Is there a way to befriend them and have them come with me places? I found this one dog that just helped me take down a Shrieker before it attracted too many other zombies. I want to take him home with me, but I don’t know if it’s possible.
I’ve marked the location on the map that he is in, and I want to be able to come back and retrieve him later 
[quote=“joancasti, post:7062, topic:42”]Is there a way to befriend them and have them come with me places? I found this one dog that just helped me take down a Shrieker before it attracted too many other zombies. I want to take him home with me, but I don’t know if it’s possible.
I’ve marked the location on the map that he is in, and I want to be able to come back and retrieve him later :)[/quote]
Find/make some dog food.
Stand next to the dog.
Activate the dog food.
Select the dog.
The dog is now your friend!
Groan in frustration three minutes later when your new friend chases a squirrel right into the middle of a horde of zeds.
Environmental protection.
Lots of the survivor gear is 10. The number tells me nothing. Even the wiki just says that a disease needs to exceed it’s protection in strength to get through.
Do we really need to be that obtrusive with information? We tell players ‘exactly’ how much protections it gives for bash/cut and a pretty good idea how much damage each weapon does. How much nuitrition/quelch food/water gives. (and we’re not nutritionists). But we won’t say. “this will keep acid rain, or fungal parasites from getting in your body”?
I know technically I can dig through json’s to find stuff. But I shouldn’t have to look at code to find information on how good a particular mask is for protection.
Because environmental protection is partial. Even EP 1 gives some protection.
And it stacks additively - stack enough bandannas and scarves and you can tank poison gases as if in a gas mask.
So that helps, but we give all of the other thresholds and amounts to players but nothing tells me what 6 or 10 is.
But at some point EP should be 100%. Otherwise when you build a nuclear device/reactor, everyone who makes it dies. So the tech is there for this.
is it on a scale of 1 to 100, 1 -40? as a number it only does any good when you know the top and bottom limits.
Looking at the ANBC suit it says you can go into radiation with it. That number is 16. What about acid? is that worse than radiation?
We do this for all of the damage numbers for weapons, foods, etc. But is there a design reason why EP is data is completely hidden on the thresholds?
It should also be on the char sheet stacked for locations so we can see what EP each area has.
Being a range character the one stat that matters is perception, All other stats are secondary, hence masks, I’m trying to get good protection for my face/mouth, without a ton of encumbrance. Ideally 0. I can maybe deal with 2-3 and still not cut into it too much.
I currently have 12 and I’m trying to decide if it’s good enough wearing a power suit to go into the more deadly areas. I’d like to take on the fungal tower nearby. as in a 6 map area they have spread so far in area it’s everywhere, as I drive farther on.
I’m taking the anti fungal medicine after I fight any of them. Why because I don’t know if my protection is good enough, there’s a lack of information, and you rarely know if you have a disease until it’s too late. Which is different than other types of protection. I know how much damage my armor provides, how much coverage it has.
My point is there are probably thresholds or is it infinitely scaling and there is no top? You can always get radiation and other diseases?
with a full survivor suit you ll be imune to fuungus infection as you do not get damaged by tendrils. The spore clouds are harmless when you wear the full atire.
so 10 is enough vs mycus.
I do not see any referense in the game world linked to the env prot value. As in *gas cloud strength 7 ~ for example would be this. but i do not see how your char would know this information…
[quote=“Valpo, post:7067, topic:42”]with a full survivor suit you ll be imune to fuungus infection as you do not get damaged by tendrils. The spore clouds are harmless when you wear the full atire.
so 10 is enough vs mycus.[/quote]
Thanks for the reply. I figured it would be.
so following this thought, There is zero reason your character would know that a Savage 111F provides +6 damage. and fully loaded provides 42.
I don’t know how potent a rifle is in real life. I have a ‘general’ idea of how damage a weapon is by it’s ammo type, bullet type. I roughly know how accurate it is based on the recoil, weight etc. But there’s no numeric values.
So why show them in game as number values?
From a design perspective in giving information to players you either obfuscate these things or show them. You do it for ALL of them. here it’s done partially for some things, and it’s one of the things in games that frustrates me. Don’t give partial information on ‘immersion’ if you then give it away for other values.
