Cities to Strongholds

[Sonicdahedgie 31]

Let's discuss making cities into a stronghold for you to control. First up is a bullet point of requirements that are pretty much a necessity to make this work without breaking the game.

- You must be in a server-identified group to make a city a stronghold. (The server recognizes you all as being in some sort of party).

- A minimum number of people per party (5-10 people)

- Making a city a stronghold is HARD. FUCKING HARD. Like having to deal with a horde of 100 zombies at once for a city as small as Tulga or something.

-Limit to number of cities-turned-stronghold per server (3 at most)

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I wanted to get the rules associated with it out of the way at the very beginning for anyone simply browsing through so they could understand how I want to avoid this from taking over the entire game.

This game is a sandbox apocalypse game. What it has, it does great, but I feel a lot of the tension provided could be amplified by having factions. And I don't mean paltry groups of two to five people scavenging around. I mean great honking factions, the likes of which you can't take on by yourself. The kind of people that build towns to protect themselves. But this is all my opinion. Others may feel that this just couldn't work with the concept of Dayz no matter what, and that viewpoint may be valid. But fuck you guys, this is my suggestion thread. So lets talk about what I want. At the end I'll discuss problems that could crop up with this.

Things involved in creating a stronghold would be A) Getting rid of the zombies, and B)Creating a barricade.

When you've got your group of the required number of people for creating a stronghold, you walk into town, and you've got your guns on, and you're feeling like hot shit. Standing in the middle of town (Or more practically, a defensible location) you do something to trigger stonghold mode. In my mind, the trigger is blowing an airhorn repeatedly while a country-raised ex-marine chomps on a cigar and shout "Come an' get ya dinner, zombie bastards!" The actual trigger would probably be far more practical for a video game.

At this point, zombies come streaming out of the wood work. There would be MANY times the number you would normally spawn in the town. They all come running at you, and you have to wipe them all out. If you guys all die, or if any of you run, stronghold mode ceases and resets. Retrying the same city repeatedly will not make it any easier.

So you and your scrappy crew of unlikely underdogs have cleared the city of zombies! It's all yours now, right? Nope, go fuck yourself. You've still got work to do. At this point, you're now racing against the clock. Once clearing the city of zombies, you have an arbitrary time limit to get barricades into place. You need to completely encircle the city with barricades to claim it as yours. (These barricade positions should probably be pre-determined and in fixed locations. It's simply a matter of getting enough wood and bringing it to the spot and then building.) Fail to get all the barricades up in time? ZOMBIES! Lots of them! Again! And now you're all dead. Or alternatively, another group came through and rocked you. Ain't you just pissed?

Lets assume you succeed. You now have a stronghold! You can hide here and be safe from zombies! Huuzah! And now you have a huge warehouse for everyone to store their stuff in, which spawns food and drink. What a wonderful town this is. But you know what, you might need some defenses. After all, your stronghold is a pretty appetizing target for folks now. A single building housing tons of equipment, and no zombie spawns? Who wouldn't go after that? Well,now begins a whole new era. You're done fighting for your own survival, but now you've got a whole new worry. Now you're looking after an entire town. You'll be needing all sorts of supplies for this place. Probably some spotlights, definitely an arsenal. Probably a generator as well. And gas for that generator. Well, what are you waiting for? Get cracking! You got shit to do!

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Some obvious problems to go with it.

-We can't really have people raiding strongholds for supplies since people might often not be at them. There should be a complete lock down option for strongholds that make it impossible for players to get into them, or out. If you're in the stronghold and want to go out raiding, then you're going to have to leave the stronghold vulnerable, so you might want to have someone guarding it.

-Strongholds can't be invincible safe zones. So, zombies may come up and start beating on your barricades. If an actual zombie horde comes, you better be ready to defend your town from it.

- Some cities just shouldn't be able to be made into strongholds. places like Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, etc, should be completely impossible to turn into a stronghold. However this should be done by simply making the task impossible (Impossible number of zombies, combined with the amount of time needed to place up barriers).

-My biggest worry is simply the amount of people allowed on servers. I don't know if the stand alone will have higher server populations, but I think this kind of thing will only work with a decent amount of people on a server.

For me, this is just the most basic idea for this sort of thing. I feel that the ability to try and rebuild society is pretty much essential for an apocalyptic survival game. And using this as a starting point, I believe we could add an IMMENSE level of depth to this game. I know this suggestion is enormous in comparison to what is being done currently with the game, but I think this could make a great addition. Not only does it give late game stuff for people to do, it gives incentives to work together.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Sonicdahedgie

[boxman80 964]

Good post, factions/groups will clearly play their part in stand alone eventually and the most obvious objective of being in a faction, and indeed a necessity is for a “base”. Clearly as a member of a large community of gamers playing with members of the clan I play in I’m naturally all for clan related features and I would be excited at the prospect of large scale faction warfare between large factions using large strongholds as base camps.

