Suggestion:20080721 Building Improvement

	Spam!
	This suggestion was voted as spam and closed for voting, with 2 keep, 6 kill, and 8 spam votes.

20080721 Building Improvement

Jon Pyre 16:17, 21 July 2008 (BST)

Suggestion type
Skill

Suggestion scope
Buildings

Suggestion description
In any zombie movie where survivors stay in a building for a long time they always work on the building to make it more livable. For example in Dawn of the Dead (original) they build a comfortable apartment for themselves in a storeroom, and in Day of the Dead one of the main characters creates a comfortable tropical themed trailer to distract himself from the horror outside. Once the building is safely barricaded a survivor might spend their improving the building.

I suggest a Construction subskill called Home Improvement (or another name if that brings too many memories of a certain sitcom). If you have a toolbox, when inside an unruined building, you would have the option of pressing a button marked "Improve Building."

Improving a building would be a random thing like barricading. Sometimes it would improve the building and sometimes it wouldn't. Likewise, the more a building is improved the harder it would be to improve it further.

Improvements to a building would appear in its building description. They'd be random and flavorful things like:

In a mall:

"A small vegetable garden has been planted in the flower beds by a central fountain.

"A boutique has been comfortably furnished with rows of beds from a furniture store."

"Fresh vacuum sealed meat is being served in the food court"

In a Police Station:

"A locker room has been restored to hold personal items"

"A firing range has been improved to working order"

In a hospital:

"Operating rooms have been sterilized"

"A row of recently constructed shelving holds equipment for easy access"

The more improved a building the more of these little descriptive terms would appear.

The ease of access and familiarity an improved building brings causes a boost in search rates. It'd start off small, maybe a single level of improvement would only result in a tiny percentage bonus. When maxed out it might add a 10-15% benefit.

Roleplay-wise it's not that there are more items to find, it's that the hallways and rooms and neat and organized. That's why the description might not necessarily correspond to what you find. A garden in a mall doesn't create more radios in the tech store, but it's symbolic of a well maintained shelter where it would be easier to find a radio in the tech store.

There are four catches though, and these downsides are what would keep the skill balanced.

1.When people search it lessens a building's improvement from wear and tear of living in it. The more that people search the faster it degrades. So a heavily occupied building would require constant improvement to keep it in top shape.

2. Improving a building is a huge AP sink. It'd cost about the same to bring a a building to max improvement as bringing a barricade from zero to extremely heavy.

3. It requires two skills and a toolbox. This means that mid/high level players are the ones who will have to spend their AP improving, rather than shooting or reviving zombies.

4. If zombies ransack a building all improvement is lost, and a ransacked/ruined building cannot be improved.

I think this would be a flavorful way of letting survivors make their safehouse shine. It also gives people a tactical choice: spend AP temporarily improving one building or spending it to recapture and unruin others. Are you better off improving your Police Station or rebarricading the building next door?

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 Read the downsides. It takes a LOT of AP to keep a building improved for a modest search bonus. Searching counteracts improving, so building would have to keep improving as people search or it's all lost. --Jon Pyre 17:09, 21 July 2008 (BST)
2. Keep/Change - Voted Keep because Ol' Jon needs more than 1 keep vote for posterity, and because I believe this can be salvaged if increased search percentages were removed altogether. Otherwise, IMO, the "max" search percentage should have a 2-5% increase, not 10%. --Private Mark 20:06, 21 July 2008 (BST)

Kill Votes

1. Change/Kill - Might be salvageable if it was changed for these improvements to happen over time, much like decay. Scrap anything to do with malls and searching, and lower the percentages a bunch. As Grim. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:38, 21 July 2008 (BST)
2. Kill - Overpowered. As the last sentence of Grim's Spam post. --Jared^SPA 17:15, 21 July 2008 (BST)
3. Kill - but not for the reasons Grim gives. I think it would further encourage (or even requires, if a balancing across-the-board search nerf kicked in) sedentary play by survivors, in that they would prefer to use "improved" buildings in safe zones rather than going out and reclaiming ruined ones in "red" suburbs that in fact are almost empty of zombies.
   It might be OK without the search effects, but then its really just a more complex Decorative Items.  Swiers 17:18, 21 July 2008 (BST)
4. Change/Kill - as the Helpful Gnome. --Sir Bob Fortune ^RR 17:56, 21 July 2008 (BST)
5. Change/Kill - Might be salvageable if it was changed for these improvements to happen over time, much like decay. Scrap anything to do with malls and searching, and lower the percentages a bunch. As Grim.--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 18:49, 21 July 2008 (BST)
6. Change/Kill I really liked this idea, right until you tied it in to searching. The idea of improving a building and making it look nicer and feel safer in your spare time seems like a great addition to the game, but once you start messing with search odds you've gone into unbalancing the game.-- Techercizer ^(Food) _(TSoE) 20:11, 21 July 2008 (BST)

