What SHOULD be more realistic?

Granted, but the amount I see that is barely a nod towards cities that feel (with some exceptions, ymmv) prestine and untouched. Theres not enough broken windows, maybe furniture scattered on a lawn from people who thought they could just move, a majority of cities just dont reflect the violence of the riots or outbreaks visibly.

The real “realism” or immersion breaker for me in most post apoc games, is scale (ie games with tiny roads, narrow highways and 2-3 unit hotels, Im looking at you Fallout) and versimilitude, where except for some set pieces the world at large doesnt match the narrative Im told. But cdda is better than most I feel.

Im really just nitpicking for the sake of the topic question, but if I am asked what kind of realism Im looking for or “what kind of realism matters?” its more about atmosphere and details.

Its hard to decribe all the little things that really sell the “wow that makes so much sense” feeling without getting long winded but for example, id expect most long shelf life foods to have been swiped off the shelf into a bag by deserting families. And just a reflection of different families various states of preparedness/reactions when it all went down, including gore or messes left behind by failures. I.e. “what would people really have done” and “what is the evidence/story they left behind”.

Especially disconnects between what the world narrative and npcs say is easy/difficult, versus the player experience being opposite.

That would really be the immersion/realism cherry on top. My hope is that randomly selecting windows/doors/furniture/food/items and deleting or moving them in random amounts for a certain percentage of “messed with” houses (which given the number of zombies I’d say should be on majority side) … would be something not too hard? and hopefully something that interests devs as much as it does me.

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Could the creation of making mutagen be more complex? At the moment it’s essential just Bleach and Lye mixed in with some goop to dilute it.

Kinda makes me wonder if we could actually beat the blob hivemind if we have literal universal amounts of bleach on hand.

Yes. I am not sure what making mutagen has to do with beating the blob, though.

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Could we change the beginning skill point distribution so that we can spend half points, and have skills that start at 1?

Also, really don’t see how the default character pools are supposed to make an ‘average’ person. I consider myself to be an average person (maybe even below average), and trying to make me in CDDA requires 6 Attributes, 6 positive traits, 3 negative traits, and 10 skill points (with several skills costing 1/2 point. With the current ‘first 2 skill levels for 1 point’, this would actually cost 14).

The points system is horrible at that, yes.
We’d like it to not exist in the future.

Hmm… I guess that’s expected, seeing how everything seems to be moving to traits and professions being the primary factors in what your character can and can’t do, instead of attributes. Honestly I’d have attributes increase baseline minimums on the effects of actions, but also cost the cube of the next level to raise; skills provide pivotal unlocks for all related recipes and actions, but cost the square of the next level to raise; and professions offer specialization bonuses for single specific actions, and only cost 1 point per level.

Make armour piece value of bolts and arrows a function of the type of arrow or bolt you are using than the damage of the weapon it is fired from. Currently the AP value is a flat value of the projectile leading to the situation where a arrow from a selfbow has the same AP value as a arrow from a heavy compound bow.

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Don´t know if necroing your own thread is ethical but this is the right place to complain about this.

Currently rowing and I believe also tree chopping causes extra fatigue, I believe this is a leftover from before the weariness systeem was implimented. This is definetly a oversight sinds this extra penalties plus the weariness syteem result in your character becoming dead tired and extremely weary after just a few hours of rowing.

This actually speaks to the whole ranged boost and melee nerf that happened recently. All combat actions, ALL combat actions, are a contest between the skill level of the one attempting the action, and the skill level of the target at countering that action. That is true for offensive skills like using a knife, or a spear, or a firearm, and of defensive skills like parry and dodge using whatever tool or weapon the defender is using, against whatever class of weapon the attacker is using.

So, shooting a zombie is no different than shooting a well trained soldier. The soldier is simply more skilled at defending against firearms, and so is harder to hit. You don’t have to simulate the evasion for a turn based game, just compare their competing skills. Conversely, a more experience shooter will have seen the evasion techniques used by the soldier and will be better able to pick their shots. And a more experienced soldier will have more evasion techniques etc. Just as a person doesn’t advance their skill to 10 cooking nothing but tea, so a person doesn’t advance their marksmanship and rifle skills to 10 shooting nothing but zombies, targets and turrets. You learn to shoot more skilled opponents by trying to shoot more skilled opponents - and having them successfully shoot you or close on you for melee in the process. The whole, “you can’t defend against ranged weapons” thing is just simply ridiculous, both from a reality perspective and a gamification perspective.

The same goes for gaining experience at avoiding getting shot.

The same is true of defensive skills like dodge and “kiting”. Kiting is a defensive skill, because it relies on the ability of the character to prevent their opponent from closing. If reach weapons had an opposing counter dynamic, kiting would be a VERY good simulation of reach weapons for a turn based game like this. A person who has never used a spear can be easily rushed, because they don’t know how to move themselves and the spear to prevent it (dodge and parry NEVER happen in isolation). This is the zero-skill dynamic we have now, where a person can’t think beyond dodging by moving around carrying their weapon, or parrying while standing in place. Reality is that a person who practices with their spear for 10 minutes soon figures out how to use the spear’s size and mass to their advantage, to parry, dodge, plant the spear in the ground to give themselves leverage, to keep the spear between themselves and their opponent. They also figure out they can use the spear as a long staff if they do get through, to stun, trip, or knock back their opponent to regain their separation. Any attacker can easily get through the zero-experience spearman’s defenses and get close. Any non-zero (10 minutes!) experienced spearmen can keep mindless attackers, like zombies, at bay (with a few odd hits or grapple attempts here or there). More experienced and more massive attackers require more experience with the spear to keep them at bay - to successfully kite. And again, skill using a reach weapon can only build against opponents skilled against reach weapons. But there is no counter skill to reach weapons, so kiting immediately became OP.

The idea of “balancing OP skills” really becomes an exercise in deciding what level of experience at that skill a particular monster is able to reliably counter. NO combat skill set, offensive or defensive, can exist without a counter skill set. EVERY new offensive or defensive skill that is developed MUST have a corresponding counter skill set. That’s why dodge became to be considered OP. There is no counter skill set, so they limited dodge to a zero-skill dynamic (one dodge attempt per turn - rate based entirely on the speed (mass) of the dodger’s weapon because the dodger has no idea what to do with their weapon other than carry it around with them as they dodge, as if it were a knife, as if they had zero experience using their weapon in a defensive manner). Any combat skill without a competing counter dynamic will become OP unless it is somehow limited to a constant-skill dynamic (zero-skill is just one version of constant skill).