Group management for post-NPC

[raymond]

Alright, so I just want to share wih my design on the group mechanics.

-First, you need to establish a base. It's alright to be nomad too, but right now I want to stick to a stationary group. It'd be easiest to create some sort of "flag" you can put on a building, be it a visible object like a sign or just some information thing displayed whenever you hover your cursor over that base.

-Next, there should be and ability to give certain NPCs ownership of rooms, containers, things etc. Even if it's a zed appocalypse, it's still capitalism and no one cancelled private property Also, some stealthy NPCs might try to steal from others, so it'd create conflicts inside he group, increasing immersion

-If you're not a group leader, all this would be generated by a leader NPC (if the awesome Devs go that far in developing AI )

So, wadda you think?

[Zombiemonkey]

 -maybe you can put a flag on the house you are gonna spend the night on with your npc's as a nomad, and remove it in the morning when you continue on your journey?

 

 

-i would like to assign rooms to npc's too. Then if they have nothing to do, They can write a journal there/Draw pictures/plan things/Tweak their weapons/etc. 

 

-Im really sure thats going to be in the game.

[Some Clever Username]

Yeah but I don't like the flag thing, I'd probably go nomad or whatever but, if you are in a base, the flag should be optional because, I'd rather that NPC's find the base because they remember it, not because of a flag. 

 

The assigning rooms is a good idea and I would love it but of coarse that'd be up to the group leader or if it's a democracy than everyone get to choose their own!

[Impetiso]

I like the idea of the flag. Not only it's useful if you, for any reason, don't remember the house you are staying when you go nomad, but it's useful for letting the other survivors there might be someone alive there. Yeah, it could be a bad idea as bad survivors might want to kill you, but you might want have more good survivors on your side.

 

Every group should have a leader, and NPC leaders are a good idea since you might not want that pressure on you. You could just farm or scavenge or hunt or whatever your leader ask you to do.

 

I don't get the capitalism and private property in the apocalipse, since you steal things from other people (you don't know if the owners of the stuff are or not alive at all). In the apocalipse the survival chance depends on the strength of the group, and not sharing the important stuff, like food, medicine or weapons in a group drop the group strenght a lot.

The conflicts will happen in a group allways, even if you share all. Someone can claim that you take too many food, or medicine, or do a lot of noise and atract too many zombies, or just hates you because of your skin.

In my opinion that might be an option, not a rule, but even then, it doesn't seem the best of the ideas to lead a group.

[Kajin]

There was an idea a while back about something called a Faction Board. Basically an item constructed from a cork board, some paper and pencil. The basic idea behind it was that a group could build one of these inside their safehouse, effectively making it their main base of operations that they coordinate out of. Their headquarters, if you will. Then you could go up and use it to keep track of supplies as well as designate tasks that need to be filled out. Any idle NPC could take stock and update the supply list on the board or check the board periodically to see if there is anything that needs to be done and then go do it if the NPC has the skill requirements.  If the group claims several buildings as territory, the building that contains the faction board would be where the leadership resides and where all the decisions and coordination gets done.

 

It'd be an effective way to stay organized without having to keep individual track of everyone in the group. If you need something done, just put up a notice to have it done and then go do whatever else you need to take care of yourself.

 

As for the flag idea... I'm a bit iffy about that. It'd be a great way to declare an area as your territory, but unless your group is strong enough to defend itself it could pose a problem when someone comes along and takes the territory marker as a challenge.

[Comrade Crimson]

Alright, so I just want to share wih my design on the group mechanics.

-First, you need to establish a base. It's alright to be nomad too, but right now I want to stick to a stationary group. It'd be easiest to create some sort of "flag" you can put on a building, be it a visible object like a sign or just some information thing displayed whenever you hover your cursor over that base.

-Next, there should be and ability to give certain NPCs ownership of rooms, containers, things etc. Even if it's a zed appocalypse, it's still capitalism and no one cancelled private property Also, some stealthy NPCs might try to steal from others, so it'd create conflicts inside he group, increasing immersion

-If you're not a group leader, all this would be generated by a leader NPC (if the awesome Devs go that far in developing AI )

So, wadda you think?

 

 

 

Must crush capitalism...!!!

 

 

I think that this is fine, but the option for shared property/chests should be implemented for the practical reason of: The town has a communal stockpile of say food. You store food in there for everyone to eat from so they get their daily rations and don't starve because some capitalistic pig hoarded everything (and trust me, you are going to get mad when you find that snobbish NPC that decides to take everything without sharing. Mad as in with an axe to their head.) and of which everyone deposits, and withdraws from.

And you have the option to have everything communally shared for convenience, when that band of raiders comes by and you need to bust into someone's room and grab their shotgun because the bastards outside want to rip your nuts off and laugh at you as you bleed clutching yourself in agony, having some goofy conception of "private property" is only going to get in the way.

 

So- here's what I suggest, you can mark zones as to what is shared and to what is not, but of course this can be ignored by certain NPC's, and some NPC's may also setup zones themselves of both shared things amongst the group they trust, and their own personal things.

 

This IS the zombie apocalypse though. Sharing is caring- if you're in a group, hoarding stuff for yourself is just inefficient and a setup for failure. Tribes did not have personal caches, they shared their food around a fire after their hunt, and anyone who took more then they could chew usually did not sleep safely at night. And that's what zomboid's environment is, anarchy with tribes and small survivor settlements.

 

And yes, I've run communes with other folks and been in a variety of towns by this point. While personal houses isn't too much an issue usually people share left and right- those who don't generally don't last long. Community is only as strong as it's weakest member..

 

Either that, or you are alone and forgo the group altogether.

