Water Damage

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I mean this to imply everything from electrical circuits shorting to weak materials to paper getting damaged in water to poorly made houses collasping as their drywall rots or something.

Items on your person, should you not be waterproof (or they not) would have a small chance of taking a hit. Items would presumably have a degree of water protection should that need to be a thing. This way, we can help reduce the ease of using high-tech in a no-tech world.

How would damage be impliemented?

Well, Id imagine that either the item use has a chance of failing if ‘wet’ to a degree, or else it either becomes nonfunctional or takes significant damage to represent the short. Not perfect, and perhaps a more ambitious project to ask of the programmers, but one I think would complete the experience, make rain a bigger deal, and help reduce the amount of usb/electrohack hording. And maybe even help incentisize people to keep their suger in a box. Or salt. Or asprin. Or oxycodon.

2

I don’t see how would that achieve much.

Early on, you don’t have a lot of electronics. A flashlight, a soldering iron, maybe an mp3 player if you’re lucky.
Using a wet soldering iron could be risky, but it probably shouldn’t take damage when not used and just wet like that.
Using a soldering iron takes a lot of time anyway, to adding risk to it would mostly serve as annoyance. Unless cauterization suddenly became an actually good method of healing bleeding (but that would require nerfing other methods).
Most flashlights are probably made with rain in mind.

In midgame, you still don’t have much electronics, but now you have food.
It would make sense to “rot” a point of badly stored flour once in a while, but the problem is, once you take it out of the box, you can’t put it back.
Aspirin and oxycodon don’t even get a box to begin with, meaning the only good way to avoid rot would be to store them in a vehicle.
Electronics now include mostly early game ones, but also tazers (to store batteries, not to use), food crafting stuff (this one shouldn’t rain-rot from use because it takes a lot of time to use anyway, so no point in forcing player to hide first), watches and maybe gun repair stuff.

Later on you have a vehicle with a roof and the whole mechanic would become irrelevant.

Then there is a performance issue: if rain affected items stored in vehicles, it could possibly have to go through all items stored in a vehicle. This potentially takes a lot of CPU time, meaning it would have to only occur once in a while or otherwise not go through all items every turn.
And if rain didn’t affect items stored in vehicle, you could just drop them off in a shopping cart.

It wouldn’t actually curb USB/electrohack hoarding. I don’t really see how is USB/electrohack hoarding a big deal.
And if it is, we should probably start counting fractional volume instead, so that you can’t store 7 bacon, 2 jerky, 7 sugar etc. without having any storage capacity.

3

Yes, the player can do many things to mitigate the loss of items. Thats the point; to have the player take care of what they want to keep.

And yes, flashlights in particular will likely have a high degree of rain resistance. It also gives us an excuse to add crappy flashlights or keychain lights.

But the bulk of whats in danger are dead npcs, zombie drops, and stuff people just plop outside without building a frame with a roof to store it in.

People who leave wood in the rain make it susceptible to fungal spores should they be around.
People who leave books outside will lose legibility quickly as the paper wears.
People who leave amplifier circuits outside will lose those as they bork out.

Hopefully, we would be able to load solids into containers. There’s a standard size already, albiet I dont know why we cant already.

People who dont add rooves to a car will risk the loss of their items.
We would have a reason to implement the rusting of car parts. I believe cars are made of steel frames and all, but so are aluminum tongs.
Scrap metal can dissappear over the long term.
These burnt out electronics can be salvaged for parts still.

We’d have effectively reduced the space per tile for a stash spot outside to 650 for most people. And made them need 2 steel frames and a sheet metal to keep it safe. Which is kind of a waste in the city, but in the country it forces people to care for their stuff; perhaps leaving it inside or under a shelter of their own making.

Then we have the ever present need to watch the skies. Not for acid rain, not because theyll die or the game will end, but because they cant leave stuff lying around and have it not take damage of some kind.

And thats items. Lightning storms are heavy rain, and I wouldnt mind a little more flexibility with constructions. That includes a failstate for attempts and a semi-fail state where a damaged roof/wall can be built or a ‘makeshift’ version of your makeshift roof can exist. And a way to tell how damaged walls/floors are and to see flavor/practical descriptions of the descriptions of the walls.

Its something I think isnt required to be a ‘now’ thing, but it adds to the simulation. Its not about forcing the player to change; it adds to the simulation by creating more loss and bleakness in the world that doesnt affect what the survivor holds dear. You’re right to say it doesnt actually affect what the survivor usually does. They build houses and rooves and they stay out of the rain for the morale penalties. Well, when you care about morale or dont have an mp3 player . . . It doesnt force drastic changes on the player.

It makes touches that can be expanded to washing exterior tiles of gibby bits. It makes touches that can be retroactivly applies to tiles outside the reality bubble. It helps wash the world of its old trappings, from a more lore friendly approach.

4

Sounds like a very annoying way to do the decay thing.

We don’t have an auto-haul command yet, so trivial crap like storing stuff under a house roof shouldn’t be required.

Requiring boxes for food storage would be a bad idea even if we had the ability to activate them to put stuff in or use advanced item menu for that. This is because having to manually put every permafood in a box would be supremely tedious.
It would need to be an automatic system.

Taking care of items only makes sense when it consumes character time and/or character resources. Consuming player time to conserve items is an inherently bad thing that has to be offset by important balance implications to be tolerable.
Hauling stuff from a safe street into a house is a player time cost with negligible character time cost and thus shouldn’t be required until we have an auto haul command.

