Items that just make sense, and other thoughts

[Mirankor]

So I want to start this off with, I want to make everything have both an upside and a downside. (Also hi there beautiful)
I may add, remove things as I go along. Obviously if the majority of people DON'T want something in the game, then it's going to be chopped.

 Every Day Items:

• Shopping carts - They are everywhere. Personally I feel like having two different kinds and nothing else would be best. The loud, squeaky, rattling metal ones (Can be treated with oil to reduce squeak), as well as the almighty plastic ones that always seemed to be much quieter. Of course they should be damageable, but also repairable.
• Bicycles - Should be pretty rare to find. The downside to them being that well... If your character is panicking too much, you're going to fall off. Also if you ride into a hoard you aren't likely to make it out alive.
• Roller-skates/Rollerblades - On foot travel at it's fastest. Downside is that slowing down and stopping isn't immediate. It's also unwise to fight with them on. Taking them off would also take some time, so you would only use them to get somewhere faster, while consuming less energy.

 

 More Crafting Options:

1. Electrical - Right now, Electrical doesn't really have anything interesting. You can use it to hotwire cars in conjunction with Mechanic at 1st level. You can use it to connect batteries to lamps at 5th level. Other than that, it severely falls short (In my opinion) and it takes so much to level even to the 3rd pip. There's also no other option for constant light in a safe zone without running a generator until you inevitably drain the map of fuel. My suggestions are as follows:

• Alternate Energy - Not going to mention anything too grandiose, just hear me out. The waterwheel and the windmill were two of the earliest forms of electricity production. They didn't provide some massive supply, most were just to provide power for lights. (Which honestly is my main concern) Adding these two into the electrical craft, would make things a lot more interesting.
• Waterwheel - A simple, early age build. Consisting of mainly wood, so it would be electrical + carpentry. Only useful at the river, or if a running stream is added later, there as well but less powerful. Also very noisy, so be prepared.
• Windmill - Solely dependent on if the sky spirits decide to bless your life and make the wind blow. This would be a small build, likely a single tile or upwards to a 2x2 square. It generates little at low wind, and more the harder the wind blows. It shouldn't produce that much power on it's own, for balance reasons. It should also require harder to find or carry parts, as it will consist mainly of metal. Metalworking + Electrical for this one. The idea for this one, is that a single windmill is only useful for powering 2-3 lamps, and it has to be used in conjunction with scavenged car batteries in order to store some energy.
• And on that note, Car Batteries - We all know they are more useful than just being used in cars. People jury rigged them as a power supply well before the early 90's. The idea isn't to really add anything, but to allow you to connect a car battery to a cable, and power lamps until the battery is depleted. Or of course, to store power from windmills. This is just because they weigh a lot more, are limited, but also have a large energy supply compared to regular batteries.
• This one is a far fetched one, and I doubt it will ever be a thing, but Solar Panels - This is more of a time waster. It also will produce the least energy because of the crafting supplies. Solar powered watches and calculators were actually very popular during the 80's and early 90's. The only issue is that they run on such little energy, that you would need a large amount of the foraged panels in order to even power a light. A better panel could also be found extremely rarely due to obvious reasons, but might be able to consistently power a single refrigerator. As I said, far fetched, which is why it's in red lol.

      2. Farming - I haven't done much in relation to farming, but I do have a few things that could be added in relation to the skill.

• Digging Holes - I know a lot of people are going to see this and think, "Is a trench really a good idea?". My answer to that is, well, obviously. Anyone with a little experience playing with dirt can dig a hole, but don't worry, there's a major downside to digging a trench. Two actually. The first downside? Water. When it rains, much like with bowls, pots, etc. it will collect water and eventually fill. This makes it useless for it's intended purpose. The second downside? Comes from the intended purpose. Whether you use it to surround your base, or put spikes into it to deal some damage to players, the problem is still going to occur. The holes are going to fill with zombs, or humans. Dead or alive. Allowing others to eventually just avoid it entirely. It's a decent defense, but requires a lot of maintenance or else you're done for.
• An addition to the Rain Collector Barrels, a Filtration System - This is something many Amish here in Kentucky use (Yes I live here...) in order to clean water. It is a multipart, meaning multi-block, system, that uses things from different facets of life. This would go great with the Tailoring skill, because you could create replaceable cloth/mesh filters for it. Other than that, it uses mainly stone and the power of actually running along said stones, to clean it and make it at the very least, safe for consumption. The Rain Collector will be placed on top of the starting block and collect water like normal.
• Drip Irrigation - High level of farming required for this one. It's essentially an automated watering system. It should be one of the two end-goals for the farming tree. It works in a similar way to the water bags used by hospitals (Which goes way back). It would require adding tubing to the game, and each plant would require a portion of said tubing to be connected to the system. This way you can build rain collectors nearby, which constantly water the plants when it isn't raining. As I said, high skill level required. Preferably level 8-10.
• Greenhouse - Straightforward, but the other end goal for farming. Allowing plant growth in the winter, though in much smaller quantities. This can be either a separate construction, or each plant having it's own craft able cell. Also capable of being connected to the previous so that you can provide the water from somewhere indoors if you prefer. Takes quite a few materials, for each cell, or each wall, whichever. 

