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Does PZ really even need cars?


Rikashey

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Lawnmowers can haul ass, man. At least in comparison to your average zed, anyway. Pull the lever on the dump cart to dump whatever is in it in front of the safe house for your buddies to grab real quick and drag in, then use the mower to draw the horde away. Drop the lawnmower off in one of the game's many garages, then run out the back of the house and circle around to go to your base.

 

A loud, fast moving vehicle like that would be good for zed control as well as hauling stuff.

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Heh. Actually, now that I think of it a lawnmower would be super awesome for attacking an enemy safe house. Turn it on, drive it past their front door, cut the engine and run for it while the zeds follow the echo of the sound towards the safe house.

 

But yeah, risky or not a lawnmower would be pretty damn useful in a limited capacity.

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I want cars, but only decorative. Like, everybody rushed to fill their cars and leave the city, then when fuel ran out they stole the gas from other cars, so all the cars left in the town are just as containers that can catch fire, sound alarms and lit the street until the battery runs out.

 

We can look at cars in one of two ways

 

1. What's 'realistic' ?

2. What's good for the game?

 

1. In Mul I'd imagine there are almost as many cars as people. The great US of A is a big country and it's useful to have a car to get around much more so than say here in the UK although others would not attest to that. As (I'm pretty sure) I've already said, in the wake of a panic like this it'd simply be impossible to completely empty the fuel tank of every car. People would crash, people would panic and leave their car and so on.

2. I'm not sure having lots of cars to get around is good for game balancing when the game is already painfully easy as it is. There needs to be trade-off. If there is one thing Minecraft has taught us[1] is that we appreciate something a lot more if we have to earn it. PZ understands this so you love your axe when you finally have it. You love your safe-house when it's finally built. And so it should be with cars. They all should have something wrong with them. Maybe a faulty spark plug, maybe a flat tyre, by taking one off another and putting it on the soon-to-be working car you'd appreciate it a lot more.

If you then make the cars easy to damage by Z's. If you make running over Z's a very bad idea for the car. You'll treat it with care.

 

Last point.

I think the cars could be useful. There may be mini stories or perhaps something that ties in with companions or family that you need to drive to another town. At the moment there is only Mul. and WP. However if there were other towns which were over 20-30 + miles away then finding a car would have greater significance. It'd also give the game a wonderful The Walking Dead feel.

 

'We need to go here to try and find Ben' etc

 

[1] Except that the sound 'Hsssss' is to be feared above all others.

 

 

Agreed that there are tons of cars in the US, and fuel is common enough that I doubt you'd ever get into a situation where it'd be terribly scarce (i.e. you could always siphon from abandoned cars, siphon from gas stations - though they'd be the first to run out - or simply loot it, since I know quite a few people who keep a bit of spare gas at their house).

 

I think people worrying about balance with cars are being a bit silly.  I mean, think about it.  Has anyone in here ever BEEN in a situation where there was a mass evacuation and panic?  I lived in New Orleans during Katrina and got to evacuate with everyone else.  The interstate was essentially a giant parking lot and it took hours to get out.  Every street from the moment we left our house to when we arrived in Houston was intensely congested.

 

You would definitely have to deal with that in a zombie apocalypse, but with the addition that walking corpses would be coming up and turning the congested freeways into an all-you-can-eat buffet.  In other words, the idea that after a huge catastrophe with the accompanying evacuation ANYONE would be able to hop into a car and rampage about town GTA-style, running over zombies and enjoying the free, open road is just ludicrous.

 

A)  You wouldn't be able to go a block without having something in your way (crashed cars, abandoned cars, etc.).  That means no 100-mph-zombie-horde-ramming.  Just wouldn't happen.  You'd have to go through the entire town with a crew and push empty vehicles out of the way to clear the roads first.

 

And

 

B)  As has already been pointed out, cars aren't very tough.  They dent easily, they don't really fare well in collisions...  Hell, a buddy of mine TOTALED his car by hitting a deer late at night.  Now imagine a crowd of 20 zombies.

 

And if you're worried that you can simply swerve out of the way, cars don't handle very well off-road unless they're designed for it.  Moreover, once that zombie crowd gets AROUND your car, game over.  Seriously.  It doesn't take much to stop a car.  Don't believe me?

 

http://www.streetfire.net/video/top-gear-mercedes-cl65-amg-car-review_694484.htm

 

Skip to around the 7:00 minute mark to see 8 dudes win in tug of war against a Mercedes CL65.  Now imagine you're in something you might actually find on the street (like a Honda Civic).

