Suggestion:20070914 Build Barrier

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Build Barrier

Timestamp: FmrPFCBob 16:53, 12 September 2007 (BST)
Type: Skill, sub-skill of construction
Scope: Survivors.
Description: Concept: As time passes in zombie stories the survivors often manage to band together and create safe zones by building walls and barriers enclosing several buildings. This proposal would allow properly skilled and equipped survivors in Malton to do the same.

Details: Skill use allows a survivor to choose a direction (NSEW) and attempt to build one level of barrier across that side of the block. They are not connected to and are independent of buildings and their barricades. They can be built on any block except those of the forts which already have external walls. Barriers can have 3 levels: minor, major, and substantial. All barriers block travel from either direction for zombies and survivors without the free-run skill must spend 5 AP to cross a barrier. Zombies and survivors can attack barriers from either side to reduce and destroy them allowing free passage. Building or reducing barrier levels will have a percentage chance for failure similar to those for barricades. A dead body in a block with a barrier can be moved to the other side by a survivor just as one can be removed from a building. Barriers will decay on their own 1 level every 3 days unless maintained.

Skill requirements - construction and body building. Equipment requirements - toolkit and crowbar.

This would be a table but I don't have the wiki-skill.
Level ___ Cost to build ___Success Rate/Build ___Success Rate/Destroy
Minor ____20 AP ______High (80%?) ______Medium (60%?)
Major ____10 AP ______Medium (60%?) ______High (70%?)
Substantial __10 AP ____Low (30%?) ______High (80%?)

Examples of possible in-game text: You are standing outside the Bainton Arms, a derelict yellow-stone building with a curved roof. The building has been very strongly barricaded. There is a minor barrier of appliances and furniture blocking your path to the North.
You are at Edgerton Drive. There is a substantial barrier of scavenged furniture, abandoned cars, and makeshift fencing blocking your path to the East.
You are able to gather enough materials to build a minor barrier to the South.
You gather enough materials to improve the barrier to the South.
You attempt to improve the barrier to the West but cannot find enough materials.
You smash at the barrier to the North, part of it falls away leaving your path clear.


The addition of this skill will enable survivors to make their own crude imitations of the forts. It is built on features already coded into the game to one degree or another. The skill, equipment, and AP requirements make it costly enough to slow the appearance of large areas protected by barriers and only larger groups should be able to clear and maintain enclosed areas. It adds another use for crowbars and the resulting debate of inventory management. Barriers cannot be improved to the levels of barricades due to the larger area they must cover so they are somewhat more fragile and less effective at protecting survivors from attack.

NOTE for clarification: Diagonal movement is also blocked for all three blocks on the side with a barrier. FmrPFCBob 20:23, 14 September 2007 (BST) 

Thanks for considering this suggestion and especially for the new ideas and advice. 
FmrPFCBob 13:56, 26 September 2007 (BST)

Voting Section

Voting Rules
Votes must be numbered, justified, signed, and timestamped.
# justification ~~~~

Votes that do not conform to the above may be struck by any user.

The only valid votes are Keep, Kill, Spam or Dupe. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.


Keep Votes

  1. Keep I believe its sufficiently unique to be considered. FmrPFCBob 19:21, 14 September 2007 (BST)
  2. Keep I believe that it's a good idea and survivors can build "kind of forts" near importants zones Heric Claussen 21:08, 14 September 2007 (BST)
  3. Keep I actually came here to post the idea myself... I don't like decay thing though. User:Colonel Wesker 18:15 September 14th
  4. Keep Decent idea, still needs a bit of work though for better balance and such. Zed's with free running remember enough skill to roll themselves over the barricade, Barricade can only be built on the edge of a suburb, not in a wasteland. The degrade idea, although not exaltly the most fun sounding thing, is also a good adition, makes it harder to upkeep the barricade, although maybe it degrades every two days, not three, so it's takes a bit more organization to upkeep --Zach016 03:44, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  5. Keep But work on it. Maybe have it functioning as lightly barricaded or bust? --DrBowman 13:00, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  6. Keep A little word about unforseen cosequnces but it's novel enough to keep Johnny Lunchpail 17:30, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  7. Keep Excellent idea, balances game more equally for survivors means in sieges you can stop/slow zombie re-inforcements giving survivors better win chance. easy to implement as you said and balances sieges and gives survivors the equal of zombie ruin, maybe make a new skill called "Engineering" or "Street Construction" costing 200 xp underneath construction. Thebattler35 13:28, 16 September 2007 (BST)