However after playing Day since launch, givng it a lot of thought from a clan perspective and after reading many other suggestions similar to yours I’m not sure I 100% agree with the fortification or annexeing of an entire towns or city though.

First of all, a town is far too big to realistically expect a community to defend. Even the largest of groups would struggle, but generally speaking there just inst the player base consistently to warrant Eve style warfare.

I think even this sort of idea were introduced on such a large scale it would compromise the integrity of two fundamental parts of the game, those being balance and sandbox freedom (i.e. no game/system enforced conditions).

I personally think the most suitable and balanced way of faction having strong holds/camps is expanding upon what the system accommodates now, smaller isolated camps that users find and chose themselves, rather than designated towns on the map. These camps would be relevant to the size and intention of group/fraction that founds them.

I would say yes, maybe apply your ideas to building ranging from small sheds, barns, increasing to large buildings such as schools or warehouses maybe, or even at an extreme (for larger groups) farms, compounds or small villages (based on several enterable buildings), but not entire, large towns or cities. This would have far too many complications and sacrifice too much to accommodate. I think it’s impractical and obviously potentially unbalanced.

The reasons for this aare simple - any player should have as many reasons to play lone wolf (or in s small team) as there is to be part of a faction, obviously the benefits of both need to different and there also needs to be some consequences of their choices too. Then you would need to consider the freedoms of the game, that would mean player actions to enforce conditions rather than relying on the game mechanics enabling or preventing too much. This would mean bases and strongholds would have to be largely organised and maintain by the players and rely on the conditions they are realistically willing to carry out.

Towns /cities are presently the main spawn points for most zombies and necessary loot in the game. If there are a couple of towns that have been annexed off by factions you are already talking some disruption to the game as far as zombie spawns are concerned are “safe”. Besides that I feel the towns/cities need to be the “battlegrounds” for us all – the place none of us want to go but need to, not sectioned off forts.

They are meant to be dangerous and if the disease side of the game is meant to be expanded as much as we all hope and Rocket hints towards, the last place you would want to be is in a city infested with the dead, decayed corpses, insects and human waste!

I’d say it would be more realistic, balanced and relevant that more manageable fortifications could be set up in larger, none essential spawn buildings, such as school houses, barns, farm houses, even standard houses, warehouse etc It could be upto the player if they decide these are going to be in cites, towns or rural areas. And once they are secured they should not be loot spawns. They should be purely for storing items and possibly some vehicles in the case of larger buildings.

The securing of a strong hold I’ve always presumed would mean having destructible perimeters or something similar, kind of like fences that need to be maintained or repaired. I like the idea of a zombie “horde” that you mentioned, perhaps these hordes would spawn periodically around “strong” holds and their main purposes would be to restrict access/exit from strong holds as well as gradually reducing the strength of the perimeter.

This would make provide a double edged sword for those who construct their fortification – on one hand the horde would almost certainly make it difficult for single or small unorganised teams to get access to the strong hold (as they would have to fight their way through the persistent horde first with their limited supplies as well as then destroy the perimeter security fence) but the perimeter fence would gradually reduce in it’s strength because of the horde and require regular and constant maintenance if it was to remain in tact.

This means clans have objectives other than guns, bullets and vehicle related objectives - they now need various materials (wood, steel wire fence, barbed wire, etc), tools (not just a tool box, individual items such as hammers, nails, bolts, screw drivers, wire cutters etc) and assorted hardware supplies.

This would mean there was a realistic tiem period that the fortification could withhold unmanned against zombies and most opportunists, but obviously not against a pre-arranged and organised attack from another faction. This means vigilance is still needed and obviously those who are prepared to have people regularly joining the server and “patrolling” or guarding the base will fare better than those who aren’t.

All in all, yes I agree that there is a lot of potential for better faction related play and there should be done in game to encourage and reward it, but not so much as it's at the expense of those who arent affiliate to a group, or it encouraging fewer but larger groups. This should be something everyone can get involved in at some level.

Edited December 14, 2012 by Box

[shadowjack 254]

As long as i can drop a Banestone and siege yer little slice of heaven ... yeah i might go for something like this.

[Happymrsnowman 52]

As long as i can drop a Banestone and siege yer little slice of heaven ... yeah i might go for something like this.

Yeah the idea is that certain groups would fight over land and resources, much as they would in real life.

[PracticalTactical 164]

Can I install flamethrowers on my walls to protect from bandits?

[Happymrsnowman 52]

Can I install flamethrowers on my walls to protect from bandits?

And for every fantastic well thought out idea, there's a coughing sputtering retarded one, with no purpose. But hey, who's to judge?

[colekern 1364]

A base building mechanic is already in order for the later versions of the standalone release.

[____ (DayZ) 3]

I like it. unsure about the lock down featuer though. even in real life you carnt be at home all the time and people do break in. even gang strong holds normally there are times in real life when there is nobody there. what keeps people out fear. if they come in and get your gear they know those gangs are going to be after them

Edited December 16, 2012 by ____