Time and resource calculations for underground construction (+fancy sketches <3)

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

I understand that the whole construction system is prbably already in design or even WIP and fully documented.

But even when it's finished it will may be require some balancing and tweaking.

So I tried to sum up reality with game in the way of a table, which can calculate the time you need to build this or that structure.

The table is fully editable (and backed up in case it's messed up) so you may play however you want with it.

You can change resources number, or times to dig 1 cubic meter or weather index (be attentive, it's a dropdown list, 1 = nice dry, 1,5 = rainy, 2,5 = frosty)

This table was designed after some 15 pages thread of unstoppable fantasies on the future underground system in the Russian section of this forum. So may be something will not be clear or understandable. Feel free to ask or critisize :) Because the numbers in the table are not ideal and I'd like us find the best average balance.

Even if Rocket never sees this thread, that will be just fun.

IF YOU HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE IN THIS STUFF, PLEASE ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:

• How much time will it take you to dig a pit* 1x1x1 meters?
  
• ... chop a tree 25cm in diameter
  
• ... 8 cm in diameter
  

*A cubic meter. In nice weather, wood soil -a bit sandy and a bit black soil, without stones, no roots, no grabage underground, not cracked dry, nor heavily wet, with good spade, full health :) ideal soil and conditions to dig.

Here is the basic construction mechanic concept.

To construct something you will:

1. gather necessary materials
   
2. bring them to the desired place
   
3. convert materials into a construction site
   
4. this begins a construction timer
   
5. press a construct button to take 3 minutes off the construction timer
   
6. button appears at random locations to prevent macros
   
7. adverse conditions (raining, frozen ground) reduce the amount of time the button takes off the construction timer
   
8. more than one player can construct on a site, so that groups can work cooperatively to reduce the the construction timer faster
   

(thanks NFK for making this list correctly)

HERE IS THE LINK TO MY TABLE AT GOOGLE DOCS

Russian version of this table

Other people sketches in the original thread (Russian)

Edited August 27, 2012 by -=PA=-Mikhail

[tiptoptopper@gmail.com 244]

HERE IS THE LINK TO MY TABLE (WITH MY SKETCHES) AT GOOGLE DOCS

That looks awesome. :)

Do you think a locking system could be implemented into the more elaborate and larger underground bunkers?

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

I'm loving the sound of this!

[U.B.C.S. Ravin 326]

Take all of my beans.

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

That looks awesome. :)

Do you think a locking system could be implemented into the more elaborate and larger underground bunkers?

If you mean security locking system, like some code lock for entrance or some hydraulic door with some passcard, then yes, why not.

Numpad lock is very easy to design in arma. Mechanics are simple.

Passcard is tougher, but may be possible. We discussed locks and security a lot in our thread. So primitive padlock is good too. Though it can be broken by a crowbar or a hatched. Even the wooden door can be destroyed with proper tools and enough time.

The good idea was about the one way locking system. It's is a combination of a simple lock or digital lock when you're outside of your bunker. And when you enter it you can jam and block the door so that it can be only destroyed or require some complex penetration tools to open it.

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

I'm loving the sound of this!

Take all of my beans.

Thank you :)

Edited August 24, 2012 by -=PA=-Mikhail

[Takas 91]

Lovely... but I hope it won't take too much time do dig your hole. Realism yes, on the other hand it should not take up all my time from actually playing. :)

[airborne01@comcast.net 23]

I love this.

As an additional idea, how about the ability to make Zombie-proof barriers. These could be very hard to make, but could be used to start to seal off small towns. The result would be that the more contained a village was, the power the zombie spawn in that area. You would also have to reduce the loot spawns in the town to represent that the town has been thoroughly picked over, but people could with many weeks of work, create small zombie free zones.

[tiptoptopper@gmail.com 244]

If you mean security locking system, like some code lock for entrance or some hydraulic door with some passcard, then yes, why not.

Numpad lock is very easy to design in arma. Mechanics are simple.

Yes, this is what I had in mind.

The good idea was about the one way locking system. It's is a combination of a simple lock or digital lock when you're outside of your bunker. And when you enter it you can jam and block the door so that it can be only destroyed or require some complex penetration tools to open it.

This also sounds really great. Those types of digital locks could be a rare spawn in grocery stores, while the hydraulics could be a very rare spawn in industrial areas.

[tiptoptopper@gmail.com 244]

I love this.

As an additional idea, how about the ability to make Zombie-proof barriers. These could be very hard to make, but could be used to start to seal off small towns. The result would be that the more contained a village was, the power the zombie spawn in that area. You would also have to reduce the loot spawns in the town to represent that the town has been thoroughly picked over, but people could with many weeks of work, create small zombie free zones.