Kill Votes

  1. Kill/Change - Don't like the decay (probably hard to implement given UD's design, definitely hard to monitor). Should block vision as well. This probably will swing the balance significantly towards survivors and will merit giving Z's something substantial to rebalance, ... but that's more of an observation than a criticism. Not opposed in principle if the above 2 issues are addressed. --Pgunn 21:11, 14 September 2007 (BST)
    Re:- Have addressed these points on the talk page, please come discuss.
    FmrPFCBob 22:34, 14 September 2007 (BST)
  2. Kill/Change - As Pgunn. --Hhal 22:24, 14 September 2007 (BST)
  3. Kill Its a good argument, but no, just no. I don't want Urban Dead turning into Nexus War. JD 00:22, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  4. Kill Barriers were annoying in nexus when I played it and I sure as hell dont want them in UD--Johnny Reb 02:08, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  5. Kill Sorry, gonna have to say no. --Sonofagun18 07:23, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  6. Kill - If it blocks zombies, it should block survivors too. --Midianian|T|T:S|C:RCS| 07:57, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  7. Kill - quite a few doubtfull moments --~~~~ [Talk] 09:13, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  8. Kill - I can see that a lot of thought has been put into this, but, I dunno. The Idea just doesnt sit right with me somehow.--Seventythree 14:15, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  9. Kill - Screws with ruins and current 'cades. Besides, I preferred the barbed wire suggestion. --Ducis DuxSlothTalk 14:45, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  10. Kill - This is not completely out of genre, but it is difficult to say what effect this will have on game play. I am afraid it will make life for feral zombies a lot harder. So no. -- John RubinT! ZG FER 16:25, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  11. Kill - Newb zombies are people too. --Howard Bentley 17:31, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  12. No - Make it weaker. Like, make it so that you can only put up one level, it covers all sides, It takes loads of AP to make, but not many to knock down, and survivors spend 2 AP to cross it. This whould make the skill only applicable if you have lots of AP to waste, with a segnificant, but minor benifit. BoboTalkClown 20:54, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  13. Change- I think I might have the balancing factor for this suggestion. Make it you can get over a barrier if you start from inside a building, whether free running or, as a zombie or newbie survivor, just going into the next square. This simulates that said person is going over them through a second story window. It would limit the barrier's effectiveness by forcing players to maintain barricades on the other side or to build adjacent to empty blocks. It would also make ransack and ruin useful as bridges over the cades. Otherwise, I think this is one of the best suggestions of its kind.--Grigori 02:58, 16 September 2007 (BST)
  14. Kill/Change Keep working on it. --Secruss 03:13, 16 September 2007 (BST)


