Gaffa Tape Warrior

Okay,
 
I am amazed by the fact that a rural town has no fireplaces or woodfire stoves. Especially the farmhouses...
 
It is (obviously) dangerous to have a campfire in your living room, so why not have these to allow for indoor cooking/heat after the power goes out?
 

If you understand entropy then it should make sense. If there are sixteen zombies on the left and no zombies on the right, and a zombie has a 1/4 chance of changing where it is, then about four zombies are going to go from the left to the right, leaving twelve on the left. Then about three zombies are going to go right and only about one leftwards, giving us ten on the left and six on the right. Now it is closer to half and half. When there are eight zombies on either side, if two go to the right and two go to the left then it stays the same.
With random movement we are going to end up with about 8 zombies on the left and 8 on the right. With random chance we might get most of the zombies going to one side, sort of decreasing entropy, because of the scales of the numbers and of the time.
You could say noisy people doing woodwork in their houses are like ions, increasing th zombie potential.
I think I remember reading about a free energy entropy-reducing machine that makes use of this once, by having a spiral staircase in which an atom or molecule is more likely to go in one direction than the other, a bit like a ratchet. I don't know if I mis-read it of if it was badly written or if there really is an entropy-reducing machine.

If you understand entropy then it should make sense. If there are sixteen zombies on the left and no zombies on the right, and a zombie has a 1/4 chance of changing where it is, then about four zombies are going to go from the left to the right, leaving twelve on the left. Then about three zombies are going to go right and only about one leftwards, giving us ten on the left and six on the right. Now it is closer to half and half. When there are eight zombies on either side, if two go to the right and two go to the left then it stays the same.
With random movement we are going to end up with about 8 zombies on the left and 8 on the right. With random chance we might get most of the zombies going to one side, sort of decreasing entropy, because of the scales of the numbers and of the time.
You could say noisy people doing woodwork in their houses are like ions, increasing th zombie potential.
I think I remember reading about a free energy entropy-reducing machine that makes use of this once, by having a spiral staircase in which an atom or molecule is more likely to go in one direction than the other, a bit like a ratchet. I don't know if I mis-read it of if it was badly written or if there really is an entropy-reducing machine.

I must stop you there because the 2nd law of thermodynamics, entropy says this will inevitably happen. Equilibrium.

I think levitating things are silly. I do not see how removing stairs could be cheating though. What are you cheating? Are you cheating the zombies? Are you cheating Allah? Are you cheating yourself? If an enemy army has to cross a bridge and you burn it, then fine. If there are ladders against your castle walls and you destroy them then great. If zombies want to climb up from the underworld into your heavenly garden above but you take the stairs apart then great.

I think levitating things are silly. I do not see how removing stairs could be cheating though. What are you cheating? Are you cheating the zombies? Are you cheating Allah? Are you cheating yourself? If an enemy army has to cross a bridge and you burn it, then fine. If there are ladders against your castle walls and you destroy them then great. If zombies want to climb up from the underworld into your heavenly garden above but you take the stairs apart then great.

I think levitating things are silly. I do not see how removing stairs could be cheating though. What are you cheating? Are you cheating the zombies? Are you cheating Allah? Are you cheating yourself? If an enemy army has to cross a bridge and you burn it, then fine. If there are ladders against your castle walls and you destroy them then great. If zombies want to climb up from the underworld into your heavenly garden above but you take the stairs apart then great.

I think levitating things are silly. I do not see how removing stairs could be cheating though. What are you cheating? Are you cheating the zombies? Are you cheating Allah? Are you cheating yourself? If an enemy army has to cross a bridge and you burn it, then fine. If there are ladders against your castle walls and you destroy them then great. If zombies want to climb up from the underworld into your heavenly garden above but you take the stairs apart then great.

I think levitating things are silly. I do not see how removing stairs could be cheating though. What are you cheating? Are you cheating the zombies? Are you cheating Allah? Are you cheating yourself? If an enemy army has to cross a bridge and you burn it, then fine. If there are ladders against your castle walls and you destroy them then great. If zombies want to climb up from the underworld into your heavenly garden above but you take the stairs apart then great.

