Base Building Frustration

[Darth Mopp 5]

(I already posted this on the steam forum with mixed results, and thought here might be a better place for it after all.) I played DayZ vanilla for a while now and I generally enjoy it and didn't feel the need for any mods until now. Only recently, after the 1.08 patch, I decided to finally try building my own base. I heard that It was super easy to break into a base before that update, but sadly I have to say its still pretty easy after it.

Instead of sawing through a lock and/or breaking a wall within minutes, after 1.08 it now takes like 20-60 min (wow, that's like sooo much longer for a determined base raider) of hammering or spamming grenades and gunfire onto the lower paneling and frame of one (!) fence wall or gate. I even read that you can destroy a fence wall by punching it with your bare fists for like 1h20min! No damage or bleeding to the attacker. WTF?!? Also, barbed wire can just be dismounted from the outside with pliers and then stolen and used again. Whats the point then?

The small changes of the update are a tiny step in the right direction, but its still sooo easy for any random raiders to breaking into, loot and dismantle my base (which of course they did, multiple times while I was offline), that took me hours and days of searching for nails and tools, logging trees and cutting wood and building and upgrading fences and gates. This is totally unbalanced. Why should anyone bother to build a base? But I like building bases!

I'm sure, that I am not the only person who is frustrated by this. On the official server I play right now, I encountered at least 3 raided and abandoned bases (s. screenshots below) this weekend. I bet their builders are really frustrated right now.

I looked through the server browser, but most community servers are so full of mods. Traders, AirDrops, BaseBuilding+, Loot+, Weapons+, Helicopters, Rocketlaunchers, NoStamina, Map, Chose Spawn Location, SafeZones, Drugs, Money, ToxicZones/Radiation, ... I don't want any of that! I think most of these Mods make survival too easy. They destroy this great feeling of desolation an having a hard time surviving that DayZ vanilla has and turn it into some random Action-Shooter. No thanks.

But from the community servers with no mods, I could find only 2 with BaseDamageOFF. And they are not very populated (between 0-1 to sometimes 8 players during last months server history). Also, having completly indestructible bases seems like overkill from the opposite side. Is there no middle ground where bases are relativly secure, but if someone puts like hours and lots of tools, bullets and granades into it he might break in? Maybe make dismantling harder /impossible? Base raiding really needs to change for DayZ vanilla and therefore the official servers, cause that's where most players are that don't play mods.

Let us fortify the fence walls somehow, make fist attackers bleed and loose health, increase the damage to tools used for destroying fences, make grenades an gunfire less effective or give us a way to protect the walls from it, make barbed wire hard to remove, by adding bleeding chance and fast demolition of pliers, also make the wire ruined after removal from the outside. It wouldn't be so hard to change things...

Edited October 13, 2020 by Darth Mopp

[amadieus 316]

Have to agree with you here and thank you for posting this. I had build my first base back in patch 1.01. and that was a travesty. So with the changes in 1.08  I decided to try building a base again, and just after 1.09 went live I started. I was disappointed to see that after just four days I already got raided twice. Currently I am not near my PC for a long time due to work, but I would have loved to see what would happen over multiple weeks with the base. I mean, I had no people dismanteling my walls (This happened multiple times to my base back in 1.01), so it was pretty easy and quick to rebuild my walls. Nonetheless, with being raided twice within such a short time frame I started to analyse why it still is so easy for them, as prior to building my base I imagined the current amount of grenades, bullets or melee hits was sufficient. You know, that only determined raiders would attack.

Well, obviously it is still a tad to easy. But it does take a big amount of bullets and five grenades sounds pretty decent for just one wall. Perhaps melee weapons should lose quality faster so it requires more of them? At least, I have the idea that they raided my base with melee weapons. As it seems a waste to use so many bullets on a wall and grenades should also damage walls around it, right? Another idea would perhaps to increase the spawn rates of base building items = more nails and thus easier to create two-walled compounds. Anyway, I do agree with the solutions that you provided in your post.

I usually compare the basebuilding and raiding to Miscreated, which IMO always had it perfectly balanced when I still played it. Basebuilding resources were easier to get, so raiders needed to pass through three walls. One wall required easily 6 hatchets, if it wasn't even more. I had that base for months and only got raided a couple of times. 