Great idea, but he Zombie-proof barriers would have to deteriorate over time through constant zombie bashing.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Topper

[Toilet 204]

With the digging 1x1x1M hole, in soft-average dirt it should take anywhere between 30-60 mins.

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

Lovely... but I hope it won't take too much time do dig your hole. Realism yes, on the other hand it should not take up all my time from actually playing. :)

Yeah, I agree. It must be balanced and at least worthy of spending the time to build this or that.

[steve t 32]

Awesome...thank you for sharing.

[Delta Smoke 01 765]

Pass card locks would be amazing. Imagine killing off a clan and finding a passcard on the bodys! I would search the entire area like a boss !

[tiptoptopper@gmail.com 244]

Pass card locks would be amazing. Imagine killing off a clan and finding a passcard on the bodys! I would search the entire area like a boss !

I would keep searching until I fell asleep with my face on the floor.

[Toilet 204]

I would keep searching until I fell asleep with my face on the floor.

I would raid the bunker then throw all the passcards away. Problem officer?

[Jim Bean 157]

Because the average lone survivor would just so happen to have the knowledge required to install hydraulic doors and pass card access systems on a shitty little hole that he dug up in the middle of nowhere...

Seriously impressed with the amount of thought you've thrown into it but just seems like it's a tad farfetched to me.

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

Construction and deconstruction

When we discussed the detail we came upon the idea that every construction will need just the same tools for both construction and deconstruction. If somebody tried hard enough and made 4 deep going metal tubes around his simple dugout entrance, then he found a welding device and welded a thick metal plate with inside door hinges... THe fastes way to break such a door will be to weld it off. Even a couple of grenades can be not enough to open it. A powerful pipebomb may collapse the structure.

The idea is that if you deconstruct something, you receive the resources back, not in full number or quality, but why not. Come to some dugout with a saw and cut out a good door for your storage cache :)

Motion sensor and small handmade electric security devices

Another big thing we fantasized was the movement detecting security. A simple motion sensor is very cheap and easy to setup. Imagine a deactivation button at some distance in the bush. But if you don't activate the motion sensor it will trigger a sound and light alarm making nearby zombies come to join the party :) Or worse! It can trigger explosion... or it can silently alarm the people inside that someone's is nearby. And the same deconstruction applies here. Somebody can be able to steal both the sensor and the button :) And put a tripwire with a grenade at your door. You open it and... BOOM.

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

Because the average lone survivor would just so happen to have the knowledge required to install hydraulic doors and pass card access systems on a shitty little hole that he dug up in the middle of nowhere...

Proof of concept possibility

I fully undestand your point. We stumbled upon this huge problem in our past discussion. Rocket himself helped us. He told that any mechanics in the game will be involving the same thinking processes as in real life. Not fancy realistic graphics or models, but actions and thinking.

Knowledge base

So if you ask yourself, what do I need to learn and be able to attach this hidraulic mechanism to this metal door?

1. Tools
   
2. Instructions\Manuals
   
3. Resource materials
   

Example of intuitive construction

I purposedly write it without googling first.

I think that for 1 and 2 you will need

1. some gas weilding device (to join the door and the hydraulic hand)
   
2. some small parts like studs
   
3. isolating materials
   
4. some spare metal for welding
   
5. wires
   
6. some electrical relay switching unit
   
7. you'll need some electricity as well (some power generator)
   
8. then you'll need some method to transport and position the door (that depends on the weight and size)
   

Then we create an electrician toolbox ingame. It will contain 3,5,6

At some factory you can grab a box full of 2 and 4.

Manuals and instructions for complex devices

Now for the manuals. It can be either (unrealistic but effective) on the internet, official or not, or ingame simeple note or a book. You read it, actually read the text which runs: "To attach a hydraulic door to your room. You'll need <look up the list>. Then you need to join door and the hydraulic hand. Then setup metal tubes into the ground to attach hydraulics base. Now power up the device and attach your desired switch. Beware unisolated wires. The unpowered door can be opened manually with a crowbar. You may install an inner valve lock tfor additional securite while indoors"

This is intuitive, authentic. Once you learned it you are now a specialist. Your personal skill has grown. Nex time you wont need a book to construct this thing again.

Seriously impressed with the amount of thought you've thrown into it but just seems like it's a tad farfetched to me.