Spam/Dupe Votes

  1. Spam - you haven't considered diagonal movement. -- Pavluk A! 19:58, 14 September 2007 (BST)
  2. Spam - Overpowered and screws low level zombies/rotters.--Karekmaps?! 00:08, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  3. Spam - Me and a couple other people discussed a similar idea over on the developing suggestions page (it was several weeks ago, so you won't be able to find it there now). Basically, your idea is overpowered as it is (imagine EVERY block having barriers...low level zeds would be stuck). When we were discussing the idea, we couldn't come up with any way to make the idea both reasonably fair AND reasonably usefull at the same time. --Steakfish 01:03, 15 September 2007 (BST)
    Re:- I could only find one similar suggestion in my research and it was from 2005. I tried to balance the cost/benefit as best I could, any new ideas are welcome. Honestly, I would prefer Kill votes to Spam votes, I find it hard to believe my idea fits the criteria for spam ("it's not some crazy uber power or something else ridiculous"). FmrPFCBob 01:18, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  4. Spam Overpowered. Newbie zombies would have to spend 7 AP a square to go through. Newbie survivors 6 AP. Also, Free Running is not a crossover skill. And, even if it were, most players don't take it right away in favor of XP gaining skills (though, of course, this might alter that). And, as Steakfish pointed out, imagine EVERY block having barriers. Newbies would be out of AP after only moving 7-8 squares. And a player would probably end up spending MORE AP to "break" the barricades then they would to just cross over them.--Pesatyel 03:18, 15 September 2007 (BST)
    Re:- No its actually worse than you thought, if you'll re-read it you'll see that NO zombie can cross it without destroying it. But it is not an additional cost to move over and above regular movement cost. FmrPFCBob 23:38, 16 September 2007 (BST)
  5. Spam - Fuck no. --The Grimch U! 12:10, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  6. Spam - Because you must learn. Votes are rocks. Once made, they are not changed except by the upheaval of the power of a hurricane. Nalikill 15:34, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  7. Spam - Utterly ridiculous.-- dǝǝɥs oʇ ɯɐds: sʎɐʍ1ɐ! 17:30, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  8. Spam - What the fuck is this crap? --Sonny Corleone RRF DORIS CRF pr0n 17:33, 15 September 2007 (BST)
  9. SPAM - VEGETA WHAT DOES THE SCOUTER SAY ABOUT ITS SIMILARITY TO NEXUS WAR LEVEL?????? Sockem 00:27, 16 September 2007 (BST)
    OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!!!! Nalikill 22:22, 16 September 2007 (BST)
  10. Spam - God no. We're already at 55/45; you want Super Barricades now? --Karlsbad 10:08, 16 September 2007 (BST)
    Re:- It was pretty bad when I started working on it. I took a while to get it to this point since I was trying to cover all the bases. But I never thought of it as a balancing event, that's what tactics and learning are for. I just thought the idea fit the genre and stage of the game. FmrPFCBob 13:27, 16 September 2007 (BST)
  11. Spam-ish Sort-of a pied piper (I do NOT want to die and be "teleported" halfway across the city) and also... Why? --AlexanderRM 22:15, 16 September 2007 (BST)
    Whaaa? That has nothing to do with the suggestion. Nalikill 22:22, 16 September 2007 (BST) Non author RE.--Karekmaps?! 11:08, 18 September 2007 (BST)
    Must be about a body being moved to the other side of a barrier. I suppose it could happen if there are many barriers in adjacent blocks but that would not be as designed nor very efficient. FmrPFCBob 23:38, 16 September 2007 (BST)
  12. As those above. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ #nerftemplatedsigs 22:44, 20 September 2007 (BST)
  13. Spam - Words cannot describe how much I hate these suggestions. --Druuuuu 04:13, 23 September 2007 (BST)
    Re:- Then vote KILL dammit! Don't make some cheap ass SPAM vote when you have made your opinion clear, have the guts to stand up for what you think. You don't appear clever or cute by voting SPAM, you look like every other whiny twit in the world who won't take responsibilty for thier actions. To quote - If you do not like the idea, and it's not some crazy uber power or something else ridiculous, VOTE KILL, NOT SPAM. FmrPFCBob 16:43, 23 September 2007 (BST)
  14. Dupe- There have been far better exterior 'barrier' proposals, namely mine.--O'Sheehy 17:49, 23 September 2007 (BST)
  15. Spam - Complicated, convoluted and overpowered. And dumb. --Themanwhocares4 22:53, 25 September 2007 (BST)


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