As for the biological aspects of "get bitten, get infected because it spreads through blloodstream", actually the first defense of your body is bleeding: blood is at a higher pressure than atmosphere so if you get a wound any infectious agent is more likely to get expelled with the blood flow going out than spreading inside. This is why we don't get septicemia at every cut or scratch IRL and the principle used in Level4 labs to prevent infectious agents from spreading outside (the labs are under less pressure than normal atmospheric). So I guess amputation should be an option since you'll have some time (depending on how deep the bite) before the infection spreads. but I think it is already in the "maybe" list ? (edit: it is) Plus it should require INSANE luck or medical skills not to die from it.

That said, I feel that bite resulting in >90% but not 100% chance of death is already pretty cool and realistic. No disease has a 100% kill rate and, in my opinion, the fact that a bite is an almost certain death is what makes the game great: to survive you HAVE TO to be cautious all the time, no error is allowed.

I often see nails on the ground in urban areas, which means people already drop nails. If they were to become zombies then they might continue to drop nails (letting you call them rediculous), or just keep them and someone rummaging through their posessions could take them. I usually pick up nails off the ground. If I became a zombie then there would likely be nails on me.

I remember hearing about some hippies who made some tree houses with rope bridges between them to protest the destruction of a lush valley for a new road next to the old one.

(I am sneaking around zombies and I hope I don't get pricked by a thorn)
-gets pricked by a thorn-
"Yelp!"
(Oh no the zombies heard me. Better climb over this fence)
-climbs over fence-
"Grunt!"
 
Some time later
 
(I really should stop making noises when zombies are nearby. Now to try and sterilise this thorn prick.)
-starts applying honey-
"Jesus deserved to die in pain and Mary was pathetic. God damn this thorn".
(I wish I could just get on with things without saying things like that)

for several weeks I've had my character living upstairs in a rural house with the staircase destroyed. All has been quiet and pleasant so I started constructing a large log wall incorperating the neighboring house into a small little fortress. Since building the wall, I've noticed that zombies are attracted to it like bugs to a zap light.
 
I knew i was not making more noise than usual, knew I wasn't leaving windows open or giving other cue's to my location. Eventually I discovered that zombies just latch onto breakable objects and destroy them for no reason. Can we change this in the future? at least as a sandbox option? 
 
Zombies, especially traditional proper zombies like what zomboid seems to seek to replicate shouldn't do anything without cause except amble around. I'm okay with zombies banging down the walls if I made a mistake, ran my generator too loud, or was seen entering the fort....but 30 zombies just picking a random wall to bang on simply because it can be destroyed? why?

Having had my save updated to the new version, I carefully looked around my house in case some zombies had spawned. I saw no zombies, and went inside again, but heard the bumping sound of a zombie. I went outside again to check this window you see in the pictures below.

That zombie on the ground was hidden from my view by the wall when I was sneaking around my house to look. As I went to see if that was where the zombie was, I could not see it because of the wall in front of the camera. The zombie then lunged out and nearly got me, but I was anticipating this glitch. The picture below shows what it looks like when you stand a bit closer.

My suggestion is to make it so that you can see things that are further "up" than other things, that your character would be able to see. Another problem is that when my character is behind things I cannot see them because they are too trasnsparent. Maybe you could make it so that you can see more than a small circle around your guy, but not make it so transparent that you cannot tell what he's behind. I am afraid of being on that side of buildings because of only having a very small circle of vision, which is bad for peering out of windows before going down escape sheets and other things.

Having had my save updated to the new version, I carefully looked around my house in case some zombies had spawned. I saw no zombies, and went inside again, but heard the bumping sound of a zombie. I went outside again to check this window you see in the pictures below.

That zombie on the ground was hidden from my view by the wall when I was sneaking around my house to look. As I went to see if that was where the zombie was, I could not see it because of the wall in front of the camera. The zombie then lunged out and nearly got me, but I was anticipating this glitch. The picture below shows what it looks like when you stand a bit closer.

My suggestion is to make it so that you can see things that are further "up" than other things, that your character would be able to see. Another problem is that when my character is behind things I cannot see them because they are too trasnsparent. Maybe you could make it so that you can see more than a small circle around your guy, but not make it so transparent that you cannot tell what he's behind. I am afraid of being on that side of buildings because of only having a very small circle of vision, which is bad for peering out of windows before going down escape sheets and other things.

It would be really nice to be able to make a simple stone/mud oven where you don't accidentally burn yourself to death. It is a simple thing to make, and would somewhat hide the light of the flames.
 
