User:Labla/Degrading barricades
Decaying barricades
| Timestamp: Labla 13:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC) |
| Type: Barricade change |
| Scope: Everyone |
Description:
Rationale Urban Dead player base is shrinking with each day, which has great impact on the game. Suburbs without large buildings (Malls) or/and organized active groups become desolated. This in turn leads to creation of over-barricaded ghost towns in many cases. In normal condition zombies would work like savanna wildfire, ruining suburb from time to time (and later survivors would reclaim red part of the city). This doesn't necessary happens, in some part of the Malton it is hard to find a single zombie or numbers are so low, that ferals have very low impact. This is natural as predators follow their pray, which leads to clustered player activity in UD. What is the bad part? Barricades in desolated areas stay the same or goes up thanks to Fiddler's Green Syndrome. It is hard to find any use for those places, beside huge free running lanes. New players will avoid this area - finding a safe house can be close to impossible. Experienced survivors will also have hard time finding entry point. Same goes for zombies, EHB and small food supplies just drives them off. At least in case of completely ruined suburbs, there are mobile groups and also unaffiliated survivors who enjoy reclaiming this type of terrain. So what we can do with over-barricades ghost towns? Solution Add slow decay to unattended buildings. Barricades should go down after some time. Keep in mind that main beneficents should be new players. Buildings with lower barricades make good safe-house for new survivors. They are also easier to open up for zombies. Possible problems Finding right balance, it is a double edged sword. Example: negative impact of too fast decaying barricades will not be limited only to survivors - think pinata tactics. Mechanics This is part I would like discuss, before submission. Barricades are central part in UD mechanics and even slight change can have great impact. I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something crucial, leaving a loophole. Bellow you will find the very first draft. After 3 weeks without touching barricades, decay should kick in. If building is empty at the time, barricade should go down a one level per day. Decay stops when someone rebarricades building (successful attempt) or barricade level reaches VSB+0. This means that building at EHB+2 would drop to VSB+0 in about a month. Why VSB+0? I picked up this level, because it is used at rot revive clinics as good compromise. Provides some security, on other hand it can be taken by zombies pretty easy. |