 

The best part of having cars in the game would be a mobile container / secure bed.  Other than that, I'm not terribly worried that cars will turn the game into some free-for-all GTA rampage.

 

One final note, just because there are cars everywhere doesn't mean that you'll be able to hop in one and take off.

 

Again, just think:  You're on the interstate, during the evacuation.  You're in your car.  You hear screams up ahead.  You turn the car off, grab your keys, and hop out to see what's going on.  You see a horde coming to you, and take off running.

 

Some dude later finds your car.  Except... you ran off with the keys months ago, and are probably a zombie wandering into the next state by now.  Unless the dude is a professional car thief who can hotwire a car without ruining it (since modern cars have anti-theft systems SPECIFICALLY designed to make it difficult to hotwire a car - it's not like a movie where you just stick a screwdriver in the ignition, give it a turn, and go), then you'd better start checking corpses for car keys.

 

You don't need to have every car you encounter randomly have a bad spark plug.  That would be silly, unrealistic, and unnecessary.  All you need is a key item linked to the car.  Some cars will still have keys in the ignition (or maybe in a drawer in the house they're parked outside of), but most cars that you find randomly out and about will be locked up tight with the keys far away.

 

And I imagine that you'll spend enough time having to fix up your car (once you find the keys to it) that having every car by default have something wrong with it is unnecessarily annoying.  Trust me, they'll break down plenty after you drive them around a bit.  It's not like there'll be road crews filling in pot holes - get ready for broken tire rods galore.

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So we've evaluated that roads will be far too busy to drive on and cars will be far too wrecked to make effective vehicles (not to mention that they'll probably also be made of paper so you can't touch zombies!). They'll be to noisy, fuel will realistically be a problem, unless it's a tank it's not allowed off-road (but you also can't drive it on the road either because of obstacles). You'll have to find all the parts to keep it maintained, assuming your everyday punter knows how to even change a headlight bulb nevermind a belt or a tire (tyre) or engine.

 

In that case, might as well just make them decorative then no? Since they'll be so ineffective for practical use.

 

It's ironic that those in favour of the vehicles are the ones saying how ineffective they would be!  :rolleyes:

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I would love to see cars scattered throughout the map, especially as environmental structures (crashed cars as intersection road blocks, traffic jams on highways, cars plowed into storefronts, etc...).

 

However, I also like the idea of them as usable vehicles, but with caveats - many should be out of gas or in disrepair, forcing them to become a side-quest/project in and of themselves; they should be damaged realistically if used as a battering ram (and should have a chance to cause bodily harm if rammed into something); the sound of cars (engines roaring, car crashes, honking horns) should draw zed like a dinner bell; many will be locked or have an alarm system which could draw a horde, making breaking into locked cars dangerous. Should probably yield good loot though, as a lot of people probably tried to pack up their cars to evacuate somewhere and end of life events happened.

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Not efficient isn't the same as useless. Everyone in the rural US more more or less has a car, you just aren't going to get anywhere otherwise. I think that you should have enough time to clear a highway that you visit frequently of all it's cars and could have one main road you use for travel, there could be a pushing or towing system if they're just in everyones way and you want to move them around without having to find the parts to get it working again. My favorite part of the original Dawn of the Dead was the idea to use the trucks in the parking lot as baricades so that they couldn't get swarmed while they were getting close enough to lock the front doors. I also want to see the kind of destruction a car can wrack up once building destruction is more polished, I've been in a building while a car crashed into it, they can do some damage. 


Oh and no one touched on the idea of attacking fences and metal sheets and making a makeshift kill-mobile a la Mad max or the Dawn of D remake

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I would love to hear some metagame things from cars. You, sitting in your safe house- then a loud screech and a sicking crash. Up the road nearby, a car just smashed into a tree to avoid a group of zombies, after you clear the zombies, (or wait out the horde looking at the crash), you can loot the car for food and other valuables. Maybe it was just a civilian running away or maybe a survivor that was just unlucky to hit that one deep pothole. 

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I, myself, would like some cars here and there. Would fill those empty garages.

Of course, a cool tiny debuff would be that there's a chance of a zombie already being in the said car and giving you a lovebite because you weren't careful enough.

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So we've evaluated that roads will be far too busy to drive on and cars will be far too wrecked to make effective vehicles (not to mention that they'll probably also be made of paper so you can't touch zombies!). They'll be to noisy, fuel will realistically be a problem, unless it's a tank it's not allowed off-road (but you also can't drive it on the road either because of obstacles). You'll have to find all the parts to keep it maintained, assuming your everyday punter knows how to even change a headlight bulb nevermind a belt or a tire (tyre) or engine.