Though seriously I gotta say, who has in real life ever had problems cooking food without burning to death? Campfires shouldn't ignite players. A small cooking campfire is  not THAT dangerous. 

well they could always try to dig up the spot where they store the fuel. it has to be stored somewhere.

The problem is that some designs are by nature better than others. There's no way to balance these things

It should occur to everyone that grills cannot burn wood.
However, this does not make 100% sense.
On a charcoal grill, you may fuel it with regular wood and the resulting fire and hot coals work just fine.
So, that's what i'm asking for.
maybe make wood less efficient at cooking,

Another thing, is a wood gasifyers.
A machine that makes fuel out of timber and charcoal.
Able to power a generator.
Perhaps make them very rare, but craftble from common things, but alot of common things.
Like, pieces of metal, electronic parts, peices of an engine, and a generator, and some mechanic's tools and such.
It would remedy all fuel based issues. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

There is only so many times you can die or have broken legs by accidentally pressing E and jumping over a fcking fence on the second+ floor and not explode with fury.

At the very least it should be Press and Hold when the player's Z coordinate is not Ground Level, it's beyond infuriating.

Eh, sort of. When I was a kid, children would slowly destroy chainlink fences around the school by leaning up against them, pushing against them .etc to the point the rails bent and the mesh eventually parted from the frame, or sagged. Not impossible.
 
Though this still likely not doable for the same reasons Lemmy mentioned earlier. You could always try to mod it in, without making fences IsoThumpable: check nearby tiles for zombies, if enough are present, damage the fence/wall.etc.

The good thing about metal, chain fences is that even a horde of zombies is going to take three ages to break/damage one. Metal is a sturdier material compared to skin, muscles or bones. For example : No matter how hard you're going to hit a rock with a pillow, you're not going to break it. Unless zombie lore implies that zombies can get a skin/bone/anything else sturdier or equally as sturdy as metal, I don't think they'll be able to break through chain link fence at all.
 
But topple it over and walk over it, on the other hand...

So, after play testing a bit my prison on new build 32, I've ran into the problem where huge numbers of zombies don't even care about the pre-built fence, and they "go around it" directly to my built log walls to break through it. They don't really pile up on fences for too long like in the picture 1 mondoid ago.
 
Here is how zombies behave. Note how they are walking directly towards the log walls instead of me.
 
My idea, however, should fix that. (And the relative safety of being behind big fences in the "isolated house).
 
What I propose : Have zombies be capable of, eventually, toppling the pre-built fences and walls given large enough number of them attempts to break through, like in the infamous TWD show The walking dead.
 
 
How will it work?
 
 
 With the use of newly introduced "stability" percentage!
 
Each pre-existing, tall fence tile will have a "Stability percentage" assigned to it. The "stability" will be determined by the number of other, stable tall fences that are connected to it.
 
For example :
 
A single, tall fence/built wall will have a 0% stability. It means any push force applied to it from either side will make the fence/wall collapse instantly. However, if you have two other tall fences/walls surrounding it, the wall in the middle will receive a 20% stability bonus. Meaning the wall in the middle will have 20% stability, while walls on the sides will have 0% stability.
 
An additional 0% stability wall added to either side of this 3-tiled fence will add another 20% stability bonus to each fence except the latest one. A wall surrounded with fences of the same stability percent automatically makes the middle fence greater percent than them. So a wall surrounded with 40% stable walls will have a 60% stability assigned to it.
A fence surrounded with fences that have different stability percentages assigned to them will have a stability greater than the smallest stability fence, but smaller than the greatest stability fence. Fence connected to a fence with greater stability will have a 1 level smaller stability assigned to them. 
 
Visual representation, to make it easier on the brain :
 
80% stability - level 4
60% stabilty - level 3
40% stability - level 2
20% stability - level 1
0% stability - level 0
 
_____________
The fence built out of 5 tiles will look like this.
| | | | |
 
Fence built out of 6 tiles (Built from left to right) will look like this :
| | | | | |
 