To conclude, I love basebuilding and it really is going into the right direction. But I do think it is not entirely there yet.

[Robzom11 109]

I don't know man, maybe they're boosting over your walls? Especially now that weapons damage quickly i can't imagine it's easy to just break into a base unless there's only one wall. My current base is out in the woods and I've had it for a few months now, the one prior i had for 5, i would say find a more secluded area if you don't have people actively protecting it or build in a building where you can have multiple layers just make sure combinations are different as once you destroy a gate the lock falls off with the code visible. I suspect dupers may have something to do with getting raided quickly aswell. Have you tried to find enough ammo or grenades to break into even just one wall, it's an investment and is leaps & bounds better than just walking up with an axe and breaking in, in 5 mins.

[Darth Mopp 5]

On 10/14/2020 at 1:47 AM, Robzom11 said:

I don't know man, maybe they're boosting over your walls? Especially now that weapons damage quickly i can't imagine it's easy to just break into a base unless there's only one wall. My current base is out in the woods and I've had it for a few months now, the one prior i had for 5, i would say find a more secluded area if you don't have people actively protecting it or build in a building where you can have multiple layers just make sure combinations are different as once you destroy a gate the lock falls off with the code visible. I suspect dupers may have something to do with getting raided quickly aswell. Have you tried to find enough ammo or grenades to break into even just one wall, it's an investment and is leaps & bounds better than just walking up with an axe and breaking in, in 5 mins.

You can of course create makeshift ladders to climb on and then jump over fences by parking a car under it, setting up a tent, or pile up some barrels (maybe other things can be used too, like wire mesh barriers). But having a working car, finding a tent and finding and transporting barrels is not exactly easy and rather time consuming. My base and the other raided bases I came across were clearly not entered by this method or some glitch. You can see if different fence/gate parts (upper/lower paneling/frame) where damaged by pointing your aim dot at them and looking at the color of the then displayed indicator (same colors as the item status colors in your inventory). Also the raiders clearly used firearms (and possibly grenades), since I had wooden crates and barrels inside a shed inside my fence walls, that was closed with a second locked gate, and the crates where almost all destroyed, their content spread on the floor, and the barrels where damaged.

I guess there are generally two possibilities or philosophies when choosing a base location. Either you make it as hard as possible to find it, by going somewhere away from roads and towns, deep in a thick forest. That base will be hard to find, and the raider needs to bring all the necessary stuff across longer distances. But, IF it is found, it is more easy to destroy and more rewarding, because there are no walls of preexisting buildings you can use, so all walls must be build by you, which means more time, material and tool attrition and more things a raider can dismantle and steal. The other option, which I chose for my first base, is to find some preexisting building (that should best still be a a bit of the road and harder to find) and use its walls and other structues, so that you have to build fewer fences (the simplest would be a shed, where you only need to build one fence-gate and lock it). This has the advantage of having to build fewer things and therefore losing fewer material and work when it is destroyed and/or dismantled, but of course the probability of you base beeing discovered is higher.

Guarding a base 24/7 should not be a consideration imho. Most people have a life outside DayZ and they should not be punished for that. Also if we speak about authenticity or "realism", which DayZ strives to achieve as best as it can, consider this: Yes, in real life destroying a wooden wall like the fence in DayZ should not be a major problem, but would we then actually build such feable things? Or would we rather create palisades of thick logs fortified by stones or other durable materials?. Also, IF the DayZ scenario was real, the owner of such a base would live there the whole day, whenever he/she is not on a scavenging trip. That person would sleep inside that base and hear it if a raider was shooting, hammering or throwing grenades at his walls. So there should be some kind of protection (e.g. higher defence/health values for fences, or even indestructability, like I thing it is the case in RUST) for a player's base during the time he/she is logged off.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Darth Mopp

[Robzom11 109]

@Darth Mopp I don't think indestructable walls are a good idea for dayz even if it's only when you're offline imo. If you're gonna take anything from rust i think it should be the alert system that sends a text to your phone when your getting raided, maybe have an item that's difficult to craft for it idk... But even that's abit odd, but like you said realisticly you would be sleeping in your base. Im not sure what more could be done, the resources it takes to get into a base are already pretty high, maybe make it higher and introduce an item like c4 that's rare that can break through easily idk, also duping would need to be fixed for that to work properly.

