Balanced group housing/fortifications

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I've noticed threads on housing, and I think it's a fairly common want, but a lot of people are missing balance here.

Housing can't make the game easier for players, it should only affect the style the player uses to play the game.

Housing can't offer serious protection to players, it may be intended to offer the feeling of safety, but shouldn't actually provide it.

Housing should be used for the purpose of survival, no decoration, no non-essential customization.

Ideas/Suggestions for houses:

• must have multiple entry/exit points, thus would not be suitable for a single person. Encouraging survivors to band together.
  
• offer plenty of storage, accessible water, protection from the elements.
  
• reduce level of noise produced and mask players (to a degree). If shots are fired or something very noisy happens in the house, zombies should attack, and will break down any fortifications between them and their targets.
  
• are a bigger target for other survivors to attempt raiding.
  
• significantly increase local zombie population when occupied.
  
• entering or exiting will draw attention of zombies.
  
• fortifications can be built with large amounts of supplies
  
• fortifications could include barricading doors (breakable, but will produce lots of noise, will prevent zombies from entering until broken), fencing(breakable, producing lots of noise, acts as a physical barrier to zombies and survivors), and (in certain buildings) secret attics or basements.
  
• must take time and resources to maintain. (prevents use by individuals, and prevents structure from being permanently held by a player or players)
  

The balance for players comes mostly in the fact that occupied houses are bigger targets for looting, as they are more likely to contain loot that other survivors worked hard to get; however, the increased zombie presence and possible fortifications make infiltration more complicated. This encourages teamwork from both the defending and invading parties. This also encourages players to take on more specific roles.

When players occupying a house are offline, zombie presence remains high, but the house will be undefended once zombies are cleared.

I'm not talking about the ability to place houses or defenses wherever, only the ability to occupy existing homes, this allows developers the ability to ensure balance.

This would also allow for greater immersion as a survivor if you have friends that play the game. The ability to band together and have a central location to base operations out of is already there, survivors and bandits do it, but it isn't really expanded upon at all.

These are just suggestions, not complaints, and not saying the game sucks, because it doesn't. Please feel free to contribute, and link other threads regarding this to and from this thread, so everyone can contribute.

Additional thoughts/concerns:

This might make it too easy for groups of players to store and hoard stuff, when a single player in said group dies, it would be very easy for him/her to get back on their feet. When in a group, this is already simple enough, but this might make it easier, and I'm not sure if that would be an acceptable change in gameplay as it removes some of the fear of death.

The threat of attack from other survivors only comes if they are aware of it's occupation, there would need to be some kind of indicator of occupation in order to add balance, and alert other survivors to the players existence there. We don't want something that would alert every player, just those in the area surrounding. If we alert everyone, the area would turn into a mass killing field with everyone killing everyone else, if we alert no-one, the house will go un attacked for weeks if it is not in a high traffic area, removing fun for players occupying the house. I think use of the radio would be an interesting option. Anyone carrying a radio would pick up an "emergency broadcast" when close enough to the occupied house, enticing them to either attack or join forces (and possibly betray the group)

Larger structures would require more resources, pushing survivors to consider allowing unknowns into the group, while smaller homes would require smaller groups which could communicate exclusively with eachother and not need to allow strangers in.

This could change gameplay too much for the individual survivor, we don't want that. Some people are just naturally loners, and we don't want to screw them over. The game should not become about control of territory and exclusion of individuals from said territory unless there is a consensus on a server to do so for role playing elements. Need to ensure that control of a large area can not be dominated by 10-20 people. This could be done by adjusting resource requirements, lowering the number of occupiable buildings, or only allowing buildings in certain areas to be occupiable.