Stability percentage never reaches 100% unless the fence is connected to an existing, pre-loaded wall (building). Fence connected to an existing wall will have a 100% stability assigned to it. Fence connected to a 100% stability fence will have a 80% stability assigned to it. Fence surrounded with 100% stable fences will also be 100% stable.So, that way, a wall that was built to barricade an open garage door in West Point will never be toppled by big amount of zombies, however, it can still be broken given enough time. Fences that have the L shape (corners) will have an automatically 80% stability assigned to them. Any fence added to 80% fence, as discussed above, will have 60% stability assigned to them. It means that building a fort that consists of walls shaped like Ш will work as you'd expect (all of them will have 80% stability). The system will calculate itself automatically and assign the calculations to each pre-built fence, which will then be saved to the specific world files that are kept within the game savefiles. How can zombies topple them?  This question is a new topic entirely. Right now, for example, zombies ignore the fences and decide to path-find around them to reach their target, unless the fence is transparent and their target (e.g - player), along with the zombie itself, is really close to the fence. What I propose is to make zombies "pathfind" through the fence and be stopped by it, just like already built walls do. Zombies will start thumping their heads/arms etc on the fence continuously, and each zombie in proximity will have an assigned "push force" to it. PUSH FORCE. What does push force do? It determines whether an active horde is capable of collapsing an existing fence or wall. It works quite simple - if the push force percentage is equal or greater than the stability percentage, the fence will start collapsing in an opposite side from where the zombies come. Each zombie has a random X push force assigned to it, which gradually add up to other zombies, if they are present. Meaning 5 zombies that have 0.5 push force will consist of total of 0.5 x 5 = 2.5% of push force.  The number of tiles of walls/fences that are affected by the push force are determined by which of them stand in the pathfinding way of the annual group of zombies. So, for example, if a cluster of zombies are all trying to get in through a confined space of 4 tiles, then their overall push force are applied to each of those 4 tiles that stands in the way. Any zombie that wanders in the vicinity of a group that attempts to break in automatically adds a push point to the overall, while any zombie that walks away - subtracts from the overall push force. So, when the zombies finally get their push force percentage higher than the fence's stability percentage, each assigned X number of hours, it will topple in the other direction by 10/20%. The hard job falls on the hands of those who draws the tiles - they'll have to draw each "toppling" percentage for each existing fence. When the toppling percentage reaches 100%, the fence "falls down" on the floor and has no collision anymore. Zombies can freely walk over it. A fence cannot remain standing while the neighboring fence has any kind of topple percentage. That means from the area where the "toppling" has happened, other fences are assigned slightly smaller amount of damage to them, all the way until the top. So, if a single tile falls down on the floor completely, two surrounding fences will have fallen down 80%, then the surrounding fences around those three will have fallen down 60%, and etc until it reaches the fully standing ones.  How can a player prevent it? First of all - by getting rid of the zombies behind the fence. It's amazing how we already are capable of shooting zombies through the fence or killing them with a melee. You can do that to prevent them from toppling the fence as well! Just guard your perimeter once in a while and kill the zombies that, give them enough time, can gather up and topple your defenses. Another thing that can prevent them from doing it - is setting up planks on the sides of the fence to give them a temporary immunity to the toppling! You will be able to do this by right clicking on the fence and "setting up the support", that will give the fence a "fake" 100% stability. However : Each number of hours that a clump of zombies with greater push force than the wall's annual stability push on the defenses will take away X amount of HP from the plank. Given enough time and lack of proper lookout, the plank will break and the fence will get toppled on it's belly. Does anyone remember that episode of The Walking Dead of season 4, where a huge horde breaks through during the night and Carl with Rick are forced to defend themselves against it? The support log breaks in half during it. Yeah, it can happen too. In conclusion This will take quite a big amount of work to implement, especially for those that are responsible for drawing the tiles, but in the end the effort will be worth it. Zombie hordes will truly become dangerous, and you won't be sleeping without worries behind the safety of pre-built fences that already exist within the game. Places like THIS will stop being 100% zombie proof fortresses. Log walls will prove more useful to maintain than to have them act as "super uber sturdy walls". You'll have to think in advance about setting up supports for your houses, and it will stop people from making impossible, unsupported 3 tile fences that are capable of withstanding a horde until they break. 

This is a suggestion to make it so that if you've not got a certain tool, you can use something else to do its job. If you've not got a hammer, you could use the back or the top of an axe, or a stone. If you've not got a trowel or a hoe to make a hole to plant some seeds, you could use a spade or a butterknife or some scrap metal or your bare hands.
Using a fireaxe to hammer in nails could make the job take a bit longer, and the same with just a stone. If all you want to do is quickly attach your escape rope and get out of there, then that'll be great. If you want to make a staircase with an axe and nails then that could be possible.
You could drive screws with a knife or a pair of scissors.