Zombie Population & Base building

[thegreattriscuit 15]

So first, I did make a good faith effort to see if this had been brought up before. If it has, and I missed it, I apologize.

Secondly, I think it's important to state the problem before the solution. So here it is:

Rocket has said he's pro-base building. And that makes alot of sense. It's what mankind does... we CAN randomly roam the countryside as loaners, but we prefer to work as groups, and we prefer to have a single place we call home. We put our stuff there, and we make it safe. So there's alot of parts to this whole thing that have to be solved before they can implement it. HOW do you build them... WHAT is the purpose (the incentive)... and WHERE do you put them. My suggestion concerns the WHERE.

Right now, when you want to settle down somewhere, you plop a tent down in the woods... And it's probably going to be nice and far away from anywhere important if you don't want someone to come take your stuff. if you get really fancy, you might put some sandbags and wire down. That's cool... but lets be real here... if 99% of the worlds population died, why wouldn't you just move into one of the millions of perfectly good, unoccupied houses and other buildings in the world? What kind of self respecting hard core anarchist bandit clan would setup a bunch of tents in the woods and live like some hobo commune when there's actual castles just waiting to be claimed and fortified? Where would you gather the remnants of a shattered humanity to rebuild... a bunch of crappy tents? or a building with actual walls and a roof? What's to stop groups from doing this?

Well zombies, of course. So what do you do? You kill them. Simple, right? Except they respawn. Of course they have to respawn, because otherwise people would kill all of them and it wouldn't be a very convincing zombie game without any zombies at all. So you pickout a town... or a farmstead out in the boonies, and you clear it out... a few minutes later more spawn, and after a few rounds of this you get fed up and just sit in a field in the rain feeling sorry for yourself.

What i propose is that the game tracks (on either a global or individual server basis, and a good topic for discussion below) the amount of zombies that have been killed in an area over time, and uses that info to weight the zombie spawns. The more zeds you kill in an area, the fewer it will spawn. You would set a threshold, say "for each zombie spawn in an area, 25 zombie deaths in a 24 hour period" (arbitrary example). If that happens, then zombies stop spawning there for a day or two.

With that, you, a few friends, a decent supply of ammo, and a little bit of dedication could push the zombie hoard out of your new home for good (or for a few days, more likely).

There's a lot that could be done to this, depending on where they wanted to take it... This is more of a foundation. Some examples of things that could be done:

1) if a player or group of players manages to clear out somewhere like zoleno... they've reduced the zombie spawns there, but slightly increased them everywhere else... So if the total number of zombie spawns on the map is 1000 (no idea what the real number is) and people shut down 50 of them, then 50 of the remaining spawns will be more active to make up the difference). So the more places that get cleaned out, the more dangerous and difficult everywhere else becomes.

2) If an area gets cleaned out the loot that spawns there could be modified. Make it better, or worse, or cease all together. You could say "the area is occupied, so everything that there is to be found here, has been found already..." but you could also say "you occupied this farm... the obvious thing to do would be to use it to produce some damn food", or something like that. I don't know which of those is the right answer, but it would seem like a good opportunity to introduce a long term goal.

3) Server vs. Global tracking: If it's on a per-server basis, it would lend itself to individuals and groups staking their claim... global tracking would lend itself to large goals like "kill 20k zombies in cherno, across all servers, over the course of a 7 day period to clean it out... ". Also, you could have the other side of that "kill a bunch of players in cherno, and you'll increase the zombie spawn rate". Put that together with increased loot spawns in an occupied area, and you've got a solid incentive to band together not just to clean out a major city, but defend it as well. a hybrid approach would probably be best... say... 3 guys working together for a few days on one server could clear out pusta on that server... if pusta gets cleared out on more than 50% of servers worldwide, then pusta is clear globally for 'x' number of days.

And that's all I've got for 4:00 in the morning. I might come back and add some more, but I think that's good for now. Let me know what you guys think.

[Sergeant Squatt 58]

It's a great idea but honestly the game dosn't need it right now & Rocket is more interested in making it harder not eaiser.

And if it was implemented it would be like more 25 zombie deaths per *30* minutes not a day or two...

Also about the growing food would make the game set in the post-apocolaypse setting not during *maybe* depends on who you ask

And it would have to be on the client side because with ARMA and 50 guys running around some servers are maxed out and i'm going to open up one as soon as i get a keyboard for my Poweredge...

[Arach (DayZ) 7]

I dunno, i kinda like your idea, but i don't see it as something the mod really needs. At least not right away.

If you like a house, why not just settle in it, zombies or not? Zeds aren't really what i'd worry about if settling anywhere, players are.

[Remscar 5]

I like the idea.

My friends and i had Zub as our base for awhile. Zombies were never an issue since they could never come inside the castle tower and we farmed the loot spawns every few minutes.

However we were eventually kicked out due to A) People being dumb and falling off the stairs, result in death. B) Enemies logging into the tower via top floor. C) My friends suck at PvP

I would like the ability to actually have a base and not just roam around, having to solid "home". Perhaps a way to build a base would be nice, like walls and maybe some sort of shelter building so we dont have to sit in the rain.

[federik21 42]

yep it isn't a bad idea.

But the problem are, as you said, zombies respawn and enemies log in.

And banditry.

Every bandit would search for this safe houses... just for shoot the survivor down through the windows.

I won't ever use an house.

[postapocalypticblog 0]

great idea! Base building or not, the idea of clearing an area of zombies (but therefore increasing zombiespawns somewhere else) has a realistic touch...if you kill 50 zombies in a village, at some point you must have gotten all...for a while

[noobfun 87]

so your idea leads to no zombies at NWAF churno and elctro ... think i shall vote no

[ZombifiedShark 8]

Houses or whatever you call them, are obviously server bound and should have nothing to do with client besides loading I'm my opinion. Because a hacker could prob find a script or something to fuck with the houses or spawn a house or some stupid shit like that

[Tarkastio 38]

+(Max number of votes I have available to use.)

I love it, makes base building important, gives players a reason to band together, makes zombies a more integral part of the game. and yet another realistic aspect to add to a realisticly styled game.

You, my good man, may have my beans.

Edited August 2, 2012 by Tarkastio