Making Electricial more Useful ( Powerboxes + Sheds + fuses )

[ZombieHunter]

One thing that can add more freedom to the player is the idea of Fuse Boxes + Junctions

These are Divided into Regional Junction which powers an entire neighboorhood 

Local Fuse Box - which powers a large building or complex.

 

A Regional Junction makes it easier for map designers so they don't need to manually add fuse boxes in every single building. 

So a bunch of small buildings can be powered by 1 - 3 Regional  regional junctions.

 

So a player may need to investigate multiple junctions to see which one is broken to fully restore power to the nieghboorhood.

For Large buildings - the Fuse box is located outside the building somewhere but usually needs a key to open. 

 

The idea behind both are the same. If damaged the area they support loses power

Over time these can get randomly damaged - so instead of a fixed time entire state loses power.  These boxes instead randomly are broken or not. 

Allows player to restore power to a neighborhood or building.

 

The "repairing" part can also be a unique minigame which requires placing parts in correct slots

The "quality" of parts is dependent on your electrical skill. 

The quality determines how likely it will break again. 

 

 

In PvP - it means people could disable power to an area. 

[dannyisdude]

This is a really cool idea, though since buildings are going to be getting a new power system, it makes sense that they would need a new tile to interact with the power system anyway. That being the case, it could make sense for the fuse box to be that tile. Having high electrical could allow you to take one off a premade building and put it on one of your own, allowing you to connect your own building to a generator.

 

To expand on the regional junction, it could allow players to electrically connect buildings in an area without having to build their own makeshift/built connections. It could start off by only providing power, but a player with a high enough electrical skill could enable it to allow connecting power grid of buildings it is connected to. Also, if it had a UI that let us turn power on and off for each building in the grid, it could make turning on the local regional junction box a good long term goal for a small community of survivors.

 

Additionally, rather than having them get damaged when the power grid is initially shutting off, there could be a day (by default from maybe week 2 - 4) when the power grid starts occasionally fluctuating, like randomly every few hours, or a couple times a day or something, and with each fluctuation, each regional junction could have a small change to turn off rather than being damaged, potentially the same for fuse boxes. Instead of being damaged at the start, fuse boxes and regional junctions could corrode and take damage naturally over long periods of time, like on the scale of years. This would keep the power relatively easy to get running again soon after the apocalypse, but make it more difficult a long time after the apocalypse, when unused and unmaintained electrical infrastructure would no longer work. The power grid could also have a full blackout a random time between something like a few days to a month after the start of the fluctuations, which turns off everything left.

The regional junction box could even be used as an example of something that could only be repaired by someone with a high affinity with electrical skill. The difference between a community that has an electrician vs one that doesn't could be having powered buildings using pre-apocalypse infrastructure vs having a makeshift system of lower wires stringing directly from building to building, or wires on the ground.
 

Edited April 12, 2023 by dannyisdude