Water Barrels, Dogs, Better Airdrops! Electricity and radios. Entropy and salt.

[AutoDMC]

[B]Water barrels![/B] I'd like to see food grade barrels of water. The only item you can store in them is water; you put a water bottle in the barrel and you get an empty bottle back. The barrel can hold 100 water bottles worth of clean water. It's a destroyable block, so if a zombie gets into it the water leaks out. Technically, this is just like a chest full of water bottles, but it gives me more empty bottles to get water with... ...and once the weather system is in place, it would let us build gutters! A gutter checks to see how many slope bricks exist in an unbroken line above it during rain, and for each block it deposits one bottle of water per day per storm into the water barrel. Eventually you won't have to spend so much time boiling water to get clean water, you can collect it from the roof. Speaking of water, sanitation tablets would be neat. Combine murky water and a sanitation tablet in your inventory to get clean water. [B]Dogs![/B] I know they're on the kickstarter stretch goal list, but I feel this is important enough to complain about. Dog zombies are terrifying relative to the other zombies I run into, and every time I've died I've died to a dog zombie. Literally. I'd like to see non-infected dogs occasionally, and if you feed them they'll follow you around. They exist mainly to attack zombies that are attacking you, and specifically to focus on other dog zombies. Alternatively, I'd love some kind of bait I can use to lure dog zombies off my trail... better still if it's something that kills them. Not to mention Dog zombies seem way overpowered... Maybe make them suck a little more during the day? [B]Better airdops![/B] First off, the contents of the crate are kinda lackluster. Considering I get a box or three a day maybe I shouldn't complain, but the remants of the US Air Force have spent precious fuel hurling a bomber in the air to drop a box containing a duplicate booklet and six bullets to me... which I have to run and seek to find. So, I'd like to see the crate contents be a little more useful. Some crates are incredibly awesome, some are crap. I just think the contents should be a little nicer; I'd settle for a server option to set the "richness" of boxes. I'd make the airdrops less likely, but more useful when they drop. Also, I should get planks when I break open a cargo box. It's made of wood planks! I should also get some cloth fragments and paracord. If I learned anything from watching Survivorman, it's (1) paracord can be used for ANYTHING, and (2) you never leave behind anything useful. ...alternatively, if you consider the weakness of the crate contents to be a plus, not a minus, another option is to make sure the crate inventory is always full, but pack it with crap. Copies of the US Constitution, moldy bread, blanks instead of bullets (craft into bullet casings), dented cans containing botulism, spoiled MREs, Fallout survival manuals from the 40s, bundles of dollar bills. Empty water bottles. Sandbags. I open up a crate and walk away with: 1 discharged battery, 6 sandbags, 3 empty water bottles, spoiled beef, $250 in one dollar bills, 6 9mm bullets, a can of chicken, 1 full water bottles, and some moldy bread. Even though half of that is "junk" I still feel more satisfied running out to get the box than I would have been spending the same amount of time to get a handful of bullets, a water bottle, and a book. I feel like the pilots fly with good intentions but are behind a bumbling bureaucracy like FEMA instead of the whole program being run by idiots trying to waste fuel. Finally, the occasional airplane crash full of cargo and fire. [B]Electricity![/B] Batteries from cars wired up to a water wheel and alternator, solar panel, windmill, wood burning boiler turn into "Charged Batteries" which can be wired up to refrigerators (to keep antibiotics cool and make food last longer), Air Conditioners (to make a building more livable once we've got environmental damage due to heat and cold), Stoves (for heat and cooking), Electric fence charger (to electrify barbed wire), power a golf cart. A day on the charger makes the battery charged; a day on a device discharges the battery. Another resource you have to plan around. You can survive without it, but you can survive better with it. I'd expect a wooden log to provide more benefit charging a battery powering a stove then you would get directly from burning the wood, for example. [B]Radios![/B] Right now the map magically tracks friends if you ask it to. I suggest having an ingame radio. If you have the radio on your belt, you can chat with your friends and friends can track you... but you're more noticable to zombies because of the static and stuff coming out of the radio. If the radio is in your pack, or not on your person, (or is discharged,) tracking and chat don't work. This can easily be worked around with Ventrilo, of course, but I like the idea of being able to track multiple people and having to decide between communication and stealth. The "home" marker requires you to maintain a base station; and perhaps this allows you to mark other locations on the map. Instead of having signage, you can build a transponder which helps you locate caches and whatnot. Instead of your bed being your spawn point, your home radio becomes your spawn. Additionally, Radios could be useful for aircraft drops; if you have a radio on your belt you can pick up the transponder in the box and get a "warmer/cooler" beeping sound when seeking a supplies box. [B]More entropy![/B] Anything not canned should eventually go bad. Meat should go rancid, bread should grow mouldy. In other words, food you make yourself shouldn't last. I saw a suggestion for canning your own food; water bottle + meat should make canned food which lasts longer, but not indefinitely. I shouldn't ever be able to build up more than a week's supply of rations in my fort, because past a certain point I can't consume them before they go bad. However, you can get salt, either from mining, brackish water and boiling, or airdrops/scavenging. Salt combined with food combined with cans combined with heat = preserved food. Jerky, sausage. These foods were some of the few long term storage foods before refrigeration, and they should be the only foods that don't go bad without refrigeration in the game. That cooked pork becomes a ham with salt and heat, and a ham can last for weeks. The cooked pork will go bad in a couple of days if it's not preserved otherwise. In ancient societies, salt was money. Salt should exist the same way in this game.

