A small building overhaul

[Suomiboi]

Well I couldn't make a more describing title, so I decided that it covers what I'm going to suggest.

 

So, my gripe with the building system has been that you can fairly easily and fast, build a fortress worthy for a medieval king and I know that the devs like it to be simple and game play friendly. However, I don't think that building is used to it's full potential.

 

In games like minecraft and many strategy games, the building and getting better at it, is a large part of the fun rather than just a hurdle you have to pass to get to lvl 5. This is what should be imo concerned with the building. Atm people rush to the books and grind their way up to the 2nd level with sawing planks and then start barricading to get to 3 etc. I think that it's too easy to advance for as big a reward. But on the other hand we don't want to take the joy of building away from those who don't want to grind their way on the top or spend hours on a safe house, that they're going to ditch soon anyways.

 

I'm suggesting that building should be, firstly slower to advance in skills and second, have an "in progress" system that makes the elements work at a certain stage, but have significantly less durability.

 

The added benefit on the latter would be that you can build up your walls as quickly as now to make a perimiter defence, but to build something that might last more than a single/2/3 zombie(s), you'd need to put time and effort into the building. So basically you'd have the traditional progress bar that'd fill up slowly as you build and when you leave the build, you can return to it whenever you feel like and continue the progress. Now when you're past, let's say the middle point of a wall, you'll have a working shoddy wall at your hands. At this point you can go off and do the next piece to make your building bigger or you can stay and build the wall to it's full strength.

 

Also the construction worker, as OP as it is now, should have building buffs to build items stronger and faster or even have specific buildable items to him/her, this would as per discussed on other threads add to the variety of playability.

 

I imagine that this'd be possible in the confines of java or maybe even lua, but the spriting for the unfinished parts would have course also be a chore. I doubt that any engine change would be required.

 

I also think that some tweaking to the building might be underway when the NPCs arrive, to achieve balance, but this is also a poke at that, to say that it's wanted.

 

TL;DR: When building items you're able to leave them unfinished and get back to them. After you've built to a certain point, walls etc. would work, but to make them as durable as atm, you'd need to finish them, which would take longer. Also as just said, make the building time longer with it.

 

On the same topic, a small side suggestion:

It'd be a nice addition to add a wall supporting bar against the wall and on the ground to help the wall against slightly larger crowds.

[bvhv]

I..... Love it!

[Realmkeeper]

I do mostly agree with this.

Perhaps, in the case of walls, once construction reaches something like 30% complete, the wall is given a durability. As construction is further completed, the durability is increased up until the wall is 100% constructed. That durability increase may be linear, or it may not.

 

This leaves open the possibility of semi-constructing things when you do not currently have all the resources to complete it, or being able to come back later at a higher skill level and 'reinforce' the structure, increasing it's durability beyond what was the maximum when it was constructed.

For example, if a hypothetical wall required 3 planks and 2 nails to fully construct, and you only had 2 planks and a single nail at the time, you could still begin construction and only complete 60% of the wall - leaving it incomplete with perhaps 40% of it's maximum durability. At a later point you could bring along another plank and a nail and finish construction.

 

That probably also opens the door for teamwork construction - Someone begins construction on all the walls of a base, but doesn't complete them, and the other players can come along with more resources and finish construction. The 'template' has then been laid out by one individual, and can be constructed by the others (or NPCs!).

 

Eh, just my thoughts on how such a construction system may work - I've previously begun implementing something similar in an older game I developed.

[Suomiboi]

I..... Love it!

Thanks!

 

-snipped-

 

 

Good thoughts Realmkeeper, I fully agree. It would make building more accessible and more demanding if you want to put the effort to it.

[Impetiso]

I love the idea, that way you will care for the NPCs because you will need them to do stuff you can't do alone (not at the same speed at least).

[deprav]

Yep I very much love that suggestion as well ! There are a few other things to be said about construction imo.

Another way to make the construction of a house a longer process could be to actually have to build the roof. A second layer of floor tiles means you need twice the ressources and time to cover the same surface. Except if you decide not to build 1st floor tiles and do a roof-garage type of construction. That would make more sense than having a magic rain-protection-roof over any floor tile on the first floor.

Which brings me to my second point, the fact that the 2nd floor is only accessible by players with high-ish building skills. Stairs sure are hard to build, but there should be another way to reach the 2nd floor of the map with lower skill requirements, like ladders, or climbing on crates, or trampolines.
Or considering Suomiboi's suggestion, poorly made stairs or ladder-stairs, upgradable to real stairs by higher skilled carpenters.

I think walls should also have different levels of resistance against player's sledgehammer depending on the carpentry level of the player who built/upgraded it, with ultimately plastered and concete walls being the toughest ones to break.

And also, manual drills to be able to use dem screws.
 

[silents429]

I don't know why, but it took me til now to think I didn't have to build a hundred junky walls to level up carpentry when baricading levels it up instead.

