Zombies Boarding Vehicles

I feel that when dealing with zombies, vehicles are kinda overpowered. So I was thinking of ways to reduce their power without reducing what they can do. What I would like to see is zombies being able to try to “board” a vehicle. This would of course involve some changes to the vehicle code. If the vehicle is at rest and the zombie moves into a vehicle square he consider to be a “Boarder” without being an “occupant”. Zombies trying to board vehicles in motion (which they are likely to do) would have to make rolls with a chance to board based on the speed of the vehicle and the type of zombie. Fast zombies would be the best boarders. Hulks and the like would not be able to board easily. If a zombie failed a board roll or they just barley make the roll they should take some damage, based heavily on the speed of the vehicle. A new command for driving and dealing with boarders. ‘S’ for sharp turn. Hit S and then your turn direction and have a chance to shake off zombies. Doing this back and forth should have more effect. A zombie that is shaken off should slid back the exterior of the car but be given an opportunity to grab back on. Any manuvers that require the user to make some sort of handling roll, ie sharp turns, driving fast over rough terrain, etc…, should require any occupants or boards to make checks whether they get an action or are shaken/shaken off. Boards would have fail, fall off, near-fail, lose turn, and succeed, full turn. Occupants not in seatbelts would be fail, shaken, or succeed, full turn.
Zombies that are at sections of the vehicle with windows would at this point be able to smash said windows. This may involve altering how current vehicles are pieces together. Right now a square is either metal, a door, or a window. Cars are often made of more then one. Back to the main point. Zombies who are boarders can no longer be “hit” by the car but now move with the car. A zombie next to a car in motion may attempt to board the vehicle. A zombie at a window may attempt to smash the window and try to gain entry to the vehicle. Once inside the zombie would move from boarder to occupant. While on the outside (boarder) the zombie’s movement is drastically reduced. The zombie would be subject to being knocked off and being thrown if the vehicle comes to a sudden stop (IE the E-brake). Once a zombie is an occupant they may move around the interior of the vehicle at one space per turn and attack other occupants (YOU!) as they like. This would then lead to some new development with cars. I feel we need to add windows to a lot of the current pieces in cars. At first I thought we should do this by adding a new part to replace boards in cars, but after thinking about it for a bit I decided on a new idea. You should be able to add “Windows” to an existing board which will give you the ability to view through the board and would allow zombies to smash their way in. These would of course come pre-added to all current car boards and maybe some minor modifications to current cars to bring them inline. Door would also have added windows and would be opaque by default.
Another point to give restrictions to vehicles would be to have any trunk/seat spaces that are not closed in (or doors aren’t closed) and have items in them can have the items fall out. Boxes on the other hand would have reduced capacity, but be able to hold stuff without it falling out.
Another way to restrict cars is to restrict what can be in the same square together. Some items, like engines, should take up most of a square and disallow many other items. While this seems to happen to some degree, I believe that engines should be particularly restrictive. A 6L engine should take up an entire frame and allow no other item to be place into it. Trunks should be similarly so. In my diagram below the windshields/windows should be a low space item, as they are often mounted over other items.
Headlights should be required to be at the front of the vehicle, should be damaged by brush, but should also be protectable by brush guards.
New glass types should be findable. Shatter resistant glass. Bullet proof glass. These would lead to shatter resistant windows and bullet proof windows. Already have some pretty unbreakable glass types in the labs. Maybe allow us to find some as raw materials?
Here is how I’d have cars look.
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ABCD
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3+##+
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A1 Wheel
B1 Frame, Headlight
C1 Frame, Headlight
D1 Wheel

A2 Board, Window
B2 Frame, 2.5L Combustion Engine, Window
C2 Frame, Window
D2 Board, Window

A3 Door, Window
B3 Frame, Seat, Roof, Control System
C3 Frame, Seat, Roof
D3 Door, Window

A4 Door, Window
B4 Frame, Seat, Roof
C4 Frame, Seat, Roof
D4 Door, Window

A5 Board, Window
B5 Frame, Trunk, Window
C5 Frame, Trunk, Window
D5 Board, Window

A6 Wheel
B6 Door
C6 Door, Muffler
D6 Wheel

Other thoughts are make Control Systems a item that takes up much space and you must be next to it to control the vehicle. Later on when we are willing to just add to vehicles for the sake of it. Add things like shocks and off-road tires, transmissions and what not. This would allow for more customizations. With the advent of off-road equipment driving off-road should become drastically harder and require harder driving rolls not to have worse and worse fumbles. If the user fumbles badly enough they might just turn the car sideways and flip the car!

These are just my ramblings on cars and stuff I’d like to see added. Trunks currently seem to have volume limits. Once the 52 item barrier is broken things will be easier to deal with. I still think seats should be useable as containers! :stuck_out_tongue:
Engine power might need to be tweaked as I can’t get a regular car to go over 50 without the speed turning yellow. Transmission could allow for a different between vehicles meant for speed or torque. Heavy Duty transmission would allow for more weight, but lower top speeds and acceleration.
Also I feel headlights should be brighter and not made from flashlights! :stuck_out_tongue: Headlights are basically floodlights!
This looks much more carish and would allow for the engine to be put by itself.
[font=courier]Sedan
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[font=courier]Station Wagon
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[font=courier]Pickup Truck - New item I’ve imagined here half-boards and tailgate. Used in the rear of the vehicle. Require less material to build, but aren’t enclosed and protected from the weather.
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[font=courier]Four-Wheeler/ATV - The rear wheels of the four-wheelers I’ve seen have a small cargo rac.
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Renamed Thread to something more appropriate.

Very interesting

I agree with most of this Im in!

I am seeing wild action scenes all over the place with frantic zombie chases.

I really like the idea of zombies (and other monsters, whatever) grabbing onto your vehicle and getting drug along. I’m not sure how easy it would be to implement. The mechanic of having them grab on and get dragged would be fairly simple, but then having them navigate through the vehicle might be a bit more problematic. I think it would be worthwhile to do if it could be sorted out.

You did miss a bet though, while they’re hanging on to the outside of the vehicle, you should be able to scrape monsters off on a building or other monsters :smiley:

The window thing is tricky, if you have an “opaque” board, and adding a window makes it transparent, what happens when the window is smashed, does it become opaque again? I guess there’s still a broken window item there, so you can do stuff with it, but what about when you remove the broken window, does the board magicaly regrow? Another issue is reaching through a window, nothing has an attack that can reach through the door square into the car to attack you (except ranged attacks) and I think they can’t enter that square either.

I’m thinking a transmission item (possibly even adjustable with sufficient mechanics skill) is something I want to add, taking the raw power from the attached engine and turning it into torque/RPM, which will give us some differentiation between large engines and fast engines.

I also think making an onroad/offroad distinction is a good idea, though I’m not sure separate shock/spring components are called for, I think we might just have various wheel types have different performance on various terrains. And yes, most of the default vehicles would be basically road only.

I agree in principle about volume-filling vehicle components, and that should be easy to do.

1 Like

I did specifically think of the scraping the zombies off thing, but ran out of time while posting.

That’s all you people have to say about this? Really? I could totally see epic zombie battles where you looting a store and notice a horde coming. You run out of the store and jump in your car and slam on the gas just as the horde arrives. A few of them climb onto the vehicle and the player drives away driving with one hand and shooting with the other. Trying to get the zombies off his vehicle.