Suggestion:20080425 External Military Actions

	Closed
	This suggestion has finished voting and has been moved to Undecided Suggestions.

20080425 External Military Actions

 Swiers 22:00, 25 April 2008 (BST)

Suggestion type
flavor and information.

Suggestion scope
large zombie break ins

Suggestion description
intro: The External Military forces already perform a few flavorful functions in Malton; this suggestion aims to have them seem to take a more active interest, by sometimes "responding" to large zombie break ins with actions that alert survivors (and also potentially zombies) to the activity.

mechanics: Whenever a zombie tore open a building barricade, and there were 50 or more zombies outside that building, there would be a 50% chance of attracting "Miliatry Interest". Note that this check can only be made once per hour for a given location; if the check is made an there is no "Military Interest", then no further checks will be made at that location for 60 minutes.

Attracting "Military Interest" has the following effects:

• The External Military will immediately make a broadcast on 25.96Mhz, as they commonly do. This broadcast will be specific to the suburb in question, and may mention "...the Building Name Here is being attacked by a large horde..." instead of the usual building specific information.
• Characters in the area will hear and see helicopters flying overhead as if a supply crate had been dropped on that location.
• Three flares will be simultaneously fired into the air at the location under attack.

footnotes: Its worth noting that all of the above effects are presumably already coded for; although the game has never had (afaik) NPC's launching flares, it hardly seems difficult to implement. By limiting potential "Military Interest" checks to one every 60 minutes at most, this suggestion minimizes server loads and avoids Military Interest being a certain thing at every large break in, or causing spam. Two of the three events triggered by MI can already be ignored anyhow, if the player uses the settings to do so; it seems unlikely that Helicopter noises would be common or distracting enough to ever need such a setting, and they would add good flavor, as you'd know when you heard them that a major horde was in the area.

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. Author's vote.  Swiers 22:16, 25 April 2008 (BST)
2. Keep- Well, I like it anyway.--Jamie Cantwel3 ^{Talk TTC} 00:47, 26 April 2008 (BST)
3. Keep- OMG OVER-POWERED FLARE LAZERS ONOZ!!! --BoboTalkClown 00:56, 26 April 2008 (BST)
4. Keep- Makes sense, I can see this happening around malls/forts/other battlegrounds, and lets survivors and zombies everywhere "get in on the action" probably making eventful moments in battles/sieges much larger in scale.......In other words.......COOL! --Nathan Blackwell 01:25, 26 April 2008 (BST)
5. Keep- Yes, yes, yes, I love it! --FXI 01:29, 26 April 2008 (BST)
6. Keep- This makes sense, as it is presumably what the external military is looking for. --Diano
7. Keep - The military can finally get off there backside. --Pvt human 06:27, 26 April 2008 (BST)
8. Keep - Cool.--Crazyloop 12:45, 26 April 2008 (BST)
9. Keep/Change - Not sure on the 3 flares. I'd be happy with a different colour flare or something to proves its the military. How long do the helicopters hang around for? Like the idea overall so well done. --Machinany gun 15:18, 26 April 2008 (BST)
10. Keep - Sounds like great fun.--Carnexhat 16:38, 26 April 2008 (BST)
11. Keep- Useful for zeds and survivors eg draws them both to the specified building block --Skyvia 20:42, 26 April 2008 (BST)
12. Keep (Minor Change) - I'd recommend that the chance of attracting military interest starts smaller (say 25%) but gets larger depending on how many zombies were outside when it happened. --Uncle Bill 22:44, 26 April 2008 (BST)
13. Keep - I like flavor that shows Malton isn't the only city in the world. Feedback from the outside helps. --_└^Frozen_┘^┌_Flame^┐ 02:19, 27 April 2008 (BST)
14. Keep - Nice one. --Shusamchen 08:25, 27 April 2008 (BST)
15. Keep --Nitro378 ^{T JNL} 21:49, 27 April 2008 (BST)
16. Keep Although I still think the updates should be on another of the reserved military 25.9x bands. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 17:52, 28 April 2008 (BST)
17. Keep - Sounds alright. --Heretic144 01:26, 29 April 2008 (BST)
18. Keep - As long as they don't start shooting. --Ciaran Deckardson 11:26, 29 April 2008 (BST)
19. Keep - As everybody else, cheer cheer yay joy hope --Vandurn 20:39, 29 April 2008 (BST)
20. Keep --Kikashie ^ELT 19:43, 30 April 2008 (BST)
21. Keep Finally, my radio would be good for something! --Mps93 17:27 (EST)
22. Keep - As Frozen Flame and Diano. It makes sense that the external military would do -something- after years and years. Also, adds an additional element of in-game strategy without relying on meta-gaming. --Tselita 07:38, 2 May 2008 (BST)
23. BADASS - Need I say more? --UCFSD 17:48, 5 May 2008 (BST)
24. Keep - Makes sense although without flares and on a seperate frequency from the normal military broadcasts. Zig13 - 6/05/2008 at 11:34(BST)
25. keep - i could swear i already voted on this. the one thing i think is that there should be stricter limits of crate drops. perhaps one per suburb per 24 hours or something --Scotw 18:56, 7 May 2008 (BST)
26. Keep - I like it. Adds more coordination and feel to the game. --Leon Vulcan 18:48, 10 May 2008 (BST)

