bobchaos

You're describing a process of discovery, but all the stuff we do in game is already discovered :/ If I was stuck in a zombopocalypse, i'd be much more likely to raid the local library's technical sections than try to rediscover metalsmithing from scratch. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea, but it should not replace the recipe book system either. If I find a book entitled "how to make a bow", my first reflex won't be to go get me a copy of "Trees of Kansas", "Making animal gut bowstrings" and "Awesome knots for hunters", I'm just going to try and craft a damn bow :/
 
I'd see it more as a complement to recipe books and a replacement for skillbooks. Instead of having a single book that gives XP bonus for lvl X, I'd replace those with your research system. Did research about wood? Small XP bonus to foraging and carpentry. Studied local flora? Bonus to farming and foraging.

I recall seeing a video somewhere of a new animation for a dead one stumbling over a fence. The devs got you covered already!

equip one bag in sec and the other in primary, open the inventory you want to empty, the drag n drop all the contents into the small icon for your bag to fill.

Even that i´m a bloody Kraut but even as a child i build bows and arrows, certainly not effectiv once but one can learn^^
f.e. with 0 archery and 0 carpentry you could build just a training bow to learn to use it and just simple arrows which couldn´t anything
with every lvl up in both you could build better bows and arrows and also the distance you can effectly use them would get more.
And as you could combine spezial arrows by using like trapping/hunting later on with capentry. For Zed´s you need point Arrows to easy remove and penetrate, but for hunting you need arrows that don´t fall off so you need barb arrows and maybe you can use it with string to get a rope or ladder up a tree to build tree houses without a stair. And not to talk about firearrows to get some light in the distance or make a lighthouse out of an enemybase^^

You know, back when I was 10 years old I made a bow & arrows with my dad, it wasn't very durable or very effective, it was the most basic bow you could imagine but it could shoot an arrow with enough force that it would lodge into a tree bark. It's not rocket science and the only really difficult thing about bows is aiming.

And I don't think anyone is going to craft a composite bow anytime soon, those could be findable in the world but your basic bow is extremely easy to make even with minimal experience.

Also, I just find it funny that some people seem to think that "Average Joe" in PZ is the kind of guy who was born yesterday and spent his entire life in front of a TV watching "reality" shows. Sure, the game is full of those kinds of Joes, you know, all the zombies... Let's assume that survivors have on average more than half a brain.

Before I get into the idea, let me state that I understand there's probably a lot of coding involved in this. Thought I'd throw it out there anyhow, maybe it's easier than I think, my programming experience if fairly limited and mostly in scripting languages.
 
In another thread I suggested it would be interesting if zombies didn't attack player made structures on contact but only if they see or hear meat moving about on the other side of said structure. If you keep quiet inside your fort, zombies don't try to tear it down, in essence.
 
I'd like to add to that another mechanic suggestion on top of that: Simulating the push of a horde. Basically, I'd have zombies be able to "transmit" damage to structures through other zombies, simulating the ones at the back pushing against the ones in the front. Think like that scene in TWD when zombies accumulate at the prison's fence until there's so many of them pushing against it that the supports bend and the fence falls.
 
This becomes complicated from a coding perspective since you'd have to detemine which part of the wall zombies at the back are hitting, so to address that you could have contiguous section of walls share HP. A bigger wall has more HP, but if zombies break through it the entire section goes down. Plus, the larger the wall, the more zombies can press up against it, compensating for the high HP. If that turns out to be OP, you could have each wall segment have dimishing returns until new wall pieces no longer provide extra HP to a given section.
 
Want to make it down right dwarfy? The wall sections are super flimsy but you can stick supports behind them to add HP to the overall structure. A section without a support within X tiles would become a weak point that zombies pushing against (in a given arc extending from the weak section) deal extra damage to.
 
Thoughts anyone?

Ok, now that my excitement is somewhat quieter in my head I have more feedback, I have a real problem with one thing in sandbox. Zombie respawn interval.

1 Day = WAY too often
1 Week = WAY too rarely

Having it at 1 day means zombies never, ever end, you don't get to breathe at all. It's nice but it gets old fast when you kill 100 zeds in an area around your safehouse and have to deal with them all over again the next day.

Having it at one week means you get way too much room to breathe.

Changing the respawn % doesn't really help all that much IMO, it's either 1 Day 10% or 1 Week 50%+ we need something in between, 1-2-3-4-5-6 Days, 1-2-3 Weeks, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11 Months and a Year I'd love to experiment but I don't have the options

Also, the amount of zeds in a group needs to be higher or there should be different types of groups, some with 10 zeds, some with 20 etc. and 1% of having a horde of 1000 somewhere out there.

