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TimF

Thoughts about base building

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Hi all! Something I've had on my mind for a long time is how hard it should be to access other peoples bases.

The big disadvantage in a game like this is we can't post sentries or just have occupants at our base 24/7 like we would in real life because most of us have a finite amount of time to play games. The fun part of base raiding to me is the fear the owners will show up, or as the owner the fun part is defending your base. However if for example someone in America can join my Australian server while it's 2am on a wednesday here, they pretty much never have to worry about getting caught.For that reason it seems like bases should really be quite hard to access - like it should take significant resources to break into a well made base, with a chance you'll fail.

Sometimes I think the solution is to have country specific servers that are only online for a short range of hours each day, eg afternoon through to night in that country.

What do you think about how hard bases should be to access? What is the right balance between fun and realism?

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Well that's kind of the thing about DayZ, there is no safety.  'Base Building' isn't even in it's infancy yet in game so it's kind of hard to say 'oh this should be like this' since we have almost no example to go on other than 'use lockpick to lock door, put stuff in cabinet, log out' or 'pitch tent in woods, put stuff in tent, log out'.  We have seen some art of what they want base building to be and some of their ideas, but to be honest a determined individual or group will find ways around locks.

For example, one of the things they want to do is have it so someone could take over an already existing building, locking/barricading doors and windows and using  objects inside (IE cabinets for storage, stove/fireplace for cooking), but considering all someone has to do to unlock your door is to either find a lockpick or a sledgehammer, it makes it kinda moot.  The ability to make traps (lethal/less-than-lethal) would help to slow down if not stop a raider, but persistance issues would have to be solved first.  What's the point of setting up a base and traps to defend it if either the traps or the loot goes poof on a restart?  Even with the best traps and locks it's only a mater of time for someone to gain access to your gear, and thats not even counting if it's just a collection of tents out in the middle of the woods, because a knife will render any sort of lock moot.

I remember in the mod they had sandbags, barbwire, and tank traps (hedgehogs I think they called them) as a means of protecting your base, but still, someone with a Ural could just ram the barbwire or sandbags, or if they had a toolkit they could take down the tank traps and barbwire, and use an E tool to take down the sandbags, and your collection of vintage beans and STANAG is now in the back of someone's Ural.  Along those lines I think it would be nice if there were traps or other defenses set up you would need tools to counteract them.  IE a pair of pliers and a knife to defuse a landmine, a stick to trigger a beartrap, tossing rocks on a pressure plate, ect.  But other than traps players need to be sneaky with how they do things (buried stashes are going to be a thing as far as I know) there shouldn't be some failsafe defense against theft so someone can just put up their nukeproof shelter in the middle of Cherno with unhackable keycode biometric NPC guarded steel door they looted from the White House Bunker.

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No base will be safe, as long as we allow offline base raiding. I know, because 99% of the other games have this issue.

This includes arma 3 exile, epoch, rust, ark, etc.. the list will go on.

The point of bases is to store items, my first trip around the map will be to base raid, offline or on.

I don't need to ever loot up if i can raid your base. This is and so far always why base building is fun but also a total waste of time....

 

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A base does not mean that there must also be Loot. A base is a fixture, which can also serve as an attractant, because no one saw that in a base also Loot must be present .... so risk your life for "nothing"? You will only know when you are inside and still alive.

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Buried loot is going to change bases by making them far less valuable as targets for loot acquisition.

Weight restrictions and capacity restrictions will make looting bases logistically far more difficult.

The rarity of loot like RPG's will make breaking and entering into bases potentially more costly. (Hesco bariers are really solid)

Booby traps of various kinds will make looting bases (even while nobody is home) much more risky).

Physical infrastructure of bases will consist of things like infirmaries with fridges and stocks of medicine (surplus can be buried), mechanics workshops with a full set of tools (surplus buried), farms (backup seeds buried), etc, and will be much more difficult to actually steal. The utility of large bases will be more about facilitating actual simulated goings-on of normal bases and as such have more actual inherent value as a place for groups to conduct their survival while things like loot burying and weight restrictions can and will make actually looting them far less devastating to a base than they once were in the mod. The walls, towers, generators, lights, fridges, and other physically constructed or placed objects will be very difficult to steal indeed, and so even while your door may be destroyed and your stores plundered, you can still repair the gate to keep the zombies out and be safe while you're online and carry on operations. Maybe they will have a heart and not even take the monkey wrench from your garage.!