Kill Votes

1. Kill I don't like this idea. If there was a breakout that large in one place, most survivors and zombies would know about it through massive amounts of groans and flares, and metagame. --Sgt. Napalm 22:25, 25 April 2008 (BST)

   You can't hear groans inside a building, which means all of the competent survivors (and a fair number of zombies) do NOT hear groans from even major break ins. As for flares- who goes outside during a major siege and fires off a flare? They'd be smarter to shoot it at a zombie (which causes no flare report, BTW). And its quite likely that 80% of survivors do little or no metagaming; even if they do, unless they check forums etc every time before logging in, this would often be the first they heard about the break in.  Swiers 22:56, 25 April 2008 (BST)

2. Kill- Overpowered, big time.-- BKM 23:56, 25 April 2008 (BST)

   For whom, and in what way? The information it provides would be equally available to zombies and survivors.  Swiers 00:07, 26 April 2008 (BST)

3. Kill - I figure that this, although having the flavour of a survivor boost (the military wouldn't be helping zombies coordinate), it would actually be more of a boost to zombies in coordinating. Survivors have their local radio stations to listen too, and to make use of this function they would need to carry around another portable radio to listen to 25.96Mhz for break ins in the local area. Zombies however, who don't need to worry about encumbrance, can carry around a single portable radio, set to 25.96Mhz, and be alerted to break ins even when inside building (salting the land). It would be an uber-feeding groan, even though it's not guaranteed to happen (although in major break ins, chances are that it will be broadcast within a day) -- boxy ^{talk • i} 04:48 26 April 2008 (BST)
4. Change - Make it 1%. Imagine the annoyance with large hordes attack well defended places. Too many flares, a little unrealistic. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 04:53, 26 April 2008 (BST)

   "Note that this check can only be made once per hour for a given location; if the check is made an there is no "Military Interest", then no further checks will be made at that location for 60 minutes."
   I meant that to mean you'd at most get (for example) 3 simultanious flares once every 60 minutes- and half the time, that would not happen, AND you'd have to wait at least an hour for the next check. Is that "to many flares"?  Swiers 05:52, 26 April 2008 (BST)

5. While the flavor of the military actually doing something is nice...the fact that the military would be acting like death cultists to alert the Zombies where their next meal is, well, isn't. Well, of course I would consider that the military is acting like death cultists, the horror that the military might actually be dumb...is too terrible to even imagine.--ShadowScope^{'the true enemy'} 16:56, 26 April 2008 (BST)
6. Kill - Waste of an update and not significant enough.--Scout 2107 20:40, 26 April 2008 (BST)
7. Kill - Why bother? Current meta-gaming allows for even better monitoring of suburb status and zombie/survivor movement. On top of this, the external military has played a fairly minor part in the game so far (crate drops notwistanding) so why will they go through all the trouble of making such frequent and large-scale reports?--ZARDOZ 21:18, 26 April 2008 (BST)
8. Kill - I'm all for the increased radio updates but the flares and crates ruin it for me. I've never actually seen a crate but I assume they're dropped outdoors, wouldn't that be where the zombies are? --Kamikazie-Bunny 13:37, 27 April 2008 (BST)