[Some Clever Username]

There was an idea a while back about something called a Faction Board. Basically an item constructed from a cork board, some paper and pencil. The basic idea behind it was that a group could build one of these inside their safehouse, effectively making it their main base of operations that they coordinate out of. Their headquarters, if you will. Then you could go up and use it to keep track of supplies as well as designate tasks that need to be filled out. Any idle NPC could take stock and update the supply list on the board or check the board periodically to see if there is anything that needs to be done and then go do it if the NPC has the skill requirements.  If the group claims several buildings as territory, the building that contains the faction board would be where the leadership resides and where all the decisions and coordination gets done.

 

It'd be an effective way to stay organized without having to keep individual track of everyone in the group. If you need something done, just put up a notice to have it done and then go do whatever else you need to take care of yourself.

 

As for the flag idea... I'm a bit iffy about that. It'd be a great way to declare an area as your territory, but unless your group is strong enough to defend itself it could pose a problem when someone comes along and takes the territory marker as a challenge.

 

I like the idea of the flag. Not only it's useful if you, for any reason, don't remember the house you are staying when you go nomad, but it's useful for letting the other survivors there might be someone alive there. Yeah, it could be a bad idea as bad survivors might want to kill you, but you might want have more good survivors on your side.

 

Every group should have a leader, and NPC leaders are a good idea since you might not want that pressure on you. You could just farm or scavenge or hunt or whatever your leader ask you to do.

 

I don't get the capitalism and private property in the apocalipse, since you steal things from other people (you don't know if the owners of the stuff are or not alive at all). In the apocalipse the survival chance depends on the strength of the group, and not sharing the important stuff, like food, medicine or weapons in a group drop the group strenght a lot.

The conflicts will happen in a group allways, even if you share all. Someone can claim that you take too many food, or medicine, or do a lot of noise and atract too many zombies, or just hates you because of your skin.

In my opinion that might be an option, not a rule, but even then, it doesn't seem the best of the ideas to lead a group.

I just don't like the idea of the flag or board unless it's optional.

The reason is that it seems almost unrealistic because I like how I'm not forced to hunker down in one house that night, I'm free! With a flag or board it would make me feel like my group is forced into that area and can't just up and leave because they are programmed to stay with the flag.

 

It's hard to explain but I would be fine with it being optional, I just feel that if you have to do it, your not free.

[Kajin]

The board would definitely be optional. I just figured it'd make group management a lot easier once you get more than a few members so you don't have to personally oversee all of them to make sure they're doing things you think need to be done.

[Impetiso]

I just don't like the idea of the flag or board unless it's optional.

The reason is that it seems almost unrealistic because I like how I'm not forced to hunker down in one house that night, I'm free! With a flag or board it would make me feel like my group is forced into that area and can't just up and leave because they are programmed to stay with the flag.

 

It's hard to explain but I would be fine with it being optional, I just feel that if you have to do it, your not free.

I get your point, and I think the flag/board, if any, must be optional. If you have a group of survivors, you might want to send them to scavenge (or kill some zombies or exploring or whatever) and you might want to get back to your group, and a board it's extremely useful manage or just know where did your survivors went and how long it's been since they left your base/main group. Then, a flag would be useful even if you want reaming free sleeping in a different house every day, as you can tell your survivors where you are even if they were out when you left the last base of your group.

In the end, boards are nothing more than somewhere to stick notes and flags are nothing more than a rag tied to a stick, both can be built, packed or burned, so they should be optional (and craftable).

[Comrade Crimson]

If were having flags here- for multiplayer and potentially singleplayer, I'd like alternating colours for the very least per group, if not even potential uploaded or custom flags able to choose from...

 

Would be cool having faction flags on a factions style server or if you wanted to roleplay factions in your singleplayer, and you wanna fly your own flag n such.

 

I think this would be a good idea for a mod, the original thread's subject matter and this.

[raymond]

What I meant as a flag is a game mechanic which allows you to bind a group to a certain location to prevent them splitting up if you don't want it. I was thinking for it to be optional and cancellable. As for private property, even in such times SOME people will still grudge at ya if you take their certain belongings. I think there must be such mechanic. But the reaction to that should depend on, say, the NPC traits, like capitalistic and communist ( I think I'm going a bit too far here ) - or greediness and generosity ( not saying anything about ideologies, it's really complicated and I don't belong to neither, just different ways of expressing the idea ). And I like the idea for a common food stash mechanic - basically, the leader would divide it among the group.

[Comrade Crimson]

Yeah, I was only joking with the whole crush capitalism thing.

 

It's a neat idea, and I think that there could easily be a shared system for further simplicity as well as "designating" private rooms or objects to people.

 

My only qualm is this feels like the player is god modding the NPC's to the point where it nullifies any decisions that they may make, killing immersion. I think this sort of system should be optional, or at the very least, indirect and somewhat unstable in terms of how "solid" the NPC's treat it. NPC's that respect you more will abide by it... those who don't.. well, needless to say things may get tussled.

[Kajin]

Not sure how it's god modding.

[Comrade Crimson]

It's god modding them because you are assuming the position of leader off the bat, and you are controlling their every action related to where they store stuff without argument or differences- what if an NPC wants a different room?

What if they don't want to store something somewhere and think it'd be better somewhere else?

Of course, not everyone's gonna be that argumentive but there will be individuals like that, I'd think.

[Kajin]

If the NPCs wanna butt heads over leadership that's perfectly fine. The devs want to code that kind of behavior in. Who says you're going to be group leader and have final say every time? Who says the NPCs will have complete faith in you and listen to everything you ask of them? The devs don't say that. They've been pretty gleeful in their discussions about how NPCs are going to be a massive pain in the ass from what I've seen.

[bvhv]

Well if they act like humans then i'm fine with that. Like near the begging is 1 week after the apocalypse so they should act more human but as you progress it should be shown in their personalities they have become hardened survivors o: