ryokukitsune

I'll start off with the down to the point raw estimate and move on to the justifications. Note: times and volumes are dependent on one person excavating and with proper tools Dry/hot (91-115ºF) 3 hours 1x1x1m moderate (60-90ºF) 1 hour 1x1x1m cold (35-59ºF) 3 hours .5x.5x.5m freezing (0-34º) 2-3 days .5x.5x.5m bullet points for the TL-DR: *ground temperature makes a difference *environmental strain makes the job take longer *the element maximums can kill you *working alone in extremes is dangerous *shelter and plenty of supplies *workable game mechanic spitballing CAUTION: WALL-O-TEXT I've been tasked with digging a lot of holes in my time and I think I've gotten pretty good at it. Most of the projects I've been assigned to are for post holes, flower beads and the occasional shallow foundation (most of the real world project time from comes complete with finishing. i.e. shore up holes to prevent collapse or leveling) the bulk of my experience comes from very narrow holes of maybe 1/4th meeter in diameter at a depth of max 1 meeter, each hole took roughly ten minuets a go accounting for moderate conditions. I've found that air temps are largely irrelevant if you are dressed for the conditions you are working in, the exception leaning towards cold/freezing or dry/hot temps. Its possible to excavate in those extremes but its not pleasant and so much more work than it would be in better conditions. The main thing to consider when digging is the type of earth being moved and how dry/wet it is. On both ends of the spectrum topsoil can be nearly impossible to move either because its to lose or because it weighs as much as a cinder block with half the volume. Suspending for a moment that one would be digging into different types of earth (topsoil, gravel, clay and/or sand and so-on) the biggest problem in determining how hard it is to excavate earth is the ground temperature because that determines weight and density (by water content) hot dry earth is practically sand and very lose making it difficult to get a load from the pit, cold wet earth is hard to excavate because most of the effort is put into breaking it up and shoveling out of ones hole. In both hot and cold ground is brittle but very hard making progress harder to gauge by simply measuring the depth. Getting to a depth isn't the hard part its getting all the lose fill out of the hole. The lose earth is what keeps excavators from digging deeper or leveling out pits. Unless its compacted it will likely take much longer to clear out the fill earth in the maximums of the temperature scale. In cold/freezing weather conditions I wouldn't even try unless I had shelter, a buddy and plenty of supplies. Opposite to digging in warm to hot weather the idea is not to exert yourself to the point you are dripping with sweat. If you drench your cloths you might as well be standing in the elements naked and getting hypothermia is a very real danger. If working alone and don't respect this fact you can pass out and die an ice cube or just come down with a fatal bug that can kill you in less than a weeks time, less so if you don't have adequate shelter while you are working. In hot weather sweating isn't so much a problem as staying hydrated. Again I wouldn't try it in the upper extremes without someone to make sure you don't turn into bacon from sun stroke. Working safely in these conditions determines the time it takes to complete the assigned task and is determined by the strain of the environmental conditions, a worker will get tired quickly (or need to stop) in temperature extremes but in the rite conditions someone could swing a pick ax or shovel all day long only really getting hungry or thirsty. If I where to make a recommendation about the scheme of building it would be to either A) leave structures incomplete for spans of time until they could be completed safely or B) start with smaller structures (caches, spider holes) that can either be expanded or used until a bunker can be constructed while taking advantage of temporary shelter [tents, leanto's] If the effort is not an investment in time (for the sake of game mechanics) it should be an investment of supplies requiring food/water and regular visits to a camp fire [heat packs] or shade and the longer an excavation goes on the slower progression, translating to longer time to completed. Basically don't dig straight threw to the end of a project, take time to rest or it will take 2-3 times as long to complete with the hazard of either falling over into shock or catching pneumonia.

I'll take a step away from the concept here since this is a splinter cell of the root topic of adding a class system to the game. I don't think such a feature fits with the survival simulation of the mod as hosted under the umbrella of Arma. Its not a bad idea though it just needs to be tweaked to fit in with other features that either currently exist or are on the table. Instead of making it a class in its own rite it could be included in the identifier features that Rocket has already discussed adding to the game. While offering no benefit or detriment to a player other than their ability to be identified at a distance a player would need to fulfill a few criteria to get the bounty hunter skin. Players [heros] who actively hunt bandits or bandits[villains] who hunt players in groups (karmicly good/neutral clan members) also as Blinkshot added, the reward players get from either killing bandits or neutral players is their loot and maybe a few bullet holes. The challenge should be its own reward.