Randomize stuff, make it less predictable. Give us more options. Please, please, please and thank you

Sorry if already suggested, I can be a silly goose sometimes. Fish needs to be cooked, as it can contain parasites while raw IRL (not sure if them fish worms are as lethal as pigs' armed tapeworm) but still atleast food poisoning would do. I have strong stomach ingame, but the icon doesn't even say "dangerous uncooked" nor I had any poisoning from raw fish.
Edit: highly exploitable for not having to waste fuel or time

I agree with the last part, devs can take the game wherever they want but having sandbox options that allow for huge hordes and different forms of zombie migration would be great. Whether it would be there for those who just prefer the other system or those who just want to have a risk of one day seeing a 1000+ massive zombie horde as an added challenge in their game would be the icing on the cake.
While I like that no areas remain completely clear now I do see how it could be possible for it to happen occasionally. Having a good day, not seeing any zombie on a lotting run.
This build has had some neat stuff happen and I'd like to be able to see all of it again, when I feel I'm up for the specific type of challenge.
Zombie Lore Options like
Max Horde Size that goes from No Hordes all the way up to 1000
Migration option that goes from having just a few zombies migrate to all of them when something happens.
Etc. It would be a great addition to sandbox, and it would be a waste to not include some of the stuff we've had in Build 32 so far in there.

I've been playing on build 32, which added 2 new professions and a skill: engineer and electrician (+ electrical skill). It just might be rotten luck but I've not been able to find recipe books for all the engineer's traps. Assuming they just don't exist, that's where I'm concerned.
 
This would create a system in which all players are no longer "equal", meaning that (as far as I can tell, new player) some professions can do things that others can't do at all. I just thought it was nice that you had to pick a specialization but you still could do anything with a bit more effort. Maybe have a skill lvl requirement for the recipe books, or make leveling more complex skills (like engineering, electrical and carpentry) downright dangerous when doing things that are considered innapropriate for your level. A lvl 0 carpenter for instance could cut himself with the saw or add his finger and blood to the barricade decorations. I could certainly see an amateur engineer exploding himself trying to fix up a pipe bomb.
 
Actually, now that I wrote that, yeah, that's what i'm going with: replace all level requirement with a chance for bodily harm! That's be brutal
 
All characters should have equal skill oportunities while finding their demise! Thoughts anyone?

There's currently some level of randomness already, with some being faster/sturdier than others. I thought it would be more appropriate to have all the zombies "evolve" over time. You start the game with a few mean, fast zombies (freshly turned), a few weeks into the game they start slowing down, then a few weeks later new fast zombies start spawning (As society collapses outside the quarantine zone and more freshly turned zombies start coming in from off-map), but 6 months into the game they'd all be slow and weak, but much more numerous. It would create different challenges as the game progress: fight the few fast zombies early, and then hide from the big and slow hordes. This would simulate zombie decomposition and self-inflicted damage from having no sense of self-preservation while maintaining challenge throughout the game by virtue of their numbers.

I the IWBUMS 32 thread I mentioned how barricading a house is now more about sleeping undisturbed for a night and less about permanent settlement sinc ezombies will destroy your work as soon as you're looking the other way, and then the devs mentionned they do want the end-game to involve settling a safe-house for the duration. I thought a good way to achieve this without reworking the zombie distribution mechanics would be to make zombie stop attacking all player made structures on contact. Instead, they could bump into them and turn around until they have reason to believe there's meat in there.
 
Basically, if they see you or hear you inside your walls, they'll start banging, but if you have a large enough perimeter or just act real quiet and discreet inside your fort, they won't tear it down and eventually wander away.

I the IWBUMS 32 thread I mentioned how barricading a house is now more about sleeping undisturbed for a night and less about permanent settlement sinc ezombies will destroy your work as soon as you're looking the other way, and then the devs mentionned they do want the end-game to involve settling a safe-house for the duration. I thought a good way to achieve this without reworking the zombie distribution mechanics would be to make zombie stop attacking all player made structures on contact. Instead, they could bump into them and turn around until they have reason to believe there's meat in there.
 
Basically, if they see you or hear you inside your walls, they'll start banging, but if you have a large enough perimeter or just act real quiet and discreet inside your fort, they won't tear it down and eventually wander away.

equip one bag in sec and the other in primary, open the inventory you want to empty, the drag n drop all the contents into the small icon for your bag to fill.