 

In that case, might as well just make them decorative then no? Since they'll be so ineffective for practical use.

 

It's ironic that those in favour of the vehicles are the ones saying how ineffective they would be!  :rolleyes:

 

Just because I have to deal with rush hour traffic, paying for gas, and the potential for wrecks in REAL life doesn't mean that cars don't make my life easier.

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Touché! Lysergic! :D

 

But in real life, cars in traffic have drivers and they tend to move. Paying for gas is fine because you know when you leave the pumps the fuel is replaced by the magic gas lorry. And a potential for an occasional wreck in real life doesn't hold a candle to the mayhem an apocalyptic event would likely produce! 

 

But I do like your analogy. :)

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Gas shouldn't be too much of a problem. The underground tanks at a gas station hold a huge amount. I did some research and the smallest tanks made for storing gasoline in gas stations can hold 5,000 gallons. That's a lot of gas. Enough so that there'll probably be a few hundred gallons left which will be accessible for as long as there is power. All you gotta do is go inside and tell the cash register there was a purchase. And if there isn't any power, you can just hook a generator up to the building to get the pumps working again. And, if we're really lucky, there might be a refueling tanker truck nearby capable of holding up to 11,000 gallons of gasoline.

 

Even under apocalyptic circumstances, I'd find it perfectly believable to say about a fifth of all gasoline is still in storage. If we assume a refueling tanker was parked at the gas station when the world went to shit, that's a lot of gasoline. Enough gasoline for all the local survivors to make use of for a long damn time, and that's not even counting all the gas that might still be left in all of the wrecked vehicles and cars abandoned on the highway. Get a small siphon pump and that's a fair amount of gas that can be plundered. The ability to procure gasoline for our vehicles isn't an issue here.

 

And so what if the roads are jammed? Like I said before, there are a fair number of vehicles that perform admirably on most terrain types. Any vehicle with four wheel drive is going to be just fine. Going off road isn't a huge problem for them. And even if you can't go off road and the roads are clogged you can still invest the effort into clearing them. The metal in a vehicle would make for excellent building and crafting materials. I can actually see various survivor groups going to war over stretches of highway, fighting each other for the rights to dismantle and harvest the scrap metal from all the abandoned cars. After some time the roads will be perfectly fine to drive on with whatever functioning vehicles that happen to be left. So long as you avoid the potholes or take some time to empty a bag of dirt or gravel into them, anyway.

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It all depends on the future of the game. What I would like to see is this: a map the size of an American state, one big city a few small towns and deserts/forests/mountains/lakes. This map would be so big you big you could actually use cars. 90% cars should be broken down (maybe get a repair skill?)  and gasoline should be sparse. A lot of roads should be blocked by debris/other cars and if you run over zombies you're car will break down very fast (5-10 zombies?) Also a lot of cars should have alarms. In general cars should be there so that their main purpose is to cover great distances, not to be GTA killing machines or something.

 

Atm with the 4 maps available cars aren't needed. Then again if you complain about the game becoming an unrealistic GTA clone with cars I wonder how realistic a carless world is.

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I don't want to read 5 pages of car discussion, but has this been mention :

Most people don't know how to start a car without keys.

Imo the ability should be a trait or come from a specific job (mechanic / outlaw / truck driver), or even being lucky enough to find a car with keys already on. You'd sure find some cars with keys on the highway if people had to rush out in panic, but most likely if they had to come out of the car to run, it would be impossible to get that vehicle out of the car cemetery.

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It all depends on the future of the game. What I would like to see is this: a map the size of an American state, one big city a few small towns and deserts/forests/mountains/lakes.

 

Agree. This would be good.

 

This map would be so big you big you could actually use cars. 90% cars should be broken down (maybe get a repair skill?)  and gasoline should be sparse.

 

I'm going to assume you're read the previous posts, right?

There are a lot of them but they go into great detail as to why the notion of scarcity of Petroleum/petrol/gas/gasoline would not be realistic. Take a look, hopefully it'll change your mind. I certainly don't want to re-tread that ground because I feel it's pretty much clear cut.

 

A lot of roads should be blocked by debris/other cars and if you run over zombies you're car will break down very fast (5-10 zombies?) Also a lot of cars should have alarms. In general cars should be there so that their main purpose is to cover great distances, not to be GTA killing machines or something.