Thank you. I'm really got very deep inside it all. I'm very inspired by the whole DayZ concept. And unfortunately for everyone I'm a graphomaniac and always write walls of texts :) I dream about writing a collection of short stries based on DayZ universe :) One very short is ready in Russian... people liked it so I continue. Getting serious and made plot chronology for 20 years already to have a believable scientific basis for future stories. Wife tells I've gone mad :)

Edited August 24, 2012 by -=PA=-Mikhail

[ryokukitsune 5]

I'll start off with the down to the point raw estimate and move on to the justifications.

Note: times and volumes are dependent on one person excavating and with proper tools

Dry/hot (91-115ºF) 3 hours 1x1x1m

moderate (60-90ºF) 1 hour 1x1x1m

cold (35-59ºF) 3 hours .5x.5x.5m

freezing (0-34º) 2-3 days .5x.5x.5m

bullet points for the TL-DR:

*ground temperature makes a difference

*environmental strain makes the job take longer

*the element maximums can kill you

*working alone in extremes is dangerous

*shelter and plenty of supplies

*workable game mechanic spitballing

CAUTION: WALL-O-TEXT

I've been tasked with digging a lot of holes in my time and I think I've gotten pretty good at it. Most of the projects I've been assigned to are for post holes, flower beads and the occasional shallow foundation (most of the real world project time from comes complete with finishing. i.e. shore up holes to prevent collapse or leveling) the bulk of my experience comes from very narrow holes of maybe 1/4^th meeter in diameter at a depth of max 1 meeter, each hole took roughly ten minuets a go accounting for moderate conditions.

I've found that air temps are largely irrelevant if you are dressed for the conditions you are working in, the exception leaning towards cold/freezing or dry/hot temps. Its possible to excavate in those extremes but its not pleasant and so much more work than it would be in better conditions.

The main thing to consider when digging is the type of earth being moved and how dry/wet it is. On both ends of the spectrum topsoil can be nearly impossible to move either because its to lose or because it weighs as much as a cinder block with half the volume. Suspending for a moment that one would be digging into different types of earth (topsoil, gravel, clay and/or sand and so-on) the biggest problem in determining how hard it is to excavate earth is the ground temperature because that determines weight and density (by water content)

hot dry earth is practically sand and very lose making it difficult to get a load from the pit, cold wet earth is hard to excavate because most of the effort is put into breaking it up and shoveling out of ones hole. In both hot and cold ground is brittle but very hard making progress harder to gauge by simply measuring the depth. Getting to a depth isn't the hard part its getting all the lose fill out of the hole. The lose earth is what keeps excavators from digging deeper or leveling out pits. Unless its compacted it will likely take much longer to clear out the fill earth in the maximums of the temperature scale.

In cold/freezing weather conditions I wouldn't even try unless I had shelter, a buddy and plenty of supplies. Opposite to digging in warm to hot weather the idea is not to exert yourself to the point you are dripping with sweat. If you drench your cloths you might as well be standing in the elements naked and getting hypothermia is a very real danger. If working alone and don't respect this fact you can pass out and die an ice cube or just come down with a fatal bug that can kill you in less than a weeks time, less so if you don't have adequate shelter while you are working.

In hot weather sweating isn't so much a problem as staying hydrated. Again I wouldn't try it in the upper extremes without someone to make sure you don't turn into bacon from sun stroke. Working safely in these conditions determines the time it takes to complete the assigned task and is determined by the strain of the environmental conditions, a worker will get tired quickly (or need to stop) in temperature extremes but in the rite conditions someone could swing a pick ax or shovel all day long only really getting hungry or thirsty.

If I where to make a recommendation about the scheme of building it would be to either A) leave structures incomplete for spans of time until they could be completed safely or B) start with smaller structures (caches, spider holes) that can either be expanded or used until a bunker can be constructed while taking advantage of temporary shelter [tents, leanto's]

If the effort is not an investment in time (for the sake of game mechanics) it should be an investment of supplies requiring food/water and regular visits to a camp fire [heat packs] or shade and the longer an excavation goes on the slower progression, translating to longer time to completed.

Basically don't dig straight threw to the end of a project, take time to rest or it will take 2-3 times as long to complete with the hazard of either falling over into shock or catching pneumonia.

[NFK 102]

In regards to time to dig a given volume, there's some military studies on digging available. Go to section 4.5.4, they quantify the rate by shovelling rate (how many scoops per minute) and blade load (how many kilograms of earth moved per scoop). Section 4.6 (Table 48) lists common military digging tasks with dig rates and time to complete, given certain types of material and tools.

Also, the studies confirm Ryokukitsune's post. It is more efficient to dig in intervals, with rest breaks, than to dig continuously. from start to finish.

