You know what'd be cool?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

More inter-species conflict.

I was on a run recently where i was infected and needed to head into the nearby town, into one of the doctors offices to look for antibiotics.

It was early in the run, in the middle of the day and so i really wasn’t prepared and didn’t think i’d get far.

As soon as i got close to the town, i found a massive battle going on between ants and zombies, having to first escape surrounding ants leading up to the town, while also going up a tower to scout the town for doctors and lose the ants pursuing me (tower fences ftw) to then come across a short lived relatively free reign while the 2 different species were locked in eternal combat on the outskirts of town, with bodies all over the streets to then more dealing with zombies the deeper into town i got.

It was awesome being a random passerby in such a major conflict, struggling to make it through it and changing tactics on the fly depending on what i was facing - using fences and doors for ants/insects, relatively free reign during the thick of it while they’re busy with eachother, then back to zombie evasion deeper in.

It really added life to the world. Instead of just 95% zombies.

Imagine a “Hunger Games” scenario where you start on the top of a tower with Binoculars and in the initial decent sized vision bubble is an Anthill, Triffid Grove, Mi-Go Tower/Encampment, Fungal Bloom, small Town with regular Zombies, one of the houses in that town containing a Wasps Nest, there being a Bee-hive, a Spiders Nest in some nearby forest, a Military Outpost with Zombies’ finest, a bit of swamp and their creatures representing, etc.

Goodluck figuring out how best to get away, what the lesser evils are to try make it through depending on who’s placed where. Give a whole new meaning to “Hunger Games” haha.

Either way, more conflict with more species would be cool.

(maybe prioritizing spawning in and around towns since they’re the focal point, with most of the gameplay happening around them - instead of mostly spawning one random species at a time in a field somewhere.)

2

I’ve seen three-way brawls between triffids, zombies and ants in the same town once, and the naked mole rats fighting zombies and bringing entire buildings down is always fun to watch. It’d be fun if there were additional various factions scattered about. Maybe wasps and bees can be transformed to be more eusocial and be more of a defined faction like ants. I think there are plans to make bees symbiotic with triffids as part of a larger insect revamp in the works too.

3

i quite often see wasps attacking zombies (or vice versa) with the wasps winning, but the bee’s eventually dying because they cant regenerate

i’ve also witnessed fights between insects and frogs, triffids and zombies, dinosaurs and pretty much anything that decides they’re a tasty snack… its always neat to watch something happen that isnt directly related to your character.

1 Like
4

I once had a character start right beside a triffid grove. There was a smallish town nearby and I was able to lead them into town where they helped clear out the zombies for me. The triffid queen took out a ton of them just by herself. All I had to do was advance further into town, yell and backtrack with a zombie group in tow. A quick jog around the triffids then watch as I caught my breath. It was a blast until I came back & the queen finally died and I realized I’m suddenly S.O.L. :dizzy_face:

5

Inter-species violence is cool, but it can be hard to balance ( speaking as the guy responsible for the naiads… ).
There’s also a lot of infrastructure missing that makes it fiddly:
predators don’t eat the corpses, so you can just follow in a safe distance and loot them;
the moment a mob sees a hated faction it changes to KILLFRENZY mode and won’t chill until it can’t see any more, which is a problem if you want to give them realistic vision ranges;
and scents aren’t inplemented for mobs, so anything with a nose will tend to follow thr player.