 

Great lengths should be taken to ensure that cars make getting from A to B easier but for very little else.

 

 


I don't want to read 5 pages of car discussion, but has this been mention :

Most people don't know how to start a car without keys.

Imo the ability should be a trait or come from a specific job (mechanic / outlaw / truck driver), or even being lucky enough to find a car with keys already on. You'd sure find some cars with keys on the highway if people had to rush out in panic, but most likely if they had to come out of the car to run, it would be impossible to get that vehicle out of the car cemetery.

 

It has been touched upon. I like the mechanic idea. That would be another geat NPC/PC skill. It could create some wonderful tense moments if your car breaks down and you're covering the car while the NPC repairs it.

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You are right. It would be unrealistic. I haven't read the last 5 pages. Just trying to think of stuff to keep cars in check. Whether there should be cars or not isn't really the question, it's about how they should be implemented.

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I don't want to read 5 pages of car discussion, but has this been mention :

Most people don't know how to start a car without keys.

Imo the ability should be a trait or come from a specific job (mechanic / outlaw / truck driver), or even being lucky enough to find a car with keys already on. You'd sure find some cars with keys on the highway if people had to rush out in panic, but most likely if they had to come out of the car to run, it would be impossible to get that vehicle out of the car cemetery.

Lol I'm a truck driver and I haven't the slightest of clues as to how hot wire a car. :D But yes I agree with you. People don't know how to do that stuff without a good amount of knowledge.

 

 

Gas shouldn't be too much of a problem. The underground tanks at a gas station hold a huge amount. I did some research and the smallest tanks made for storing gasoline in gas stations can hold 5,000 gallons. That's a lot of gas. Enough so that there'll probably be a few hundred gallons left which will be accessible for as long as there is power. All you gotta do is go inside and tell the cash register there was a purchase. And if there isn't any power, you can just hook a generator up to the building to get the pumps working again. And, if we're really lucky, there might be a refueling tanker truck nearby capable of holding up to 11,000 gallons of gasoline.

 

Even under apocalyptic circumstances, I'd find it perfectly believable to say about a fifth of all gasoline is still in storage. If we assume a refueling tanker was parked at the gas station when the world went to shit, that's a lot of gasoline. Enough gasoline for all the local survivors to make use of for a long damn time, and that's not even counting all the gas that might still be left in all of the wrecked vehicles and cars abandoned on the highway. Get a small siphon pump and that's a fair amount of gas that can be plundered. The ability to procure gasoline for our vehicles isn't an issue here.

 

And so what if the roads are jammed? Like I said before, there are a fair number of vehicles that perform admirably on most terrain types. Any vehicle with four wheel drive is going to be just fine. Going off road isn't a huge problem for them. And even if you can't go off road and the roads are clogged you can still invest the effort into clearing them. The metal in a vehicle would make for excellent building and crafting materials. I can actually see various survivor groups going to war over stretches of highway, fighting each other for the rights to dismantle and harvest the scrap metal from all the abandoned cars. After some time the roads will be perfectly fine to drive on with whatever functioning vehicles that happen to be left. So long as you avoid the potholes or take some time to empty a bag of dirt or gravel into them, anyway.

 

On the topic of gas stations/trucks and fuel: You can't get into those tanks without drilling or destroying the tank itself (which could be fatal), as they are made robbery proof. With the cash register part I agree. You could open a certain hose to allow you to get gas from there, but as you said only when the electricity is on. It would also be quite impossible irl to hook a generator to a buildings power source, but I could go with that in game.

 

If you'd manage to get one of those trucks you'd also have to drill your way in, those hoses are made so that they spew gas only when they are connected to a right kind of hole. I don't know the technical terms, but it's damn near impossible to steal gas from them. This is partly also to avoid the drivers themselves stealing gas, so experience won't be much of a help. But, it's a whole other thing if this should be the case in game, for playabilitys sake.

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Maybe if one was already hooked up to a gas station, it could continually refuel the pumps even as the pumps are drained out, I guess? I dunno. I'm not sure how that all works.

 

And I'm pretty sure it's possible to hook a generator up to a building's power source. Difficult, maybe, but possible. I'll have to look into it.

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I guess the Zombie apocalypse must have made all the cars drive off. All those parking spots and no cars, not even disabled ones. And if everyone took off in cars where did all the zombies come from? :)

the zombies are the people who had their cars stolen from them, so they could not escape in time. it's why they are so upset, otherwise they would be much nicer and only gnaw on you a little bit just to be friendly.

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