Malton Danger Updaters/Tools

Malton Danger Updaters

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Malton Danger Updaters | Talk | History | Current Assignments | Roster | Allies | Tools | Recruitment Ad

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These are tools & references that may be useful for updating assignments! Maps The maps linked to on the suburb page are very useful — but they're not the only ones out there! Particularly useful maps include: The Danger Center, for locating areas that are primarily out-of-date (gray/unknown) and to catch holes in mostly-updated areas. The External Military Report Map — high-zombie areas or areas with changing EMR numbers are more likely to need frequent updating. (See also the EMR instructions below.) The Mobile Phone status maps, as mobile phone towers get out-of-date faster than most buildings. DangerReports for individual building types. Many know about the Mall and NT status maps, but did you know that such maps exist for all building types? This is useful for (e.g.) seeing if no hospitals in an area are updated, or no dark buildings. The maps are: Auto Repair - Bank - Cathedral - Church - Cinema - Club - Factory - Fire Station - Fort - Hospital - Hotel - Junkyard - Library - Mall - Mansion - Museum - NecroTech - Police Department - Power Station - Pub - Railway Station - School - Stadium - Tower - Warehouse Danger Reports The basic primer on how to update Danger Reports is the Danger Reports Guide — it covers how the DR system works and how to update the reports. Note that updating a building's status affects how that building is displayed throughout the wiki: on its wiki page, the suburb-level danger maps, the Danger Center, Building Information Centers, and any other maps (see the above section). One thing the guide fails to note in depth is what kinds of situations mean what statuses. A simplified listing is below. Safe — The building is at least Very Strongly Barricaded, without significant zombies outside (maybe with one, or with dead bodies). It does not matter whether the building is lit, occupied by survivors, or surrounded by ruined buildings, but these are all things you can list in the comments of the report. Rebuilding — The building is somewhere between Loosely and Quite Strongly caded, without zombies in the block. Again, the building can be lit or unlit. Under Attack — If a building is unruined, has at least some barricades, and there are at least a couple zombies outside (~5+ for malls), it's under attack. Sometimes these buildings won't have anyone inside, because survivors are defending the block while sleeping elsewhere, or zombies have just arrived. Under Siege — In general, a building under attack moves to under siege with 10+ zombies outside (~20+ for malls) is considered under siege. These numbers used to be higher, but declining population levels mean the under siege status is relatively rare. In Zombie Hands — If a building is unbarricaded and/or ruined and there are more zombies than survivors inside, it's in zombie hands. Ransacked — The building has no barricades (doors open or closed) but has no zombies in the block and isn't ruined. This is a common status for junkyards. Ruined — The building is ruined and doesn't have zombies in it. Pinata — A ruined building which is Heavily Barricaded or greater is listed as a pinata. By custom, even buildings with zombies still in the block are listed as pinata (rather than in zombie hands) if they are overbarricaded. Rot Revive — This status, which only applies to NecroTech Buildings, means the building is unbarricaded (doors open) but lit and unruined, and therefore available for reviving brain rotted zombies. If an NT building briefly meets these qualifications due to an ongoing break-in by zombies and not due to continued maintenance, it's listed as under attack rather than rot revive. Unknown — The report hasn't been recently updated. See the relevant assignment. External Military One of the most useful ways to keep information on Malton updated is through the External Military Report system. The system was long used to update wiki statuses of suburbs, buildings, etc. with the assistance of a bot; however, this was discontinued a few years ago. That means that keeping the system updated is up to dedicated volunteers like us! Below are the basic steps to becoming an EMR updater. They may seem long/confusing at first, but soon (once you've memorized the codes in step five especially) the process will become very simple. 1. Have your character carry a radio and set it to the External Military frequency, 25.96 MHz. The radio can only be acquired & retuned while a survivor, but will continue to play messages while a zombie (or a dead body etc.). 2. When this character logs in, pause. Don't take any actions. Open the EMR Page (or equivalent map) on the wiki, and do all of the EMR updates. If you take an action with the character, you'll no longer be able to see the EMRs. For the next steps, let's say you see a single EMR, for the suburb of Miltown. The message will read something like: 25.96 MHz: "... minimal activity in Miltown ... a lot of buildings with lights on ... only a few buildings damaged ... lights are on in the Fliney Building ..." (yesterday) 3. Navigate to the relevant EMR page by (on the EMRP or EMRM) clicking on the date in the box for the relevant suburb. This will bring you to a page entitled, e.g., EMRP: Miltown. Leave this page open, but in another tab, open its talk page, in this case Talk:EMRP: Miltown. 