[deprav]

I posted the following paragraphs on another thread, but I thought it would suit this precise discussion and goes along the OP suggestion ;o It kind of resume the whole stuff.

"
It would be nice to see carpentry leveling not as a succession of craft-recipes unlocking over time but as an evolution of the quality of your work. Like, anyone could give a shot at building a rain barrel but a non-experienced guy would make it less hermetic (leaking), with a smaller capacity, maybe pretty weak and prone to break during storms or having its water contaminated by bacterias. Low level stairs could be ladder-ish stairs, slower to climb and weaker, prone to break under the weight of an heavy-loaded person etc...
The more you level up, the better the quality of your work : thicker, more resistant, more efficient, more useful for harsh conditions.

Edit : That could work for any crafting & surviving skills.
A low level trapper would craft shitty traps with high risk of animals getting away, not weather resistant. the harder the trap is to build, the more chance you have to make a trap that barely works or doesn't work at all.
A low level fisherman would craft weak fishing poles, bad hooks, and fish would get away way more often, except very small ones.
When the electricity crafting comes in, you'd have high chances of making a circuit that cuts a lot, need more fuel, high risk of fire, power outage when rainy, or simply doesn't work if you try to craft something too complicated.
etc...

That would also make ressource management funnier, you could try to craft hard stuff with a low level character, but you might just waste some ressources as the result wouldn't fit the object's purpose. AND that would give the lucky trait more weight."



Also : Walls and wooden crafted object built by low-level carpenters/crafters could deteriorate over time and get weaker and weaker. Even more with the erosion mod incoming.
 

[deprav]

(sorry for double post but I didn't want to make a whole new thread since it fits pretty well in here)

Forgot to mention it earlier but that's an idea I had for a long time :

Building sky bridges is pretty OP and absurd imo, we should be forced to build structures/pilars able to hold upper floors ! Like you'd need a pilar at ground floor level to hold 8 tiles of upper floor, or something along those lines.

[EnigmaGrey]

(sorry for double post but I didn't want to make a whole new thread since it fits pretty well in here)

Forgot to mention it earlier but that's an idea I had for a long time :

Building sky bridges is pretty OP and absurd imo, we should be forced to build structures/pilars able to hold upper floors ! Like you'd need a pilar at ground floor level to hold 8 tiles of upper floor, or something along those lines.

Already in the game, oddly enough. They're just not used for anything right now.

[King jjwpenguin]

They could do a lot in the game. My idea is that floors that make up second levels should have certain weight limits. That way you can have large empty floors but if there is too much weight it can break sending you down a level. It would make pillars useful and therefor make it so the maximum weight limit can only be reached my a multitude of pillars and a well thought out design. 

[uberevan]

The time it takes to work your way up to lvl 3 is fine IMO but I like the rest of the post.  I get that some people can grind easily but in real life if you really wanted to learn something bad enough you'd be surprised how fast you can learn it.

[EnigmaGrey]

The time it takes to work your way up to lvl 3 is fine IMO but I like the rest of the post.  I get that some people can grind easily but in real life if you really wanted to learn something bad enough you'd be surprised how fast you can learn it.

And then there's all the fun injuries and ruined materials that rushing results in.

[uberevan]

 

The time it takes to work your way up to lvl 3 is fine IMO but I like the rest of the post.  I get that some people can grind easily but in real life if you really wanted to learn something bad enough you'd be surprised how fast you can learn it.

And then there's all the fun injuries and ruined materials that rushing results in.

That's a good idea: Penalties for not taking your time.  You can grind all you want but you might get sore hands and a strained back as well as crummy or destroyed wood you've experimented on.

[King jjwpenguin]

I learned that if you barricade and unbarricade you only lose a little hammer durability and 1 nail. You can effectively grind your level until you reach level 5 if you have a good hundred nails or so. Even less if you use books. Just saying that's a problem to me.

[Bullwinkle]

At low carpentry levels, you should be able to smash your thumb with the hammer pretty seriously.

[Sadeyx]

Yes I agree with the suggestion,

 

Though, I think some part of the issue may be that once you've cleared an area of zombies, there is very little threat that occurs to threaten defences. until such 'events' come into the game (cue random passing hoardes / vandelous npc's) its hard to say how effective the current system is.

 

However, I do feel that, (among other things in PZ), all player made structures should 'wear down' over-time with various things effecting the rate of degredation (like weather, bumping zombies, workmanship) and a variety of ways to 'maintain' structures (painting, fixing, weather proofing)

 

This would discourage large sprawling walls that would take too much time, effort and resources to maintain, favoring smaller, space efficient areas that are faster, cheaper and quicker to maintain.

 

Another issue is that players WANT to make large sprawling walls and structures right now because they need a large project to level the skill.  So I would actually say that building structures should level the skill faster, But!  the resource cost, time and 'risk of injury' should be greater.

 

At the end of the day your not training to become a master carpenter capable of constructing complex wooden palaces, but rather, you just need enough skill to construct sturdy, reliable and functional objects that are well made but simple, effective and have a good life for its purpose.