Q:do you plan on refining the zombies based on their social/civil roles? people refer to soldiers as "kevlar zeds" why not make them a little harder to kill? Q: Do you plan on this game being more of a human infection zombie game or a hollywood genre? Should zombies die from body shots in your opinon or should they be immobleized?

I agree that this feature isn't important since the mod is in Alpha currently. I imagine something like this will be implemented when there is enough resources to investing time in getting a collection of skins/weapons that don't require [light]expansion packs, heck even something with a code base light enough to run on Arma free without AO. At this stage in development though the more important thing to wait on is the stability and reliability of the game: zombies actually open doors instead of walking threw them, not being able to hit you threw walls or getting aggroed threw a window and a zombie charging the window instead of finding a door. Groovy stuff like that. You know cleaver but stupid... zombies not the idea =P

I think this game is fine without a set of rules to play by, goals included but for the sake of discussion I'll throw something out. To all the haters I'M JUST SPITBALLING HERE. Have a set of tournament ladder servers that are based around the humanity system. You can't progress between servers unless you A ) complete a set of tasks to improving your odds for survival and B ) keep a neutral or positive humanity rating. Though you could go bandit on any server you'd have to get your humanity back up to neutral to fulfill any servers main goal, “Escape Chernaruse” in Day Z the difficulty rating doesn’t mean dickens unless you are some purist who would rather play without the crosshairs or third person but in the ladder system they would actually determine the difficulty of survival as a player progressed threw the PVE servers to the main PVP tier [expert mode] on each server the tasks would be to collect equipment that slightly increased your chances of survival in the future and if you managed to lose anything along the way about the only way you'd get it back would be to rob other players as you couldn't return to lower level servers once you left. On easy/recruit the zombies would be sparse and the basic equipment be easier to find. Canned food and a hatchet/crowbar would be the “quest” items to find but you could also find a few other odds and ends like matches and a watch. On “normal” you'd need to get fire arms and zombies would be more prevalent and a little harder. Your goal on these servers would be to get a primary and a secondary weapon but while you are there the un listed objective would be to get a compass and a map, the hard servers would be where you start stalking up on mil-speck equipment but by now all the starter gear has become impossible to find unless you venture into the big cities to risk a rare drop. Canned food/drink are rare drops and the unlisted quest is to get a knife and a tent because on the Expert servers its PVP and open season. But on the hard servers you need to survive threw the night (play at night for 4 hours) and temperatures drop low enough to kill you unless you constantly keep moving or warm up/cook by the fire. Players that join these servers are almost required to loot each other for supplies as the drops for ammo are now rare and everything else can only be found in the city but the zombies are so difficult its suicide to go in alone. Other than hunting game (livestock, there is no wild game in day z... yet) players need to find useable wells because some of them have become contaminated and if a player didn't pick up a canteen prior to the PVP server then they will probably only last a day or so unless they kill a player for it they'll die of thirst. Playing this server should have the same “rule” of keeping a positive humanity rating but since its the highest level the chances of that compared with the scarcity of resources makes it unlikely. Anyone that gets here however is armed to the teeth so they are just as much of a threat to other players as the environment is to them. In the last two difficulty servers the environment would play a big part in survival you'd pretty much have to have wood to keep warm and cook with and maybe make some activated charcoal to filter bad water. To get off the hard server you'd also have to fix a car and drive it “off” the map to get bumped to the next server tier. If you died on any server you'd have to start over from the lowest server

I'm going to take a step away from most of the post and focus on the issue of zombie awareness in cities. *This post is an extension of my post in the thread about making zombies more difficult. Indoor or outdoor shouldn't matter in cities. Zombies in cities should be able to run and chase indoors if they corner a player though there should be less of them [runners] than other types of zombies since they would be more likely to have been munched on (taken crippling damage) those zombies that can run also aggro other zombies in their chase so if a player runs indoors zombies fallow the trail of commotion to the Alamo players pick until they eventually over run them. Firing off shots has the draw back of attracting zombies in waves to respond to the disturbance. The runners get there first and rush the player. The walkers amble in waves closely behind and then if the player(s) think its safe outside the monkeys and crawlers are bringing up the rear of the rush like a brood of crabs. All of this suggests that once a player is aggroed more zombies would start to spawn as if to come out of the wood work of buildings that are not enterable. This would discourage people from taking a shot if they had plans to stick around very long. Though it would take longer for zombies to zero in on snipers in towers and hard to reach places they would be in just as much danger if not more because they would start to swarm outside the building they where shooting from making it difficult to escape. While the runners where aggroed to the surrounding block the sniper was shooting from the walkers and hoppers would crowd outside the building until they started shuffling in (like hearing a gunshot outside a doorway) this would discourage players from shooting in towns but at the same time encourage players to camp the perimeter as highway men bandits. With a mechanic like this looting big cities would really only be possible with players armed to the teeth should something go horribly wrong as they probably will.