Spam/Dupe Votes

1. Spam - Holy fuck no! Super overpowered. In a large mall, like Giddings (After it gets fixed), people could easily max all the corners within a week (Assuming that it takes thousands of investments to do, instead of just a dozen or two), and endure the crushing burden of 60-65% find rates. I cant go much farther because the suggestion is Incomplete. 10 or 15%? How many investments does it take to do? How much does it cost? What are the stages? Give me some fucking numbers to rag on your suggestion. This should have gone on Talk:Suggestions, if anywhere. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 16:24, 21 July 2008 (BST)
   Edit. Sorry, i finally found some roundabout figures in there i didnt spot the first time through. It'd take maybe 50ap to max a building out (Same as it takes to get to EHB, though im being generous there) for humans to get an obscene search buff, which means every building in the city that isnt ruined will be maxed out within 24 hours of any implimentation, which basically results in an across the board search buff of 15%. And here i was treating your suggestion as something that requires serious time and investment, where the proper AP requirement to make something like this even remotely considerable as a serious suggestion is in the order of 5,000 fucking AP. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 16:34, 21 July 2008 (BST)

   Except... That searching undoes the improvement. Let's assume they're kept 1/2, like cading and destroying cades. One person spends 50AP improving to max. Then two people spend 50AP each searching in there and then the improvement is gone. So whoever is repairing the building gave up 100% of their chance to find an item 50 times so two people could have a bonus over 100 searches. Also the less improvement the lower the benefit. So maybe one of the searchers has a 15% bonus for twenty searches, then 10% for thirty searches. The next guy starts off with 10% and that goes steadily down the more they search. Not quite the buff you assume. It'd require lots of maintenance. Huge AP sink. --Jon Pyre 16:46, 21 July 2008 (BST)

   You have given NO figures at all for how fast searching undoes the improvement. You just said it does and left it at that. What you have continually failed to understand is that any change to search rates, regardless of investment by others, is fucking broken, especially when you will just end up with an army of zergs whos sole purpose is to keep these buildings repaired at max for peoples searching pleasure. Worst suggestion all year, and a serious contender for the worst suggestion ever award. This is more retarded than the psychic rampage crap that idiot tranhanam0027 tried to push through years ago. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 16:50, 21 July 2008 (BST)

2. Spam - As Grim. I'll add that it needs to be Nuked from orbit. Twice.--Feisar ^{DORIS•RR•RRF•RI!} 16:29, 21 July 2008 (BST)
3. Spam - Dear Bob in Malaysia boy, will you think next time before you post a suggestion like this? --Amber Waves of Pain 16:36, 21 July 2008 (BST)
4. Dude, where's my SPAM??? - You shouldn't get a search bonus for being a stationary mall rat, i.e. for sitting on your ass doing nothing. Instead, you should get your ass bit, and your brains devoured. In any event, there are already advantages to staying in one place. Idiotic Suggestion Creative Process Mode On: Like, for example, like, uhm, dude... the fact that you'll, like, gather a lot of supplies from, like, searching lots. And, also, like, if a place is, like, secure dude... Then, like, lots of other dudes I mean survivors are going, like, come and hang out with you. DUUUUUDE. So, this makes it, like, safer, cuz of like Safety In Numbers I think they call it... Yeah. Like. Totally. Idiotic Suggestion Creative Process Mode Off. --WanYao 17:24, 21 July 2008 (BST)
   • Re Actually this is more helpful to people in small groups. Improve a crowded building and that search benefit will just be eaten up by other people right away. Improve a building where you're the only occupant, you just gave yourself a search bonus for the next two days. --Jon Pyre 18:12, 21 July 2008 (BST)
     • No. The more people people present, the more people are going to be sinking some apes into this thing. And in a mall -- or, zomg, a fort armoury -- with the bazillions sitting around with nothing better to do... They'll spend some apes doing the HGTV thing, then some searching. Whereas in those building with no one in them, well people pass through them all the time... And will muss up your new carpets and stuff, take food from the pantry, without even so much as a hello... Seriously, John Pyre, I wonder if you actually play the same game I do... This is is bad suggestion. Period. There is no way to save it or make it better or rationalise in favour of it. It just sucks. --WanYao 21:12, 21 July 2008 (BST)
5. Obligatory Spam Vote - "The ease of access and familiarity an improved building brings causes a boost in search rates." "an improved building brings causes a boost in search rates." "boost in search rates." --Karek^maps?! 18:14, 21 July 2008 (BST)
6. Spam - WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overpowered. I don't hate this suggestion, but this isn't Susie fucking Homemaker, it's a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. Take away the improved search rates and I will think about a keep vote.  Billy Club Thorton  T!  RR  19:34, 21 July 2008 (BST)
7. Spam - Because it's incomplete. I am pretty skeptical about the idea to begin with, but if it were complete I could at least give it a kill (or a keep if it didn't feel like a strange way to give items to people and was balanced) --Pgunn 21:34, 21 July 2008 (BST)
8. Incomplete - In the most critical parts. As Grim. Seriously Jon, you have to learn to put these on Talk:Suggestions if you can't be bothered to think these through yourself. --Midianian^{|T|T:S|C:RCS|} 23:01, 21 July 2008 (BST)

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