skusmc

So, me and my small group have thought up a pretty decent bandit killing/loot gathering routine that seems to work wellish. It's simple and requires a group though. You need; 1: A runner; Someone who carries little loot and is disposable. 2: A medic; someone who's set up to tend the wounds and stay relatively safe 3: A fireteam; the remaining kitted players who do the shooting and scooting. Essentially the runner jogs around like a noob in any given area going from house to house looking for for loot. He runs through, grabs the necessities with his empty inventory and later distributes it to the remaining members when they're in a safer area. The other members stay just out of sight, preferably in a concealed location in the woods nearby. Inevitably, the runner gets ambushed or held up, which is when he directs the fireteam to his exact location via teamspeak (or skype/whatever). The bandits are usually busy giving the runner hostage instructions or looting his body, so the fire team should have the jump on them. The medic comes in afterwards or on the exfil and administers aid. We've tried this plan a little and it seems to work alright, and plan on really testing it this weekend. The two things that seem to throw a wrench in it most often are; Very high pop servers/areas; there just seems to be too much chaos and other groups to make a choerent plan. The fireteam gets engaged by others before rescuing the runner etc. And snipers that don't collect loot; it's possible to locate the lone gunman who killed the runner, but sometimes not very probable. In all it seems like a decent plan. Relative safety and survivability for most of the group while getting the chance to screw up some bandit's plans and not needing to kill friendlies. Not perfect, but fun when it works. Alot of people are complaining about PVP and KOS, and this is a way to address it without some artificial reality-killing tweeking of the game mechanics. DayZ is usually what you make of it.

The bit about needing an AK windage tool is right on. My wife has a WASR 10 and I've learned that you CAN adjust it with a punch and hammer, but it won't be precise. IMO they should include the windage tool in the game as loot, and make the AK innaccurate until you find it. That being said, once you get an AK sighted in they ARE reasonably accurate. Maybe 3-4 MOA accurate on average, which actually isn't bad for a service weapon. Once you find an AK windage tool ingame, or even as rare loot a side saddle scope mount, there's no reason an undamaged AK shouldn't be given that kind of accruacy. The M16, undamaged, with an ACOG should be able to hit stationary torso targets at 500 meters every time without question. Marines on the rifle range are expected to be able to engage torso sized targets prone with iron sights at 500 meters. And ditto that M16 reliability is underestimated as well. I've fired tens of thousands of rounds out of the M16/Ar15 platform as a civilian and in the military, and I can't think of a single malfunction that wasn't my fault. And I can vouch that com-block ammo can be crap. I've shot com-block surplus 7.62x54 and 8mm Mauser and I've had case eruptions on both. It's usually really rare in my expierence, though. Good post. If realism is important in the game, to gun guys whether or not the firearms are represented convincingly can make or break the game.

It's hard to tell if GPS would still work. The satellites would still be up. Radio transponders attuned to very specific wavelengths and frequencies have been used for a long time in all different types of applications. There's no reason to think that someone would pick up or notice the very specific signal you're looking for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification

Specifically to put in your gear or vehicle so you or your friends can have a chance to hunt it back down if you or your camp is looted. These exist in real life, and you can embed them in your valuables to help the police track them down if need be. It could add some great scenerios for gameplay. Obviously each device should have a locator specifically pared with it, so anyone with a generic locator wouldn't be able to find any other tracker. The game could have a mechanic for finding a tracker embeded in an object if that object is searched throughly. So a thief could, for example, probably find a tracker embedded in an M4 a relatively easily, but something larger with more hiding places like a car may not be found so easily. A found tracker could be set anywhere so the thief could then send their pursuers on a wild goose chase or even set up an ambush. There's the problem that it wouldn't work with gear on a peson who's logged out, but if that person did happen to log back in you could get a message like "your locator just pinged" show up on your screen. If done properly it could add a chance for justice and cool revenge/ambush scenerios.

At the end of the Arma campaign there was basically a low level war involving Russian, USMC and Chenerussian (spelling?) factions, with the US and Russia supporting opposing factions. So I think there's a good explanation why Eastern AND Western hardware would be awash in the region, which was the case in the mod as well. That being said I agree with the author that Eastern equipment should be more prevelant in this fictional Eastern European state. I was absolutely giddy to realize that Mosin Nagant's were modeled instead of ye olde Enfield...

The amount of m4's right now is insane, but I've heard it explained that the only reason it's that way right now is that being an alpha there's just not enough objects to spawn, so m4's are everywhere. Yeah, it probably would be difficult to implement ammo crafting. But just making ammo REALLY rare I think would help alot. KOS would have to go down for sure. I mean, you're not going to waste rounds on a new spawn when you've only got 3 in your mag. I'd rather see ammo rare than guns, because it would make sense. Same with cars and gas. If everyone were dead, those objects would still exist, but it would stand to reason that survivors would have used up most of the gas/ammo since then. Plus if people still had guns, you would never really know if that guy has a round in his mag or not. Could make for some interesting roleplaying.

