Yeah, back in the old days, you’d make a noise and a gang of zombies would be beamed in behind you from an endless supply aboard the orbiting starship Zombie Enterprise.
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How do you create anvil or crucible in wilderness if you dont have hacksaw?
Crucibles can be made from clay, and an anvil can be carved from a medium or large boulder.
Thanks, anvil carving is in pickaxe menu?( i dont see in craft or buildings)
Huh. It was a construction project. Just checked for it now and it’s gone. Must have been removed since my last wilderness start. That’s lame. I liked having an anvil that actually took up floor space and wasn’t just another tool to throw in a locker.
Yeah. I have to re-iterate that towns are really unpleasantly not worth it past the point where you have survivor gear and a basic vehicle. They’re pretty much devoid of any worthwhile loot, and become packed with fast re-spawning high level zombies before the first 90 days are out.
I’d be safer at the bottom of any lab or military base. 
For me the only real issue is the frequency isn’t quite right. There are also a couple of buildings which, while they technically add “variety”, don’t serve enough of a purpose.
- Houses and apartments are essentially very similar, and together they feel far too frequent.
- Skate parks don’t really add anything. Other types of parks feel far too frequent for me.
- Is a diner distinct enough from a fast food shop or restaurant to bother having?
- Does a thrift store really add anything?
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I personally can’t make myself stop raiding towns. Like even if I know it’s worthless, I just feel bad about leaving the noodles and macaroni to rot.
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I like the new districts. Towns definitely feel better than previously, but new shops do cut down on some useful spawns.
I don’t know the mapgen code, but it’d be interesting to tinker with some numbers. Are overmap specials grouped in any way other than the standard multiple variants for individual entities? (grocery stores, etc)
Basements can now lead to labs, which is a huge step. I’ve considered more difficult rare spawning house variants (like the survivors or boobytrapped gunsmith’s) with challenge to justify the loot.
You should probably stop looking at them as distinct places with unique purposes and just consider them as something generic like an “eating hole”. At that point, they’re just variations on the same location, no different to how there is variation in residential houses but they are still all “houses” the same.
You’re right, I guess my only real issue is that the weight for various buildings doesn’t feel quite right.
If anything there aren’t enough houses (not that I’m complaining), I don’t live in America so maybe it’s different over there but here the number of shops/services are greatly out numbered by houses even in big towns and cities. It might not seem that way if you only visit the city centers but the surrounding area will usually be packed with residental areas that cover a much larger area.
In terms of realism, sure. But in terms of fun and varied gameplay I feel there are too many houses/apartments.
Apples and oranges. Can’t compare Cataclysm’s mapgen to the real world. Simple as that.
I also have been encountering a crap ton of houses lately. And yeah, it’s less fun to loot a house than a shop or larger building. But it is what it is.
Would I prefer cities that are randomly generated from various, partially pregenerated ‘blocks’ rather than a tile by tile randomness? Yes. Is it going to happen? Seems real unlikely.
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Rather then make houses less common I’d rather they spice up the potential loot you can find in houses, just going by my own house as an example I’ve got a few replica weapons and an absolute boat load of books. My neighbour is the very definition of a hoarder and my parents have a shed literally full of tools (you actually can’t step inside and need to partly empty it to get at stuff at the back) and cupboards stuffed full of tinned, jarrred and dried foods.
Edit: Last I counted I personally owned over 200 books, that was some years back, the number has only grown since then.
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Yeah, my house would be a great cataclysm start:
- Skill books about mechanics, computers, fabrication and cooking
- Over 500 novels covering most topics
- Food preserves enough to sustain yourself for a month, two with rationing
- Plenty of fizzy drinks, energy drinks and alcohol
- A real katana, three shitty ones, plus a blunted real longsword (for destreza classes), and a wooden practice sword.
- Tools for dismantling anything smaller than a car, plus enough computers to hack the NORAD
- Electronic components and chemical equipment aplenty.
I think this qualifies as a “prepper” home, save for the lack of guns (that’s europe for you 
)
Now, back in the topic, I think the fact that there is more variety of houses should not impact a town generation: Towns and cities should have a percentage of homes, a percentage of commercial buildings and a percentage of workshops/industries.
IIRC you can change the way is generated by editing/overwriting the regional_map.json and tweak the values there. I don’t get very well what shop_radius, shop_sigma, park_radius and park_sigma does, but my guess if you want more comercial buildings in your city, you can start there 
I would assume that those things determine how far from the center of town shops can be placed, and their distribution around that center (like clustered at the center or more spread out towards the edges of the circle defined by radius), respectively.
Oh, so if I understand what you’re saying correctly, radius and sigma only limit more the chances of a “shop type” building happening on the global spawn, and the weights of houses, shops, and parks are all summed up and randomized?
My impression was that the system first checked if the place was a good spot for a shop or a park -if neither, then it is a house-, then chose one of the buildings from that particular list, weighted. If this is the case then altering the sigma of the parks to make them generate less (or altering the radius/sigma of the shop) often would improve the chances for commercial buildings to appear.
But if is not the case, then is a bug, because as you add new buildings (via mods or not), the chances for a shop or a park diminish as you start adding more houses to the mix.
I don’t think that’s how it works internatlly, but somebody who’s looked at the mapgen code more recently than two years ago will have to explain that.
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naw I’d disagree. there’s always something to do in town, even just to get scrap materials like gunpowder and electronics and siphon fuels.
not to mention you may always luck out in some places by finding robots or atomic powered items.