 

I'd also like to see plumbing in the game, seeing as that's not electricity based, but that's a topic for discussion with the community, as it would add a potentially useless skill to the list.

 

 

If I think of anything else, I'll add it later. I do like someone else's suggestion for blacksmithing, but that would fall under metalworking imo. Hope this isn't too much of a read. I wanted to get my point's across as best as I could! Let me know what you think though, so I can adjust some things if need be.

[OprahWinfrey]

Those mostly sound good to me. The farming section was especially interesting. A lot of the recipes you mention such as the waterwheel and natural filtration system would be useful, but not something that you would find in a farming textbook or that any typical 90's farmer would know how to build. But perhaps someone with a particular profession would know how to build them. +1 for adding the "Amish" profession with its unique recipes (similar to the pipe bomb being unique to engineers), strength and fitness +1, farming +2, trapping and foraging +1, carpentry +1.

[Mirankor]

7 hours ago, OprahWinfrey said:

A lot of the recipes you mention such as the waterwheel and natural filtration system would be useful, but not something that you would find in a farming textbook or that any typical 90's farmer would know how to build.

 

To be fair, both a waterwheel and windmill use a turbine. The rest could easily be guesswork and still be made possible by anyone inventive enough lol. There should have been information on Turbines back then as well, so it's not impossible to learn. Could just be really rare magazines/books. The filtration system also likely would have been mentioned in a farmers magazine, since I learned about that when I was like... 4-5 which would be in the late 90's

 

[Toshis]

I agree on electrical skill, it doesnt have much going for it. Is there any reason to level up electrical skill to 8, 9 or 10 at all? Same goes for metalworking and mechanics? Skills need a revamp.

 

What i miss in game is other light sources besides using generator to light your safehouse. Maybe an oil lamp or placeable candle (with increased candle spawn rate).

[Mirankor]

On 12/29/2021 at 11:15 AM, Toshis said:

I agree on electrical skill, it doesnt have much going for it. Is there any reason to level up electrical skill to 8, 9 or 10 at all? Same goes for metalworking and mechanics? Skills need a revamp.

 

What i miss in game is other light sources besides using generator to light your safehouse. Maybe an oil lamp or placeable candle (with increased candle spawn rate).

Yeah exactly. The only reason to really level electrical at all is for the level 5 battery powered lamps, and even those run out of juice very quickly. Another thing is the tailoring which, really useful to level up to 10, but it's by far the biggest grind in the game. Not to mention all you can do with that is fix clothes. You can't make patchwork sheets (for windows) or patchwork tarps (for tents). 

[AdmScoo]

[ first post here as a new player who only recently found the game (how has PZ flown under my radar all these years?!?), woohoo ]

Excellent ideas! I've looked over the forums and solar energy seems to be something which divide people a lot. Not knowing really how the game function "under the bonnet/hood" I'd still like to offer one idea as to how solar power might be implemented (a bit longish, please bear with me):

 

- the current vanilla game seem to frustrate some as in order to be able to use a generator a non-electrician need to read the prerequisite magazine in order to get the full 20-tile powered radius. This simulates plugging a generator to a building's "offgrid plug" and also switching off normal grid power (apparently common in rural parts of the world) and thus utilizing the normal electrical wiring of the house to carry the generator power. How about if not having read the magazine in question (and possibly having a minimum skill level in electricity) one could still use a generator but in order to simulate simpler use of directly plugging an appliance to the generator only have the "powered tile"-status be limited to 1-2 tiles from the generator? Thus one could run a single refrigerator or some such.

 

- the current game has three different car batteries for different types of vehicles. Regular car batteries can be used in a pinch to power say illumination but they are intended (and optimized to deliver a quick burst of energy when starting an engine and then rapidly be recharged when the vehicle engine is running. Batteries for a recreational vehicle or solar batteries deliver a steady slow stream of energy far longer without a dip in voltage (they can sustain a slow drain for far longer compared to a vehicle starting battery) and then be slowly recharged using solar power. Using a car battery this way would cause it to lose condition rather quickly. I'd suggest that a fourth type of 12V battery be added, call it say a RV battery or solar battery. These deep cycle batteries would function in a 12V offgrid setup without loosing much condition.