I agree with the OP on this 100%. Ammo should be rare Road Warrior style. When you have three rounds for your weapon, you'd have to consider if that person you're drawing down is worth it. It would add realism, strategy and may end the KOS mentality, especially against new spawns.

DOH! Saw that when it popped up in the Radio Chatter. That's what I get for getting all exited when I post an idea.

I'm not talking about magazines or firearms, but ammunition specifically. I would think that in a real Dayz situation, ammo wouldn't just be laying all over the place. It would be very rare ala Road Warrior. What if the only way to get ammo was reloading, whereas people would have to find or make the dies, powder, brass and bullets necessary to manufacture ammunition? If each round were rare and precious, players would be hesitant to waste it on other players, especially newly spawned players that wouldn't have any loot worth wasting ammo on. Zombies would become more dangerous as even well equipped players would be hesitant to waste ammo on them. Just like it seems natural that cars would be common in a massive depopulation, but gas rare, it seems logical that there would be as many guns as there were pre zombies, but that most of the ammo would have been used up.

Good idea.

Sure, bandits are going to grease you the second they see you. But if you could identify from a distance with a magnified optic if they were nototious, you could get them instead. And if they turned out to NOT be a bandit you could instead choose to NOT shoot, which doesn't happen very often as is. As is everyone just greases everyone on sight anyway. If we had a system of crude identification, wannabe heroes could cover an entire area with a magnified rifle and choose to kill only the bandits they recognized. And it makes sense. Rocket said they're aiming for 150 player server limit. In a town of a 150 or a few hundred people, people are going to recognize the notorious faces from everyone else. Everyone recognizes everyone in small towns anyway, so if most of the world is dead, it makes sense that you'd probably recognize a notorious person in a given area if you saw one. If we're going for simulation here, there should be a mechanic for that. And if the mechanics were worked out there's no reason someone should be able to abuse the system. Spamming blood bags into people or giving away items shouldn't erase all the people you've killed if you're a bandit. That doesn't make sense. If, I think, minimal time were put into this there could be a decent system for atleast recognizing who the notorious bandits were. Ranking up like you said by votes would just encourage clan spamming. Everyone in a clan would level up one member at a time, and the solo players would just be SOL.

Deployable bipod; it narrows field of travel of your weapon but eliminates shake/wobble

If I'm not mistaken there is/was the system in place that kept track of hero/bandit status as something like karma. You got bandit points for killing non bandits and hero points for giving blood or killing bandits. I think there's something about recognizing a bandit based on heartbeat, or something, but I'd have a hard time believeing that I will ever survive an enounter long enough with a bandit to put it to use. I think a visual indication, especially from afar with a magnified optic would make recognizing and avoiding/dispatcing bandits more likely. So I'd guess it could be a modification of the current bandit/hero system, whereby you wouldn't become a bandit by defending yourself from players who already had "bandit points". The "philanthropist" part is a little more tricky, granted. I'd say people who transfer items while handcuffed shouldn't get points, but even if they did maybe they could see it as a little reward for their misfortune. People giving medical aid or items to non bandits could get the designation "medic" or "doctor" or somesuch.

That was a good read colekern, and I liked the idea. I'd guess the biggest problem with all of this would be the mechanics to implement it. Covering the face and having shadows/folaige obsecure it would probably take alot more resources and time than the Dayz team could invest right now. I wouldn't (like TIC said) want to ruin the immersion either so maybe my idea about name tags isn't so good. Maybe just something simple like mouse wheeling an action on someone to see if you recognize them. "Reminds you of the description you heard of a notorious bandit" etc. popping up in the chat box. Not giving a prompt for the action and no name tag popping up above their head would keep people for fishing for name tags to shoot at.

New member's first post here. I used the search engine and didn't find anything, so take it easy on me if this has been covered before... I know one of the reasons Rocket gave for the item degradation system is to try to stall the relentless shoot on sight atmosphere that the mod has had. Judging from the "feel" I get on the standalone servers so far I think it's helped. I actually met a guy who didn't kill me outright. I was thinking it might be easy to implement some type of name tag and recognition if a character was famous or infamous enough. Nothing that would give away a position or be seen instantly, or course. It would require either A: very cose proximity or B: hovering a magnified optic over an enemy for a few seconds to "recognize" someone. That way you couldn't, for example, scan a treeline until a name tag came up. But it could pop up the player's name and small description based on what they've done like "murderous bandit" "highway robber" "bounty hunter" "doctor" or "famous philanthropist". This would of course simulate the real world propensity for people to recognize famous or infamous people based off of their actions. Like picking a Bono or Saddam Hussein photo out of a bunch or random ones. I think it might help with the kill on sight pattern that's driven alot of people away from Dayz.