I'm for making zombies more difficult but I think they should spawn with predictable status ailments and levels of “health” that can be exploited to thin them out. Zombies shouldn't die from body shots they should only be immobilized until a killing blow. If paralyzed they should at least writhe to show to the player that they are still a minor threat. Zombies that hop/crawl have damage to their flanks or legs preventing them from walking up rite even indoors (stuck with the ground game) and zombies can only run/walk depending on how decayed they are (*more on walk/runner in the city thread). All of these would have grades of available health and acuity (runners would have higher health and be more aware than a walker, walkers more than monkeys or crawlers, so on) and when taking on a horde taking shots at their legs/flanks should slow them down by changing their posture and potential speed. for zombies playing dead they would be similar to the immobilized zombie but instead of writhing on spawn they would be still until the player came to investigate them [landmines]. They would occasionally twitch but would start squirming at the last second to scare the crap out of the player who's trying to loot dem beans, they try to take a chunk. I'm against armed zombies, at least the ones that can actually use weapons. I wouldn't be against finding empty or battered weapons on zombies. A slung AK on a soldier or a holstered pistol on a cop but the consensuses of the majority of the zombie genre is that the undead are to far removed from humanity to remember how to use them. I find it a little unrealistic that damaged loot like that isn't found on zombies. A clenched hand around a rusted AK with a buffer spring dangling, an MP5 with a flowered barrel even a zombie with a pistol slide sticking out of his chest from a back fire. (last one is an exaggeration that would require asset modification) indoor civilian zombies too. armed zombies I'm against, at least with zombies that use weapons. a soldier zombie with a batter AK slung or a police zombie with a holstered pistol is one thing but by consensis of the Zombie Genre majority zombies can't use weapons. I don't count RE:E chainsaw Zombies but I wouldn't be against the ocassional super mutant zombie stalking the woods for an extreamly rare challenge (like spawns once a week rare)

come on guys, this is off topic. there is nothing in this conversation that pertains to a sugestion

it would take to long to train dogs, they would be better as bait or meat. in cities they would be a good indicator to players in the area and be just as likely to aggro zombies. plus some logical spitballing on why making them companions is a bad idea. thanks for your honesty though =P

I think this is a good idea but a tad flawed. The idea really only applies to ax raids as those would be the only one with enough splatter to get a decent scent trail off of. If that where also the case then wounded players would need this mechanic as well because just jogging around with a flesh wound would attract the horde and so far the declared fact that “zombies have a heightened... sense of smell...” hasn't come into play. Might be worth Rocket looking into. For the rest of the discussion as to characters coming back as zombies I like that Idea and its not difficult to imagine the possibility of a full immunity or a partial immunity. Soldier corpses are evidence of this. Some of them are dead dead and some of them are doing the rot walk. The same could apply to characters, say 1:5 chance of a character getting up after death regardless of how they died (lest a 50cal to the head) after about 1-2 minuets they would get back up and start shuffling away. If the bandit was out for their loot then he'd have to make sure the deed was truly done and by the time he got to the corpse it would likely be in range to aggro the horde. This also opens up the door to the landmine zombie. Zombies that look like their dead but are actually waiting for prey. Dependent on how damaged their body is (fractures or excessive “head trauma”) means they can't be mobile like other zombies so they just wait for prey and latch on to ankles when something gets to close. This type of thing would be a 50:50 chance for character zombies that actually roll a zombie state so that even if they aren't moving when someone goes to loot them there is a pretty big chance that they'll still get up and bite the crap out of you for violating their personal space. This makes it so that if any player gets close to them they have to take them out before they can loot them. Twitchy fingers would likely report their position to the entire nearby horde unless they had a silenced gun. Since the landmine zombies are opportunistic they also have a very high chance of making a player bleed out so they'd also have to patch themselves up. Bottom line, think twice about killing someone or at least make sure they're dead before you stick your hand near an undead bear trap.

all debating aside this is what the point boils down to. what we need is melee weapons and a good place to put them or at least they return to the tool belt when you equip something else so they don't just fail to exist... btw, my beans, you have them.