   Characters in the area will hear and see helicopters flying overhead as if a supply crate had been dropped on that location. I said "as if" because no supply crate drop is made. All this does is invoke the same helicopter-related messages that were associated with supply crate drops.  Swiers 19:31, 27 April 2008 (BST)

9. Kill - Would mean a huge increase in radio traffic on 24.96MHz. Consider stocking up on radios and tuning one to each mall frequency - My main zed character already does this. Give basically the same info. --Explodey 22:20, 27 April 2008 (BST)

   I specifically avoid sleeping in buildings with transmitters in them so I do NOT hear that crap.  Swiers 19:23, 29 April 2008 (BST)

10. Weak Kill/Change - No flares and somehow lower the percentages and / or frequency of the checks. It is a tad strong as it is... And it does favour zambahz more than harmans; some kind of way this more fair to harmanz, for whom news of a big break in just news of impending death, would be better... But, most of the above Kill votes are based on forcing people to metagame, and that's just not a cool thing to do. Ferals (harmanz and zambahz alike) are players too! Don't force metagaming on folks... --07:04, 30 April 2008 (BST)
11. Kill - Feels like this would be more useful/used be zeds Sanpedro 05:06, 1 May 2008 (BST)
12. Kill - but reluctantly. The only thing I dislike about this is the 'zombie beeper' effect of the instant update. A delay would balance it I feel as discussed in Talk. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 19:21, 6 May 2008 (BST)
13. Kill - A refreshingly good suggestion. As much as I hate to say it, Iscariot is right about the delay. It would balance things out, but I think it would destroy the flavor. An excellent suggestion though.  Billy Club Thorton  T!  RR  00:54, 7 May 2008 (BST)

    There's already a "delay" of sort, in that there's only a 50% chance of anything happening ONCE PER HOUR MAX. I picked that mechanism largely for simplicity (it seems easy to code, and would minimize server load), but also for flavor; if the miliatry isn't around, they can't send out the alert, and probably won't be around for some time.
    Another delay occurs simply because this isn't a "real time" game; generally people will log in and see that the alert when out "x minutes ago", or even "x hours ago". After all, how often do you currently see real-time radio broadcasts, flares, and groans?
    Besides, why would the Military wait for a while after seeing a break in to alert people to it? With a delay, the mall could actually be sealed up and the break in repelled when the alert goes out.
    I do understand the "zombie dinner bell" concerns, but really- feeding groan already does that rather well in almost every case where this could occur. Not many zombies are gonna travel more than 6 blocks to a siege that might be going either way, so the longer range of flares and radios is irrelevant. THe fact that zombies who are inside might be notified is significant, but that cuts both ways, and zombies who are inside tend to be the ones who metagame anyhow.  Swiers 04:09, 7 May 2008 (BST)

    I'm sorry but my vote remains "kill". I understand your point about the delay...which is why I said that it was necessary but ruined the flavor of the suggestion; however, I still believe that this would be a souped-up feeding groan. I disagree about your assessment of zombie behavior: on my dual naturalist zombie, I try to help out whatever horde I am close to. Although I did not mention this in the original vote, I agree with Druuuuu in that the percentage is a little high.  Billy Club Thorton  T!  RR  17:28, 7 May 2008 (BST)

14. Kill - I feel the % is waaaaaay too high, especially for checking every hour. --Druuuuu ^OcTRR 04:42, 7 May 2008 (BST)
15. Kill - The impact is not worth the added complexity. --Max Lord 22:09, 8 May 2008 (BST)
16. Kill - Pointless. Omega 01:50, 9 May 2008 (BST)
17. Kill - They haven't done anything in 3 years, they're not going to start with the fireworks now --Barton 17:30, 9 May 2008 (BST)
18. Kill - The military wouldn't risk the men. They would either launch a missle or artillery strike.gabdewulf 02:19, 11 May 2008 (BST)

Spam/Dupe Votes