I the IWBUMS 32 thread I mentioned how barricading a house is now more about sleeping undisturbed for a night and less about permanent settlement sinc ezombies will destroy your work as soon as you're looking the other way, and then the devs mentionned they do want the end-game to involve settling a safe-house for the duration. I thought a good way to achieve this without reworking the zombie distribution mechanics would be to make zombie stop attacking all player made structures on contact. Instead, they could bump into them and turn around until they have reason to believe there's meat in there.
 
Basically, if they see you or hear you inside your walls, they'll start banging, but if you have a large enough perimeter or just act real quiet and discreet inside your fort, they won't tear it down and eventually wander away.

I the IWBUMS 32 thread I mentioned how barricading a house is now more about sleeping undisturbed for a night and less about permanent settlement sinc ezombies will destroy your work as soon as you're looking the other way, and then the devs mentionned they do want the end-game to involve settling a safe-house for the duration. I thought a good way to achieve this without reworking the zombie distribution mechanics would be to make zombie stop attacking all player made structures on contact. Instead, they could bump into them and turn around until they have reason to believe there's meat in there.
 
Basically, if they see you or hear you inside your walls, they'll start banging, but if you have a large enough perimeter or just act real quiet and discreet inside your fort, they won't tear it down and eventually wander away.

I the IWBUMS 32 thread I mentioned how barricading a house is now more about sleeping undisturbed for a night and less about permanent settlement sinc ezombies will destroy your work as soon as you're looking the other way, and then the devs mentionned they do want the end-game to involve settling a safe-house for the duration. I thought a good way to achieve this without reworking the zombie distribution mechanics would be to make zombie stop attacking all player made structures on contact. Instead, they could bump into them and turn around until they have reason to believe there's meat in there.
 
Basically, if they see you or hear you inside your walls, they'll start banging, but if you have a large enough perimeter or just act real quiet and discreet inside your fort, they won't tear it down and eventually wander away.

Configurable hotkeys for equiping things in primary and secondary slots. If I hit 1 I want a weapon of my choosing in hand, not the one the game thinks is best :/

Configurable hotkeys for equiping things in primary and secondary slots. If I hit 1 I want a weapon of my choosing in hand, not the one the game thinks is best :/

Configurable hotkeys for equiping things in primary and secondary slots. If I hit 1 I want a weapon of my choosing in hand, not the one the game thinks is best :/

I'd quite like to see a type of killmode, whereby you cannot farm, fish, forage or build anything, and can only equip weapons.
 
You'd also start with a shotgun/fireaxe for easy transition into murdering everything.

My experience of survival mode has been extremely varied. The majority of the time I've survived less than a week but generally if I can get over that hump it's a very different experience. I once spent 2 weeks grinding carpentry in a house on the corner of the suburbs - chopping trees, sawing, all that noise stuff - and saw maybe 5 zombies that entire time. On another run I broke down a single internal door and attracted literally hundreds of them.
Personally I am not opposed to there being quiet areas but agree that there should be a small minority of zombies that don't react (oor react less) to meta events and clumping so that "quiet" does not mean "deserted".
Mostly I love the new mechanics, but I would argue for a lower population on day 1, steadily rising over the first week or so to current levels. A LOT of my runs are spent ineptly sneaking from house to house trying to find even a usable weapon/bag - the absolute basics really - then getting in over my head and dying. A little time to find your feet would need the frustration and up the fun IMHO.
Edit: this was all on survival mode

I always thought a crowbar was a universal key: opens everything from crates, to doors, going throught skulls! It would be nice to have the crowbar be able to force a door open without downright breaking it.
 
As for picklocking, the game would need some real lockpicks added, as there is no way you can pick a lock with a paper clip or a bobby pin in real life, they simply are too flimsy to lift the heavy pins and turn the deadbolt. They might work on handcuffs (single, light tumbler pin), but on the average front door (4-6 heavy, spring supported pins and a very heavy deadbolt), they would bend instead of lifting them pins.
Same for the credit card: that trick works on interior doors because they typically have the (can't recall the name, that thing that pulls out of the frame and into the door when you turn the handle) cut at an angle, and a thin object can get in there and force that thing into the door. But front doors usually have a very solid bolt extending from the lock into the frame.

Positive happiness moodle could act in a similar way to beta blockers, giving superior panic and stress resistance for a while. It would be more appropriate than bonuses applied to physical traits or skills. I'd also add a mechanic to make your happiness drop when in contact with zombies so that it can't be abused to make yourself into a zombie killing machine. Maybe while the moodle is active any panic or stress "damage" goes to your happiness or something such.
 
@Svarog, happiness is a very relative thing. Finding a sealed icecream container or chocolate after the world's gone to hell and you got chased by your now-very-murderous neigbor across town might just make you smile.

And sets fire to your house if you forget to put it out >