in a recent interview Rocket did with Machenima he mentioned that he planed on throwing dogs into the game. I listened to the whole interview and the part about dogs was a little disconcerting. It sounds like a very weak feature to the game as a freebie to players rather than another layer to the simulated zombie apocalypse. What makes this game a great attention grabbing concept is that it is unapologeticaly [damn spellcheck fails...] hard. The world is a dangerous place and there are a lot of factors that make it inhospitable to people even without the factor of zombies playing their part to drum our life expectancies down. What makes me think that this is a poorly conceived feature is the fact that Rocket is researching how to “train” dogs. I can speak from experience and say that training a dog can take months if not YEARS to accomplish and unless there was a mechanic introduced that made the life expectancy of the game skyrocket average characters don't have that much time to devote to anything but getting their next can of beans or a few more rounds of ammunition before either a zombie or a bandit make them bite the big one prematurely. That said I'm not against dogs being in the game but not as companions. I think World War Z had a pretty good picture of how dogs would behave after the fall of man. The novel assumes that we fend off the zombies to an extent to collect ourselves but unless our k9 friends survived with us then there is a very small chance that any friendly dogs wouldn't be around in the time frame of Day Z (seemingly a few months to a year after the outbreak) anything that still had an attachment to humans either died off long ago or has become leery of humans. What would survive apart from human companionship would be the feral dogs who hunt/scavenge to survive and know that humans, at least zombies, are bad news so they would be un-trusting creatures of human in nature if they could tell the difference at all. If dogs where to be put in the game I'd like to see them be a neutral AI that should be avoided as much as zombies but just as dangerous to the players survival by where they are found. In cities dogs play a big part in urban warfare and in the zombie apocalypse. If they could tell the difference between a living player and the shuffling horde they would bark at players to warn them to keep their distance, exposing a general presence of a player to the horde and other players alike. If a player ended up getting to close to a dog then they would be just as likely to attack as a zombie but more likely to cause a ruckus or cut and run as soon as they attracted the attention of zombies. If the player was aggroed with them the zombies would be distracted between the two potential prey making it a little easier for one or both of them to get away. Feral dogs are also incredibly difficult to train. They would be extremely freaked out by one player making kissy faces at them not to mention a whole group of survivors and would almost certainly run rather than come get a cut of steak. Even if they where included as a companion they would be dangerous to keep around. Trained to detect things the behavior of barking would have to be trained out. Trained to guard something they would be difficult to relocate because of unfamiliar territory and likely flee at the first sign of danger. Then there is keeping them healthy, its hard enough to keep a character in the black let alone a dog. About the only thing you could do for a pet dog after the apocalypse would be to bandage it up. Dogs cant take the same medication or the same dosages as human, they can't take blood packs and are far less composed and disciplined when forced to walk on a bad injury. I'm a humanitarian in my life but it all boils down to that in its current form dogs would make better bait or meat than a companion in the game world. I'd like to get Rocket into a discussion on this, in PM if I could because its something I'm open to though I think it could use some serious work. Its purely academic anyway so its not like my opinion shouldn't change anything but it would be fun to get the consensus of my fellow players on the matter to see where the wind is blowing.

I like that idea, but its not related to this discussion. could you make a thread for that? I do find it kind of funny that after some point we probibly are going to need a crafting table for the zombie apocolypse lol =P

This comes down to a karmic ding for killing other players. The idea of making actions faster would only really serve the players that play in groups of friends and for bandit groups this would not affect their decision to hunt players for sport. In my opinion the karmic ding should benefit players who are victimized by serial bandits and punish bandits when they inevitably respawn. For instance a player who dies 2-3 times at the hands of an errand sniper shot within the average life expectancy should have a greater chance of spawning with some kind of firearm and limited ammo to defend themselves while the bandit would take the Karmic ding in the form of spawning with less equipment until they are basically washed up on the beach in a speedo and a rusty paper clip.

As a little side note so the first post wasn't longer than it already is: melee should really fall into two categories for shoulder fired weapons. The tap melee that takes a quick jab with the butt stock and the equipped inventory option to use it as a club. The difference would be in the fact that if animations is used to time the turning of the rifle would it would need to be played each time the weapon was “fired” in Melee mode and same would be said for turning the weapon back over. I think the practical solution, considering animation, would be to separate the intended use. The animation transitions used as wait timers could be much shorter with a defensive crack of the stock as a firing mode to give players room to move (or shoot) while equipped as clubs are intended for offensive uses to cause damage. also to defend my thoughts on using scrap metal and the wood pile as weapons. Limiting resourcefulness to “weapons only” diminishes the simulation of the game in my opinion, though I'm open to the idea of omitting them from the weapons catalog if it has a practical reason. Though if you saw a big rock on the ground you'd use that to defend yourself if you where desperate enough. You'd also probably curb stomp a crawler and punt a monkey before you let it latch onto you.