I agree more could be done to make base raiding more balanced, personally though i think duping should be fixed first and then go from there.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Robzom11

[Monosof 15]

10 hours ago, Robzom11 said:

@Darth Mopp I don't think indestructable walls are a good idea for dayz even if it's only when you're offline imo. If you're gonna take anything from rust i think it should be the alert system that sends a text to your phone when your getting raided, maybe have an item that's difficult to craft for it idk... But even that's abit odd, but like you said realisticly you would be sleeping in your base. Im not sure what more could be done, the resources it takes to get into a base are already pretty high, maybe make it higher and introduce an item like c4 that's rare that can break through easily idk, also duping would need to be fixed for that to work properly.

I agree more could be done to make base raiding more balanced, personally though i think duping should be fixed first and then go from there.

Electrifying barb wire...so those pesky flies stop stealing it.

[Darth Mopp 5]

On 10/16/2020 at 9:32 AM, Robzom11 said:

@Darth Mopp I agree more could be done to make base raiding more balanced, personally though i think duping should be fixed first and then go from there.

What is duping?

[amadieus 316]

20 hours ago, Darth Mopp said:

What is duping?

From Wikipedia: Duping refers to the practice of using a bug in a video game to illegitimately create duplicates of unique items or currency in a persistent online game, such as an MMOG. Duping can vastly destabilize a virtual economy or even the gameplay itself, depending on the item duplicated and the rate at which duplication occurs. Modern persistent world games include automated detection of duping. Duping is considered to be a game cheat.

So basically people in dayz can dupe ammo to have unlimited amounts. Now honestly I don't think this is an big issue at this moment on PC. I think duping rarely happens. Might be different for consoles.

[VodkaFish 38]

Quote

The small changes of the update are a tiny step in the right direction, but its still sooo easy for any random raiders to breaking into, loot and dismantle my base (which of course they did, multiple times while I was offline), that took me hours and days of searching for nails and tools, logging trees and cutting wood and building and upgrading fences and gates. This is totally unbalanced. Why should anyone bother to build a base? But I like building bases!

agreed, it should be harder (or we should be allowed to make it harder through upgrading the base with additional materials) to break into a base.  It takes a week to secure a decent sized building, like an apartment.  It takes one day to break in.

[Tonyeh 454]

I've yet to actually bother building a base. To all intents and purposes they're kinda useless, so I've heard. It's basically advertising your gear to people who'll happily spend a couple of hours knocking the shit out of your walls to get to the goods inside. And if you're a lone wolf, like I am, the chances of you being around to protect the base at all times is nil.

So far, I've had success just leaving my stuff on the ground.

[Darth Mopp 5]

So I decided to try it one last time with a really really well hidden small base. I went to the edge of the map deep in the woods and created just the first floor of a watchtower (to have a roof as protection agatinst rain, and also to just be able to walk up the stairs and jump out instead of heaving to open the combination lock and gate during which time, the base is vurnerable). It was hiddenb between three thick trees and I covered every side with camouflage net. It remained undetected for at least a week which was nice. But ultimatly someone came across it when I was logged off (of course) and just built a watchtower roof with stairs just beside mine, and simply walked up and jumped into my small building to rob everything inside and dismantle some of the crates and stairs, the roof and stairs and one wall:

(I'm standing on the roof of the watchtower the raider built (without walls) looking down into the remains of my own watchwower in the back)

[schleiche 0]

Yes you are right. It is much too easy to raid a base. I can highly recommend to play on a server without base damage. I think this it what you are looking for.

Try this server. It is Vanilla (official Dayz), no mods only without damage on fences and towers.

[EU] Cheranus | no base damage | Loot+ | Vanilla | IKEA
5.83.170.48:19000

[Astalonte 48]

I think basebuilding it s ok the way it is.

Dayz is not Rust. Never basebuilding was a "core" part of the game. 

I know it s important for some people but you cannot "impose" to be this like rust.

Honestly. It s ok the way it s. 

The loot in this game does not belong to you. Stop hoarding and go adventuring.