Edited by FlimFlamm
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Hopefully it is pretty hard to break into a base but it shouldnt be too hard.  

For instance it might take a while for me to sledgehammer my way in but if i place a sticky bomb on a homemade door to a base i would expect it to blow the shit out of it.  I wouldnt want to come across any base that is impenetrable or have super hi tech security like electronic locks and the like.

I have higher hopes for barricading rather than base building.  Why build a structure when you can wall off or barricade an existing one?

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"Hard" to break in is irrelevant.  Unless the base is actively guarded, it's only a matter of time before someone breaks in.  They can either wait until you go to sleep and hammer at it all night, or just "teleport" inside using another server.  I'd rather have the ability to bury supplies in a hole.  Better to rely on the base not being seen than it being impenetrable.

The other thing.  HESCO barriers, Bremer walls, concertina wire barricades, berms, bastions, watch towers, bunkers, shacks all these structures are fairly labor intensive IRL, often requiring the assistance of heavy construction vehicles.  I have a bit of trouble suspending disbelief that a couple of players with some hand tools should be able to erect massive fortifications.  Base building should be limited to what a couple of guys could reasonably build by hand.

Also what's the point of a base?  That would make more sense if DayZ was more like Project Zomboid or The Sims with zombies.  In those games, you're on an accelerated day/night cycle where you need to constantly attend to food, water, and sleep.  People don't sleep in DayZ, they log off.  You don't need a base in DayZ because the world outside really isn't that dangerous. 

 

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3 hours ago, bfisher said:

Also what's the point of a base?  That would make more sense if DayZ was more like Project Zomboid or The Sims with zombies.  In those games, you're on an accelerated day/night cycle where you need to constantly attend to food, water, and sleep.  People don't sleep in DayZ, they log off.  You don't need a base in DayZ because the world outside really isn't that dangerous. 

Survival in DayZ is set to be much more difficult than in the past. If you've played steadily enough, you will have noticed that as soon as the bean and ammo spawning rate is too low or the zombies travel too quickly, everyone freaks out and complains that the game is too hard. Well life is hard. You've got to contend with injury, disease, food, shelter, warmth, safety from zombies, wolves, other players, and more. You will need a place to convalesce from the cholera that was in the pond you drank from and also have your injuries disinfected and mended (along with a place to keep the required medical supplies). If at any time you want to be able to relax in some modicum of safety and comfort, a barricaded or constructed base is how you're going to be able to achieve that, and it's going to take more than a couple of guys to erect and operate.

In an ideal world servers can take up to 100 or more players, and so very large groups could potentially emerge. Very large and well constructed and defended bases could have layers and layers of defenses, making them defensible by a skeleton crew. Electricity means defensive flood lights and even a possibility of electrified wire has been tossed around. We already have mines and trip wires, and barriers such has the Hesco variety are going to be more robust than ever. The actual soft assets of bases can be spread out and buried such as non-perishable surpluses of food, medicine, guns, ammo, clothes, tools, equipment, etc, and so people have less incentive to actually raid bases.

TL;DR : There will be less potential reward from raiding bases (see: buried loot). Bases will be more useful (See: medicine, electricity, vehicle repair, agriculture, radio communications, etc). Bases will be much harder to raid (See traps, Hesco barriers, more in-depth personal injury mechanics, personal loot weight/capacity restrictions and accompanying movement debilitation, etc...). Bases are going to be entirely different than anything we have ever seen before in DayZ.

Edited by FlimFlamm
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I'm hoping that 'Base-Building' is more about pieces that a person could make over time with a lot of effort - without the use of most electronic tools. 

Barricading, building makeshift walls and doors and traps. . Basically, just make use of all the buildings already in the game and then fix up storage, rain collectors, and some kind of generator for lights and other electric goods.

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12 hours ago, DemonGroover said:

Hopefully it is pretty hard to break into a base but it shouldnt be too hard.  

For instance it might take a while for me to sledgehammer my way in but if i place a sticky bomb on a homemade door to a base i would expect it to blow the shit out of it.  I wouldnt want to come across any base that is impenetrable or have super hi tech security like electronic locks and the like.

I have higher hopes for barricading rather than base building.  Why build a structure when you can wall off or barricade an existing one?