For the game, the three factors could be tools, rate, and material being dug.

Tools - measured in terms of blade load. A small entrenching tool would have the smallest blade load, while a full size shovel the largest.

Rate - the pace at which your character digs. This could be fixed, or it could be a variable controlled by the player where a faster rate burns more energy necessitating more food and drink.

Material Being Dug - for simplification, material in the game could be sand, soil, clay, or rocky, all at either normal or frozen temperature. Each combination would be assigned a difficulty value. Materials that slow down digging would have a value of greater than 1, materials that accelerate digging would have a value of less than 1.

So the game could determine a character's digging by calculating:

(Tool * Rate) / Difficulty value of Material = Mass Dug per Time

Example: Unfrozen soil has a difficulty value of one (neither slowing down nor speeding up dig time). Character is using a collapsible entrenching tool with a blade load of 2kg per scoop. Character digs at an average pace of 12 scoops per minute. The game would calculate:

(2kg * 8 scoops/min) / 1 = 16kgs of material dug

The game would have to assign a density value to the material dug to determine what volume of space was created.

A simpler, but less realistic system would be volumetric only. Every tool would remove a given volume of material per scoop in a world where all material had a uniform density. Instead of blade load, you would use blade volume, and calculate:

(Blade Volume * Scoops/min) / Difficulty Value of Material = Volume Dug per Time

Example: Unfrozen clay has a difficulty value of 1.5. Character is using a collapsible entrenching tool with blade volume of 500cc. Character digs at an average pace of 12 scoops per minute. So the game calculates:

(500cc * 12 Scoops/min) / 1.5 = 4000cc/min

That's only 0.004m3, so it's going to be a long day with that puny entrenching tool. Tweak the numbers as desired.

Of course, all this assumes you even want the game calculating dig time and volume removed. For all we know Rocket will assign every type of underground structure a fixed time to create, with an accompanying animation.

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

When we designed this concept we decided a player will have to bring all required resources to the place where he wants to start constru tion, then he converts the resources into a construction site. He chooses what he is building before this of course. Then every player can come to construction site and do some actions. Check status - player sees what is being constructed, resources list and how much time it requires. Another action is CONSTRUCT. And DECONSTRUCT.

Now lets say we construct a dugout for 42 hours.

And here is the most important part. Every player can do construction ONLY for 3 minutes. After that he must manually activate construct action again for next 3 minutes. Each time he decreases the total construction time by 3 minutes.

This mechanic makes you actually work, routinely, tiresomely work. Really work instead of simply activating construction, turning your monitor off for 42 hours and come later to see everything done automatically.

Mouse bots and macros? Wont work. The place of the CONSTRUCT button will be set randomly on the screen.

When you work, you get thirsty and hungry quicker. When thirst or hunger flashes red, construction button gets disabled.

If weather changes, you will do the action longer in the rain. You will construct only 2 minutes when it rains, but spend 3 minutes as usual. When the soil gets frozen, you will construct only 1 minute for 3 minutes work.

This is my idea. It will be authentic an not too simple to do it alone. Just as you suggested above. If another player comes he can press CONSTRUCT button too and give his 3 minutes at any time. So construction goes quicker.

What do you think about such method?

[NFK 102]

If I understand correctly, the sequence would be:

- gather necessary materials

- bring them to the desired place

- convert materials into a construction site

- this begins a construction timer

- press a construct button to take 3 minutes off the construction timer

- button appears at random locations to prevent macros

- adverse conditions (raining, frozen ground) reduce the amount of time the button takes off the construction timer

- more than one player can construct on a site, so that groups can work cooperatively to reduce the the construction timer faster

Is that a correct summary of your mechanic?

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

Yes. Couldn't put it better myself. I'll add this to OP.

[Lt_Dutchy 1]

Interesting, hope it gets a place in the standalone.

It would finally be a way to store items so that other people cant steal them or atleast others cant find them because it will only appear on the map of the player(s) that made it (they will have a symbol at the place it is positions and have to look for it there)? And others can only find it with luck because the entrance is camouflaged with grass, etc?

[sixfeetgiantbunnyrabbit 40]

love it. i don´t know how such open concepts can be implemented into a game but if it would make it into the standalone i´d spend my time figuring out how to wire booby traps to christmas lightings, or how to transform a dog into a remote controlled spy drone. you´re welcome.

but i think for more complex constructions it would be wise that players would need to find manuals in game in addition to the necessary materials so you can prevent Chernarus being flooded with futuristic high tech electronical devices, people learned to construct through various How-To-Dos on the internet.