly grows into the completed settlement you seem to be thinking of.

Major cities are the last places these things would develop, they would have the lowest rate of survival and the most zombies.

[mlangsdorf]

The Old Guard canonically has the 2nd fleet and the footholds:

• 2nd fleet: “I don’t know much about how it formed but it is the armada of military and commercial ships that’s floating off the coast. They have everything from supertankers and carriers to fishing trawlers… even a few NATO ships. Most civilians are offered a cabin on one of the liners to retire to if they serve as a federal employee for a few years.”
• footholds: “They may just be propaganda but apparently one or two cities were successful in ‘walling themselves off.’ Around here I was told that there were a few places like this one but I couldn’t tell you where.”

I’m not at all certain how “walling yourself off” would work in the CDDA context. There may be a couple of Old Guard walled settlements but most of the Old Guard population should be with the 2nd fleet.

Hmm, a Nimitz class CVN is roughly 330m by 75m by 35m, you could map it out in about 14x4 overmap tiles with 10 z-levels. That’s a lot of work, but not larger than the National Guard camp.

[Mr.Denton]

If you were to use the assest we already have, it wouldnt be that big of a task to build it, the hard part would br addning npcs with function and purpose into it

[QuietCoyote]

I think adding a story to it would be the hardest, and making npc’s to compliment that… Also don’t mind the mini throw-down between two gods of coding above…

[Litppunk]

walled off cities/footholds - Perhaps some military bases with Highly capable commanders managed their base well during the outbreak? Didn’t let themselves get overwhelmed with refugees and the like? Or could be almost the opposite and some towns/cities further from protals and such were able to be succesfully evacuated (resulting in low zombie numbers) then retaken as a military/refugee hub. Once elevation is properly in the game, it could be used as a “factor” as well.

Geo maps - OH that would be so cool! Hope to see it some day ^.^

[QuietCoyote]

Well, the lore is a little shady, but Kevin mentioned that the blob infected most people before the cataclysm even started, so evacuating can’t really make sense…

[Litppunk]

People don’t turn unless they die though. So avoiding death without a destroyed body is paramount. If an orderly evacuation would prevent the deaths that would allow the blob to overcome the bodies nervous system… it would absolutely help.

[QuietCoyote]

Well, I think anything orderly would be out of the question first off, especially with the world ending with a genocide of the human race without mercy… That would complicate a lot of things however, so maybe more orderly than you would expect???

[Litppunk]

^ Yes. Basically anything that can be done to minimize deaths/ get the healthy population away from those who are dying/ soon to be a threat. Even a fairly deadly evacuation would be…not ok… but result in the desired lore outcome. Those who Die during the panic/evacuation would revive after the evac had completed, and thus be outside any encampment set up for the healthy population, preventing defenses from having to deal with attacks from inside and out, as long as all bodies inside hours are disposed of within… ~12 hours? or so, and bite victims treated or put down.

[kevin.granade]

Also don’t mind the mini throw-down between two gods of coding above…

Ehh, mark has been a lot more involved with building out factions than I have, so his answer is more authoratative.
Other than me forgetting about the whole fleet thing, I dont think they’re in much conflict either. Basically humanity doesn’t have any large scale outposts that can support themselves, and the fleet isnt self-supporting.

[Litppunk]

fleet seems like it might be a point of contention to those that are supporting it, but do not expect to be a part of it later, unless the fleet is giving enough back (fish, visible protection) different towns under the Old Guard could have wildly different opinions of supporting it. Especially as it seems like a point where leftover corruption, and new corruption would fester.

Ex: Rich buying access, questionable service length/tasks completed for the old guard to gain retirement rights.

[kevin.granade]

Yea, that’s where I expect the story to go with regards to the fleet, it’s a fundamentally unsustainable thing to do. Those ships are designed for long term autonomous operation, but only with a focused and dedicated crew. Once the initial batch of supplies run out, they’re going to encounter ever worsening shortages of pretty much everything, and they’ll need to start consuming supplies from land.

[crazykiddeath]

Why am I suddenly getting Waterworld flashbacks…

[mlangsdorf]

I didn’t think I was disagreeing with Kevin, just quoting the existing canon per the Old Guard Rep.

The fleet is obviously a short term measure. A CVN is big and makes an excellent fortress against zombies - because even swimming zombies are probably not smashing their way through 0.5" of Special Treatment Steel hull nor are they climbing 5+ stories from the waterline to the aircraft elevators. But the flight deck is less than 3 acres and you can’t feed more than 30 people off of 3 acres. If you put hydroponics in every nook and cranny of the CVN you’re not increasing that past 300. And the CVN and any SSNs/SSBNs are the only ships in that armada with nuclear power - everyone else is going to run out of gas and therefore electricity relatively soon, so no hydroponics for the other ships.

The 2nd Fleet is a temporary refuge for Old Guard dependents for about 6 months, and then 95% of it is going to have to be shut down and the people pushed on shore to the hopefully fortified farm settlements. The CVNs are going to stay off-shore to provide a secure haven for the Old Guard leadership.

The Old Guard Rep, being a glorified contractor in zombie country, doesn’t know a lot of this and wouldn’t tell you, some rando he’s hiring to do dirty work, even if he did know. The Old Guard gets a lot of legitimacy for being the successor to the US government, but they lose a lot of that if they admit they’ve got no better solution to the zombie problem than dig some trenches, put up some barbed wire, and start farming - which is the same solution that everyone else has. They’re not going to casually admit that the 2nd Fleet is a temporary haven and the footholds are basically the same thing as the Refugee Center and the Tacoma Commune.