Like for instance, it takes a lot of effort to find c4 type weapons, simply an axe could not chop through a re enforced door, or wall. (however it could on a simple wooden wall over 30 minutes time) for example.

Finding a ladder however would be much simpler, but would kick you back or could not place if no member(s) online @ the server. This may or may not make sense to offline raiding.

Its not always about storing loot, or is it? since people like to build. Putting tons of effort into a small base, making it just perfect. Most pve type players or a mixture of Pve, PVP enjoy this effort and spend the time.

 

Where it becomes a failure is when you have the ability to get into someone's base either by underground glitching, or through the walls. There is also problems related to offline raiding.

You spend 1000 of hours building it up, finding all the materials etc... and then someone comes along within 5 minutes destroys the base or glitches in. People quit the game.

 

 

I do suggest that if any base building system is put in, that the devs do consider testing out the arma 3 exile system with flags. This creates the territory, which can be upgraded by the crafting system if you do not wish AI to control the system.

Modding is and will handle some of this eventually, given the tools.

So many things to say atm, since i am very heavy into base building and destruction of them at the moment.

I do feel exile does rather well given the adjustments server admins can do, making it almost impossible without special loot to destroy someones base. They value things, so that someone purchasing mines or explosives on a lvl 1 flag would not be worth it, to trade in. A lvl 5+ is worth it given the value back to the person. This system is controlled by vendors and pop tabs $$ however dayz could handle this with crafting, and finding special parts around the map to make it very difficult to get anywhere.

 

All i wish for is that the dayz devs do not close off the system so that we can not change certain values or block things, if we wish to change as server scriptwriters, admins etc... if you know what i mean?

 

Other games are controlled some what the same way, just offline base raiding has made sandbox's not fun for many folks. We want it hard, but not too hard and be lost within 5 minutes.

 

 

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I rambled on for a few paragraphs and made some awesome points but decided to shoot at the heart of what we know about basebuilding.

Barricading will more than likely be rather easy to break through (this is DayZ not some mod after-all) and will more than likely be used to prep and setup ambushes for other players.  Most gear will remain stashed in the woods in barrels or buried chests.  That's not really a bad thing.

Bigger bases using some of the assets we've seen on trello would allow larger groups to setup temporary trading zones as they're always super popular among communities.  Yes, they'll eventually be broken into while that team is offline but players will know this and not store gear in those structures.  

We need to know what is planned for barricading/base-building and weapon economy before guessing as to how hard it'll be to break into them. 

 

 

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55 minutes ago, sneakydude said:

Like for instance, it takes a lot of effort to find c4 type weapons, simply an axe could not chop through a re enforced door, or wall. (however it could on a simple wooden wall over 30 minutes time) for example.

You could take a crowbar and pry your way into most of the stuff they've shown in a matter of minutes, haha.

Now, this concept would be very tough to dismantle... but ladders and ropes exist... in fact, if you have arms, you wouldn't even need them. So...

dayz-rtx-2015-hq-base-building-album-sho

I'm guessing access will be limited more so than in real life, either by design or by simple lack of the required mechanics (eg, climbing).

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... pls dont hit me!

But I want an NPC in my base who sends out emergency radiograms to my walkie talkie if me and my mates are roaming arround chernarus and someone tries to enter our base. For shure everybody can hear those calls if they are on the same radio channel. If I give him an M4 with scope and ammunition i should be able to work as a guard if we are not online. He costs food and resources over time. I now this never will happen but I like the Idea :)

 

I would prefer a more safety way of basebuilding, because if its to easy to break inside, everybody just takes barrels again and hides them into trees to save their gear. If a base is too easy to raid it just makes no sense to build one. I would prefer a system where its nearly impossible to break in except teh owners are online. The devs want bases which fit in the style and design of the game. You cant build beautiful bases if they are easy to raid. We need to get rid of those stashes safed on the mapedge. I want to roam arround and see a barrickaded house and it fits in the envoirnment. I dont want to layout my base so no Helicopter can land in it to raid it the easy way. I want to build a beautiful nerd RP base.

Edited by imunone

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1 hour ago, imunone said:

... pls dont hit me!

But I want an NPC in my base who sends out emergency radiograms to my walkie talkie if me and my mates are roaming arround chernarus and someone tries to enter our base. For shure everybody can hear those calls if they are on the same radio channel. If I give him an M4 with scope and ammunition i should be able to work as a guard if we are not online. He costs food and resources over time. I now this never will happen but I like the Idea :)

 

Sounds like a decent idea for a mod to me. Not that I in any way would be capable of making it, but could be doable for people with skills :p

 

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1 hour ago, imunone said:

... pls dont hit me!

But I want an NPC in my base who sends out emergency radiograms to my walkie talkie if me and my mates are roaming arround chernarus and someone tries to enter our base. For shure everybody can hear those calls if they are on the same radio channel. If I give him an M4 with scope and ammunition i should be able to work as a guard if we are not online. He costs food and resources over time. I now this never will happen but I like the Idea :)

 

I would prefer a more safety way of basebuilding, because if its to easy to break inside, everybody just takes barrels again and hides them into trees to save their gear. If a base is too easy to raid it just makes no sense to build one. I would prefer a system where its nearly impossible to break in except teh owners are online. The devs want bases which fit in the style and design of the game. You cant build beautiful bases if they are easy to raid. We need to get rid of those stashes safed on the mapedge. I want to roam arround and see a barrickaded house and it fits in the envoirnment. I dont want to layout my base so no Helicopter can land in it to raid it the easy way. I want to build a beautiful nerd RP base.

In 7 Days to Die there is an online/offline setting for how much protection your base gets from a claim block.  I would love to see something like this in DayZ but tweaked so that you can't just exit the game if someone is attacking your base.  Maybe a time limit on the protection so you need to come back at some point.

I also think the Infected should play a big part in base raids and even building them.  The longer you spend trying to get into a base, the more the Infected get involved.  Groups would then have an advantage with being able to set up a defensive perimeter but would also spawn in more infected due to more players in the area.  One guy on his own takes longer to break in and has to deal with the odd Infected attracted by the noise.

I do hope there is some protection, if there isn't and you can't store loot then I see no reason to have a base.

Edit: So used to typing Dayz I called it 7 Dayz to Die :)

Edited by corbit
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18 minutes ago, Corbit said:

In 7 Days to Die there is an online/offline setting for how much protection your base gets from a claim block.  I would love to see something like this in DayZ but tweaked so that you can't just exit the game if someone is attacking your base.  Maybe a time limit on the protection so you need to come back at some point.

Yeah, timelimit in form of goods which get consumed. And loggin off while being atacked shouldnt be possible...true!

18 minutes ago, Corbit said:

 

I also think the Infected should play a big part in base raids and even building them.  The longer you spend trying to get into a base, the more the Infected get involved.  Groups would then have an advantage with being able to set up a defensive perimeter but would also spawn in more infected due to more players in the area.  One guy on his own takes longer to break in and has to deal with the odd Infected attracted by the noise.

Thats another good Idea I think. Im really excited which mechanics the devs will implement.

 

Another thing is maintainance of bases. Hicks wrote one time he wont see some weird looking bases where foundations despawned because the base isnt in use anymore, like in Miscreated, exile, ark etc. Maybe it would be good to let the base degrade from the top of the Y-axis so the top things start to despawn first. i dont think physics will come into play because of serverperformance. And the maintanance should be done by loot. In a Base menu you have to put tools and resources to reset the degrade timer and you wont need to repair every single thing to restart the despawn/degrade timer.

 

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6 hours ago, imunone said:

But I want an NPC in my base who sends out emergency radiograms to my walkie talkie if me and my mates are roaming arround chernarus and someone tries to enter our base. For shure everybody can hear those calls if they are on the same radio channel. If I give him an M4 with scope and ammunition i should be able to work as a guard if we are not online. He costs food and resources over time. I now this never will happen but I like the Idea :)

Nice idea!

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On 12/10/2016 at 2:40 PM, bfisher said:

HESCO barriers, Bremer walls, concertina wire barricades, berms, bastions, watch towers, bunkers, shacks all these structures are fairly labor intensive IRL, often requiring the assistance of heavy construction vehicles.

I know your statement didn't specifically rule this out, but I'm reminded of the tale from either Iraq or Afghanistan wherein the Americans were having trouble with this particularly mountainous area being used as a sort of base of operations. They couldn't see a non-costly way of assaulting it. So they sent in some guys at night with shovels and empty HESCO bastions. They filled them up and had a makeshift base overnight, which allowed them to assert control over the whole of the mountainous area they were concerned with. No heavy equipment required.

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