[legolas141]

I think the inclusion of dog zombies, (along with their permanent run ability) is to keep the player on their toes, instead of feeling completely safe and care free during the day. Like the water barrel/rain collection idea, a great way to store clean water other than 10 bottle stacks I also like the "nothing is useless" mentality. of course this only truly applies in the early game when you don't have massive stores of wood and cloth and iron and other resources. The electricity idea is interesting, and something along those lines is probably coming I would imagine. however, I would think along these lines. Wood/coal can oly "power" one device, (the one they are burned in). while electricity could be wired to several devices at once. that way you don't have to micromanage each device's "inventory" of fuel. The industrial craft mod for minecraft is a perfect example of the system I am talking about. you have a core system that generates electricity and then a wiring system that runs everything in your base from that core system, whether it is generated by solar/water/burning items. different sources would also have different payoffs relative to their costs/requirements. wood burning or water wheels require resource input, (or specific location with a water wheel, aka side of river) but generate more electricity. while solar or wind simply need to be set up and left alone, but don't generate quite as much. This would make electricity a viable and attractive option for larger more advanced bases while providing different "tech" levels for the different generators. A generator powered by burning wood/coal for example would be relatively simple to build, but would require constant attention to keep running. while solar panels would require high tech parts and knowhow but once created can be "forgotten about" as they need no player interaction to function.

[Robert Skywalker]

Definitely full of awesome ideas. We need some 5-50 cord, paracord, that stuff is truly useful for everything. Maybe throw in duct tape too, as it is second most useful item. I've probably got at least a 100ft of paracord around, because I use it for everything. We could even craft it with the cotton that just got added. Radios sound great. And the water collection system... SO EPIC! Nothing is useless. Getting planks from crates yes! Water barrels, Yes! I could go through everything and say Yes!, but instead I'll just say YES!!!!! To everything. I'm happy to know another Survivorman fan is here too. Maybe we could get a Leatherman, multi tool, combat knives, etc for making a lot of the stuff he does on the show. Could seriously help in the apocalypse.

[AutoDMC]

I agree with Legolas; "nothing is wasted" is more useful for the beginning game instead of the endgame... but I think that's more a side effect of there being no "middle game" currently in the alpha. At least in my experience, the zombies don't really get more dangerous or scary over time... with some decent spikes and some planning you can have a solid base within an ingame month. I don't blame the Pimps for this; I think it's just a side effect of the newness of the game. However, with that said, I expect to see smarter zeds; zeds wearing body armor (obviously previous survivors who couldn't find antibiotics) who aren't stopped by spikes, zombie animals who smash through defenses, tool using zombies with grenades and guns, computer controlled raiders who aren't infected, weather damage to your shelters... as the game goes on, I expect the middle and end games to get more difficult, even with your newfound abilities and awesome fort. Heck, even just throwing larger and larger hordes at you could eventually wear away your carefully crafted bunker. Food, iron, and the like should definitely become more scarce than it currently is. Like you said, with a little bit of effort you can wall yourself up pretty tight. If food went bad and antibiotics had to be properly stored to stay effective, you'd be required to keep moving. Thunderstorms and acid rain could destroy parts of your fortress so you continue having to survive. Even once you've rebuilt an island of civilization, it should be surrounded by never ending zombie hordes trying to break their way in... that's what I expect going forward. So even if you're just out on a reccy trying to find some supplies because your antibiotics went bad, even if you're got a fully fortified castle back at home, when night falls you should be glad that you got some paracord and wood from that supply crate, because now you've gotta defend yourself with just the stuff on hand.

[Yojimbo]

"Bark bark!" "What's that girl? Timmy fell and broke his leg?" "Bark!" "He doesn't have a splint?" "Bark! Bark!" "Sorry girl, it's 20:00. Timmy's SOL. Here, have some grilled rabbit."