 

- the main purpose for 12V solar power could apart from roleplaying/immersion a handy way of handling long-term lighting of one's safehouse/base. At the moment at least a character with the cat eyes perk can say read unimpeded even in pitch blackness. If a check for illumination would be added then certain activities could be either performed more slowly or altogether impossible (). Another thing would be a renewable power supply for radios (a rather simple way of adding NPCs to the game could be via offscreen ones that broadcast over ham radio (say Montana Civil Defense of Terminator 3 fandom ). As to power something like a refrigerator, well it could be done using a AC-DC power converter or inverter to step up from 12V to 120V but they were inefficient back in the day. And a fridge or freezer (unless it is very modern) typically need a higher than the appliance's nominally rated power to start the compressor (something that in real life might overload even a smaller generator, not to say the least a AC-DC convertor). How this could practically be handled would be to say have a 1x2 tile solar panel installation that for conveniance could be placed on the ground (as opposed to roof installation). It could be built (akin to a tent kit) using a lootable solar panel, car or solar battery, a lootable or buildable (high electronics skill) solar panel regulator. To even take into account the rather high drop in voltage in low voltage wiring say that this unit would only power a 10-tile radius. Just as regular lamps can be modified to use ingame batteries the player could choose to instead modify a lamp to use 12V power (that way possible to calculate energy consumption between unaltered lights that run off a generator and ones modifed for 12V power.

 

-  Gas-powered pressure lamp: as has been suggested before. In order to simplify the game and considering that the game is set near military installations and that the military is present (or was present ingame) there could be a lamp that runs on gas/petrol. Some pressure lamps  (although a lot more dangerous than ones running on kerosene) were used by militaries, the type which use a mantle such as Petromax / Tilley / Aladdin / Coleman. If these were modeled in the game as opposed to say a kerosene hurricane lantern the developers would have the added benefit of not needing to alter the light output of the current electrical lights as pressure lamps are quite bright, comparable to a 100W incandescent bulb (thus for example even used in the operating theatre of a field hospital as backup). This way we could light our base in winter in the rather long term as opposed to sitting near a wood stove or near a fireplace. As an alternative to this, an oil lamp. Say wick in a jar burning cooking oil (vegetable oil that already is in the game) or looted deep frying oil from a fast food restaurant.

 

- Fierarm cleaning kit  (as suggested as nr #1018 back in July 2019). As of now the game rather simulate repairing of firearms (by cannibalizing parts from one identical one and then discarding it) as being due them suffering from a major malfunction due to parts breaking (say extractor bent, spring breaking, cracked frame or something else rather critical). This rather than the rather mundane real life issue of especially self loading firearms getting dirty through repeated usage. What causes them to get fouled is either dust / sand / grit getting in the action or simply a build up of carbon and powder residue. In the current game this is nigh on par back when black powder was used. For anyone interested, here is an article from 1981 on the poor performance of the then new US service rifle M16 in Vietnam; that was mostly due to a  bureacracy that insisted on using an ill-suited type of gunpowder that caused them to gunk up. As with different grades of gasoline (octane) and motor oil (viscosity) so does various grades of gunpowder make a certain type of propellant suitable for a certain kind of firearm.

 

Back to the game, if players could find a firearms cleaning kit (a makeshift one could possibly also be crafted from a generic solvent and oil plus rags) that would akin to a bottle of disinfectant be used a couple of times to restore a gun to full working order. While mostly down to RNG, as it stands now, 100% condition M9 / Beretta M92 can break in as little as ~200(?) rounds or so. Must otherwise say that the implementation of firearms in PZ is stellar with say the ability to have a complex management of different magazines, having the ability to load a round in the chamber etc. [minor nitpick, a bullet is only the projectile, one loads rounds or cartridges into a firearm's magazine]

 

TLDR

1) generators usable albeit at a lesser capacity without reading the magazine 2) a solar array unit that make car batteries and a new fourth type of batteries usable for powering lights & radios (and would reward investing in the electric skill) 3) lamp that runs on cooking oil or the existing gasoline fuel 4) cleaning kits for guns

 

 

I gather some things can be handled via mods but as I at the moment prefer the "curated experience" of the vanilla game I humbly hope that some of this could be taken into consideration by the developers and community. Hope I have adhered to the manual of style.