Obfuscation is like the 5 armor repair ratings. It’s fully repaired, slightly damaged, heavily damaged etc. No numbers are given, but there’s a general idea it’s not working up to par.
So there’s a major gap in information for EP.
There is also no reason you should know that a .50 caliber rifle mod’d down from a M2 browning has a damage rating of 70. It should also be obfuscated to something like “very HIGH” or ‘extreme’. With others being something like “very low,low,below average,average,above average,high, very high”. If my choice is between this and a remington 700 as a rifle for range and damage, I think I know which I’ll choose based on the cailber of the rifle. Maybe not recoil or how fast I can shoot, but for raw damage I’d have a good idea. Same thing with a .22 caliber pistol verse a .45.
The whole gun code is shown flat out when it should be obfuscated, like recoil “High, medium, low, poor, WillKnockYouOnYourArse”.
You assign the obfuscation to a scale. Like they did with EP. You know that a gas mask has a actual number value in protection from smoke, etc. However it’s also only 75% coverage.
So stating that your character shouldn’t know that EP 16 is enough to stop radiation is a valid point. You get in a hazmat suit and it’s design if to protect you from radiation, so on a screen when viewing the item it shouldn’t have 16, it should have protection value “Radiation - protected” or something like that, along with “Smoke: protected”;“Gas protected”.
If your going where damage lowers the value then it lowers the obfuscated value of 'Protected, to “partially protected” or something.
You do this instead of a numeric value, if your going to show a value, it needs relevance. This is where the gap lies. many things are obfuscated in code or numeric values without any thresholds given, but then there’s stuff that is flat out shown to players where should follow the other pattern.
A good example of the obfuscation that works is the aim code. It’s awesome.
I should pop this over to another thread, and I may, but I wanted to point it out that stating that it’s blatantly mixed all over the place.
Keep track of the tower attacking you though as if i recall correctly have seen it sometimes pen my armor. If it succeeds in pumping spores into your system which the game will tell you then you are running a high risk of a fungal parasite.
~The displayed values for everything should be streamlined agreed.
[quote=“Kryxx, post:7066, topic:42”]Looking at the ANBC suit it says you can go into radiation with it. That number is 16. What about acid? is that worse than radiation?
My point is there are probably thresholds or is it infinitely scaling and there is no top? You can always get radiation and other diseases?[/quote]
ANBC explicitly protect from radiation because it has a tag that marks it as protecting from radiation. If you got 30 EP without a rad-resistant suit, you’d still get irradiated just like before.
With gases and diseases, you can the EP threshold with a single gas mask or with a giant stack of smaller ones. There could be a note like “This item is sufficient to provide gas immunity”, but it would be misleading if badly worded like “This item grants immunity to gases” (items without it still grant resistance) and you could not have a description like “This item provides partial immunity to gases” without having to slap it on all environmental protection items that cover mouth.
The survivor does know it somehow, actually. When entering gas clouds without protection, you’re asked if you really want to do it.
If I put multiple alternators on a vehicle, will I get more power?
Yes. Though you can only do 1 per engine.
Use 1-cylinder engines for minimal fuel use but still generating electricity.
Yes, but also more fuel usage.
For best fuel/power ratio, use only truck alternators.
[quote=“The Lone Badger, post:7072, topic:42”]Yes. Though you can only do 1 per engine.
Use 1-cylinder engines for minimal fuel use but still generating electricity.[/quote]
1-cylinder engines aren’t more efficient at generating energy. When using a car alternator, all engines below 7 liters are equal. When using a truck alternator, you can use any engine below 10 liters with no efficiency loss. Above 10 liters (only V12 ever get that much), it gets a bit more complicated.
If we really wanna go that way, i’d like to point out that when a survivor spots a gun for the first time, he shouldn’t be able to tell name and specs. And what about all the other things? “Normal” people wouldn’t have any idea of what the hell a kukri or a naginata is, or their pourpose, same goes for advanced technology stuff, or power armor, or other-dimension monsters. How can you tell if a creature can regenerate itself if you have never seen it wounded?
But the thing is we either leave things the way they are or we overhaul completely. Which I guess is gonna be a shit-ton of work. Have you ever played Rogue? The game that started the genre and gave the name to it? In Rogue every potion, scroll, weapon or armor you find, you don’t know shit about it. You have to drink/read it once, and then you will know how they work and look if you find more. Of course, if you character sees a sword, he knows it is a sword. But what about a wand? What does it do? So you either point it against a wall and hope to don’t fuck shit up, oooor you have enough magic knowledge to tell immediatly the effects.
