House repair and scavenging

[tomtrustworthy 35]

After seeing a post on reddit about people trying to get currently existing towns back up and running again. It got me thinking about what sort of features could be added that benefit this group but also others at the same time. These could be official features put into the game some day or maybe even modded ones i suppose. 

 

The main ideas here are the following: 

• Have two states that a house can be in
  • Normal State, would be how the houses are now. You can walk in and loot them and such. 
  • Damaged State, this would have the house caved in on itself slightly. You can crouch to get in each room and loot but this would take longer and leave you exposed. 
• Houses would be treated as a world container, they would need various parts like a V3S needs to run. AFter having the parts it needs it will be its normal state. If any of those are taken away it will be damaged. 
• Attacking a building would damage the parts inside and turn them to scrap. Which could change the state the house is in. 
• Players/infected/animals in the house when the state goes from normal to damaged will die.

That should be an easy enough list for people to read if they want a quick overview of this newborn baby of an idea. I am just thinking as I type so there should be some issues with this but we can work through them to get a solid idea. 

 

I think this could add a lot to the game with out ruining it for any given play style. Say a group of RPer's want to live in a town, this will work wonderfully for them. The would have to scavenge other towns potentially, which would ruin those houses if the materials were not found spawning on the ground as normal. 

 

A group of bandits looking for gear could not even fix up houses, but looting broken down homes would take longer and make them have to crouch walk and crawl from room to room in damaged homes. This could also help them camp a town and give them more chances to shoot people as they move slower to loot up. 

 

A lonewolf player (like myself) could setup a house far north and hope nobody goes looking for him. Or they could try to sneak in to towns that have been fixed up at night time. 

 

So this shouldnt really break any play styles which I consider a key selling point. It brings a little 'end game' element that people can use or ignore if needed. 

 

The extra dev work I see right away is a damaged model for each house model... which sucks but maybe its not so bad? Also houses would have to be considered world containers, maybe make it required to be in the house to scroll on it and open the house inventory up. This could go along with the tool usage the devs talk about when repairing cars. After required items are in the house inv, you need a hammer in order for the scroll menu to show "repair house". 

 

Repaired houses could have decay times like barrels and tents, but make them longer. After they 'decay' clear out the inv of the house, except the building materials that are in use. This will not allow people to have storage that lasts forever. While also not making all houses look broken down and add variety to the look of towns. (some houses will be damaged while others are not, just depending on how players treat each house)

 

Ok rambled on enough, let me know what you guys think and offer suggestions. Thanks!

[BeefBacon 1185]

I like the idea, but not the idea. Being able to fix up damaged homes (there should be more, currently they're pretty much all pristine) should be feasible, but you should be able to choose specifically what you do. Is the roof caved in? Why not build a ladder to the remains of the roof and have a small viewing platform? Part of the wall blown out? Replace it with wooden boards and scrap, or just put a pile of sandbags there. I'm not mega keen on arbitrary "building has taken X amount of damage and therefore has no roof, place Y amount of materials into the structure to repair." 

 

While a Frostbite level of building destructibility would be awesome, it probably isn't feasible (though correct me if I'm wrong because that'd be awesome). It seems like it'd make more sense to have a number of pre-damaged buildings, and to allow buildings to be completely destroyed if they're hit with a few RPGs or something. 

 

The idea of house inventories decaying over time is interesting, but it seems to me that having objects inside these houses (cupboards, fridges) that decay makes more sense.

[tomtrustworthy 35]

I was thinking more of a simple route to go with this, a 'fixed' house would look like the building currently look. While a damaged one would need new models. It sounds like you're saying the houses should be able to break in different ways maybe? To me this sounds like a better idea but more work overall for the devs or modders. 

 

I think a more simple approach could be best at least to get the idea out there.

 

I would be ok with cupboards and fridges having an inv independant of the building/repairing inv. 

[IkaikaKekai 1957]

I have to agree with Beef, I like the concept, but not the idea as you put forth, mainly the idea bout the house being partly collapsed and being able to repair it from that state.  A building in that state a lone person would not be able to fix, safely or not safely.  Even with a group you would need some moderate/heavy equipment to fix a house in that condition, and even then there'd be a pretty high chance of the entire building collaspeing while you try to repair it.

 

Now scavengeing compoenets from a house to repair another building would be a good idea.  IE pulling copper wire from the walls, removing doors/window glass/shutters, refrigerator or it's parts.  You could scavenge a building and use those parts to get a building fully functional.  IE fixing the gas pipes so you can fill the propane tank outside to heat the house or use the stove/oven, hooking the house up to a generator so you can use the lights and appliances, replaceing the front door with something heavier.  Things like that.

[tomtrustworthy 35]

I like the idea of some houses being too gone to repair but would this be the only place you can get materials to upgrade the houses that CAN be worked on? 

 

Would we just sprinkle these broke down houses aorund the map to provide materials while leaving the current houses in the state they are. And those current houses are the ones that can be worked on? If so I would be all for that as well. This would avoid having to create new models for every house and forcing some houses to fall in on itself. 

[Kirby12352 67]

It seems to me that a bunch of little kids will just run around smashing houses for no reason if this is implemented. Not that it'd be a big deal, but probably every house would be in a damaged state on a high pop server. After all, what's stopping them?

[tomtrustworthy 35]

With the original idea it would still not matter really The building would still be enterable and loot would spawn. So smashing houses wouldn't benefit people really and it would not break the game. 

[S3V3N 1402]

You might wanna look into this old thread (which I like a lot). Unfortunately these ideas will be left to the modding community, because the game is in late Alpha and appart from soft-skills and vehicles I don't think much new will be added.

 

https://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/45284-control-old-industry/