5

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:4, topic:11262”]Requiring boxes for food storage would be a bad idea even if we had the ability to activate them to put stuff in or use advanced item menu for that. This is because having to manually put every permafood in a box would be supremely tedious.[/quote]Yet various foods still spawn inside containers without an actual mechanic behind the idea; I’m fairly sure food won’t spoil slower inside a container, or won’t get damaged less easily, and powder foods don’t get “dissipated” and don’t disappear over time even when aren’t contained inside a box/bag/bottle. Why the containers then? You can just spawn food the way it is and leave bags and boxes as trash lying around randomly. I’m assuming it’s there for the sake of realism, so I don’t see why these water-damage mechanics can’t be implemented for realism’s sake as well.

Keeping items dry can be just as “annoying” as unloading foods from their respective containers so they take less volume inside the player inventory.

6

For the record, I think this whole idea is terrible. It would add a lot of cpu overhead for what amounts to an annoy the player mechanic that would only affect very new characters. Once in midgame, you might lose a couple drops when you kill something in a rainstorm, or maybe if you happen to get hulk smashed into a swamp or river. Once you have waterproof gear and a vehicle, the mechanic is just cpu time for something that doesn’t affect you.

The real reason I responded is to agree wholeheartedly with the assertion that packaged food is damn annoying. I hate spending time 'U’nloading stuff from boxes, bags, bottles, and jars, but it’s a huge volume saving technique so I can’t NOT do it. At least now I can unload things from adjacent squares so it’s become somewhat less annoying. Cardboard boxes are the worst offenders. 4 volume box containing almost nothing. It’s fairly accurate for RL cereals though…but still very annoying, and as you say, it’s not like the box is acting to preserve the food in any way. I want to lodge a counter-idea: remove pointless time-wasting mechanics only included for the sake of realism and/or make containers sealable to slow down rot.

7

A debatable point if we were to hash out a system. Examples include updating every hour or every day or only when the weather changes.

for what amounts to an annoy the player mechanic
Keep this in mind.
that would only affect very new characters. Once in midgame, you might lose a couple drops when you kill something in a rainstorm, or maybe if you happen to get hulk smashed into a swamp or river. Once you have waterproof gear and a vehicle, the mechanic is just cpu time for something that doesn't affect you.
So it is an annoying mechanic that . . . doesnt affect people?

Has cake/ Eats cake.

In addition, it affects more than just a few players. It not meant to be the new be-all to end-all mechanic. Its reduces the ambiant items in the world in the case of water soluables and it destroys irl vulnerable items that are left to decay like the rest of thr world. Its a mechanic that attempts to add depth to the world irregardless :slight_smile: of player preperation. For RP purposes if nothing else, itd be nice to have to care if it drizzled out or if it was a lightning storm. Because Im personally never put on a raincoat just because of rain and the only time it bothered me was when I needed that morale.

The real reason I responded is to agree wholeheartedly with the assertion that packaged food is damn annoying. I hate spending time 'U'nloading stuff from boxes, bags, bottles, and jars, but it's a huge volume saving technique so I can't NOT do it. At least now I can unload things from adjacent squares so it's become somewhat less annoying. Cardboard boxes are the worst offenders. 4 volume box containing almost nothing. It's fairly accurate for RL cereals though...but still very annoying, and as you say, it's not like the box is acting to preserve the food in any way. I want to lodge a counter-idea: remove pointless time-wasting mechanics only included for the sake of realism and/or make containers sealable to slow down rot.
Well no. The cardboard is there to protect againt minor physical trauma to the cornflakes or circles or wheat puffs or w.e. And I know if youve ever made the mistake of putting salt into cereal; its not something thats appealing. So when I can stack my (400) seasoning salt with my (12) corn flakes on my stove top for easy cooking and nothings hurt as a result I get a little disparaged.

While discussing the exact nature of the solid containers, I don’t think they’re there to ‘waste time’. They represent an intermediary, a holder, for a mechanic. They will or were eventually going to be part of an implementation later. Trying to force them out because they take up time is silly when by all logic theyre needed.

And since you mentioned powders, I dont think there would be a loss of a few particles at a time. At first I imagine so as you struggle to scoop them into a new container. But in rain or if left over time there would be attrition in large doses.

8

If people are going to complain that end-game is too OP and then not curtail their own power on their own I dont know why they arent focused on the decay of the human world as natural forces and the invaders turn the world into something humans can’t survive in.

We are reliant on the technology, on crops, and on scavanging the old world. Our strength in the game is our preperation; our ability to maintain our gear for when it is needed, and to create new products from the old. No other species in the game does that.

9

[quote=“pisskop, post:7, topic:11262”]

that would only affect very new characters. Once in midgame, you might lose a couple drops when you kill something in a rainstorm, or maybe if you happen to get hulk smashed into a swamp or river. Once you have waterproof gear and a vehicle, the mechanic is just cpu time for something that doesn’t affect you.

So it is an annoying mechanic that . . . doesnt affect people?[/quote]

Doesn’t affect people who are fine with tedium and haul everything by hand, affects the rest.
In other words, doesn’t balance anything, only introduces a “ritual” you have to perform once in a while to keep your stuff from decaying. And since the ritual is nearly free to perform (except in player time) it would be better off abstracted away.

As long as decay forces the player to manually move items from the street into a house, it is a bad idea.
It is also a bad idea if it forces the player to constantly dump items into nearby roofed cart.
And even worse if the decay means having to weld the roof all the time to prevent it from being eaten away by rust.

Items rotting when not kept inside is not really an adequate simulation of decay of the world.
The only thing it would really change would be that after few seasons, most items on the world outside buildings would be despawned. It doesn’t do jack shit about endgame being OP.
Rotting vehicles could be a thing, but it would have to somehow spare the player from constantly having to repair the entire car because water poked holes into it.