4. Add the report to the talk page. The talk page acts as an archive of past reports, and lets other users know that a given broadcast has already been updated. To do this, at the top of the page (below the "Logged Reports" title) type five tildes in italic markers (should look like: ''~~~~~''), which will paste the italicized timestamp — not your full signature! (This means you can't use the button if you normally do.) After that, paste the full report, including the "25.96 MHz:" and the "time ago" (the text in parentheses). When you save the page, the result should look like this: 05:14, 16 February 2016 (UTC) 25.96 MHz: "... minimal activity in Miltown ... a lot of buildings with lights on ... only a few buildings damaged ... lights are on in the Fliney Building ..." (yesterday) 5. Edit the EMR page. Back on the suburb's EMR page (in this case, EMRP: Miltown), edit the page and update the information. The information is in a coded form, to keep the form small: the key can be found at either EMRP: Format and Meaning of Report Summaries or Talk:External Military Report Page. The basics are: z: This should be followed by a tilde and then a number. For "twenty" or numbers higher than thirty, it appears as ~20, ~30, etc. If the report says "empty", "clear", etc. it should be ~0; "a dozen" is ~12 or ~1dzn; "two dozen" is ~24 or ~2dzn. The odd one out is "minimal activity" — by convention, this is marked as 10- (i.e. not zero, but not enough to qualify as about a dozen.) i: This is the "infrastructure" section, marked between *** (fully intact) and --- ("wasteland", "wrecked" etc.) p: This is the lighting level in the suburb, graded between A and F. For the i and p numbers, the detailed table is below: Infrastructure rating : report text *** : can't see a single ruined building *** : infrastructure looks intact **- : only a few buildings damaged **- : some minor structural damage *-- : heavy structural damage *-- : serious collateral damage --- : most of the buildings are ruined --- : the whole suburb's wrecked --- : it's a wasteland down there   Power rating : report text A : lights are on across the suburb A : power's on across most of the area A : suburb's lit up like a Christmas tree B : a lot of lights on, looks the area's been reclaimed B : a lot of buildings with lights on B : a lot of lights on, though, there are still people down there C : several buildings with power C : a few buildings with lights on D : only one building with lights on D : the only building with any lights on F : no lights on down there F : can't see any signs of life In the case of our example report, "... minimal activity in Miltown ..." translates to z=10-; "... a lot of buildings with lights on ..." means p=B; and "... only a few buildings damaged ..." means i=**-. 6. Update the date. To know the date the EMR was broadcast, take the current game time (easy to see as the timestamp from step 4!) and subtract the "time ago" from the end of the broadcast. In our case, the timestamp we got was on February 16, and the report says (yesterday), so we would mark the EMR page as d=Feb 15. In all, our report should look like this: |z=10- |i=**- |p=B |d=Feb 15 Once we have that, just save the page! 7. Update the Danger Reports of any listed buildings. See the Danger Reports section of this page for the basics on how to update Danger Reports. In general, most EMRs will list the status of 1-2 strategic buildings (NTs, malls, or forts) at the end of the report. In our case, we have "... lights are on in the Fliney Building ..." So, we would navigate to the Fliney Building Danger Report and update it, leaving the "... lights are on in the Fliney Building ..." text as the comment. In general, it's ok to update a report as safe if it says "lights are on" or equivalent, and ruined if it says "out of action", "down" or equivalent. However, you may want to take into account other information, particularly the previous Danger Report update if it's recent. For example, if we visited the Fliney Building report and the prior status was rot revive, we would leave the report as rot revive as the EMR we got doesn't contradict that (rot revive buildings must have lights on). Occasionally, early in the report text another building will be referred to, generally as "about (number) outside the (such-and-such) building". The procedure for updating the relevant Danger Report is as above, although generally under atack or under siege is the most common resulting status. 8. Update the suburb Danger Level. This is the least frequent, and most subjective, part of the process. First, determine what the EMR implies the suburb Danger Level is. This is an approximate system, and EMRs don't always reflect 100% accurate numbers, so the boundaries can be fuzzy. In general, the tables below indicate what the relevant DL should be. Each box is an i: level, with the rows and columns as p: and z:. Danger Levels implied by EMRs Infrastructure Intact: *** Number of Zombies 0 or 10- ~12 ~20 or ~24 ~30 + A or B rating Safe Safe Safe MD C+ "several" Safe Safe MD MD C- "a few" Safe Safe MD MD D or F rating GT GT MD Dang Minor Damage: **- Number of Zombies 0 or 10- ~12 ~20 or ~24 ~30 + A or B rating Safe MD MD Dang C+ "several" Safe MD MD Dang C- "a few" * MD Dang Dang D or F rating GT GT Dang Dang Heavy Damage: *-- Number of Zombies 0 or 10- ~12 ~20 or ~24 ~30 + A or B rating MD MD Dang VD C+ "several" MD Dang Dang VD C- "a few" GT Dang Dang VD D or F rating GT GT Dang VD Wasteland: --- Number of Zombies 0 or 10- ~12 ~20 or ~24 ~30 + A or B rating ? ? ? ? C+ "several" ? ? ? ? C- "a few" GT GT VD VD D or F rating GT GT GT VD Next, check the suburb's currently-listed Danger Level on the Suburb map or the suburb's individual page. If the current status contradicts the one implied by the EMR, you can change it. Let's say that before our EMR, Miltown's Danger Level was listed as moderately dangerous. However, the EMR implies that it should be listed as safe. In that case, we can navigate to User:DangerReport/Miltown and replace "|Danger=moderately dangerous" with "|Danger=safe". You may have noticed that a couple of these boxes have asterisks (*). This means the report is borderline between a safe and ghost town status. In this case, if a suburb is already listed with one of those statuses, it's best to leave the report unupdated. And if you're not sure about a status, you don't have to update the Danger Level! Another EMR checker, or an on-site reporter, will update the status with more accurate information. 9. Repeat this process for any other EMRs listed. 10. Rest happy in the knowledge your updates help keep the wiki active & informative for other players!

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