And then you die because, you know, it’s a roguelike. But the new character won’t know what the previous did. So, say, you drank a healing potion with your last character? And then he was able to spot healing potions whenever he saw one? Well, your new character may find a healing potion too, but the description will just say “a [completely random colour] potion in a small glass container”. And you, the player, won’t know if it is poison pr anything else. Can you see how this can be applied to Cataclysm? I firmly believe it would be awesome. Books could teach you how to recognise stuff, or you could learn it yourself by leveling up the linked skill. A 17 year old in love with shoes and shopping (sorry for the stereotype right there) living the Cataclysm wouln’t even know how to hold a scar-H. On the other hand, if you choose “soldier”, or “sniper”, or “bionic soldier” or similia, you might as well be able to use any gun you find. Or if you choose otaku, you should recognise Japan’s historical blades. While everyone knows what a pot is and how to use it. Part of this concept is already in-game (the crafting menu only shows the stuff you already know), and i really hope it could be fully-implemented in the game, even tho I know it probably won’t be.
That would require lots of different items looking the same. In rogue, crawl, nethack etc. it works because you have enchanted items, wands, potions and the like. Those aren’t marked, because real life logic doesn’t apply to those. DDA is based on real life stuff and in real life people try to make things obvious rather than arcane.
Having a “curved sword” instead of katana doesn’t change anything - there’s no scimitar in game. Unless you limited it to “sword”, but in this case it would be less about survivor not knowing and more about player not being given information. Otherwise it would have to be limited to guns, bows, food, some drugs and some electronic items.
With guns, the problem is calibers. Hiding the caliber would be really annoying and not very realistic. Once you know the caliber, most guns in the game don’t differ that much. Plus, even without the caliber you could try to figure out which gun is it by looking at the magazine size.
Making drugs and some chemicals hidden (“you snort oxidizer powder”) would require hiding portion sizes. Could be easy to cheat around or quite hard to implement.
One thing that would actually work with the system is liquid consumables, like mutagen. You’d never know what kind of mutagen are you drinking.
So hidden items would not really work well in DDA.
Randomly generated monsters were proposed before. I like the idea. It wouldn’t be very straightforward to implement, but could be a lot of fun.
Though it would have to be randomly generated monsters, not randomly named monsters - hiding stats adds to the game when it actually makes it impossible for the player to know the stats before observing that particular monster (not just its “brothers”), not when it only makes new players confused.
Maybe more about lore, but what where the biggest killers during the cataclysm?
Lore kinda doesn’t tell that much, only speaks of general chaos, friendly fire and acid rains.
Was there a “killer-flu” or something like it.
in other words, sit back and chill. its a game, not a reality simulator(in case the zombies and magic amd etc didnt clue you in already).
No its a simulator of reality with nether isurgence .
I replaced the box from a wheelbarrow with a trunk from a car, but is there any negative drawbacks to that? I reckon the 650 instead of 250 volume space will help me greatly gather up a lot of loot, since I can’t really drive a car around my base due to stuff.
Like… the wheelbarrow won’t suddenly explode due to the extra weight of the steel frame? Should I replace the wheel with a better one?
Come to think of it, can I somehow install some spike or armor plating in front to turn it into some sort of battering ram? I mean, I doubt that it’ll have some practical use, but it could look cool.
Yes you can. Just 'i’nstall spike or plating to empty space in front of your vehicle.
[quote=“Azrad, post:7079, topic:42”]Like… the wheelbarrow won’t suddenly explode due to the extra weight of the steel frame? Should I replace the wheel with a better one?
Come to think of it, can I somehow install some spike or armor plating in front to turn it into some sort of battering ram? I mean, I doubt that it’ll have some practical use, but it could look cool.[/quote]
Isn’t box also made with a steel frame? Your survivor should handle this weight anyway. At least until you fill it with more stuff.
Wheels currently don’t matter for dragged stuff.
You can install spikes and plating on it, but spikes will make it bigger than 1 tile. Long vehicles are often harder to drag because the dragging system is rather crude. You can’t ram stuff with dragged vehicles yet.